Chapter VI: Book TWO: Ann Pidduck (1)

. . . and make
Strange combinations out of common things
Like human babes in their brief innocence,
And we will search with looks and words of love
For hidden thoughts, each lovelier than the last.

I

ADVENTURE IN LONDON

Et quelle est la femme qui ne chercherait pas à vous rendre
heureux!

HE awoke with a parched mouth and cramped limbs to find himself being shaken and to hear a voice saying:

"Hi, mate, time to wake up. Can't leave you no longer."

"Eh? Is this London?"

"Aye, and London it's been these three hours past. You came in by the five-twenty-five, and I couldn't get you to wake up, I couldn't. You're in the sidings."

René shook himself and clambered down with the red-headed railway porter, and walked with him across the rails through several coaches, back to the station.

"Been ill, mate?"

"No. Why?"

"I never see such a face. Got more than your fair share of bones in it. It was that made me leave you."

"I'm much obliged."

The big clock announced five minutes past eight.

"No luggage?" asked the porter.

"No. No luggage."

"Going to see friends?"

"No."

"You'll excuse me asking, but I don't like letting you go alone with a face like that. D'you know London?"

"No."

"You'll want breakfast."

René realized that he was hungry. The porter took him to a pull-up in a noisy street, filled with the clang of tramcars and the roar and rattle of heavy drays coming from the goods yard. They had coffee and ham and great hunks of bread.

"I never see such a sleeper," said the porter.

"I was tired, I think."

That struck the porter as a good joke. He kept on chuckling to himself and saying:

"Tired? I should think you was. Tired! He says he was tired!"

Presently he became solemn and leaned across the deal-topped table.

"I can't make you out, mate. I don't know if you're a gent or what. You're from the North. It's easy to see that. What is it? Trouble?"

"Not exactly trouble. Nothing unusual, I mean. It's been going on for a long time."

"They're not after you, then?"

"Oh, no. No one's after me."

The porter's expression showed both disappointment and relief.

"Is it far to Putney?" asked René.

"It's where the boat-race is," said the porter. "I been there. An hour in a bus or train."

"I mean--to walk. I'd like to walk. To see London. I've never seen it, you know."

"It'd be Fulham Road, I fancy, though I don't know those parts well. Friends at Putney?"

"Someone I know there."

"I see. You'll be going home soon. Return ticket?"

"No. I just wanted to see London. At least, there was a train going to London."

"Ain't lost your memory, have you, mate?"

"No," said René. "No. I've lost interest in it, that's all."

"Money? Got any money?"

René thrust his hand into his pocket and produced three pounds and a few shillings.

"And no friends," said the porter to himself. "Well, you are a corker, and no mistake! Set on going to Putney, are you?" René nodded. "Well, if you want a friend, come to me." And he wrote down an address in Kentish Town which René pocketed without looking at it.

"But if I was you," said the little man, "I should go back home, I should, really. See your friends and go back home. I had a brother once who got crossed in love. Took it something crool, he did, and walked out of the house one day after breakfast and went to Canada. We sent him the money to come home, and now he's doing well in the drysalting. Good-by, mate, and good luck."

He held out a grimy paw, and René clasped it warmly. It was, he felt, a good beginning.

For some time he sat in the pull-up watching the busy trade in victuals, the burly carters, weedy clerks and boys come in and gulp down their food and drink as though the beginning of the day's work hardly left them time for their natural necessities. It was all oddly familiar and like enough to the life he had been accustomed to in the school and university among factories and warehouses. Only, as he looked out of the window, the light was different, softer and more generous. It was exciting and invited him out.

He paid the bill, returned to the station, and washed and had himself shaved. As he left the barber's shop he saw a train loading up for its journey to Thrigsby, and he stayed and watched it go out for the pleasure of feeling that he was not in it. Then he turned briskly away for the adventure of the plunge into London.

A foreign city! He could hardly understand the language spoken by the people in the streets. Within a quarter of a mile he came on a great garden with trees and grass, and down a street he could see more trees. A keen air was blowing. It was invigorating and whipped up his blood. In Thrigsby, when the air was keen it was unpleasant and devastating. The boarding-houses and private hotels in the region of the station seemed to him very lordly houses. They had wide, handsome doors that were in themselves a welcome--a welcoming and no indifferent city. It seemed to him that the people in the streets were aware of each other. At least he was aware of them, and pleased with every kind of person. So many of them were amused, so many found it good to be walking the streets, and they had some mind and energy to spare from the business of the moment. Even the people in the sordid streets through which he passed had the air of bearing their squalor good-humoredly. No one was moody or grimly silent. And there was color. He knew the color of many country-sides, but always on entering the cities he had felt as though a dirty sponge had been passed over his vision. Certain streets seemed to be filled with a dancing, colored light. He was lured on from one to another, with no thought of time or direction. Some of the great thoroughfares were so familiar from pictures that he felt at home in them, and was queerly put out when they led on to places and views of which he had no recollection. Finding himself approaching a church as well known to him as the Collegiate Church in Thrigsby, he said to himself with a sudden thrill of almost awe: "This is the Strand!" And then down a street he caught sight of water. The river! He almost ran down toward it.

