THE SECOND BOOK OF THE FOOLISH LOVERS (continued 3)

"Miss Moore," he said in a hesitating manner, taking off his hat as he spoke.

She started and turned round. "What is it?" she said in an alarmed manner.

"I ... I've been trying to find you for a long time!..."

She shrank away from him. "I don't know you," she said. "You've made a mistake. Please go away!"

"Don't be afraid of me," he pleaded. "I know you don't know me, but I know you. You're Eleanor Moore!..."

She came forward from the shadow. "Yes," she said, half in alarm, half out of curiosity. "Yes, that's my name, but I don't know you!..." Then she recognised him. "Oh, you're that man!" she said, now wholly alarmed.

"I saw you at the tea-shop," he replied hastily. "You remember you left a letter behind and I picked it up and gave it to you. That's how I know your name!"

"Why are you persecuting me?" she demanded, almost tearfully.

He was daunted by her tone. "Persecuting you!" he said.

"Yes. You follow me about in the street, and stare at me. I saw you this evening at the Albert Hall, and you stared at me!..."

"Because I love you, Eleanor!" He went nearer to her, and as he did so, she retreated further into the shadow. "Don't be afraid of me, please," he said. "I fell in love with you the moment I saw you, but I'm a stranger in this town and I had no way of getting to know you. I tried hard, Eleanor!..."

"Don't call me Eleanor!"

"I can't help it. I think of you as Eleanor. I always call you Eleanor to myself. You see, dear, I'm in love with you!"

"But you don't know me. I wish you'd go away. I shall ring the bell or tell the policeman at the corner!..."

"Let me tell you about myself," he pleaded.

"I don't want to hear about you. I don't like you. You stare so hard, and you're always looking at my stockings!..."

"Oh, no!"

"Yes, you are. You're looking at them now!"

"Only because you mentioned them. I won't look at them if you tell me not to!..."

"I don't want to tell you anything," she murmured. "I only want you to go away!..."

"I know that, dearest, but just let me tell you this. My name is John MacDermott!..."

"I don't care what your name is," she interrupted. "It doesn't interest me in the least!..."

"But it will, Eleanor, darling. When you're married to me!..."

She burst out laughing, "I think you're mad," she said.

"I was very lonely, Eleanor, when I saw you. I have not got a friend in London!..." He omitted to remember the existence of Hinde. "I come from Ireland!..."

"Oh!"

"And I had not been in London more than a day when I saw you. I fell in love with you at once!..."

"Absurd!" she said.

"It's true. After you'd gone back to your office, I went for a long walk, but all the time, I was thinking of you, and I hurried back to the shop at teatime, hoping I'd see you. And you were there, looking lovelier than you looked in the middle of the day. Do you remember?"

"Yes," she said. "You looked so ridiculous!..."

"Perhaps I did, but I didn't care how I looked so long as I was near you. I felt miserable and lonely, and you were the only person in London I knew!..."

"But you didn't know me!" she insisted.

"I knew your name, and I was in love with you. That was enough. I tried to speak to you, but you would not let me. I asked you to be friends with me, and you got up and walked away. I felt ashamed of myself because I thought I had frightened you, and I hurried out of the shop and followed you so that I might tell you how sorry I was and how much I loved you, but I lost you at your office, and the man at the lift nearly had a fight with me!..."

"Then it was you who had been asking for me? He told me that a suspicious character had been hanging about the hall, enquiring for me. I thought it might be you!"

"I don't look suspicious, do I?"

"You behave suspiciously. You speak to people whom you do not know, and you follow them in the street!..."

"Only you, Eleanor. Not anybody else!"

There was a silence for a few moments, and then she turned to the door and inserted the key in the lock.

"Well, please go away now," she said. "You can't do any good here!..."

"Let me come in and tell your father and mother I want to marry you!"

She opened the door and gazed at him as if she could not believe her ears.

"This is a residential club for women," she said. "I have no parents, I think you're the silliest man I've ever encountered. Please go away! You'll get me talked about!..."

She shut the door in his face.

He stared blankly at the glass panels of the door for a few moments and then went down the steps into the street, and as he did so, he saw a light suddenly illuminate the room immediately above the pillared portico. He stared up at it, and saw that the window was open, and while he looked, he saw Eleanor come to it and begin to draw it down.

He called out to her. "Eleanor!" he said, "Hi, Eleanor!"

She peered out of the window, and then leant her head through the opening. "There's a policeman at the corner," she said, "I shall call him if you don't go away!"

"Very well," he replied. "They can't put a man in gaol for loving a woman!"

"They can put him in gaol for annoying her!"

"I'm not annoying you. How can I annoy you when I'm in love with you? No, don't interrupt me. You haven't let me get a word out of my mouth all night!" He could hear her laughing at him. "Are you codding me?" he said.

"What?" she replied in a puzzled voice.

"Are you codding me?" he repeated. "Are you making fun of me?"

She leant out of the window as if she were trying to see him more closely. "You really are funny," she said. "I was afraid of you ... you stared so ... but I'm not afraid of you now. You're a funny little fellow, but I do wish you'd go away!"

"Come down and talk to me, and I'll go home content!..."

"You're being silly again!"

"No, I'm not. I tell you, girl, I'm mad in love with you, and I'll sit on your doorstep all night 'til you agree to go out with me!"

"The policeman would lock you up if you were to do that," she replied. "I'm not in love with you ... I don't even like you ... I think you're a horrid man, staring at people the way you do ... and I won't 'go out with you,' as you call it. I'm not a servant girl!..."

"What does it matter to me what sort of a girl you are, if I'm in love with you. You must like me ... you can't help it!..."

"Oh, can't I?"

"No. I never heard tell yet of a man loving a woman the way I love you, and her not to fall in love with him!"

"Don't talk so loudly, please," she said in a lowered tone. "People will hear you, and there's someone coming down the street."

"I don't care!..."

"But I do. Now listen to me, Mr.... Mr.... I can't remember your name!"

"My name's MacDermott, but you can call me John."

"Thank you, Mr. MacDermott, but I don't wish to call you John. Now listen to me. I think you're a very romantic young man!... No, please let me finish one sentence! You're a very romantic young man, and I daresay you think that all you've got to do is to tell the first girl you meet that you're in love with her, and she'll say, 'Oh, thank you!' and fall into your arms. Well you're wrong! You may think you're very romantic, but I think you're just a tedious fool!..."

"A what?"

"A tedious fool. You've made me feel exceedingly uncomfortable more than once. I had to stop going to that tea-shop because I couldn't eat my food without your eyes staring at me all the time. Fortunately, the work I was doing in the City was only a temporary job, and I got a permanent post elsewhere and was able to move away from the City altogether!..."

"But Eleanor!..."

"How dare you call me Eleanor!"

"Because I love you!" he said.

She seemed to be nonplussed by his reply. She did not speak for a few moments. Then, altering her tone, she said, "Oh, well, I daresay you think you do!"

"I don't think. I know. I'll not be content till I marry you. Now, Eleanor, do you hear that?"

"I know nothing whatever about you!..."

"Come down to the doorstep and I'll tell you. Will you?"

"No, of course not!"

"Well, how can you blame me then if you won't listen to me when I offer to tell you about myself. You know my name. John MacDermott. And I'm Irish!..."

"Yes," she interrupted, "I'm making big allowances for that!"

"My family's the most respected family in Ballyards!..."

"Where's that?" she asked.

"Do you not know either? You're the second person I've met in London didn't know that. It's in County Down. My mother lives there, and so does my Uncle William. I've come here to write books!..."

"Are you an author?" she exclaimed with interest.

"I am," he said proudly. "I've written a novel and I'm writing a play!... Come down and I'll tell you about them!"

"Oh, no, I can't. It's too late. And you must go home. Where do you live?"

"At Brixton," he answered.

"That's miles from here. And you'll miss the last bus if you don't hurry!..."

"I can walk. Come down, will you!"

"No. No, no. It's much too late," she said hurriedly. "And I can't stay here talking to you any longer. Someone will make a complaint about me. You'll get me into trouble!..."

"Well, will you meet me to-morrow somewhere? Wherever you like!"

"No!..."

"Ah, do!"

"No, I won't. Why should I?"

"Because I'm in love with you and want you to meet me."

"No!..."

"Then I'll sit here all night then. I'll let the peeler take me up, and I'll tell the whole world I'm in love with you!"

"You're a beast. You're really a beast!"

"I'm not. I'm in love with you. That's all. Will you meet me the morrow?"

"I don't know!..."

"Well, make up your mind then."

She remained silent for a few moments.

"Well?" he said.

"I don't see why I should meet you!..."

"Never mind about that. Just meet me!"

"Well ... perhaps ... only perhaps, mind you ... I don't promise really ... I might meet you ... just for a minute or two!..."

"Where?"

"At the bookstall in Charing Cross station. Do you know it?"

"I'll soon find it. What time?"

"Five o'clock!"

"Right. I'll be there to the minute!..."

"Go home now. You've a long way to go, and I'm very tired!"

"All right, Eleanor. I wish you'd come down, though. Just for a wee while!"

