Before boarding-houses in London were all called Hotels and while
snobbery had advanced no further than to call them Establishments,
there was one in a London square where two of the "visitors"--which is
boarding-house English for "boarders"--were a girl and a young man.
Irene Barton was a humble journalist, who wrote stories when she would
have been wiser to go to bed, and yearned to be an admired author. Jack
Humphreys was an athletic clerk, who was renouncing clerkships for
Canada and foresaw himself prospering in a world of wheat. The young
man and the girl used to confide their plans to each other--when they
weren't saying how detestable all the other boarders were--and before
the time came for him to sail they had complicated matters by falling
in love.
When he had begged her to wait for him and she had explained that
matrimony did not enter into her scheme of things, Miss Barton was
miserable. But she did not let him guess that she was miserable, and
she didn't change her mind. She had dreamed of being a celebrated
novelist from the days when she wrote stories, in penny exercise
books, at the nursery table, and his appeal amounted to asking her
to sacrifice her aspirations and remain a nobody. She had scoffed too
often at women who "ruined their careers for sickly sentiment" to
be guilty of the same blunder. Still, she had had no suspicion that
sentiment could lure so hard, and she viewed the women more leniently
now.
She reflected that the experience of sickly sentiment at first hand
should be of benefit to her fiction, but the thought failed to
encourage her so much as she would have expected of it. "They learn
in suffering what they teach in song," she reminded herself--and an
old-fashioned instinct, which she rebuked, whispered, "But isn't it
better to be happy than to teach?"
Because Jack Humphreys persisted they discussed the subject more than
once. Sauntering round the garden of the square in the twilight, she
expounded her philosophy to him.
"I am not," she insisted, "the least bit the kind of girl you ought to
care for. It'll be five years at the very least before you can marry,
and in five years' time I shall have written books, and--well, I hope
I shall have done something worth while. Do you suppose I could be
satisfied to give it all up? I know myself, I couldn't do it. Or, if I
did do it, I should be wretched--and make you wretched too."
"But why should you give it all up?" he said miserably. "Don't
you think I should be interested in it? Haven't I been interested
here--have you found me so wooden? I don't know much about it, but Oh,
my dear, I'm so fond of you! Whatever interested _you_ would be bound
to interest _me_. You could write novels as my wife--I'd never put any
difficulties in your way, heaven knows I wouldn't!"
She shook her head.
"You think all that now, but you'd know better then. You won't want
a wife to write novels--you'll want one to bake the bread and feed
the chickens and make herself useful. You'll want the domesticated
article--and I'm an artist. I should be an encumbrance, not a wife.
Besides, I should hate it all. Oh, I know I'm hurting you, but it's
true! I should bore myself to death. To write, I need to live among men
and women, to live in London, Paris, among other writers. I want to
see pictures, and hear music--real music, not Verdi and that kind of
treacle--and be in the movement. Perhaps by the time you wanted me to
come to you I _should_ be in the movement--five years is a long while,
and I'm going to work hard. And you fancy I could turn my back on it
all! Oh, Mr. Humphreys, don't let us talk about it any more!"
Trying to steady his voice, the young man asked:
"May I write to you sometimes, as a friend?"
"I think you had better not," she said, though her heart had jumped at
the suggestion.
"I haven't any people who'd care much about hearing from me," he
pleaded; "I shall be pretty humped over there at the start. I'd
promise faithfully not to--er--I'd write to you just as I might write
to any other chum, if I had one."
"Very well," she assented. "Write to me like that and I'll answer."
* * * * *
He did not write quite like that, but he suppressed two-thirds of
what he wanted to say, and signed himself "Yours sincerely." Nobody
could have found any definite endearment to object to in the pages.
