The Odd Women Part 10

She offered the little volume. He took it as though it were something fragile, and--the sculls fixed under his elbows--turned to the fly-leaf.

'What? It is _your_ birthday?'

'Yes. I am twenty-one.'

'Will you let me shake hands with you?' His pressure of her fingers was the lightest possible. 'Now that's rather a strange thing--isn't it?

Oh, I remember this book very well, though I haven't seen it or heard of it for twenty years. My mother used to read it on Sundays. And it is really your birthday? I am more than twice your age, Miss Madden.'

The last remark was uttered anxiously, mournfully. Then, as if to rea.s.sure himself by exerting physical strength, he drove the boat along with half a dozen vigorous strokes. Monica was rustling over the pages, but without seeing them.

'I don't think,' said her companion presently, 'you are very well contented with your life in that house of business.'

'No, I am not.'

'I have heard a good deal of the hardships of such a life. Will you tell me something about yours?'

Readily she gave him a sketch of her existence from Sunday to Sunday, but without indignation, and as if the subject had no great interest for her.

'You must be very strong,' was Widdowson's comment.

'The lady I went to see this afternoon told me I looked ill.'

'Of course I can see the effects of overwork. My wonder is that you endure it at all. Is that lady an old acquaintance?'

Monica answered with all necessary detail, and went on to mention the proposal that had been made to her. The hearer reflected, and put further questions. Unwilling to speak of the little capital she possessed, Monica told him that her sisters might perhaps help her to live whilst she was learning a new occupation. But Widdowson had become abstracted; he ceased pulling, crossed his arms on the oars, and watched other boats that were near. Two deep wrinkles, rippling in their course, had formed across his forehead, and his eyes widened in a gaze of complete abstraction at the farther sh.o.r.e.

'Yes,' fell from him at length, as though in continuation of something he had been saying, 'I began to earn my bread when I was fourteen. My father was an auctioneer at Brighton. A few years after his marriage he had a bad illness, which left him completely deaf. His partnership with another man was dissolved, and as things went worse and worse with him, my mother started a lodging-house, which somehow supported us for a long time. She was a sensible, good, and brave woman. I'm afraid my father had a good many faults that made her life hard. He was of a violent temper, and of course the deafness didn't improve it. Well, one day a cab knocked him down in the King's Road, and from that injury, though not until a year after, he died. There were only two children; I was the elder. My mother couldn't keep me at school very long, so, at fourteen, I was sent into the office of the man who had been my father's partner, to serve him and learn the business. I did serve him for years, and for next to no payment, but he taught me nothing more than he could help. He was one of those heartless, utterly selfish men that one meets too often in the business world. I ought never to have been sent there, for my father had always an ill opinion of him; but he pretended a friendly interest in me--just, I am convinced, to make the use of me that he did.'

He was silent, and began rowing again.

'What happened them?' asked Monica.

'I mustn't make out that I was a faultless boy,' he continued, with the smile that graved wrinkles about his eyes; 'quite the opposite. I had a good deal of my father's temper; I often behaved very badly to my mother; what I needed was some stern but conscientious man to look after me and make me work. In my spare time I lay about on the sh.o.r.e, or got into mischief with other boys. It needed my mother's death to make a more sensible fellow of me, and by that time it was too late. I mean I was too old to be trained into profitable business habits. Up to nineteen I had been little more than an errand and office boy, and all through the after years I never got a much better position.'

'I can't understand that,' remarked Monica thoughtfully.

'Why not?'

'You seem to--to be the kind of man that would make your way.'

'Do I?' The description pleased him; he laughed cheerfully. 'But I never found what my way was to be. I have always hated office work, and business of every kind; yet I could never see an opening in any other direction. I have been all my life a clerk--like so many thousands of other men. Nowadays, if I happen to be in the City when all the clerks are coming away from business, I feel an inexpressible pity for them. I feel I should like to find two or three of the hardest driven, and just divide my superfluous income between. A clerk's life--a life of the office without any hope of rising--that is a hideous fate!'