"I can't. Good-night!"

"Good-night, my dear. You've the loveliest eyes!..."

She closed the window, but he could see her standing behind the glass looking at him.

He kissed his hand to her and then, when she had moved away, he walked off.

"Good night, constable!" he said cheerily to the policeman at the corner.

The policeman looked suspiciously at him.

"How do you get to Brixton from here?" John continued.

"First on the right, first on the left, first on the right again, and you're in the Bayswater Road. Turn to the left and keep on until you reach Marble Arch. You'll get a 'bus there, if you're lucky. If you're too late, you'll have to walk it. Go down Park Lane and ask again. Make for Victoria!"

"Thanks," said John.

He walked along the Bayswater Road, singing in his heart, and after a while, finding that the street was almost empty, he began to sing aloud. The roadway shone in the cold light thrown from the high electric lamps, and there was a faint mist hanging about the trees in Kensington Gardens. He looked up at the sky and saw that it was full of friendly stars. All around him was beauty and light. The gleaming roadway and the gleaming sky seemed to be illuminated in honour of his triumphant love, for he did not doubt that his love was triumphant. The night air was fresh and cool. It had none of the exhausted taste that the air seems always to have in London during the day. It was new, clean air, fresh from the sea or from the hills, and he took off his hat so that his forehead might be fanned by it. He glanced about him as if in every shadow he expected to see a friend. London no longer seemed too large to love.

"I like this place," he said, waving his hat in the air.

A policeman told him of a very late 'bus that went down Whitehall and would take him as far as Kensington Gate, and he hurried off to Charing Cross and was lucky enough to catch the 'bus.

"How much?" he said to the conductor.

"Sixpence on this 'bus," the conductor replied.

John handed a shilling to him. "You can keep the change," he said.

VI

Hinde was lying on the sofa in the sitting-room when John, slightly tired, but too elated to be aware of his fatigue, got home.

"Hilloa," he said sleepily, "how did the concert go?"

John suddenly remembered.

"Holy O!" he exclaimed, clapping his hand to his head.

"What's that?" Hinde said.

"I forgot all about it," John replied.

"Forgot all about it! Do you mean you didn't go to it?"

"I went all right, but I forgot to take my notice to the office!"

Hinde sat up and stared at him. "You forgot!..." He could not say any more.

John told him of the encounter with Eleanor.

"You mean to say you let your paper down for the sake of a girl," Hinde exclaimed incredulously.

"I'll go back now," John said, turning to leave the room.

"Go back now! What's the good of that? The paper's been put to bed half an hour and more ago. My God Almighty ... you let the paper down. For the sake of a girl!"

He seemed to have difficulty in expressing his thoughts, and he sat back and gaped at John as if he had just been informed that the Last Day had been officially announced.

"You needn't show your nose in that office again," he said again. "I never heard of such a reason for letting a paper down! Good heavens, man, don't you realise what you've done? You've let the paper down!"

"I'm in love with this girl!..."

Hinde almost snarled at him. "Ach-h-h, love!" he shouted. "And you propose to be a journalist. Let your paper down. For a girl. You sloppy fellow!... My heavens above, I never heard of such a thing. Letting your paper down!..."

He walked about the room, repeating many times that John had "let his paper down."

"And I recommended you to Clotworthy, too. I told him you had the stuff in you. I thought you had. I thought you could do a job decently, but by the Holy O, you're no good. You let your own feelings come between you and your work. Oh! Oh, oh! Oh, go to bed quick or I'll knock the head off you. I'll not be responsible for myself if you stand there any longer like a moonstruck fool!"

"If you talk to me like that," said John, "I'll hit you a welt on the jaw. I'm sorry I forgot about the paper, but sure what does it matter anyway?..."

"What does it matter!" Hinde almost shrieked at him. "Your paper will be the only paper in London which won't have a report of that concert in it to-morrow. That's what it matters? I'd be ashamed to let my paper down for any reason on earth. If my mother was dying, I wouldn't let her prevent me from doing my job!... If you can't understand that, John MacDermott, you needn't try to be a journalist. You haven't got it in you. Your paper's your father and your mother and your wife and your children! Oh, go to bed, out of my sight, or I'll forget myself!..."

John walked towards the door.

"I'd rather love a woman any day than a paper," he said.

"Well, go and love her then, and don't try to interfere with a paper again! Don't come down Fleet Street pretending you're a journalist!"

"Good-night!"

"Yah-h-h!" said Hinde.

THE FIFTH CHAPTER

I

It had been exceedingly difficult for John to explain his defection to Mr. Clotworthy and to Tarleton. The only mitigating feature of the business was that the matter to be reported was only a concert. Both Mr. Clotworthy and Tarleton trembled when they thought of the calamity that would have befallen the paper if the forgotten report had been of a murder! They hardly dared contemplate such a devastating prospect. They invited John to think of another profession and wished him a very good morning. Tarleton quitted the room, leaving John alone with the editor, and as he went he showed such contempt towards him as is only shown towards the meanest of God's creatures.

"Well, where's your Ulster now?" said Mr. Clotworthy very sardonically when they were alone together.

"I know rightly I'm in the wrong from your point of view, Mr. Clotworthy," John replied, "but I'd do the same thing again if twenty jobs depended on it. It's hard to make you understand, and mebbe I'm a fool to try, but there it is. The minute I clapped my eyes on her, I forgot everything but her. I'm sorry I've lost my post here, but I'd be sorrier to have lost her. That's all about it. You were very kind to give me the work, and I wish I hadn't let your paper down the way Hinde says I did, but it's no good me pretending about it. I'd do it again if the same thing happened another time. That's the beginning and end of it all. I'd rather be her husband than edit a dozen papers like yours. I'd rather be her husband than be anything else in the world!"

"Well, good afternoon!" said Mr. Clotworthy.

"Good afternoon!" said John, turning away.

He moved towards the door of the room, feeling much less assurance than he had felt when he came into it.

"If you care to send in some articles for page six," Mr. Clotworthy added, "I'd be glad to see them!"

"Thank you," said John.

"Not at all," the editor replied without glancing up.

He left the Daily Sensation office, and walked towards Charing Cross. A queer depression had settled upon his spirits. Hinde had treated him as if he were mentally deficient, and he knew that Mr. Clotworthy and Tarleton, particularly Tarleton, regarded him with coldness, but he was not deeply affected by their disapproval. Nevertheless, depression possessed him. He felt that Eleanor would fail to keep her appointment. Quietly considered, there seemed to be no reason why she should keep it. She knew absolutely nothing of him except what he had told her while she leaned out of the window. How was she to know that he was speaking the truth? What right had he to expect her to pay any heed to him at all? Dreary, drizzling thoughts poured through his mind. He felt as certain that his novel would not be published as he felt that Eleanor would not be at the bookstall at Charing Cross station when he arrived there. The tragedy on which he was working had seemed to him to be a very marvellous play, but now he thought it was too poor to be worth finishing. He had been in London for what was quite a long time, but he had achieved nothing. He had not even written the music-hall sketch for the Creams. He had not earned a farthing during the time that he had been in London. All the exaltation which had filled him as he walked along the Bayswater Road on the previous night, with his mind full of Eleanor and love and starshine and moonlight and gleaming streets and trees hanging with mist and friendliness for all men, had gone clean out of him. Fleet Street was a dirty, ill-ventilated alley full of scuffling men and harassed women. London itself was a great angry thing, a place of distrust and contention, where no one ever offered a friendly greeting to a stranger. He would go to Charing Cross station and he would stand patiently in front of the bookstall, but Eleanor would not come to meet him. He would stand there, dumb and uncomplaining, and no one of the hurrying crowd of people would turn to him and say, "You're in trouble. I'm sorry!" They would neither know nor care. They would be too busy catching trains. He would stand there for an hour, for two hours ... until his legs began to ache with the pain of standing in one place for a long time ... and then, when it was apparent that waiting was useless and he had, perhaps, aroused the suspicions of policemen and railway porters concerning his purpose in loitering thus so persistently in front of the bookstall, he would go home in his misery to a contemptuous Hinde!...

II

And while these bitter thoughts poured through his mind, he entered Charing Cross station, and there in front of the bookstall was Eleanor Moore. The bitter thoughts poured out of his mind in a rapid flood. He felt so certain that his novel would be published that he could almost see it stacked on the bookstall behind Eleanor. He would finish the tragedy that week and in a short while England would be acclaiming him as a great dramatist!... He hurried towards her and held out his hand, and she shyly took it.

"Have you been here long?" he anxiously asked.

"No," she answered, "I've only just come!"

"Let's go and have some tea," he went on.

"I've had mine, thanks!..."

"Well, have some more. I've not had any!..."

"I don't think I can, thanks. I've really come to say that I can't!..."

"There's a little place near here," he interrupted hurriedly, "where they give you lovely home-made bread. I found it one day when I was wandering about. We'll just go there and talk about whatever you want to say. Give me that umbrella of yours!" He took it from her hand as he spoke. "This is the way," he said, leading her from the station. As they crossed the road, he took hold of her arm. "These streets are terribly dangerous," he said. "You never know what minute you're going to be run over!"