The tide was up, the river at its broadest. On the other side were great platforms surmounted with tall cranes that seemed higher than the highest steeple. Beyond were towers, chimneys, domes, standing out against the sky that so delighted and refreshed him. That sky and the water in the wide sweep of the river! Friendliness and power! The river seemed to bear on its broad back the bridges, the tall buildings, the bustling energy about them, the twin masses of the city built up on its flanks. And along the river with the tide came a lovely air, sweetening and restoring. That was indeed a welcome, and he felt that he had passed into another world and become its citizen. He felt no more the strain of the crisis through which he had passed. The years of unceasing labor that lay between his boyhood and this moment were wiped out. The current of his being flowed again. He was as eager as a boy, as ripe for adventure, weighed down only by the memory of the dark little house that had been his home, and that other house so full of gracious things, so empty of all that could justify their graciousness. And, like a boy, he lacked purpose. He had nothing but his fantastic desire to go to Putney, and he was reluctant to tear himself away from the fascination of the river. But the porter had said the boat-race was rowed at Putney and the river must be there also.

So he walked along the river past the Houses of Parliament. He had once made a cardboard replica of it as a child, and, remembering that, his mind was filled with other childish memories--illnesses, books, fights with George, games and exploits with other boys, next-door neighbors, the small girl at his first school who had cast a blight over his life by announcing that she was in love with him-- Past the tall chimneys at Chelsea; and then, taking a wrong turning, he found himself in a desolate region, almost as desolate as any in Thrigsby but for the generous sky above it. And the two sides of little houses did not so dreadfully close in upon the street as they did in the mean quarters of the northern city. Nothing here was so cramping and destroying as there.

At length he came to Putney Bridge and crossed it into what looked like a holiday town, Southport, or Buxton, or Matlock. He asked a policeman the way to Putney.

"This is Putney."

"I want Mr. Bentley's house. It is called Roseneath."

"Mr. Bentley. He's dead. Six months ago."

René asked to be directed to his house. The tidings he had received had made his memory of Mr. Bentley very clear--gruff, kindly, patronizing, a little pompous, conscious of being a success and "somebody." He had his name printed very large on luggage labels, and the note-paper on which Cathleen used to write was crested, with something about _Judex_ on the scroll beneath the crest. And Mrs. Bentley was always tired, and her husband used to keep everybody flying round to fetch and carry for her. But they had very nice ways, and their house in Scotland was always open, even if it was overfull of athletic young men, highly polished and oppressively clean.

When he came to the house, René found it empty. He was disappointed with its aspect. It was very like the Brocks' house in Galt's Park, must have been built about the same time; stucco with absurd Gothic windows; a square porch, rooms on either side of it. He was disappointed, for he had thought of the Bentleys living in a region remote and inaccessible, beyond anything he had ever known or could know. He remembered the agent's description of his own house--"an eminently desirable family residence." This house bore almost the same recommendation. The fantastic London that he had shaped in his mind began to fall away. It had something in common with Thrigsby, was connected with it by something more than the deep sleep in which he had been borne hither. He felt rather foolish standing there by the empty house, and saw with dismay how much more foolish he would have been if the house had been occupied and the Bentleys accessible. He had a sick fear as he saw how irresponsibly he had acted, and how separate his impulse had been from his will.

"All the same," he said, "it is done. It is done. I thought I should always know what would happen to me, but this I did not know. It makes it easy for Linda. The Smallmans will help her to see how badly I have behaved. They will like saying it and explaining to all their friends. They will talk about all they did for me. I never wanted them to do anything. I never wanted-- If I had been like George and gone into business? But I could not have stood that, either. It would have been over sooner. Other people stand things, worse things, too. Oh, well--I can't."

It gave him no pleasure to think that he was different from other people. Rather the reverse; it brought an acute pang of something like shame. He moved on. He lost himself in the polite streets of Putney with their little gardens, but came at last to another bridge. The sun was setting, and he stood and watched it weave a changing tapestry on the sky.

"So the days go," he said. "I think I never noticed a day go before. There must have been something very wrong with me."

That lightened his heart. To have confessed his failure was already in some sort to justify it, and though the cloud upon his mind had grown darker, he was sensible of a release of feeling. He could breathe again. He was no longer the cramped, huddled creature that he had been all day. He could rejoice as the sky grew dark and the stars came out and the glow of the great city went up into the sky. There were patches in the sky so lurid that they filled him with alarm that they must mean fire. He moved toward one of those lurid patches and found himself presently in a narrow thoroughfare crowded with men and women, youths and maidens. The street was streaked with light and darkness. Cheap bazaars were thronged; shops filled with automatic machines of entertainment were garishly lit; there were butchers' and greengrocers' shops open to the air, blazing with color under electric and naphtha lamps; there were stalls in the road, barrows of artificial flowers; white kinematograph houses; terra-cotta music-halls and theaters; crimson-tiled and green-brick public-houses; swarms of human beings, talking, laughing, singing, the laughter of excited girls. He shrank within himself from the harsh vitality of it all. He was filled with a dread of calling down some of the laughter upon himself. The road grew narrower, the wheeled traffic more congested; the yellow and red trams seemed to fill the street. Motor-cars, trams, carts, all moved slowly and cautiously. A little girl started to move across the road, her eyes fixed on someone or something she had seen on the other side. Another step and she would be under a motor-car. René moved to save her. At the same moment, from the other side, he saw a young woman dart out, catch the child up, fling her back, and rush on in her own impetus. She slipped in the tramline, and almost fell just within his reach. He caught her arm, pulled her up, and dragged both her and the child back to his own side of the road. The traffic moved on and no one seemed to have seen what had happened. The child saw her opportunity and dashed over in safety, leaving René and the young woman together.

