Front matter (continued 3)

"No, I'm not. I've tried to, but I can't."

"Then are you expecting someone?"

He looked up at her, smiled, opened the door of his room, and bid her pass through.

"And is all this," said he, "because I paused a moment when you asked me if I was glad to see you?"

She seated herself easily in the chair to which she was accustomed. She began drawing the pins out of her hat, as a woman does when she feels at home. When the hat was free of her heaps of brown-red hair, she threw it carelessly upon the table, shook her head and lifted the hair from her forehead with her fingers. And John stood by with a smile, thinking how the faintest shadow of a word of question would make that hat fly back on to the head of brown-red hair, the hat-pins pierce the crown with hasty pride, and the little purse that lay upon the table alongside of them be clutched in an eager, scornful hand, as she would rise, full of dignity, to depart.

He let the smile fade away, and repeated his question.

"Yes," she said. "I thought when you didn't answer at once that you weren't very keen to see me."

"And if I said I wasn't very keen, would you go at once?"

Her eyebrows lifted high. She made a movement in her chair. One hand was already beginning to stretch out for the grey velvet hat.

"Like a shot!" she answered.

He nodded his head.

"That's what I thought," said John.

She rose quickly to her feet.

"If you want me to go, why don't you say so?"

He put his hands on her shoulders and seated her gently back again in the chair.

"But I don't want you to go," he replied. "I've got a lot of things I want to say to you."

"If you're going to talk evolution----" she began.

He laughed.

"It's something very like it," said he.

She gave a sigh of resignation, took out a packet of cigarettes, extracted one, lit it and inhaled the first breath deep--deep into her lungs.

"Well, go on," she said.

"Have you got plenty of cigarettes?"

"Yes, plenty to-day."

"Hadn't you yesterday?"

"No, Mother and I raked up all the cigarette ends out of the fireplaces, and I just had a penny for a packet of cigarette papers." She laughed.

This is the honesty of poverty. She would take no money from any man. For just as the virtue of wealth will bring out the evil of avarice, so will the evil of poverty bring out the virtue of self-respect. In this world, there is as much good that comes out of evil as ever stands by itself alone. This, in fact, is the need of evil, that out of it may lift the good.

"Well, what have you got to say?" she continued. "Get it over as quick as you can. I shan't understand half of it."

"You'll understand it all," said John. "You may not admit it. You don't admit your own honesty--you probably won't admit mine."

She screwed up her eyes at him. He said the most incomprehensible things. Of course, he was a crank. She knew that--took it for granted--but what did he mean by her honesty?

"I don't steal," she said. "But I owe fifteen pounds to my dressmaker, and thirteen to Derry & Toms, and six somewhere else, and I don't suppose they'll ever get paid. Do you call that honest?"

"I don't mean that sort of honesty. That's the sort of honesty that a dishonest man shields behind. You'd pay them if I gave you the money to pay them, or if anybody else gave you the money, or if you made the money. You meant to pay them, you probably thought you could pay them when you ordered the things."

She looked up at him and laughed.

"You poor old dear! I don't suppose you've got twopence in your pocket. You couldn't give it to me."

"I've got one and nine," said John. "But the point is, if I could give it you, you wouldn't take it. That's the honesty I'm talking about. From the standard at which you rate life, that's honesty, and you never depart from it. And, in a way, my standard has been much about the same--till now."

"Till now?" She echoed it in a little note of apprehension.

"Yes--till now. I thought these things were honest--now I've changed my standard, and I find them different, too."

"What do you mean?"

Her eyes looked far into his, and he stood there looking far back into hers.

"You don't love me, do you?" he said presently.

A pause preceded her answer.

"No," she said.

"And I've never told you I loved you?"

"No--never."

"And yet, does it strike you that there may be such a thing?"

"Oh, I suppose there is. Some people pretend they know all about it. I think you're the kindest and the best person I've ever met--that's enough for me."

"Would you marry me?" said John.

"No--never."

"Why not?"

"Because directly people marry--directly they find themselves bound, they look at each other in a different light. The question of whether it can last begins to creep in. With us, it doesn't matter. I come and see you whenever you want me to. If it doesn't last, then nobody's hurt by it--if it does, let it last as long as it can. I don't want it to end to-day--I might to-morrow. I might see someone I liked better."

"And then you'd go?"

"Most certainly."

"Well--suppose you came across someone with whom you knew it must last; from whom you expected to find those things which go on past time and all measuring of clocks, would you marry them?"

She came up close to him and laid her hands upon his shoulders.

"You can tell me straight out," she said gently. "One of us was bound to find it one of these days. I only hoped it would be me. You can tell me who she is. Go on."

John told her. This was what he had wanted the woman for--first his mother, then Mrs. Rowse, then the little typewriter, then even Jill herself. For it is a woman to whom a man must tell these things--nobody else will do; nobody else will understand.

And when she had heard it all, she looked up with the suspicion of tears in her eyes and smiled.

"Then I guess I'm the fly in the amber," she said. "It won't be a clear bit of stone till I'm gone. Isn't that what you mean?"

And, taking his face in her hands, she kissed his forehead. "You're a funny little boy," she said with a wry smile.

This was the box of bricks, the playing at her dignity. Every woman has them, and while some throw them at your head, the best make patterns--patterns of fine ladies and noble dames. It was a fine lady who would call him a funny little boy. It was a noble dame who would show him that she was not hurt. He had wanted her in his way, in their way--the way she wanted him as well. All men want some woman like that, and there are as good women to supply the need as there are bad ones who would shrink from it. And now, he wanted her no longer. She knew she had to bow her head to something that she could not understand, something that she could not supply. He loved. And they had so easily avoided it.

"Are you going to be married?" she enquired. She longed to ask what the other one was like.

John shrugged his shoulders.

"You don't know?"

"No, I don't know."

"Does she love you?"

"I couldn't tell you."

"You haven't asked her?"

"No--we haven't said a word about it."

She smiled.

"Then why do you send me away?"

"Because--I know, myself. There comes a time--I didn't know it--when you know--a time when you don't excuse yourself with the plea of humanity--when you wish to offer no excuse--when there is only one way, the way I'm choosing. I'm a crank, of course. I know you've called me that before. To you I'm a crank,--to heaps of other people as well. But in the back of this muddled head of mine, I've got an ideal--so has everyone else--so have you. But now I've found a means of expressing it. You say I'm in love--that's what you call it. I prefer just to say, I love--which is another matter altogether. People fall in and out of love like an india-rubber ball dancing on a spray of water. But this sort of thing must be always, and it may be only once or twice in your life that you find a means of expressing it. But it's there all the time. And one time it's a woman with dark hair and another it's a woman with gold--but the emotion--the heart of it is just the same. It's the same love--the love of the good--the love of the beautiful--the love of the thing which is clean through and through and through. And when you meet it, you'll sacrifice everything for it. And if you don't meet it, you'll go on hunting for it your life through--unless you lose heart, or lose character, or lose strength--then this wonderful ideal vanishes. You come to look for it less and less and less till at last you only seek for the other thing--what you call--falling in love."

"Do you think we all have this ideal?" she asked.

"Yes, every one of us."

"Then have I lost it?"

"No, I don't believe so. I saw tears in your eyes just now."

CHAPTER XVIII

THE NONSENSE-MAKER

John took a box at the opera. There is some sense in taking a box at the opera when you owe two quarters of your rent of thirty pounds a year. To have a box all the year round with your visiting-card pinned to the door, that is needless, unforgiveable extravagance, for it does not then belong to you, but to your friends.

When John took the stage-box on the third tier, it was bread and butter, dinners and teas, that he laid down in payment for the little slip of paper. They did not know that. The clerk at the office thought it was three guineas. He brushed off the money carelessly into the palm of his hand without thinking that it could be anything but coin of the realm. Who ever would go to the box-office of Covent Garden, and, tendering ingenuously bread and butter, expect to get a ticket for the stage-box on the third tier in return? But they are not observant, these box-office clerks, for heaps of people do it.

There was an old lady just behind John, who handed in all her warm spring under-clothing and a nice little embroidered lace cap that would have looked delightful on her white head in the evenings of the summer that was to come.

"I want a stall," said she, "for Tuesday night."

And in just the same inconsequent and unobservant way, the clerk, without the slightest embarrassment, swept all the warm spring under-clothing and the little lace cap into his hand and gave it her without a word, but heavens! how insulted he would have been if you had told him that he was simply a dealer in second-hand under-linen! It would not have appeased him a bit, to tell him that the under-linen had never been worn, that, in fact, it had never even been bought.

Just in this way, he took John's bread and butter, and gave him the stage-box on the third tier. It was for the night of La Bohéme.

On that same night, Jill was going to a dance, chaperoned by an older school-friend of hers--one who had married--a Mrs. Crossthwaite. And Mrs. Crossthwaite knew everything; not because she had been told it. That is not the way amongst women. They tell each other what they are pretending to believe, and both of them know all about it all the time.