He still held her arm when they were safely on the pavement, but she contrived to free herself without making a point of doing so. He tried to bring her back to the mood in which they were when she leaned out of the window to listen to him ... "like Romeo and Juliet," he told himself ... but the congestion of the streets made such intimacies impossible. They were constantly being separated by the hurrying foot-passengers, and so they could only speak in short, dull sentences. He brought her at last to the quiet tea-shop where he ordered tea and home-made bread and honey!...

"Eleanor," he said, when the waitress had taken his order and had departed to fulfil it, "it's no good, you telling me that you can't go out with me. You must, my dear. I want to marry you!..."

"But it's absurd," she expostulated. "How can you possibly talk like that when we're such strangers to each other!"

"You're no stranger to me. I've loved you for two months now. I've hardly ever had you out of my mind. I was nearly demented mad when I lost you. I used to go and hang about that office of yours day after day in the hope that you'd come out!... And if ever I get the chance, I'll break that liftman's neck for him. He insulted me the day I asked him what office you were in. He called me a Nosey Parker!"

She laughed at him. "But that was right, wasn't it?" she said. "You wouldn't have him give information about me to any man who chooses to ask for it?"

"He should have known that I was all right. A child could have seen that I wasn't just playing the fool. But you're mebbe right. I'll think no more about him. Do you know what happened last night?"

"No."

He told her of his relationship with the Daily Sensation.

"Then you've lost your work?" she said.

He nodded his head, and they did not speak again for a few moments. The waitress had brought the tea and bread and honey, and they waited until she had gone.

"I'm so sorry," she said.

"It doesn't bother me," he replied. "I only told you to show you how much I love you. I'm not codding you, Eleanor. You matter so much to me that I'd sacrifice any job in the world for you. I told Clotworthy that ... he's the editor of the paper ... I told him I'd rather be your husband than have his job a hundred times over. And so I would. Will you marry me, Eleanor?"

"I've never met anyone like you before!..."

"I daresay you haven't but I'm not asking you about that. Will you marry me? We can fix the whole thing up in no time at all. I looked it up in a book this morning, and it says you can get married after three weeks' notice. If I give notice the morrow, we can be married in a month from to-day!"

"Oh, stop, stop," she said. "Your mind is running away with you. I spoke to you for the first time last night!..."

"Beg your pardon," he said, "you spoke to me the first day we met. I handed you your letter!..."

"Oh, but that doesn't count. That was nothing. I really only spoke to you last night, and I don't know you. I'm not in love with you ... no, please be sensible. How can I possibly love you when I don't know you!..."

"I love you, don't I?" he demanded.

"You say so!"

"Well, if I love you, you can love me, can't you. That's simple enough!"

She passed a cup of tea to him. "Do all Irishmen behave like this?" she said.

"I don't know and I don't care. It's the way I behave. I know my mind queer and quick, Eleanor, and when I want a thing, I don't need to go humming and hahhing to see whether I'm sure about it. I want you. I know that for a fact, and there's no need for me to argue about it. I'll not want you any more this day twelvemonth than I want you now, and I won't want you any less. Will you marry me?"

"No!"

"How long will it be before you will marry me, then?"

She threw her hands with a gesture of comical despair. "Really," she said, "you're unbelievable. You seem to think that I must want to marry you merely because you want to marry me. I take no interest whatever in you!..."

"No, but you will!"

She shrugged her shoulders. "It isn't any use talking," she said. "Your mind is made up!..."

"It is. I want to marry you, Eleanor, and I'm going to marry you. I have a lot to do in the world yet, but that's the first thing I've got to do, and I can't do anything else till I have done it. So you might as well make up your mind to it, and save a lot of time arguing about it when it's going to happen in the end!"

She pushed her cup away, and rose from her seat. "I'm going home," she said. "This conversation makes me feel dizzy!"

"There's no hurry," he exclaimed.

She spoke coldly and deliberately, "It's not a question of hurry," she replied. "It's a question of desire, I wish to go home. Your conversation bores and annoys me!"

"Why?"

"Because you treat me as if I were not human, and had no desires of my own. I'm to marry you, of whom I know absolutely nothing, merely because you want me to marry you. I don't know whether you are a gentleman or not. You have a very funny accent!..."

"What's wrong with my accent?" he demanded.

"I don't know. It's just funny. I've never heard an accent like that before, and so I can't tell whether you're a gentleman or not. If you were an Englishman, I should know at once, but it's different with Irish people. Your very queer manners may be quite the thing in Ireland!"

He put out his hand to her, but she drew back. "Sit down," he said. "Just for a minute or two till I talk to you. I'll let you go then!"

She hesitated. Then she did as he asked her. "Very well!" she said primly.

"Listen to me, Eleanor, I know very well that my behaviour is strange to you. It's strange to me. Till last night we'd never exchanged a dozen words. I know that. But I tell you this, if you live to be a hundred and have boys by the score, you'll never have a man that'll love you as I love you. I'm in earnest, Eleanor. I'm not codding you. I'm not trying to humbug you. I love you. I'm desperate in love with you!..."

She leant forward a little, moved by his sincerity. "But," she said, and then stopped as if unable to find words, adequate to her meaning.

"There's no buts about it," he replied. "I love you. I don't know why I love you, and I don't care whether I know or not. All I know is that the minute I saw you, I loved you. I wanted to see you again, and I schemed to make you talk to me!..."

"Yes, and very silly your schemes were. Asking me if I wanted the Graphic back again!..."

"You remember that, do you?" he asked.

"Well, it was so obvious and so stupid," she answered.

"Listen. Tell me this. Do you believe me when I tell you I love you? It's no use me telling you if you don't believe me!"

"It's so difficult to say!..."

"Do you believe me," he insisted. "Do I look like a man that would tell lies to a girl like you. Answer me that, now?"

She raised her eyes, and gazed very straightly at him. "No," she said; "I don't think you would. I ... I think you mean what you say!..."

"I do, Eleanor. As true as God's in heaven, I do. Will you not believe me?"

"But I don't love you," she burst out.

"Well, mebbe you don't. That's understandable!" he admitted.

"And the whole thing's so unusual," she protested.

"What does that matter? If I love you and you get to love me, does it matter about anything else? Have wit, woman, have wit!"

"Don't speak to me like that. You're very abrupt, Mr. MacDermott!..." "My name's John to you! Now, don't flare up again. You were nice and amenable a minute ago. You can stop like that. You and me are going to marry some time. The sooner the better. All I want you to do now, as you say you don't love me, is to give me a chance to make you love me. Come out with me for a walk ... or we'll go to a theatre, if you like! Anyway, let's be friends. I don't know anybody in this town except one man, and him and me's had a row over the head of the Daily Sensation!..." "Yes," she interrupted, "you've lost your work through your foolishness. What are you going to do now? It isn't very easy to get work." "I'll get it all right if I want it, I've enough money to keep me easy for a year without doing a hand's turn, and I daresay my mother and my Uncle William 'ud let me have more if I wanted it. I don't want to be on a paper much. I want to write books!" Her interest was restored. "Tell me about the book you've written. Is it printed yet?" she said. He told her of his work, and of the Creams and of Hinde. He told her, too, of his life in Ballyards. "Where do you come from?" he said. "Devonshire," she answered. "My father was rector of a village there until he died. Then mother and I lived in Exeter until she died!..." "You're alone then?" he asked. "Yes. My mother had an annuity. That stopped when she died. My cousin ... he's a doctor in Exeter ... settled up her affairs for me, and when everything was arranged, there was just enough money to pay for my secretarial training and keep me for a year. I trained for six months and then I went as a stop-gap to that office where you saw me. I'm in an office in Long Acre now—a motor place!" "And have you no friends here—relations, I mean?" "Some cousins. I don't often see them. And one or two people who knew father and mother!" "You're really alone then ... like me?" he said. "Yes," she answered. "Yes, I suppose I am!" He leant back in his chair. "It seems like the hand of God," he said, "bringing the two of us together!" "I wish," she said, "you wouldn't talk about God so much!"

III

When he went home that evening, he wrote to his mother. Dear Mother, he wrote, I've got acquainted with a girl here called Eleanor Moore, and I've made up my mind I'm going to marry her. She's greatly against it at present, but I daresay she'll change her mind.... There was more than that in the letter, but it is not necessary to repeat the remainder of it here. He also wrote to Eleanor. My dearest, the letter ran, I'm looking forward to meeting you again tomorrow night at the same place. I know you said you wouldn't meet me, but I'm hoping you'll change your mind. I'll be waiting for you anyway, and I'll wait till seven o'clock for you. Remember that, Eleanor! If you don't turn up, it'll be hard for you to sit in comfort and you thinking of me waiting for you. You'll never have the heart to refuse me, will you? We can have our tea together, and then go for a walk or a ride on a 'bus till dinner-time, and then, if you like, after we've had something to eat, we'll go to a theatre. Don't disappoint me, for I'm terribly in love with you. Yours only, John MacDermott. P. S. Don't be any later than you can help. I hate waiting about for people.

