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LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

Love and Mr. Lewisham

By H.G.WELLS, Author of '' Tales of Space and Time " ^^When the Sleeper Wakes'' ''The War of the Worlds'' etc.

HARPER y BROTHERS PUBLISHERS LONDON AND NEW YORK

1900

Printed by Bam-Antvne, Hanson &^ Co. At the BallantiTie Press

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PACK

I. Introduces Mr. Lewisham i

II. "As the Wind Blows" ii

III. The Wonderful Discovery 22

IV. Raised Eyebrows 28

V. Hesitations 37

VI. The Scandalous Ramble 43

VII. The Reckoning 58

VIII. The Career Prevails 70

IX. Alice Heydinger 78

X. In the Gallery of Old Iron 85

XI. Manifestations oi

XII. Lewisham is Unaccountable 106

XIII. Lewisham Insists 109

XIV. Mr. Lagune's Point of View 119

XV. Love in the Streets 126

XVI. Miss Heydinger's Private Thoughts 136

XVII. In the Raphael Gallery 141

XVIII. The Friends of Progress Meet 147

XIX. Lewisham's Solution 162

XX. The Career is Suspended 171

XXI. Home ! iSi

XXII. Epithalamy 1S4

XXIII. Mr. Chaffery at Home 191

XXIV. The Campaign Opens 216

XXV. The First Battle 226

XXVI. The Glamour Fades 247

W CONTENTS

CHAPTER ^^^^

XXVII Concerning a Quarrel 256

XXVIII. The Coming of the Roses 272

XXIX. Thorns and Rose Petals 282

XXX. A Withdrawal 297

XXXI. In Battersea Park 3^9

XXXII. The Crowning Victory 3'^

LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCES MR. LEWISHAM

The opening chapter does not concern itself with Love — indeed that antagonist does not cer- tainly appear until the third — and Mr. Lewisham is seen at his studies. It was ten years ago, and in tliose days he was assistant master in the Whortley Proprietary School, Whortley, Sussex, and his wages were forty pounds a year, out of which he had to afford fifteen shillings a week during term time to lodge with Mrs. Munday, at the little shop in the West Street. He was called " Mr." to dis- tinguish him from the bigger boys, whose duty it was to learn, and it was a matter of stringent regula- tion that he should be addressed as " Sir."

He wore ready-made clothes, his black jacket of rigid line was dusted about the front and sleeves with scholastic chalk, and his face was downy and his moustache incipient. He was a passable-looking

2 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

youngster of eighteen, fair-haired, indifferently barbered and with a quite unnecessary pair of glasses on his fairly prominent nose — he wore these to make himself look older, that discipline might be maintained. At the particular moment when this story begins he was in his bedroom. An attic it was, with lead-framed dormer windows, a slanting ceiling and a bulging wall, covered, as a number of torn places witnessed, with innumerable strata of florids old-fashioned paper.

To judge by the room Mr. Lewisham thought little of Love but much on Greatness. Over the head of the bed, for example, where good folks hang texts, these truths asserted themselves, written in a clear, bold, youthfully florid hand : — " Knowledge is Power," and *' What man has done man can do," — man in the second instance re- ferring to Mr. Lewisham. Never for a moment were these things to be forgotten. Mr. Lewisham could see them afresh every morning as his head came through his shirt. And over the yellow- painted box upon which — for lack of shelves — Mr. Lewisham's library was arranged, was a " Schema." (Why he should not have headed it " Scheme," the editor of the CJmrch Times, who calls his miscella- neous notes " Variay is better able to say than I). In this scheme, 1892 was indicated as the year in which Mr. Lewisham proposed to take his B. A.

INTRODUCES MR. LEWISHAM 3

degree at the London University with " hons. in all subjects," and 1895 as the date of his " gold medal/* Subsequently there were to be " pamphlets in the Liberal interest," and such like things duly dated. " Who would control others must first control him- self," remarked the wall over the wash-hand stand, and behind the door against the Sunday trousers was a portrait of Carlyle.

These were no mere threats against the universe ; operations had begun. Jostling Shakespeare, Emerson's Essays, and the penny Life of Con- fucius, there were battered and defaced school books, a number of the excellent manuals of the Universal Correspondence Association, exercise books, ink (red and black) in penny bottles, and an india-rubber stamp with Mr. Lewisham's name. A trophy of bluish green South Kensington certif- icates for geometrical drawing, astronomy, physi- ology, physiography, and inorganic chemistry, adorned his further wall. And against the Carlyle portrait was a manuscript list of French irregular verbs.

Attached by a drawing-pin to the roof over the wash-hand stand, which — the room being an attic — sloped almost dangerously, dangled a Time-Table. Mr. Lewisham was to rise at five, and that this was no vain boasting, a cheap American alarum clock by the books on the box witnessed. The lumps of

4 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

mellow chocolate on the papered ledge by the bed- head, indorsed that evidence. " French until eight," said the time-table curtly. Breakfast was to be eaten in twenty minutes ; then twenty-five minutes of "lit- erature " to be precise, learning extracts (preferably pompous) from the plays of William Shakespeare — and then to school and duty. The time-table further prescribed Latin Composition for the recess and the dinner hour, ("literature," however, during the meal), and varied its injunctions for the rest of the twenty- four hours according to the day of the week. Not a moment for Satan and that " mischief still " of his. Only three-score and ten has the confidence, as well as the time, to be idle.

But just think of the admirable quality of such a scheme ! Up and busy at five, with all the world about one horizontal, warm, dreamy-brained or stu- pidly hullish, if roused, roused only to grunt and sigh and roll over again into oblivion. By eight three hours' clear start, three hours' knowledge ahead of everyone. It takes, I have been told by an eminent scholar, about a thousand hours of sin- cere work to learn a language completely — after three or four languages much less — which gives you, even at the outset, one each a year before break- fast. The gift of tongues — picked up like mush- rooms! Then that "literature" — an astonishing conception ! In the afternoon mathematics and the

INTRODUCES MR. LEWISHAM, 5

sciences. Could anything be simpler or more mag- nificent ? In six years Mr. Lewisham will have his five or six languages, a sound, all-round education, a habit of tremendous industry, and be still but four and twenty. He will already have honour in his university and ampler means. One realises that those pamphlets in the Liberal interests will be no obscure platitudes. Where Mr. Lewisham will be at thirty stirs the imagination. There will be mod- ifications of the Schema, of course, as experience widens. But the spirit of it — the spirit of it is a devouring flame !

He was sitting facing the diamond-framed win- dow, writing, writing fast, on a second yellow box that was turned on end and empty, and the lid was open, and his knees were conveniently stuck into the cavity. The bed was strewn with books and copygraphed sheets of instruc- tions from his remote correspondence tutors. Pursuant to the dangling time-table he was, you would have noticed, translating Latin into English.

Imperceptibly the speed of his writing diminished. " Urit me Glycera; nitor " lay ahead and troubled him. " Urit me," he murmured, and his eyes traV' elled from his book out of window to the vicar's roof opposite and its ivied chimneys. His brows were knit at first and then relaxed. " Urit me I "

6 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

He had put his pen into his mouth and glanced about for his dictionary. Urare ?

Suddenly his expression changed. Movement dictionary-ward ceased. He was listening to alight tapping sound — it was a footfall — outside.

He stood up abruptly, and, stretching his neck, peered through his unnecessary glasses and the dia- mond panes down into the street. Looking acutely downward he could see a hat daintily trimmed with pinkish white blossom, the shoulder of a jacket, and just the tips of nose and chin. Certainly the stranger who sat under the gallery last Sunday next the Frobishers. Then, too, he had seen her only obliquely. . . .

He watched her until she passed beyond the win- dow frame. He strained to see impossibly round the corner. . . .

Then he started, frowned, took his pen from his mouth. " This wandering attention ! " he said. " The slightest thing ! Where was I ? Tcha ! " He made a noise with his teeth to express his irrita- tion, sat down, and replaced his knees in the up- turned box. " Urit me," he said, biting the end of his pen and looking for his dictionary.

It was a Wednesday half-holiday late in March, a spring day glorious in amber light, dazzling white clouds and the intensest blue, casting a powder of wonderful green hither and thither among the trees

INTRODUCES MR. LEWISHAM 7

and rousing all the birds to tumultuous rejoicings, a rousing day, a clamatory insistent day, a veritable herald of summer. The stir of that anticipation was in the air, the warm earth was parting above the swelling seeds, and all the pine-woods were full of the minute crepitation of opening bud scales. And not only was the stir of Mother Nature's awakening in the earth and the air and the trees, but also in Mr. Lewisham's youthful blood, bidding him rouse himself to live — live in a sense quite other than that the Schema indicated.

He saw the dictionary peeping from under a paper, looked up " Urit me," appreciated the shining " nitor " of Glycera's shoulders, and so fell idle again to rouse himself abruptly.

" I cant fix my attention," said Mr. Lewisham. He took off the needless glasses, wiped them, and blinked his eyes. This confounded Horace and his stimulating epithets ! A walk?

" I won't be beat," he said — incorrectly — replaced his glasses, brought his elbows down on either side of his box with resonant violence, and clutched the hair over his ears with both hands. . . .

In five minutes' time he found himself watching the swallows curving through the blue over the vicarage garden.

" Did ever man have such a bother with himself as me? " he asked vaguely but vehemently, " It's

8 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

self-indulgence does it— sitting down's the beginning of laziness."

So he stood up to his work, and came into perma- nent view of the village street. " If she has gone round the corner by the post office, she will come in sight over the palings above the allotments," sug- gested the unexplored and undisciplined region of Mr. Lewisham's mind. . . .

She did not come into sight. Apparently she had not gone round by the post office after all. It made one wonder where she had gone. Did she go up through the town to the avenue on these occasions? . . . Then abruptly a cloud drove across the sunlight, the glowing street went cold and Mr. Lewisham's imagination submitted to control. So " Mater saeva aipidiyimn^' " The untameable mother of desires," — Horace (Book II, of the Odes) was the author appointed by the university for Mr. Lewis- ham's matriculation — was, after all, translated to its prophetic end.

Precisely as the church clock struck five Mr. Lewisham, with a punctuality that was indeed almost too prompt for a really earnest student, shut his Horace, took up his Shakespeare, and descended the narrow, curved, uncarpeted staircase that led from his garret to the living room in which he had his tea with his landlady, Mrs, Munday. That good lady was alone, and after a few civilities Mr. Lewis-

INTRODUCES MR. LEWISHAM 9

ham opened his Shakespeare and read from a mark onward — that mark, by-the-bye, was in the middle of a scene — while he consumed mechanically a number of slices of bread and whort jam.

Mrs. Munday watched him over her spectacles and thought how bad so much reading must be for the eyes, until the tinkling of her shop-bell called her away to a customer. At twenty-five minutes to six he put the book back in the window-sill, dashed a few crumbs from his jacket, assumed a mortar-board cap that was lying on the tea-caddy, and went forth to his evening " preparation duty."

The West Street was empty and shining golden with the sunset. Its beauty seized upon him, and he forgot to repeat the passage from Henry VIII. that should have occupied him down the street. Instead he was presently thinking of that insubor- dinate glance from his window and of little chins and nose-tips. His eyes became remote in their expression. . . .

The school door was opened by an obsequious little boy with " lines" to be examined.