There was the invitation to the dance--one known as a subscription. Mrs. Dealtry could not go. She had a dinner party. Jill nominated Mrs. Crossthwaite as her chaperon, and went to tea with her that day, having seen John in the morning.

First, she spoke of the dance. Mrs. Crossthwaite was delighted. She had been stepping it in the heart of her ever since she was married; but only in the heart of her, and the heart of a woman is an impossible floor to dance upon. It makes the heart, not the feet, tired.

Having won her consent--an easy matter, not lasting more than five minutes--Jill began gently, unobtrusively, to speak of the work of an author called John Grey. Mrs. Crossthwaite had read one of the books, thought it distinctly above the average, but very sad. She did not like sad books. There was quite enough sadness in real life, and so on. All of which is very, very true, if people would only realise it, as well as say it.

From there, with that adroitness which only women have the fine fingers for, Jill led on the conversation to her acquaintance with John. Oh, it was all very difficult to do, for a school-friend, once she has married, may have become a very different sort of person from the girl who was ready to swarm down the drain-pipe to meet the boy with the fair hair and the cap far on the back of his head, who passed her a note concealed between the pages of the Burial Service in the Prayer-book. Marriage is apt to rob your school-friend of this courage; for, though she never did climb down the drain-pipe, she made you think she was going to. She had one leg on the window-sill and would soon have been outside, only that she heard the voice of the mistress in the corridor just in time. And she sometimes loses this courage when she marries. Jill, therefore, had to proceed with caution.

They merely talked about his work. He was very interesting. His ideas were strange. Of course, it was a terrible pity that he would not say where he lived, but Mrs. Crossthwaite did not seem to consider that. For a moment, she had expressed surprise and approval of Mrs. Dealtry's action; but he was a member of the Martyrs' Club, and Mr. Crossthwaite's greatest friend was a member there as well, and Mr. Crossthwaite's greatest friend was naturally nearly as wonderful a person as Mr. Crossthwaite himself. So what did it really matter where he lived? The position of man was his club. She even had no curiosity about his residence.

Again, Jill had never seen Bohème. Her people were not musical. They hated it. She loved it. This was the opportunity of her life. He would bring her back to the dance, of course, and no one need ever know that she had not been there all the time. And in the intervals of the opera they would talk about his work. That was all they ever did talk about. She knew all his ambitions, all his hopes. Once or twice he had accepted her suggestions, when really she knew nothing about it. It was only what she felt; but he had felt it too, and the alteration had been made. He said she helped him, and that was all that was between them. The main fact of importance was that she had never seen La Bohème, and might never see it, if she refused this opportunity.

All these specious arguments she put forward in a gentle, enticing, winning way--full of simplicity--full of honesty; but the principal reason that Mrs. Crossthwaite consented to become a party to this collusion was that she did not believe a single word of it.

Romance! it is a word in itself, a thing in itself--a piece of fine-worked lace that must catch the eye of every woman, and which every woman would stitch to the Garment of maternity if she could.

So it was arranged. In the vestibule of the rooms where the dance was held, John was formally introduced to the chaperon before he bore her charge away. Then they stepped into a hansom.

"The Opera," said John, through the trap-door, carelessly, as though he went there most evenings of his life; for when you give your bread and butter to get a box at Covent Garden, hunger makes you talk like that. This is all part of the delight which you miss in having a box all the year round.

And when they had got far away into the traffic--that passing to and fro of people, which is all a thumb-nail illustration of the stream of life--and when her heart had begun to beat a little less like a lark's wings in a six-inch cage, Jill broke the silence.

"What did Mrs. Crossthwaite say to you while I went to get my cloak?" she asked.

"She was good enough to hope that I would call on her."

"Oh! I'm so glad she's asked you. Did she say anything else?"

"She asked me if I lived in London all the year round. I said I did--except for a month in the year, when I went to Venice. Then she asked me what part of London I lived in."

"She asked you that?"

"Yes."

Jill was silent for a few moments. It is always an interesting moment in a woman's life when she learns something about her sex.

"And what did you say?" she asked.

John laughed. He thought he had said it rather neatly.

"Oh, I've got rooms," he had said, "just between St. Paul's and the Strand." Which might be the Inner Temple, if you had a nice mind with which to look at it. He told Jill this answer. She smiled.

"And is it between St. Paul's and the Strand?" she asked.

"Roughly speaking--yes--but very roughly speaking."

Again she was silent. Could it be that he was poor--at least, not well enough off to live at a good-sounding address? Could that have been why he was praying to St. Joseph on the eighteenth of March? Yet he was a member of the Martyrs' Club, and here he was taking her to a box at Covent Garden. She looked up quickly into his face. This was more mystery than her desire for knowledge could afford.

"Do you remember what you said to me once," she began, "about the woman with the gift of understanding?"

"Yes--the first day that we met in Kensington Gardens."

"Well--do you think I am absolutely ungifted that way?"

John closely searched her eyes. Did she remember all he had said about the woman with God's good gift of understanding? Did she realise the confession it would entail if he admitted--as he believed--that she was? She was young, perhaps--a girl, a child, a baby--just twenty-one. But the understanding which is the gift of God, comes independently of experience. Like genius, it is a gift and of just such a nature. Absolute simplicity is the source of it, and with it, it brings the reward of youth, keeping the heart young no matter the years. Experience will show you that the world is full of evil--evil motives and evil deeds; it will teach you that evil is said of everyone, even the best. But with God's good gift of understanding, you have the heart of a child, knowing nothing yet finding the good in everything.

To such a one, no secrets are possible, no deeds can lie hid; for no man does evil because he would, but because it rises stronger against the innermost will of him. And so few are there with the gift to understand this, that confession is seldom made.

And for John to tell her that she had this gift, was to make admission of all he had learnt that Easter Sunday. Could it be that she asked for that reason? Did she wish to know? In his own way, he had meant to tell her; but not like this. And so he searched her eyes; but searched in vain.

"Why do you ask?" he said at length.

"Because--if you think I have any understanding at all, don't you think I should understand, even if you told me you lived at----" She could not think of a poor enough neighbourhood where people might live. She scarcely knew any.

"Shepherd's Bush?" he suggested.

"Well--yes--Shepherd's Bush."

"And so you want to know where I do live?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

She looked up at him quite honestly.

"Well--pride, I suppose. We're good friends. I hope we are. I've never had a friend before. I think I should tell you everything, and I expect I feel hurt because you don't tell me. I'm sure you have a good reason for not letting my people know, but that hasn't prevented me from keeping you as my friend against all their wishes. They don't understand, I admit. But I believe I should. I'm sure I should."

Her hand in its white glove was resting on the door of the hansom in front of her. For a moment he looked at it, and then, with heart beating, in fear, joy, apprehension--a thousand emotions all flowing into one--he took it in his and pressed it reverently, then let it go.

"I know you would," he replied in his breath. And then he told her.

Did she remember Wrigglesworth's? Would she ever forget it? Those high-backed seats, the sawdust on the floor, the poll-parrot in its cage in the middle of the room! And, then, who could forget the name of Wrigglesworth?

Did she remember the little greengrocer's shop he had pointed out to her, and how she had said she would love one of the rosy-cheeked apples that were piled up in their little partitions--and his reply, rather reluctant, evidently none too eager that one of the rosy-cheeked apples should be hers? Yes, she remembered. She remembered, too, that nothing more had been said about the apples, and that he had not reminded her of them again when they came away from lunch.

Exactly--because over that very little greengrocer's shop in Fetter Lane--the two windows above the shop itself--was where he lived.

For a moment she gazed at him in astonishment; then she stared out into the traffic before her. Back through her mind raced the sensations she had experienced that day when she had lunched with him. The secrecy, the novelty, the stuffy little eating-house, it had all seemed very romantic then. The tablecloth was not as clean as it might be, but the high-backed seats had been there for nearly two hundred years. One thing weighed with another. The waiter was familiar; but, as John had explained to her, the waiters knew everybody, and you might feel as much annoyed at their familiarity as you had reason to at the age of the poll-parrot and the remarks that he made about the cooking. They all combined to make Wrigglesworth's--Wrigglesworth's; and she had taken it for granted in the halo of romance. But to live there! To sleep at night within sight and sound of all the things which her unaccustomed eyes and cars had seen and heard! She suddenly remembered the type of people she had seen coming in and out of the doorways; then she looked back at John.

"Then you're very poor?" she said gently.

"If you mean I haven't a lot of money," he said.

"Yes."

"Then poor is the word."

He sat and watched her in silence. She was thinking very fast. He could see the thoughts, as you see cloud shadows creeping across water--passing through her eyes. Even now, he knew that she would understand in the face of all upbringing, all hereditary ideas. But he waited for her to speak again. The moment was hers. He trusted her to make the best of it.