IV

She came, reluctantly so she said, to the bookstall at Charing Cross station, but only to tell him that she could not do as he wished her to do. She would take tea with him for this once, but it was useless to ask her to go for a walk with him or for a 'bus-ride either, and she certainly would not dine with him nor would she go to a theatre. Yet she went for a walk on the Embankment with him, and they paced up and down so long that she saw the force of his argument that she might as well have her dinner in town as go back to her club where the food would be tepid, if not actually cold, by the time she was ready to eat it. She need not go to a theatre unless she wished to do, but he could not help telling her that a great deal of praise had been given to a piece called Justice by a man called Galsworthy. Mebbe she would like to see it. She was not to imagine that he was forcing her to go to the theatre.... And so she went, and they sat together in the pit, hearing with difficulty because of the horrible acoustics of the Duke of York's Theatre; and when the play was over, he had to comfort her, for the fate of Falder had pained her. They climbed on to the top of a 'bus at Oxford Circus and were carried along Oxford Street to the Bayswater Road. They sat close together on the back seat of the 'bus, with a waterproofed apron over their knees because the night was damp and chilly; and as the 'bus drove along to Marble Arch they did not speak. The rain had ceased to fall before they quitted the theatre, but the streets were still wet, and John found himself again realising their beauty. Trees and hills and rivers in the country and flowers and young animals were beautiful, but until this moment he had never known that wet pavements and wooden or macadamised roads were beautiful, too, when the lamps were lit and the cold grey gleam of electric arcs or the soft, yellow, reluctant light of gas lamps fell upon them. He could see a long wet gleam stretching far ahead of him, past the Marble Arch and the darkness of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens into a region of which he knew nothing; and as he contemplated that loveliness, he remembered that the sight of tramlines shining at night had unaccountably moved him more than once. Once, at Ballyards, he had stood still for a few moments to look at the railway track glistening in the sunshine, and he remembered how puzzled he had been when, in some magazine, he had read a complaint of trains, that they marred the beauty of the fields. He had seen trains a long way off, moving towards him and sending up puffs of thick white smoke that trailed into thin strips of blown cloud, and had waited until the silence of the distant engine, broken once or twice by a shrill, sharp whistle, had become a stupendous noise, and the great machine, masterfully hauling its carriages behind it, had galloped past him, roaring and cheering and sending the debris swirling tempestuously about it! ... The sight of a train going at a great speed had always seemed to him to be a wonderful thing, but now he realised that it was more than wonderful, that it was actually beautiful.... He turned his head a little and looked past Eleanor to the Park. Little vague yellow lights flickered through the trees, all filmy with the evening mists, and he could smell the rich odour of wet earth. He looked at Eleanor and as he did so, they both smiled, and he realised that suddenly affection for him had come to life in her. Beneath the protection of the waterproofed apron, his hand sought for hers and held it. Half-heartedly she tried to withdraw her fingers from his grasp, but he would not let them go, and so she did not persist in her effort.

"Look!" he said, snuggling closer to her.

She turned towards the Park, and then, after a little while, turned back again. "I've always loved the Park," she said. "It's the most friendly thing in London!"

He urged his love for her again. He had seen affection for him in her eyes and had felt that her hand was not being firmly withdrawn from his.

"No, no," she protested, "don't let's talk about it any more. I don't love you!..."

"Well, marry me anyhow!"

Backwards and forwards their arguments passed, returning always to that point: But I don't love you! Well, marry me anyhow!...

He took her to the door of her club, and for a while, they stood at the foot of the steps talking of the play they had seen that evening and of his love for her.

"It's no good," she said, trying to leave him, but unable to do so because he had taken hold of her hand and would not release it.

"Don't go in yet," he pleaded. "Wait a wee while longer!"

"What's the use?" she exclaimed.

"You'll meet me again to-morrow?..."

"I can't meet you everynight!"

"Why not?" he demanded. "Tell me why not!"

"Well... well, because I can't. It's ridiculous. You're so absurd. You keep on saying the same thing over and over... and it's so silly. If I were in love with you, I might go out with you every evening, but!..."

"Do you like me!"

"I don't know. I... I suppose I must or I wouldn't go out with you at all. Really, I'm sorry for you!..."

"Well, if you're sorry for me, come out with me tomorrow night. We'll have our dinner in town again!"

"No, no! Don't you understand, Mr. MacDermott!..."

"John, John, John!" he said.

"I can't call you by your Christian name!..."

"Why not? I call you by yours, don't I?"

"Yes, but you oughtn't to. I've asked you not to call me Eleanor, but it doesn't seem to be any good asking you to do anything that you don't want to do. But even you must understand that I can't let you take me out every evening. I can't let you pay for things!..."

"Oh," he said, as if his mind were illuminated. "Is that your trouble? We can soon settle that. If you won't let me pay for things, pay for them yourself ... only let me be with you when you're doing it. You have to have food, haven't you? Well, so have I. We have no friends in London that matter to us, and you like me ... you admitted it yourself ... and I love you ... so why shouldn't we have our meals together even, if you do pay for your own food?"

"Of course, it sounds all right as you put it," she answered, "but it isn't all right. I can't explain things. I don't know how to explain them, but I know about them all the same. And I know it isn't all right. You'll begin to think I'm in love with you!..."

"I hope you will be, but you'll never be certain unless you see me fair and often. You'll come again to-morrow, won't you?"

"Oh, good-night," she said impatiently, suddenly breaking from him. "You're like a baby. You think you've only got to keep on asking for things and people will get tired of saying 'No!' I won't go out with you again. You make me feel tired and cross!..."

"Well, if you won't meet me to-morrow night, will you meet me the next night?"

"No!"

"Then will you stay a wee while longer now?"

She turned on the top step and looked at him, and he saw with joy that the anger had gone out of her eyes and that she was smiling at him. "You really are!..." she said, and then she stopped. He waited for her to go on, but she shrugged her shoulders and said only, "I don't know! It simply isn't any good talking to you!"

He went up the steps and stood beside her and took hold of her hand. "Let me kiss you, Eleanor," he said.

She started away from him. "No, of course I won't!"

"Just once!"

"No!"

"Well, why not? You've let me hold your hand. What's the difference?"

"There's every difference. Besides I didn't let you hold my hand. You took it. I couldn't prevent you. You're so rough!..."

"No, my dear, not rough. Not really rough. Eleanor, just once!..."

"No," she said again, this time speaking so loudly that she startled herself. "Please go away. I shan't go out with you again. I was silly to go out with you at all. You don't know how to behave!..."

She broke off abruptly and turned to open the door, but she had difficulty with the key because of her anger.

"Let me open it for you," he said, taking the key from her hand and inserting it in the lock. "There!" he added, when the door was open.

"Thank you," she said, taking the key from him. "Good-night!"

"Good-night, Eleanor!" he replied very softly.

They did not move. She stood with, her hand on the door and he stood on the top step and gazed at her.

"Well—good-night," she said again.

"Dear Eleanor," he replied. "My dear Eleanor!"

She gulped a little. "Goo—good-night!" she said.

"I love you, my dear, so much. I shall never love anyone as I love you. I have never loved anybody else but you, never, never!... Well, I thought I loved someone else, but I didn't!..."

"It's no good," she began, but he interrupted her.

"Well, meet me again to-morrow night at the same place!..."

"No, I won't!"

"At five o'clock. I'll be there before you ... long before you. You'll meet me, won't you?"

"No."

"Please, Eleanor!"

She hesitated. Then she said, "Oh, very well, then! But it'll be the last time. Good-night!"

She pushed the door to, but before she could close it, he whispered "Good-night, my darling!" to her, and then the door was between them.

He waited until he saw the flash of the light in her room, and hoped that she would come to the window; but she did not do so, and after a while he went away.

V

Up in her room, she was staring at her reflection in the mirror, while he was waiting below on the pavement for her to come to the window, and as he walked away, she began to talk to the angry, baffled girl she saw before her.

"I won't marry him," she said. "I won't marry him. I don't love him. I don't even like him. I won't marry him!..."

THE SIXTH CHAPTER

I

Now that he had found Eleanor again, he was able to settle down to work. It was necessary, he told himself, that he should have some substantial achievements behind him before she and he were married, particularly as he had lost his employment on the Daily Sensation. The money he possessed would not last for ever and he could hardly hope to sponge on his Uncle William ... even if he were inclined to do so ... for the rest of his life. He must earn money by his own work and earn it quickly. In one way, it was a good thing that he had lost his work on the newspaper ... for he would have all the more time to write his tragedy. The sketch for the Creams had been hurriedly finished and posted to them at a music-hall in Scotland where they were playing, so Cream wrote in acknowledging the MS., to "enormous business. Dolly fetching 'em every time!..." Two pounds per week, John told himself, would pay for the rent and some of the food until he was able to earn large sums of money by his serious plays. The tragedy would establish him. It would not make a fortune for him, for tragedians did not make fortunes, but it would make his name known, and Hinde had assured him that a man with a known name could easily earn a reasonable livelihood as an occasional contributor to the newspapers. It was Hinde who had proposed the subject of the tragedy to him. For years he had dallied with the notion of writing it himself, he said, but now he knew that he would never write anything but newspaper stuff!...