Though she checked the impulse to reply by the next mail, she replied
at considerable length. She told him the latest details of the
boarding-house---that Mrs. Usher was looking seriously ill because
she couldn't find out why Mrs. Dunphy received so many telegrams; and
that because Mrs. Kenyon's husband wasn't able to come to England yet,
Mrs. Wykes was suggesting that she hadn't a husband at all. She told
him that she had "had enough of these awful people" and that he was
to direct his next letter elsewhere. And always his next letter was
awaited more eagerly than was consistent of a young woman who was quite
sure that she preferred celebrity to love.
So, although they did not write to each other more than twice or
thrice a year, they were still corresponding after both had made some
progress. The homestead was the man's own property at last, and the
woman had had a novel published. She sent a copy of it to him, with
two or three of the best reviews. It had been reviewed very highly,
and if the ex-clerk had sometimes questioned whether she mightn't be
exaggerating her prospects, his doubt was banished when he read the
compliments that the critics paid her.
He grinned a little wryly in the solitude of the homestead. Yes, it
would have been a queer kind of life here for a woman of her talent!
"I should bore myself to death." Like a knife through him when she
said it. Of course, he had not grasped then what the life would be.
If he had thoroughly divined----Looking back, he wondered whether he
would have found the pluck to tackle it himself. That first awful year,
when he had ploughed a bit of wilderness, craving in every hour for
the sight of a girl in England!... Well, time worked wonders, and his
labours interested him now. He pulled, and viewed proudly, a few heads
of the wheat he had sown with his own hands. Jolly colour they were!
Better than a clerkship; no more London for _him_. Irene Barton was
finding it a Tom Tiddler's ground, he supposed. Good luck to her! Oh,
of course, she had done the sensible thing in refusing him--and, heaven
be praised, he wasn't broken up about it any longer. One could get over
any blow.
By way of thanks for the book, he scribbled a friendly letter, in which
there was no endearment, definite or indefinite, to object to. It
implied that her choice had been a wise one, and he congratulated her
very cordially. The letter was sincere; he felt that it would give her
pleasure. And when it reached her and she read between the lines, the
woman's heart sank, and tears crept down her face.
He wondered mildly why he didn't hear from her any more.
* * * * *
The novel that the papers praised so warmly had enriched her by the sum
of ten pounds; and when she was five years older than she had been on
the day she said good-bye to him, she was writing in a boarding-house
much like the one where he had met her. She remembered wistfully that
within five years she had foreseen herself rejoicing in Upper Bohemia.
She wrote well. She did not think as well as she wrote, of course--her
horizon was clouded by myths, like those that have it that Scots are
all skinflints, and Jews are all rogues--but her work had beauty; and
critics saw it, and she made a reputation. But the general public
did not see it, or, seeing the beauty, were a Channel's width from
perceiving that it was beautiful, so she did not make money. And
without money she found a literary reputation was less ecstatic than
she had presumed. It did not mean congenial society, because she could
not afford to join the clubs where congenial society might be supposed
to exist. It did not mean concerts, or picture-galleries, or less
physical discomfort, or a breath of sea air when she was sick for it;
it did not mean a single amelioration of her life's asperities, because
Press notices were not to be tendered in lieu of cash. Even those who
lauded her fiction remained strangers to her. Only for a few weeks
after each book was issued, she read, in her boarding-house attic,
that she was a "distinguished novelist," and then she was again ignored.
And meanwhile her youth was fading, and her eyes were dimming, and she
looked in the glass and mourned. In the emptiness of her "distinction"
she longed for laughter and a home. Desperate at last, she did join a
club of professional women; but nominal as the fees were, considering
the splendour of the place, it was an annual effort for her to pay
the subscription. And she did not go there often enough to make any
intimate friends, because she was generally too tired.
And every year she grew more tired still.