"Why didn't you ask me to come and see your rooms after we'd had lunch at Wrigglesworth's?" she said presently and, expecting simplicity, counting upon understanding, even he was surprised.

"Ask you there? To those rooms? Over the little greengrocer's shop? Up those uncarpeted wooden stairs?"

And then they found themselves under the portico of the Opera House; in another moment in the crush of people in the vestibule; then making their way round the cheaply-papered boxes along the ugly little passages to the stage-box on the third tier.

The attendant threw open the door. Like children, who have been allowed down to the drawing-room after dinner, they walked in. And it was all very wonderful, the sky of brilliant lights and the sea of human beings below them. It was real romance to be perched away up in a little box in the great wall--a little box which shut them in so safely and so far away from all those people to whom they were so near. Her heart was beating with the sense of anticipation and fear for the fruit which their hands had stolen. For the first ten minutes, she would scarcely have been surprised had the door of the box opened behind them and her mother appeared in a vision of wrath and justice. Some things seem too good to be true, too wonderful to last, too much to have hoped for. And Romance is just that quality of real life which happens to be full of them.

From the moment that the curtain rose upon the life of these four happy-go-lucky Bohemians, to the moment when it fell as Rudolfo and Mimi set off to the café, these two sat in their third-tier box like mice in a cage, never moving a finger, never stirring an eye. Only John's nostrils quivered and once or twice there passed a ripple down Jill's throat.

At last fell the curtain, one moment of stillness to follow and, shattering that stillness then into a thousand little pieces, the storm of the clapping of hands.

Music is a drug, a subtle potion of sound made liquid, which one drinks without knowing what strange effect it may or may not have upon the blood. To some it is harmless, ineffectual, passing as quietly through the veins as a draught of cool spring water; to others it is wine, nocuous and sweet, bringing visions to the senses and pulses to the heart, burning the lips of men to love and the eyes of women to submission. To others again, it is a narcotic, a draught bringing the sleep that is drugged with the wildest and most impossible of dreams. But some there are, who by this philtre are imbued with all the knowledge of the good, are stirred to the desire to reach forward just that hand's stretch which in such a moment but separates the divine in the human from the things which are infinite.

This was the power that music had upon John.

While the applause was still vibrating through the house, while the curtain was still rising and falling to the repeated appearances of the players, he slipped his hand into his pocket, took something quickly out, and when she turned after the final curtain fall, Jill beheld, standing upon the velvet railing of the box, a little man all in brass, with one hand resting aristocratically upon his hip and the other stretched out as though to take her own.

Surprise and question filled her eyes. She looked up at John. She looked back at the little brass man, and the little brass man looked back at her. It may not have been that he raised his hat; but he had all the appearance of having just done so.

"Did you put that there?" she asked.

John nodded. She picked him up, and once her fingers had touched him, the spell of his dignity was cast.

"What is he? Where did you get him? What does he mean?" One question fell fast upon another.

"He's my little brass man," said John. "He's an old seal, over a hundred years old----" And he told her the whole story.

When he had finished, the curtain rose once more--outside the Café Momus with the babel of children and the hum and laughter of a crowd that only a city southeast of the Thames can know or understand. Through all the act, Jill sat with the little brass man standing boldly beside her. When it was over, she turned to him again.

"Aren't you very miserable when you have to--to part with him?" she asked.

"Very.--He comes back as soon as possible. But I've made a resolve."

"What's that?"

"I'm going to put him out of reach of the indignity. He's never going to the chapel of unredemption any more."

"What are you going to do?"

"Give him to you. You are the only person I know of, who has the gift of understanding poverty."

"To me?" Instinctively her fingers tightened round him. "To me?" she repeated.

He smiled and bent his head. "He seals our friendship," said he.

This was his way of telling her that he knew she understood. The perfect nonsense of the gift--a figure in brass that cost seven' shillings and had been pledged and redeemed for six, times out of number--this had little or nothing to do with it. Everything in this world is nonsense; the whole of life is a plethora of ludicrous absurdities, one more fanciful than another. The setting upon the head of a man a fantastic piece of metal and calling in a loud voice that he is king--the holding aloft of another piece of metal, crossed in shape, studded with precious stones, and exhorting those who behold it to fall upon their knees--the placing on the finger of a little circular band--of metal too--and thereby binding irrevocably the lives and freedom of two living beings in an indissoluble bondage, all these things are nonsense, childish, inconsequent nonsense, but for their symbolism and the inner meaning that they hold.

The crown is nothing, the cross is nothing, the ring is nothing, too. A goldsmith, a silversmith, a worker in brass, these men can turn them out under the hammer or upon the lathe; they can scatter the earth with them and have done so. From the crown in finest gold and rarest jewels to the crown in paper gilt, the difference can only be in value, not in truth. From the great cross in Westminster Cathedral to the little nickel toy that hangs from the cheapest of rosary beads, the difference is only the same. From the massive ring that the Pope must wear to the tinsel thing that the cracker hides in its gaudy wrappings at Christmas-time, the difference is just the same. Each would serve the other's purpose. Each would mean nothing but nonsense and empty foolishness except to the eyes which behold the symbolism that they bear.

Yet they, because of their meanings, dominate the world. Little pieces of metal of the earth's reluctant yield--for the highest symbolism always takes form in metal--they govern and command with a despotism that is all part of the chaos of nonsense in which we live.

Only one form of metal there is, which is a meaning in itself; before which, without nonsense and without symbolism, a man must bow his head--the sword. The only thing in this world of ours in which nonsense plays no part; the only thing in this world of ours which needs no symbolism to give it power. Yet in times of peace, it lies idly in the scabbard and there are few to bring it reverence.

For the present, nonsense must content us then. The greatest intellects must admit that it is still in the nature of them to sprawl upon the floor of the nursery, making belief with crowns, with crosses and with rings--making belief that in these fanciful toys lies all the vast business of life.

Until we learn the whole riddle of it all, the highest profession will be that of the nonsense-maker. The man who can beat out of metal some symbolical form, earns the thankfulness of a complete world of children. For with baubles such as these, it is in the everlasting nature of us to play, until the hours slip by and the summons comes for sleep.

So played the two--children in a world of children--in their stage-box on the third tier. She knew well what the gift of the little brass man must mean--the Chevalier d'honneur. John might have sworn a thousand times that he knew the great power of her understanding; yet such is the nature of the child, that in this little symbol of brass--as much a nonsense thing as any symbol of its kind--she understood far clearer the inner meaning of that word friendship.

"Will you accept him?" said John gently.

She looked back in his eyes.

"On one condition."

"What is that?"

"That if ever we cease to be friends, he must be returned to you."

CHAPTER XIX

THE MR. CHESTERTON

It was always a strain when July came round, for John to amass those seventeen odd pounds for the journey to Venice. But it was a greater strain when, having amassed it, he had some days before him in which to walk about the streets before he departed--it was a greater strain, then, not to spend it. For money, to those who have none, is merely water and it percolates through the toughest pigskin purse, finds it way somehow or other into the pocket and, once there, is in a sieve with as broad a mesh as you could need to find.

It was always in these few days before his yearly exodus, that John ran across the things that one most desires to buy. Shop-keepers had a bad habit of placing their most alluring bargains in the very fore-front of the window. Everything, in fact, seemed cheaper in July, and seventeen pounds was a sum which had all the appearance of being so immense, that the detraction of thirty shillings from the hoard would make but little material difference to the bulk of it.

But John had learnt by experience that if you take thirty shillings from seventeen pounds, it leaves fifteen pounds ten, an odd amount, demanding that those ten shillings be spent also to equalise matters. Then the fifteen pounds which is left is still immense and the process beginning all over again, there is finally left but a quota of what had been at first. With fifteen pounds in bank notes in his letter-case and two pounds in gold in his pocket, he found himself looking in the window of Payne and Welcome's, where a little Nankin milk jug of some unimpeachable dynasty was standing in all expectation, just waiting to catch the eye of such a person as himself who might chance to pass by.

That afternoon, Jill was coming to tea--her first visit to Fetter Lane, made, as he thought, simply in honour of his departure. And that little milk jug was begging to come, too.

He stood for a while and stared at it. It would not be more than fifteen shillings--expensive, too, at that. Fifteen shillings would make no impression upon so vast a sum as seventeen pounds. A voice whispered it in his ear, from behind his back,--just over his shoulder.

"You want a milk jug," said the voice, "and it's a beautiful blue. It will go wonderfully with the teapot and the little blue and white cups and saucers. Get it, man! Get it!" and it reminded him in a joking way, with a subtle, cunning laugh, of his philosophy when he was a boy. "What are sweets for, but to eat?" "What is money for, but to spend?"