"A near thing that," said he.

"I think I've hurt my foot. I slipped on the tramline. They do stick up just here."

"Can you walk?"

She tried, but twisted up her face with the pain of it.

"O-o-oh! Crimes! Let me hold on to you."

He supported her, and she found that she could just hobble.

"Rotten luck!" she said. "I was going to a dance. Don't you love dancing? Just like me, though; if there's ever any trouble going, I get it. I shall have to go home now."

"Is it far?"

"Not far. The busses go by. Any old bus from that corner." They had come to a circus where many roads meet. "Mitcham Mews. Number six. Don't you trouble. You just put me into the bus."

"But I must see you home."

"I 'spect you got someone waiting for you. 'Tain't fair to spoil your fun."

"This is much better fun than anything I can imagine doing!"

"'Tain't my idea of fun, helping a lame duck over a stile. It's good of you, anyway. Penny fare."

They boarded a bus and she leaned down and prodded at her ankle to discover where and how much it hurt.

"It's only ricked, I think," she said. "It feels like your neck when your head goes gammy. I don't think it's a sprain."

René was filled with admiration of her vivacious prettiness. She had an oval face; a dark complexion beautifully colored, ivory most delicately colored with crimson; wide-set eyes that were still merry in spite of the pain smoldering in them; a pouting mouth that, as she talked, showed perfect teeth, small and even brilliant, strong as an animal's dark hair neatly arranged under a rather common hat. She had a necklet of imitation pearls round her soft throat. Her dress was neat, but just a little shabby. She laughed lightly, and her laughter lit up her face with a radiant happiness.

"What you might call being thrown together," she said.

He could not but smile with her.

"I'm rather glad," he answered. "Do you know that I hadn't spoken to a soul but a railway porter and a policeman since early morning?"

"Reely," said she. "I think I'd die if I couldn't talk. Here's where we get off. O-o-oh!"

She hung more heavily on his arm as they descended. They stood for a moment to watch the bus jolt back into its top gear and go roaring up the wide and almost empty street.

"It's not far."

They moved slowly for some fifty yards, past empty shops, until they came to an archway plastered on either side with the bills of local music-halls, and lit with an old gas-jet. Through the archway they turned and came to a dark place, very quiet, with long low buildings on either side of it, and a great litter of paper and refuse on the pavement, and handcarts and vans uptilted. The ground floors of the buildings were all taken up with doors, the first floors with little windows, in some of which were flower-boxes and bird-cages and hanging ferns. One or two of the windows were lit up. From the other end, far up, came the glaring lights of a motor-car. It stopped, and they could hear the purr of its sweetly running engine.

"That's Mr. Ripley," said the young woman. "He's often out at night. He's a oner, he is. Down to Brighton and back and all that, you know."

René did not know, but he was pleased and excited. London had ceased to be a spectacle to him. He had been drawn into an adventure, taken to a place where people lived--and a very strange place--the friendliest of hands was on his arm, the cheeriest of voices ringing in his ears.

II

MITCHAM MEWS

Do not her dark eyes tell thee thou art not despised? The
Heaven's messenger! All Heaven's blessings be hers.

"I'M sorry," she said, "but you'll have to help me upstairs. Wasn't I a fool to go and get tripped up like that?--O-o-h! Hercules!"

René took her in his arms and carried her up the narrow little stairs. She opened the door and asked him to come in and have a cup of tea. After she had put the kettle on and lit the gas she sat and took a long look at him.

"I like you," she said. "And I suppose I shan't see you again. That's always the way. The people you like best you see only once, or in the train, or going by in a bus. Is it far where you live?"

"I don't know where I live."

"Go on. I'm not that sort."

"It's true. I've only just come to London. This morning."

"Leave your things at the station?"

"Things? No, I didn't bring any."

"Well! I never!"

She shrugged her amazement away, his adventures being no business of hers.

After she had made the tea she removed her shoes and stockings and examined her ankle. It was inflamed and slightly swollen. She made him rub it, giving little gasps as he touched or wrenched the soreness.

"'Tisn't a sprain? You don't think it's a sprain? I don't care as long as it isn't a sprain."

"No, I shouldn't think it's a sprain; but you'd better ask someone else."

"Are you Scotch?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"You talk funny. I say arsk."

