Chapter XIII: Concerning Romeo

It is a far cry from Verona to London. The ways of the Corso are not the ways of Pall Mall. Therefore, when I admit that my heart cried “A Romeo!” you are not to infer that I had fallen in love with him. I merely mean that I recognised in my new friend the type of man who might conceivably command my heart and me, should fate so will it.

When Romeo of Verona first saw his Juliet at the Capulets’ masque, ’tis on record that, at first sight of her, he forgot fair Rosaline (for whose sake but one hour earlier he was dying to die), and seizing his new goddess’s hand, assured her, without preamble or introduction, that his lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stood to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss; while Juliet, in return, was prepared to avow at a glance that if the stranger were married her grave was like to be her wedding bed. Those be the modes of Verona, as vouched by Shakespeare. Our northern hearts, however, have not the instant electric responsiveness of Italian breasts. Love with us is the child, not the mother of acquaintance. And though I thought of my Romeo as Romeo from the first moment I beheld him, never calling him in my soul by any other name, yet ’twas but some prophetic fancy on my part. For many weeks he figured as no more than my employer.

Juliet of Verona, if I recollect aright, when she flung herself upon Romeo, was not yet full fourteen till Lammas night; at her age our northern maid, with her fair hair down, has conceived a romantic attachment for chocolate-creams and the prettiest of her governesses. I was twenty-two; and twenty-two, that mature age, takes time to consider. Moreover, it waits till its Romeo asks it.

For, pretend as we will, the plain truth is this: woman is plastic till the predestined man appears; then she takes the mould he chooses to impose upon her. Men make their own lives, women’s are made for them. Why, one of my dearest friends at the Guild—an ethereal being—was wont to pace the garden with a vellum-covered Rossetti or Pater in her pocket, composing chants-royal to the moon and to divine love, till a man loomed on the horizon—a man in a Norfolk jacket, with a commission in the Guards and estates in the Midlands; whereupon she exchanged the Rossetti all at once for a blear-eyed ferret, and strolled about the lanes accompanied by a fox-terrier and a Cuban bloodhound. This is not poetical, but ’tis life as I have noted it.

To cut moralising short, I settled down at once to work at my Romeo’s.

When I arrived there with my machine, more dead than alive with shame, the good-looking clerk carried it upstairs for me reverently. He was a comely youth, with a clean round face, Devonshire apple cheeks, and pleasant parsonage manners; he came, indeed, as I discovered later, from an Exmoor rectory. A table was set for me in Romeo’s own room. I feared to invade that sanctum. “Am I to sit right here?” I asked. He smiled and answered, “Right there.” So I took my place under protest. Thenceforth, I was part of the furniture of his study.

My life at Romeo’s was a life of routine. Now routine (varied by outbreaks) is excellent for the nerves; but it does not afford material for romance. It is the drab of life: art insists rather on the purple and scarlet. So I make no apology for dealing with it here only in a few brief episodes.

All our history is episode, with blanks between, which just serve conveniently to divide the chapters.

At home, my social circle was limited to Mr. Commissioner Lin: my conversation to “Did ’ums, then? did ’ums?” At occasional intervals I dined with my aunt, who abode at Paddington: but I did not yearn to make that joy too common. My revered relation has all the vices of the decayed gentlewoman: unheroic vices, which interest nobody. She hoards bits of string, and half-sheets of note-paper. Her table, her ideas, and her discourse are meagre. She entertains angels, disguised as curates, and is a prop of the Deaconesses’ Institute.

At the office, I had my seat in Romeo’s own room. Poverty emancipates. It often occurred to me how different things would have been had my dear father lived, and had I remained a young lady. In that case, I could have seen Romeo at intervals only, under shelter of a chaperon; as it was, no one hinted the faintest impropriety in the fact that the type-writer girl was left alone with him half the day in the privacy of his study. Not that this freedom gave me much occasion (at first) for talk with Romeo. He was courtesy itself, and by nature conversible: but his chivalrous feelings, and his sense of my isolation, made him chary of speaking. He dictated all day, or left me to transcribe; but he seldom broke silence save on matters of business.

Nevertheless, from the outset, he was markedly kind to me. I had two nice boys at hand to run errands and carry my notes; one, a skimpy London imp, compact of saucy humour; I called him Puck: the other, a slender lad of fifteen, pale, delicate, girlishly pretty, with long straw-coloured hair and a distracted manner, whom I rechristened Ariel. Romeo gradually adopted this trick of speech from me. It is a habit of mine (as you may have observed) to invent names for my friends; and these generally stick—I suppose because I borrow them as a rule from the poets, who have classified us into types which recur perennially.

After I had been at the office a few weeks, I happened one day to slip into some Americanism. Though I have seen little of America (having gone there but once on a visit to my father’s folk at Salem when I was not quite fifteen) I have inherited from my ancestry not a few Massachusetts idioms, one or other of which I sometimes let drop, unconsciously to myself, in the course of conversation. Romeo snapped at the word at once. “Why, you must be a New Englander!”

“Not quite,” I answered, flushing. “My father was born at Salem, an American citizen; but he became naturalised in England young, and was a British officer.”

“Not in the army?” Romeo cried, surprised.

“Yes,” I answered. “Why not? A colonel.”

I grew hot as I spoke. For the first and only time, I think Romeo doubted me. “Then you—must have—a pension,” he broke out, slowly.

It was partly desire to avoid telling the truth, partly a certain native love of mystification—or rather of piquing other people’s curiosity; but I answered with a touch of defiance, “An officer’s daughter loses her pension on marriage. I may be married, perhaps—or separated—or a widow.” And I bent down over my work to hide my heightened colour.

He gazed at me for a second; his eye fell on my left hand; then he glanced away. I could see him saying to himself he had no right to cross-question me. But interest in me prevailed. He drew near, and stood over me. “You must forgive my persistence,” he said, gently, in his modulated voice—each syllable clear as crystal—“but I feel constrained to ask you. Have you really a pension? . . . . For if so, you have misled me.”

I looked up at him with proud eyes. My father’s blood rose hot in me. “I must tell you the truth,” I said, “or you will think I am ashamed of my father. I am not ashamed; I am proud of him. He was an English colonel; but I have no pension. He was a very brave man. He threw up his commission, in time of war, at a moment of danger, almost in face of the enemy, because he would not carry out orders which seemed to him unjust. And he died of anxiety and fever just after, on the West Coast of Africa.”

“I remember the case. Pray forgive me. It was cruel of me to drive you.”

“Not at all. I am glad you did. Now you will understand better.”

I rose, flushed, and faced him. “They say a soldier should resign his conscience into the keeping of the Queen’s advisers. My father could not. He felt wrong was being done. He would not make his judgment blind. He left me poor by it; and I am proud of it—proud of him.”

“You have reason to be proud,” Romeo answered. “I recall it all now. His previous record showed it was courage, not cowardice. I honoured him for it at the time—though the world thought otherwise.”

“Thank you,” I said in a low voice. “May I go now? It is nearly five. And I feel, after this, I can do no more work this evening.”

He opened the door for me and bowed even more respectfully than usual. There was sympathy in every movement. I felt he understood. I felt I had made a friend. I felt, still more surely than before, that _this_ was my Romeo.