With sudden decision, he walked in; but it was not through the entrance of the jeweller's shop. He marched into the confessional box in the chapel of unredemption. There, pulling out his three five-pound notes and his two sovereigns, he planked them down upon the counter.

"I want ten shillings on those," said he.

They were used to John's eccentricities there, but they never thought him so mad as this.

"Why, it's seventeen pounds," said the man.

"That's quite right," said John. "I counted it myself. And I want ten shillings on it."

Ten shillings would feed him for a week. He strode out of the shop again with the ten shillings in his pocket and the seventeen pounds safe in the keeping of the high priest. There was a man who owed him fourteen shillings, and who, when the time came to go to Venice, might possibly be induced to part with that necessary ten, if he were asked for it as a loan. A man will willingly lend you ten shillings if he owes you fourteen; it is the paying you back that he does not like.

As he passed out into the street, John kept his face rigidly averted from the little Nankin milk jug. He had played that milk jug a sly, and a nasty trick. It was really nothing to be proud about.

When he returned to Number 39, there was a man waiting outside his door, a man dressed in a light-brown tweed, the colour of ripening corn. He had on a shiny-red silk tie, adorned with a pin--a horseshoe set with pearls. His face was round, fat and solemn--the solemnity that made you laugh. He put John in good spirits from the loss of the Nankin milk jug, the moment he saw him. Someone had left the door into the street open and so he had come upstairs.

"Who are you?" asked John.

"Well--my name's Chesterton, sir, Arthur Chesterton."

John opened his door with the innocence of a babe, and the man followed him into the room, closely at his heels.

"And what do you want?" asked John.

Mr. Chesterton handed him a paper. John looked it through.

"Yes--of course--my two quarter's rent. They shall be paid," he said easily. "There's money due to me next month."

Mr. Chesterton coughed behind his hand.

"It must be now," he said quietly. "That is to say--I must wait here till I get it."

A bailiff! And Jill was coming to tea! In another half hour she would be there! She knew he was poor; she thought Fetter Lane a terrible neighbourhood; but with all her imagination, she had not conceived anything as terrible as this.

There was only one way; to explain everything. He had a lady coming to tea with him that afternoon--a lady--did he understand? Anyhow, he nodded his head. Well--it was quite impossible for her to find him there--a bailiff! It was not his fault, of course, that he was a bailiff, but he must see how impossible the position was. The little man nodded his head again. Well, would he go away; just for a short time, till they had had tea. He could return then, John promised he would let him in. He knew that once a bailiff was out of possession, he was powerless; but this was a matter of honour. On his honour he would let him in again.

Mr. Chesterton blinked his eyes.

"Sometimes," he replied quietly--"Sometimes they tell me it's their father as is comin'--then again, if it's a woman, she says her husband'll be back in a minute and her husband's always a man with an 'orrible bad temper what's liable to do dangerous things. And sometimes, they say it's a girl they're sweet on--same as you."

"But I'll swear it's true!" cried John wildly.

Mr. Chesterton smiled.

"Wouldn't payin' the money be better than swearin'?" said he. "It's only fifteen pounds. Sometimes they gets rid of me that way--and it's the only successful way of doin' it. You see I'm inside now. I'm the nine points of the law now. If I was outside, I'd be only one--you'd be the nine, then--see. You'd be able to lock your door and make a long nose at me out of the window. Lord! the times I've said that to people--and they don't seem to see the truth of it--not they."

John had every sympathy with their obtuseness. If he saw the point of it himself, it was only because he knew it would not be so in his instance.

"Then you won't go?" he said.

Mr. Chesterton shook his head, quite patiently.

"Do you ever get kicked out of a place into the street?" asked John. The man was so small that the question would rise naturally to the minds of quite a lot of people.

He smiled amiably.

"Yes--they do that sometimes. But two months, without the option, for assault ain't pleasant, you know. I shouldn't care for it myself. I'd sooner 'ave the assault, it's over quicker."

There are some tragedies in life in which, if you do not find place for laughter, you become melodramatic--a sin which is unforgivable.

John just saved the position in time. He sat down in a chair and laughed aloud.

"And till I've paid this money," he said. "I've got to put you up. Where are you going to sleep? I've only got a bedroom besides this and a cupboard that holds two hundredweight of coal on the landing."

Mr. Chesterton looked about him.

"That settle looks comfortable enough," said he. "I've slep' worse than that." He crossed the room and felt the springs of it with his fist. "But it's a small place. I'm afraid I shall be a bit in the way."

"My Lord!" John jumped up again. "You will this afternoon." He was to have told Jill many things that afternoon. Now this ruined everything. They would have to go out to tea, because there was no paying of the money. He could not redeem his seventeen pounds and settle it with that. There would be nothing left with which to go to Venice and the calculations of that little old white-haired lady who was waiting for him to put his arms about her neck had become so small, so infinitely small, that he had not the heart to add to them by so much as a figure of seven.

"And you don't believe that a lady's coming to tea with me?" he said excitedly.

Mr. Chesterton spread out a pair of dirty hands.

"I know that lady so well," he said. "She's always every inch a lady who wouldn't understand the likes of me. But I'm quite easy to understand. Tell her I'm a friend of yours. I won't give the game away."

Oh! It was ludicrous! The laugh came again quickly to John's lips, but as soon it died away. So much was at stake. He had pictured it all so plainly. She would be disappointed when she heard he was going. He would ask her why that look had passed across her eyes. Her answer would be evasive, and then, word by word, look by look, he would lead her to the very door of his heart until the cry--"I love you"--the most wonderful words to say--the most terribly wonderful words to mean, would be wrung from his lips into her ears.

And now this imperturbable fiend of a bailiff, with his very natural incredulity and his simple way of expressing it, had come to wreck the greatest moment of his life.

John looked him up and down.

"What sort of a friend do you think I could introduce you as?" he asked. "Do you think you look like a friend of mine?"

The little man glanced down at his boots, at the light-brown tweed trousers, upturned and showing a pair of woollen socks not far removed in colour from that of his tie.

"Well--you never know," said he, looking up again. "I'm stayin' here, aren't I? They said you was a writer--that you wrote books. Well, have you never seen a person who wrote books, like me? Why there was a woman I 'ad to get the rent from once--a journalist, she called herself. She'd got a bit of a beard and a fair tidy moustache--and by gum, she dressed queerer than anything my old woman would ever put on. I felt quite ashamed to be stoppin' with her."

John laughed again; laughed uproariously. Mr. Chesterton was so amused at the remembrance of it, that he laughed as well. Suddenly their laughter snapped, as you break a slate pencil. There came a gentle, a timid knock on the door.

"This is she," whispered John. "The door below was open. She's come upstairs. What the devil am I going to do?"

At last the little man believed him. He really was going to see the lady this time, the lady who would never understand the likes of him, and he began to feel quite nervous. He began to feel ashamed of being a bailiff.

"Introduce me as a friend," he whispered--"It'll be all right--introduce me as a friend."

"Sit down there, then--on that settle."

Then John opened the door and Jill stepped hesitatingly into the room. Mr. Chesterton rose awkwardly to his feet.

This was the lady, materialised at last. From long habit of summing up in a glance the people with whom he had to deal, he made his estimation of Jill in a moment. The quietness of her voice as she said--"I was rather afraid to knock, for fear I had made a mistake"--that gentleness in the depth of the eyes which admits of no sudden understanding, yet as gently asks for it--the firm repose of the lips already moulded for the strength which comes with maturity, and all set in a face whose whole expression was that innocence of a mind which knows and has put aside until such moment when life shall demand contemplation. This--there was no doubt of it--was the lady who would not understand the likes of him.

John shook hands with her. Mr. Chesterton took it all in with his little solemn eyes. He was in the way. Never had he been so much in the way before. As their hands touched, he felt that John was telling her just how much in the way he was.

"May I introduce you," said John, turning, when that touching of the hands was done with. "This is my friend--Mr. Chesterton. Miss----" he paused. It seemed sacrilege to give her name to a bailiff, and the little man felt sensitively, in his boots every moment of that pause. His red socks were burning him. He could see the colour of his tie in every reflection. It was even creeping up into his cheeks.

"Miss Dealtry."

He was going to come forward and shake hands, but she bowed. Then, when she saw his confusion, out, generously, came her hand.

"Are you a writer, too?" she asked.

John was about to interpose; but the little man wanted to stand well with her. He felt that his socks and his tie and his corn-coloured suit ought all to be explained, and what more lucid or more natural explanation than this.

"Oh, yes, I'm a writer," he said quickly. "Books, you know--and a little journalism--just to--to keep me goin'--to amuse myself like. Journalism's a change, you know--what you might call a rest, when your always writin' books----" Then he remembered a quotation, but where from, he could not say, "Of the writin' of books, you know--at least, so they say--there's no end." And he smiled with pleasure to think how colloquially he had delivered the phrase.

"Why, of course, I know your work," said Jill--"Aren't you the Mr. Chesterton?"