Mr. Lewisham felt a curious change of atmos- phere on his entry. The door slammed behind him. The hall with its insistent scholastic suggestions, its yellow marbled paper, its long rows of hat-pegs, its disreputable array of umbrellas, a broken mortar-board and a tattered and scattered

10 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

Principia, seemed dim and dull in contrast with the luminous stir of the early March evening outside. An unusual sense of the greyness of a teacher's life, of the greyness indeed of the life of all studious souls, came and went in his mind. He took the " lines," written painfully over three pages of exer- cise book, and obliterated them with a huge G. E. L., scrawled monstrously across each page. He heard the familiar mingled noises of the playground drifting in to him through the open schoolroom door.

CHAPTER II

" AS THE WIND BLOWS "

A FLAW in that pentagram of a time-table, that pentagram by which the demons of distraction were to be excluded from Mr. Lewisham's career to Greatness, was the absence of a clause forbidding study out of doors. It was the day after the trivial window peeping of the last chapter that this gap in the time-table became apparent, a day if possible more gracious and alluring than its predecessor, and at half-past twelve, instead of returning from the school directly to his lodging, Mr. Lewisham escaped through the omission and made his way — Horace in pocket — to the park gates and so to the avenue of ancient trees that encircles the broad Whortley domain. He dismissed a suspicion of his motive with perfect success. In the avenue — for the path is but little frequented — one might expect to read undisturbed. The open air, the erect atti- tude, are surely better than sitting in a stuffy, ener- vating bedroom. The open air is distinctly healthy, hardy, simple. . . .

XX

12 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

The day was breezy, and there was a perpetual rustling, a going and coming in the budding trees.

The network of the beeches was full of golden sunlight, and all the lower branches were shot with horizontal dashes of new-born green.

" Zm, nisi ventis Debes ludibrium, cave,"

was the appropriate matter of Mr. Lewisham's thoughts, and he was mechanically trying to keep the book open in three places at once, at the text, the notes, and the literal translation, while he turned up the vocabulary for ludibrium, when his attention, wandering dangerously near the top of the page, fell over the edge and escaped with in- credible swiftness down the avenue. . , .

A girl wearing a straw hat adorned with white blossom, was advancing towards him. Her occupa- tion, too, was literary. Indeed, she was so busy writing that evidently she did not perceive him :

Unreasonable emotions descended upon Mr. Lewisham — emotions that are unaccountable on the mere hypothesis of a casual meeting. Something was whispered ; it sounded suspiciously like " It's her ! " He advanced with his fingers in his book, ready to retreat to its pages if she looked up, and watched her over it. Ludibrium passed out of his universe. She was clearly unaware of his nearness,

"AS TPIE WIND BLOWS" 13

he thought, intent upon her writing, whatever that might be. He wondered what it might be. Her face, foreshortened by her downward regard, seemed infantile. Her fluttering skirt was short, and showed her shoes and ankles. He noted her graceful, easy steps. A figure of health and lightness it was, sun- Ht, and advancing towards him, something, as he afterwards recalled with a certain astonishment, quite outside the Schema.

Nearer she came and nearer, her eyes still down- cast. He was full of vague, stupid promptings to- wards an uncalled-for intercourse. It was curious she did not see him. He began to expect almost painfully the moment when she would look up, though what there was to expect — ! He thought of what she would see when she discovered him, and wondered where the tassel of his cap might be hang- ing— it sometimes occluded one eye. It was of course quite impossible to put up a hand and inves- tigate. He was near trembling with excitement. His paces, acts which are usually automatic, became uncertain and difficult. One might have thought he had never passed a human being before. Still nearer, ten yards now, nine, eight. Would she go past without looking up ? . . .

Then their eyes met.

She had hazel eyes, but Mr. Lewisham being quite an amateur about eyes, could find no words

14 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

for them. She looked demurely into his face. She seemed to find nothing there. She glanced away from him among the trees, and passed, and nothing remained in front of him but an empty avenue, a sunlit, green-shot void.

The incident was over.

From far away the soughing of the breeze swept towards him, and in a moment all the twigs about him were quivering and rustling and the boughs creaking with a gust of wind. It seemed to urge him away from her. The faded dead leaves that had once been green and young sprang up, raced one another, leapt, danced and pirouetted, and then something large struck him on the neck, stayed for a startling moment, and drove past him up the avenue.

Something vividly white ! A sheet of paper — the sheet upon which she had been writing !

For what seemed a long time he did not grasp the situation. He glanced over his shoulder and under- stood suddenly. His awkwardness vanished. Hor- ace in hand, he gave chase, and in ten paces had secured the fugitive document. He turned towards her, flushed with triumph, the quarry in his hand. He had as he picked it up seen what was written, but the situation dominated him for the instant. He made a stride towards her, and only then under- stood what he had seen. Lines of a measured

"AS THE WIND BLOWS" 15

length and capitals! Could it really be — ? He stopped. He looked again, eyebrows rising. He held it before him, staring now quite frankly. It had been written with a stylographic pen. Thus it ran :

" Come ! Sharp's the wordy

And then again,

" Come ! Sharp's the word."

And then,

" Come ! Sharp's the word!'

" Come ! Sharp's t'Jie word."

And so on all down the page, in a boyish hand uncommonly like Frobisher ii.'s.

Surely ! " I say ! " said Mr. Levvisham, struggling with the new aspect and forgetting all his manners in his surprise. . . . He remembered giving the im- position quite well : — Frobisher ii. had repeated the exhortation just a little too loudly — had brought the thing upon himself. To find her doing this jarred oddly upon certain vague preconceptions he had formed of her. Somehow it seemed as if she had betrayed him. That of course was only for the instant.

She had come up with him now. " May I have my sheet of paper, please ? " she said with a catch- ing of her breath. She was a couple of inches less in height than he. Do you observe her half-open lips, said Mother Nature in a noiseless aside to Mr.

l6 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

Lewisham — a thing he afterwards recalled. In her eyes was a touch of apprehension.

" I say," he said, with protest still uppermost, "You oughtn't to do this."

" Do what ? "

"This. Impositions. For my boys."

She raised her eyebrows, then knitted them mo- mentarily, and looked at him. " Are you Mr. Lew- isham ? " she asked with an affectation of entire ignorance and discovery.

She knew him perfectly well, which was one rea- son why she was writing the imposition, but pretend- ing not to know gave her something to say.

Mr. Lewisham nodded.

•' Of all people ! Then " — frankly — " you have just found me out."

'' I am afraid I have," said Lewisham. " I am afraid I have found you out." ^

They looked at one another for the next move. She decided to plead in extenuation.

" Teddy Frobisher is my cousin. I know it's very wrong, but he seemed to have such a lot to do and to be in such trouble. And I had nothing to do. In fact, it was / who offered. ..."

She stopped and looked at him. She seemed to consider her remark complete.

That meeting of the eyes had an oddly discon- certing quality. He tried to keep to the business

"AS THE WIND BLOWS" 17

of the imposition. " You ought not to have done that," he said, encountering her steadfastly.

She looked down and then into his face ag-ain, " No," she said, '' I suppose I ought not to. I'm very sorry."

Her looking down and up again produced another unreasonable effect. It seemed to Lewisham that they were discussing something quite other than the topic of their conversation ; a persuasion pat- ently absurd and only to be accounted for by the general disorder of his faculties. He made a serious attempt to keep his footing of reproof.

" I should have detected the writing, you know."

" Of course you would. It was very wrong of me to persuade him. But I did — I assure you. He seemed in such trouble. And I thought — "

She made another break, and there was a faint deepening of colour in her cheeks. Suddenly, stu- pidly, his own adolescent cheeks began to glow. It became necessary to banish that sense of a duplicate topic forthwith.

" I can assure you," he said, now very earnestly, " I never give a punishment, never, unless it is mer- ited. I make that a rule. I — er — always make that a rule. I am very careful indeed."

" I am really sorry," she interrupted with frank contrition. " It was silly of me."

Lewisham felt unaccountably sorry she should

i8 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

have to apologise, and he spoke at once with the idea of checking the reddening of his face. " I don't think that," he said with a sort of belated alac- rity. " Really, it was kind of you, you know — very kind of you indeed. And I know that — I can quite understand that — er — your kindness. . . ."

" Ran away with me. And now poor little Teddy will get into worse trouble for letting me. . . ."

" Oh no," said Mr. Lewisham, perceiving an op- portunity and trying not to smile his appreciation of what he was saying. " I had no business to read this as I picked it up — absolutely no business. Consequently. . . ."

" You won't take any notice of it ? Really ! "

" Certainly not," said Mr. Lewisham.

Her face lit with a smile, and Mr. Lewisham's re- laxed in sympathy. " It is nothing — it's the proper thing for me to do, you know."

" But so many people wouldn't do it. School- masters are not usually so — chivalrous."

He was chivalrous ! The phrase acted like a spur. He obeyed a foolish impulse.

" If you like — " he said.

"What?"

" He needn't do this. The Impot., I mean. I'll let him off."

" Really ? "

" I can."

"AS THE WIND BLOWS" 19

" It's awfully kind of you."

" I don't mind," he said. " It's nothing much. If you really think. . . ."

He was full of self-applause for this scandalous sacrifice of justice.

" It's awfully kind of you," she said.

" It's nothing, really," he explained, " nothing."

" Most people wouldn't — "

" I know."

Pause.

" It's all right," he said. " Really."

He would have given worlds for something more to say, something witty and original, but nothing came-

The pause lengthened. She glanced over her shoulder down the vacant avenue. This interview — this momentous series of things unsaid was com- ing to an end ! She looked at him hesitatingly and smiled again. She held out her hand. No doubt that was the proper thing to do. He took it, searching a void, tumultuous mind in vain.

" It's awfully kind of you," she said again as she did so.

" It don't matter a bit," said Mr. Lewisham, and sought vainly for some other saying, some doorway remark into new topics. Her hand was cool and soft and firm, the most delightful thing to grasp, and this observation ousted all other things. He held it for a moment, but nothing would come.

20 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

They discovered themselves hand in hand. They both laughed and felt " silly." They shook hands in the manner of quite intimate friends, and snatched their hands away awkwardly. She turned, glanced timidly at him over her shoulder, and hesitated. " Good-bye," she said, and was suddenly walking from him.

He bowed to her receding back, made a seven- teenth-century sweep with his college cap, and then some hitherto unexplored regions of his mind flashed into revolt.

Hardly had she gone six paces when he was at her side again.

" I say," he said with a fearful sense of his temer- ity and raising his mortar-board awkwardly as though he was passing a funeral. " But that sheet of paper ..."

" Yes," she said, surprised — quite naturally.

"May I have it?"

" Why ? "

He felt a breathless pleasure, like that of sliding down a slope of snow. " I would like to have it,"

She smiled and raised her eyebrows, but his ex- citement was now too great for smiling, " Look here ! " she said, and displayed the sheet crumpled into a ball. She laughed — with a touch of effort.

" I don't mind that," said Mr. Lewisham laughing

"AS THE WIND BLOWS" 21

too. He captured the paper by an insistent gesture and smoothed it out with fingers that trembled.

"You don't mind? " he said.

" Mind what ? "

"If I keep it?"

" Why should I ? "

Pause. Their eyes met again. There was an odd constraint about both of them, a palpitating interval of silence.

" I really must be going," she said suddenly, breaking the spell by an effort. She turned about and left him with the crumpled piece of paper in the fist that held the book, the other hand lifting the mortar-board in a dignified salute again.

He watched her receding figure. His heart was beating with remarkable rapidity. How light, how Hving she seemed ! Little round flakes of sunlight raced down her as she went. She walked fast, then slowly, looking sideways once or twice but not back, until she reached the park gates. Then she looked towards him, a remote, friendly little figure, made a gesture of farewell, and disappeared.

