VII

On fine mornings I used to leave door and window blocked open in my

room, and take half an hour's walk in the park before breakfast. The

weather was sometimes unkind, of course, but Fanny never, and she

would neglect the rooms of other lodgers in order to hasten the

straightening of mine. The other lodgers were all folk whose business

took them away from Howard Street as soon as breakfast was dispatched,

and kept them away till evening.

It often happened that I would work at my little writing-table until

the small hours of the morning; and in such cases, more often than

not, I would leave the house directly after breakfast, walk down

Tottenham Court Road, and tack through Bloomsbury to Gray's Inn and

Fleet Street, or wherever else the office might lie for which the

manuscript I carried was destined. Where possible, I preferred this

method of disposing of manuscripts. Not only did it save stamps--a

considerable item with me--but it seemed quicker and safer than the

post. I had a dishonest little formula for porters and bell boys in

these offices, from the enunciation of which I derived a comforting

sense of security and dispatch.

'You might let the editor have this directly he comes in,' I would say

as I handed over my envelope; 'promised for to-day, without fail.'

Well, I had promised--myself. And this little formula, in addition to

making for prompt delivery, I thought, gave one a sense of actual

relationship with the editor. Save for the trifling fact that the

manuscript would, probably, in due course be returned, or even

consigned to the waste-paper basket, my method seemed to put me on the

footing of one who had written a commissioned article. The dramatic

value of the formula was greatly enhanced where one happened to know

the editor's name, and could say in a tone of urgent intimacy: 'You

might let Mr. ---- have this directly he comes in,' etc. In those

cases one walked down the office stairway humming an air. It was next

door to being one of the Olympians, and that without sacrificing one's

romantic liberty as a free-lance.

As my earnings rose--and they did rise with agreeable rapidity after

my establishment in Howard Street--I wrote less and thought more. I

also walked more, and saw more of London, But I was still writing a

great deal; more probably than any salaried journalist in the town,

though a large proportion of my writings never saw the light of print.

When I had been living for five or six months in Howard Street, my

earnings were averaging from ten pounds to fifteen pounds each month.

For a long time I seemed able to maintain something like this average,

but not to improve upon it. It may be that my efforts slackened at

that point, and that I gave more time to reading and walking. This is

the more likely, because I know I felt no interest whatever in the

progress of the account I opened in the Post Office savings bank.

It was about this time, I fancy, though only in my twenty-fourth or

twenty-fifth year, that I began seeking advice from chemists and their

assistants, under whose guidance I tapped the fascinating but deadly

field of patent medicines. The fact was I had completely disorganised

my digestive system during two years and more of catering for myself

upon an average outlay of six or seven shillings weekly (sometimes

much less, of course), whilst living an insanely sedentary life in

which the allowance of sleep, exercise, and fresh air had been as

inadequate as my dietary. A wise physician might possibly have been

able to steer me into smooth waters now, especially if he had driven

me out of London. But the obstinate energy and conceit of youth was

still strong in my veins. I had no money to waste on doctors, I told

myself. And so I held desultory consultations across the counters of

chemist's shops, and, supremely ignorant as to causes, attacked

symptoms with trustful energy, consuming great quantities of mostly

valueless and frequently harmful nostrums.

Another step I took at this time, after quaintly earnest discussion

with Fanny, was to arrange an additional payment of eight shillings a

week to Mrs. Pelly, in return for the provision of my very simple

breakfast and a bread and cheese luncheon each day. This relieved me

of a task for which I had never had much patience, and very likely it

was also an economy. My evening meal I preferred, as a general thing,

to obtain elsewhere. It was one of my few entertainments this foraging

after inexpensive dinners, and watching and listening to other diners.

At that time my prejudices were the exact antithesis of those that

came later on, and I preferred foreign restaurants and foreign service

and cooking, quite apart from the fact that I found them nearly always

cheaper and more entertaining than the native varieties.

It was in a dingy little French eating-house near Wardour Street

(where I must say the cooking at that time really was skilful, though

I dare say the material used was villainously bad, since the prices

charged were low, even judged by my scale in such matters) that I

first made the acquaintance of Sidney Heron. I felt sure that Heron

must be a remarkable man, even before I spoke to him, or heard him

speak, for he lived with a monocle fixed in his right eye, and never

moved it, even when he blew his nose and gesticulated violently, as he

so often did. The monocle was attached to a broad black ribbon which,

in some way, seemed grotesque as contrasted with the dingy greyish-white

flannel cricketing shirts which Heron always wore, with a red

tie under the collar. Linen in any guise he clearly scorned. I do not

think his boots were ever cleaned, and he appeared to spend even less

upon clothing than I did. I do not know just how he disposed of his

money, but he earned two hundred or three hundred a year as a writer,

and he was invariably short of funds. I think it quite conceivable

that he may have maintained some poor relation or relations, but in

all the years of our acquaintance I never heard him mention a

relative. He certainly lived poorly himself.