The little man's face beamed. That was just what they all called him--the Mr. Chesterton.

"That's right," said he delightedly, "the one and only." And under the mantle of genius and celebrity his quaintnesses became witticisms, his merest phrase a paradox.

CHAPTER XX

WHY JILL PRAYED TO ST. JOSEPH

Little as you might have imagined it, there was a heart beneath that corn-coloured waistcoat of Mr. Chesterton's. His old woman, as he called her, would have vouched for that.

"He may have to do some dirty tricks in his job," she had said of him. "But 'e's got a 'eart, 'as my young man, if you know where to touch it."

And seemingly, Jill had known; tho' the knowledge was unconscious. It was just that she had believed--that was all. She had believed he was the Mr. Chesterton, presumably a great writer, a man to command respect. He had never commanded respect before in his life. Abuse! Plenty of that! So much of it that his skin had become hardened and tough. But respect--never.

Ah! She was a lady, certainly--a delightful, a charming young lady. He could quite believe that she would not understand the likes of him. He would even dare to swear, and did, when eventually he went home to his old woman, that she had never heard of a bailiff in her life.

And while John laid out the tea things, she talked to him all the time as if he were a great man--bless her little heart! He was a fine fellow, whoever this Chesterton was, and he seemed to have said some mighty smart things. Anyhow, if writing books was not a paying game, as, judging by this young Mr. Grey, it would not seem to be, it certainly brought one a deal of credit. The little bailiff basked in the light of it, feeling like a beggar who has awakened in the King's bed-chamber, ensconced in the King's bed. Only when, occasionally he caught sight of the expression on John's face, did he realise how abominably he must be in the way.

At last, when tea was ready, the kettle spitting on the little spirit stove in the grate, Mr. Chesterton rose to his feet. A look had passed between those two, a look unmistakable to his eyes--a look of mute appeal from her, an answering look of despair from John. Had it been John alone, he would have taken no notice. John had been making grimaces to himself for the last quarter of an hour; besides, he had brought it on himself. Young men should pay their rent up to time. He had little or no sympathy for John. But when he saw that look in Jill's eyes, realising that it was only her gentle politeness which made her talk to him so nicely--only her gentle politeness and the kudos which he had stolen from the name of Chesterton--then, he felt he could stay there no longer. He had always had a tender heart for women, so long as they were not unsexed by journalism, by a bit of a beard and a fair tidy moustache. He had no sympathy for them then if their rents were overdue. But now, this was a different matter. That look in Jill's eyes had cut him to the quick.

"I've got to be goin' now, Mr. Grey," he said.

John's mouth opened in amazement. He had just decided in his mind that Kensington Gardens was the only place left to them from this abominable interloper.

"Going?" he echoed. It might almost have seemed as if he were intensely sorry, his surprise was so great.

"Yes--goin'," said Mr. Chesterton with a look that meant the absolute certainty of his return. "Good-bye, Miss Dealtry--you'll excuse me runnin' away, won't you? Time and tide--they won't wait, you know--they're just like a pair o' children goin' to a circus. They don't want to miss nuthin'."

Now that was his own, his very own! He had been determined all through their conversation to work in something of his own. The great Mr. Chesterton had never said that! This credit of being another man, and gleaning all the approbation that did not belong to him, had brought with it its moments of remorse, and he longed to win her approval for something that was truly, really his.

He looked proudly at John as he said it. He laughed loudly at the thought of the two children dragging at their mother's hands all the way to the circus. It was a real picture to him. He could see it plainly. He had been one of those children himself once. Time and tide--like a pair o' children goin' to a circus! He thought it excellent--good, and he laughed and laughed, till suddenly he realised that John was not even smiling. Then wasn't it funny after all? Wasn't it clever? Yet the things which this Mr. Chesterton was reputed to have written, were quite unintelligible to him.

"The apple which Eve ate in the Garden of Eden was an orange and the peel has been lying about ever since."

Where was the sense in that? How could an apple be an orange. But Time and Tide, like a pair o' children going to a circus! Oh--he thought it excellent.

Then, with a pitiable sensation of failure, he turned in almost an attitude of appeal to Jill. But she was smiling. She was amused. Then there was something in it after all! It had amused her. He held out his hand, feeling a wild inclination to grip it fiercely and bless her for that smile.

"Good-bye," said he in his best and most elaborate of manners. "I'm very pleased to have made your acquaintance," and he marched, with head erect, to the door.

John followed him.

"I'll just come down with you," he said.

As soon as they were outside and the door was closed, he caught the little man's hand warmly in his.

"You're a brick," said he. "You're a brick. I'll let you in whenever you come back--you needn't be afraid."

Mr. Chesterton stopped on the stairs as they descended.

"I wouldn't have done it," he said emphatically--"if it wasn't that she was a lady as wouldn't understand the likes of me. I tell you, she's a sort of lady as I shall never come across again,--not even in my line of business,--bless her heart." He descended another step or so, then stopped once more. "See the way she smiled at that what I said. I tell you, she's got a nicer sense of understandin' than what you have."

John smiled.

"I know she has," said he.

"I suppose you didn't think that clever, what I said?"

"Oh, yes, I do--I do. I don't even think the Mr. Chesterton would have thought of that."

"Don'tcher really, now? Don'tcher really?"

John had not smiled; but this--well, of course, this made up for everything. The Mr. Chesterton would not have thought of Time and Tide being like a pair of children goin' to a circus! Now, if he were to write that and a few other things like it, which he dared say he could think of easily enough, he, too, might be a great man whose name would be on the lips of such women as that perfect little lady upstairs. Then she would understand the likes of him.

"Then you think I suited the part?" he said cheerfully at the door.

"I think, under the circumstances and everything being considered, you did it wonderfully," said John. "And as for your being good enough to trust me--well--it's finer than all the epigrams in the world."

He wrung his hand once more and the little man departed happily down the Lane, thinking of all the clever things that he would say to his old woman when eventually he got home. But--Time and Tide, like a pair of children--he knew he'd never beat that. She had smiled at it. She had thought it clever. The other things that came laboriously into his mind as he walked down the Lane, were not a patch on it.

The moment John had closed the door, he flew upstairs.

"Well--what do you think of the great Mr. Chesterton?" he asked with a laugh.

"I do not think his conversation is nearly as good as his writing," said Jill.

"But you smiled at that last thing he said."

"Yes, I know." She explained it first with her eyes and then, "He was going," she added--"and I think it must have been relief."

John's heart thumped. A light of daring blazed in his eyes. It was relief! She was glad to be alone with him! This meant more than the look of disappointment. He had crossed the room, found himself beside her, found her hand gripped fiercely in his before he realised that he had obeyed the volition to do so.

"You wanted us to be alone?" he whispered.

"Yes--I've got a lot I want to say."

Had the moment not been such as this, he would have caught the note of pain that vibrated in her voice; but he was in the whirlwind of his love. It was deafening in his ears, it was blinding in his eyes; because then he knew she loved him also. He heard nothing. He saw nothing. Her hand was to his lips and he was kissing every finger.

Presently he held her hand to him and looked up.

"You knew this," he said--"didn't you? You knew this was bound to be?"

She bent her head.

"I don't know what it means," he went on passionately. "I haven't the faintest idea what it means. I love you--that's all. You mean everything to me. But I can't ask you to marry me. It wouldn't be fair." A thought of Mr. Chesterton rushed across his mind. "I--I can barely keep myself in rooms like these. I couldn't keep you. So I suppose I haven't a moment's right to say one of these things to you. But I had to say them. You knew I was going to say them--didn't you--Jill--my Jill--you knew--didn't you?"

She let him take both her hands in his; she let him drag them to his shoulders and press them there. But she bent her head forward. She hid her face from his. There was that which she had to tell him, things which she had to say, that must be told before he could blame himself any more for the love he had offered. She had known it was coming. He was quite right; she had known all he was going to say, realised it ever since that day when they had quarrelled in Kensington Gardens. All the moments between until this, had been a wonderful anticipation. A thousand times her breath had caught; a thousand times her heart had thumped, thinking he was about to speak; and through it all, just these few weeks or so, the anxious longing, the tireless praying that what she had now to say need never be said.

For a little while she let him hold her so. It would be the last time. God had been talking, or He had been sleeping, and St. Joseph--perhaps he had taken John's gift of generosity rather than that last candle of her's, for the petition she had made on that 18th of March in the Sardinia St. Chapel had not been answered.

Presently she looked up into his eyes.

"You mustn't blame yourself, John," she said gently. "It is I who deserve all the blame."

"Why?" he said--"why?"

"Because--not for the reason you said--but for something else, this is all impossible. I know it is the most wonderful thing that will ever be in my life. I know that. I'm sure of it. But something has happened since I saw you last, which makes it impossible for us to see each other again."

"Your people have found out? They forbid it?"

