"Well, what about your father?"

She winced. "Father--father doesn't help much. He's--he's an invalid."

Humphrey was young, and this was his first love, and the more obstacles

there were to overcome, the greater seemed the prize to him. "We could

send your mother a little money each week ..." he said. "It won't cost

so much when you're not there."

"Yes, we could do that. And I could still go on with my work."

"What," he cried, horrified, "you go to the Special News Agency after

we're married?"

"Yes, why not?"

"Oh, Lilian dear, I don't want you to do that. I want you to have a

home of your own, just to sit there and arrange it as you like, and

do nothing but loll in an arm-chair all day until I come home in the

evening, and then we'll loll together."

She laughed. "You are a funny boy," she said. "I suppose you think

a house doesn't want looking after. It's much harder work than

typewriting."

"But don't you want a _home_," he persisted, mournful disappointment in

his voice.

"Of course I do, dear; I know what you mean--I was only teasing you.

But, I do think, for the beginning, I ought to go on with my work. It's

so much safer. Supposing you get out of work, then I could keep things

going for a time."

"I'm hanged if I'm going to live on you," he said indignantly.

They compromised by agreeing to the purchase of a typewriter--Lilian

was to found a little business of her own that could be done at home.

Plenty of people wanted typewriting, and she could earn almost a pound

a week, she said, that would be enough for mother....

These practical discussions were very bitter to Humphrey: they robbed

the whole thing of the last vestige of beauty; they depressed him, he

knew not why. She did not mean it, but everything she said, that had

nothing to do with endearment and love, made him feel hopeless. He was

only really happy when they rested as children in one another's arms,

talking delightful nonsense between their kisses, and not thinking at

all of the plans of their lives that puzzled them so much when they

came to talk about them.

It was about this period that Wratten came back from his honeymoon,

and asked Humphrey to come and dine with him at home, always assuming

that neither of them would be kept by work. "Tommy Pride is coming

if he can, and I've asked Willoughby." It happened that Humphrey was

the only one of the invited guests from the office who was able to

come. The news of a Regent Street burglary published in the afternoon

papers, made Willoughby champ his false teeth--a habit of his when

he was excited--run his hand through his tangled hair, and depart in

mysterious ways. Tommy Pride was sent to a lecture that began at eight.

"Just my luck," he said to Humphrey, with a wry smile. "The missis will

be disappointed."

So Wratten and Humphrey went out together. "I say," said Humphrey, on

the way, "don't tell any one, but I'm engaged to be married."

"No--are you?" Wratten said. "Congratulations. When did that happen?"

"Quite recently." Out came the photograph.

"You're a lucky fellow. When are you going to get married?"

"I don't know yet--we haven't decided. Do you think we can live on

three pounds a week?"

"Is that all you get, old man--you're worth more: it's a bit of a tight

fit." Humphrey wondered what Wratten's salary was. Perhaps Wratten

guessed his thoughts, for he said: "I don't like telling people what I

get--there's a sort of secrecy about it--but, if you don't let it go

any further, I'll tell you--I get ten pounds a week."

Humphrey felt himself shrink into insignificance before that mighty

sum. Ten pounds seemed a tremendous salary to earn--no wonder Wratten

had married. It was too much for one man's needs.

"I say, that's pretty good," he said, admiringly.

"Oh! you'll be worth more than that, some day," Wratten said. "You're

the kind of chap that gets on, I can see.... That's why I shouldn't

be in a hurry to marry if I were you," he added; "I've seen lots of

fellows stick in the mud by marrying too early. It doesn't give them

a chance. Marriage helps in some ways, and holds back in others ... a

man is not so independent when he marries. He has to think of others

besides himself. Unless, of course, his wife has a little means of her

own."

He has to think of others besides himself!

That point of view had never come to Humphrey before. Why, he was

marrying solely to please himself. Marriage seemed to him, then,

necessary to the fulfilment of his dreams. Lilian was a mere excuse.

He told her that he wanted to make her happy, blinding himself to the

fact that he wanted to make himself happy. He was going to use her as

a motive for his life, that was all. She would urge him on to success,

encourage him, look after him, comfort him when he was in need of

it--he had never thought of her at all, except as an accessory to his

life. Of course, if anybody had told Humphrey this, at the time, he

would have denied it, vehemently; protested his eternal love; sworn

that she was always uppermost in his mind; and that it was his most

ardent desire to work for her happiness. Love not only blinds us to the

imperfections of others, but twists the vision we have always held of

ourselves.

Wratten had taken a flat at Hampstead--a little box of a flat--at

a ridiculously high rent, but to Humphrey, as he came into the

sitting-room, it appeared as an ideal home. There was an air of repose

and rest about it, the walls papered in a soft green, chintz curtains

drawn over the windows, a carpet of a shade of green deeper than the

walls, and old furniture about the room.

The artistic nature is always hidden below the practical journalist,

and it comes to light in different ways. With some men it shows itself

in a love of old books; with others, it bursts out in the form of

writing other things than ephemeral newspaper "copy"; and with nearly

all, the artist in them shakes itself free from its hiding-place and

shines clear and strong in the home. There is no time for art during

the day; no need for it, indeed. The standard of what is good is not

made by the reporter, but by the paper for which he writes.

And here, in Wratten's home, Humphrey found the vein of the artist in

him, in his perception and appreciation of old furniture. He fondled

his pieces. "Here's a nice little rocking-chair," he said. "Don't see

many of these now."

"I like this," said Humphrey, touching another old chair.

"Ah! yes, that's a beauty," Wratten replied. "I picked that up in

Ipswich frightfully cheap. It's an old Dutch back chair of the

seventeenth century." He tilted it up and ran his palm over the perfect

curve of the cabriole legs, entirely absorbed in the pleasure of

touching the chair.

"I didn't know you went in for this sort of thing," Humphrey said.

"I've been getting things like this together for years ... they're so

restful, these old things. Can you imagine anything more peaceful than

that book-case?" and he pointed to a beautiful Empire book-case, with

rows of books showing through the latticed glass and brass rosettes for

handles to the drawers that rested on claw feet.

The change in Wratten was really remarkable. Although he was still

serious, and his face in repose was gloomy, he seemed to have lost his

brusque manner. Marriage had undoubtedly softened him.

Mrs Wratten came into the room and welcomed Humphrey. Wratten slipped

his arm through his wife's, and she looked up at him and smiled at

him.... Humphrey saw himself standing thus, in his own home, with

Lilian close to him, his companion for ever. It all seemed so very

desirable. This little home was very compact and peaceful, thousands of

miles removed from the restlessness of Fleet Street....

While they were talking, a young man and a woman were ushered into

the room by the little maid-servant. The likeness between the two was

unmistakable--they were obviously brother and sister. The young man

was the taller of the two, very slender, with the thin and delicate

hands of a woman. Humphrey noticed the long fingers tapering to the

well-kept nails. The face was the face of an ascetic, thin-lipped and

refined. The eyes were peculiarly glowing, and set deeply beneath the

overhanging eyebrows; the nose was finely chiselled; the nostrils

sensitive and curling, with a faint suspicion of superciliousness.

He was introduced to Humphrey as Kenneth Carr, and Humphrey knew the

name at once. Kenneth Carr had the reputation of being a brilliant

descriptive writer; he was on the staff of _The Herald_, but, besides

that, he had written several historical biographies, many novels, and

was at work on a play. He belonged to a type which is a little apart

from Fleet Street, with its wear and tear--a shy, scholarly man, who

found that historical biographies and novels did not yield sufficient

income, and, therefore, the grinding work of everyday journalism was

preferable to pot boiling. Fleet Street was, to him, a stepping-stone.

He would have been happier in the editorial chair of a weekly paper, or

writing essays for _The Spectator_ and the _Saturday Review_, but, as

it was, he threw in his lot with Fleet Street, and did his work so well

that he stood at the top of the ladder. But Fleet Street had left its

mark on his face--it was pale and thin, and the eyes had a strained,

nervous look in them.

"Awfully good of you to ask us," he said to Mrs Wratten. "Elizabeth and

I don't go out much, she gets so tired from her slumming."

His sister smiled--Humphrey saw that the handsome features of Kenneth

Carr became beautiful in his sister's face. The sharp lines about the

nose and mouth were softened, her eyes were bluer and larger, her face

rounded more fully, and devoid of the hollows which made the face

of Kenneth so intellectual. The likeness between brother and sister

finished with the lips--hers were very red, and were faintly parted, so

that one had a glimpse of her teeth, like a string of white pearls. She

wore her hair in two loops from a parting in the centre, and she had a

habit of carrying her head a little forward, so that the outward curve

of her neck was emphasized in its perfect grace.

"What does your brother mean by slumming, Miss Carr?" Humphrey asked as

they sat at dinner.

"He calls it slumming," Elizabeth Carr laughed, "but it isn't exactly

that. I'm rather fond of the people who have no chance in life. I want

to make a chance for them." She spoke banteringly, but her eyes had a

curious way of growing large and earnest as if they were anxious to

counteract the lack of seriousness in her voice. "I'm trying to make a

thoroughfare through the Blind Alley," she said. "Isn't it dramatic?

Can't you imagine me with pick and shovel, Mr Quain."

"What do you mean by the Blind Alley?" he asked.

She suddenly became grave. "Of course, you've never thought of

that--have you? It's just a phrase.... Some day I'll explain to you

fully. It's where the people who have no chance live."

"How do you help them?"

"We don't help them much, at present--we're only beginning. It's a

life's work," she said, earnestly, "and it's a work for which a life

would be gladly given. You've asked me the question I'm always asking

myself--How is it to be done?"

"Does your brother help?"

"Kenneth--oh, as best he can. It's the apathy that we want to overcome.

That's what makes the Blind Alley." She laughed. "We'll do it some

day--I don't know how--but we'll do it."

Kenneth Carr's voice drawled across the table. "Look out, Mr Quain, or

Elizabeth will have you in her toils. I'll bet she's talking slumming

to you. You can't be a social reformer and a reporter, you know,

nowadays. The two don't hang together."

"Kenneth!" his sister said, with pretended indignation.

"Look at me! She's making me compile a book about poverty that'll be

nothing but statistics--who wants them outside blue books. She's got me

in her toils."

The phrase amused Humphrey: he thought of Lilian, and began comparing

her with the woman next to him. Of course, they were not alike; the

comparison irritated him, why compare people so entirely different. One

might know Elizabeth Carr for years, and yet never _know_ her; Lilian

was different. She seemed simpler, and yet.... He wondered if Lilian

had ever heard of the Blind Alley, or bothered about the people who

have no chance.

When the dinner was finished, and they were all settling down to

chatter, the telephone bell rang. Wratten went to answer it. "It's the

office," Mrs Wratten said, with disappointment in her voice.

Wratten came back. "I'm frightfully sorry," he said. "The office wants

me ... Collard's arrested." He went over to his wife. "I shall be late,

dear, don't sit up," he said.

"Who's Collard?" she asked.

"Oh! the Company promoter--reg'lar crook--but he might have waited

until the morning to be arrested."

"Filthy luck!" he grumbled, as he reappeared, shouldering himself into

his overcoat. "Having to leave all you people like this.... Can't be

helped."

