The Call of the Town Part 18

CHAPTER XVII

THE WAY OF A WOMAN

"WHAT makes you think of London, when you're doing so well in Laysford?"

Flo Winton asked her sweetheart, strolling one Sunday by the banks of the Lays.

"But well in Laysford may be ill in London," he replied.

"That's just it. Why not be content, and don't play the dog with the bone?"

A woman seldom sees beyond the end of her nose. Flo Winton was no doubt perfectly honest in her counsel to Henry, and entirely selfish. Let his professional chances go hang; he was doing pretty well in Laysford, and she rather fancied the town as a place to live in. Besides, "out of sight, out of mind."

"It is the reverse from the dog and the bone," returned Henry. "What I now hold is little better than the mere shadow of success, the real thing is only to be found in Fleet Street. Comfort, food, raiment, furniture, money to spend--these can be earned in the provinces, but the success I aim at must be sought in London."

"Dear me! And what will you do with it when you've found it--if you ever do so?"

This was scarcely lover-like, and Henry felt the implied sneer; but he was determined not to be shaken from his plan. He did not answer Flo.

"Money to keep a nice home and go about a bit among the smart set of the town--isn't that success?" she continued. "You are working that way here. You're a somebody here; in London you'd be one of the crowd. At least, that's what I believe."

"And I too, Flo. Fancy being a somebody in a town whose Lord Mayor can barely sign his name, whose chief constable is a habitual drunkard, whose town clerk wouldn't be fit for devilling to a London barrister, whose whole corporation is a gang of plunderers scheming for their own ends. Fancy having to whitewash these ruffians in my leading articles. A somebody! Rather the millioneth man in London than the first in Laysford."

This looked bad for Flo; her reason for his staying was his own reason for wishing himself away. Henry was horridly honest and absurdly upright to be a newspaper editor in a thriving provincial town.

"I tell you frankly," he went on, while Flo walked now in moody silence by his side, "I could never settle down in Laysford. Any a.s.s with money is courted here."

"And it's the same everywhere; the same in London," she snapped.

"Perhaps; only in London you can avoid the society of the money-grubbers, and find a congenial clime where the foul element does not enter. You see, London isn't a town; it's a country, and there are communities of kindred interests within its borders."

"How do you know?"

"Well, I can gather as much from my inquiries, and from what I read."

"A lot of use that is. I know it's fearfully expensive to live in London."

"But one can make more money."

"I thought you despised money-grubbing."

"For the mere sake of the grubbing, yes. But where it costs more to live there is usually more to live for, and more means of earning the necessary cash."

"Money; you simply can't get away from it, yet you sneer at the wealthy folk here. You only wish you had half of their complaint, as the thirsty cabby said of the drunk who was supposed to be ill."

Flo laughed aridly at her simile, without looking her companion in the face. Henry felt irritated by her as never before. But his teeth were set. Both kept silence for a time.

"Of course you never think of me," said Flo at length, trailing her sunshade among the pebbles.

"That's just what I do, though."

"How kind of you!"

The sneer froze Henry like a sudden frost.

"Men are such unselfish things, to be sure," she went on; the ice thickening rapidly.

Henry had really thought a great deal about her, and not without some misgivings. He had seen himself a successful worker in Fleet Street, with a dainty house out Hampstead way--he did not know where that might be, but he thought it was the literary quarter--and Flo looking her best as mistress of that home, with many a notable personage for guest. But he had also moments when he wondered if he were not a fool to bother his head about her, and when she said, "How kind of you!" he was glad they were not married yet. For all that, if Flo insisted, he supposed it would have to be, though there had been no arrangement in so many binding words. He was inclined to let her have to insist, however; and if she did--why, life would be ever after the making the best of a bad job. Not a healthy condition of love, it will be perceived.

As they were nearing the Wintons' again, Henry thawed a little.

"Wouldn't you really like to live in London, Flo?" he said.

"Perhaps, and perhaps not. No doubt I would. But what I don't like--and I may as well be frank about it--is living here and you in London."

"Ah, but that need not be for long," Henry returned kindly.

"So you say. But one never knows."

