THREE LETTERS, AND SOME OTHERS
ON the mantelpiece of his room, set on end against the little marble
clock which ignored the flight of time, Henry found three letters. He
examined the addresses and postmarks of each, and saw at a glance that
one was from his sister Dora, another from Flo, and the third from Edgar
Winton. For a moment he hesitated, undecided which to open first. Home
for him had a far-off call by now, and it was with the vague sense of a
dream that was past that he read Dora's fortnightly letters. Flo--hers
was a more recent influence--and from a fascinating it had come to be an
irksome one: the more real by that token. He burst open Edgar's letter
with his forefinger, and read:
"DEAR HENRY,--I've been going to write you any time these last
six weeks, but--well, old man, I'm no hand at correspondence
unless it's a penny a line. Besides, I hear about you through
Flo, who is quite reconciled to your absence, which the poet
tells us makes the heart grow fonder. I wonder!
"But first of all, you'll want an inside view of the dear old
rickety old _Leader_. Your successor is a daisy, and no mistake.
Walks into the office in knickers and a cloth cap, and shaves
once a week when his beard is ready for clipping. Even Dodge,
the newest junior, sneers at him, and refuses to recognise 'that
josser' as editor. It's hard cheese on a youngster to run up
against a weed like Steel for his first editor. Gives a low idea
of our noble profession, don't you know.
"Steel's greatest feat has been to assault his wife in the
street while drunk (that's Steel, not the wife, I mean, who was
lushing), and get run in; but a word from 'Puggie' [Mr. Albert
Scriven, the chief reporter, so called by reason of his physical
appearance], who happened to be at the police station at the
time, put the matter right, and 'Puggie' took our warrior to his
''appy little 'ome.' It fell to my lot to vamp up the usual
editorial cackle myself that night, but I've got to help the
beauty most nights, as he doesn't like work. Jones knows of his
little exploits, but does nothing. He's got him cheap, and
that's enough for him. Besides, nobody outside the office--and
nobody in it, for that matter--would believe that Steel was
editor of the paper, so Jones swaggers about the town, and has
taken to describing himself as 'managing editor.' Oh, we enjoy
life here! there's a lot of fun in the game. Steel wonders how
the paper lived through the editorship of 'a literary ass.' He
isn't nuts on literature; but with a pair of scissors, some gum,
and a pencil, the Johnnie can knock out leaders while you cough,
and the joke is nobody seems to be a bit the worse. Hope you
don't mind my telling you this; but really, do you think anybody
reads leaders? I hope they don't read mine.
"The _Leader_ appeared four hours late yesterday. What do you
think of that? Jones again. He's a treat. A cog-wheel of the Hoe
machine burst, and there wasn't a spare one in stock, nor in the
town. Though he had been warned months ago, when a similar
accident happened, that the last spare wheel had been used, he
would not spend the money to stock one or two. We had to borrow
one from the _Milton Daily Post_. You are well out of the hole,
I can tell you.
"I read the _Watchman_ every week, and think it immense; but you
fly above me, old man. I'm only a country scribbler, and must
admire you a long way off. I takes off my hat to you, sir.
"The mater is rather queer just now, and I hope she isn't going
to kipper. But one never can tell. 'Our times are in His hand,'
that's Browning, isn't it? I saw it quoted the other day, and
managed to drag it into a leaderette this week. Sounds well, I
think.
"Pater joins in kind regards--at least, I suppose he does,
though I haven't asked him--and Flo is sending her warmest
breathings direct, I understand.--Believe me, ever thine,
"EDGAR WINTON."
Henry was inclined to resent the flippant tone of the letter, the
senseless slang; but he remembered that it was "only Edgar's way," and
stuffed the sheets back into their envelope and into his inside pocket.
Flo's letter he turned over again as he lifted it and Dora's from his
knee. He opened his sister's next, and laid the other down.
It was the usual Hampton budget of uninteresting details about the
doings of that little community, and Henry read it in his usual
perfunctory way, scarce recollecting the people whose names were
recalled by it. "Who on earth is old Gatepost? I believe she means old
John Crew, the farm bailiff. I'm surprised he is only dying now. Thought
he would have been dead long ago." Often his thoughts would run thus
over some bit of news from Dora. She seemed to write from out the past.
"Hoping you are well, as we all are when this leaves. No more at
present, from your loving Sis."
The phrase might have been stereotyped; it was Dora's one form of
"drawing to a close." Indeed, she did not draw thither; she simply
closed according to formula when she had spun her loose threads of news
into some semblance of a web of words.
Dora's letter was presently keeping Edgar's company, with many another
tattered envelope and note, in Henry's pocket.
He turned to the third of the letters with no apparent zest.
"She writes a neat hand after all," he murmured, as he scanned the
superscription. A bad sign that. A man in love should be the last person
to ask for an opinion of the handwriting of his sweetheart. When he can
speak with deliberation on the subject or think of it with detachment,
he has become critical, and the end--happy or otherwise--is not far off.
Happy only if there is still time or courage to draw back.
"She writes a neat hand after all," said Henry, as he rammed his finger
into the flap of the scented envelope and burst it open. "After all!"
These even more than the words preceding them were suggestive.
The hour was late, and who knows but that may, to some extent, have been
responsible for the blinking mood in which the young man read his
sweetheart's letter? It was the typical feminine scrawl, chiefly chatter
about society doings in Laysford.