The maid came in with coffee. Wratten gulped a thimbleful, kissed his

wife, and went out. The evening seemed to have lost something of its

pleasure with his sudden departure. They fell to talking over the ways

of work and the calls of the office. It was as if Fleet Street had

suddenly asserted itself, and shown the futility of trying to escape

from it even for a few hours.

"Poor Mr Wratten," Elizabeth Carr sighed, "I do think they're

heartless."

"Why don't you help us, Miss Carr?" Humphrey said, with a laugh. "We're

in the Blind Alley too."

VIII

The weeks passed into August, and Humphrey took eagerly all the

work that was given to him by Rivers. He became a mental ostrich,

assimilating all sorts of knowledge. One day, perhaps, he would have

to describe a cat show at the Crystal Palace, the next he might be

attending a technical exhibition at the Agricultural Hall and Olympia,

and have his head stuffed with facts and figures of this and that

industry. He was acquiring knowledge all day long, but it was only

superficial; there was no time to go deeply into any subject, and

indeed, his one object was to unburden his mind of all the superfluous

things he learnt during the day. If reporters were to keep a book of

cuttings of everything they wrote--and they know the value of their

work sufficiently not to do that--they would be amazed, looking back

over ten years (those cuttings would fill several mighty volumes), at

the vast range of subjects they touched upon, at the inside knowledge

they had of the little--and even big--things of life; of the great

men with whom they had come into contact, perhaps for a few minutes,

perhaps for a day; of the men they had even helped to make great by the

magic of publicity--they would be astounded at the broadness of their

lives, at the things they had forgotten long ago, and perhaps they

would pity themselves, looking over their cuttings, for the splendid

futility of it all.

You remember Kipling's poem of "The Files," bound volumes of past

years; which are repositories of all lost endeavours and dead

enthusiasm. Heaven help us when we can write and achieve no more, and

the only work of our youth and manhood lies buried, forgotten, in the

faded yellow sheets of the files.

But Humphrey Quain at this period, just like every other young man,

whether he be a haberdasher or a reporter, did not contemplate the

remote future. He was young, and his brain was clear and fresh, and he

wrote everything with a pulsing eagerness, as though it were his final

appeal to posterity. He found his style improving, as he read, and

his understanding broadened. He wrote in the crisp style that suited

_The Day_; he had what they call the "human touch"--that was a phrase

which Ferrol was very fond of using. Rivers began to entrust him with

better things to do: now and again he was sent out of London on country

assignments. That was a delightful business, to escape for a day or

so from the office routine, and be more or less independent in some

far-away town or village. You were given money for expenses, and told

to go to Cornwall, where something extraordinary was about to happen,

or some one had a grievance, or else there was some one to interview,

and you packed a handbag, and went in a cab to Paddington, and had

lunch on the train, and stopped at the best hotel, and generally tried

to pretend that you were holiday making. But, more often than not, the

idea of a holiday fell away when you got to the place, and you had to

bustle and bother and worry to get what you wanted. Then you had to

write your message, and that meant generally being late for dinner, or

perhaps it was the kind of story that kept you hanging about and made

it necessary to telephone news late at night.

But going out of town held a wonderful charm for Humphrey--it gave him

a sense of responsibility. It made him feel that the office trusted

him; somehow or other he felt more important on these country jobs, as

if he bore the burden of _The Day_ on his own shoulders.

There was the charm, too, of writing the story in the first person,

instead of adopting the impersonal attitude that was the rule with

London work; and the charm of fixing the little telegraph pass to

the message, which franked it at press rates to _The Day_ without

pre-payment. Sometimes there were other men on the same story, and they

forgathered after work, and as all journalists do, talked shop, because

they cannot talk of anything without it touches the fringe of their

work. The men he met were, for the most part, thoroughly experienced

and capable, they were tremendously enthusiastic, though they tried

to appear blasé, because it was considered the correct thing among

themselves. They never discussed each other's work, nor told of what

they had written. Even when they met in the morning, though they had

all read their colleagues' messages in the papers, and compared them

with their own, they kept aloof from all reference to the merits or

demerits of these messages. But it used to rejoice Humphrey's heart

to see, sometimes, how older men who were inclined to patronize him

as a beginner and a junior the night before, treated him as one of

themselves in the morning at the breakfast-table. And he nearly burst

with pride when he first saw his messages headed: "From _The Day_

Special Correspondent." Even though he were no further afield than

Manchester or Birmingham, it seemed to place him in the gallant band

of great ones just as if he were a Steevens, a Billy Russell, or an

Archibald Forbes.

And all the time he was learning,--learning more swiftly than any one

else can learn, in the school of journalism, where every hour brings

its short cut to knowledge and worldly wisdom.

The occasional separations from Lilian, however, modified a little the

charm of going away. These orders to go out of town had a habit of

coming at the most undesirable moments, generally upsetting any plans

they had made together for spending an enjoyable evening somewhere.

"When we are married," said Humphrey, on the eve of a departure for

Canterbury to describe the visit of a party of priests from France

and Italy who were making a pilgrimage to the Cathedral, "when we are

married, you shall come away with me. It's not bad fun, if the job

isn't hard."

"I wish you didn't have to go away so often," she pouted.

There was a hint of conflict, but Humphrey was too blind to see it.

He only wished he had to go away more often, for the measure of his

success on _The Day_ was in proportion to the frequency of special work

they gave to him. "All will be well when we are married," he said,

comforting her.

His love-story wove in and out of his daily work. The date of their

marriage had not yet been fixed, because Ferrol was away somewhere in

the south of France, and that business of the extra pound a week on

his salary could not, of course, be settled until Ferrol came back. It

seemed, too, that Lilian was in no hurry to be married; she loved these

days of his wooing to linger, with their idyllic moments, and rapturous

embraces, and the wistfulness of all too insufficient kisses.

For the period of engagement was to them a period of licensed kissing.

Nor was it always possible to meet beneath the moon. Humphrey grew

cunningly expert in finding places where they could kiss in broad

daylight. There was an Italian restaurant in the Strand (now pulled

down for improvement), which had an upstairs dining-room where nobody

but themselves ever seemed to go, and then there was the National

Gallery, surprisingly empty, where the screens holding the etchings

gave them their desired privacy, and on Saturday afternoon they went

in the upper circles of theatres, sometimes, on purpose not to see the

play, but to sit in the deserted lounges during the acting, and enjoy

each other's company. Their love-affair was tangled by circumstance;

scamped and impeded--they made the best of it, and lived many hours of

happiness.

And then, one day, when he least expected it, she said: "I suppose you

ought to come down and see mother."

Humphrey went out to Battersea to the home of his betrothed. The

circumstances of his visit were not happy. It was raining, and there is

no city in the world so miserable as London when it rains. The house

was in a rather dreary side-street, a long distance from Battersea

Park, a mere unit in the army of similar houses, that were joined

to one another in a straight row, fronted by railings that had once

been newly painted, but were now grimed and blackened. These houses

appalled one: they were absolutely devoid of any kind of beauty, never

could they have been deemed beautiful by their architect. They were

as flat-fronted and as hideously symmetrical as a doll's-house; nor,

apparently, did the people who dwelt in them take any pains to lessen

the hideousness of their exteriors: ghastly curtains were at every

window, curtains of mid-Victorian ugliness, leaving a cone-shaped

vacancy bounded by lace. In the windows of the lower floors one caught

a glimpse of a table, with a vase on it, and dried grass in the vase,

and behind the glass panes above the front doors there was, in house

after house, as Humphrey walked down the street, a trumpery piece of

crockery or some worthless china statuette, or the blue vase of the

front window, with more grass in it, or a worse abomination in the

shape of a circular fan of coloured paper.

Number twenty-three, to be sure, where Lilian lived, was, as far as

the outside view was concerned, different from the other houses, in

that there were real flowers in the window, instead of dried grass.

Humphrey felt wet and miserable when he reached it; the rain had

dripped through a hole in his umbrella, and had soaked the shoulder of

his coat. He went up the steps and pulled the bell. He waited a little

while, and happening to glance over the railings into the area, he saw

a girl of rather untidy appearance look up at him, and quickly vanish,

as if she had been detected in something that she had been forbidden to

do. The girl, he noticed, had the same features, on a smaller scale, as

Lilian: he supposed she was Florence. Then he heard footsteps in the

passage, and through the ground-glass panels of the door he could see

a vague form approaching. The next moment all memory of ugliness and

squalor and the dismal day departed from him, as Lilian, the embodiment

of all the beautiful in his life, stood before him, smiling a welcome.

How she seemed to change her personality with every fresh environment

in which they met! She was the same Lilian, yet vaguely a different

one here, with her brown hair done just as charmingly yet not in the

same way as she did it when they went to theatres in the evening. She

wore a white muslin blouse, without a collar, and round her neck was

a thin gold chain necklace which he had given her. Though he did not

realize it at the time, his joy in her was purely physical; the mere

sight of her bared neck and throat and the warm softness of her body

was sufficient to make him believe that he loved her as he could never

love anybody else; he sought no further than the surface; she was

pretty, and she was agreeable to be his wife. He did not stop to think

of anything else.

"So it's really you!" she said, with a laugh.

As though she had not been expecting him!

He murmured something about the weather as he shook his dripping

umbrella. She could invest commonplaces, courtesy phrases, with

reality. Her eyes were tender as she said, "You poor thing." It was

really fine to have some one so interested in your welfare that her

eyes could show pity over a few rain-spots.

"You must come in and dry yourself over the fire. We had a fire because

it is so wet."

She closed the door. He took off his coat and hat, and suddenly he

caught her silently to him (her eyes spoke of caution, and looked

towards the door, leading from the passage), and they kissed hurriedly

and passionately. She disengaged herself, and began to talk about

trivialities in a high tone. "I have not told any one yet," she

whispered. "It is still a secret--so you needn't be afraid of mother."

She led the way into the room. Somebody was sitting on the sofa,

against the light.

"Mother," said Lilian, "this is Mr Quain."

"Oh," said Mrs Filmer, rising and coming forward to shake hands with

him, "how do you do?"

Humphrey sat down in a gloomy, black horsehair chair by Mrs Filmer,

who returned to a sofa that belonged to the same family. They began

to talk. It was plain that Lilian's mother had been coached by her.

She seemed to pay him a deference altogether disproportionate to the

occasion, if he were to be considered as a mere casual visitor, a

friend of Lilian. She was a faded woman of fifty years or so, the

personification of the room itself, for everything within those four

walls was irrevocably lost and faded--the photographs in their ugly

frames were yellow and old-fashioned; the pictures on the walls,

chiefly engravings of thirty years ago, in bevelled frames of walnut

wood, were spotted with damp; the furniture was absolutely without

taste, a mixture of horsehair and mahogany, and the piano had one of

those frilled red satin fronts behind a fretted framework. There was a

blue plush _portière_, with a fringe of pom-poms down one side of it,

hanging from a brass rod over the door.

It was difficult for him to believe that she was Lilian's mother:

that she had actually brought into the world that beautiful, supple

being whom he loved. Had she ever been like Lilian? He could trace no

resemblance to her in this little thin woman who sat before him, her

hands, with the skin of them warped and crinkled, crossed in her lap,

her hair sparse and faded, with threads of brown showing among the

grey, and the fringe of another tint altogether. She did not even talk

as Lilian did: she was too careful of aspirates. He saw that she was

altogether inferior to Lilian. She talked of nothing--nothing at all.