She shook her head.

"No--no--it's not that. They know nothing. I must go back in order to explain it to you."

Still holding his hand, she slipped into a chair, motioning him to draw up another beside her.

"You remember when we first met?"

He nodded.

"Did you ever wonder why I was praying to St. Joseph?"

"Wonder?" he echoed. "I've thought of a thousand different things."

"I don't suppose you've thought of the right one," said Jill. "My father's not rich, you know; not so rich as you might expect from his position and the house where we live. At one time we were better off, but they still try to live on at Prince of Wales' Terrace, though they can't really afford it. Father lost money in speculation, and, before that, he had put down Ronald's name for Eton. Then the chances of his ever going there seemed to dwindle to nothing. It was when it almost seemed as if we must leave the house in Kensington, that a friend of father's asked me to marry him. He was over forty--some years older than me and I----"

"You refused him, of course," said John quickly. At twenty-six, forty years can seem the millennium when they stand in your way.

"Yes--I--I refused. But he did not take my refusal. He asked me to think about it; that he would wait--would even wait a year. Then, I believe, he must have said something to father, besides telling him that I had refused, because father talked for a long while to me afterwards and mother, too. They showed me as plainly as they could, though, from their point of view alone, what an excellent match it would be. Father told me exactly what his financial position was--a thing he had never done before. I had always thought him to be quite rich. Then, at the end, he said he had invested in some speculation which he believed was going to set him quite right again, enable us to stay on in Kensington and make it quite possible for Ronald to go to Eton. But that if this failed, as he did not believe it would, then he hoped that I would reconsider my refusal to his friend. I say he hoped; but he did not put it in that way. He showed me that it would be my duty--that I should be spoiling Ronald's chances and mother's life and his, if I did not accept."

She paused. She waited for John to say something; but he sat there beside her with his lips set tight and his eyes unmoving.

"It was on the 18th of March, he told me that," she continued--"the day that I went to pray to St. Joseph that his speculation might not fail--the day I met you. Then--only the day before yesterday--they told me. The prayer had been no good. I always said poor St. Joseph was no good to me."

"He's lost his money?" said John hoarsely. He let her hand fall and moved away.

"Yes. I--I've got to accept."

CHAPTER XXI

THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL NONSENSE

"Then you'll never know my people in Venice," said John presently. He had suddenly remembered that there was nothing to tell the little old white-haired lady now. To all the thousand questions which she would whisper into his ears, only evasive answers could be given her.

"I told my mother about you," he went on slowly. "I told her how we met. I told her that you were praying to St. Joseph and she's been wondering ever since--like me"--the emotion rose in his throat--"she's been wondering what you could have had to ask."

He came back to the arm-chair--the arm-chair in which he did his work--and quietly sat down. Then, as quietly, as naturally as if she had done it a thousand times before, Jill seated herself on the floor at his feet and his arm wound gently round her neck.

"Did your mother know we met again?" she asked presently.

"Yes--I told her about the first time in Kensington Gardens. I haven't told her any more. I dared not."

"Dared not?" She looked up quickly.

"No--it's the hope of her life to see me happy--to see me married. They think I make more money than I do, because I won't take anything from them. They believe I'm in a position to marry and, in nearly every letter she writes, she makes some quaint sort of allusion to it. I believe already her mind is set on you. She's so awfully cute. She reads every single word between the lines, and sometimes sees more what has been in my mind when I wrote to her, than I even did myself."

Jill's interest wakened. Suddenly this old lady, far away in Venice, began to live for her.

"What is she like?" she asked--"Describe her. You've never told me what she's like."

Diffidently, John began. At first it seemed wasting their last moments together to be talking of someone else; but, word by word, he became more interested, more absorbed. It was entering Jill into his life, making her a greater part of it than she would have been had she gone away knowing nothing more of him than these rooms in Fetter Lane. At last the little old white-haired lady, with those pathetically powerless hands of hers, was there, alive, in the room with them.

Jill looked up at him with such eyes as concealed their tears.

"She means a lot to you," she said gently.

"Yes--she means a great deal."

"And yet, do you know, from your description of her, I seemed more to gather how much you meant to her. She lives in you."

"I know she does."

"And your father? Thomas Grey--of the port of Venice?" She tried to smile at the remembrance which that brought.

"Yes--he lives in me, too. They both of them do. He, for the work I shall do, carrying on where he left off; she, for the woman I shall love and the children I know she prays I may have before she dies. That is the essence of true fatherhood and true motherhood. They are perfectly content to die when they are once assured that their work and their love is going on living in their child."

She thought of it all. She tried in one grasp of her mind to hold all that that meant, but could only find herself wondering if the little old white-haired lady would be disappointed in her, would disapprove of the duty she was about to fulfil, if she knew.

After a long pause, she asked to be told where they lived; to be told all--everything about them; and in a mood of inspiration, John wove her a romance.

"You've got to see Venice," he began, "you've got to see a city of slender towers and white domes, sleeping in the water like a mass of water lilies. You've got to see dark water-ways, mysterious threads of shadow, binding all these flowers of stone together. You've got to hear the silence in which the whispers of lovers of a thousand years ago, and the cries of men, betrayed, all breathe and echo in every bush. These are the only noises in Venice--these and the plash of the gondolier's oar or his call--'Ohé!' as he rounds a sudden corner. You've got to see it all in the night--at night, when the great white lily flowers are blackened in shadow, and the darkened water-ways are lost in an impenetrable depth of gloom. You've got to hear the stealthy creeping of a gondola and the lapping of the water against the slimy stones as it hurries by. In every little burning light that flickers in a barred window up above, you must be able to see plotters at work, conspirators planning deeds of evil or a lover in his mistress' arms. You've got to see magic, mystery, tragedy, and romance, all compassed by grey stone and green water, to know the sort of place where my mother and father live, to know the place where I should have taken you, if--if things had been different."

"Should we have gone there together?" she said in a breath.

"Yes--I've always sort of dreamed, when I've thought of the woman with God's good gift of understanding, I've always sort of dreamed of what we should do together there."

She looked up into his face. The picture of it all was there in his eyes. She saw it as well. She saw the vision of all she was losing and, as you play with a memory that hurts, as a mother handles the tiny faded shoe of the baby she has lost, she wanted to see more of it.

"Should we have gone there together?" she whispered.

He smiled down at her--mock bravery--a smile that helped him bear the pain.

"Yes,--every year--as long as they lived and every year afterwards, if you wished. Every morning, we'd have got up early--you know those early mornings when the sun's white and all the shadows are sort of misty and the water looks cleaner and fresher than at any other time because the dew has purged it. We'd have got up early and come downstairs and outside in the little Rio, the gondolier would be blowing on his fingers, waiting for us. They can be cold those early mornings in Venice. Then we'd have gone to the Giudecca, where all the ships lie basking in the sun--all the ships that have come from Trieste, from Greece, from the mysterious East, up through the Adriatic, threading their way through the patchwork of islands, past Fort San Nicolo and Lido till they reach the Giudecca Canal. They lie there in the sun in the early mornings like huge, big water-spiders, and up from all the cabins you'll see a little curl of pale blue smoke where the sailors are cooking their breakfasts."

"And how early will that be?" asked Jill in a whisper.

"Oh--six o'clock, perhaps."

"Then I shall be awfully sleepy. I never wake up till eight o'clock and even then it's not properly waking up."

"Well, then, you'll put your head on my shoulder and you'll go to sleep. It's a wonderful place to sleep in, is a gondola. We'll go away down towards Lido and you can go to sleep."

"But the gondolier?"

"Oh"--he laughed gently. "The hood's up--he stands behind the hood. He can't see. And if he can, what does that matter? He understands. A gondolier is not a London cabby. He plies that oar of his mechanically. He's probably dreaming, too, miles away from us. There are some places in the world where it is natural for a man to love a woman, where it isn't a spectacle, as it is here, exciting sordid curiosity, and Venice is one of them. Well, then, you'll go to sleep, with your head on my shoulder. And when we're coming back again, I shall wake you up--how shall I wake you?"

He leant over her. Her eyes were in Venice already. Her head was on his shoulder. She was asleep. How should he wake her? He bent still lower, till his face touched hers.

"I shall kiss you," he whispered--"I shall kiss your eyes, and they'll open." And he kissed her eyes--and they closed.

"We'll go back to breakfast, then," he went on, scarcely noticing how subtly the tense had changed since he had begun. "What do you think you'd like for breakfast?"

"Oh--anything--it doesn't matter much what one eats, does it?"

"Then we'll eat anything," he smiled--"whatever they give us. But we shall be hungry, you know. We shall be awfully hungry."

"Well," said Jill under her breath--"I'm sure they'll give us enough. And what do we do then?"

"After breakfast?"

"Yes."

"Well--I finish just one moment before you do, and then I get up, pretending that I'm going to the window."