"My home's up north."

"Home. Father and mother?"

"Well--no. A wife and all that."

"O-o-h! Married?"

She looked unhappy and uncomfortable for a moment. Then she said:

"I shouldn't have thought it. You look so young. What did you do?"

"Lectured and took pupils at the university."

"College? I know. There's a big school just round here. I suppose it's something like that. I seen the teachers. Half-baked they look, some of them. Was that it?"

"I don't know what it was. Things came to a head suddenly. I was taken by surprise. I think it will take me some time to realize quite what has happened."

She asked his name. He gave it and she hers, Ann Pidduck, and she worked in a factory, pickles and condiments, at the packing, putting wooden boxes together with a machine that drove in four nails at a time. Once she had been ill and sent away and taught the artificial flowers, and she did that too, in her spare time, for some hat-shops in the High Street, and for one or two ladies she knew. She used to live at home with her mother, who had turned religious and couldn't put up with a bit of fun. And she had a friend who lived in these rooms when there were still horses in the mews, but the friend had gone out to Canada on a farm, "where you get married at once if you're anything like." She broke off her story:

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

"Well, you can't just sit and look at London till it begins to look at you."

"No."

"You look as if you'd like to sit there forever and ever. Oh, you do look tired, poor thing! But keep awake a little, there's a dear. I must know what I'm going to do with you."

He could hardly keep his attention fixed on what she was saying, but he fastened his eyes on her to make her understand that he was listening.

"You don't want to go home? No?"

He shook his head.

"Popped the lid on it, have you?"

He nodded.

"Got any money?"

"In a bank."

"All right. You'll want clothes and things. You can write. Only I want to know; it's nothing I shouldn't like? Is it?"

"No."

"I don't want you to tell me, but I wouldn't like to think you'd done something you'd be sorry for. . . . You haven't drunk your tea. I say, you haven't drunk your tea. Asleep. I'm off. Good night."

And she limped away into the inner room.

When he awoke the next day he remembered that she had come to him in the morning, shaken him out of his deep sleep, and made him understand that he could have her bed, sent him staggering toward it, and then, as he sank back into unconsciousness, he remembered hearing the door slam.

She had laid breakfast for him, tea, bread and butter, and an egg lying ready to be boiled in a saucepan. He was at first petulant at her absence, but shook himself up enough to see that he was not in a position to feel any such thing, and to be amazed at his own acquiescence in the unexpected. It was somehow disreputable, this discovery of himself in a strange room after two nights spent in his clothes. He had not even removed his boots. His gratitude to Ann Pidduck was appreciably lessened as he remembered that she had not thought to take them off for him. To put a man in her bed with his boots on! That was, to say the least of it, distasteful. It was sufficiently against the grain of his physical and mental habits to send his thoughts flying back to the life he had left, but they were caught in the mists of the excitement and pain through which he had passed, and he relapsed into an insensate pondering, forgot his breakfast, his surroundings, and sat unheeding through the day, until Ann returned in the evening. She brought flowers.

"Well, of all the----" she cried. "I did think you'd have cleared away. Why, you haven't touched your breakfast. Haven't you been out?"

He had not exactly forgotten her. Indeed, he had been awaiting her coming, but now he was puzzled because her return was so expected, and it ought to have been unexpected. He felt injured, that he had been cheated, that things on this side of his crisis were too much like things on the other side: a woman, habit, meals, interest in his appetite.

"Wake up, stoopid," said Ann. "You'll be wasting off like the niggers in Africa if you don't wake up. You can't go sleeping on forever."

"Can't I?"

"Well, you can, of course, but if you do, I'll be thinking you're a case. You're not a case, are you? You weren't last night."

She spoke as though to be called a case was the horridest of insults, and he took it as such and roused himself not to deserve it.

"That's better," she said. "Nothing to eat all day."

"No. Nothing."

She pondered that.

"I expect your stomach knows best. Now, then, stir yourself. You got to write home."

She gave him writing materials and he drew up to the table and sat staring at the blank sheet of paper. He took pen in hand, but could not write, could not concentrate his will even that much.

"What am I to say?" he asked.

"Don't you know?"

"No."

"Well, I'm blowed! If you aren't the funniest. . . . It's to your wife! Don't you know what to say to your wife?"

He wrote:

"Dear Linda----"

Then he thought of Linda in a friendly, distant fashion, as someone charming and taking whom he had known, of whom it was pleasant to think.

"Dear Linda, Linda Brock, Lin----"

Ann saw his hesitation, and suggested:

"You want your clothes."

He wrote down:

"I want my clothes. I don't think I want my books. You can sell the car. You gave me a nice picture once by some German. I think I should like you to send that. I have been walking about London. It is very wonderful. A railway porter was nice to me, and there are other friendly people."

He stopped. Ann said:

"The address is 6 Mitcham Mews, West Kensington."

He wrote that down. There was something else he wanted to say, but he could not fix in his mind a sufficient image of Linda to be able to write to her. So he gave it up presently and only added: "That's all," and his signature.

The letter was addressed and stamped, and Ann, still limping, took it to the post.