And all the time she was talking, and he was answering her, he was

aware, dimly, of Lilian's presence, somewhere in the background; he was

conscious of her watching him, studying him.

The weather was terrible for the time of the year.

They wanted to move out of this house; it was too large for them.

It was so nice for Lilian to have such a comfortable office to work in.

But it was a long way to come home, when the weather was bad.

The weather was very bad to-day.

The summer, one supposed, was breaking up.

After all, it was not so very out of season.

Mr Quain must find his work very interesting.

And so on.

Tea was brought in by a girl who was Lilian on a smaller scale. "Edith,

this is Mr Quain," said Lilian; and to Humphrey, "This is my sister

Edith." She put the tray down, and shook hands limply. He noticed

that she had precisely the same coloured eyes as Lilian's, but they

were weaker, and she did not carry herself well. She seemed but a

pale shadow of the splendid reality of Lilian. Then Florence, the

other sister, came into the room; she was the young girl whom Humphrey

had seen over the railings as he stood on the doorstep. She was

undeveloped, but her face and figure bore great promise of a beautiful

womanhood. Her hair was of a reddish colour, and hung in a long plait

down her back. Her face was quite unlike Lilian's: he judged that she

resembled her father.

"You look dreadful, child," said Lilian, with a laugh. "Go and wash

your face, little pig."

Florence made a grimace, and tossed her pigtail. "It's freckles," she

said, hopelessly. "I've been scrubbing away for ten minutes." She

looked at Humphrey appealingly, with a smile in her eyes--they all had

that smile he knew so well.

"I think you're too hard on your sister, Miss Filmer," he said to

Lilian, with mock gravity. (How odd the Miss Filmer sounded.) "She

looks radiant. I noticed it was freckles at once." Florence went to

Lilian and put her arm round her waist. They were evidently very

sisterly. Edith was busy pouring out tea ("One lump or two, Mr Quain");

Mrs Filmer sat with her hands crossed in her lap looking out of the

window into the garden beyond. Humphrey took a cup of tea across to

her; she was too effusive in her thanks; begged him to sit down,

and urged Florence to look after Mr Quain. Just then the front door

clicked. "There's Harry," said Edith, putting down the teapot, and

running to the door. A short, well-built young man appeared. His hair

was the reddish colour of Florence's hair, and his face was frank and

boyish. He was about nineteen years old, just the age of discrimination

in ties and socks, and the flaunting of well-filled cigarette cases.

He and Edith were apparently the greatest friends, doubtless because

there was only two years' interval in their ages. Nevertheless, he

pulled Florence's pigtail affectionately and gave her a brotherly

kiss; pecked Lilian on the cheek ("What a horrid collar you're wearing,

Harry," she said, "and you simply reek of tobacco"), and kissed

his mother on her forehead. Then Lilian introduced him to Humphrey

Quain, and they shook hands and regarded each other furtively, with a

constrained silence.

Humphrey felt that the whole family must know of the relations between

Lilian and himself, though not one of them spoke about it. But they

all treated him with a certain deference, and gave him a status in

the house, which invested him with a superiority that seemed to match

Lilian's. For there was no doubt of her superiority in this household,

now that they were all gathered together. She seemed so stalwart and

broad beside them; a creature apart from them all. She did not appear

to belong to them, and yet she was, indisputably, of them. They were

so commonplace, and she was so rare--at least, that was what Humphrey

thought. He watched her as she moved about the room bearing plates

and cups, noiselessly, gracefully; she gave him a new impression of

domesticity as she wandered about in her own home without the hat that

he was accustomed to see her wearing. And she gave him, furthermore,

an appearance of strength and character, as though she had acquired

the right to rule in this household by the might of her own toil which

chiefly supported it. While she was in the room, it lost some of its

faded quality, and when she left it to take a cup of tea and a piece

of cake to Mabel, the third sister, who was an invalid lying, he

understood, on a couch upstairs, the room became desolate, and the most

insistent person was the faded mother with her querulous voice.

They made him look at picture-postcard albums and photographs, and some

of Florence's drawings, while Lilian was absent. Florence wanted to

be a fashion artist, and though her drawings were incredibly bad and

scratchy, he felt it was necessary for him to say that they showed

promise.... How had Lilian grown to be Lilian in these surroundings, he

wondered--surroundings of such frank ugliness and shabby gentility?

He glanced out of the window which gave a view of a narrow oblong

garden at the back, where a few stunted wallflowers struggled to live.

A patch of unkempt grass ran between the high walls, and there a broken

wicker-work chair faced the windows. As he looked out he saw a man

stumbling over the grass towards the side door: he caught a glimpse of

the soiled and frayed clothes, and feet clothed in down-at-the-heel

slippers, of a grey face with shrunken cheeks, and pale blue eyes that

peered weakly from beneath grey wiry eyebrows. The man came across his

vision like a spectre, trailing his slippered feet one after another,

and swaying a little as he walked. He was fascinated by the sight, and

suddenly his attention was distracted by Lilian. She had come back to

the room, and was standing at his side. Her eyes had followed his, and

she knew what he had seen. "Will you have some more tea?" she said,

abruptly, touching him on the shoulder. He turned away hastily: his

eyes met hers; they held a challenge in them, as though she were daring

him to speak of the man in the garden. It was as if he had probed into

a carefully hidden secret.

He knew, without being told, that this aimless, shambling man with the

slippered feet was the father. He was given in a moment the explanation

of this room; the mother; the invalid child; and the air of subdued

failure that brooded over the house. He saw Lilian as a regenerating,

purifying influence, trying to lift them out of the slough. Their

eyes met, and though no word was passed between them, he understood

everything.

He wished that he had not come to this house. This family depressed

him, and made him feel afraid of Life. It was an odd thought that

haunted him: they would be his relations when he married Lilian.

But when, after the leave-takings, she came to the door to help him

on with his coat and let him out, he realized that she was unchanged,

that she was still splendid for him, and as desirable as she had always

been. He felt something of a hero, because he was going to rescue her

from this dreadful home of hers....

The memory of the father dogged his thoughts as he came away. He wished

he had not gone to the house.

IX

At eight o'clock, on a chill morning, the women in the red-brick

cottages of Hyde, which are built round the Hyde collieries, felt the

earth quiver beneath their feet, and heard a low roar, reverberating

about them. Their hands went up to their beating hearts; they rushed to

their windows that overlooked the grey wastes where the shafts of the

mines stood gaunt against the horizon; they saw a burst of flame leap

from the upcast shaft of No. 3 mine; leap vividly for a swift moment,

and leave behind it a vision of a twisted cable-rope, and twisted

iron, and the flame that vanished swiftly bore with it the souls of

two hundred men: their husbands, their sons--their men. They gathered

their shawls about them, and ran, with their clogs clattering on the

cobbled streets, to the pit-mouth, joining a stream of men, whose

eyeballs shone whitely from the grime and black of their faces--they

ran with terror clutching at their hearts and fear at their heels, and

every lip was parched and dry with the horror and dread of the moment.

There had been a disaster to No. 3 pit: an explosion; a fire--"What is

it? Tell us?" They crowded round the mine offices, besieged the mine

manager: "For the love of Heaven, for the mercy of Mary, for the sake

of Christ--tell us! We must know ... we are the wives, the daughters,

the mothers of those who went below to their work in the blackness

of the coal.... No need to tell us: we know, now; we see the thin

cloud of smoke, with its evil smell, floating above the shaft ... the

engine-room is silent. The ventilation fan is not working. It has been

shattered, with the lives of all those who matter, by this explosion.

"Yes, yes, we will wait. Some of our men are sure to have escaped; they

know the workings. They will find their way to the Arden mine shaft

adjoining, and come up in the cages. Perhaps they all will, and no

lives will be lost. We will wait...."

At eleven o'clock the little tape machines in the newspaper offices

printed out letter by letter the message that was sent by the Hyde

reporter, who overslept himself that day, and did not hear the news

until ten. "An explosion occurred in the No. 3 mine of the Hyde

Collieries this morning. Two hundred men were working at the time, and

it is feared that there has been a serious loss of life."

"Off you pop," said Rivers to Wratten, who had just arrived at the

office. "This looks big. I think you'd better have some one with you.

Boy, tell Mr Quain to come up."

Half an hour later Wratten and Quain were on their way in a cab to

Euston, Humphrey thrilling with the adventure of being chosen to

accompany Wratten, looking forward to a new experience. "Horrible

things, these mine disasters," said Wratten. "I hate 'em," as if any

one in the world was so misguided as to like them.

"Are they difficult to do?" asked Humphrey.

"Sometimes ... it depends. If there's a chance of rescue, you've got to

hang about sometimes all night. They get on my nerves. This'll be your

first, won't it?"

"Yes," Humphrey said. It seemed strange to him that they should be

discussing such an appalling disaster so dispassionately; considering

it only from their point of view. There was no sense of tragedy,

of deep gloom, in their talk. It was all part of their business--a

lecture, a murder, an interview, a catastrophe--it was all the same to

them. They were merely lookers-on.

When they arrived at Euston, a tall man, whose chief characteristics

were gold-rimmed spectacles and a black moustache, came towards

them. He wore a red tie and carried a heavy ash stick in his hand.

"What--ho! Wratten," he said, jovially, "coming up?"

"Hullo, Grame," said Wratten, "anybody else here yet?"

"Oh! the whole gang. We're for'rard in a reserved compartment."

Kenneth Carr, white-faced and breathless, arrived at the last moment.

"Hullo!" he said, "isn't this awful.... Two hundred men! I'll join you

as soon as possible."

"Poor Kenneth!" Wratten remarked to Quain, as they followed Grame

to the carriage. "He really feels this quite keenly. He realizes

the immensity of the tragedy to which we're going to travel. It's a

mistake. It hampers one."

"I should have thought it would make you do better work," Quain

answered, "if you really felt the tremendous grief of it all."

"Not a bit. It makes you maudlin. You lose your head and go slobbering

sentimental stuff about. Remember, you're no one--you don't

exist--you're just a reporter who's got to hustle round, find out

what's happened, and tell people how it happened. Never mind how it

strikes you--_The Day_ ain't interested in you and your sensations--it

wants the story of the mine disaster."

"But--" Humphrey began.

Wratten turned on him savagely. "Oh! Good God! don't you think _I_

feel it too? Don't you think I hate the idea of never being able to

write it as I see it? By God! I wouldn't dare tell the story of a mine

disaster as I see it. _The Day_ would never print it--it would be rank

socialism."

There were five other reporters in the carriage. Two of them Humphrey

had met before: Mainham, who wore pince-nez, looked like a medical

student, and spent every Saturday at the Zoological Garden, where

he discovered extraordinary stories of crocodiles, who suffered

from measles; he was, in a way, the registrar of births, deaths and

marriages among the animals; and Chander, a thin-faced, thin-lipped

young man, who wore long hair, whose conversation was entirely made up

of a long chain of funny stories.