His face was flushed and his eyes bright. Curi- ously enough, he was out of breath. He stared for a long time at the vacant end of the avenue. Then he turned his eyes to his trophy gripped against the closed and forgotten Horace in his hand.

CHAPTER III

THE WONDERFUL DISCOVERY

On Sunday it was Lewisham's duty to accom- pany the boarders twice to church. The boys sat in the gallery above the choir, facing the organ loft and at right angles to the general congregation. It was a prominent position, and made him feel pain- fully conspicuous, except in moods of exceptional vanity, when he used to imagine that all these peo- ple were thinking how his forehead and his certif- icates accorded. He thought a lot in those days of his certificates and forehead, but little of his honest, healthy face beneath it. (To tell the truth there was nothing very wonderful about his forehead.) He rarely looked down the church, as he fancied to do so would be to meet the collective eye of the congregation regarding him. So that in the morning he was not able to see that the Frobishers' pew was empty until the litany.

But in the evening, on the way to church, the Frobishers and their guest crossed the market- square as his string of boys marched along the

22

THE WONDERFUL DISCOVERY 23

west side. And the guest was arrayed in a gay new dress, as if it was already Easter, and her face set in its dark hair came with a strange effect of mingled freshness and familiarity. She looked at him calmly ! He felt very awkward and was for cutting his new acquaintance. Then hesitated, and raised his hat with a jerk as if to Mrs. Frobisher. Neither lady acknowledged his salute, which may possibly have been a little unexpected. Then young Siddons dropped his hymn-book, stooped to pick it up, and Lewisham almost fell over him. . . . He entered church in a mood of black despair.

But consolation of a sort came soon enough. As she took her seat she distinctly glanced up at the gallery, and afterwards as he knelt to pray, he peeped between his fingers and saw her looking up again. She was certainly not laughing at him.

In those days much of Lewisham'smind was still an unknown land to him. He believed among other things that he was always the same consistent intelligent human being, whereas under certain stim- uli he became no longer reasonable and disciplined but a purely imaginative and emotional person. Music, for instance, carried him away, and partic- ularly the effect of many voices in unison whirled him off from almost any state of mind to a fine massive emotionality. And the evening service at Whortley church — at the evening service surplices

24 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM.

were worn — the chanting and singing, the vague brilliance of the numerous candle flames, the multi- tudinous unanimity of the congregation down there, kneeling, rising, thunderously responding invariably inebriated him. Inspired him, if you will, and turned the prose of his life into poetry. And Chance, coming to the aid of Dame Nature, dropped just the apt suggestion into his now highly responsive ear. The second hymn was a simple and popular one, dealing with the theme of Faith, Hope and Charity, and having each verse ending with the word " Love." Conceive it, long drawn out and disarticulate, —

Faith •will van ... ish in ... to sight, Hope be emp . . . tied in deli . . . ight, Love in Heaven will shine more bri . . , ight There . . . fore give us Love.

At the third repetition of the refrain, Lewisham looked down across the chancel and met her eyes for a brief instant. . . .

He stopped singing abruptly. Then the con- sciousness of the serried ranks of faces below there, came with almost overwhelming force upon him, and he dared not look at her again. He felt the blood rushing to his face.

Love ! The greatest of these. The greatest of all things. Better than fame. Better than knowledge. So came the great discovery like a flood across his

THE WONDERFUL DISCOVERY 25

mind, pouring over it with the cadence of the hymn and sending a tide of pink in sympathy across his forehead. The rest of the service was phantasma- goria! background to that great reaHty — a phantas- magoria! background a !ittle inclined to stare. He, Mr. Lewisham, was in Love.

" A . . . men." He was so preoccupied that he found the whole congregation subsiding into their seats, and himself still standing, rapt. He sat down spasmodically, with an impact that seemed to him to re-echo through the church.

As they came out of the porch into the thicken- ing night, lie seemed to see her everywhere. He fancied she had gone on in front, and he hurried up the boys in the hope of overtaking her. They pushed through the throng of dim people going liomeward. Should he raise his hat to her again ? . . . But it was Susie Hopbrow in a light-coloured dress — a raven in dove's plumage. He felt a curious mixture of relief and disappointment. He would see her no more that night.

He hurried from the school to his lodging. He wanted very urgently to be alone. He went up- stairs to his little room and sat before the upturned box on which his Butler's Analogy was spread open. He did not go to the formality of lighting the candle. He leant back and gazed blissfully at the solitary planet that hung over the vicarage garden.

26 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

He took out of his pocket a crumpled sheet of paper, smoothed and carefully refolded, covered with a writing not unlike that of Frobisher ii., and after some maidenly hesitation pressed this treasure to his lips. The Schema and the time-table hung in the darkness like the mere ghosts of themselves.

Mrs. Munday called him thrice to his supper.

He went out immediately after it was eaten and wandered under the- stars until he came over the hill behind the town again, and clambered up the back to the stile in sight of the Frobishers' house. He selected the only lit window as hers. Behind the blind, Mrs. Frobisher, thirty-eight, was busy with her curl-papers — she used papers because they were better for the hair — and discussing certain neighbours in a fragmentary way with Mr. Fro- bisher, who was in bed. Presently she moved the candle to examine a faint discolouration of her com- plexion that rendered her uneasy.

Outside, Mr. Lewisham (eighteen) stood watching the orange oblong for the best part of half an hour, until it vanished and left the house black and blank. Then he sighed deeply and returned home in a very glorious mood indeed.

He awoke the next morning feeling extremely serious, but not clearly remembering the overnight occurrences. His eye fell on his clock. The time was six and he had not heard the alarum ; as a mat-

THE WONDERFUL DISCOVERY 27

ter of fact the alarum had not been wound up. He jumped out of bed at once and ah'ghted upon his best trousers amorphously dropped on the floor instead of methodically cast over a chair. As he soaped his head he tried, according to his rules of revision, to remember the overnight reading. He could not for the life of him. The truth came to him as he was getting into his shirt. His head, struggling in its recesses, became motionless, the handless cuffs ceased to dangle for a minute. . . .

Then his head came through slowly with a sur- prised expression upon his face. He remembered. He remembered the thing as a bald discovery, and without a touch of emotion. With all the achro- matic clearness, the unromantic colourlessness of the early morning. . . .

Yes. He had it now quite distinctly. There had been no overnight reading. He was in Love.

The proposition jarred with some vague thing in his mind. He stood staring for a space, and then began looking about absent-mindedly for his collar- stud. He paused in front of his Schema, regard- ing it.

CHAPTER IV

RAISED EYEBROWS

" Work must be done anyhow," said Mr. Lewis- ham.

But never had the extraordinary advantages of open-air study presented themselves so vividly. Be- fore breakfast he took half an hour of open-air read- ing along the allotments lane near the Frobishers* house, after breakfast and before school he went through the avenue with a book, and returned from school to his lodgings circuitously through the avenue, and so back to the avenue for thirty minutes or so before afternoon school. When Mr. Lewis- ham was not looking over the top of his book during these periods of open-air study, then com- monly he was glancing over his shoulder. And at last who should he see but — !

He saw her out of the corner of his eye, and he

turned away at once, pretending not to have seen

her. His whole being was suddenly irradiated witli

emotion. The hands holding his book gripped it

very tightly. He did not glance back again, but 28

RAISED EYEBROWS 29

walked slowly and steadfastly, reading an ode that he could not have translated to save his life, and listening acutely for her approach. And after an interminable time, as it seemed, came a faint foot- fall and the swish of skirts behind him.

He felt as though his head was directed forward by a clutch of iron.

" Mr. Lewisham," she said close to him, and he turned with a quality of movement that was almost convulsive. He raised his cap clumsily.

He took her extended hand by an afterthought, and held it until she withdrew it. " I am so glad to have met you," she said.

" So am I," said Lewisham simply.

They stood facing one another for an expressive moment, and then by a movement she indicated her intention to walk along the avenue with him. " I wanted so much," she said looking down at her feet, " to thank you for letting Teddy off, you know. That is why I wanted to see you." Lewis- ham took his first step beside her. "And it's odd, isn't it," she said looking up into his face, " that I should meet you here in just the same place. I be- lieve . . . Yes. The very same place we met be- fore."

Mr. Lewisham was tongue-tied.

" Do you often come here," she said.

" Well," he considered — and his voice was most

30 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

unreasonably hoarse when he spoke — " No. No.

. . . That is At least not often. Now and

then. In fact I like it rather for reading and that sort of thing. It's so quiet."

" I suppose you read a great deal?"

"When one teaches one has to."

"But you . . . "

" I'm rather fond of reading, certainly. Are you i

" I love it."

Mr. Lewisham was glad she loved reading. He would have been disappointed had she answered differently. But she spoke with real fervour. She loved reading ! It was pleasant. She would un- derstand him a little perhaps. " Of course," she went on, " I'm not clever like some people are. And I have to read books as I get hold of them."

" So do I," said Mr. Lewisham, " for the matter of that. . . . Have you read . . . Carlyle ? "

The conversation was now fairly under way. They were walking side by side beneath the sway- ing boughs. Mr. Lewisham's sensations were ecstatic, marred only by a dread of some casual boy coming upon them. She had not read much Carlyle. She had always wanted to, even from quite a little girl — she had heard so much about him. She knew he was a Really Great Writer, a very Great Writer indeed. All she had read of him

RAISED EYEBROWS 31

she liked. She could say that. As much as she liked anything. And she had seen his house in Chelsea.

Lewisham, whose knowledge of London had been obtained by excursion trips on six or seven isolated days, was much impressed by this. It seemed to put her at once on a footing of intimacy with this impos- ing Personality. It had never occurred to him at all vividly that these Great Writers had real abiding places. She gave him a few descriptive touches that made the house suddenly real and distinctive to him. She lived quite near, she said, at least within walking distance, in Clapham. He instantly forgot the vague design of lending her his " Sartor Resartus " in his curiosity to learn more about her home. " Clapham — that's almost in London, isn't it ? " he said.

" Quite," she said, but she volunteered no further information about her domestic circumstances. " I like London," she generalised, " and especially in winter." And she proceeded to praise London, its public libraries, its shops, the multitudes of people, the facilities for "doing what you like," the concerts one could go to, the theatres. (It seemed she moved in fairly good society.) " There's always something to see even if you only go out for a walk," she said, " and down here there's nothing to read but idle novels. And those not nev/."

32 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

Mr. Lewisham had regretfully to admit the lack of such culture and mental activity in Whortley. It made him feel terribly her inferior. He had only his bookishness and his certificates to set against it all — and she had seen Carlyle's house ! " Down here," she said, " there's nothing to talk about but scandal." It was too true.

At the corner by the stile, beyond which the wil- lows were splendid against the blue with silvery aments and golden pollen, they turned by mutual impulse and retraced their steps. " I've simply had no one to talk to down here," she said. " Not what /call talking."

" I hope," said Lewisham, making a resolute plunge, " perhaps while you are staying at Whort- ley ..."

He paused perceptibly, and she, following his eyes, saw a voluminous black figure approaching. " We may," said Mr. Lewisham, resuming his re- mark, " chance to meet again, perhaps."

He had been about to challenge her to a delib- erate meeting. A certain delightful tangle of paths that followed the bank of the river had been in his mind. But the apparition of Mr. George Bonover, headmaster of the Whortley Proprietary School, chilled him amazingly. Dame Nature no doubt had arranged the meeting of our young couple, but about Bonover she seems to have been culpably

RAISED EYEBROWS 33

careless. She now receded inimitably, and Mr. Lewisham, with the most unpleasant feelings, found himself face to face with a typical representative of a social organisation which objects very strongly inter alia to promiscuous conversation on the part of the young unmarried junior master. . " — chance to meet again, perhaps," said Mr. Lewisham, with a sudden lack of spirit.