"Do you know anything about St. Patrick?" he said to John.

"A wee bit. Not much."

"Well, you know he was a slave before he was a saint?" John nodded his head. "A man called Milchu," Hinde continued, "was his master. An Ulsterman. He was the chieftain of a clan that spread over Down and Antrim. Our country. He had Patrick for six years, and then he lost him. Patrick escaped. He returned to Ireland as a missionary and sent word to Milchu that he had come to convert him to Christianity, and Milchu sent word back that he'd see him damned first. Milchu wasn't going to be converted by his slave. No fear. And he destroyed himself ... set fire to his belongings and perished in his own flames rather than have it said that an Ulster chieftain was converted by his own slave. That's a great theme for a tragedy. I suppose you're a Christian, Mac?"

"I am. I'm a Presbyterian!"

"Oh, well, you won't see the tragedy of it as well as I see it. Think of a slave trying to convert a free man to a slave religion. There's a tragedy for you!..."

"I don't understand you," said John.

"No? Well, it doesn't matter. There's a theme for you to write about. A free man killing himself rather than be conquered by a slave! Of course, the real tragedy is that St. Patrick converted the rest of Ireland to Christianity! ... Milchu escaped: the others surrendered. It wasn't the English that beat the Irish, Mac. They were beaten before ever the English put their feet on Irish ground. St. Patrick beat them. The slave made slaves of them!..."

"Is that what you call Christians?" John indignantly demanded. "Slaves?"

Hinde shrugged his shoulders. "The Irish people are the most Christian people on earth," he said. "That's all!..."

They put the subject away from them, because they felt that if they did not do so, there must be antagonism between them. But John determined that he would write a play about St. Patrick and the Pagan Milchu. Hinde lent him his ticket for the London Library, and he spent his mornings reading biographies of the saint: Todd and Whitley, Stokes and Zimmer and Professor J. B. Bury; and accounts of the ancient Irish church. Slowly there came into his mind a picture of the saint that was not very like the picture he had known before and was very different from Hinde's conception of the relationship between Milchu and St. Patrick. To him, the wonderful thing was that the slave had triumphed over his owner. Milchu, in his conception, had not been sufficiently manly to stand before Patrick and contend with him, and to own himself the inferior of the two. He had run away from St. Patrick! With that conception of the two men in his mind, he began to write his play.

"You're wrong" said Hinde. "Milchu was a gentleman and Patrick was a slave!..."

"The son of a magistrate!" John indignantly interrupted.

"A lawyer's son!" Hinde sneered. "And Milchu, being a gentleman, would not be governed by a slave. Think of an Irish gentleman being governed by an Irish peasant!" There was a wry look on his face, "And a little common Irish priest to govern a little common Irish peasant!... They won't get gentlemen to live in a land like that!"

"I'm a peasant," said John. "There's not much difference between a shopkeeper and a peasant!..."

"I'm talking of minds," said Hinde, "not of positions. I believe in making peasants comfortable and secure, but I believe also in keeping them in their place. I'm one of the world's Milchus, Mac. I'd rather set fire to myself than submit to my inferiors!"

John sat in his chair in silence for a few moments, trying to understand Hinde's argument. "Then why do you write for papers like the Daily Sensation?" he asked at last.

Hinde winced. "I suppose because I'm not enough of a Milchu," he replied.

II

John had met Eleanor at their customary trysting-place, in front of the bookstall at Charing Cross Road, and they had walked along the Embankment towards Blackfriars. The theme of his tragedy was very present in his mind and he told the story to Eleanor as they walked along the side of the river in the glowing dusk. They stood for a while, with their elbows resting on the stone balustrade, and looked down on the dark tide beneath them. The great, grim arches of Waterloo Bridge, made melancholy by the lemon-coloured light of the lamps which surmounted them, cast big, black shadows on the water. They could hear little lapping waves splashing against the pillars, and presently a tug went swiftly down to the Pool. Neither of them spoke. Behind them the tramcars went whirring by, and once when John looked round, he felt as if he must cry because of the beauty of these swift caravans of light, gliding easily through the misty darkness of a London night. He had turned quickly again to contemplate the river, and as he did so, Eleanor stirred a little, moving more closely to him, demanding, so it seemed, his comfort and protection, and instantly he put his arm about her and drew her tightly to him. He did not care whether anyone saw them or not. It was sufficient for him that in her apprehension she had turned to him. Both his arms were about her, and his lips were on her lips. "Dear Eleanor," he said....

Then she released herself from his embrace. "I felt frightened," she said. "I don't know why. It's so lovely to-night ... and yet I felt frightened!"

"Will we go?" he asked.

"Yes!"

He put his arm in hers and she did not resist him. "You're my sweetheart now, aren't you, Eleanor?" he whispered to her, as they walked along towards Westminster.

She did not answer.

"My dear sweetheart," he went on, "and presently you'll be my dear wife, and we'll have a little house somewhere, and we'll love each other for ever and ever. Won't we?" He pressed her arm in his. "Won't we, Eleanor? Every night when I come home from work and we have had our supper, we'll go for a walk like this, and I'll talk and you'll listen, and we'll be very happy, and we'll never be lonely again. Oh, I pity the poor men who don't know you, Eleanor!..."

She smiled up at him, but still she did not speak.

"I couldn't have believed I should be so happy as I am," he continued. "I wonder if it's right for one woman to have so much power over a man ... to be able to make him happy or miserable just as the fancy takes her ... but I don't care whether it's right or wrong. I'm content so long as I have you. We're going to be married, aren't we, Eleanor? Aren't we?"

He stopped and turned her round so that they were facing each other.

"Aren't we, Eleanor?" he repeated.

"Don't let's talk about that," she murmured. "I'm so happy to-night, and I don't want to think about what's past or what's to come. I only want to be happy now!"

"With me?"

"Yes," she replied.

"Then you do love me?..."

"I don't know. I can't tell. But I'm frightfully happy. I expect I shall feel that I've made a fool of myself ... in the morning, but just now I don't care whether I'm fool or not. I'm like you. I'm content. Let's go on walking!"

They turned back at Boadicea's statue, and when they were in the shadows again, he took his arm from hers and put it about her waist. "Let's pretend there's nobody else here but us," he said.

III

They dined in Soho, and when they had finished their meal, they walked to Oxford Circus and once more climbed to the top of a 'bus that would take them along the Bayswater Road.

"You must like me, Eleanor," he said to her, as they sat huddled together on the back seat, "or you wouldn't come out with me as you do!"

"Yes," she answered, "I think I do like you. It seems odd that I should like you, and I made up my mind that I shouldn't ever like you. But I do. You're very likeable, really. It's because you're so silly, I suppose. And so persistent!"

"Then why can't we get married, my dear? Isn't it sickening for you to be living in that club and me to be living at Brixton, when we might be living in our own home? I hate this beastly separation every night. Let's get married, Eleanor!"

"I suppose we will in the end," she said, "but I don't feel like getting married to you. After all, John!..." She called him by his Christian name now. "After all, John, if I were to marry you now, when we know so little of each other, it would be very poor fun for me, if you discovered after we were married that you did not care for me as much as you imagined. And suppose I never fell in love with you?"

"Yes," he said gloomily.

"How awful!"

"But I'd have you. I'd have the comfort of being your husband and of having you for my wife!"

"It mightn't be a comfort. Oh, no, it's too risky, John. We must wait. We must know more of each other!..."

"Will you get engaged to me then?" he suggested.

"But that's a promise. No. Let's just go on as we are now, being friends and meeting sometimes!"

"Supposing we were engaged without anybody knowing about it?" he said. "Would that do?"

"I don't want either of us to be bound ... not yet. Oh, not yet. Do be sensible, John!"

"I am sensible. I know that I want to marry you. That's sensible, isn't it?"

"Yes, I suppose it is," she replied, laughing.

"Well, isn't it sensible to want to be sensible as soon as possible? You needn't laugh. I mean it. It's just foolishness to be going on like this. I'm as sensible as anybody, and I can't see any sense in our not marrying at once. Get engaged to me for a while anyway!"

"But what would be the good of that?"

"All the good in the world. I just want the comfort of knowing there's a chance of you marrying me!"

"It seems so unsatisfactory to me ... and so risky!" she protested.

"I'm willing to take the risk. I'll wait as long as you like."

"I'll think about it. But if I do get engaged to you, we won't get married for a long time!"

"How long?"

"Oh, a long time. A very long time."

"What do you mean? Six months?"

"No, years. Oh, five years, perhaps!"

"My God Almighty!" he said. "Do you know what you're saying! Five years? We might all be dead and buried long before then. What age will I be in five years time. Oh, wheesht with you, Eleanor, and don't be talking such balderdash. Five years! Holy O!"

"What does 'Holy O!' mean?" she demanded.

