THE COMPLETE LETTER-WRITER
"I've been making up my mind to it for a long time; now I shall do it."
Patience sat upright in her chair, and stared, not at the girl, but at
the window of the room; she shook her head resolutely. "I shall do it in
my own way--and it isn't as if it'll cost much. It'll only want two
sheets--or an extra one, in case of a blot or anything like that, and
I'll have 'em black-edged."
Moira looked at her for a moment in silence. "Why black-edged,
Patience?" she asked at last.
"More respectable, if it isn't too deep. There's a something about a
black edge that takes away any flippancy; with anybody elderly like me
it's always more decent. If you wouldn't mind, my dear, getting three or
four sheets--and envelopes to match--I could set about it."
The idea had been in the mind of Patience for some time; she had thought
about it, and worried over it, until at last she had brought herself to
undertake the extraordinary task itself. Distrustful always of anyone
young and impulsive, such as she conceived Moira to be, and of anyone,
moreover, with no knowledge or experience of life, she had felt that in
some fashion or other the girl had blundered in writing to Alice. The
Baffalls were people of quality; above all, they were people with money;
was it not possible that Moira had let slip something about the narrow
life she led with the old woman, and the care with which money had to be
watched with an eye to the future. If that were the case--Patience
bridled at the thought, and determined to set matters right in her own
fashion. Filled with a fiery independence, the old woman seemed to see
these people shrugging shoulders and pursing lips, in pity for her and
her supposed poverty; she would tell a different tale, with the aid of
that highly respectable black-edged paper.
Behold her, therefore, with the grimly-edged sheet spread on a newspaper
before her on the table, and with Moira's inkstand and pen at her
service. Behold her watching the girl furtively while she framed her
first sentence. Her worn cheeks were hot at the thought of what she had
to do, and what she had to say; feverishly, she wished that the girl
would say something, if only something against which she could raise a
protest.
"What are you going to say?" asked Moira unexpectedly, without glancing
up from her needlework.
"Don't know yet; it's hard to begin," retorted Patience. "I've put the
address at the top, and the day--and 'Dear Madam'--that's as far as I've
got."
"What do you want to say?" asked Moira, without looking up.
"Well"--the thin old hand was guiding the pen over the newspaper,
tracing lines in and out among the lines of print--"I want to put it so
they'll understand what we do--and the people we see--and--and all that
sort of thing."
"Surely it's easy to say that," said Moira, with a half smile. "But how
will it interest them?"
"They've got to be interested," replied the old woman sharply as she
looked up. "Anything you've put into their heads has got to be taken out
again; they've got to understand that we're doing things rather
well--going about--and that sort of thing."
Moira dropped her hands, and looked across at Patience with sudden
interest. "But why?" she asked.
"Because I choose," said Patience stiffly. "Because I'm going to have
'em think different from what you've told 'em. Because I want 'em to
know that we hold up our heads with the best of 'em. That's why. If I
was younger, and hadn't forgot so many things, I could be able to write
down just what I want. But my imagination seems to have got dead
somehow."
"Are you going to put imagination in the letter?" asked the girl.
"What else is there to put?" Patience raised her head and looked at the
girl; then lowered her eyes, and went on tracing the lines on the
newspaper. "Oh, yes, I know; I understand more than you think. I'm a
hard old woman--and you're a girl, with all the world calling to you.
You hear the beat of hundreds of feet all marching on the road you'd
like to travel; don't you hear the beat of the feet sometimes?"
"Sometimes," replied Moira, lowering her eyes.
"I know you do. And I'm glad to forget that the feet are marching at
all; glad to think that if they march my way, it'll only be perhaps over
my grave. I've done with it, and I've thought sometimes that you could
be done with it, too."
Moira stretched a hand across the table, and touched the hand of the
woman. "I'm not ungrateful--and we lead our quiet lives here," she said.
"I know that," replied Patience sharply. "But I don't mean that anyone
else shall know that; I've got my pride--more than most folk. Who's
Alice, if it comes to that, that she should be taken about, and drive in
her carriage--and all that? If they took one girl--didn't I take the
other; me that they looked on as a servant? I'll soon show 'em."