" I hope so too," she said.

Pause. Mr. Bonover's features, and particularly a bushy pair of black eyebrows, were now very near, those eyebrows already raised, apparently to express a refined astonishment.

" Is this Mr. Bonover approaching ? " she asked.

"Yes."

Prolonged pause.

Would he stop and accost them ? At any rate this frightful silence must end. Mr. Lewisham sought in his mind for some remark wherewith to cover his employer's approach. He was surprised to find his mind a desert. He made a colossal ef- fort. If they could only talk, if they could only seem at their ease! But this blank incapacity was eloquent of guilt. Ah !

" It's a lovely day, though," said Mr. Lewisham. "Isn't it?"

She agreed with him. " Isn't it ? " she said.

And then Mr. Bonover passed, forehead tight 3

34 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

reefed so to speak, and lips impressively compressed. Mr. Lewisham raised his mortar-board, and to his astonishment Mr. Bonover responded with a mark- edly formal salute — mock clerical hat sweeping cir- cuitously — and the regard of a searching, disapprov- ing eye, and so passed. Lewisham was overcome with astonishment at this improvement on the nod of their ordinary commerce. And so this terrible incident terminated for the time.

He felt a momentary gust of indignation. After all, why should Bonover or anyone interfere with his talking to a girl if he chose? And for all he knew they might have been properly introduced. By young Frobisher, say. Nevertheless, Lewisham's spring-tide mood relapsed into winter. He was, he felt, singularly stupid for the rest of their conver- sation, and the delightful feeling of enterprise that had hitherto inspired and astonished him when talk- ing to her had shrivelled beyond contempt. He was glad — positively glad — when things came to an end.

At the park gates she held out her hand. " I'm afraid I have interrupted your reading," she said.

" Not a bit," said Mr. Lewisham warming slightly. " I don't know when I've enjoyed a conversa- tion. ..."

•' It was — a breach of etiquette, I am afraid,

RAISED EYEBROWS 35

my speaking to you, but I did so want to thank you. ..."

" Don't mention it," said Mr. Lewisham, secretly impressed by the etiquette.

" Good-bye." He stood hesitating by the lodge, and then turned back up the avenue in order not to be seen to follow her too closely up the West Street.

And then, still walking away from her, he remem- bered that he had not lent her a book as he had planned, nor made any arrangement ever to meet her again. She might leave Whortley anywhen for the amenities of Clapham. He stopped and stood ir- resolute. Should he run after her? Then he re- called Bonover's enigmatical expression of face. He decided that to pursue her would be altogether too conspicuous. Yet ... So he stood in in- glorious hesitation, while the seconds passed.

He reached his lodging at last to find Mrs. Mun- day halfway through dinner.

" You get them books of yours," said Mrs. Mun- day, who took a motherly interest in him, "and you read and you read, and you take no account of time. And now you'll have to eat your dinner half cold and no time for it to settle proper before you goes off to school. It's ruination to a stummik — such ways."

" Oh, never mind my stomach, Mrs, Munday,"

36 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

said Lewisham, roused from a tangled and ap- parently gloomy meditation; "that's viy affair." Quite crossly he spoke for him.

" I'd rather have a good sensible actin' stummik than a full head," said Mrs. Munday, " any day."

"I'm different, you see," snapped Mr. Lewisham, and relapsed into silence and gloom.

(" Hoity toity ! " said Mrs. Munday under her breath.)

CHAPTER V

HESITATIONS

Mr. BONOVER, having fully matured a Hint suit- able for the occasion, dropped it in the afternoon, while Lewisham was superintending cricket practice. He made a few remarks about the prospects of the first eleven by way of introduction, and Lewisham agreed with him that Frobisher i. looked like shap- ing very well this season.

A pause followed and the headmaster hummed. " By-the-bye," he said, as if making conversation and still watching the play ; " I, ah — understood that you, ah — were a stranger to Whortley."

" Yes," said Lewisham, " that's so."

•' You have made friends in the neighbourhood?"

Lewisham was troubled with a cough and his ears — those confounded ears — brightened. "Yes," he said, recovering. "Oh yes. Yes. I have."

" Local people, I presume."

"Well, no. Not exactly," The brightness spread from Lewisham's ears over his face.

" I saw you," said Bonover, " talking to a young

37

38 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

lady in the avenue. Her face was somehow quite famihar to me. Who was she ? "

Should he say she was a friend of the Frobishers? In that case Bonover, in his insidious amiable way might talk to the Frobisher parents and make things disagreeable for her. " She was," said Lewisham, flushing deeply with the stress on his honesty and dropping his voice to a mumble, " a ... a ... an old friend of my mother's. In fact, I met her once at Salisbury."

" Where ? "

" Salisbury."

" And her name? "

" Smith," said Lewisham, a little hastily and re- penting the lie even as it left his lips.

** Well hit, Harris! " shouted Bonover, and began to clap his hands. " Well hit, sir."

" Harris shapes very well," said Mr. Lewisham.

" Very," said Mr. Bonover. " And — what was it ? Ah! I was just remarking the odd resemblances there are in the world. There is a Miss Henderson — or Henson — stopping with the Frobishers — in the very same town, in fact, the very picture of your Miss . . ."

" Smith," said Lewisham, meeting his eye and recovering the full crimson note of his first blush.

" It's odd," said Bonover, regarding him pensively.

" Very odd," mumbled Lewisham, cursing his own stupidity and looking away.

HESITATIONS 39

« Very — very odd," said Bonover.

" In fact," said Bonover, turning towards the schoolhouse, " I hardly expected it of you, Mr. Lewisham."

" Expected what, sir? "

But Mr. Bonover feigned to be already out of earshot.

" Damn ! " said Mr. Lewisham. " Oh \—dainn ! " — a most objectionable expression and rare with him in those days. He had half a mind to follow the headmaster and ask him if he doubted his word. It was only too evident what the answer would be.

He stood for a minute undecided, then turned on his heel and marched homeward with savage steps. His muscles quivered as he walked, and his face twitched. The tumult of his mind settled at last into angry indignation.

"Confound him!" said Mr. Lewisham, arguing the matter out with the bedroom furniture. " Why the devil can't he mind his own business ? "

" Mind your own business, sir ! " shouted Mr. Lewisham at the wash-hand stand. "Confound you, sir, mind your own business ! "

The wash-hand stand did.

"You overrate your power, sir," said Mr. Lewis- ham a little mollified. " Understand me ! I am my own master out of school."

Nevertheless, for four days and some hours aftei

40 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

Mr. Bonover's Hint, Mr. Lewisham so far observed its implications as to abandon open-air study and struggle with diminishing success to observe the spirit as well as the letter of his time table pre- scriptions. For the most part he fretted at accu- mulating tasks, did them with slipshod energy or looked out of window. The Career constituent in- sisted that to meet and talk to this girl again meant reproof, worry, interference with his work for his matriculation, the destruction of all " Discipline," and he saw the entire justice of the insistence. It was nonsense this being in love ; there wasn't such a thing as love outside of trashy novelettes. And forthwith his mind went ofT at a tangent to her eyes under the shadow of her hat brim, and had to be lugged back by main force. On Thursday when he was returning from school he saw her faraway down the street, and hurried in to avoid her, looking ostentatiously in the opposite direction. But that was a turning-point. Shame overtookhim. On Fri- day his belief in love was warm and living again, and his heart full of remorse for laggard days.

On Saturday morning his preoccupation with her was so vivid that it distracted him even while he was teaching that most teachable subject, algebra, and by the end of the school hours the issue was decided and the Career in headlong rout. That afternoon he would go, whatever happened, and see

HESITATIONS 41

her and speak to her again. The thought of Bon- over arose only to be dismissed. And besides —

Bonover took a siesta early in the afternoon.

Yes, he would go out and find her and speak to her. Nothing should stop him.

Once that decision was taken his imagination be- came riotous with things he might say, attitudes he might strike, and a multitude of vague fine dreams about her. He would say this, he would say that, his mind would do nothing but circle round this wonderful pose of lover. What a cur he had been to hide from her so long ! What could he have been thinking about ? How could he explain it to her, when the meeting really came? Suppose he was very frank —

He considered the limits of frankness. Would she believe he had not seen her on Thursday? — if he assured her that it was so ?

And, most horrible, in the midst of all this came Bonover with a request that he would take "duty " in the cricket field instead of Dunkerley that after- noon. Dunkerley was the senior assistant master, Lewisham's sole colleague. The last vestige of dis- approbation had vanished from Bonover's manner; asking a favour was his autocratic way of proffering the olive branch. But it came to Lewisham as a cruel imposition. For a fateful moment he trem- bled on the brink of acquiescence. In a flash came

42 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

a vision of the long duty of the afternoon — she pos- sibly packing for Clapham all the while. He turned white. Mr. Bonover watched his face.

'* No," said Lewisham bluntly, saying all he was sure of, and forthwith racking his unpractised mind for an excuse. " I'm sorry I can't oblige you, but . . . my arrangements . . . I've made arrange- ments, in fact, for the afternoon.''

Mr. Bonover's eyebrows went up at this obvious lie, and the glow of his suavity faded. " You see," he said, *' Mrs. Bonover expects a friend this after- noon, and we rather want Mr. Dunkerley to make four at croquet. ..."

" I'm sorry," said Mr. Lewisham, still resolute, and making a mental note that Bonover would be play- ing croquet.

*' You don't play croquet by any chance ? " asked Bonover.

" No," said Lewisham, " I haven't an idea."

" If Mr. Dunkerley had asked you ? . . . " per- sisted Bonover, knowing Lewisham's respect for etiquette.

** Oh ! it wasn't on that account," said Lewisham, and Bonover with eyebrows still raised and a general air of outraged astonishment left him standing there, white and stiff, and wondering at his extraordinary temerity.

CHAPTER VI

THE SCANDALOUS RAMBLE

As soon as school was dismissed Lewisham made a gaol-delivery of his outstanding impositions, and hurried back to his lodgings, to spend the time until his dinner was ready — Well? ... It seems hardly fair, perhaps, to Lewisham to tell this ; it is doubtful, indeed, whether a male novelist's duty to his sex should not restrain him, but, as the wall in the shadow by the diamond-framed window insisted, " Magna est Veritas et prevalehitT Mr. Lewisham brushed his hair with elaboration, and ruffled it picturesquely, tried the effect of all his ties and selected a white one, dusted his boots with an old pocket-handkerchief, changed his trousers because the week-day pair was minutely frayed at the heels, and inked the elbows of his coat where the stitches were a little white. And, to be still more intimate, he studied his callow appearance in the glass from various points of view, and decided that his nose might have been a little smaller with advantage. . . .

43

44 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

Directly after dinner he went out, and by the shortest path to the allotment lane, telling himself he did not care if he met Bonover forthwith in the street. He did not know precisely what he intended to do, but he was quite clear that he meant to see the girl he had met in the avenue. He knew he should see her. A sense of obstacles merely braced him and was pleasurable. He went up the stone steps out of the lane to the stile that overlooked the Frobishers, the stile from which he had watched the Frobisher bedroom. There he seated himself with his arms folded, in full view of the house.