'But your brother got on well. Why didn't he help you?'

'We couldn't agree. We always quarrelled.'

'Are you really so ill-tempered?'

It was asked in Monica's most naive tone, with a serious air of investigation which at first confused Widdowson, then made him laugh.

'Since I was a lad,' he replied, 'I have never quarrelled with any one except my brother. I think it's only very unreasonable people that irritate me. Some men have told me that I was far too easy-going, too good-natured. Certainly I _desire_ to be good-natured. But I don't easily make friends; as a rule I can't talk to strangers. I keep so much to myself that those who know me only a little think me surly and unsociable.'

'So your brother always refused to help you?'

'It wasn't easy for him to help me. He got into a stockbroker's, and went on step by step until he had saved a little money; then he speculated in all sorts of ways. He couldn't employ me himself--and if he could have done so, we should never have got on together. It was impossible for him to recommend me to any one except as a clerk. He was a born money-maker. I'll give you an example of how he grew rich. In consequence of some mortgage business he came into possession of a field at Clapham. As late as 1875 this field brought him only a rent of forty pounds; it was freehold property, and he refused many offers of purchase. Well, in 1885, the year before he died, the ground-rents from that field--now covered with houses--were seven hundred and ninety pounds a year. That's how men get on who have capital and know how to use it. If _I_ had had capital, it would never have yielded me more than three or four per cent. I was doomed to work for other people who were growing rich. It doesn't matter much now, except that so many years of life have been lost.'

'Had your brother any children?'

'No children. All the same, it astonished me when I heard his will; I had expected nothing. In one day--in one hour--I pa.s.sed from slavery to freedom, from poverty to more than comfort. We never _hated_ each other; I don't want you to think that.'

'But--didn't it bring you friends as well as comfort?'

'Oh,' he laughed, 'I am not so rich as to have people pressing for my acquaintance. I have only about six hundred a year.'

Monica drew in her breath silently, then gazed at the distance.

'No, I haven't made any new friends. The one or two men I care for are not much better off than I used to be, and I always feel ashamed to ask them to come and see me. Perhaps they think I shun them because of their position, and I don't know how to justify myself. Life has always been full of worrying problems for me. I can't take things in the simple way that comes natural to other men.'

'Don't you think we ought to be turning back, Mr. Widdowson?'

'Yes, we will. I am sorry the time goes so quickly.'

When a few minutes had pa.s.sed in silence, he asked,--

'Do you feel that I am no longer quite a stranger to you, Miss Madden?'

'Yes--you have told me so much.'

'It's very kind of you to listen so patiently. I wish I had more interesting things to tell, but you see what a dull life mine has been.' He paused, and let the boat waver on the stream for a moment.

'When I dared to speak to you last Sunday I had only the faintest hope that you would grant me your acquaintance. You can't, I am sure, repent of having done me that kindness--?'

'One never knows. I doubted whether I ought to talk with a stranger--'

'Rightly--quite rightly. It was my perseverance--you saw, I hope, that I could never dream of giving you offence. The rule is necessary, but you see there may be exceptional cases.' He was giving a lazy stroke now and then, which, as the tide was still, just moved the boat onwards. 'I saw something in your face that _compelled_ me to speak to you. And now we may really be friends, I hope?'

'Yes--I can think of you as a friend, Mr. Widdowson.'

A large boat was pa.s.sing with four or five young men and girls who sang in good time and tune. Only a song of the music-hall or of the n.i.g.g.e.r minstrels, but it sounded pleasantly with the plash of the oars. A fine sunset had begun to glow upon the river; its warmth gave a tone to Monica's thin cheeks.

'And you will let me see you again before long? Let me drive you to Hampton Court next Sunday--or any other place you would choose.'

'Very likely I shall be invited to my friend's in Chelsea.'

'Do you seriously think of leaving the shop?'

'I don't know--I must have time to think about it--'

'Yes--yes. But if I write a line to you, say on Friday, would you let me know whether you can come?'