When she returned, she said:

"I've fixed you up. You're to sleep with Jimmy at No. 10 until your things come, and then we'll begin to think. You're not much use to anybody now, are you?"

"No," said he. Then he began to stammer out an apology.

"Silly," said Ann. "Just a lost boy, that's what you are. Lucky for you it was me and not the police found you. They'd have sent you back where you came from." She saw that it was useless to joke with René and soon dropped her bantering tone. She took him for a walk round the houses, and was delighted when he remembered that he must have a clean collar and a toothbrush; a return to grace, or sense.

"Oh! I'd be sorry now if it wasn't true, and you went back."

"I shan't go back."

Her question, the necessity of responding to her spontaneity, brought back in a sudden flood his will, and he had a quick pleasure in feeling the air upon his face and seeing the evening color of the streets.

"No. I shan't go back. People can't go back. But my father went back."

"Why did you say that?"

"What did I say?"

"'But my father went back.'"

"Did I? I didn't know I said that. I didn't know I even thought of him."

"I know," said Ann. "It's like suddenly finding yourself talking aloud. And don't you feel a fool if there's anybody listening?"

They bought collar, toothbrush, pajamas, and a red sausage for supper. With these they returned to Mitcham Mews and had to wait up until Jimmy at No. 10 turned up. He did so about one o'clock, a strange figure strutting up the mews, beaming all over his face, and humming:

Can you see me, gray eyes,
Hiding in the tree,
Waiting for the moonrise?
Gray eyes, look at me,
In the apple-tree.
Apple-tree, apple-tree.

He had on a mortar-board cap, a white collar reaching up to his ears, an enormous black bow tie, a red satin waistcoat hung with chains, and his face was blacked except for one eye and a quarter of an inch all round his mouth. He carried a banjo. As he saw Ann he drew his hand across the strings and croaked out in a hoarse voice:

"Give us a kiss, old dear, I'm that hellish dry."

"Oh, go on. You got to behave yourself now, Jimmy, now you got a lodger."

"Like old times," said Jimmy. "Ma had lodgers. What Ma didn't know about lodgers----"

"Give it a rest," said Ann. "Do keep off the comic for a bit. Mr. Fourmy wants to get to bed. So do I, and you'll have the neighbors up, the way voices go ringing up the mews. Good night."

She turned away.

"Good night, old gal," said Jimmy, and he led René up the stairs of No. 10. "Good sort, that gal. Likes her bit o' fun same as any gal, but she's a tiddler, she is. Independent! I don't fink. Gals look arter theirselves nowadays. Cos why? Cos they're three to one. We don't go round, us men. What a awful thought! There's your bed, Mr. ---- What's your name? 'Ardly a gent's bed, but you can lie on it, and what more can be said of any bed?"

He went into the inner room and began undressing, talking all the while, explaining that minstrelsy was only one of his professions, that he had had a rotten day, not a smile in the world; that he wouldn't try again for a week, not if he starved; that Mr. Fourmy must be prepared for a shock when he saw him without his black, as it made such a difference, and that there was a silver lining to every cloud. He got into bed without removing his black, for René heard no sound of water, and talked himself to sleep. . . . René lay sleepless, this third night of his adventure, and rejoiced as one who had awakened from a long and painful dream. Jimmy amused him, Ann amused him, and all amusement was new to him.

Jimmy woke up talking, ran out in nightshirt and trousers, and returned with a jug of beer and a loaf of bread. That was breakfast. He sat on René's bed and they consumed their fare together.

"Gardening to-day," said Jimmy. "Ladies all want their gardens dug up these days. I got two or three gardens. They call me Gardener, though I ain't no blooming gardener. 'D'you think sweet peas will do in the smoke, gardener?' they say. I dunno, but I sticks 'em all in. They gets it all out of a book, and what's good enough for them is good enough for me. Gardener! Well, here's luck!"

And René said: "Here's luck!"

When he was washed, Jimmy appeared as a sandy-haired man with a fuchsia-colored face, fattish, shapeless, with little twinkling, blinking eyes. Round and ball-like his head was, round and ball-like his body, and he bounced in all his movements. He was grotesque, but not so grotesque as the idea René had of him, the idea which haunted him as he sat alone in the scantily-furnished room, with no desire to go out or to claim with the world any relationship but those which chance had thrown his way, with Ann and the minstrel-gardener. He spent many hours gazing out of the window at the children playing in the litter and adding to it. There were swarms of children; little girls in charge of babies, not so very much smaller than themselves; boys tirelessly passing from one game to another, stopping only when a car came up the mews or was brought out to be sluiced down or oiled. There were one or two men who sat all day as listless as himself. They smoked, chewed straws, occasionally talked, disappeared at intervals round the corner, but returned to smoke, chew straws, and talk occasionally. They were unconcerned, inattentive, and unmoved. René saw one of them earn a coin of some sort by holding a tool for a chauffeur while he groped in his engine. There were women who sat in the windows for hours together, gazing out with unseeing eyes; other women who stood in the doors and talked. One young woman in the evening came and stood in a doorway with a baby in her arms. The light had grown very soft. It fell upon her, and surrounded her with an atmosphere that gave her beauty. René's eyes rested on her gladly, but without conscious appreciation. Then, very slowly, he began to see something that appealed to him and accounted for her fascination: the line of her body drooping under the weight of the child in her arms, her whole body one unconscious, comforting caress of protection. While she stood there René saw nothing else, and he watched her until the light faded and she disappeared, slipped away like a vision, into the darkness. Somehow he felt that his day had not been in vain.