"You wouldn't show what wasn't true, dear?" whispered Moira.
"Yes--I would," was the surprising answer, "and not think twice about
it. Who's to know?"
"I wouldn't do it," said Moira. "You'll only be sorry afterwards."
"Shall I? You don't know me," she retorted. "My pride'll keep me from
ever being sorry. Now for it!"
Moira leaned her elbows on the table, and rested her chin on her clasped
hands, and watched. A slight flush of excitement had grown in the white
face of Patience; her lips were set in grim determination as she poised
the pen, and waited before setting down in black and white what was in
her mind. It seemed difficult of expression; after a moment she raised
her eyes hopelessly to the girl. "I don't know how to begin," she
muttered, with a glance at the door, as though fearful of being
overheard.
"I thought you'd find it difficult," was the reply. "Why not say at
once that we drive every morning until luncheon; pay calls in the
afternoon; are never to be found at home in the evening? If you want
imagination----Why, what are you writing?"
The pen was jerking rapidly over the paper, and Patience was saying the
words aloud as she wrote. "Dear Madam,--I have been meaning to write to
you for a long time--but London life takes up so much of my time--and
Moira--'is it one "r," Moira?'--is always out and about--when not with
me, then with some young companion." She glanced up half shyly at Moira,
who was watching.
"Can't you spell 'companion'?" asked Moira demurely.
"Of course I can," explained Patience. "My in-vest-ments having turned
out better than I hoped, we are finding this house almost too large for
us, but should not like to change. I do not think that we could go back
to the country now; we seem to want more life than we used to have,
especially now after my re-tire-ment. I am afraid sometimes"--she raised
her eyes again to the face of the girl, and then lowered them--"afraid
sometimes that the life is almost too gay for Moira; but then she is
young, and----"
Her voice trailed off, and she finished the letter with a commonplace or
two that she had dug out of the respectable past. Then she looked up
again at the girl, half appealingly. "It ain't exactly what I wanted to
say; 'tain't strong enough," she said. "Couldn't I write something
underneath?"
"Tear it up," suggested Moira, in a whisper. "Why should you write such
things--when they'll know----"
"The letter's going," exclaimed Patience sternly. She turned again to
the page, and took up her pen; began to write, while she muttered the
words aloud.
"P.S.--I name no names; but there may be parties that have said things
about me, and it is my wish to right myself in the eyes of all. Moira
sits opposite me while I write"--she raised her eyes again for a moment,
and lowered them quickly; perhaps she thought of the many, many nights
on which the girl had sat there, with the lamp between them--"having no
engagement for this evening outside."
* * * * *
She addressed the envelope hurriedly, as though afraid her resolution
might fail. Moira, glancing across at the thing when it was finished,
raised a protest.
"It's no use sending it to Daisley Cross," she said; "they're in
London."
"I ain't going to waste an envelope," retorted Patience, after gazing at
it for a moment a little blankly. "It'll find 'em."
So it came about that the letter found its way to the breakfast table of
the Baffalls at Daisley Cross, for they were down there, as it happened,
by a sudden whim on the part of Alice.
"Now I do hope nobody I know has died," murmured Mrs. Baffall, as she
turned the black thing over and over. "No--I don't know the writing--but
the postmark's London. Now, it couldn't be----No--it wouldn't be them;
they were quite well a week ago; besides, the writing isn't the same.
Now I come to look at it," added Mrs. Baffall, brightening, "it isn't
unlike Janie Ford's writing; she has just those little twiggles at the
ends of the words. And yet it isn't Janie."
It occurred to her at last that it might be well to open it, which she
did, shaking her head as she did so, and murmuring suggestions as to who
the writer might be. The letter open, she began to punctuate her reading
of it with little soft "oh's" now and then, and an upraised hand. Mr.
Baffall complacently waited until she had turned the page, and had got
to the end of the letter; then, as she laid it down and looked round at
the two expectant faces, he smiled, and asked who it was had really
written it.
"Well--you'll never guess," said Mrs. Baffall. "If anyone had come to me
this morning, and had said to me--suddenly and without any
warning--'Flora Baffall, you're going to have a letter with the name of
Patience Roe at the end of it'--well, I don't know what I should have
said to them. Ten to one I should have laughed."