She looked up surprised.

"Pretending? What for?"

"Because I want to get behind your chair."

"But why?"

"Because I want to put my arms round your neck and kiss you again."

He showed her how. He showed her what he meant. She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes once more.

"When, without complaint, you take whatever is given you, that's the only grace for such a meal as that. Well--when we've said grace--then out we go again."

"In the garden?"

"Yes--to the Palazzo Capello in the Rio Marin."

"That's where your people live?"

"Yes. Well, perhaps, we take them out, or we go and sit in the garden. I expect father will want us to go and sit in the garden and see the things he's planted; and mother of course'll consent, though she'll be longing to go out to the Piazza San Marco and look at the lace in the shops under the Arcade."

"Well, then, I'll go out with her----" said Jill.

"If you go, I go," said John.

She laughed, and forced him to a compromise. He would stay in the garden for half an hour; it need not be more.

"There might be things we wanted to buy in the shops," she said--"shops where you might not be allowed to come." So he could understand that it ought to be half an hour. But it must not be more.

"And then--what then?" she asked.

"Well, then, directly after lunch, we'd take a gondola once more and set off for Murano."

"Directly after? Wouldn't it be cruel to leave them so soon? If we only go for a month every year, wouldn't it be cruel?"

This is where a man is selfish. This is where a woman is kind. It was natural enough, but he had not thought so much of them.

He consented that they should stay till tea-time was over--tea in those little, wee cups without any handles, which the little old white-haired lady could just manage to grasp in her twisted hands, and accordingly, loved so much because they did not jeer at her powerlessness as did the many things which she had once been able to hold.

"You didn't want not to come out with me--did you?" he asked when the tea-time picture had passed before his eyes.

"Not--not want--but you'd get tired, perhaps, if you saw too much of me alone."

"Get tired!"

Three score years and ten were the utmost that a man might hope for in this life. Get tired!

Well, then, tea was over at last. The light of a pearl was creeping into the sky. That was the most wonderful time of all to cross the Lagoon to Murano.

"Then it was much better we stayed to tea," she whispered.

Much better, since the shadows were deepening under the arches, and he could take her head in his hands and kiss her--as he kissed her then--without being seen. Oh--it was much better that they had stayed to tea.

Now they had started, past the Chiesa San Giacomo into the Grand Canal, down the broad waterway, past the Ca' d'Oro, which the Contarini built, to the narrow Rio di Felice; then out into the Sacca della Misericordia, and there, before them, the broad stretch of the silent Lagoon--a lake of opal water that never ended, but as silently became the sky, with no line of light or shade to mark the alchemy of change.

"And across this," said John,--"with their hour glasses spilling out the sand, come the gondolas with the dead, to the cemetery that lies in the water in the midst of the Lagoon. They churn up the water with the speed they go, and if you ask a gondolier why they go so fast, he will tell you it is because the dead cannot pay for that last journey of theirs. That is their humour in the city they call La citta del riso sangue. But we shall creep through the water--we can pay--at least----" he thought of his two quarters' rent--"I suppose we can. We shall steer through the water like the shadow of a little cloud gliding across the sea. Oh----" he pressed his hands to his eyes--"but it would be wonderful there with you! And at night, when the whole city is full of darkness--strange, silent, mysterious darkness--where every lighted taper that burns and every lamp that is lit seems to illuminate a deed of mystery, we would go out into the Grand Canal, when we had said good-night to those dear old people of mine and we'd listen to them singing--and, oh,--they sing so badly, but it sounds so wonderful there. At last--one by one, the lights would begin to flicker out. The windows that were alive and awake would close their eyes and hide in the mysterious darkness; a huge white lamp of a moon would glide up out of the breast of the Adriatic, and then----"

"Then?" she whispered.

"Then we should turn back to the little room amongst all those other little rooms in the great darkness--the gondolier would row home, and I should be left alone with my arms tight round you and my head resting on the gentlest place in the world."

He lifted his hands above his head--he laughed bitterly with the unreality of it all.

"What beautiful nonsense all this is," said he.

She looked up with the tears burning in her eyes. She looked up and her glance fell upon a picture that his father had painted and given him--a picture of the Rialto lifting with its white arches over the green water. She pointed to it. He followed with his eyes the white line of her finger.

"Then that," said Jill, and her voice quivered--"that's the City--the City of Beautiful Nonsense."

BOOK II

THE TUNNEL

CHAPTER XXII

THE HEART OF THE SHADOW

Ideals in the human being are as the flight of a swallow, now high, now sinking to earth, borne upwards by the bright light of air, pressed downwards by the lowering of a heavy sky.

When John had said his last good-bye to Jill, when it seemed to both of them that the Romance was finished--when the City of Beautiful Nonsense had just been seen upon the horizon, like a land of promise viewed from a height of Pisgah, and then faded into the mist of impossible things, John turned back to those rooms in Fetter Lane, with his ideal hugging close to earth and all the loneliness of life stretching out monotonously before him.

But not until he had seen the empty tea-cups in their position upon the table just as they had left them, the little piece of bread and butter she had half eaten, upon her plate; not until he had seen the empty chairs standing closely together as though repeating in whispers all the story of the City of Beautiful Nonsense which he had told her, did he come actually to realise that he had lost her--that he was alone.

The minutes ticked wearily by as he sat there, staring at it all as though it were an empty stage at the end of a play, which the players had deserted.

At the sound of footsteps mounting the stairs, he looked up. Then, as a knock fell upon the door, he started to his feet. She had come back! She could bear the parting no more than he! They were never to be parted! This loneliness was too unendurable, too awful to bear. In hurried strides, he reached the door and flung it open.

There stood the little bailiff--the great Mr. Chesterton--with a smile spreading agreeably over his solemn face. In those two hours of his absence, he had thought of three clever things--three! which, having just invented, he found to be in every way as good as that famous simile of Time and Tide. He was longing to say them.

But when he saw the look on John's face, he stopped.

"Yer not expecting another young lady are yer?" he asked.

John turned back despairingly into the room, making way for him to enter. He offered no reply to the little man's remark.

Mr. Chesterton closed the door behind him.

"'Ave you 'ad a scrap?" he asked sympathetically.

Now, sympathy from a bailiff, may be a very beautiful thing, but when the mind of a man is floundering in the nethermost pit, he has no need of it. John turned on him, his face changed, his whole expression altered.

"You've come here to do your work, haven't you?" he said thickly--"you've come here to take possession of any confounded thing you like. Well--take it! Take the whole blessed show! I don't want to see a single thing in this room again." He strode to the door. The little man stood staring at him amazed. "You can rip every damned thing off the walls----" he went on wildly. "Make up your fifteen pounds whatever you do. Don't stint yourself! For God's sake don't stint yourself!--Take every damned thing!"

The door slammed. He was gone.

It was half-past six. Payne and Welcome were just beginning to put up their shutters. John hurried into the side entrance and threw his ticket down on the counter.

"I want that seventeen pounds," he said, and the ten-shilling-piece twisted a giddy dance on the counter by the side of the ticket, then sank down with a gentle ringing sound.

The pawnbroker looked at him in amazement, then went to a little pigeon-hole and produced the packet of money. John snatched it up and went.

They stared after him; then stared at one another.

"He ain't so far off it this time," said one.

"Next thing I'll do," said the high priest--"I'll cut 'is throat in a barber's shop."

But supremely unconscious of all these gentle remarks, John was hurrying on through the streets, scarcely conscious of where he was going, or why he had redeemed the money that was now gripped fiercely in his hand.

For what did anything matter now? There must be some colour of reality about the ideal, some red lamp burning before an altar to light up that utter darkness into which the mind inevitably falls, blindly and stumblingly, without such actual guiding flame as this. Where would be the wonderful reality of the Host in the Tabernacle, if it was not for the dim red lamp that burnt silently by day and night before the altar? Who could pray, who could believe in utter darkness?

And in utter darkness Jill had surely left him now. It might have been that they could not have married for some years; it might have been that they could never have married at all; but to see her no more--never to feel again the touch of understanding in her hands, the look of understanding in her eyes--that was the gale of the wind which had obliterated the red light of the lamp that burnt before his altar. And now--he was in darkness. Neither could he pray, nor believe.

For an hour, he wandered through the streets, then, as a clock struck the half-hour after seven, he turned into a fashionable restaurant and took a table in a corner alone.

A waiter came with the menu of the dinners--five shillings, seven and six, ten shillings. He chose the last as it was handed to him. The mere action of spending money needlessly seemed a part of the expression of that bitterness which was tainting all his thoughts.

The waiter handed him the wine list with a bow.

John shook his head.

"Water," he said.

This was not his way of seeking oblivion. In even the blackest moments of his mind, he must have his senses wide-eyed and awake. The man who drinks to forget, forgets Remorse as well. Remorse is a thing to be learnt of, not to drown.