Our acquaintance resulted from his tipping a rum omelette into my lap.

The tables at this little restaurant were exceptionally narrow, and I

suppose Heron was exceptionally cross, even for him. The omelette was

burnt, he said, and after pishing and tushing over it for a moment or

two he shouted to the overworked waiter, giving his plate so angry a

thrust at the same time that it collided violently with mine, and the

offending omelette ricochetted into my lap.

Heron's apologies indicated far more of anger than contrition, I

thought; but they led to conversation, at all events, and as he lived

in the Hampstead Road we walked a mile or more together after leaving

the restaurant. It was the beginning of companionship of a sort for

me, and if we did not ever become very close friends, at all events

our intimacy endured without rupture for many years.

At the outset I was given an inkling of the irascibility of his

temper, and my subsequent method, in all our intercourse, was simply

to leave him whenever he became quarrelsome, and to take up our

relations when next we met at the point immediately preceding that at

which temper had overcome him. At heart an honourable and I am sure

kindly man, Heron had a temper of remarkable susceptibility to

irritation. The stomachic causes which, as time went on, produced

melancholy and dense, black depression in me, probably accounted for

his eruptions of violent irascibility. And I fancy we were equally

ignorant and brutal in our treatment of our own physical weaknesses.

Heron certainly became one of my distractions, one of my human

interests outside work, at this time. But there was another, and the

other came closer home to me.

I suppose I spent seven or eight months in discovering that Mrs. Pelly

was a singularly unpleasant woman. But the thing did eventually become

plain to me, so plain indeed that it would have caused me to give up

my French window and writing-table and migrate once more, but for

certain considerations outside my own personal comfort. That Mrs.

Pelly consumed far more gin than was good for her became apparent to

me during my first week, if not my first day, in Howard Street. But as

she rarely entered my room, and our encounters were merely accidental

and momentary, this weakness would never have affected me much.

What did affect me was my very gradual discovery of the fact that this

woman treated her own daughter with systematic cruelty--a thing

happily unusual in her class, as it is also, I think, among the very

poor of London. At the end of eight or nine months my increasing

knowledge of Mrs. Pelly's harsh unkindness to Fanny had begun to weigh

on my mind a good deal. It was a singular case, in many ways. Here was

a girl, a young woman rather, in her twenty-first year, who to all

intents and purposes might be said to be carrying on with her own

hands the entire work of a house which sheltered five lodgers; and, as

a fact, it was rarely that a day passed without her suffering actual

physical violence at the hands of that gin-soaked termagant, her

mother.

The woman positively used to pinch Fanny in such a way as to leave

blue bruises on her arm. She used to pull her hair violently, slap her

face, and strike at her with any sort of weapon that happened to be

within reach. Further, when the vicious fit took her, she would lock

up pantry and kitchen, and make this hard-working girl go hungry to

bed at night, by way of punishment for some pretended misdeed. And the

astounding thing was that, with all this and more, Fanny retained a

very real affection for her unnatural parent; and used to plead that,

but for the effect of liquor upon her, Mrs. Pelly would be and was a

good mother.

It appeared that Fanny had lost her father when she was about twelve

years old, and ever since that time her mother's extraordinary

attitude towards her had become increasingly harsh and cruel. She

never had a penny of her own, though she did the work of two servants,

and her clothes were mostly home-made make-shifts from discarded

garments of her mother's. When necessity caused her to ask for new

boots, for example, the penalty would be perhaps a week of vile abuse

and bullying, of slaps, pinches, docked meals and other humiliations,

all of which must be endured before the wretched woman would buy a

pair of the cheapest and ugliest shoes obtainable, and fling them to

her daughter from out her market-basket. If they were a misfit, Fanny

would have to suffer them as best she could. Or, in other cases, new

shoes would be refused altogether, and she would be ordered to make

shift with a pair her mother had worn out.

It was only very gradually that I came to know these things. Once,

when I knew no more than that Fanny worked very hard and seldom

stirred out of the house, I chanced to encounter mother and daughter

together on the stairs early on a Sunday evening. The girl looked

pinched and unhappy, and something moved me to make a suggestion I

should hardly have ventured upon then, if the mother had not happened

to be present.