"And what does Patience Roe want?" asked Mr. Baffall. "Not in any
difficulty, I hope?"
"Moira didn't come to see me in London," said Alice. "At least--not
after that once."
"Well, it's not surprising," said Mrs. Baffall, appealing to the letter,
and seeming to shake her head over it. "According to what Patience says
here, they never have time for anything--she speaks of Moira as being
almost too gay."
Alice started, and looked round quickly with a frown. "What?" she
exclaimed. "Gay? Well, she didn't look very gay when I saw her; surely
you didn't think so Aunt Baffall? A poor washed-out, shabby thing----"
"Patience says something about investments having turned out better than
she expected," murmured Mrs. Baffall. "Which is very pleasing, as
Baffall himself would tell you, my dear--knowing something about it. If
I didn't know Patience, I should almost think this was like a boasting
letter--what we should call a bit of show-off. But it can't be that, of
course."
When the meal was ended, and Alice had gone singing off to her own
quarters, Baffall came round the table to his wife, and put a friendly
hand on her shoulder. "May I see the letter, mother?" he asked.
She handed it to him, and he read it in silence; screwed up one eye over
it, and tugged at his short beard, and rumpled his hair. Finally,
tapping it with a stunted forefinger, he gave his verdict.
"When anybody writes like that--for no particular reason--it's either
one or other of two things. Either they're what we'd call in business
'bluffing'--which means that the letter's got to be read the opposite
way, in a manner of speaking--or else they're merely bragging for the
sake of bragging."
"That isn't her way, I should think," broke in Mrs. Baffall quickly.
"I should think not," retorted her husband, "but you never can tell.
There's some reason for it, and it concerns that dark-eyed girl. I'm not
much of a judge--but what did you think when you saw her in London,
mother?"
"Well--without meaning to be unkind, Daniel, I did run an eye over her,"
said Mrs. Baffall; "and I must say she was poor as poor. Neat, mind you,
as such a girl always would be--and more of a lady than half a hundred
of 'em would be, no matter how much you spent on 'em; but poor--what I'd
call make-shifty, if you'll understand."
Mr. Baffall nodded slowly. "I understand," he said; "therefore, it looks
like bluff. Of course, the investments may have turned out much better;
but you can't lead me to believe that that old woman would be the sort
to make a splash about it, even if she came into a quarter of a
million."
Mr. Baffall took a turn across the room, and touched the handle of the
door to be certain that the door was closed. Then he came back to Mrs.
Baffall, and spoke in a lowered voice.
"How do you think it would be if Alice was to go----"
Mrs. Baffall shook her head vigorously; Mr. Baffall nodded slowly, with
a perplexed face. "Perhaps you're right," he said slowly; "perhaps Alice
isn't quite the sort. Not but what, being brought up as children, I
should have thought----"
It was the turn of Mrs. Baffall to shake her head again. "It doesn't
matter much how you bring 'em up, Daniel, or how you don't; it's what's
in 'em to begin with. She's a nice girl, Daniel"--the old lady seemed to
indicate the girl who had gone singing from the room--"but God didn't
give her quite the sort of heart you an' me was looking for. Come and
kiss you, she will, and her smile is beautiful to see; yet it leaves a
longing somehow for something you never get."
"She always looks very nice--and is much admired," suggested Mr. Baffall
simply.
"Which is something to be grateful for," replied Mrs. Baffall,
brightening a little. "If only I could have understood the other one."
"I wouldn't worry about it," said Mr. Baffall, with a hand upon her
shoulder. "I daresay the other one's happier as she is."
Nevertheless, Mr. Baffall was not altogether happy about the matter; he
pondered over it with bent brows while he smoked his morning cigar round
what he called the "estate." It ended, in fact, by his taking the cigar
and the letter in the direction of the rectory, in the hope for temporal
advice at least. There, without ceremony, he spread the letter before
the Rev. Temple Purdue (grown a little greyer with the years, but
otherwise unchanged) and indicated by a wave of the hand that it was to
be read.