Chander faced the little tragedies of his work daily, but he kept

himself eternally young by pretending only to see the humorous side of

things. For instance, he once spent a whole morning in the rain and

slush of a January, trying to verify some story. He tramped the dismal

pavements of a dirty street off Tottenham Court Road, in search of a

certain man in a certain house, finally gave it up in disgust, and

discovered that he should have gone to another street of the same name

by King's Cross. That would have disheartened the average man: but

Chander turned it into a funny story--it is good to have the Chander

point of view.

The other reporters were Thomas, who worked for _The Courier_--a penny

paper--a well-ordered, methodical, unimaginative man, who had a secret

pity for the poor devils who had to work for halfpenny papers; and a

big broad-shouldered man, whose name was Gully. His face at a glance

seemed handsome enough, until you noticed the narrow eyes and the

coarseness of the heavy under lip. He had brought a pack of cards with

him and wanted to play nap.

"Good heavens!" said Kenneth Carr, irritably, "try and behave as if

you had some decency left. We're going to a mine disaster. There's two

hundred dead men at the other end of the journey."

"Well, you do talk rot," Gully replied. "Are they relations of yours?"

He sniggered at his joke, and asked Mainham to play. Mainham said he

couldn't play in the train, but Thomas was willing. Chander, who knew

that Kenneth Carr loathed Gully and all that he stood for, joined the

party out of sheer good-nature. He hated quarrelling.

"Why look on the black side of things, Carr?" he said. "Perhaps they're

not dead at all. We needn't go into mourning until we know everything,

and we don't know anything except what the early editions of the

evening papers had. And newspapers are so inaccurate."

"Ass!" said Kenneth, with a grin, for he and Chander were good friends,

and he understood Chander's tact.

Gully shuffled the cards. "I hope they're dead," he said, "because then

we shall be able to get back to-morrow."

Kenneth Carr, Grame and Wratten looked at each other. Wratten gave his

head a little toss, and made a clicking noise that meant, "What can you

expect, after all, from Gully."

"Charitable soul," Chander said, admiringly. "What a sweet temperament

you have. Won't it be sad if you find 'em all alive and ready to kick!"

Kenneth Carr, Wratten, Mainham and Humphrey went into the dining-car,

as the express rocked northwards towards Luton. The journey was full

of apprehension for Humphrey; he had never been on such a big story

as this, and, though he knew he had to do nothing but obey Wratten,

there was still a doubt of success in his mind. It interfered with

his appetite. He marvelled that the other men could eat their food

so calmly, as though they were going on a pleasure trip, and talk of

ordinary things. Of course, they were thoroughly used to it. It was as

common an incident in their lives as casting up columns of figures is

to a bank clerk, or the measuring of dead bodies to an undertaker.

After luncheon, Mainham left them to go back to the carriage, and the

three friends were alone over cigarettes and coffee.

"I'm sorry I lost my temper with Gully," Carr said, after a pause.

"Oh, we all know Gully." Wratten smiled and sipped his coffee.

"Don't get like Gully," Kenneth said to Humphrey, "even if you feel

like him. It's bad; it's the Gullys that have brought such a lot of

disrespect on journalism. He's the type of journalist whom people think

it necessary to give 'free' cigars to, and 'free' whiskies and sodas;

'free' dinners, even. They think it is the correct thing to give 'free'

things to us, as one throws bones to a dog. It's the Gullys who take

everything greedily and never disillusion them."

"But don't you think you're too sensitive?" Humphrey ventured. "It

seems to me that the work we do demands a skin thick enough to take all

insults. Look at the things we have to do sometimes!"

"It's our business to take risks," Wratten interposed. "I don't

mind what I do, so long as there's a good story in it. If it's

discreditable, the fault isn't with me. I'm only a humble instrument.

It's _The Day_ who's to blame--_The Day_ and the system. I do my duty,

and any complaints can be made to Neckinger or Ferrol, with or without

horsewhip. That's my position."

"You see," Kenneth Carr said, musingly, "there are, roughly, three

classes of reporters. There's the man who is keenly alive to the human

side of his work and talks about it, as I'm afraid I do; there's the

man who feels just as keenly and shuts up, as you and Wratten and

Mainham and hosts of others do; and there's the chap, like Gully, who

hasn't an ounce of imagination, and gloats over things like this mine

disaster, because he's a ghoul. I envy people like you and Wratten. You

do the best work because, although you feel pity and sorrow, you never

allow these feelings to hamper your instincts of the reporter."

Humphrey smiled. "Wratten doesn't." The time passed in recounting

some of Wratten's audacious doings. His bullying a half-suspected

murderer into a confession; his brutal exposure of a woman swindler--he

had answered an advertisement for a partner in some scheme or other,

found the advertiser was a woman with a questionable commercial past,

pretended he was _bona fide_, and, when he had obtained all his

material, ruthlessly exposed her in _The Day_. There was the case of

the feeble-minded millionaire, who was kept a prisoner in his house.

There was the case of the Gaiety girl who married a lordling, and

Wratten pried into their private lives, forced the lordling into an

interview, and wrote a merciless story that made London snigger. He was

absolutely callous in his work, yet so human and tender-hearted out

of it. Humphrey, since that night when he had been helped by him, had

looked up to Wratten as the type of the ideal reporter, with courage

unlimited, who never flinched, even when the work was most unsavoury

and humiliating.

He was not popular with the reporters of the papers: he kept himself

away from them, and restricted his friendship to one or two men. The

reason of his unpopularity was simply because others feared him as a

rival, and Humphrey found, later, that there was merit in that sort of

unpopularity. The strong men are never popular.

The train had now sped past Rugby, and the green valleys and chequered

landscapes ran by in a never-ending panorama. The sunshine held with

them as far as Crewe, and then, as they came into an unlovely stretch

of land bristling with factory chimneys, the clouds gathered, and the

greyness settled over the day. The three friends sat silently now:

Wratten and Carr, seated opposite, were looking out of the window, and

Humphrey over Carr's shoulder caught glimpses of the little world to

which they were journeying. He saw the great brick chimneys everywhere

now, breathing clouds of foul black smoke, and then, wherever he

looked, the strange-looking gearing-wheels of the coal-mine shafts

came into view. Some of them were quite near the railway line, and he

could see the light twinkling between their spokes as the great shaft

wheels moved round, hauling up invisible cages. There were tangles of

iron-work, and buildings of grimy brick, and, as they rushed on, they

passed gaunt sidings where coal-stained trucks waited in a long line.

They were in a world of brick and iron and coal: down below them,

beneath the throbbing wheels of the express, the earth was a honeycomb

of burrows, where half-naked men sweated and worked in the awful

heat and close darkness. This was a hard world, spread around them,

a world where men lived hard, worked hard, and died hard. A world

without sunshine,--all grimy iron and coal and brute strength. And

again Humphrey could not help feeling the pitiful artificiality of his

own work, that mattered so little, compared with this real and vital

business of dragging coal from the heart of the earth to warm her

children.

They had to change at Wigan: the bookstalls were covered with placards

of Manchester and Bolton newspapers telling of the horror of the

disaster. They bought copies of every paper, and saw the whole terrible

story, hastily put together, and capped with heart-rending headlines.

They would have to wait thirty minutes for the train to Hyde: Wratten

twitched Humphrey's sleeve and drew him aside. "Look here," he said,

"I don't know what the other fellows are going to do. Trains are no

good to me--I mayn't be able to get back to Wigan to wire, and the Hyde

post-office will be a one-horse show. I'm going to get a motor-car.

Come on." So they left the group. Social friendship was at an end:

there were no "Good-byes," each man was concerned with himself and his

own work.

Motor-cars were not used by newspapers at that time to the extent that

they are used to-day; they were doubly expensive, and even a little

uncertain, but _The Day_ was always generous with expenses when it came

to getting news.

They went outside, and Wratten hailed a dilapidated four-wheeler.

"Drive to a motor garage--quick," he said.

"Won't t' old hoss do, guv'nor?" asked the cabby, with the broad

Northern accent.

"No, it won't, and look slippy," growled Wratten. The old cab rattled

over the stones and down a steep hill.

"This is a pretty dull hole," Humphrey said, looking out at the town,

which seemed to be oozing coal from all its pores.

"Yes," Wratten said shortly. "I'm trying to think out a plan. You'd

better come with me to Hyde, and after we've got some stuff for the

main story, you can hang on, and I'll bump back here in the car, and

put it on the wire. Then I'll come back to the mine and relieve you.

You'll probably have got some interviews by then, and we can run them

on to the story."

They arranged for the motor-car, and during a ten-minutes' wait,

Wratten dashed off to the post-office. "Always call at the post-office

when you get on a job like this, and tell them what you're going to

send. Besides, the office may have some instructions for you in the

poste restante. And always wire your address to the office. We'd better

stop at the Royal. I daresay every one else will be there, but it can't

be helped."

They set out in the evening for the mine. The car took them through the

mean streets of Wigan and the outlying villages, where the shadow of

disaster hung like a black curtain over the houses. The streets were

strangely silent: groups of men stood at the street corners, talking

in constrained voices, and women with shawls over their heads flicked

across the roads, grey and ghostlike, the slap of their clogs breaking

harshly into the silence. Now and again they passed a beer-house,

brilliantly lit, and from here came sounds of voices, and high nervous

laughter. "They always get drunk on days like these," Wratten said.

"They have to forget that death is always sitting at their shoulders."

And now there was a stretch of open country, yet even the fields

had not the bright green of the Southern fields. The very grass was

soiled with the coal, and the mines and the tall chimneys made a ring

round their horizon. Humphrey moved uneasily in the car: the brooding

spirit of tragedy that hovered over the place was beginning to seem

intolerable. It was all so grey, so appallingly dismal and squalid.

Here were the houses with the blinds drawn over their windows--whole

streets of them--houses where there was no man to come home now. Here

were women leaning over the railings of the patches of gardens, staring

before them into the desolate future. Fatherless babes crawling about

the dusty pavements and gutters, unheedingly, knowing nothing of the

disaster that had scorched and withered the mankind of their world.

They turned down a side-street, and came out upon an open space filled

with a mighty crowd of people. Behind them was the gate that led to the

colliery, and far away, above their heads, Humphrey saw the winding

wheel above the shaft, twisted and broken, the shaft itself jagged and

castellated where the force of the explosion had torn the brickwork,

and the cable-ropes shattered and tangled, as if some giant hands had

wrenched it loose and made a plaything of it.

The crowds before the gate parted as they heard the noise of the

motor-car. They made a narrow lane, just wide enough for the car

to creep through. The gate was guarded by a police-sergeant, who,

overcome by the sight of the motor-car, opened the way, and saluted:

Wratten, bulky with rugs and wraps, touched the peak of his cap. The

car drew up outside the offices, and they set out to walk up the black

hill to the pit-mouth.

Desolation, utter and dismal; the lowering sky stained and splashed

with the red of the dying sun; dark masses gathering below the purple

pall of clouds; the ground barren and black with coal beneath the

feet: these were Humphrey's first impressions as they walked up the

hill, with thousands of envious, resentful eyes regarding them from

the crowds that huddled beyond the railings. Nobody questioned them;

nobody asked them what right they had to be there. They were part and

parcel of the scheme--the literary undertakers, or, if you like, the

descendants of the bards of old, the panegyrists, come to sing their

elegies to the dead.