Ann came to inspect his quarters and to take him out. He was very happy to see her, and she seemed to feel it, for she said:

"I knew you'd be better to-day. A good night's rest. That's what you wanted. But I was afraid Jimmy would keep you up with his nonsense."

"He made me laugh," said René.

She gave a little crow of pleasure:

"Good old Jimmy!" she cried.

Then she asked him had he seen anyone that day, and he described some of the people he had seen. As he described she told histories, so that presently for René Mitcham Mews seemed a place bursting with human energy, passions, disasters, jokes, follies, and frailties--just the sort of place he had been seeking. There was Old Lunt, who sold ballads and wrote letters for the people who had never learned to write; there was Maggie, who went out as a midwife to keep the families of her two daughters; Bellfield the furniture-remover, who had a strange young man come to see him sometimes, who was like no one else in the world; Mr. Martin, who used to keep the livery at the end of the mews and had now gone in for taxicabs; Fat Bessie, who went out charring and had an idiot son to whom her whole life was devoted; Billy and Click, who were wrong 'uns, dirty wrong 'uns, but too clever to be caught, though they would be one day.

"A bright lot," said Ann. "And then, of course, there's me--and you. They'll laugh at you at first. They laugh at everything and everybody new. But you mustn't mind that. They'll borrow money from you, but don't you never lend them more than sixpence, if it's Maggie or Bessie; twopence if it's any of the men."

"And who," asked René, "is the girl with the baby?"

"Oh, that's Rita. Baby? She's got four, and another coming. She's all right. Bit washed out with it. Makes her stupid and sly. But she's all right, and Joe's a good sort. One o' them as is always in and out of work. I dunno why. I think he's the sort as can't work with a beast above him. 'Lectrician. If you want a feller to talk, he's the one."

"I think your talk's about as good as I could have, Ann."

Her face lighted up.

"Is it? I _am_ glad. Ooh! It is nice to have you call me that. D'you know, I couldn't stop thinking of you all day long. And it didn't stop me working neither. I did best day I've done for a long time."

"And all day long I looked out of the window."

III

MR. MARTIN

The innocencie that is in me is a kinde of simple-plaine
innocencie without vigor or art.

THE next morning brought a letter from Professor Smallman:

"MY DEAR FOURMY,--My first impulse was to come down and implore you to return, to think of your career, or, if you are incapable of doing that, of us, to whom your career and, I may say, your happiness, are things of some moment. Linda forbade me to do that. She is well, but shows signs of strain. Frankly, I can understand neither of you. Bitterness, grievances keep men and women apart, but neither of these is in her. She alarms me. She seems to me to be grappling with an emotional situation with her intellect. That seems to me to be dangerous. She said of you: 'His intellect only comes into play when he is emotionally sure,' and gave me that, which I do not pretend to understand, as a reason for letting you go your way. I cannot do that without protest. She says: 'Men and women have the right to adjust their own difficulties and repair their own mistakes without reference to outside opinion, or, indeed, outside affection.' I cannot agree. My feeling is all against it. When a man and woman marry, they create a social entity which they are not entitled to destroy without consulting society. That is putting it at its very lowest, without thinking for a moment of the spiritual entity which marriage creates. You two seem to have agreed to disregard that----"

René read no more. The old exasperation that the well-meaning Smallman had roused in him surged through him now, and he took pen and paper and wrote:

"MY DEAR, GOOD, KINDLY IDIOT,--When no spiritual entity is created, then no social entity is created; nothing is created but an amorphous relationship which is hostile to society, and such relationships it is the duty of decent people to avoid and to destroy. Nothing is created, and if by good luck the calamity of having children is averted, then there is nothing to destroy; then those who are apart in fact are better also apart in appearance."

So, with a startling suddenness he was driven to a conclusion, and knew that, come what might, he would abide by it. What Smallman had said of Linda strengthened him, gave him a clearer idea of her than he had ever had, an idea, moreover, in which with heart and mind he could rejoice. There was fight in her, too.

He took up the Professor's letter once more. It was rather a good letter, ably setting out everything to be considered, the various interests that would be injured--relations, friends, the university, the little community of cultured persons who would be delivered up to coarse, commercial Thrigsby and its tongues. Clearly Smallman's dread was lest all these interests should be drawn down in the wreck of the young couple's marriage, and René could shudder and sympathize at the suffering and distress he might be causing. His resolution weakened a little until he thought of Linda, and then he said:

"But we are saving ourselves. The marriage goes to hell or we do. They can't have both."