That was at ten minutes to two. At twenty minutes to three he was still sitting there, but his hands were deep in his jacket pockets, and he was scowling and kicking his foot against the step with an impatient monotony. His needless glasses had been thrust into his waistcoat pocket — where they remained throughout the afternoon — and his cap was tilted a little back from his forehead and ex- posed a wisp of hair. One or two people had gone down the lane, and he had pretended not to see them, and a couple of hedge-sparrows chasing each other along the side of the sunlit, wind-rippled field had been his chief entertainment. It is unaccount- able, no doubt, but he felt angry with her as the time crept on. His expression lowered.

He heard someone going by in the lane behind

THE SCANDALOUS RAMBLE 45

him. He would not look round — it annoyed him to think of people seeing him in this position. His once eminent discretion, though overthrown, still made muffled protests at the afternoon's enterprise. The feet down the lane stopped close at hand.

" Stare away," said Lewisham between his teeth. And then began mysterious noises, a violent rustle of hedge twigs, a something like a very light foot- tapping.

Curiosity boarded Lewisham and carried him after the briefest struggle. He looked round, and there she was, her back to him, reaching after the spiky blossoming blackthorn that crested the opposite hedge. Remarkable accident ! She had not seen him !

In a moment Lewisham's legs were flying over the stile. He went down the steps in the bank with such impetus that it carried him up into the prickly bushes beside her. " Allow me," he said, too excited to see she was not astonished.

" Mr. Lewisham ! " she said in feigned surprise, and stood away to give him room at the blackthorn.

"Which spike will you have?" he cried over- joyed. "The whitest? The highest ? Any!"

"That piece," she chose haphazard, "with the black spike sticking out from it."

A mass of snowy blossom it was against the April sky, and Lewisham, struggling for it — it was

46 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

by no means the most accessible — saw with fantas- tic satisfaction a lengthy scratch flash white on his hand, and turn to red.

" Higher up the lane," he said, descending tri- umphant and breathless, " there is blackthorn. . . . This cannot compare for a moment. ..."

She laughed and looked at him as he stood there flushed, his eyes triumphant, with an unpremedi- tated approval. In church, in the gallery, with his face foreshortened, he had been effective in a way, but this was different. " Show me," she said, though she knew this was the only place for black- thorn for a mile in either direction.

" I hiezv I should see you," he said, by way of answer. " I felt sure I should see you to-day."

" It was our last chance almost," she answered with as frank a quality of avowal. " I'm going home to London on Monday."

" I knew," he cried in triumph. " To Clapham ? " he asked.

" Yes. I have got a situation. You did not know that I was a shorthand clerk and typewriter, did you ? I am. I have just left the school, the Grogram School. And now there is an old gentle- man who wants an amanuensis."

"So you know shorthand?" said he. "That accounts for the stylographic pen. Those lines were written. ... I have them still."

THE SCANDALOUS RAMBLE 47

She smiled and raised her eyebrows. " Here," said Mr. Lewisham tapping his breast-pocket.

" This lane," he said — their talk was curiously in- consecutive— "some way along this lane, over the hill and down, there is a gate, and that goes — I mean, it opens into the path that runs along the river bank. Have you been? "

" No," she said,

" It's the best walk about Whortley. It brings you out upon Immering Common. You must — before you go."

''Now ? " she said with her eyes dancing.

" Why not ? "

" I told Mrs. Frobisher I should be back by four,"

she said.

" It's a walk not to be lost."

"Very well," said she.

"The trees are all budding," said Mr. Lewisham, " the rushes are shooting, and all along the edge of the river there are millions of little white flowers floating on the water. / don't know the names of them, but they're fine. . . . May I carry that branch of blossom ?"

As he took it their hands touched momentarily . . . and there came another of those significant gaps.

" Look at those clouds," said Lewisham abruptly rememberins the remark he had been about to make

48 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

and waving the white froth of blackthorn. " And look at the blue between them."

" It's perfectly splendid. Of all the fine weather the best has been kept for now. My last day. My very last day."

And off these two young people went together in a highly electrical state — to the infinite astonish- ment of Mrs. Frobisher, who was looking out of the attic window — stepping out manfully and finding the whole world lit and splendid for their entertain- ment. The things they discovered and told each other that afternoon down yb the river ! — that spring was wonderful, young leaves beautiful, bud scales astonishingthings, and clouds dazzling and stately ! — with an air of supreme originality ! And their naive astonishment to find one another in agreement upon these novel delights ! It seemed to them quite out- side the play of accident that they should have met each other.

They went by the path that runs among the trees along the river bank, and she must needs repent and wish to take the lower one, the towing path, before they had gone three hundred yards. So Lewisham had to find a place fit for her descent, where a friendly tree proffered its protruding roots as a con- venient balustrade, and down she clambered with her hand in his.

Then a water-vole washing his whiskers gave

THE SCANDALOUS RAMBLE 49

occasion for a sudden touching of hands and the in- timate confidence of whispers and silence together. After which Lewisham essayed to gather her a marsh mallow at the peril, as it was judged, of his life, and gained it together with a bootful of water. And at the gate by the black and shiny lock, where the path breaks away from the river, she overcame him by an unexpected feat, climbing gleefully to the top rail with the support of his hand, and leap- ing down, a figure of light and grace, to the ground.

They struck boldly across the meadows, which were gay with lady's smock, and he walked, by special request, between her and three matronly cows — feeling as Perseus might have done when he fended off the sea-monster. And so by the mill, and up a steep path to Immering Common. Across the meadows Lewisham had broached the subject of her occupation. " And are you really going away from here to be an amanuensis? " he said, and started her upon the theme of herself, a theme she treated with a specialist's enthusiasm. They dealt with it by the comparative method, and neither noticed the light was out of the sky until the soft feet of the advancing shower had stolen right upon them.

"Look!" said he. "Yonder! A shed," and they ran together. She ran laughing, and yet swiftly and lightly. He pulled her through the

50 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

hedge by both hands, and released her skirt from an amorous bramble, and so they came into a little black shed in which a rusty harrow of gigantic pro- portions sheltered. He noted how she still kept her breath after that run.

She sat down on the harrow and hesitated. " I must take off my hat," she said, " that rain will spot it," and so he had a chance of admiring the sincerity of her curls — not that he had ever doubted them. She stooped over her hat, pocket-handkerchief in hand, daintily wiping off the silvery drops. He stood up at the opening of the shed and looked at the country outside through the veil of the soft vehemence of the April shower.

" There's room for two on this harrow," she said.

He made inarticulate sounds of refusal, and then came and sat down beside her, close beside her, so that he was almost touching her. He felt a fan- tastic desire to take her in his arms and kiss her, and overcame the madness by an effort. " I don't even know your name," he said, taking refuge from his whirling thoughts in conversation.

" Henderson," she said.

" Miss Henderson ? "

She smiled in his face — hesitated. "Yes — ATiss Henderson."

Her eyes, her atmosphere were wonderful. He had never felt quite the same sensation before, a

THE SCANDALOUS RAMBLE 51

strange excitement, alnnost like a faint echo of tears. He was for demanding her Christian name. For calling her " dear " and seeing what she would say. He plunged headlong into a rambling description of Bonover and how he had told a lie about her and called her Miss Smith, and so escaped this unac- countable emotional crisis. . . .

The whispering of the rain about them sank and died, and the sunlight struck vividly across the dis- tant woods beyond Immering. Just then they had fallen on a silence again that was full of daring thoughts for Mr. Lewisham. He moved his arm suddenly and placed it so that it was behind her on the frame of the harrow.

" Let us go on now," she said abruptly. " The rain has stopped."

" That little path goes straight to Immering," said Mr. Lewisham.

"But, four o'clock?"

He drew out his watch and his eyebrows went up. It was already nearly a quarter past four.

"Is it past four?" she asked, and abruptly they were face to face with parting. That Lewis- ham had to take " duty " at half-past five seemed a thing utterly trivial. " Surely," he said, only slowly realising what this parting meant. *' But must you ? I — I want to talk to you."

" Haven't you been talking to me? "

52 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

" It isn't that. Besides — no."

She stood looking at him. " I promised to be home by four," she said. " Mrs. Frobisher has tea. . . ."

" We may never have a chance to see one another again."

"Well?"

Lewisham suddenly turned very white.

" Don't leave me," he said, breaking a tense silence and with a sudden stress in his voice. " Don't leave me. Stop with me yet — for a little while. . . . You . . . You can lose your way."

" You seem to think," she said forcing a laugh, " that I live without eating and drinking."

" I have wanted to talk to you so much. The first time I saw you. . . . At first I dared not . . . I did not know you would let me talk. . . . And now, just as I am — happy, you are going."

He stopped abruptly. Her eyes were downcast. " No," she said, tracing a curve with the point of her shoe. " No. I am not going."

Lewisham restrained an impulse to shout. " You will come to Immering?" he cried, and as they went along the narrow path through the wet grass, he began to tell her with simple frankness how he cared for her company. " I would not change this," he said, casting about for an offer to reject, " for — anything in the world. ... I shall not be back for

THE SCANDALOUS RAMBLE 53

duty. I don't care. I don't care what happens so long as we have this afternoon."

" Nor I," she said.

"Thank you for coming," he said in an outburst of gratitude. " Oh, thank you for coming," and held out his hand. She took it and pressed it, and so they went on hand in hand until the village street was reached. Their high resolve to play truant at all costs had begotten a wonderful sense of fellow- ship. " I can't call you Miss Henderson," he said. "You know I can't. You know ... I must have your Christian name."

" Ethel," she told him.

" Ethel," he said and looked at her, gathering courage as he did so. " Ethel," he repeated. "It is a pretty name. But no name is quite pretty enough for you, Ethel . . . dear." . . .

The little shop in Immering lay back behind a gar- den full of wallflowers, and was kept by a very fat and very cheerful little woman, who insisted on regard- ing them as brother and sister, and calling them both "dearie." These points conceded she gave them an admirable tea of astonishing cheapness. Lewisham did not like the second condition very much, because it seemed to touch a little on his latest enterprise. But the tea and the bread and butter and the whort jam were like no food on earth. There were wallflowers, heavy scented, in a

54 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

jug upon the table, and Ethel admired them, and when they set out again the little old lady insisted on her taking a bunch with her.

It was after they left Immering that this ramble, properly speaking, became scandalous. The sun was already a golden ball above the blue hills in the west — it turned our two young people into little figures of flame — and yet, instead of going homeward, they took the Wentworth road that plunges into the Forshaw woods. Behind them the moon, almost full, hung in the blue sky above the tree-tops, ghostly and indistinct, and slowly gathered to itself such light as the setting sun left for it in the sky.

Going out of Immering they began to talk of the future. And for the very young lover there is no future but the immediate future.

"You must write to me," he said, and she told him she wrote such silly letters. " But I shall have reams to write to you," he told her.

" How are you to write to me?" she asked, and they discussed a new obstacle between them. It would never do to write home — never. She was sure of that with an absolute assurance. ** My mother — " she said and stopped.

That prohibition cut him, for at that time he had the makings of a voluminous letter-writer. Yet it was only what one might expect. The whole

THE SCANDALOUS RAMBLE 55

world was unpropitious — obdurate indeed. ... A splendid isolation a deux.

Perhaps she might find some place where letters might be sent to her? Yet that seemed to her deceitful.

So these two young people wandered on, full of their discovery of love, and yet so full too of the shyness of adolescence that the word " Love" never passed their lips that day. Yet as they talked on, and the kindly dusk gathered about them, their speech and their hearts came very close together. But their speech would seem so threadbare, written down in cold blood, that I must not put it here. To them it was not threadbare.

