The City of Beautiful Nonsense Part 21

On that same night, Jill was going to a dance, chaperoned by an older school-friend of hers--one who had married--a Mrs. Crossthwaite. And Mrs. Crossthwaite knew everything; not because she had been told it.

That is not the way amongst women. They tell each other what they are pretending to believe, and both of them know all about it all the time.

There was the invitation to the dance--one known as a subscription.

Mrs. Dealtry could not go. She had a dinner party. Jill nominated Mrs.

Crossthwaite as her chaperon, and went to tea with her that day, having seen John in the morning.

First, she spoke of the dance. Mrs. Crossthwaite was delighted. She had been stepping it in the heart of her ever since she was married; but only in the heart of her, and the heart of a woman is an impossible floor to dance upon. It makes the heart, not the feet, tired.

Having won her consent--an easy matter, not lasting more than five minutes--Jill began gently, un.o.btrusively, to speak of the work of an author called John Grey. Mrs. Crossthwaite had read one of the books, thought it distinctly above the average, but very sad. She did not like sad books. There was quite enough sadness in real life, and so on. All of which is very, very true, if people would only realise it, as well as say it.

From there, with that adroitness which only women have the fine fingers for, Jill led on the conversation to her acquaintance with John. Oh, it was all very difficult to do, for a school-friend, once she has married, may have become a very different sort of person from the girl who was ready to swarm down the drain-pipe to meet the boy with the fair hair and the cap far on the back of his head, who pa.s.sed her a note concealed between the pages of the Burial Service in the Prayer-book. Marriage is apt to rob your school-friend of this courage; for, though she never did climb down the drain-pipe, she made you think she was going to. She had one leg on the window-sill and would soon have been outside, only that she heard the voice of the mistress in the corridor just in time. And she sometimes loses this courage when she marries. Jill, therefore, had to proceed with caution.

They merely talked about his work. He was very interesting. His ideas were strange. Of course, it was a terrible pity that he would not say where he lived, but Mrs. Crossthwaite did not seem to consider that.

For a moment, she had expressed surprise and approval of Mrs. Dealtry's action; but he was a member of the Martyrs' Club, and Mr. Crossthwaite's greatest friend was a member there as well, and Mr. Crossthwaite's greatest friend was naturally nearly as wonderful a person as Mr.

Crossthwaite himself. So what did it really matter where he lived? The position of man was his club. She even had no curiosity about his residence.

Again, Jill had never seen _Boheme_. Her people were not musical. They hated it. She loved it. This was the opportunity of her life. He would bring her back to the dance, of course, and no one need ever know that she had not been there all the time. And in the intervals of the opera they would talk about his work. That was all they ever did talk about.

She knew all his ambitions, all his hopes. Once or twice he had accepted her suggestions, when really she knew nothing about it. It was only what she felt; but he had felt it too, and the alteration had been made. He said she helped him, and that was all that was between them.

The main fact of importance was that she had never seen _La Boheme_, and might never see it, if she refused this opportunity.

All these specious arguments she put forward in a gentle, enticing, winning way--full of simplicity--full of honesty; but the princ.i.p.al reason that Mrs. Crossthwaite consented to become a party to this collusion was that she did not believe a single word of it.

Romance! it is a word in itself, a thing in itself--a piece of fine-worked lace that must catch the eye of every woman, and which every woman would st.i.tch to the Garment of maternity if she could.

So it was arranged. In the vestibule of the rooms where the dance was held, John was formally introduced to the chaperon before he bore her charge away. Then they stepped into a hansom.

"The Opera," said John, through the trap-door, carelessly, as though he went there most evenings of his life; for when you give your bread and b.u.t.ter to get a box at Covent Garden, hunger makes you talk like that.

This is all part of the delight which you miss in having a box all the year round.

And when they had got far away into the traffic--that pa.s.sing to and fro of people, which is all a thumb-nail ill.u.s.tration of the stream of life--and when her heart had begun to beat a little less like a lark's wings in a six-inch cage, Jill broke the silence.

