The City of Beautiful Nonsense Part 17

She looked very steadily into his eyes. How long had he seen her before she had seen him?

"Perhaps you're under the impression that I came to see you," she said, and she began walking towards the Bayswater Road.

He followed quietly by her side. This needed careful treatment. She was incensed. He ought not to have thought that, of course.

"I never said so," he replied quietly.

Then they fought--all the way over to the Bayswater side. Each little stroke was like velvet, but beneath it all was the pa.s.sion of the claw.

"I expect it's as well we're not going to see each other any more," she said one moment and, when he agreed, repented it bitterly the next. He cursed himself for agreeing. But you must agree. Dignity, you know.

Dignity before humanity.

And then he called her a hansom--helped her within.

"Are you going back to the Gardens?" she asked from inside, not shutting the doors.

"No--I'm going up to town."

"Well----" She pushed the bricks away. "Can't--can't I drive you up?"

He stepped inside, and the cab rolled off.

"Were you going to have walked?" she asked presently, after a long, long silence.

"No," said John. "I was going to drive--with you."

CHAPTER XVI

EASTER SUNDAY

One Easter Sunday, soon after his first clandestine meeting with Jill, John was seated alone in his room in Fetter Lane. The family of Morrell and the family of Brown--the plumber and the theatre cleaner--had united in a party and gone off to the country--what was the country to them.

He had heard them discussing it as they descended the flights of uncarpeted wooden stairs and pa.s.sed outside his door.

"As long as we get back to the Bull and Bush by five," Mr. Morrell had said emphatically, and Mr. Brown had said, "Make it half-past four."

Then Mrs. Morrell had caught up the s.n.a.t.c.h of a song:

"I've a tickly feelin' in the bottom of me 'eart For you--for you,"

and Mrs. Brown has echoed it with her uncertain notes. Finally the door into the street had opened--had banged--their voices had faded away into the distance, and John had been left alone listening to the amorous frolics on the stairs of the sandy cat which belonged to Mrs. Morrell, and the tortoise-sh.e.l.l, the property of Mrs. Brown.

Unless it be that you are an ardent churchman, and of that persuasion which calls you to the kirk three times within the twenty-four hours, Easter Sunday, for all its traditions, is a gladless day in London.

There is positively nothing to do. Even Ma.s.s, if you attend it, is over at a quarter to one, and then the rest of the hours stretch monotonously before you. The oppressive knowledge that the Bank Holiday follows so closely on its heels, overburdens you with the sense of desolation.

There will be no cheerful shops open on the morrow, no busy hurrying to and fro. The streets of the great city will be the streets of a city of the dead and, as you contemplate all this, the bells of your neighbourhood peal out in strains that are meant to be cheerful, yet really are inexpressibly doleful and sad. You know very well, when you come to think about it, why they are so importunate and so loud. They are only ringing so persistently, tumbling sounds one upon another, in order to draw people to the fulfilment of a duty that many would shirk if they dared.

The bells of a city church have need to be loud, they have to rise above the greater distractions of life. Listen to the bells of St.

Martin's-in-the-Fields. The bell-ringers there know only too well the sounds they have to drown before they can induce a wandering pedestrian within. It was just the same in Fetter Lane. John listened to them clanging and jangling--each bell so intent and eager in its effort to make itself heard.

He thought of the country to which the families upstairs had departed; but in the country it is different. In the country, you would go to church were there no bell at all, and that gentle, sonorous note that does ring across the fields and down the river becomes one of the most soothing sounds in the world. You have only to hear it to see the old lych-gate swinging to and fro as the folk make their way up the gravel path to the church door. You have only to listen to it stealing through the meadows where the browsing cattle are steeping their noses in the dew, to see with the eye of your mind that pale, faint flicker of candle-light that creeps through the stained gla.s.s windows out into the heavy-laden air of a summer evening. A church bell is very different in the country. There is an unsophisticated note about it, a sound so far removed from the egotistical hawker crying the virtue of his wares as to make the one incomparable with the other. John envied Mrs. Brown and Mr. Morrell from the bottom of his heart--envied them at least till half-past four.

For an hour, after breakfast was finished, he sat staring into the fire he had lighted, too lonely even to work. That heartless jade, depression, one can not call her company.

Then came Mrs. Rowse to clear away the breakfast things and make his bed. He looked up with a smile as she entered.

"What sort of a day is it outside?" he asked.

"Cold, sir; and looks as if we was going to have rain."

She caught up the breakfast things, the china clattered in her fingers.