When at last they came down the long road into Whortley, the silent trees were black as ink and the moonlight made her face pallid and wonderful, and her eyes shone like stars. She still carried the blackthorn from which most of the blossoms had fallen. The fragrant wallflowers were fragrant still. And far away, softened by the distance, the Whort- ley band, performing publicly outside the vicarage for the first time that year, was playing with unctu- ous slowness a sentimental air. I don't know if the reader remembers it, that favourite melody of the early eighties : —

" Sweet dreamland faces, passing to and fro, (pum, pum) Bring back to Mem'ry days of long ago-o-o-oh."

56 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

was the essence of it, very slow and tender and with an accompaniment of pum,pum. Pathetically cheerful that pum, pum, hopelessly cheerful indeed against the dirge of the air, a dirge accentuated by sporadic vocalisation. But to young people things come differently.

" I love music," she said.

" So do I," said he.

They came on down the steepness of West Street. They walked athwart the metallic and leathery tumult of sound into the light cast by the little circle of yellow lamps. Several people saw them and wondered what the boys and girls were coming to nowadays, and one eye-witness even subsequently described their carriage as " brazen." Mr. Lewis- ham was wearing his mortar-board cap of office — there was no mistaking him. They passed the Proprietary School and saw a yellow picture framed and glazed, of Mr. Bonover taking duty for his aberrant assistant master. And outside the Fro- bisher house at last they parted perforce.

" Good-bye," he said for the third time. " Good- bye, Ethel."

She hesitated. Then suddenly she darted to- wards him. He felt her hands upon his shoulders, her lips soft and warm upon his cheek, and before he could take hold of her she had eluded him, and had flitted into the shadow of the house. *' Good-

THE SCANDALOUS RAMBLE 57

bye," came her sweet, clear voice out of the shadow, and while he yet hesitated an answer, the door opened.

He saw her, black in the doorway, heard some indistinct words, and then the door closed and he was alone in the moonlight, his cheek still glowing from her lips. . . .

So ended Mr. Lewisham's first day with Love.

CHAPTER VII

THE RECKONING

And after the day of Love came the days of Reckoning. Mr. Lewisham was astonished — over- whelmed almost — by that Reckoning, as it slowly and steadily unfolded itself. The wonderful emo- tions of Saturday carried him through Sunday, and he made it up with the neglected Schema by assur- ing it that She was his Inspiration, and that he would work for Her a thousand times better than he could possibly work for himself. That was cer- tainly not true, and indeed he found himself won- dering whither the interest had vanished out of his theological examination of Butler's Analogy. The Frobishers were not at church for either service. He speculated rather anxiously why ?

Monday dawned coldly and clearly — a Herbert Spencer of a day — and he went to school sedulously assuring himself there was nothing to apprehend. Day boys were whispering in the morning appar- ently about him, and Frobisher ii. was in great request. Lewisham overheard a fragment. " My

mother was in a wax," said Frobisher ii.

58

RECKONING 59

At twelve came an interview with Bonover, and voices presently rising in angry altercation and audible to Senior-assistant Dunkerley through the closed study door. Then Lewisham walked across the schoolroom, staring straight before him, his cheeks very bright.

Thereby Dunkerley's mind was prepared for the news that came the next morning over the exercise books. " When ? " said Dunkerley.

" End of next term," said Lewisham.

" About this girl that's been staying at the Fro- bishers ? "

" Yes."

'* She's a pretty bit of goods. But it will mess up your matric next June," said Dunkerley.

*' That's what I'm sorry for."

" It's scarcely to be expected he'll give you leave to attend the exam. ..."

" He won't," said Lewisham shortly, and opened his first exercise book. He found it difficult to talk.

" He's a greaser," said Dunkerley. "But there! — what can you expect from Durham ? " For Bon- over had only a Durham degree and Dunkerley, having none, inclined to be particular. Therewith Dunkerley lapsed into a sympathetic and busy rustling over his own pile of exercises. It was not until the heap had been reduced to a book or so that he spoke again — an elaborate point.

6o LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

" Male and female created He them," said Dun- kerley ticking his way down the page. " Which (tick, tick) was damned hard (tick, tick) on assistant masters."

He closed the book with a snap and flung it on the floor behind him. " You're lucky," he said. " I did think I should be first to get out of this scandalising hole. You're lucky. It's always act- ing down here. Running on parents and guardians round every corner. That's what I object to in life in the country : it's so confoundedly artificial, /shall take jolly good care /get out of it just as soon as ever I can. You bet ! "

"And work those patents ? "

" Rather, my boy. Yes. Work those patents. The Patent Square Top Bottle ! Lord ! Once let me get to London. . . ."

" I think / shall have a shot at London," said Lewisham.

And then the experienced Dunkerley, being one of the kindest young men alive, forgot certain pri- vate ambitions of his own — he cherished dreams of amazing patents — and bethought him of agents. He proceeded to give a list of these necessary help- ers of the assistant master at the gangway— Orellana, Gabbitas, The Lancaster Gate Agency, and the rest of them. He knew them all — intimately. He had been a " nix " eight years. " Of course that Kensing-

RECKONING 6i

ton thing may come off," said Dunkerley, " but it's best not to wait. I tell you frankly — the chances are against you."

The " Kensington thing " was an application for admission to the Normal School of Science at South Kensington, which Lewisham had made in a san- guine moment. There being an inadequate supply of qualified science teachers in England, the Science and Art Department is wont to offer free instruction at its great central school and a guinea a week to select young pedagogues who will bind themselves to teach science after their training is over. Dunker- ley had been in the habit of applying for several years, always in vain, and Lewisham had seen no harm in following his example. But then Dunker- ley had no green-grey certificates.

So Lewisham spent all that " duty " left him of the next day composing a letter to copy out and send the several scholastic agencies. In this he gave a brief but appreciative sketch of his life, and en- larged upon his discipline and educational methods. At the end was a long and decorative schedule of his certificates and distinctions, beginning with a good-conduct prize at the age of eight. A con- siderable amount of time was required to recopy this document, but his modesty upheld him. After a careful consideration of the time-table, he set aside the midday hour for " Correspondence."

62 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

He found that his work in mathematics and classics was already some time in arrears, and a " test " he had sent to his correspondence Tutor during those troublous days after the meeting with Bonover in the Avenue, came back blottesquely indorsed : " Below Pass Standard." This last experience was so unprecedented and annoyed him so much that for a space he contemplated retorting with a sarcastic letter to the tutor. And then came the Easter recess, and he had to go home and tell his mother, with a careful suppression of details, that he was leaving Whortley. " Where you have been getting on so well ! " cried his mother.

But that dear old lady had one consolation. She observed he had given up his glasses — he had for- gotten to bring them with him — and her secret fear of grave optical troubles — that were being " kept " from her — was alleviated.

Sometimes he had moods of intense regret for the folly of that walk. One such came after the holidays, when the necessity of revising the dates of the Schema brought before his mind, for the first time quite clearly, the practical issue of this first struggle with all those mysterious and powerful in- fluences the spring-time sets a-stirring. His dream of success and fame had been very real and dear to him, and the realisation of the inevitable postpone- ment of his long anticipated matriculation, the door-

RECKONING 63

way to all the other great things, took him abruptly like an actual physical sensation in his chest.

He sprang up, pen in hand, in the midst of his corrections, and began pacing up and down the room. " What a fool I have been ! " he cried. " What a fool I have been ! "

He flung the pen on the floor and made a rush at an ill-drawn attempt upon a girl's face that adorned the end of his room, the visible witness of his slavery. He tore this down and sent the fragments of it scattering. . . .

" Fool ! "

It was a relief — a definite abandonment. He stared for a moment at the destruction he had made, and then went back to the revision of the time- table, with a mutter about " silly spooning."

That was one mood. The rarer one. He watched the posts with far more eagerness for the address to which he might write to her than for any reply to those reiterated letters of application, the writ- ing of which now ousted Horace and the higher mathematics (Lewisham's term for conies) from his attention. Indeed he spent more time meditating the letter to her than even the schedule of his vir- tues had required.

Yet the letters of application were wonderful compositions ; each had a new pen to itself and was for the first page at least in a handwriting far above

64 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

even his usual high standard. And day after day passed and that particular letter he hoped for still

did not come.

His moods were complicated by the fact that, in

spite of his studied reticence on the subject, the reason of his departure did in an amazingly short time get " all over Whortley," It was understood that he had been discovered to be " fast," and Ethel's behaviour was animadverted upon with complacent indignation — if the phrase may be al- lowed— by the ladies of the place. Pretty looks were too often a snare. One boy — his ear was warmed therefor — once called aloud " Ethel," as Lewisham went by. The curate, a curate of the pale-faced, large-knuckled, nervous sort, now passed him without acknowledgment of his exist- ence. Mrs. Bonover took occasion to tell him that he was a " mere boy," and once Mrs. Frobisher sniffed quite threateningly at him when she passed him in the street. She did it so suddenly she made him jump.

This general disapproval inclined him at times to depression, but in certain moods he found it exhil- arating, and several times he professed himself to Dunkerley not a little of a blade. In others, he told himself he bore it for Jier sake. Anyhow he had to bear it.

He began to find out too, how little the world

-fi

RECKONING 65

feels the need of a young man of nineteen — he called himself nineteen, though he had several months of eighteen still to run — even though he adds prizes for good conduct, general improvement, and arithmetic, and advanced certificates signed by a distinguished engineer and headed with the Royal Arms, guaranteeing his knowledge of geometrical drawing, nautical astronomy, animal physiology, physiography, inorganic chemistry and building construction, to his youth and strength and energy. At first he had imagined headmasters clutching at the chance of him, and presently he found himself clutching eagerly at them. He began to put a cer- tain urgency into his applications for vacant posts, an urgency that helped him not at all. The appli- cations grew longer and longer until they ran to four sheets of note-paper — a pennyworth in fact. " I can assure you," he would write, " that you will find me a loyal and devoted assistant." Much in that strain. Dunkerley pointed out that Bonover's testimonial ignored the question of moral character and discipline in a marked manner, and Bonover refused to alter it. He was willing to do what he could to help Lewisham, in spite of the way he had been treated, but unfortunately his con- science . . .

Once or twice Lewisham misquoted the testimo- nial— to no purpose. And May was half way through,

66 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

and South Kensington was silent. The future was grey.

And in the depths of his doubt and disappoint- ment came her letter. It was typewritten on thin paper. " Dear," she wrote simply, and it seemed to him the most sweet and wonderful of all possible modes of address, though as a matter of fact it was because she had forgotten his Christian name and afterwards forgotten the blank she had left for it.

" Dear, I could not write before because I have no room at home now where I can write a letter, and Mrs. Frobisher told my mother falsehoods about you. My mother has surprised me dreadfully — I did not think it of her. She told me nothing. But of that I must tell you in another letter. I am too angry to write about it now. Even now you cannot write back, ior yo2t must not soid letters here. It would never do. But I think of you, dear," — the "dear" had been erased and rewritten — "and I must write and tell you so, and of that nice walk we had, if I never write again. I am very busy now. My work is rather difificult and I am afraid I am a little stupid. It is hard to be interested in anything just because that is how you have to live, is it not ? I daresay you sometimes feel the same of school. But I suppose everybody is doing things they don't like. I don't know when I shall come to Whortley again, if ever, but very likely you will be

RECKONING ^y

coming to London. Mrs. Frobisher said the most horrid things. It would be nice if you could come to London, because then perhaps you might see me. There is a big boys' school at Chelsea, and when I go by it every morning I wish you were there. Then you would come out in your cap and gown as I went by. Suppose some day I was to see you there suddenly ! ! "

So it ran, with singularly little information in it, and ended quite abruptly, " Good-bye, dear. Good- bye, dear," scribbled in pencil. And then, " Think of me sometimes."