Mr. Purdue turned it over solemnly to find the signature; turned it back
again to begin the reading of it. When he had finished he took off his
spectacles, and laid them on his writing table, and looked up mildly at
Mr. Baffall.
"Seems very satisfactory," he said. "Really, my dear Baffall, it is kind
and thoughtful of you to have given me news of old friends like
this--very kind indeed. I always had a great respect for Patience Roe--a
very great respect indeed."
"That's one of the letters," said Mr. Baffall, leaning forward, and
tapping it with a finger, "that wants reading between the lines. There
is more in it than the mere words--and, according to Mrs. Baffall, it
don't bear out what she thought when she saw the girl in London; nor,
for the matter of that, does it bear out what I saw. Mr. Purdue, I've
got a sneaking feeling that I should like to do something for that
girl--young lady, I suppose you'd call her now; and I think that
thought's in Mrs. Baffall's mind too."
Mr. Purdue looked at his visitor in some perplexity. "I'm afraid I don't
quite understand," he said.
"Mr. Purdue, sir," went on Baffall solemnly, "when I was in business, if
things went very wrong with me, and I didn't quite know where to turn
for money or credit, what was the first thing I did?" Mr. Purdue shook
his head. "Why, I made believe that I'd got more money than I knew what
to do with, and was looking out for investments; or I suggested that
business was so flourishing that I really couldn't entertain the idea of
taking any more. That was my move--and that's the move in that letter.
For all we know, they may be in Queer Street, and yet much too proud to
let anybody show 'em the way out."
"You distress me greatly," said Mr. Purdue, with a sigh. "What do you
suggest should be done?"
Baffall shook his head. "Whatever's done must be done delicately," he
said. "If me or Mrs. B., or Alice was to go--and Alice would want the
carriage--I can understand their backs would be up--and their pride
would stand in the way; I was always a bit afraid of that girl myself.
But if there was anybody in London--struggling a bit, perhaps, like
themselves--it might be a help to the girl, for it seems to me that she
must have a pretty slow time of it with that old woman."
The Rev. Temple Purdue sat silent for a few moments, thoughtfully biting
the end of a pen. He looked up at last, and spoke almost apologetically.
"There's Charlie," he said.
There seemed to be some understanding between the two men as regarded
Charlie; they looked at each other for a moment or two in silence; the
rector sighed a little.
"Yes, there's Charlie," said Mr. Baffall, a little sternly. "Doing any
better?"
"I have hopes of him," replied Purdue. "You see, he lost his mother when
he was very young, Baffall; we must never forget that. And if he's wild
and headstrong--well, that is one of the faults of youth, I suppose. You
see--to go to London like that--plunge at once into a medical
school--and live in lodgings----"
"I see what you're driving at," broke in Baffall. "You think that if he
lived with anyone who would keep an eye on him----"
"I'm sure he'd do better," exclaimed the other eagerly. "I've thought of
it often; but I have no time to go to London myself. He writes for
money--and still more money; he sends promises of what he will do, and
what he will undo; he's a good boy at heart."
"Patience Roe has rooms to spare in her house," said Daniel Baffall
thoughtfully.
Such a little phrase to change a life--nay, to change lives! These two
men, with their lives nearly spent, and with the road they had traversed
stretching far behind them, sat innocently plotting what was to be done
with younger lives that were in their keeping; and innocently they
forged links that were to bind together those lives in a fashion they
would never have suspected. Somewhere in that great London of which the
one knew nothing, and which the other was glad to forget, Moira sat
waiting for the beat of the many feet that were to come marching into
her life; somewhere in that London Charlie lived his careless existence,
with no thought of any morrow but a bright one. And these two men were
pulling strings that should draw the two inevitably together.
"I'll write to her," exclaimed Purdue suddenly, "and I'll write to
Charlie. He wants friends of a better sort in London; and if, as you
suspect, they are poor, this may help them."
"I'm glad I came to you," said Baffall, as he got to his feet. "After
all, that girl may help to keep the boy straight. Boys want a lot of
keeping straight these days, it seems to me."
He had moved to the door when Mr. Purdue, going after him, detained him
with a question. "No news of Jimmy?"