This, if John had known it, was what his father meant by wishing for the sorrow in his life. By such moments as these, he was to come to learn the value of optimism; by such moments as these, he was to come to know, not that there is too much sadness in life already, but that there is too little of the contrast of real happiness to appreciate it.

All through the meal, sending away one course after another unfinished, he gave way voluntarily to the passion of bitterness, made no effort to steady the balance of his mind.

In a balcony, at the far end of the room, a band of string instruments played the worst of meanings into bad music--the music one hears without listening to. It was not long in finding its way into John's mind, not long in exerting its influence upon his mood. One by one, crowding quickly upon each other, he permitted its suggestions to take a hold upon his thoughts. What did it matter how he thought? What did it matter how low his ideal should fall? He could see nothing beyond the moment, nothing further than that he was alone, deprived of the greatest, the highest hope with which his whole being had associated itself? What did anything matter now that he had lost that.

And then, out of a stillness that had fallen since the last playing of the band, the musicians began a selection from La Bohème. He laid his knife and fork upon the plate. He sat back in his chair and listened.

Why did it sound so different? What had changed in it since that night when he had heard it at the Opera? Now there was sensuality in every note of it. It maddened him. The very passages that he had once found beautiful--found wonderful as he had listened to them with Jill--became charged with the vilest imaginations. Thoughts, the impurest, surged into his mind. The wildest and most incomprehensible desire beat in his brain. Was it the players? Was it their rendering of the music, or was it himself?

He called the waiter, ordered his bill, paid--thinking no loss in it--out of the seventeen pounds he had redeemed, and strode out of the place into the street.

There was nowhere to go, no friend whom he cared at such a moment to see. At last, without consciously determining upon it, he found himself making his way back to Fetter Lane.

With steps almost like those of an old man, he climbed up the stairs, passing the sandy cat without notice--not so much as a good-evening.

When he opened the door of his room, there was Mr. Chesterton, comfortably ensconced in his armchair and only saving his presumptuousness of its occupation, by reading one of John's books.

But Mr. Chesterton was a man with a certain amount of humility. He rose to his feet as John entered; because there was no doubt as to its being John's particular arm-chair. It was the only armchair in the room. The little bailiff had observed that. In fact, for that very reason, he had considerately omitted it in the making of his inventory.

"I--I just been reading one of your books, Mr. Grey," he said, "an' if yer don't mind my sayin' so, I've read many a story what was worse. I 'ave, indeed. I like this story first rate. It's no more like a thing you'd hear of in life than I'm like the photograph my son took of me last week with a five-shilling camera. 'Ow on earth you manage to do it is a marvel to me. Do you get a plot in yer 'ead like and just stick it down just as it comes to yer--what my old woman calls when the spirit moves? 'The spirit moves,' she says, and then she goes out and gets a jug of beer. But that's only figurative, of course. What I mean is, do you go on writing what's in your 'ead, or do you get bits of it out of other books? 'He threw his arms around her neck and held her in a passionate embrace.' I've read that in 'eaps of books. I suppose they get it from each other."

"Did you find it in mine?" asked John.

"Well, no--I can't say as I 'ave yet. But then, they've only just been introduced. I expect you'll 'ave to come to it sooner or later. They all do."

"That's quite right," said John--"we all do. There's something inevitable about it. Have you had a meal yet?"

"No--but I've got a little something here in a basket. I'll eat it on the landing if you like."

"Oh, no," said John--"eat it here. It makes no difference to me."

So Mr. Chesterton pulled out the basket with the little something inside. Two cold sausages and some bread and butter were the extent of his meal which he ate with evident relish, and table manners that, perhaps, a fastidious person might have objected to. You could, for example, hear him eating. Sometimes he exclaimed how excellent were sausages when they were cold. He went so far as to say he loved them. He also expanded on the way his old woman cooked tripe; but when he talked about the brains of certain animals being cheap and at the same time a great delicacy, John found that his hands wanted washing and went into the other room.

"They've had a tiff," said the little man as he bit into the second sausage--"they've 'ad a tiff. He's that down in the mouth, there's nothin' I can say as'll buck him up. Why, if I talk about sheep's brains to my old woman, she gets as chirpy as a cock-sparrer."

When John came back, Mr. Chesterton had finished; the basket was put away and he was doing things with his teeth and a bent pin in a far corner of the room.

"'Ave yer got a box of draughts, Mr. Grey?" he asked, when he was at liberty. John nodded his head.

"Then come along," said the little man--"let's have a game!"

CHAPTER XXIII

AMBER

But there is no oblivion to be found in a game of draughts. For some days, John bore with the society of the amiable Mr. Chesterton. He listened to his stories of visits that he had paid in other establishments, where they had prevailed upon him to do odd jobs about the house, even to the cleaning of the knives and boots. The only time when he seemed to have resolutely refused to do anything, was on the occasion he had spent seven days with the lady journalist who had a beard and a fair tidy moustache.

"I wouldn't even have shaved her if she'd asked me to," he said.

This sort of thing may be amusing; but it needs the time, it needs the place. In those rooms of his, where only a few days before, Jill had been sitting--at that period of his life when hope was lowest and despair triumphant, John found no amusement in it at all.

He wanted his oblivion. His whole desire was to forget. The life that had held all promise for him, was gone--irrevocably broken. He sought for that, which would, by contrast, close the memory of it, as you shut a book that is read. It was not to be done by playing draughts with Mr. Chesterton. It was not to be done in the ways that the crowd of men will choose. He had attempted that--found it impossible and flung it aside.

It was then that he thought of Amber. She had had a rightful place once, a place that had accorded with his ideas of the cleanliness of existence. Only that he had met Jill--only that he had loved--only that he had found the expression of his ideal in her, Amber would still have been there. And now--now that he had lost everything--why not return? It was the most human thing in the world. Life was not possible of such ideals.

So he argued, the darkness slowly diminishing--the light of some reason creeping again into his mind. But the bitterness was still there. He still did not care and, as yet, his mind did not even rebel against such callousness.

One evening, then, he left Mr. Chesterton finishing the reading of his book. He hailed the first hansom he saw and, screwing himself into the corner of the seat, took a deep breath of relief as he drove away.

Then began the fear as he drove, the fear that he would not find Amber, that since she had gone out of his life, she would have readjusted her mind, found other interests, or even that she might not be there when he arrived. And now, once his destination was made, he dreaded the thought that Circumstance should balk his desire.

Jumping quickly out of the hansom, he paid his fare, hurried up the steps and rattled the flap of the letter-box. This was the knocker of friends. All those who used the proper means were creditors, not answered until inspected carefully from behind lace curtains.

For a few moments, his heart beat tentatively. There was no sound, no light from within. Then came the quick tapping of high-heels. He took a breath. The door opened. He saw her face of amazement in the darkness.

"You!" she exclaimed. The door opened wider to her hand. "Come in."

He took off his hat and stepped in. His manner was strange. He knew it was strange; he understood the look of question in her eyes as she stared at him--it reflected the look in his own mind.

"Are you alone?" he asked.

She nodded her head.

"My aunt is staying with me," she explained, "but she's gone to bed. She's got my bedroom. The mater's gone to bed. I'm sleeping on the floor in the drawing-room. I was sitting there. Come in."

He followed her into the drawing-room. There was her bed upon the floor--a mattress, sheets and blanket. That was all.

"You're sleeping there?" he said.

She said--"hm" with a little jerk of the head, in the most natural way in the world. If he thought he knew what it was to be poor, he flattered himself. He had been without meals, but he had never slept on the floor.

"Isn't it hard?" he questioned. "Do you go to sleep at all?"

She laughed gently under her breath.

"Good heavens, yes! I'm used to it. But what have you come for?"

She sat down in a heap, like a journeyman tailor, upon her bed, and gazed up at him. At first, he did not know how to say it. Then he blurted it out.

"I want you to come back again to see me in Fetter Lane."

She smiled with pride. Her mind reached for its box of bricks. He had sent her away from Fetter Lane. That was all over--past--done with.

"That's rather unexpected--isn't it?"

"I can't help that," he exclaimed, with a moment of wildness.

"But after all you've said?"

"I can't help what I've said. It holds good no longer. I take it all back. It means nothing."

She knelt up quickly on her knees. Dignity comes often before humanity with a woman, but pity will always outride the two. Something had happened to him. He was in trouble. The old appeal he had once made to her rose out of the pity that she felt. She stretched up her hands to his shoulders.

"What's happened?" she asked--"tell me what's happened."

He dropped on to the mattress on the floor. He told her everything. He told her how far his ideals had fallen in those last few days. He stripped the whole of his mind for her to lash if she chose; he stripped it, like a child undressing for a whipping.

When he had finished, she sat back again in her former position. She stared into the empty grate.

"I wonder," said she--"I wonder does the man exist who can bear disappointment without becoming like that."