The full force of the tragedy came, as a blow between the eyes, when

they reached the pit-mouth. Those women, waiting patiently throughout

the day,--and they would wait, too, long into the night, keeping up

their vigils of despair--who could forget them? Who could look at

their faces without feeling an overwhelming gush of pity flooding the

heart; those eyes, red-rimmed and staring intensely, eyes that could

weep no more, for their tears were exhausted, and nothing but a stony

impassive grief was left! The shawls made some of the faces beautiful,

Madonna-like, framing them in oval, but others were the faces of

dolorous old women, grey-haired, and mumbling of mouth. And some of

them laid their forefingers to their lips, calling the world in silence

to witness their stupendous sorrow. They stood there compact and

pitiful: thinking of God knows what--perhaps of the last good-bye, of

a quarrel before parting, of a plan for the morrow, of all the little

last things that had been done by their men, before death had come.

And, permeating everything, into the very nostrils of all of them,

there crept a ghastly smell of gas and coal-dust--a smell that brought

to the vision of the imaginative the shambles in the twisting galleries

of coal below their feet; great falls of black boulders, nameless

tortured hulks that once were men--living, loving, laughing--lying

haphazard as they fell to the same gigantic fist that smote the iron

wheel above the shaft, and crumpled the brickwork as if it were

cardboard.

They had to see it all: they met other reporters wandering in and

out--dream-people in a world of terrible reality. Their companions

of the train were all there: Kenneth Carr, surveying that wall of

women silently; Mainham, talking to the mine-manager, whose black and

sweating face told of many descents into the mine; Gully, buttonholing

a woman with a baby in her arms, and making notes in his notebook;

Grame, plodding to and fro in the coaly mire, for it had been raining

that morning in the North: all working, all observing, all gathering

facts. It was not their business to moralize, to link up dead men

and disasters with the idea of these desolate women and humanity at

large. That was the leader-writer's work. Their business was to get

the news and say how it happened. They dared not even expose criminal

negligence, or inhuman cruelty, or savage conditions of work--and libel

laws were there to restrain them.

And they all felt--yes, I believe even the brutal Gully felt it for

a moment--the unspeakable horror of the tragedy, the injustice not

of men dying like this, but having to live like this; great waves

of sympathy and pity came over them, and they pitied themselves for

their impotence. Ah! if they could have told the millions that would

read their writings in the morning, the thoughts that were in their

minds....

Humphrey saw it all. He saw the gaunt, drear shed where the flickering

lamp-light played over a dozen shapeless bundles sewed up in white. A

man came to the shed--this business of identification was no woman's

work--the policeman in charge whispered something: they went in

together; the policeman turned back the sheet--O God! is it possible

that a face once human could look like that! Turn down the sheet. We

cannot recognize him. All we know is that the bundle of clothes seared

from his body is his; that pocket-book is his too, and we recognize the

bone crucifix that he bought one Easter-tide in Manchester.

"Hold up.... Thanks, matey, the light's a bit dim...."

An odour of carbolic mingled with the stench of the coal-dust; a

blue-clad nurse with a scarlet cross on her arm moved among the white

bundles, and she seemed to bring with her a promise of exquisite peace

after pain, and rest and eternal sleep. Outside, a grim black wagon

lumbered up the hill, and, as the wind flapped its canvas doors open,

one saw its load of coffins....

Now the rescue party was going down again. They emerged from a brick

shanty, through whose windows Humphrey could see the shelves which

were meant to hold the miners' lamps--there was a pathos in those

empty shelves. These men were going down to dare death: they looked

inhuman fantastic creatures, with goggled helmets over their heads, and

great knapsack arrangements of oxygen and nitrogen to breathe, for one

breath of the air in the mine below meant stupor and sleep everlasting.

There were five men, and as they passed the group of dolorous women,

they must have felt the tremor of hope and deep gratitude that shot

through the fibre of every despairing one. Here were the sexes in

their elemental state, stripped of all the artificial trappings of

civilization; men were doing the work of men; women giving them

courage with the blessings of God that they murmured.

The leader of the rescue gang carried a little canary in a cage; the

little yellow bird piped and sang, and hopped about his perch. The

little yellow bird was the centre of all their faith in God's mercy:

for if the bird could live in the air of the mine, there was still some

hope for their men.

Slowly the cage descended the shaft that was unbroken. The sunset

blinked between the spokes of the gearing-wheel, slower and

slower--they were at the bottom of the mine. Now, they were in that

inferno of vaporous blackness, with death stalking them, a gaunt,

cloudy monster, who had but to puff out his cheeks and breathe

destruction. There would be enormous falls of coal and timber to

combat; they would have to crawl on their bellies, and stagger along,

stooping to the broken roofs of the galleries, and always there was the

startling danger of a jar knocking their knapsacks, or breaking the

mouthpieces through which they breathed their precious elixir of life.

Up above, the night was coming, and a rain as soft as tears began

to drift downwards. The women waited. Salvation Army officers moved

among them, enticing some of them into the shelter of the silent

machine-room. "Of what use is tea and coffee to us? Give us our men. No

food or drink shall pass our lips until our men have kissed them, or we

have kissed their still faces."

Up above, a preacher preached of the infinite mercy of God, and the

gospel of pain and sorrow by which the Kingdom of Heaven is reached. He

stood there with his arms outstretched, like a black cross silhouetted

against the darkening sky, his low, mournful, dirge-like voice blending

with the gloom.... Down below, in the reek and the stench, the

rescuers' hands are bloody with tearing their way through obstacles,

and their pulses are hammering in their heads ... and they have seen

sickening things.

Now the wheel begins to move again. Doctors hurry to the door of the

cage--lint, bandages, stretchers, evil and glittering instruments that

kill pain with pain, all the ghastly paraphernalia of Death. They are

coming up!... They are coming up!... A silence, so swift and sudden,

that it is as if the great multitude had whispered "Hush," the tinkle

of the bell marking the stages of the ascent is clearly heard by people

waiting on the bank. The cage appears.... The men stagger out, one by

one, helmets removed, their faces grimed and sweaty, their eyes white

and staring out of the black grotesquery of their faces, their lips

taut and silent.

And one of them carries a cage in his hand, a cage with an empty perch,

and a smother of wet and draggled feathers huddled into one corner. A

world without the song of a bird--no hope! ... no hope.

* * * * *

"I shall have to dash back to Wigan now, and get my stuff on the

wires," said Wratten. "Will you wait here and I'll come and relieve

you. Pick up any stuff you can. Facts." Humphrey wandered about the

dismal pit-mouth--sometimes he was challenged by the police, and

ordered to keep within a certain area. He found a cluster of reporters

by a lighted lamp. One of them had received an official communication

from the mine-manager, and he was giving it to his colleagues. Humphrey

took it down in his note-book. Then there was another flutter. A piece

of flimsy paper was fixed to a board outside the lamp-house. A message

from the King.

Now, the wires were humming with words, thousands upon thousands of

words sent by the writers to all the cities of the kingdom. And in

all the offices the large square sheets of the press telegraph-forms

were being delivered. Humphrey saw the picture of _The Day_ office:

Selsey sitting at the top of the table, the boy handing him the pile of

news from Wigan, a sub-editor cutting it down, here and there--always

cutting down. Perhaps, you see, some great politician was making a

speech at the Albert Hall, and space was needed for three columns, with

a large introduction.

It was nine o'clock. Another rescue party had gone down. The women

still waited, their faces yellow now in the flare of lamps. It seemed

to Humphrey that he had left London centuries ago ... that he had

never met Lilian at all. It was as if that morning his life had been

uprooted, and it would have to be planted again before it could absorb

the old interests and influences.... He was hungry and cold. There was

no chance of getting food. If he were a miner, or had any real part in

this game, the Salvation Army would have given him tea and bread ...

but he was a reporter, an onlooker, supposed to be watching everything,

and, in a sense, physically invisible.

A car panted up.... It was Wratten. "Here I am, Quain. Anything

happened? Official communication. Oh yes, and the King's telegram.

Better send them off. Hop into the car and then send it back for me.

I'll wait."

"Wait?" Humphrey said. "What about food?"

"I've got some sandwiches. I'll wait here until two. Never know what

will happen. Rescuer might get killed. It's happened before. Fellow

might be brought up alive."

"But it's going to rain like blazes."

"Is it?... Off you get. You can turn in. I'll keep the deck."

* * * * *

It was nearly eleven when Humphrey had sent his telegram to London.

The post-office was open by a side door for the correspondents, and

some of them were still writing. Cigarettes dangled from their lips.

They had an opened note-book on one side and a pile of telegraph-forms

on the other--not the forms that ordinary human beings use, but large

square sheets, divided up into spaces for a hundred words on a page.

Fifteen of them made a column in _The Day_--Wratten had covered thirty

forms.

Humphrey went back to the hotel. His friends were in the coffee-room

amazing the waitress with their appetites for cold meat and pickles and

beer at half-past eleven. The tension was over, and the reaction was

setting in. Their faces were strained, and they all seemed unnaturally

good-humoured. They laughed at anything, clutching at any joke that

would make them forget the dismal horrors of their day. Kenneth Carr

looked more pallid than ever.

"Where's Wratten?" he asked, as Humphrey came into the room.

"Still waiting up there," Humphrey said.

"What's the good of waiting?" Gully put in. "If anything happens, the

Agency men will send it through, and, anyway, it's too late for the

first edition."

"I reckon I've done my day's work; me for the soft bed," Chander

remarked. "By the way, I found five separate men who've got five

separate shillings out of me. Each swore he was absolutely the first

person to arrive on the scene and no one else there. It's a sad world.

Good-night."

Kenneth Carr left shortly afterwards, and the others remained drinking

and telling stories. Humphrey had been chary of drinking since his

adventure that evening when he was on his first murder story, but

to-night he drank with the rest. They were all urged by the same

motives. They wanted to forget the black pit-mouth, and the women, and

the smell of the coal-dust.

That night Humphrey woke up suddenly and heard the rain drumming

against the window. He wondered if Wratten were back from the mine. He

fell asleep again, and dreamed of a gaunt building, where a blue-clad

nurse, with the face of Lilian, hovered about white, shapeless

bundles.... And in London the dawn was coming westwards over Fleet

Street, and the vans were rattling to the stations, so that all that

had been written would be read over millions of breakfast-tables

everywhere in the kingdom.

X

Since his visit to Lilian's home, he had come to a definite decision

about his marriage. It would have to be privately done, and the news

kept from his aunt until they were wedded. In spite of the increasing

breadth of his life, he had not yet shaken off the narrow influence

of Easterham; his aunt still remained as a factor to be considered

in his scheme of things. If he told her, beforehand, she would ask

all sorts of questions. Who were the Filmers? What did Mr Filmer do?

(He winced at even this imagined question.) Were they _really nice_

people? That was the greatest quality that anybody could have in his

aunt's estimation--the quality of being _really nice_. It was a vague,

impalpable quality that defied definition, though Humphrey knew that,

somehow or other, his aunt would arrive at the conclusion that the

Filmers had not that desirable attribute, if she could by any chance

visit them.