She was honestly unhappy at the idea of his leaving her, and Henry, when he understood this, felt his heart rise a little in sympathy--the swelling had gone down since we last saw them together. But he did not guess that he was pleased rather by the flattering thought that she would miss him, than softened by the sentiment of leaving her behind him.

"After all," he said, "I'm not away yet."

"It's that horrid Puddy--what-you-call-him--that's to blame for stuffing your head with ideas of throwing up such a good post as you have. Take my advice, Henry, stay where you are, for a while at any rate. There's a dear, good fellow!"

But the dear, good fellow kissed Flo somewhat frigidly when he parted from her that night, and decided that Adrian Grant was right in his estimate of women as creatures who, in the ma.s.s, had no ideas beyond social comfort, no ambition higher than "society," and who were only interested in the projects of men to the extent these might advance their own selfish desires.

"She said I never considered her. By Jove, I could wish I did not,"

Henry reflected, biting his moustache savagely in his mood of discontent. "I wonder what P. would think of her?"

When a man wonders what another would think of his sweetheart it is a cloudy day for the latter. When the man hesitates, the woman is lost.

Mr. P. had never encountered Miss Winton; but a few days after the frosty episode in her love-story, Henry and his friend met Flo in the market-place, and stopping, she was introduced. This not without qualms to Henry, who could scarce avoid the meeting, and was yet loth to present his friend to Flo, in view of her expressed dislike for him. But the ready courtesy and charming manner of the author-musician seemed to please her, and to Henry's surprise, her eyes, her smiles, were more for Mr. P. than for himself. She could be most attractive when she liked, this young lady who had called his friend "horrid," and was absurdly opposed to his dream of London. Henry did not know whether to be pleased or disappointed at the bearing of Miss Winton. He was glad she had not been cold to Mr. P., hurt that she was pleasant--so superfluously pleasant. On the whole, he was irritated, uneasy.

Something in the manner of his friend contributed to this result. Not a word had been spoken in the short conversation on the pavement of the old market-place to awaken or enliven doubt or jealousy, but there was an indefinable something in Mr. P.'s manner to Flo, and his remarks when they parted from her, to indicate that he had not been favourably impressed.

A year or two ago happiness seemed such an easy thing--so simple, so difficult to escape--that by contrast, Henry's present state of querulous unrest put it as far away as a fog removes the wonted position of a prominent landmark. He had an inclination to kick somebody--himself, deservedly. Could Flo be right about settling down in Laysford, where he was a potential "somebody"? Suppose he had an opportunity to go to London now, should he take it? If the man who wrote as Adrian Grant had unsettled his mind so far as his old simple faith in G.o.d's goodness and mercy was concerned, and Stratford and Wheelton and Laysford together had muddied his pictures of journalism, and even Flo had clouded his thoughts of happiness, what was worth while? Might London be all he had painted it? Was it to be "never glad, confident morning again"?

Such was the muddle of Henry's mind when the two returned to Mrs.

Arkwright's from their afternoon stroll, and each went to his own rooms.

Henry threw himself into an arm-chair and gave himself up to brooding thoughts--dark, distracting. He was not long alone, for his fellow-lodger came to his door in the s.p.a.ce of five minutes, with a letter open in his hand and a smiling face, which betokened good news.

"How's this for a piece of fortune?" he exclaimed, stepping briskly towards Henry, and handing him the letter. "Read. It has just come with the afternoon post."

What Henry read was a brief note from Mr. Swainton of the _Lyceum_, saying, that, curiously enough, the very week he had received Mr. P.'s letter asking him if he knew of any suitable post for his friend, Mr.

Charles, the editor of the _Watchman_ had mentioned that he was on the lookout for a smart young journalist as a.s.sistant editor of that weekly review. He had spoken to him of Mr. Charles, and he now wrote to say that if the latter would run up to town and see Mr. G.o.dfrey Pilkington, the gentleman in question, he might "pull off" the job. It would be worth 350 a year, he fancied.

Good news, indeed. At the magic touch of "London" Henry's doubts were dissipated. They had existed only while the prospect still seemed to be uncertain. He would have preferred an editorship; but an a.s.sistant in London was (he imagined) as good as any editor in the provinces.