The Unclassed Part 56

Then, to bring back completely the old times, Mr. Egger was prevailed upon to sing one of his _Volkslieder_, that which had been Waymark's especial favourite, and which he had sung--on an occasion memorable to Sally and her husband--in the little dining-room at Richmond.

"_Die Schwalb'n flieg'n fort, doch sie zieh'n wieder her; Der Mensch wenn er fortgeht, er kommt nimmermehr!_"

Waymark was silent for a little after that.

When it was nearly eleven o'clock, Casti looked once or twice meaningly at Waymark, and the friends at length rose to take their leave, in spite of much protest. O'Gree accompanied them as far as the spot where they would meet the omnibus, then, with a.s.surances that to-night had been but the beginning of glorious times, sent them on their way.

Julian was silent during the journey home; he looked very wearied. For lack of a timely conveyance the last mile or so had to be walked.

Julian's cough had been bad during the evening, and now the cold night-air seemed to give him much trouble. Presently, just as they turned a corner, a severe blast of wind met them full in the face.

Julian began coughing violently, and all at once became so weak that he had to lean against a palisading. Waymark, looking closer in alarm, saw that the handkerchief which the poor fellow was holding to his mouth was covered with blood.

"We must have a cab," he exclaimed. "It is impossible for you to walk in this state."

Julian resisted, with a.s.surances that the worst was over for the time.

If Waymark would give the support of his arm, he would get on quite well. There was no overcoming his resolution to proceed.

"There's no misunderstanding this, old fellow," he said, with a laugh, when they had walked a few paces.

Waymark made no reply.

"You'll laugh at me," Julian went on, "but isn't there a certain resemblance between my case and that of Keats? He too was a drug-pounder; he liked it as little as I do; and he died young of consumption. I suppose a dying man may speak the truth about himself. I too might have been a poet, if life had dealt more kindly with me. I think you would have liked the thing I was writing; I'd finished some three hundred lines; but now you'll never see it. Well, I don't know that it matters."

Waymark tried to speak in a tone of hopefulness, but it was hard to give his words the semblance of sincerity.

"Do you remember," Casti continued, "when all my talk used to be about Rome, and how I planned to see it one day--see it again. I should say?

Strange to think that I really was born in Rome. I used to call myself a Roman, you know, and grow hot with pride when I thought of it. Those were dreams. Oh, I was to do wonderful things! Poetry was to make me rich, and then I would go and live in Italy, and fill my lungs with the breath of the Forum, and write my great Epic. How good that we can't foresee our lives!"

"I wish to heaven," Waymark exclaimed, when they were parting, "that you would be a man and shake this monstrous yoke from off your neck! It is that that is killing you. Give yourself a chance. Defy everything and make yourself free."

Julian shook his head sadly.

"Too late! I haven't the courage. My mind weakens with my body."

He went to his lodgings, and, as he antic.i.p.ated, found that Harriet had not yet come home. She was almost always out very late, and he had learnt too well what t expect on her return. In spite of her illness, of which she made the most when it suited her purpose, she was able t wander about at all hours with the acquaintances her husband did not even know by name, and Julian had no longer the strength even to implore her to have pity on him. He absence racked him with nervous fears; her presence tortured him to agony. Weakness in him had reached a criminal degree. Once or twice he had all but made up his mind to flee secretly, and only let her know his determination when he had gone; but his poverty interposed such obstacles that he ended by accepting them as excuses for his hesitation. The mere thought of fulfilling the duty which he owed to himself, of speaking out with manly firmness, and telling her that here at length all ended between them--that was a terror to his soul. So he stayed on and allowed her to kill him by slow torment. He was at least carrying out to the letter the promise he had made to her father, and this thought supplied him with a flattering unction which, such was his disposition, at times even brought him a moment's solace.

There was no fire in the room; he sank upon a chair and waited. Every sound in the street below sent the blood back upon his heart. At length there came the fumbling of a latch-key--he could hear it plainly--and then the heavy foot ascending the stairs. Her glazed eyes and red cheeks told the familiar tale. She sat down opposite him and was silent for a minute, half dozing; then she seemed suddenly to become conscious of his presence, and the words began to flow from her tongue, every one cutting him to the quick, poisoning his soul with their venom of jealousy and vulgar spite. Contention was the breath of her nostrils; the prime impulse of her heart was suspicion. Little by little she came round to the wonted topic. Had he been to see his friend the thief? Was she in prison again yet? Whom had she been stealing from of late? Oh, she was innocence itself, of course; too good for this evil-speaking world.