Of Lilian, of course, there could be no doubt.... She was rare and

exquisite, so different altogether from the rest of her family. Nobody

could help loving her, and he knew that she would survive the Easterham

inquisition. But he saw at once that Mrs Filmer and his aunt would

never, never blend. She would find out at once that Mrs Filmer was not

"really nice."...

He and Lilian talked it over, whenever they could meet. She did not

share his hurry to be married. "It is sweet like this," she said once.

There was an odd, wistful note in her voice. Then she looked at him

fondly, and, "Oh! what a boy you are, Humphrey," she said. He did

not object to that so much now. He smiled indulgently--he had not

been many months in Fleet Street, but he seemed to have absorbed the

experience of as many years.

He was changing, so gradually, that he could not note the phases of

his development himself. He felt that he was leaving all his old

associations far behind. It was as if some driving power were within

him, rushing him forward daily, while most of the other people round

him stood still. There was Beaver, for instance--he seemed to have left

Beaver long ago, though they were still at their old Guilford Street

lodgings. But, somehow, Beaver seemed now just a milestone, marking the

passage of a brief stage in his life. Soon, he knew, Beaver would be

out of sight altogether. There was Tommy Pride--another milestone; he

had run on and caught up with Wratten and Kenneth Carr, and these were

the people who were influencing him now....

And there was that great ambition, growing into a steady flame:

ambition burning up every other desire within him; ambition leading him

by ways that mattered not so long as they led at last to conquest.

Lilian was to help him: she was to be a handmaiden to ambition. The

picture of the journalistic homes that he had seen made him long

to found one of his own. This life of lodgings and drifting was

profitless--he wanted a home; permanence and peace in this life of

restless insecurity. Very often he dreamed of his home--where would it

be?--they would have to be content with rooms at first, an upper part,

perhaps, but the rooms would be their own, and they could shut the door

on the world, and live monarchs of their own seclusion for a few hours,

at least, every day. There were walls lined with books, too, in his

picture of the home, and Lilian, in an arm-chair of her own, set by the

fireplace, and the blinds down, and the light glittering on the golden

threads in her brown hair.

He told Lilian of his dreams, and she shook her head and smiled.

"It's a nice picture, isn't it?" she said.

"Don't you see it too?" he asked.

"Sometimes. I used to see it quite a lot at one time. Before I knew

you."

He showed chagrin. "Oh! wasn't I in it?"

"How could you have been when I hadn't met you? I forget who was

the ideal for me at the moment. Lewis Waller, perhaps, or William

Gillette." She laughed. "Silly Humphrey, it's the picture you're in

love with, and you can put anybody in the arm-chair."

He protested against it, yet all the while he was wondering how she

could have known that! He had not considered that point of view

himself, nor would he now. It was Lilian he wanted; she was just as

beautiful as ever, and nobody else was within his grasp.

He sighed. "I do wish we could settle about--about our marriage. Let's

fix it up for next week."

She pretended to be horrified. "Only a week to prepare in! Look at the

things I've got to buy. My bottom drawer isn't half full."

"Well!" he said, hopelessly, "when are we going to get married? Do

let's try and fix a day."

He could not understand why, sometimes, she would seem so eager and

delighted with the prospect of marriage, and at other times she would

be in a mood for indefinite postponement, as though she wished to

keep him for ever lingering after her with all his thirst for love

unquenched.

He could not know that she was beginning to realize, with that

intuition which no man can fathom, that her dreams had been but dreams,

and the love that they thought everlasting but the passing shadow of a

moment.

* * * * *

When he got back to the reporters' room that evening--he had

been reporting the visit of a famous actress to a Home for

Incurables--Willoughby met him with a grave face.

"Heard about Wratten?" he asked.

"No--what is it?" Humphrey said, feeling that evil news was coming.

"Double pneumonia--they thought it was a chill at first ... he got it

at that mine disaster last week. You were there, weren't you?"

"Yes. He would insist on staying out all night ... it was raining...."

"That was Wratten all over," Willoughby said.

Humphrey winced. "Don't say 'was,'" he said, almost fiercely.

"Wratten's going to get better. It's impossible for him to die ...

why, he is only just begun to live ... and there's his wife ... and,

perhaps...."

He stopped short. Nobody could quite understand what Wratten meant to

him. Not even Wratten himself.

"I didn't know you and Wratten were very thick," Willoughby said. "He's

a good chap, but so devilish glum."

"None of you know Wratten--I don't suppose I do--but I know that he's

the whitest man in the Street."

He went out to Hampstead that night, after work, but the nurse who came

to the door said that he could not see Mrs Wratten, she was in the

sick-room--Mr Wratten was dangerously ill; but he was going on as well

as could be expected.

XI

Ferrol was back in his room, among his buttons, after a long holiday

abroad. There was always a subtle difference in the office when he

returned after these occasional absences; and not only in the office,

but in the whole Street, where men would say to each other, "Ferrol's

back, I hear ... wonder what _The Day_ will do next." For Ferrol always

returned to his paper with some new scheme, some new idea that he had

planned while he was away--he seemed to be able to see weeks ahead, to

know what people would be talking about, or, if he could not be certain

as to that, he would "boom" something in _The Day_, and its mighty

circulation would make people talk about anything he wanted them to

discuss. They were doing nearly a million a day--think of it! Ferrol,

sitting in his office, could touch a button, give some instructions,

and send his influence into nearly a million homes. He could move the

thoughts of hundreds of thousands; throw the weight of _The Day_ into

a cause and carry it through into success. He could order the lives

of his readers, in large matters or small matters. That famous Batter

Pudding campaign, for instance, is not forgotten, when _The Day_ found

a crank of a doctor, who declared that our national ill-health was

due to eating Batter Pudding with roast beef. Batter Pudding was on

every one's lips, and in no one's mouth. People stopped cooking Batter

Pudding. Ferrol touched a button and they obeyed. Nor must we forget

the wonderful campaign on the "Bulrush Throat," by which Humphrey was

able to oust the bulrushes from Mrs Wayzgoose's sitting-room.

Yet, sometimes, in _The Day_ campaigns, there was a spark of greatness

and a hint of nobler things, that seemed to reflect the complex

personality of Ferrol himself; Ferrol groping through the web of

commercial opportunism which was weaving round him, striving after

something ideal and worthy. A man has been wrongly arrested and

condemned--Ferrol stands for justice; the columns of _The Day_ are

opened to powerful pens; the nation is inflamed, there are questions in

the House, the case is re-opened and the conviction quashed. Nameless

injustices and cruel dishonesty would flourish if _The Day_ were not

there to expose such things. You must balance the good against the

evil, and perhaps the good will outweigh the evil, for Ferrol, when he

touched the buttons, did many good things, and the nearest approach

to evil he made was in doing those few things that were transparently

foolish....

Something in _The Day_ had arrested his attention that morning. (He

always read the paper through, page by page, from the city quotations

to the last word on the sporting page.) The article in question was not

an important one: it was a few hundred words about a party of American

girls who were being hustled through London in one day--the quickest

sight-seeing tour on record. The account of their doings was brightly

written, with a flash of humour here and there; and, you know, it had

the "human touch."

Who wrote it? The button moves; pink-faced Trinder starts nervously

from his desk in the ante-room, and appears shiny, and halting in

speech. He is sent on a mission of investigation, while Ferrol turns

to other matters: the circulation department wants waking up. Ferrol

actually travelled in his car all the way from his house in Kensington,

and for every contents bill of _The Day_ he saw three of _The

Sentinel_. Gammon, the manager of the circulation department, appears,

produced magically by touching a button. "This won't do, you know."

There are explanations, though Ferrol doesn't want explanations--he

wants results; which Gammon, retiring in a mood for perspiration,

promises. There has been a slight drop in advertisement revenue--Ferrol

has a finger in every pie. "Dull season be damned," says Ferrol to the

advertisement manager--a very great person, drawing five thousand a

year, commissions and salary, and with it all dependent on Ferrol. In

two minutes Ferrol has produced a "scheme"--an idea that may be worth

thousands of pounds to the paper. "Splendid," says the advertisement

manager. "Get ahead with it," says Ferrol....

In ten minutes it is as if there had been an eruption in every

department of the grey building. The fault-finding words in the red

room with the buttons drop like stones in a pool, making widening

rings, until they reach the humblest junior in every department--Ferrol

is back, and the office knows it!...

Trinder reappears. Mr Quain wrote the article ... and Ferrol suddenly

remembers.

So the boy has been doing well. Both Neckinger and Rivers approve of

Humphrey. "Not a brilliant genius, thank God!" says Rivers, "but a good

straightforward man. Very sound."

Thus is Ferrol justified once more in his perception for the right man.

His thoughts travelled back once more to Easterham, to the days when

he himself was Humphrey's age, to the days of Margaret, and the white

memories of his only romance. Strange that the vision of her should

always stand out against the thousand complexities of his life after

all these years. He saw her just as he had last seen her, eyes of a

deep darkness, and black hair that seemed by contrast to heighten the

dusky pallor of her skin. A child that was too frail to live, and yet

she had inspired him in these long distant days.

It was astonishing to think that she had had a separate life of her

own; that she had married and passed out of the scheme of things. She

was dead, and yet she came knocking like this at queer, irregular

intervals, at the door of his life.

And Ferrol was drawn with a strange attraction towards this boy who was

her son; he came as if he were a message from Margaret, holding out her

hands to him, across the unfathomable abyss of Space and Time. "Now you

can repay," she seemed to say.

* * * * *

"Well, Quain," said Ferrol, as Humphrey came into the room.

Ferrol masked his sentiments behind the crisp, hard voice that he

always cultivated in the office. Nobody could have guessed from his

treatment of Humphrey that he regarded the boy with any particular

favour. Ferrol knew well enough how to handle men: they must be made

always to believe that they are firm and independent, and it does not

do to let them see the props and supports that hold them up.

Humphrey was busily searching for the reason of this summons to

Ferrol's room. It was only the third time that he had been in this

broad red room, yet already his nervousness vanished, he no longer

feared his greatness, or the comprehensive power of the man with

the black moustache and the strong hands that held in their grip

all the fortunes of _The Day_. He stood there, by Ferrol's desk, so

changed, so different from the timid Humphrey who had felt the floor

sinking beneath him when he faced, for the first time, this man whose

potentiality he could not grasp. There was little outward difference,

save, perhaps, the lips compressed a little tighter, and a frown that

came and went, but inwardly the timid Humphrey had gone, and in its

place there was a bolder Humphrey, whose mind was all the better for

the bruises of battle.

"Well, Quain," said Ferrol, moving papers about his desk, and regarding

Humphrey all the time with those penetrating grey eyes.

"You sent for me, sir?" Humphrey asked.

"Yes." Ferrol paused. "Getting on all right?" he blurted out.

Humphrey smiled--Getting on! The phrase had been on his lips on that

day when he had first appeared in the red room. He thought of all the

things that had been crowded into his life since then. Of all that

he had seen; of all the people he had met; of the glimpses into the

greatness and the pettiness; the worthiness and the unworthiness; the

virtue and the vice and the vanity of it all. As he thought thus, he

saw a blurred composite picture of the past months, figures flitting to

and fro, men striving in the underworld of endeavour, work, work, and

a little love, and, in the background, a whimsical picture of his aunt

who preached the stern gospel of Getting On, without knowing what it

really meant.