"I don't know. It's just a thing to say when you can't think of anything else. Five years! Five minutes is more like it!"

"We're too young to be married yet, and in five years' time we'll know each other much better!"

"I should think so, too," he said. "It's a lifetime, woman! Whatever put that idea into your head!"

"If I get engaged to you at all," she replied, "and I'm not sure that I will, it'll be for five years or not at all. You may be willing to take risks, but I'm not. Risks are all right for men ... they can afford to take them ... but women can't. If you don't agree to that, you'll have to give up the idea altogether!"

"Then you'll get engaged to me?"

"No, I didn't say that. I said that if I got engaged to you at all, it would be for five years. I'm not sure that I shall get engaged to you. I don't think I really like you. I think I'd just get tired of saying 'No' to you!..." She could see that his face had become glum, and she hurriedly reassured him. "Yes, I do like you! I like you quite well ... but I'm not going to marry you ... if I ever marry you ... till I'm sure about you!"

They descended from the 'bus and walked towards her club.

"Anyway," he said, "I consider myself engaged to you. And I'll buy you a ring the morrow morning!"

"Indeed, you won't," she said.

"Indeed, I will," he replied. "I'll have it handy for the time you agree to have me!"

"You won't be able to get one until you know the size, and I won't tell you that!..."

They wrangled on the doorstep until it was late, but she would not yield to him. He could consider himself engaged to her if he liked ... she could not prevent him from considering anything he chose to consider ... but she would not consider herself engaged to him nor would she wear a ring until she was sure of her feelings.

He kissed her when they parted, and she did not resist him. It was useless to try to resist an accomplished thing. His childlike insistence both attracted and irritated her. She felt drawn to him because his mind seemed to be so completely centred upon her, and repelled by him because his own wishes appeared to be the only considerations he had. She could not decide whether the love he had for her ... and she believed that he loved her ... was complete devotion or complete selfishness. Love at first sight was a perfectly credible, though unusual thing. It was possible that he had fallen in love with her ... her vanity was pleased by the thought that he had done so ... but she certainly had not fallen in love with him either at first or at second sight. She was not in love with him now. She felt certain of that. He was likeable and kind and a very comforting person, and there was much more pleasure to be had from a walk with him than from an evening spent in the club!... Ugh, that club, that dreadful conglomeration of isolated women! Oh, oh, oh! She gave little shudders as she reflected on her club-mates. Most of them were girls like herself, working as secretaries either in offices or in other places ... to medical men or writers ... and, like her, they had few friends in London. Their homes were in the country. Among them were a number of aimless spinsters, subsisting sparely on private means ... poor, wilting women without occupation or interest. They were of an earlier generation than Eleanor, the generation which was too genteel to work for its living, and they had survived their friends and their families and were left high and dry, without any obvious excuse for existing, among young women who were profoundly contemptuous of a woman who could not earn a living for herself. They sat about in the drawing-room and sizzled! They knew exactly at what hour this girl came in on Monday night, and at exactly what hour the other girl came in on Tuesday night. They whispered things to each other! They thought it was very peculiar behaviour for a girl to come back to the club alone with a man at twelve o'clock ... "midnight, my dear!" they would say, as if "midnight" had a more terrible sound than twelve o'clock ... and they were certain that Miss Dilldall's parents should be informed of the fact that on Saturday evening she went off in a taxi-cab with a man who was wearing dress-clothes and a gibus-hat. Miss Dilldall publicly boasted of the fact that she had smoked a cigarette in a restaurant in Soho!...

Ugh! Even if John were selfish, he was preferable to these drab women, these pitiful females herded together. Women in the mass were very displeasing to look at, and they frightened you. They turned down the corners of their mouths and looked coldly and condemningly at you. It was extraordinary how unanimous the girls were in their dislike of working under women. The woman in authority was more hateful to women even than to men. Eleanor had done some work for an advanced woman, an eminent suffragette, who had crept about the house in rubber-soled shoes so that she might come unexpectedly into the room where Eleanor was working and assure herself that she was getting value for her money!... She was always spying and sneaking round! What an experience that had been! How impossible it had been to work with that woman! A girl in the club had worked for a royal princess ... not at all an advanced woman ... and she, too, had had to seek for employment under a man. The princess was a foolish, spoilt, utterly incompetent person who did not know her own mind for two consecutive hours. She sneaked around, too, and spied!... All these women in authority seemed to spend half their day peering through keyholes.... Perhaps it was because the club was such a dingy, cheerless hole that she liked to go out with John. The food was meagre and poor in quality and vilely cooked. Somehow, women living together seemed unable to feed themselves decently. Miss Dilldall, gay little woman of the world, had solemnly proposed that a man should be hired to growse about the meals. "We'll never get good food in this damned compound," she said, "until we get some men into it. Bringing them as guests isn't any good. They're too polite to their hostesses to say anything, but I'm sure that every man who has a meal in this place goes away convinced that the food we are content to eat is a strong argument against votes for women! And so it is. What a hole!"

"That's really why I like going out with him," Eleanor confided to her reflection in the looking-glass as she brushed her hair. "It's really to escape from this dreary club! But I can't marry him for that reason. It wouldn't be fair to him. It would be much less fair to me. Of course, I like him!... Oh, no! No, no!..."

IV

Lizzie was in the hall when John let himself into the house that night.

"Hilloa," he said, "not gone to bed yet?"

"I never 'ave time to go to bed," she said. "'Ow can I get any sleep when I 'ave to look after men! You an' Mr. 'Inde!" She came nearer to him. "You'll get a bit of a surprise when you go upstairs," she said very knowingly.

"Me!"

She nodded her head and giggled.

"What sort of a surprise?" he demanded.

"You'll see when you get upstairs. It's been, waitin' for you 'ere since seven o'clock!..."

"Seven o'clock! What is it? A parcel?"

Lizzie could not control her laughter when he said "parcel." "Ow!" she giggled. "Ow, dear, ow, dear! A parcel! Ow, yes, it's a parcel all right! You'll see when you get up!..."

He began to mount the stairs. "You're an awful fool, Lizzie," he said crossly, leaning over the banisters.

"Losin' your temper, eih?" she replied, bolting the street door.

He hurried up to the sitting-room and as he climbed the flight of stairs that led directly to it, Hinde called out to him, "Is that you, Mac?"

"Yes," he answered.

Hinde came to the door and opened it fully. "There's someone here to see you," he said.

"To see me! At this hour?"

He entered the room as he spoke. His mother was sitting in front of the fire.

"Mother!" he exclaimed, remembering just in time not to say "Ma!" which would have sounded very childish in front of Hinde.

"This is a nice hour of the night to be coming home," she said, trying to speak severely, but she could not maintain the severity in her voice, for his arms were about her and she was hugging him.

"You never told me you were coming," he said. "What brought you over?"

"I've come to see this girl you've got hold of," she answered.

V

"But why didn't you tell me you were coming?" he asked. "I'd have met you at the station!"

She ignored his question. "This is a terrible town," she said. "Mr. Hinde says there's near twice as many people in this place as there is in the whole of Ireland. How in the earthly world do they manage to get about their business?"

"Oh, quite easily," he said nonchalantly, and as he spoke he realised that he had come to be a Londoner.

"When I got out at the station," Mrs. MacDermott continued, "I called a porter and said to him, 'Just put that bag on your shoulder and carry it for me!' 'Where to, ma'am?' says he, and then I gave him your address. I thought the man 'ud drop down dead. 'Is it far?' says I. 'Far!' says he. 'It's miles!' By all I can make out, John, you live as far from the station as Millreagh is from Ballyards. I had to come here in one of them things that runs without horses ... what do you call them?"

"Taxi-cabs!"

"That's the name. It's a demented mad place this. Such traffic! Worse nor Belfast on the fair-day!"

"It's like that every day, Mrs. MacDermott!" Hinde interjected.

"What bothers me," she went on, "is how ever you get to know your neighbours!"

"We don't get to know them," Hinde replied. "I've lived in this house for several years, but I don't know the names of the people on either side of it!"

"My God," said Mrs. MacDermott, "what sort of people are you at all! Are you all fell out with each other?"

"No. We're just not interested!"

"I wouldn't live in this place for the wide world," she exclaimed. "And you," she continued turning to her son, "could come here where you know nobody from a place where you knew everybody. The world's queer! What was that water I passed on the way out?..."

"Water!"

"Aye. We went over it on a bridge!"

"Oh, the river!"

"What river!" she said.

"Why, the Thames, of course!"

"Is that what you call it?"

Hinde smiled at John. "So you've learned to call it the river, have you? Mrs. Hinde, in this town we always talk as if there were only one river in the world. A Londoner always says he's going up the river or down the river or on the river. He always speaks of it as the river. He never speaks of it as the Thames. In Belfast, you speak of the Lagan ... never of the river. The same in Dublin. They speak of the Liffey ... never of the river. John's become a Londoner. He knows the proper way to speak of the Thames!"

"London seems to be full of very conceited and unneighbourly people," Mrs. MacDermott said.

John demanded information of his mother. How were Uncle William and Mr. Cairnduff and the minister and Willie Logan?...