He turned round a little in his chair and watched her clear away. This is loneliness--to find a sense of companionship in the woman who comes to look after one's rooms.

"Whenever a man is lonely," wrote Lamartine, "G.o.d sends him a dog." But that is not always so. Some men are not so fortunate as others. It happens sometimes that a dog is not available and then, G.o.d sends a Mrs.

Rowse to clear away the breakfast things.

But Mrs. Rowse was in a hurry that morning. There was no money due to her. You would not have found the faintest suspicion of lingering in anything that she did then. Even the topic that interested her most--her daughters--had no power to distract her attention.

She was going to take them out to the country--they were going down to Denham to see her sister, as soon as her work was done--Lizzie, who stuck labels on the jam-jars in Crosse and Blackwell's, and Maud, who packed cigarettes in Lambert and Butler's.

There were those living in Peabody Buildings, who said that Lizzie would have a beautiful voice, if she'd only practise. She could sing, "Love Me and the World Is Mine." She could sing that lovely. And Maud--well, Mrs. Rowse had even got a piano in their little tenement rooms for Maud to learn on, but Maud would never practise neither. True, she could pick up just anything she heard, pick it up quite easy with the right hand, though she could only vamp, foolish-like, with the left.

Yet upon these portentous matters, Mrs. Rowse would say nothing that morning. They were going to catch a mid-day train from Marylebone down to Denham, and she had no time to waste.

"Would you mind me coming with you, Mrs. Rowse?" said John suddenly. As suddenly he regretted it, but only because of its impossibility.

There is some sort of unwritten law which says that when you accompany ladies on a journey by train, you must pay for their tickets, and all women are ladies if they do not swear or spit on the ground. You should take off your hat to everyone of them you know when in the street. It may be that they are charwomen, that they stick labels upon jam-jars in their spare hours, that they pack up little boxes of cigarettes when there is nothing else to do, but in the street, they are women--and all women, with the restrictions here mentioned, are ladies.

Now John could not possibly pay for their tickets. He could ill-afford to pay for his own. It would mean no meal the next day if he did. And here let it be said--lest any should think that his poverty is harped upon--John was always poor, except for five minutes after an excursion to the p.a.w.n-shop, and perhaps five days after the receipt of the royalties upon his work. You may be sure at least of this, that John will jingle the money in his pocket and run his finger-nail over the minted edge of the silver when he has any. If he has gold, you will see him take it out under the light of a lamp-post when it is dark, in order to make sure that the sovereign is not a shilling. On all other occasions than these, a.s.sume that he is poor,--nay, more than a.s.sume, take it for granted.

Accordingly, directly he had made this offer to accompany Mrs. Rowse and her daughters to Denham, he had to withdraw it.

"No," said he, "I wish I could come--but I'm afraid it's impossible.

I've got work to do."

Quite soon after that Mrs. Rowse departed.

"Hope you'll enjoy yourselves," said he.

"We always do in the country," replied she as she put on her hat outside the door. And then--"Good-morning, sir,"--and she too had gone; the door into the street had banged again, and the whole house, from floor to roof, was empty but for the sandy cat, the tortoisesh.e.l.l cat and John.

He sat on there in the stillness. Even the cats grew tired of play and were still. Then came the rain, rain that turned to sleet, that drove against the roofs outside and tried, by hiding in the corners of the chimneys, to look like snow. John thought of the tulips in Kensington Gardens. Spring can come gladsomely to England--it can come bitterly, too. Those poor people in the country! But would the country ever permit such weather as this? Even supposing it did, they would not be lonely as he was. Mr. Morrell had Mrs. Brown to talk to, and Mr. Brown had the company of Mrs. Morrell. There were Lizzie and Maud for Mrs.

Rowse. Perhaps going down in the train, they would get a carriage to themselves and Lizzie would sing, "Love Me and the World Is Mine," and Maud would count cigarettes in her mind, and pack them up in her mind, or more probably forget that there ever were such things as cigarettes in the fresh delight of seeing the country with bread and cheese on all the hedges. Those young green buds on the hawthorn hedges are the pedestrian's bread and cheese. But you know that, every bit as well as I.

Well, it seemed that everyone had company but John. He took out of his pocket the last letter his mother had written him from Venice--took it out and spread it before him. If only she were there! If only her bright brown eyes were looking at him, what thousands of things there would be to say! What short stories and beginnings of new books would there not be to read her! And how sympathetically would she not listen.

How frequently would she not place those dear paralysed hands of hers in his, as he read, at some new pa.s.sage that she liked!