"I'm going to have you put on better work," Ferrol said. How the boy's

eyes sparkled and lit up his face! "Mr Rivers is quite satisfied. You

shall do some of the descriptive work. Think you'll be able to do as

well as John K. Garton one day?"

John K. Garton!--he was the great descriptive writer of _The Day_,

the man who signed every article he wrote, who was never seen in the

reporters' room, except when he looked in for letters; a being who

seemed to Humphrey to belong to quite another sphere, above Wratten,

above Kenneth Carr, above all the reporters in salary and reputation.

He was one of Ferrol's products: all England knew of him, and read

his work as special correspondent, yet Ferrol could put a finger on a

button, you know....

Humphrey laughed. "Oh, I don't know, Mr Ferrol," he said, awkwardly.

"My work would probably be quite different, I couldn't write in his

style."

"That's right," said Ferrol. "Try and find an individual style of your

own. No room for imitators here. Still, there's plenty of time to talk

about that. I just wanted to let you know I've had my eye on you."

Ferrol nodded, Humphrey turned to go.

Then he remembered he was going to ask Ferrol for a rise in salary. He

came back to the desk.

"Oh, Mr Ferrol," he said, "I ought to tell you, I'm going to be

married."

Ferrol pushed his pad aside. What a fool he had been to think he could

constitute himself the only influence in this boy's career. How was

it he had overlooked the one important factor--a woman. It came so

suddenly, this revelation of Humphrey's intimate life, and all at once

Ferrol found himself swayed with an unreasoning dislike of this unknown

woman--it was an absurd feeling of jealousy.--Yes, he was jealous that

anybody should exercise a greater influence than himself over Humphrey,

now that he had decided to push him forward to success.

"Married!" he said, harshly, "you damned young fool!"

The words came as a blow in the face. Humphrey flushed, and found

that he could not speak. He thought of Ferrol's soft words that had

opened up such illimitable visions of the future, and then, quite

unexpectedly--this.

"Somebody in Easterham?" asked Ferrol.

"Oh no! Nobody in Easterham. She lives in London. She's in Fleet

Street."

"A woman journalist?"

"No--she's a typist."

"You damned young fool!" Ferrol repeated. "What do you want to get

married for?"

XII

In the silence that followed, Humphrey stood bewildered. The harsh

note in Ferrol's voice surprised him; what on earth could it matter

to Ferrol whether he married or not. And Ferrol must have read his

thoughts, and seen his mistake at once.

"Of course," he said, "it's no business of mine. Your life's your own.

Only I think you're too young for that sort of thing. Why, you haven't

seen the world yet. You haven't a father, have you?"

"No," said Humphrey.

"Well"--Ferrol's voice softened--"you won't mind my advising you then."

"No," said Humphrey again: already he seemed to feel Lilian slipping

from his grasp.

"I'm looking at it simply from the business point of view. No man has a

right to marry until his position is made--least of all a reporter."

"But she would help me," Humphrey pleaded. "She would be able to help

me. She would ..." he broke off.

Ferrol completed the sentence for him. "Keep you straight. Yes, I

know. I've heard it all before. The man who needs a woman to keep him

straight is only half a man."

"But," continued Humphrey--and he thought of Wratten and Tommy

Pride--"we don't get much out of life--we're at work all day long,

there's absolutely nobody ... I mean, there's nothing left in it

all ..." he spread his hands wide. "At the end there's nothing

... emptiness." He stammered broken sentences that had a queer

impressiveness in them. "I'm nothing ... it seems to me ... all this

life, rushing about all day ... and everything forgotten to-morrow ...

there's nothing that lasts ... nothing except...."

"Oh, you think you'll get happiness," Ferrol said. "Perhaps you will.

But every moment of happiness is going to cost you years of misery.

As soon as you marry, what happens? You are no longer independent.

You've got to lie down and take all the kicks. You've got to submit to

be ground down; to be insulted by men whom you dare not strike back,

as you would, if you had only yourself to think of.... And then, you

know, in a year's time, you've got to work ... double as hard, and to

watch every penny, and to save.... Why, you young fool, don't you see

that if you're going to get on in this business, you mustn't have any

other wish in life but to rise to the top. Everything must be put aside

for that--you must even put aside yourself. You must have only one

love--the love of the game; the love of the hunter for his quarry."

What made Ferrol talk like this.... What had happened to Humphrey that

he should be there, standing up to Ferrol, fighting the question of his

marriage? Something new and unexpected had thrust itself into their

relations, and Humphrey could not understand it.

"But that's what I want to do," he said; "we should do it together."

"Yes. How?" said Ferrol, a little brutally again. "Shall I tell you?

I know you young men who marry the moment you see a marrying wage.

It's all very well for you--you may progress--you may develop--you're

bound to, for men knock about and gather world experience. But what of

the woman at home?--cooped up in her home with babies? Eh? have you

thought of that? Where would your home be? You haven't got as far as

that, then. The woman stands still, and you march on. She can lift

you up, but you can't lift her up. And then the day comes that you're

a brilliant man--the most brilliant man in the Street, if you like...."

Ferrol smiled. "Oh! you never know. Think of John K. Garton, and

Mallaby, and Owers.... And you're different. You can link up the things

of life. You can perceive and appreciate pictures and fine music and

the meaning of everything that matters ... and for the woman who has

not been able to progress, nothing but popular songs, chromographs,

and ignorance of anything but the petty little things of to-day. Then

you hear people saying, 'How on earth did he come to marry her?'

There's always an answer to that. _He_ didn't marry her. It was another

man--the man he was twenty years ago--who did it. Do you see?"

Humphrey looked about him forlornly. His dreams were crumbling before

the onslaught of Ferrol's remorseless less words. The powerful

magnetism of this man held him: he felt sure that Ferrol was right....

Ferrol was only voicing the thoughts that he himself had feared to

express. Above the inward turmoil of his mind, he heard again the voice

of Ferrol, forceful and insistent:

"You are not the man you will be in twenty years' time. There's no

reason," he added hastily, "why I should take all this trouble over you

... no reason at all ... it's no concern of mine. Other people on my

staff can do as they please--for some men marriage is the best thing

... I don't interfere. I'm not interfering now. I'm only giving my

point of view."

"Yes ... I know," Humphrey said, and somehow or other he seemed to feel

an extraordinary sympathy for Ferrol; he seemed to understand this man.

At that moment he would have stood forth for Ferrol and championed him

against a world of hatred!

"Only I thought ..." Humphrey began. "You see, she supports her

family...."

"O Lord!" Ferrol groaned. "It's worse than I imagined."

"Besides, she's ... she's clever ... we have the same tastes."

"Of course you have. But your tastes will alter. You're going to

progress.... And she's going to progress, too, on different lines.... A

woman's line of progress is different ... and in twenty years' time!"

The telephone bell rang. Ferrol took up the receiver.

"Well, that's all," he said to Humphrey. And then: "I don't take this

trouble with every one."

Humphrey groped for words. "No ... I understand ... I see what you

mean.... You don't think...."

Ferrol nodded. "You can do what you like, of course."

He put the receiver to his ear and began talking rapidly.

XIII

Lilian knew the letter by heart now, she had read it through and

through so often. She had received it early that morning, when, as

usual, she ran downstairs at the postman's knock, so as to take that

precious letter, that came daily, from the floor where it lay as it

had been dropped through the slit in the door. Of late, the sisters

and brother had noticed the hurry to capture the first post, and there

had been a little good-humoured chaffing over the breakfast-table,

where they all sat together--the father and mother took their breakfast

upstairs in bed, in keeping with their slatternly lives.

"Going to be a blushing bride soon, Lily?" said Harry, with a wink to

Edith.

"Don't be silly!" Lilian said, crumbling her letter in her pocket.

"What's he like? Is it that nobleman who came here a few weeks ago? If

so, I don't think much of his taste in ties!"

"It's better than your taste in socks," retorted Lilian.

"Aha!--a hit, a palpable hit. Guessed it at once. Pass the butter,

Edie."

"Do tell us all about it," Florence urged.

"The family wants to know," pleaded Harry.

"Lilian--are you really...."

Her hands closed over the letter which she had just read. She turned

her head away and pretended to be busy at the coffee-pot. They were all

joking among themselves, and they did not notice the tears glisten in

her eyes.

"There's nothing to tell," she said, in a hard voice.

"Oh, we don't believe that!" Harry said. "Young ladies wot gets letters

in masculiferous handwritings every morning...."

She rose abruptly and looked at the clock. Then--wonderful Lilian!--she

laughed and threw them all off the scent. "You children are too

talkative," she said, with pretended loftiness. "I mustn't stop

chattering with you or I shall miss the eight-forty." She put on her

gloves with precision, and took up her little handbag, and adjusted her

hat, just as if nothing had happened to disturb the ordinary course of

her life; and, then, with the usual kiss all round, she let herself out

of the house.

Oh, she kept herself well in hand throughout the journey to

town--nobody knew, and nobody must know. It was only a secret between

herself and her heart. She looked out with dry eyes over the dismal

plain of chimney-pots with which the train ran level, the cowls

spinning in the wind ... the chimney-pots stretched row upon row, far

away, until, with a hint of the open sea, adventure and wide freedom,

the masts and rigging and brown sails arose from the ships lying in

the docks. But when she came to the office she rushed upstairs, and in

the little room where they hung their cloaks and hats, all her pent-up

emotions broke loose with a torrent of tears. She wanted to empty her

eyes of tears so that there should be none left, and she wept without

control, silently, until she could weep no more. It was just like a

short, sharp storm on a day that is oppressive and heavy; the air is

all the cooler and sweeter for it, fresh breezes play gently over the

streets, the world itself seems eased after its outburst.

She could smile again. She bathed her red eyes in the cold water of the

basin, and performed some magic with a powder-puff. Nobody would have

guessed, as she sat tap-tapping at her typewriter, with the sunshine

touching her hair with its golden fingers, that a thunderstorm had

shaken her nature a few minutes earlier. It was all over now; only the

letter remained, and she knew the letter by heart, she had read it so

often.

A difficult letter to write! Well, not really, for that which comes

from the heart is easy to write. It is insincerity which presents

difficulties, and in this business Humphrey had not been insincere. He

had not made any cold calculations as to the future; he had not weighed

the pros and cons of it all. After the letter was written and posted,

the vision of her reproachful face haunted his dreams, and he felt that

he had lost something irretrievable--something of himself that had gone

from him, never to return.

He was only considering himself. He saw the sudden possibilities of the

future which Ferrol had opened for him; the true proportions in which

he had painted that picture of the days to come. The fear of these

responsibilities attacked him and made him a coward.

He saw, at once, that he could not marry Lilian, and he told her so in

a tempestuous, passionate letter, with ill-considered phrases jumbled

all together, treading on one another's heels, as fast as the ideas

tumbled about in his mind.

"I cannot do it, Lilian, dear," he began. "We should never be happy

together. I can see that. I don't know what you will think of me;

you cannot think any worse of me than I think of myself. I feel a

blackguard; I feel as if some one had given me a beautiful, priceless

vase, and I had hurled it to the floor and smashed it. It is not that

I love you any the less, but I cannot ask you to share this life of

mine. When I first knew you, I thought it would be beautiful if we

could be married--everything seemed so easy to accomplish. But now I

see that years must pass before I win my way, and that marriage for

us would be an unhappy, uphill affair. Forgive me, forgive me, Lilian.