Mr. Baffall's brows contracted. "Not a word," he replied. "I'm
disappointed in that boy; we both seem to have been a bit unlucky in
that respect, Mr. Purdue. I got Jimmy into a good situation--provided
for him, in a way; and he left it--or was turned out of it--for
incompetence; and that's the last we've heard of him. It wants a strong
boy or a strong man to hold his own in London."
The Rev. Temple Purdue sighed. "And Charlie is not strong--in that way,"
he said.
The Rev. Temple Purdue wrote two letters that evening in his study. The
one was to astonish Patience Roe on the following day, and to cause her
to regret that she had sent a letter to Daisley Cross at all. It
suggested that Mr. Purdue was glad to hear of her continued prosperity;
it mentioned incidentally that his son was in London, and would in all
probability call upon them at an early date; concerning that particular
item of news Patience said nothing to Moira.
The second letter was to Charlie; it was a letter written with some
shakings of the head and many pauses for reflection. It addressed
Charlie as "My dear boy," and it reminded him once again that his father
was not a rich man, and that much money had already travelled
Londonwards for Charlie's benefit. It contained some advice (which
Charlie was afterwards to skim through hurriedly with a frowning face),
and it mentioned the address of Patience Roe and Moira. More than that,
it finished with the suggestion that Charlie might find it pleasant to
visit them, and that he might perhaps care to make a change of lodging,
and to take up his quarters with friends.
And while the rector penned that letter in his quiet study at Daisley
Cross, a man in a little squalid coffee-house in a turning off Fleet
Street was writing a letter to him.
The man was one of that great army of men in London who have no means,
and no hopes, and no prospects; who, in some fashion or other, manage to
keep a frowsy bed to which to retire when the long, scheming, hungry,
pitiful day is ended; who have come down from borrowing sovereigns to
borrowing shillings and even sixpences; who are acquainted with every
cheap place in the great city where, for the expenditure even of a
penny, shelter may be had for an indefinite number of hours. And his
name was Anthony Ditchburn.
It had taken Anthony Ditchburn a long time to get to this coffee-house
(which was also, by the way, a species of reading-room, to which
admittance was to be gained by the payment of one penny, and the
luxuries of which included chess and draughts and dominoes); yet the
road he had traversed to it had been a fairly straight one. He had begun
with the borrowing of sovereigns from such men as had known him in
university days, and were sorry for the position in which the man had
suddenly found himself by the death of Paul Nannock at Daisley
Cross--Paul Nannock, who had died so inconsiderately, and left Ditchburn
in the lurch. Then, when that source of income had gone, and men closed
their doors against him, Anthony Ditchburn took to writing begging
letters, and found it quite a profitable business for a time.
He got easily into the reading-room of the British Museum; it was warm
there, and writing materials were at his hand for the asking. He flew at
high game; wrote to people he had never met, but whose titles seemed to
promise something substantial; quoted the letters which he had a right
to set down after his name, and referred to the university lists boldly.
To his surprise money came in readily; he fell so quickly into the
business that he prepared lists of his patrons, and of others to whom he
might apply, and set down against them the amounts they had given, or
which might be expected.
It took a long time to exhaust his list, but the hour dawned when he was
met with rebuff after rebuff, and when even the mention of the great
work on which he had been so long engaged failed to attract the
attention it should have done. Then, remembering those people in whose
midst he had lived in the flourishing times of Old Paul, he looked in
the direction of Daisley Cross, and sent a missive winging towards it.
That was the missive written in the little squalid coffee-house. Anthony
Ditchburn had quarrelled bitterly with another shabby, greasy
individual, who had dared to occupy the table at which Ditchburn usually
sat in the dark little reading-room; had quoted Latin at him, and had
been retorted to in the same tongue; had gone away discomfited. Finally,
he had haggled with a contemptuous young lady in charge of the room for
an outside soiled sheet of paper, and had got it for a halfpenny; had
managed to secure an envelope for himself, at no expenditure at all,
while her back was turned. And then had sat down to write to the Rev.
Temple Purdue.
Knowing his man, and inwardly reproaching himself that he had not done
something in this direction before, Anthony Ditchburn adopted the grand
manner in dealing with him.