"What did Mrs. Crossthwaite say to you while I went to get my cloak?"

she asked.

"She was good enough to hope that I would call on her."

"Oh! I'm so glad she's asked you. Did she say anything else?"

"She asked me if I lived in London all the year round. I said I did--except for a month in the year, when I went to Venice. Then she asked me what part of London I lived in."

"She asked you that?"

"Yes."

Jill was silent for a few moments. It is always an interesting moment in a woman's life when she learns something about her s.e.x.

"And what did you say?" she asked.

John laughed. He thought he had said it rather neatly.

"Oh, I've got rooms," he had said, "just between St. Paul's and the Strand." Which might be the Inner Temple, if you had a nice mind with which to look at it. He told Jill this answer. She smiled.

"And is it between St. Paul's and the Strand?" she asked.

"Roughly speaking--yes--but very roughly speaking."

Again she was silent. Could it be that he was poor--at least, not well enough off to live at a good-sounding address? Could that have been why he was praying to St. Joseph on the eighteenth of March? Yet he was a member of the Martyrs' Club, and here he was taking her to a box at Covent Garden. She looked up quickly into his face. This was more mystery than her desire for knowledge could afford.

"Do you remember what you said to me once," she began, "about the woman with the gift of understanding?"

"Yes--the first day that we met in Kensington Gardens."

"Well--do you think I am absolutely ungifted that way?"

John closely searched her eyes. Did she remember all he had said about the woman with G.o.d's good gift of understanding? Did she realise the confession it would entail if he admitted--as he believed--that she was?

She was young, perhaps--a girl, a child, a baby--just twenty-one. But the understanding which is the gift of G.o.d, comes independently of experience. Like genius, it is a gift and of just such a nature.

Absolute simplicity is the source of it, and with it, it brings the reward of youth, keeping the heart young no matter the years. Experience will show you that the world is full of evil--evil motives and evil deeds; it will teach you that evil is said of everyone, even the best.

But with G.o.d's good gift of understanding, you have the heart of a child, knowing nothing yet finding the good in everything.

To such a one, no secrets are possible, no deeds can lie hid; for no man does evil because he would, but because it rises stronger against the innermost will of him. And so few are there with the gift to understand this, that confession is seldom made.

And for John to tell her that she had this gift, was to make admission of all he had learnt that Easter Sunday. Could it be that she asked for that reason? Did she wish to know? In his own way, he had meant to tell her; but not like this. And so he searched her eyes; but searched in vain.

"Why do you ask?" he said at length.

"Because--if you think I have any understanding at all, don't you think I should understand, even if you told me you lived at----" She could not think of a poor enough neighbourhood where people might live. She scarcely knew any.

"Shepherd's Bush?" he suggested.

"Well--yes--Shepherd's Bush."

"And so you want to know where I do live?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

She looked up at him quite honestly.

"Well--pride, I suppose. We're good friends. I hope we are. I've never had a friend before. I think I should tell you everything, and I expect I feel hurt because you don't tell me. I'm sure you have a good reason for not letting my people know, but that hasn't prevented me from keeping you as my friend against all their wishes. They don't understand, I admit. But I believe I should. I'm sure I should."

Her hand in its white glove was resting on the door of the hansom in front of her. For a moment he looked at it, and then, with heart beating, in fear, joy, apprehension--a thousand emotions all flowing into one--he took it in his and pressed it reverently, then let it go.

"I know you would," he replied in his breath. And then he told her.

Did she remember Wrigglesworth's? Would she ever forget it? Those high-backed seats, the sawdust on the floor, the poll-parrot in its cage in the middle of the room! And, then, who could forget the name of Wrigglesworth?

Did she remember the little greengrocer's shop he had pointed out to her, and how she had said she would love one of the rosy-cheeked apples that were piled up in their little part.i.tions--and his reply, rather reluctant, evidently none too eager that one of the rosy-cheeked apples should be hers? Yes, she remembered. She remembered, too, that nothing more had been said about the apples, and that he had not reminded her of them again when they came away from lunch.