"His wife's got a child," Mrs. MacDermott replied severely.

"A boy or a girl?"

"A boy, and the spit of his father, God help him. Thon lad Logan'll come to no good. Aggie's courting hard. Some fellow from Belfast that travels in drapery. She told me to remember her to you!"

"Thank you, mother!"

Hinde rose to leave them. "You'll have a lot to say to each other, and I'm tired," he explained, as he went off to bed.

"I like that man," said Mrs. MacDermott when he had gone. "And now tell me about this girl you've got. Are you in earnest?"

"Yes, ma!" John answered, using the word "ma," now that he was alone with his mother.

"Will she have you?"

"I hope so. She hasn't said definitely yet, but I think she will!"

"Who is she? Moore you said her name was. That's an Irish name!"

"But she's not Irish. She's English. Her father was a clergyman, but he's dead. So is her mother. She has hardly any friends!"

"Does she keep herself?"

"Yes, ma. She works in a motor-place ... in the office, typing letters. She's an awful nice girl, ma! I'm just doting on her, so I am!"

"Do you like her better nor that Belfast girl that married the peeler?..."

"Och, that one," John laughed. "I never think of her now ... never for a minute. Eleanor's the one I think about!"

"Are you sure of yourself?..."

"As sure as God's in heaven, ma!"

"Oh, yes, we know all about that, but are you sure you're sure? You were queerly set on that Belfast girl, you know!"

He pledged himself as convincingly as he could to Eleanor, and told his mother that he could never be happy without her.

"And how do you propose to keep her?" she said, when he had finished.

"Work for her, of course!"

"How much have you earned since you came here?"

"Nothing!"

"And you've no work fornent you?"

"No, not at the minute. I had a job, but I lost it!"

He gave an account of his relationship with the Daily Sensation.

"You'll not be able to buy much with that amount of work," she interrupted.

He told her of the sketch for the Creams and of the tragedy of St. Patrick.

"What's the use of writing about him," she said. "Sure, he's been dead this long while back!"

He did not attempt to make her understand. "And then there's the novel I wrote when I was at home," he concluded.

"But you've heard nothing of it yet. As far as I can see you've done little here that you couldn't have done at home!"

"Oh, yes I have. I've learned a great deal more than I could ever have learned in Ballyards. And I've met Eleanor!"

"H'm!" she said, rising from her seat. "I'm going to my bed now. That girl Lizzie seems a good-natured sort of a soul. Where does Eleanor live?"

"Oh, a long way from here!..."

"Give me her address, will you?"

"Yes, ma, but why?"

"I'm going to see her the morrow!"

He had to explain that Eleanor could not be seen in the day-time because of her employment, and he proposed that his mother should go with him in the evening to meet her at the bookstall at Charing Cross station.

"Very well," she said as she kissed him, "Good-night!"

THE SEVENTH CHAPTER

I

Mrs. MacDermott had remained in London for a week. John, eager to show the sights to her, had tried to persuade her to stay for a longer period, but she was obstinate in her determination to return to Ireland at the end of the week. "I don't like the place," she said; "it's not neighbourly!" She repeated this objection so frequently that John began for the first time in his life to understand something of his mother's point of view. He remembered how she had insisted upon the fact that the MacDermotts had lived over the shop in Ballyards for several generations; and now, with her repetition of the statement that London was an unneighbourly town, he realised that Ballyards in her mind was a place of kinsmen, that the people of Ballyards were members of one family. She was horrified when she discovered that Hinde had been stating the bare truth when he said that he had lived in Miss Squibb's house for several years, but still was ignorant of the names of his neighbours. Miss Squibb had told her that people in London made a habit of taking a house on a three-years' lease. "When it expires, they go somewhere else," she had said. Miss Squibb had never heard of a family that had lived in the same house in London for several generations. She did not think it was a nice idea, that. She liked "chynge" herself, and was sorry she could not afford to get as much of it as she would like to have.

"I do not understand the people in this place," Mrs. MacDermott had complained to Hinde. "They've no feeling for anything. They don't love their homes!..."

But although she had stayed in London for a week only, she had seen much of Eleanor Moore in that time. It had not occurred to John, until the moment his mother and he entered Charing Cross station, that Mrs. MacDermott and Eleanor might not like each other. He imagined that his mother must like Eleanor simply because he liked her, but as he held a swing-door open so that his mother might pass through, a sudden dubiety took possession of him and he became full of alarm. Supposing they did not care for each other?... The doubt had hardly time to enter his mind when it was resolved for him. Eleanor arrived at the bookstall almost simultaneously with themselves. (It struck him then that Eleanor was a remarkably punctual girl.) "This is my mother, Eleanor!" he had said, and stood anxiously by to watch their greeting. The old woman and the girl regarded each other for a moment, and then Mrs. MacDermott had taken Eleanor's outstretched hand and had drawn her to her and had kissed her; and John's dubiety disappeared from his mind. They had dined together in Soho that night, but Mrs. MacDermott had not enjoyed the meal. The number of diners and the clatter of dishes and knives and the foreign look and the foreign language of the waiters disconcerted her and made her feel as if she were a stranger. Above all else in the world, Mrs. MacDermott hated to feel like a stranger! She demanded familiar surroundings and faces, and was unhappy when she found herself without recognition. The menu made her suspicious of the food because it was written in French. She distrusted foreigners. London appeared to be full of all sorts of people from all parts of the world. Never in her life had she seen so many black men as she had seen in London that day. John had taken her to St. Paul's Cathedral in the afternoon and had shown her the place where Queen Victoria returned thanks to Almighty God for her Diamond Jubilee ... and there, standing on the very steps of a Christian church, was a Chinaman! There were no Chinamen in Ballyards, thank God, nor were there any black men either. She realised, of course, that God had made black men and Chinamen and every other sort of men, but she wished that they would stay in the land in which God had put them and would not go trapesing about the world!...

"What about us, then?" said John. "We don't stay in the one place!"

"I know that," she replied. "That's what's wrong with the world. Everyone should stay in his own country!"

The dinner had not entirely pleased John. Somehow, in a way that he could not understand, he found himself being edged out of the conversation, not altogether, but as a principal. His mother and Eleanor addressed each other primarily; they only addressed him now and then and in a way that seemed to indicate that they had suddenly remembered his presence and were afraid he might feel hurt at being left out of their talk. He was glad, of course, that his mother and Eleanor were getting on so well together, but after all he was in charge of this affair.... When his mother proposed to Eleanor that they should meet on the following evening and go somewhere for a quiet talk, he could hardly believe his ears.

"But what about me?" he said.

"Oh, you! You'll do rightly!" his mother replied.

"But!..."

"You can come and bring me home from wherever we go," Mrs. MacDermott continued.

Eleanor had suggested that Mrs. MacDermott should meet her at the bookstall and go to her club from which John would fetch her at ten o'clock.

"That'll do nicely, Eleanor!" Mrs. MacDermott said.

John hardly noticed that his mother had called Eleanor by her Christian name: it seemed natural that she should do so; but he was vaguely disturbed by the arrangement that had just been made.

"I wonder what she's up to?" he said to himself as he moodily examined his mother's face.

He sat back in his chair and listened while Eleanor and his mother talked together. He was not accustomed to taking a subsidiary part in discussions and he greatly disliked his present position, but he could not think of any way of altering it.

"Do you like living in London?" Mrs. MacDermott had suddenly said to Eleanor.

"No, I hate it," Eleanor vehemently answered.

"Then why do you stay?" Mrs. MacDermott continued.

"I have to. A girl gets better-paid work in London than in the provinces. That's the only reason!"

"Would you rather live in the country, then?"

"Yes!" Eleanor said.

"I wonder would you like Ballyards!" Mrs. MacDermott said almost as if she were speaking to herself. Then she began to talk of something else.

II

He had taken his mother to Charing Cross station on the following day, hoping that they would relent and allow him to go to Eleanor's club with them, but neither of them made any sign of relenting. His mother, indeed, turned to him immediately after Eleanor had arrived and said, "Well, we'll say 'Good-bye' for the present, John. We'll expect you at ten!" and very sulkily he had departed from them. He saw Eleanor lead his mother out of the station. She had taken hold of Mrs. MacDermott's arm and drawn it into hers, and linked thus, they had gone out, but neither of them had turned to look back at him. He had not known how to fill in the time between then and ten o'clock ... whether to go to a theatre or walk about the streets ... and had ended by spinning out his dinner-time as long as possible, and then walking from Soho to Eleanor's club. He had arrived there before ten o'clock, but they allowed him to sit with them!... He had an overwhelming sense of being allowed to do so. Suddenly and unaccountably all his power had gone from him, his instinctive insistence upon his own will, his immediate assumption that what he desired must be acceptable to others and his complete indifference to whether what he desired was acceptable or not to others... suddenly and unaccountably these things had gone from him and he was submitting to the will of his mother and of Eleanor. His mother's conversation, too, had been displeasing to him. She talked of Ballyards and of the shop all the time. She talked of the prosperity of the business and of the respect in which the MacDermotts were held in their town. Mr. Hinde had told her of the harsh conditions in which journalists and writers had to work, particularly the journalists. They had no settled life... they went here, there and everywhere, but their wives stayed always in the one place... and sometimes money was not easily obtainable. Anything might happen to put a journalist out of employment!...