Reading it, and especially that opening " dear," made Lewisham feel the strangest sensation in his throat and chest, almost as though he was going to cry. So he laughed instead and read it again, and went to and fro in his little room with his eyes bright and that precious writing held in his hand. That " dear" was just as if she had spoken — a voice suddenly heard. He thought of her farewell, clear and sweet, out of the shadow of the moonlit house.

But why that " If I never write again," and that abrupt ending? Of course he would think of her.

It was her only letter. In a little time its creases were worn through.

Early in June came a loneliness that suddenly changed into almost intolerable longing to see her. He had vague dreams of going to London, to Clap-

68 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

ham, to find her. But you do not find people in Clapham as you do in Whortley. He spent an after- noon writing and re-writing a lengthy letter, against the day when her address should come. If it was to come. He prowled about the village disconso- lately, and at last set off about seven and retraced by moonlight almost every step of that one mem- orable walk of theirs.

In the blackness of the shed he worked himself up to the pitch of talking as if she were present. And he said some fine brave things.

He found the little old lady of the wallflowers with a candle in her window, and drank a bottle of ginger beer with a sacramental air. The little old lady asked him, a trifle archly, after his sister, and he promised to bring her again some day. " I'll certainly bring her," he said. Talking to the little old lady somehow blunted his sense of desolation. And then home through the white indistinctness in a state of melancholy that became at last so fine as to be almost pleasurable.

The day after that mood a new " text " attracted and perplexed Mrs. Munday, an inscription at once mysterious and familiar, and this inscription was :

Pi2pah.

It was in Old English lettering and evidently very carefully executed.

Where had she seen it before ?

RECKONING 69

It quite dominated all the rest of the room at first, it flaunted like a flag of triumph over " disci- pline " and the time-table and the Schema. Once indeed it was taken down, but the day after it re- appeared. Later a list of scholastic vacancies partially obscured it, and some pencil memoranda were written on the margin.

And when at last the time came for him to pack up and leave Whortley, he took it down and used it with several other suitable papers — the Schema and the time-table were its next-door neighbors — to line the bottom of the yellow box in which he packed his books : chiefly books for that matric- ulation that had now to be postponed.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CAREER PREVAILS

There is an interval of two years and a half and the story resumes with a much maturer Mr. Lewis- ham, indeed no longer a youth, but a man, a legal man, at any rate, of one and twenty years. Its scene is no longer little Whortley embedded among its trees, ruddy banks, parks and common land, but the grey spaciousness of West London.

And it does not resume with Ethel at all. For that promised second letter never reached him, and though he spent many an afternoon during his first few months in London, wandering about Clapham, that arid waste of people, the meeting that he longed for never came. Until at last after the manner of youth, so gloriously recuperative in body, heart, and soul, he began to forget.

The quest of a " crib " had ended in the unex- pected fruition of Dunkerley's blue paper. The green-blue certificates had, it seemed, a value be- yond mural decoration, and when Lcwisham was

already despairing of any employment for the rest 70

THE CAREER PREVAILS 71

of his life, came a marvellous blue document from the Education Department promising inconceivable things. He was to go to London and be paid a guinea a week for listening to lectures — lectures beyond his most ambitious dreams! Among the names that swam before his eyes was Huxley — Huxley and then Lockyer ! What a chance to get! Is it any wonder that for three memorable years the Career prevailed with him ?

You figure him on his way to the Normal School of Science at the opening of his third year of study there. (They call the place the Royal College of Science in these latter days.) He carried in his right hand a shiny black bag, well stuffed with text- books, notes, and apparatus for the forthcoming session ; and in his left was a book that the bag had no place for, a book with gilt edges, and its binding very carefully protected by a brown paper cover.

The lapse of time had asserted itself upon his upper lip in an inaggressive but indisputable mous- tache, in an added inch or so of stature, and in his less conscious carriage. For he no longer felt that universal attention he believed in at eighteen ; it was beginning to dawn on him indeed that quite a number of people were entirely indifferent to the fact of his existence. But if less conscious, his carriage was decidedly more confident — as of one with whom the world goes well.

72 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

His costume was — with one exception — a tem- pered black, — mourning put to hard uses and, " cutting up rusty," The mourning was for his mother, who had died more than a year before the date when this story resumes, and had left him property that capitalized at nearly a hundred pounds, a sum which Lewisham hoarded jealously in the Savings Bank, paying only for such essentials as university fees, and the books and instruments his brilliant career as a student demanded. For he was having a brilliant career, after all, in spite of the Whortley check, licking up paper certificates in- deed like a devouring flame.

(Surveying him. Madam, your eye would in- evitably have fallen to his collar — curiously shiny, a surface like wet gum. Although it has practically nothing to do with this story, I must, I know, dispose of that before I go on, or you will be in- attentive. London has its mysteries, but this strange gloss on his linen ! " Cheap laundresses always make your things blue," protests the lady. " It ought to have been blue-stained, generously frayed, and loose about the button, fretting his neck. But this gloss . . ." You would have looked nearer, and finally you would have touched — a char- nel house surface, dank and cool ! You see. Madam, the collar was a patent waterproof one. One of those you wash over night with a tooth-brush, and

THE CAREER PREVAILS 73

hang on the back of your chair to dry, and there you have it next morning, rejuvenesced. It was the only collar he had in the world, it saved three- pence a week at least, and that, to a South Ken- sington " science teacher in training, " living on the guinea a week allowed by a parental but parsi- monious government, is a sum to consider. It had come to Lewisham as a great discovery. He had seen it first in a shop window full of indiarubber goods, and it lay at the bottom of a glass bowl in which goldfish drifted discontentedly to and fro. And he told himself that he rather liked that gloss.)

But the wearing of a bright red tie would have been unexpected — a bright red tie after the fashion of a South-Western railway guard's ! The rest of him by no means dandiacal, even the vanity of glasses long since abandoned. You would have reflected. . . . Where had you seen a crowd — red ties abundant and in some way significant ? The truth has to be told. Mr. Lewisham had become a Socialist !

That red tie was indeed but one outward and visible sign of much inward and spiritual develop- ment. Lewisham, in spite of the demands of a studious career, had read his Butler's Analogy through by this time, and some other books ; he had argued, had had doubts, and called upon God for " Faith " in the silence of the night — " Faith "

74 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

to be delivered immediately if Mr, Lewisham's pat- ronage was valued, and which nevertheless was not so delivered. . . . And his conception of his destiny in this world was no longer an avenue of examina- tions to a remote Bar and political eminence " in the Liberal interest (D. V.)" He had begun to realise certain aspects of our social order that Whortley did not demonstrate, begun to feel some- thing of the dull stress deepening to absolute wretchedness and pain, which is the colour of so much human life in modern London. One vivid contrast hung in his mind symbolical. On the one hand were the coalies of the Westbourne Park yards, on strike and gaunt and hungry, children begging in the black slush, and starving loungers outside a soup kitchen ; and on the other. West- bourne Grove, two streets further, a blazing array of crowded shops, a stirring traffic of cabs and car- riages, and such a spate of spending that a tired student in leaky boots and graceless clothes hurry- ing home was continually impeded in the whirl of skirts and parcels and sweetly pretty womanliness. No doubt the tired student's own inglorious sensa- tions pointed the moral. But that was only one of a perpetually recurring series of vivid appro- ximations.

Lewisham had a strong persuasion, an instinct it may be, that human beings should not be happy

THE CAREER PREVAILS 75

while others near them were wretched, and this gay glitter of prosperity had touched him with a sense of crime. He still believed people were responsible for their own lives; in those days he had still to gauge the possibilities of moral stupidity in himself and his fellow-men. He happened upon " Progress and Poverty" just then, and some casual numbers of the " Commonweal," and it was only too easy to accept the theory of cunning plotting capitalists and landowners, and faultless, righteous, martyr workers. He became a Socialist forthwith. The necessity to do something at once to manifest the new faith that was in him was naturally urgent. So he went out and (historical moment) bought that red tie !

" Blood colour, please," said Lewisham meekly to the young lady at the counter.

''What colour?" said the young lady at the counter, sharply.

"A bright scarlet, please," said Lewisham, blush- ing. And he spent the best part of the evening and much of his temper in finding out how to tie this into a neat bow. It was a plunge into novel handicraft — for previously he had been accustomed to made-up ties.

So it was that Lewisham proclaimed the Social Revolution. The first time that symbol went abroad a string of stalwart policeman were walking

^6 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

in single file along the Brompton Road. In the opposite direction marched Lewisham. He began to hum. He passed the policemen with a signifi- cant eye and humming the Marseillaise. . . .

But that was months ago, and by this time the red tie was a thing of use and wont.

He turned out of the Exhibition Road through a gateway of wrought iron, and entered the hall of the Normal School. The hall was crowded with students carrying books, bags, and boxes of instru- ments, students standing and chattering, students reading the framed and glazed notices of the De- bating Society, students buying note-books, pencils, rubber, or drawing pins from the privileged stationer. There was a strong representation of new hands, the paying students, youths and young men in black coats and silk hats or tweed suits, the scholar contingent, youngsters of Lewisham's class, raw, shabby, discordant, grotesquely ill-dressed and awe- stricken ; one Lewisham noticed with a sailor's peaked cap gold-decorated, and one with mittens and very genteel grey kid gloves ; and Grummett the perennial Official of the Books was busy among them.

" Der Zozalist ! " said a wit.

Lewisham pretended not to hear and blushed vividly. He often wished he did not blush quite so much, seeing he was a man of one and twenty. He

THE CAREER PREVAILS Tj

looked studiously away from the Debating Society notice board, whereon " G. E. Lewisham on Social- ism " was announced for the next Friday, and struggled through the hall to where the Book awaited his signature. Presently he was hailed by name, and then again. He could not get to the Book for a minute or so, because of the hand-shaking and clumsy friendly jests of his fellow-" men."

He was pointed out to a raw hand, by the raw hand's experienced fellow-townsman, as " that beast Lewisham — awful swat. He was second last year on the year's work. Frightful mugger. But all these swats have a touch of the beastly prig. Exams — Debating Society — more Exams. Don't seem to have ever heard of being alive. Never goes near a Music Hall from one year's end to the other."

Lewisham heard a shrill whistle, made a run for the lift and caught it just on the point of departure. The lift was unlit and full of black shadows ; only the sapper who conducted it was distinct. As Lew- isham peered doubtfully at the dim faces near him, a girl's voice addressed him by name.

"Is that you. Miss Heydinger?" he answered. " I didn't see. I hope you have had a pleasant vacation."

CHAPTER IX

ALICE HEYDINGER

When he arrived at the top of the building he stood aside for the only remaining passenger to step out before him. It was the Miss Heydinger who had addressed him, the owner of that {.nit edged book in the cover of brown paper. No one else had come all the way up from the ground floor. The rest of the load in the lift had emerged at the " as- tronomical " and " chemical " floors, but these two had both chosen " zoology " for their third year of study, and zoology lived in the attics. She stepped into the light, with a rare touch of colour springing to her cheeks in spite of herself. Lewisham per- ceived an alteration in her dress. Perhaps she was looking for and noticed the transitory surprise in his face.