Tonight he could not bear it. He rose from his chair like a drunken man, and staggered to the door. She sprang after him, but he was just in time to escape her grasp and spring down the stairs; then, out into the night. Once before, not quite a month ago, he had been driven thus in terror from the sound of her voice, and had slept at a coffeehouse.

Now, as soon as he had got out of the street and saw that he was not being pursued, he discovered that he had given away his last copper for the omnibus fare. No matter; the air was pleasant upon his throbbing temples. It was too late to think of knocking at the house where Waymark lodged. Nothing remained but to walk about the streets all night, resting on a stone when he became too weary to go further, sheltering a little here or there when the wind cut him too keenly.

Rather this, oh, a thousand times rather, than the h.e.l.l behind him.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

NO WAY BUT THIS

In the early days of October, Waymark's book appeared. It excited no special attention. Here and there a reviewer was found who ventured to hint that there was powerful writing in this new novel, but no one dared to heartily recommend it to public attention. By some it was cla.s.sed with the "unsavoury productions of the so-called naturalist school;" others pa.s.sed it by with a few lines of unfavourable comment.

Clearly it was destined to bring the author neither fame nor fortune.

Waymark was surprised at his own indifference. Having given a copy to Casti, and one to Maud, he thought very little more of the production.

It had ceased to interest him; he felt that if he were to write again it would be in a very different way and of different people. Even when he prided himself most upon his self-knowledge he had been most ignorant of the direction in which his character was developing.

Unconsciously, he had struggled to the extremity of weariness, and now he cared only to let things take their course, standing aside from every shadow of new onset. Above all, he kept away as much as possible from the house at Tottenham, where Ida was still living. To go there meant only a renewal of torment. This was in fact the commonplace period of his life. He had no energy above that of the ordinary young man who is making his living in a commonplace way, and his higher faculties lay dormant.

In one respect, and that, after all, perhaps the most important, his position would soon be changed. Mr. Woodstock's will, when affairs were settled, would make him richer by one thousand pounds; he might, if he chose, presently give up his employment, and either trust to literature, or look out for something less precarious. A year ago, this state of things would have filed him with exultation. As it was, he only saw in it an accident compelling him to a certain fateful duty.

There was now no reason why his marriage should be long delayed. For Maud's sake the step was clearly desirable. At present she and her mother were living with Miss Bygrave in the weird old house. Of Paul there had come no tidings. Their home was of course broken up, and they had no income of their own to depend upon. Maud herself, though of course aware of Waymark's prospects, seemed to shrink from speaking of the future. She grew more and more uncertain as to her real thoughts and desires.

And what of Ida? It was hard for her to realise her position; for a time she was conscious only of an overwhelming sense of loneliness. The interval of life with her grandfather was dreamlike as she looked back upon it; yet harder to grasp was the situation in which she now found herself, surrounded by luxuries which had come to her as if from the clouds, her own mistress, free to form wishes merely for the sake of satisfying them. She cared little to realise the minor possibilities of wealth. The great purpose, the n.o.ble end to which her active life had shaped itself, was sternly present before her; she would not shirk its demands. But there was lacking the inspiration of joy. Could she harden herself to every personal desire, and forget, in devotion to others, the sickness of one great hope deferred? Did her ideal require this of her?

Would he come, now that she was free to give herself where she would, now that she was so alone? The distance between them had increased ever since the beginning of her new life. She knew well the sort of pride he was capable of; but was there not something else, something she dreaded to observe too closely, in the manner of his speech? Did he think so meanly of her as to deem such precautions necessary against her misconstruction? Nay, _could_ he have guarded himself in that way if he really loved her? Would it not have been to degrade her too much in his own eyes?

He loved her once. Had she in any way grown less n.o.ble in his eyes, by those very things which she regarded as help and strengthening? Did he perchance think she had too readily accepted ease when it was offered her, sacrificing the independence which he most regarded? If so, all the more would he shrink from losing for her his own independence.

She imagined herself wedded to him; at liberty to stand before him and confess all the thoughts which now consumed her in the silence of vain longing. "Why did I break free from the fetters of a shameful life?

Because I loved, and loved _you_. What gave me the strength to pa.s.s from idle luxury, poisoning the energies of the soul, to that life of lonely toil and misery? My love, and my love for _you_. I kept apart from you then; I would not even let you know what I was enduring; only because you had spoken a hasty, thoughtless word to me, which showed me with terrible distinctness the meaning of all I had escaped, and filled me with a determination to prove to myself that I had not lost all my better nature, that there was still enough of purity in my being to save me finally. What was it that afflicted me with agony beyond all words when I was made the victim of a cruel and base accusation? Not the fear of its consequences; only the dread lest _you_ should believe me guilty, and no longer deem me worthy of a thought. It is no arrogance to say that I am become a pure woman; not my own merits, but love of you has made me so. I love you as a woman loves only once; if you asked me to give up my life to prove it, I am capable of doing no less a thing than that. Flesh and spirit I lay before you--all yours; do you still think the offering unworthy?"