"But I don't want to be a journalist, mother!" John had testily interrupted. "I want to write books and plays!"

"That's even worse." she had said. "It takes a man years and years before he can earn a living out of books. Mr. Hinde told me that!..."

"He seems to have told you a fearful lot," John sarcastically exclaimed.

"I asked him a lot," Mrs. MacDermott replied. "If you ever get that book of yours printed at all, he says, you'll not get more nor thirty pounds for it, if you get that much. And there's little hope of you making your fortune with the tragedy you're wasting your time over. Now, your Uncle William has a big turnover in the shop!..."

"I daresay he has," John snapped, "but I'm not interested in the shop, and I am interested in books!"

"Oh, well," Mrs. MacDermott murmured, "It's nice to have work that takes your fancy, but if you get married I'm thinking your wife'll have a poor job of it making ends meet on the amount of interest you take in your work, if that's all the reward you get for it. You were a year writing that story of yours, and you haven't had a penny-farthing for it yet. However, you know best what suits you. I suppose it's time we were thinking about the road!" She rose as she spoke, and Eleanor rose too. "Come up to my room," Eleanor said, "and we'll get your things!"

They left John sitting in the cheerless room. "That's a queer way for her to be talking," he said to himself. "Making little of me like that!"

He maintained a sulky manner towards his mother as they returned to Brixton, but Mrs. MacDermott paid no heed to him.

"Fancy having to go all this way to see your girl," she said, as they climbed the steps of Miss Squibb's house. "In Ballyards you'd only have to go round the corner!"

"I daresay," he replied, "but you wouldn't find Eleanor's match there if you went!"

"No," she agreed. "Eleanor's a fine girl. I like her queer and well. She was very interested to hear about Ballyards and the shop. Very interested!"

She turned to him at the top of the stairs.

"Good-night, son," she said. "I'm away to my bed. I'm tired!"

She put her arms round him. "You're a queer headstrong wee fellow," she said. "Queer and headstrong! Good-night, son!"

"Good-night, ma!" he replied as he kissed her.

He held her for a moment. "I can't make out what you and Eleanor had to talk about," he said. "What were you talking about?"

"Oh, nothing!" she replied. "Just about things that interest women. You wouldn't be bothered with such talk. And you know, son, women likes to have a wee crack together when there's no men about. It's just a wee comfort to them. Good-night!"

"Good-night, ma!"

She went up the stairs, and when she had disappeared round the bend of the bannisters, John went into the sitting-room. There was a postal packet for him lying on the table. It contained the MS. of his novel. Messrs. Hatchway and Seldon informed him that they had read his story with great interest, but they were sorry to have to inform him that conditions of the publishing trade at present were such that they saw no hope of a return for the money they would be obliged to spend on the book. They would esteem it a favour if he would permit them to see future work of his and they begged to remain his faithfully per pro Hatchway and Selden, J.P.T.

"Asses!" he said, as he wrapped the MS. up again in the very paper in which Messrs. Hatchway and Selden had returned it to him. Then he tied the parcel securely and addressed it to Messrs. Gooden and Knight, who, he told himself, were much better publishers than Messrs. Hatchway and Selden. He would post it in the morning.

III

And then a queer thing happened to him. He had been about to extinguish the light and go to bed, when he remembered that the parcel of MS. was lying on the table and that his mother would see it in the morning. She would probably ask questions about it ... and he would have to tell her that Messrs. Hatchway and Selden had refused to publish it. He seized the parcel and tucked it under his arm. He would keep it in his room and post it without saying anything to her about it. He did not wish her to know that it had been declined. Messrs. Hatchway and Selden had given a very good excuse for not publishing it—conditions of the publishing trade—and they had manifested a desire to see other work of his. That could hardly be said to be a refusal to print the book ... at all events, it could not be called an ordinary, condemnatory refusal. No doubt, had the conditions of the publishing trade been easier, Messrs. Hatchway and Selden would have been extremely pleased to print the book. It was not their fault that the conditions of the publishing trade were so difficult!... Anyhow, he did not wish his mother to know that the book had been refused, even though the conditions of the publishing trade were so difficult. So he took the MS. up to his bedroom with him.

IV

He had been enormously relieved when his mother returned to Ireland. Eleanor and he had seen her off from Euston ... Hinde had come for a few moments snatched from an important job ... and he had been very conscious of some understanding between the two women which was not expressible. It was as if his mother were not his mother, but Eleanor's mother ... as if he were simply Eleanor's young man come to say good-bye to Eleanor's mother ... and she were being polite to him, because Eleanor would like her to be polite to him. He felt that things were being taken out of his control, that he had ceased to have charge of things and was now himself being ordered and controlled; but he could not definitely say what caused him to feel this nor could he think of any notable incident which would confirm him in his fear that control had passed out of his hands. All he knew was that he was glad his mother had resisted his importunities to her to stay for a longer time in London. This state of uncertainty had not begun until Mrs. MacDermott suddenly and without warning had arrived at his lodgings. He hoped that it would end with her departure from Euston. Eleanor's attitude towards him during the week of his mother's visit had been very odd. She accepted him now without any qualms, but not, he felt, as her husband to be, hardly even as her lover. She accepted him, instead, as one who might become her lover if she could persuade herself to consent to allow him to do so. Once, in a moment of dreadful humility, he imagined that she accepted him merely as Mrs. MacDermott's son!... He had watched the train haul itself out of the station and had waved his hat to his mother until she was no longer distinguishable, and then he had turned to Eleanor with a curiously determined look in his eye.

"Are you going to marry me?" he demanded.

"Yes," she said, "I think I will. I like your mother awf'lly, John!..."

"It's me you're going to marry. Not her. Do you like me?"

"Yes, I like you ... though you're frightfully conceited and selfish!..."

"Selfish! Me? Because I try hard to get what I want?" he indignantly exclaimed.

"Oh, we won't argue about it. You'll never understand. I don't know whether I love you or not. But I like you. I like you very much. Of course, we may be making a mistake. It's foolish of me to marry you when I know so little about you ... and that little scares me!..."

"What scares you!"

"Your selfishness scares me. You are selfish. You're frightfully selfish. You think of nothing and no one but yourself!..."

"Amn't I always thinking of you?"

"Oh, yes, but only because you want me to marry you. That's all!"

He was very puzzled by this statement. "What other reason would a man have for thinking of a woman?" he asked.

"That's just it," she replied. "You can't think of any other reason for thinking about a woman ... and I can think of a whole lot of reasons. But I shall marry you in spite of your selfishness because I know you're as good as I'm likely to get!..."

"That's a queer reason for marrying a man!"

"I suppose it is. You're really rather a dear, John, and I daresay I shall get to love you quite well ... but I don't now. Why should I? I haven't known you very long ... and you've rather pestered me, haven't you?"

"No, I haven't!"

"Yes, you have. But I don't mind that. Being pestered by you is somehow different from being pestered by other men...."

"Have any other men bothered you?" he interrupted.

They were walking towards Tottenham Court Road as they spoke, and her arm was securely held in his.

"Of course they have," she answered. "Do you think a girl can walk about London without some man pestering her. Old men!..." She shuddered and said "Oh!" in tones of disgust. "Why are old men so beastly?"

"Are they?"

"Oh, yes, of course they are. Beastly old things. I think old men ought to be killed before they get nasty ... but never mind that. Being pestered by you is very different from that sort of thing. I know very well that you won't stop asking me to marry you until I either say I will or I run away from London altogether and hide myself from you; and I don't want to do that. So I'll marry you!"

He glanced at her in a wrathful manner.

"Is that what my mother told you to say?" he asked.

"Your mother? She never said anything at all about it!"

John laughed. "I told her about it," he said. "That's what she came over about. She wanted to have a look at you!"

"Yes, I suppose I ought to have guessed that. I did in a way, but I didn't know you'd said anything definite about it!"

"I'm always definite," said John.

"Yes. M' yes, I suppose you are!"

They walked down Tottenham Court Road and caught a 'bus going along Oxford Street.

"You don't seem very pleased now that I've said I'll marry you," she murmured, as they sat together on the back seat on top of the 'bus.

"I believe you're only marrying me to get away from that club you're living in!" he replied.

"That's one reason, but it isn't the only reason. I do like you, John. Really, I do!"

"I want you to love me, love me desperately, the way I love you."

"But you've no right to expect that. Women don't love men for a long time after men love them ... and sometimes they never love them. There's a girl in our club ... well, she's not a girl, but she's unmarried, so, of course we call her a girl ... and she says that most of us can live fairly happily with quite a number of people. She says that a person has one supreme love affair ... which may not come to anything ... and enough liking for about a hundred people to be able to marry and live happily with anyone of them. I think that's true. I've known plenty of men that I think I could have married and been happy enough with. You're one of them!..."