* * * * *
When she had been growing tired for sixteen years she was in a dreary
lodging, in a dingy street, toiling at a novel, between the fashion
articles by which she earned her daily bread. Mr. Humphreys, in easy
circumstances by this time, was in London too, though when memories
awoke in her she pictured him in Manitoba. He was indulging in a trip,
and had been in England three weeks. One afternoon, in the hall of the
new and expensive hotel, he picked up a book and came upon her name
among the publisher's advertisements. It was an advertisement of one of
her shattered hopes, but Mr. Humphreys didn't know that--he merely saw
her referred to as a "distinguished novelist." She was, at the moment,
trudging from a modiste's to a milliner's, to gather something to say
in her inevitable article. It was raining, and she had a headache, and
she would have to hammer out a sprightly column about Paris models
before she could lie down. His holiday was proving rather dull, and he
wondered idly whether it would be a foolish impulse to recall himself
to such a prominent woman.
His formal note, re-directed by the publisher's clerk, and re-directed
again, reached her some days later. "If you have not quite forgotten
our old friendship, I should be glad of an opportunity to call and
congratulate you on your triumphs." She read that line many times. Her
face was white, and her eyes were wide. She looked again at the name
of the expensive hotel, and stared at the sordid parlour in which she
sat--the pitiable parlour with its atrocious oleographs on drab walls,
and two mottled vases, from the tea-grocer's, on the dirty mantelpiece.
He would be "glad to congratulate her"!
She remembered the unaffected cheeriness of the previous
congratulations, the letter that had shown her his love was dead. She
had fancied that nothing could hurt more deeply than that letter, but
she had been wrong--to expose her mistake to him would be bitterer
still. The humiliation of it, the punishment! All the arrogance of
her rejection, all the boasts of her girlhood thronged back upon her
tauntingly. God! if she could have seen ahead--if only she could have
her life again.
She debated her reply. To say that she was leaving town would sound
ungracious. The alternative was to receive him at the club. Almost for
the first time she was devoutly thankful to be a member--the club would
spare her the ignominy of revealing her parlour; the stationery would
avert the need for betraying her address.
On the imposing stationery she wrote that she would be "pleased to
see him here on either Wednesday or Thursday next." Her clothes, she
supposed, wouldn't give her away, as he was a man.
Was he married? There was no hint of a wife in his letter. How much
changed would she find him? Would the change in herself shock him
greatly? There were women as old as she who were still spoken of as
"young," but their lives had run on smoother lines than hers--and when
he saw her last she had been twenty-two and sanguine. It seemed to her
that he would meet a stranger. She trembled in the club on Wednesday
afternoon, and began to hope that his choice would fall on "Thursday."
She was told that he had come. She rose with an effort. A big man, with
greying hair, approached her uncertainly. She smiled with stiff lips.
"Mr. Humphreys," she faltered. And a voice that she didn't remember, a
new deep voice that wasn't like Jack's at all, was saying, "Why, Miss
Barton! This is very kind of you."
"How d'ye do? So glad to see you again," she murmured. "Let--let us go
and sit down." Her heart was thumping, and she felt a little deaf.
"So--er Well, how does London look to you after such a long time? Are
you home for good?"
"No, about a couple of months. My home is on the other side now. Well,
this is a real pleasure! I never expected--I was rather nervous about
writing, but----"
"It would have been too bad if you hadn't," she said.
"Well, I thought I'd take my chance. Er--yes, London looks rather
different. I managed to get lost in it the other day; I had to find a
taxi to take me back. No taxis when I was here before!"
"You take tea?"
The alcove was very comfortable, and the long room was exquisite in all
its tones. The beauty of the carpet, she felt, more than repaid her for
that annual effort. And how deferential was the service!
"A fine place," said Mr. Humphreys admiringly.
"Yes, it's rather decent," she drawled; "they do one very well here. A
club is one of the necessaries of life."
"I suppose so." He was remembering the way her tea had been served in
the boarding-house. "Wealth buys more in the old country than over
there--you get more for your money than I do."
"Do you have to rough it very badly?" Her tone was gentler. "Are you
still in the same place?"
"Well, I haven't known I was roughing it of recent years, but I don't
see luxury like this in Manitoba. Not bad. And I've got a gramophone.
Pretty rotten records, I'm afraid. Verdi is about the most classical of
them."