"REV. AND GENTLE SIR,
"I venture to turn, in the midst of unmerited misfortune, to one
who has been placed (and I would add, quite deservedly placed) in a
position of ease and comfort; as a scholar I appeal to a scholar.
"You may doubtless remember that some years ago I grounded in the
elements some children, who afterwards (solely owing to a whim on
the part of our poor dear old friend Nannock) were passed on to you
for further instruction. Incidentally, it will ever be a
satisfaction to me that they lisped their first words of knowledge
under the guidance of two such men.
"Since that period, although I have been a wanderer in various
seats of learning, and have contributed with some degree of success
to various of the heavier reviews, the time has at last come when,
owing to a difference of opinion with an editor, I am in temporary
difficulties. I am amazed when I think that such a misfortune
should ever have befallen me; I tremble at the thought of what I
must face in the great world." (It may be added that Anthony
Ditchburn had trembled often and often in a hundred such letters,
until he knew quite well the trick of it; could even give a shake
of his pen to emphasise it.) "Will you--quite as a temporary
matter--oblige me with a small loan, which will enable me to
satisfy a truculent being who demands a something for rent; and
also to provide myself during the next day or two with the mere
necessaries of life? I need scarcely add that the amount will be
repaid as soon as I receive a remittance--long since overdue--from
a friend to whom, in a more fortunate moment, I rendered
assistance, and who shall of course be nameless.
"I am, Rev. Sir,
"Obediently and sincerely yours,
"ANTHONY DITCHBURN.
"P.S.--A mere matter of ten shillings would stay the pangs of
hunger, and permit me to pay something on account for my poor
lodging.--A. D."
That written, and the envelope addressed, Anthony found a greasy piece
of folded paper in an inner pocket, and from it took a stamp. Then the
letter was despatched, bearing the name and address of the coffee-house
as Anthony's abode; and so took its way down to Daisley Cross to startle
the Rev. Temple Purdue, and to show him anew what a hard and sordid
place this London was.
But the letter had one effect, and that incidentally a great one. For
Mr. Purdue, after conning the letter for a long time, and clicking his
tongue over it, and sighing and shaking his head, despatched it in turn
to the only person he knew in London, who would be likely, as being on
the spot, to give what assistance was necessary, and to take an old
acquaintance by the hand. That person Charlie Purdue.
On his own account the rector sent a sovereign to Anthony Ditchburn, who
under his present circumstances felt that he had tapped a gold mine.
Also, the innocent rector mentioned his son's address, and begged that
the eminent scholar would look the young man up. "Charlie will be glad
of a solid friend," he wrote.
But long before Anthony Ditchburn had had time to enter into Charlie's
life in that new and somewhat startling capacity of solid friend,
Charlie himself had read his father's letter, and had, on an impulsive
moment when things were wrong with him, and he had nothing very much to
occupy his attention, started for Chelsea; had found the little house,
and had climbed the stairs to find Moira. Of course, she knew nothing of
him or of his coming; he took her unawares, in that little room wherein
she spent her lonely days and her lonely evenings with the old woman.
It had been a day of misty rain and bitter wind; a day when the mere
commonplace work of mean shopping had seemed more toilsome than usual.
She had come home with damp skirts, and with limbs reluctant to climb
the stairs; had sunk down in the firelight, and had leaned her head back
and had closed her eyes. The lamp was lighted, and she was alone; for it
happened that old Patience was in her bedroom, putting those little
absurd touches to her dress and to her cap, without the addition of
which she would not have faced the evening.
There came a tap at the door; Moira spoke wearily, although she did not
turn her head; this was probably the landlady on some petty matter of
the household. "Come in," she said.
The door was opened, and someone stood there. Moira waited for that
someone to speak; heard a cough, and got up quickly. There, for a
moment, she stood behind the lamp, looking with parted lips at the young
man--fair, well-dressed, and smiling--who stood with a hand outstretched
to her. Then something in the look told her who he was, whispered to her
heart that here suddenly was a friend come out of the brighter world
into her life. She touched his hand, and caught a sob--half of laughter,
half of tears--in her throat, and whispered his name.
"Charlie!" And again, wringing his hand--"Charlie!" And yet again,
almost hysterically as it seemed--"Charlie!"