"Oh, I'm becoming quite a giddy girl, dearest, and me engaged.
It's too awful. Just fancy, I've been to three
functions--_three_! Poor me that used to go nowhere at all. The
Mellises' garden party was a very swell affair. I was there
because I teach the daughter the pianoforte--and a silly thing
she is. But--_don't_ be angry now, Hal--who do you think took me
to the Mayor's reception? Why, that terrible goose, Mr.
Trentham, the Mayor's secretary. You remember him? Short, stout,
fair moustache, but _always_ well dressed. Fancies himself,
_rather_. He has asked me to go with him to another reception,
when some sort of conference comes to Laysford. I don't know
what it is, but the receptions are all right. Lots of fun and
the best of everything. Perhaps you wouldn't like me to go,
dearest? But really you needn't be _jealous_. Trentham is
_really_ a goose. Only one is so dull, and then _everybody_
knows I'm engaged."
Henry knew, certainly; and he had no doubt the "everybody" was not
unjustified. He accepted the information without a pang of jealousy.
"Everybody knows I'm engaged." Somehow, he would not readily have
confessed to delight in the fact. Trentham he did not recall as
suggestive of the ungainly biped. "Rather a decent sort of chap,"
thought Henry. "Not much in Flo's way, I imagine." He blinked through
the remainder of the letter, never dreaming--though near to
dreamtime--that Trentham was wondering what Flo could see in Henry
Charles. The man who can divine just why another man loves or admires
one woman, or why a woman "sees anything" in another man, has yet to be
born. He was certainly neither Henry Charles nor Mr. Trentham.
"Not a word from Flo about her mother," Henry reflected, on his way to
bed. "Just like her--all about herself. I wonder if I'm an ass!"
How unreasonable men are. Why should Flo have written about anyone but
herself?
It was time for Henry to wonder. But he was still wondering months
later, when Trentham was not.
The fact is, this Trentham was a very fair specimen of the average
bull-headed Englishman, and better than most in the eyes of Miss Winton,
since he enjoyed a private income, which made him quite independent of
the salary attaching to his official position. His name cropped up
frequently for a time in Flo's letters to Henry, but the latter
scarcely referred to it in any of his replies, from which Flo judged him
jealous, and when Trentham had never a mention from her, Henry supposed
him circling in some other orbit. Here, of course, he was wrong, and he
might have noticed a lowering temperature in the tone of Flo's epistles.
There was still need to ask himself whether he was an ass, and to answer
in the affirmative. But he never thought out an answer until one day it
came ready-made in a fine right-hander, which took his breath away:
"DEAR HENRY,--I am so sorry to tell you that I cannot continue
our engagement. My affections have undergone a change, and I
think it best for both of us that we should not carry out the
engagement. I have promised to marry Mr. Trentham, who really
thought we were never engaged. I haven't worn the ring much, as
I didn't care greatly for the style of it, and now return it.
I feel it is best for both of us to cease our correspondence.
I shall always wish you well.--Sincerely yours,
"FLO WINTON."
"An ass," undoubtedly. The thing that he had often wished had happened,
yet he felt chagrined, and the sense of having been wronged leaped up
at him.
"She has made a fool of me," thought Henry, after reading the brief
note, "and yet I'm glad." But he was nothing of the kind. He knew that
he ought to be glad; he had hoped for this for nearly a year in the
odd moments when he saw things clearly, and realised that Flo was
receding from the place she had once held in his esteem. His visits
to Laysford had not improved matters. He was vexed, irritated,
disappointed--anything but glad. His self-esteem was wounded, and to
have avoided an injury there he would have faced even the obligation
he had entered into before coming to London.
"She has taken up Trentham because the creature has a bit of money," he
muttered savagely, crumpling up the offending note, and then opening it
out to read the fateful words again. "So much for women!" And he swept
the sex aside for the perfidy of this one, though the woman's very
selfishness was the saving of him.
"Delighted!" he wrote in bold letters on a postcard, and put her name
and address on it. Then he tore it up, and feared he was a cad to the
bargain.
Delighted! He was miserable for three days, until he could sit down and
pen a sensible letter, in which he expressed the opinion that Flo had a
better knowledge of her affections than he had, and that while he would
never have given her the pain of breaking their engagement, he accepted
the situation with some philosophy, since it did not altogether run
against his own inclination.
A silly affair enough, as he came to understand once the final letter
had been posted, and even so he had a delusion that at some time he had
been actually in love with Flo. One cannot tell whether she had any
delusions on the same object. She was not of the kind who dream dreams.
"I'm terribly sorry, old man, that Flo has cut up this way," wrote
Edgar. "I always fancied you and she were engaged, but evidently not.
Trentham is a very decent sort. They're to be married soon now that the
mater is all right again. Flo is nuts on 'style,' you know, and you are
not--unless it's literary style. After all, perhaps it's for the best. I
think everything is for the best except what happens at the _Leader_
office. Steel still keeps the uneven tenor of his way. I make wonderful
progress. Don't gasp when I tell you that, quite unsolicited, I got a
rise of half-a-crown last week. I think I shall buy a motor-car with
it. Fancy, Jones has gone in for electric light. You wouldn't know the
place now--the light shows up the dirt so strongly."
But Laysford had entirely lost interest for Henry now. To fancy one has
been in love is almost as serious a condition as to be in love.