"Isn't it lovely, how Verdi reminds one?" she said. "If I hear Verdi,
I'm about ten years old again, and--it's funny--I'm always in the same
bow window, and it's always a summer's afternoon, though I suppose
the organs used to come in the winter, too. Just as, if I hear that
hymn with 'pilgrims of the night' in it, it's always the nursery, and
the gas over the mantelpiece is lighted. Verdi gives me my childhood
back. I hope to hear Verdi in heaven. You've nothing very dreadful to
complain of, then? You aren't sorry you went?"
"Well, no--I'm glad I went. It has panned out all right. It has been a
funny thing to walk down the Strand again and remember that the last
time I was in it I was short of sixpences. The other day I looked in
at the office where I used to clerk. Two of the boys I had known were
there still--grown round-shouldered and pigeon-chested. I suppose
they've had a rise of about fifty pounds a year in the meantime. They
came round to dinner at the hotel last night, and it made me melancholy
to hear them talk. I used to want them to chuck the office and go out
to Canada with me--they'd got the stamina once--but they hadn't got
the grit. Now it's too late.... You know, it's capital to see you
flourishing like this! You're about the only survivor of the old days
that it hasn't given me the hump to meet. You always _were_ sure you'd
get on, weren't you?"
"I was," she said. "Yes, I used to say so."
"Do you remember the people in that house? And how we used to groan
about the extras in the bills?"
"It was a bad time for us both," she stammered.
"But it's good to look back on now it's over. Helps one to appreciate.
When you're feeling dull now, you can drive round here and have a chat
with a friend, and say, 'Well, it used to be much worse--I used to be
poor.' Isn't that so?"
She nodded helplessly. Her mind was strained to find another subject.
"I wish _you'd_ come round to dinner with me one evening, if you've
nothing better to do?"
"I'm not going out very much just now," she demurred. "I---"
"It'd be a charity, I'm all alone, and--by the way, I don't know if
'Miss Barton' is just your literary name now? If there is a lucky man,
I hope he will give me the pleasure, too?"
"No, I'm not married," she said.
"Like me, you've been too busy. You know, I really think our victories
should be fêted. It'd be friendly of you to come. You can find one
evening free before I go back?"
"I suppose," she said, trying to laugh, "I'm not so full of engagements
that I can't do that!"
And, though neither of them had foreseen the invitation, she was
pledged to dine with him. Heavily she reflected that, when the dinner
finished, she would be obliged to ask him to send for a taxi and that
it would probably cost her a half-crown.
* * * * *
She went by train. That her solitary evening gown was wrong, having
been bought three years since, did not worry her, though as "Lady
Veronica," in her _The Autocrat at the Toilet-Table_ column, she
wrote of things being "hopelessly last season's" when their vogue had
been declining for a week; but she was embarrassed by her lack of
evening shoes. At the table she bore herself bravely, supported by the
knowledge that the epoch of her sleeves was unsuspected by him, but
when she rose she found it difficult to conceal her feet.
Yet, if it had not been that the shame of failure poisoned each
mouthful that she took, the evening would have had its fascination.
When she led him to speak of his early blunders on the homestead, while
he told her how he had shrunk dismayed from the first bleak sight of
that patch of prairie, she forgot she was pretending, and forgot to
feel abased. In moments she even forgot to feel old. The story of his
struggles bore her back. As she heard these things, the greying man
became to her again the boy that had loved her--and as the woman leant
listening, the man caught glimpses of the girl that she had been.
His trip was proving queerly unlike his forecast of it on the farm.
When he packed his bags he had had no idea of seeing her, but he
had looked for emotions that he hadn't obtained. The strangeness of
sauntering on the London pavements as a prosperous man had been less
exhilarating than his anticipation of it. To drive to a fashionable
tailor's and order clothes had failed to induce a burst of high
spirits, though on the way he had laudably reminded himself that once
it would have been the day of his life. He was, in fact, feeling
solitary, and to loll in stalls at the theatres, instead of being
jammed in the pit, would have seemed livelier to him if he had had
a companion. In the circumstances, it was not astonishing that he
proposed to take Irene Barton to the theatre a night or two later--and
as he insisted a good deal, she compromised with a matinée.