I cannot tell you all my thoughts on paper. But meet me just once

more in the old restaurant in the Strand, where I can explain to you

all that I want to say, and plead for your forgiveness. Oh, my sweet

Lilian, you will understand and help me, I know.

"HUMPHREY."

This was the letter, written on the impulse of the moment, which

Humphrey sent to her. Incredible that it should be dropped in the

ordinary way into a pillar-box, to lie for hours with hundreds of other

letters, to pass through many hands until it finally came into the

hands of the postman at Battersea Park, who delivered it, without any

emotion, with a score of bills and receipts and circulars.

Well, it was done, and, while Humphrey was waiting for his work in

the reporters' room of _The Day_, Lilian's mind was busy with the new

development of affairs. Now, she could review everything calmly, she

felt in her heart that Humphrey was right, but there was the sense of

wounded pride with her. He had thrown her over! He did not even ask her

to wait for him--yes! she would have waited--he was hasty to unburden

himself and win his freedom again. Yet she knew that she could not

wait--she was older than he--she would be too old in ten years' time.

The flower of her life would be full for a few years, and then she knew

he would see that her glory was waning.... All this was no surprise

to her. Instinctively she seemed to have known that this would be the

outcome of her love affair. Strange! how she accepted it without any

more demur than the natural outburst of tears--and what were those

tears, after all, but tears of self-pity, as she looked upon herself

and saw that she was poor and patient and loveless?

They met in that same Italian restaurant in the Strand to which

Humphrey had first taken her on that day, months ago, when the glamour

was upon him. The proprietor knew them for more or less regular

customers, and they always had the upstairs room, which was invariably

empty.

This dreadful business of the waiter taking his hat and stick, setting

the table in order, offering the menus, and recommending things, with a

greasy smile, and knowing, dark eyes! They had to mask their feelings,

and to play the old part, and pretend that they were going to have

lunch.

She noticed that Humphrey's face was pale, the lines about his mouth

less soft than usual. His eyes were strained, and he looked at her

wistfully, not quite sure of his ground, wondering whether there would

be a scene.

She could read him thoroughly. She knew that he really felt mean and

uncomfortable, that she had but to use her woman-wit to recapture him

at once--snare him so completely that never could he escape again. She

knew that the very sight of her weakened him in his resolve, a kiss on

the lips, and her fingers stroking his hair and face, he was hers, and

the world well lost for him.

But that was not Lilian's way. A strange, deep feeling of pity was

in her heart as she marked the pallor of his face. She would have

mothered him, but never cajoled him. "He is only a boy," she thought

sorrowfully, "with a boy's destructiveness. This, that he thinks is

an overwhelming tragedy, will be only a mere incident in a few years'

time." And she smiled at her thoughts.

Her smile awoke only the faintest echoes of dying memories within

him: her smile that had once thrilled him, and sent his heart beating

faster, and made his throat so curiously parched--incredible that such

things had happened once!

"You are not angry," he said, timidly, with a touch of tragedy in his

voice.

"Angry?" she echoed. (He feared she was going to make light of the

whole affair, and trembled at the idea of her mocking him: he might

have known that that also was not Lilian's way.) "Angry," she repeated.

"No, Humphrey. I'm not angry."

"There's no excuse," he began, hopelessly, "I've got nothing to say for

myself.... It seems to me ... it seems best that it should be ... for

both of us, I mean."

"I think it's better for me," she said, softly. "There's no good making

a tragedy of it. Things always turn out for the best."

He fidgeted uneasily. "I was thinking it over last night.... Oh, my

head aches with thinking.... You see, what can we do, if we married.

Everything's up against us ... it's all fighting and risks, and

uncertainty. I don't mind for myself" (and Humphrey really believed

this, for the moment), "it's you that I'm thinking of ... it wouldn't

be fair. I could ask you to wait ..." he did not finish.

Now, really, Humphrey's arrogance must be taught a lesson. Behold,

Lilian gathering her forces together to crush him--ask her to wait,

indeed! as if he were her last chance. And then something in his eyes

checked her, something wistful and intensely pathetic. Splendidly,

Lilian spared him. He was so easy to crush ... perhaps she still liked

him a little, in spite of everything.

"No," she said. "There's no need to do that. We'll each go our own

ways."

The waiter, after discreet knocking at the door, came between them

with plates of food and clatter of knives and forks. They regarded him

silently, and when he was gone, they made a feeble pretence of eating.

"I ought to have known better," she said, returning to the business

again with a wry smile. "I ought to have known it couldn't have lasted."

"It isn't that I love you any the less," he said, unconsciously quoting

a phrase in his letter. "I don't know how to explain my attitude.... I

love you just the same ... but, somehow...."

"Don't, don't explain," she interrupted. "I understand. Of course it's

impossible if you think like that. And, of course, Humphrey, there's no

need to talk of love...." She laughed a little, and then, really, she

could not spare him any more. "Oh, what a boy you are!"

He flushed hotly. "I know you've always looked upon me as a boy," he

said. "You think I'm a child ... but it takes a man to do what I'm

doing ... it takes courage to face it out ... it hurts."

"Oh, you _are_ a boy," she said, with a little hysterical laugh. "Of

course you're only a boy." She pushed her plate away from her. "Don't

you see what you've done--you've broken up everything."

And she put her head on her arms outstretched on the table, and sobbed

and sobbed again.

He watched her shoulders tremble with her sobs, and heard her accusing

words repeat themselves in a pitiful refrain in his ears. At that

moment he touched, it seemed, the lowest depths of meanness. He felt

awkward and foolish.... She was crying, and he could do nothing.

"Lilian ... Lilian," he pleaded, touching her hand that was flat on

the table. "Don't--I didn't mean to." Heavens! if she did not stop, he

would snatch her to him, and kiss her hotly, and let Ferrol and the

world and all its success go by him for ever.

The waiter saved the situation. His knock came as a warning, and when

he entered the room with more plates and a greasier smile, he found

the lady at the window flinging it open widely and complaining of the

heat, the gentleman looking moodily before him, and the food barely

touched.

"You no like the fricassee, sare?" he said, turning the rejected food

with his fork.

"It's all right," Humphrey said, in a voice that the waiter knew to

mean "Get out." "No appetite to-day."

Lilian turned from the window, as the door closed behind him. Her eyes

and lips were struggling for mastery over her emotions, and the lips

conquered with a wan, watery smile. She placed her hand on Humphrey's

shoulder. "There," she said, wiping her eyes, destroying the tension

with a prosy sniff. "It's all over--I didn't mean to be so silly."

The miserable meal went on in silence. There was nothing more to be

said. He was thinking of all this pitiful love-affair of his, how it

ran unevenly through the fabric of work and hopes, beginning at first

with a brilliant pattern--a splash of the golden sunrise--and gradually

becoming worn, until now all the threads were twisted and frayed. After

this, they would part, never to meet again on the old terms, never

to recapture the thrill of early love. Odd, how she who had lain so

close to his heart, enfolded in his arms, would have to pass him in

the street henceforth, perhaps with only a nod, perhaps without any

recognition at all. And nobody would know, nobody would guess of their

shipwrecked love.

"I'm glad I never told mother," she said once, voicing her thoughts.

She took a little package from her pocket: it held the few trinkets he

had given her, wrapped up in tissue-paper--a brooch or two, a thin gold

necklace with a heart dangling from it, and his own signet ring.

"No ... no ..." he said; "for God's sake, keep those. I should be

happier if you kept them."

She shook her head gently. "I could not keep them," she said. "They

were little tokens of your love ... they belong to you now."

There was a pause. The clock chimed two. The disillusion was complete,

all the fine draperies of love had been wrenched away--they were so

flimsy after all--and behind them reality stood, sordid and ashamed.

She tried to strike a note of cheerful fatalism.

"Well, what must be, must be," she said, reaching for her cloak. He

sprang to his feet to help her, remembering how, in other days, his

hand had touched her cheek, and he had urged her lips towards him,

that he might kiss her. How calm and self-possessed she was now. How

magnificently she mastered the situation--a false move from her and the

moments would become chaotic. He was uneasy, awkward and embarrassed

... one moment, ready to snatch her to his arms and begin all over

again; the next, alertly conscious that he was unencumbered, that

henceforth there was no other interest in his life but work--free!

Now she was ready to go.

"I won't come down with you," he said, "I'll say good-bye now." He

could not face a parting in the street. He watched her gather her

things together, her bag, her umbrella, her gloves ... she smiled at

him, and now the smile was a riddle: he could not guess her thoughts:

contempt or pity?

Suddenly she bent down towards him, stooped over him, with her face

aglow with a divine expression, virginal and tender, the light of

sacrifice in her eyes, the sweet pain of martyrdom on her lips; she

bent towards him and kissed him lightly on the forehead.

"Good-bye, Humphie dear."

She had never spoken with a voice like that before, she had never shown

how much she loved him, and all the misunderstandings, the torment, the

doubts and uncertainties were washed away as his thoughts gushed forth

in a great appreciation of his loss.

The next moment she had gone.

He was alone in the room, with her good-bye ringing in his ears. Idly

he fingered a little packet of tissue-paper, opening it and laying bare

the little pieces of metal that were all that remained to him of his

love.

He touched the presents that he had given to Lilian--each one held

memories for him.... The gold signet ring had belonged to his

father.... If only Daniel Quain had been there, with his world-wisdom

and philosophy....

Tears, Humphrey? Surely, not tears! Think how splendidly free you are

now; think of the moment of triumph when you can go to Ferrol and tell

him that you are no longer hampered; see how straight the path that

leads to conquest.

XIV

That night, in a little box of a flat in Hampstead, a man was fighting

his last battle, with the fingers of Death at his throat and the arm

of Love for his support. It was a sharp, short battle, ended when the

night itself finished, and the dawn came through the chinks in the

shutters, as pale and as cold as a ghost.

This was the end of Leonard Wratten, whom so few people understood, who

had always kept his own counsel, so that only he himself knew of his

own struggles and ambitions--they were just like Humphrey's, just like

those of every other man in the Street. He had not asked much of life,

and all that he asked for was given him, and then snatched away.

They talked about it in the Pen Club, and in the offices. "Overwork,"

they whispered. "He was just married." Ferrol rose to the occasion:

wrote handsome cheques for Mrs Wratten, straightened out affairs, sent

her flowers, arranged for her to take a sea-cruise ... did all that

he possibly could, except bring Leonard Wratten striding back to life

again.

But there was one in Fleet Street who followed the coffin to the

cemetery, who seemed to feel that he alone had understood Wratten.

("It's always the best fellows that are taken," they said, when he was

gone, as they say of every one.) And, as he came away from the cemetery

in the sunshine when the coffin had been lowered into the grave, and

scattered with lilies, he knew that he had lost friendship inestimable,

for it had not had time fully to develop and ripen.

Wratten's death, and the break with Lilian, came hard upon each other:

he felt that the roots of his life were stirred, two influences of such

potent possibilities had gone from him. He knew that a phase of his

life was closed.