And yet she knew that she could never thus speak to him; her humility was too great. At moments she might feel this glow of conscious virtue, but for the most part the weight of all the past was so heavy upon her.

Fortunately, her time did not long remain unoccupied. As her grandfather's heiress she found herself owner of the East-end property, and, as soon as it was a.s.sured that she would incur no danger, she went over the houses in the company of the builder whom Abraham had chosen to carry out his proposed restorations. The improvements were proceeded with at once, greatly to the astonishment of the tenants, to whom such changes inevitably suggested increase of rent. These fears Ida did her best to dispel. Dressed in the simplest possible way, and with that kind, quiet manner which was natural to her, she went about from room to room, and did her best to become intimately acquainted with the woman-kind of the Lane and the Court. It was not an easy end to compa.s.s. She was received at first with extreme suspicion; her appearance aroused that distrust which with the uneducated attaches to everything novel. In many instances she found it difficult to get it believed' that she was really the "landlord." But when this idea had been gradually mastered, and when, moreover, it was discovered that she brought no tracts, spoke not at all of religious matters, was not impertinently curious, and showed indeed that she knew a good deal of what she talked about, something like respect for her began to spring up here and there, and she was spoken of as "the right sort."

Ida was excellently fitted for the work she had undertaken. She knew so well, from her own early experience, the nature of the people with whom she was brought in contact, and had that instinctive sympathy with their lives without which it is so vain to attempt practical social reform. She started with no theory, and as yet had no very definite end in view; it simply appeared to her that, as owner of these slums, honesty and regard for her own credit required that she should make them decent human habitations, and give what other help she could to people obviously so much in need of it. The best was that she understood how and when such help could be afforded. To native practicality and prudence she added a keen recollection of the wants and difficulties she had struggled through in childhood; there was no danger of her being foolishly lavish in charity, when she could foresee with sympathy all the evil results which would ensue. Her only temptation to imprudence was when, as so often happened, she saw some little girl in a position which reminded her strongly of her own dark days; all such she would have liked to take home with her and somehow provide for, saving them from the wretched alternatives which were all that life had to offer them. So, little by little, she was brought to think in a broader way of problems puzzling enough to wiser heads than hers. Social miseries, which she had previously regarded as mere matters of fact, having never enjoyed the opportunities of comparison which alone can present them in any other light, began to move her to indignation. Often it was with a keen sense of shame that she took the weekly rent, a sum sc.r.a.ped together Heaven knew how, representing so much deduction from the food of the family. She knew that it would be impossible to remit the rent altogether, but at all events there was the power of reducing it, and this she did in many cases.

The children she came to regard as her peculiar care. Her strong common sense taught her that it was with these that most could be done. The parents could not be reformed; at best they might be kept from that darkest depth of poverty which corrupts soul and body alike. But might not the girls be somehow put into the way of earning a decent livelihood? Ida knew so well the effect upon them of the occupations to which they mostly turned, occupations degrading to womanhood, blighting every hope. Even to give them the means of remaining at home would not greatly help them; there they still breathed a vile atmosphere. To remove them altogether was the only efficient way, and how could that be done?

The months of late summer and autumn saw several more garden-parties.

These, Ida knew, were very useful, but more enduring things must be devised. Miss Hurst was the only person with whom she could consult, and that lady's notions were not very practical. If only she could have spoken freely with Waymark; but that she could no longer on any subject, least of all on this. As winter set in, he had almost forsaken her. He showed no interest in her life, beyond asking occasionally what she was reading, and taking the opportunity to talk of books.

Throughout November she neither saw him nor heard from him. Then one evening he came.

She was alone when the servant announced him; with her sat her old companion, Grim. As Waymark entered, she looked at him with friendly smile, and said quietly--

"I thought you would never come again"

"I have not kept away through thoughtlessness," he replied. "Believe that; it is the truth. And to-night I have only come to say good-bye. I am going to leave London."

"You used to say nothing would induce you to leave London, and that you couldn't live anywhere else."

"Yes; that was one of my old fancies. I am going right away into the country, at all events for a year or two. I suppose I shall write novels."

He moved uneasily under her gaze, and affected a cheerfulness which could not deceive her.

"Has your book been a success?" Ida asked.

"No; it fell dead."

"Why didn't you give me a copy?"

"I thought too little of it. It's poor stuff. Better you shouldn't read it."