Smallman's letter ended with a sentence worth the whole of the rest. It was as though he had written himself into something near imaginative perception and true friendship:

"But, my dear fellow, if you are resolved to continue in this blind and cruel folly, I can only pray and hope that the tragic trial it must be may make a man of you. Though you may be lost to us, I will pray, I believe in you enough to think, that you will not be altogether lost."

René tore up his first indignant note, and wrote another, saying how much he appreciated the friendship and affection, how it had become impossible to turn back, and how it pleased him to know that between himself and those who had been his friends there would be the separation of circumstance, not that of enmity and bitterness.

This done, he posted his reply and wired to his bank in Thrigsby to find out how much money he possessed.

He received the answer later when he was with Ann at tea: Fifty-five pounds.

"Je-rusalem!" she cried.

"I spent very little," he explained, "and my wife had seven hundred a year."

"Seven hundred!" She was scared. "Seven hundred! And you chucked that to come and live in Mitcham Mews! Well, no wonder they say the world's going balmy."

She was both relieved and awed by his vast wealth, and allowed him to take her to a music-hall, where her pleasure brimmed over so that he could share it.

The fifty-five pounds changed her attitude toward him somewhat, made her more sure of him, relieved her, perhaps, of anxiety. She lost the nervous discomfort that had shown itself in deference toward him, and she could now consider him as a practical proposition and no longer as the delightful but alarming perplexity he had been. She had time to breathe, to let things go their own way, until it became necessary to do something. She asked him questions about his old life to discover any talent or capacity that might be turned to account.

"If the worst comes to the worst," she said, "I could teach you the paper flowers. You could do a lot in the daytime, and I'm sure we could sell most of them."

He was quite prepared to make paper flowers. He was so fascinated by her capacity for the rough business of living and for extracting enjoyment out of almost everything she touched, that he was her admiring pupil, to be and do anything she might expect.

At the music-hall a comedian had made the audience scream with laughter by his antic burlesque of a motorist. René was amused, but never smiled. Ann turned to him in some distress and said:

"Don't you think it's funny?"

She had laughed till the tears were streaming down her cheeks.

"It's quite funny, but so old-fashioned. Cars don't break down like that now. I have driven hundreds of miles and never been stopped on the road."

"Oh, did you drive a car?"

"Yes. A little one."

"Then we'll go and see Mr. Martin."

And with this suggestion also he complied.

At the other end the mews were approached by a wide street flanked by little houses which were let off in flats and rooms; two flats of four rooms in each house. Mr. Martin lived in the last house, had always lived there since the houses were built, because it was next to his livery stables and convenient, for he had so much flesh to carry that he carried it as little as possible. He rose early in the morning and rolled into the glass office in his yard, where there were still two horses, a victoria, and a closed carriage, which he kept, partly because he could not bear to be without a horse, and partly because he still had some small business with old ladies and gentlemen of his former connection who disliked motors, or could not conceive of ceremonious visiting except in a horse-drawn vehicle. Besides, he had three taxicabs, and had drifted into a trade in accessories and sundries with the chauffeurs in the mews, the nearest garage being half a mile away and beyond their walking distance. He knew everyone in the mews, and everyone liked him, and as he sat in his office all day long he had a succession of visitors. A groom and a boy composed his staff, and the boy was mostly away on errands for Mr. Martin's housekeeping, because he would not admit any woman to his house. Such cleaning as it got was done by the groom. Not that Martin disliked women; he was fond of them, but he was afraid of them.

"Let 'em set foot in your house," he used to say, "and they'll stay. Once let 'em start doing for you and they do for you altogether."

(He had been married to an extraordinarily capable woman and could not endure a sloven.)

Ann he had known since she was a child, when he had caught her in bravado stealing a horseshoe "for luck" out of his yard. And he had carried her and her booty into his house to show his wife the little girl who was braver than the boys who had egged her on to do it; for the boys had scuttled away on his approach. Then his wife had tied the horseshoe up with a pink ribbon and sent proud Ann away with it and a halfpenny, and permission to visit the yard whenever she liked. And when Mrs. Martin died and for a whole week the fat man sat in his house and mourned, Ann was the first to visit him and bring him out of the lethargy that had come upon him. Later, when the livery business went into a galloping consumption, it was in talk with Ann that Mr. Martin plucked up his energy to use his yard, of which he possessed the freehold, for a taxicab business.

She had told him about René, who received a warm welcome when she took him into the office one evening. The very geniality of his reception made René shy, and the old fellow put him to such a shrewd scrutiny that he felt he was being weighed up and measured in his worthiness of friendship with Ann.

"Pleased to meet you, sir," wheezed Mr. Martin. "Any friend of hers is a friend of mine." Then he came to business. He knew nothing of motor-cars himself, but the cab business needed likely young fellers, different kind of feller from 'orses; they needed 'ands and a heart to understand, something special, an inborn gift. "Lookin' at you, I should say you didn't 'ave it. But motors, well, that's a thing you can learn. A motor can't take a dislike to you same as a 'orse, and, likewise, a motor can't take a fancy to you and work 'is 'eart out for you, same as a 'orse. I've 'ad 'orses, if you'll believe me, as it's been a honor to drive, and I've never 'ad a 'orse as could abide Mrs. Martin, God bless 'er! It was a great grief to me, that was."