'You look tired, Fanny,' I said. 'Why not come out for a walk in the

park with me? The air would do you good, and perhaps you will have a

bit of dinner somewhere with me before getting back. Do! It would be

quite a charity to a lonely man.'

I saw her tired brown eyes brighten at the thought, and then she

turned timidly in Mrs. Pelly's direction.

'Oh!' said I, on a rather happy inspiration, 'I believe you're one of

the vain people who fancy they are indispensable. I am sure Mrs. Pelly

would be delighted for you to come; wouldn't you, Mrs. Pelly? There

will be no lodgers home till late this fine evening.'

Mrs. Pelly simpered at me, with a rather forbidding light in her eye,

I thought. But I had struck the right note in that word

'indispensable.'

'Oh, she's very welcome to go, for me, Mr. Freydon; and I'm sure it's

very kind of you to ask her. Girls nowadays don't do so much when they

are at work but what it's easy enough to spare 'em. But, haven't you

got a tongue, miss? Why don't you thank Mr. Freydon?'

'No, indeed,' I laughed. 'The thanks are coming from me. I'll just go

back to my room and write a letter, and you will let me know as soon

as you're ready, won't you, Fanny?'

Well, I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoyed that little outing.

I thought there never had been any one who was so easily pleased and

entertained. Doubtless her worshipful attitude flattered my youthful

vanity. But, apart from this, it was a real delight to see the flush

of enjoyment come and go in her pale, pretty face, when we rode on the

top of an omnibus, examined flowers in the park, and sat down to a

meal with the preparation and removal of which she was to have no

concern whatever. It was a pretty and touching sight, I say, to see

how these very simple pleasures delighted her. But I very soon learned

that this experience must not be repeated. Indeed, it was in this wise

that I obtained my first inklings of the real wretchedness of Fanny's

life. She had to suffer constant humiliations for a week or more, as

the price of the little jaunt she had with me. Her mother found it

hard to forget or forgive the fact that her daughter had had an hour

or two of freedom and enjoyment. Realisation of this made me detest

the woman.

And then, it may have been three months after this little outing,

there came another Sunday incident that moved me. I returned to my

room unexpectedly about six o'clock, having forgotten to take out with

me a certain paper. The house was very silent, and perhaps that made

me walk more softly than usual up the stairs. As I opened my door the

warm, yellow light of the setting sun was slanting across my

writing-table, and in the chair before it sat Fanny, reading a magazine.

My first thought was of irritation. I did not like to see any one

sitting at my writing-table. I was touchy regarding that one spot--the

table, my papers, and so forth. In the same instant irritation gave

place to some quite other feeling, as the sunlight showed me that

tears were rolling down Fanny's pale face.

She sprang to her feet in great confusion, murmuring almost passionate

apologies in her habitually soft, small voice.

'Oh, please forgive me, Mr. Freydon! I know it was a liberty. Please

do forgive me. I will never do it again. Please say you will overlook

it, and--and not tell my mother.'

She unmistakably shrank, trembling, almost cowering before me, so that

I was made to feel a dreadful brute.

'My dear Fanny,' I said, touching her arm with my fingers, 'there's

nothing to forgive. How absurd! I hope you will always sit there

whenever you like. As though I should mind! But what were you

reading?'

The question had no point for me, and was designed merely to relieve

the tension.

'Oh, your story, Mr. Freydon. It's--it's too beautiful. That was what

made me forget where I was, and sit on here. I just glanced at it--like;

and then--and I couldn't leave it. Oh!'

And she drew up her apron and dabbed her eyes. I don't believe the

poor soul possessed a handkerchief. Here was a pretty pass then! I had

forgotten for the moment that one of the three magazines on the table

contained a short story of which, upon its appearance, I had been

inordinately proud. I was young, and no one else flattered me.

Literally nobody had shared my gratification in the publication of

this story. Here was somebody from whom it drew indubitable tears;

some one who was deeply moved by its beauty....

I patted her shoulder. I drew confidences from her regarding the

wretchedness of her home life. I laid down emphatic instructions that

she was to regard my room as her sanctuary; to use it whenever and

howsoever she might choose, irrespective of my presence or absence. I

bade her make free with my few books--as though the poor soul had

abundance of leisure--comforted her to the best of my ability; and-- Yes,

let me evade nothing. I stroked her hair, and in leaving her, with

reiterated instructions to remain there and rest, I touched her cool

white cheek with my lips, and was strangely thrilled by the touch.

A warm wave of what I thought pity and sympathy passed over me as I

walked from her.