Somehow or other he was having tea with her, at the club again, the day
afterwards. And on the day after that, there was something else.
They had always found much to say to each other in the old days--they
found much to say now, when the constraint wore off. The man told
himself that he felt a calm friendship for the woman whom he had once
wanted for his wife. And the woman told herself that, since he would
soon be gone, she'd snatch happy hours with the man she loved while
he was here. Her philosophy had changed since she expounded it in the
garden of the square.
And then--the claims of _The Autocrat at the Toilet-Table_ had
compelled her to break an appointment--it manifested itself to Mr.
Humphreys that his feelings were not so calm as he had thought.
Irritable in the hotel hall, he perceived that this "friendship"
threatened his holiday with a disastrous end. He wanted no second
experience of fevering in Canada for a face in England. Grimly he
decided that the acquaintance must be dropped. If it came to that, why
remain in England any longer? It was time for him to go.
On the morrow, in another charming corner of the familiar club, he
told her his intention, and she tried to disguise how much it startled
her. When she had "hoped that he hadn't received bad news" and he had
said briefly that he hadn't, there was a pause. In his endeavour to be
casual he had been curt, and both were conscious of it. He wondered
if he had hurt her. Perhaps he should have offered an excuse for his
sudden leave-taking? He began to invent one--and she politely dismissed
it. He was certain now that he had hurt her. After all, why not be
candid?
He leant forward, and spoke in a lowered tone:
"Do you know why I'm going? I'm going because, if I stopped, I should
make a fool of myself again."
The cup in her hand jerked. She felt suffocating, voiceless. Not a word
came from her.
"I'm remembering that discretion is the better part of valour, Miss
Barton."
"How do you mean?" she faltered.
"I'm running away in time. You see, I--I made a mistake: I reckoned you
wouldn't be dangerous to me any more, and I was wrong.... So you won't
think me ungrateful for going, will you? You've given me some very
happy hours; I don't want you to think I didn't appreciate them. But I
appreciate, too, the fact that you're a successful woman and that I've
even less to hope for now than I had before. I went through hell about
you once, dear--I couldn't stick it twice."
Her hand was passed across her eyes, and she trailed it on her skirt.
"Are you running away from--from my success? If I cared for you, do you
think my success would matter?"
"Do you care for me?" His voice shook, like hers. He hated the
chattering groups about them, as he bent conventionally over the
tea-table. "Do you mean you could give your position up to be my wife?"
She rose. Her lips twitched before her answer came. It came in a
whisper:
"You've never seen my rooms. Will you drive me there?"
And on the way she was very quiet.
The taxi stopped. In a dingy street she took a latchkey from her
pocket, and opened a door, from which a milk-can hung. Perplexed, he
followed. She led him to a parlour--a pitiable parlour, with atrocious
oleographs on drab walls, and two mottled vases on a dirty mantelpiece.
"This," she said dryly, "is where I live. You see the celebrity at
home."
He tried to take her to him, and she drew swiftly back.
"I have failed," she cried; "no one has read my books; I'm as poor
as when you knew me first. I've spent years in holes like this! I've
shammed to you because I was ashamed. My talk of people I know, of
places I go to has been lies--I know no one, I go nowhere. I refused
to marry you, when I was a girl, because I didn't think it good
enough for me; before you stoop to ask me again, go away and think
whether it's good enough for _you_. I've lost my hopes, my youth, my
looks--you'd be giving me everything, and I should bring you nothing in
return!"
His arms were quick now, and they held her fast.
"Nothing?" he demanded. His eyes challenged her. "Nothing, Irene?"
"Oh, my dearest," she wept, smiling, "if my love's enough----?"