René had been primed with the wonders of Mrs. Martin and Ann had told him the story of the horseshoe, and he was able to sympathize and show his sympathy. He set his case before Mr. Martin.

"'Tain't many men," said the livery-keeper, "as turns from books to work. 'Tain't many as can. I seen many a good man go wrong through books--discontented, uppish, faddy, nothin' good enough. But they was mostly too old or middle-aged. When a man gets idees, there's nothin' to be done with him. That's my experience, and I been sitting here these forty years. But perhaps you're young enough."

"Young enough to try, anyhow," said René, and that brought the old man back to the affair of the moment. He had a new car on order, and when it arrived it would be given to Casey, and then René could have Casey's machine, a Renault. In the meantime, it would be necessary for him to study up the knowledge of London preparatory to taking out his license. Casey would tell him all about that, and if he liked he could come into the office and help with the books and the accessories and earn fifteen shillings a week. He closed with that, and arranged to begin the next day, coming very early in the morning so that he could meet Casey.

"I do hope you'll like it," said Ann, as they walked away.

"I'm sure I shall," said he. "I like the old fellow, and I must do something, and that's better than blacking my face and gardening."

She laughed.

"It does seem queer, after all your book-learning."

"When I look back on it, my dear Ann, I can only remember reading one book with pleasure after I was a child and did everything with pleasure."

"What book was that?"

"It was an anthology. Something like this was in it:

'And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win,
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm love in.'"

"That's pretty," said Ann Pidduck. "There are pretty things in books, though I never read them."

Said he:

"I never had the feeling of it until now. I think something went wrong with me that I couldn't feel."

"But you must have, to suffer like you did and run away."

"I'm beginning to think that I ran away because I couldn't feel, but only melt into a sort of exasperated heat."

"But that's like when you lie awake when you're very young and fancy no one wants you, and simply long for someone to want you very much. Oh, you do make me go on."

"I'm glad you do, Ann. I'm glad you do."

"I dunno----" she seemed to protest.

"You must let me say that because I never had such a friend as you."

"Oh! Oh! The world seems all upside down. I oughtn't to. I oughtn't to be friends, because you _are_ different. You know you are. It isn't the same. It isn't like having a bit o' fun, and since you came, I'm off my bit o' fun."

He caught her hands, and in the confused emotion that had seized him, tried to kiss her; but she broke away and ran up the mews, leaving him standing under the lamp in the archway. He did not move. He was filled with a sweet, healing tenderness that soothed his trouble and made him feel curiously and happily sure of himself, and his mind flew back to the book from which he had quoted, and to all the associations it had brought in its train. And he had lost the uncomfortable sense of a violent change in his life, and began to perceive the inevitability of good and bad, hope and despond, driving him on to adventure and through adventure to appreciation of the mere fact of living, so that the things that happened were almost without significance. No longer did he have any dread of his fate; up or down, it was no great matter; a certain kind of agony it was impossible, it was vile and degrading to bear; a certain kind of happiness it was worth any suffering, any bewilderment to find. And yet happiness was hardly the word for it. Happiness was associated in his mind with being content, settled down, established, a part of surrounding circumstances, without reaction. This that he was beginning to perceive necessitated effort and will, fierce endeavor without ceasing. For an image of it he could find nothing better than tearing about the country with Kurt. Only that was aimless, containing nothing but the pleasure of the moment and the risk of disaster. The conception germinating in his mind had all the swiftness and the peril, but it had also immense purpose, irresistible force, and he said aloud:

"Force! Huge force, gripping you, holding you, bearing you on to its purpose which is also your own, so that always you are sure, always stronger than yourself."

Out of the dark archway came a voice, saying:

"A philosopher in the slums."

René started, and groped back to the world of the senses. A tall thin figure loomed up in front of him, and a pale, eager face with a jutting nose and large eyes smiled at him.

"Kilner, my name," said the owner of it. "I've noticed you, walking about in a hungry dream. Down on your luck? So am I. Best of luck in a way. When the world doesn't want you, it gives you time to look at it and think about it, and discover that it is really good. Otherwise you have to take so much on hearsay, and then of course you are not entitled to have an opinion about it, much less any feeling."

"I was just beginning to feel extraordinarily happy about it all, though I have come to grief, and am a source of great anxiety to my friends."

"Friends? They never want anything but one's external comfort. They will dine with you, walk with you, talk with you, sleep with you, but think with you, feel with you, they will not. It's not their fault. They don't want to be anything but charming. We who want charm only with truth find ourselves in trouble in no time at all. What did you try to do?"

"I got married."

"Oh! Is that all? I thought you must be a painter or a writer or--I'm a painter. But I can't sell a damn thing, so I work for a furniture-dealer until I've saved enough to keep me going for a few months. Come up and talk."

They went up to No. 16. Kilner produced cigarettes and continued: