PART II LILIAN (continued 3)

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.