The previous session — their friendship was now

nearly a year old — it had never once dawned upon

him that she could possibly be pretty. The chief

thing he had been able to recall with any definite-

ness during the vacation was, that her hair was not 78

ALICE HEYDINGER 79

always tidy and that even when it chanced to be so, she was nervous about it ; she distrusted it. He remembered her gesture while she talked, a patting exploration that verged on the exasperating. From that he went on to remember that its colour was, on the whole, fair, a light brown. But he had forgotten her mouth, he had failed to name the colour of her eyes. She wore glasses, it is true. And her dress was indefinite in his memory — an amorphous dingi- ness.

And yet he had seen a good deal of her. They were not in the same course, but he had made her acquaintance on the committee of the school Debat- ing Society. Lewisham was just then discovering Socialism. That had afforded a basis of conversa- tion— an incentive to intercourse. She seemed to find something rarely interesting in his peculiar view of things, and, as chance would have it, he met her accidentally quite a number of times, in the corri- dors of the schools, in the big Education Library, and in the Art Museum. After a time those meet- ings appear to have been no longer accidental.

Lewisham for the first time in his life began to fancy he had conversational powers. She resolved to stir up his ambitions — an easy task. She thought he had exceptional gifts and that she might serve to direct them ; she certainly developed his vanity. She had matriculated at the London University and

8o LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

they took the Intermediate Examination in Science together in July — she a little unwisely — which served, as almost anything will serve in such cases, as a further link between them. She failed, which in no way diminished Lewisham's regard for her. On the examination days they discoursed about Friendship in general, and things like that, down the Burlington Arcade during the lunch time, — Bur- lington Arcade undisguisedly amused by her learned dinginess and his red tie — and among other things that were said she reproached him for not reading poetry. When they parted in Piccadilly, after the examination, they agreed to write, about poetry and themselves, during the holidays, and then she lent him, with a touch of hesitation, Rossetti's poems. He began to forget what had at first been very evident to him, that she was two or three years older than he.

Lewisham spent the vacation with an unsym- pathetic but kindly uncle who was a plumber and builder. His uncle had a family of six, the eldest eleven, and Lewisham made himself agreeable and instructive. Moreover he worked hard for the cul- minating third year of his studies (in which he had decided to do great things) and he learnt to ride the Ordinary Bicycle. He also thought about Miss Heydinger, and she, it would seem, thought about him.

ALICE HEYDINGER 8i

He argued on social questions witli his uncle, who was a prominent local Conservative. His uncle's controversial methods were coarse in the extreme. Socialists, he said, were thieves. The object of Socialism was to take away what a man earned and give it to "a. lot of lazy scoundrels." Also rich people were necessary. "If there weren't well-off people, how d'ye think I'd get a livin' ? Hey? And where'd ^oti be then ? " Socialism, his uncle assured him, was " got up " by agitators. " They get money out of young Gabies like you, and they spend it in champagne." And thereafter he met Mr. Lewisham's arguments with the word " Cham- pagne " uttered in an irritating voice, followed by a luscious pantomime of drinking.

Naturally Lewisham felt a little lonely, and per- haps he laid stress upon it in his letters to Miss Heydinger. It came to light that she felt rather lonely too. They discussed the question of True as distinguished from Ordinary Friendship, and from that they passed to Goethe and Elective Afifinities. He told her how he looked for her letters, and they became more frequent. Her letters were indisput- ably well written. Had he been a journalist with a knowledge of "per t/iou." he would have known each for a day's work. After the practical plumber had been asking what he expected to make by this here science of his, re-reading her letters was balsamic.

82 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

He liked Rossetti — the exquisite sense of separation in "The Blessed Damozel " touched him. But, on the whole, he was a little surprised at Miss Hey- dinger's taste in poetry. Rossetti was so sensuous ... so florid. He had scarcely expected that sort of thing.

Altogether he had returned to the schools de- cidedly more interested in her than when they had parted. And the curious vague memories of her appearance as something a little frayed and careless, vanished at sight of her emerging from the darkness of the lift. Her hair was in order, as the light glanced through it it looked even pretty, and she wore a well-made, dark-green and black dress, loose- gathered as was the fashion in those days, that somehow gave a needed touch of warmth to her face. Her hat too was a change from the careless lumpishness of last year, a hat that, to a feminine mind, would have indicated design. It suited her — these things are past a male novelist's ex- plaining.

" I have this book of yours, Miss Heydinger," he said.

" I am glad you have written that paper on Social- ism," she replied, taking the brown-covered volume.

They walked along the little passage towards the biological laboratory side by side, and she stopped at the hat pegs to remove her hat. For that was

ALICE HEYDINGER 83

the shameless way of the place, a girl student had to take her hat off publicly, and publicly assume the holland apron that was to protect her in the laboratory. Not even a looking-glass !

" I shall come and hear your paper," she said.

" I hope you will like it," said Lewisham at the door of the laboratory.

" And in the vacation I have been collecting evi- dence about ghosts — you remember our arguments. Though I did not tell you in my letters."

" I'm sorry you're still obdurate," said Lewis- ham. " I thought that was over."

•' And have you read ' Looking Backward ' ? "

" I want to."

" I have it here with my other books, if you'd care for me to lend it to you. Wait till I reach my table. My hands are so full."

They entered the laboratory together, Lewis- ham holding the door open courtly-wise, Miss Hey- dinger taking a reassuring pat at her hair. Near the door was a group of four girls, which group Miss Heydinger joined, holding the brown-covered book as inconspicuously as possible. Three of them had been through the previous two years with her, and they greeted her by her Christian name. They had previously exchanged glances at her appear- ance in Lewisham's company.

A morose elderly young demonstrator brightened

84 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

momentarily at the sight of Lewisham. " Well, we've got one of the decent ones anyhow," said the morose elderly young demonstrator, who was ap- parently taking an inventory, and then brightening at a fresh entry. " Ah ! and here's Smithers."

CHAPTER X

IN THE GALLERY OF OLD IRON

As one goes into the South Kensington Art Museum from the Brompton Road, the Gallery of Old Iron is overhead to the right. But the way thither is exceedingly devious and not to be revealed to everybody, since the young people who pursue science and art thereabouts set a peculiar value on its seclusion. The gallery is long and narrow and dark, and set with iron gates, iron-bound chests, locks, bolts and bars, fantastic great keys, lamps, and the like, and over the balustrade one may lean and talk of one's finer feelings and regard Michael Angelo's horned Moses, or Trajan's Column (in plaster) rising gigantic out of the hall below and far above the level of the gallery. And here, on a Wednesday afternoon, were Lewisham and Miss Heydinger, the Wednesday afternoon immediately following that paper upon Socialism, that you saw announced on the notice board in the hall.

The paper had been an immense success, closely

reasoned, delivered with a disciplined emotion, the

85

86 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

redoubtable Smithers practically converted, the reply after the debate methodical and complete, and it may be there were symptoms of that febrile affection known to the vulgar as " swelled 'ed." Lewisham regarded Moses and spoke of his future. Miss Heydinger for the most part watched his face.

"And then ? " said Miss Heydinger.

" One must bring these views prominently before people. I believe still in pamphlets. I have thought ..." Lewisham paused, it is to be hoped through modesty.

"Yes?" said Miss Heydinger.

" Well — Luther, you know. There is room, I think, in Socialism, for a Luther."

"Yes," said Miss Heydinger, imagining it. " Yes — that would be a grand way."

So it seemed to many people in those days. But eminent reformers have been now for more than seven years going about the walls of the Social Jericho, blowing their own trumpets and shouting — with such small result beyond incidental displays of ill-temper within, that it is hard to recover the fine hopefulness of those departed days.

"Yes," said Miss Heydinger. 1' That would be a grand way."

Lewisham appreciated the quality of personal emotion in her voice. He turned his face towards her, and saw unstinted admiration in her eyes. " It

IN THE GALLERY OF OLD IRON 87

would be a great thing to do," he said, and added, quite modestly, " if only one could do it."

" Vou could do it."

" You think I could ? ' Lewisham blushed vividly — with pleasure.

" I do. Certainly you could set out to do it. Even to fail hopelessly would be Great. Some- times ..."

She hesitated. He looked expectation. " I think sometimes it is greater even to fail than to succeed."

" I don't see that," said the proposed Luther, and his eyes went back to the Moses. She was about to speak and changed her mind.

Contemplative pause.

" And then, when a great number of people have heard of your views ? " she said presently.

"Then I suppose we must form a party and . . . bring things about."

Another pause — full, no doubt, of elevated thoughts.

" I say," said Lewisham quite suddenly. " You do put — well — courage into a chap. I shouldn't have done that Socialism paper if it hadn't been for you." He turned round and stood leaning with his back to the Moses, and smiling at her. " You do help a fellow," he said.

That was one of the vivid moments of Miss Hey-

88 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

dinger's life. She changed colour a little. " Do I ? " she said, standing straight and awkward and look- ing into his face. " I'm . . . glad."

" I haven't thanked you for your letters," said Lewisham. " And I've been thinking ..."

"Yes?"

"We're first-rate friends, aren't we? The best of friends.''

She held out her hand and drew a breath. " Yes," she said as they gripped. He hesitated whether to hold her hand. He looked into her eyes, and at that moment she would have given three quarters of the years she had still to live, to have had eyes and features that could have expressed her. Instead, she felt her face hard, the little muscles of her mouth twitching insubordinate, and fancied that her self- consciousness made her eyes dishonest.

" What I mean," said Lewisham, " is — that this will go on. We're always going to be friends, side by side."

" Always. Just as I am able to help you — I will help you. However I can help you, I will."

" We two," said Lewisham gripping her hand.

Her face lit. Her eyes were for a moment touched with the beauty of simple emotion. " We two," she said, and her lips trembled and her throat seemed to swell. She snatched her hand back suddenly and turned her face away. Abruptly she walked towards

IN THE GALLERY OF OLD IRON 89

the end of the gallery, and he saw her fumbling for her handkerchief in the folds of the green and black dress.

She was going to cry !

It set Lewisham marvelling — this totally inappro- priate emotion.

He followed her and stood by her. Why cry ? He hoped no one would come into the little gallery until her handkerchief was put away. Nevertheless he felt vaguely flattered. She controlled herself, dashed her tears away, and smiled bravely at him with reddened eyes. " I'm sorry," she said, gulp- ing.

" I am so glad," she explained.

" But we will fight together. We two. I can help you. I know I can help you. And there is such Work to be done in the world ! "

"You are very good to help me," said Lewisham, quoting a phrase from what he had intended to say before he found out that he had a hold upon her emotions.

"No!

" Has it ever occurred to you," she said abruptly, " how little a woman can do alone in the world ? "

" Or a man," he answered after a momentary meditation.

So it was Lewisham enrolled his first ally in the cause of the red tie — of the red tie and of the Great-

90 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

ness that was presently to come. His first ally ; for hitherto — save for the indiscretion of his mural in- scriptions— he had made a secret of his private ambi- tions. In that now half-forgotten love affair at Whortley even, he had, in spite of the considerable degree of intimacy attained, said absolutely nothing about his Career.

CHAPTER XI

MANIFESTATIONS

Miss Heydinger declined to disbelieve in the spirits of the dead, and this led to controversy in the laboratory over Tea. For the girl students, being in a majority that year, had organised Tea between four o'clock and the advent of the extin- guishing policeman at five. And the men students were occasionally invited to Tea. But not more than two of them at a time really participated, be- cause there were only two spare cups after that confounded Simmons broke the third.

Smithers, the square-headed student with the hard grey eyes, argued against the spirits of the dead with positive animosity, while Bletherley, who displayed an orange tie and lank hair in unshorn abundance, was vaguely open-minded. " What is love ? " asked Bletherley, " surely that at any rate is immortal ! " His remark was considered irrelevant and ignored.

Lewisham, as became the most promising student

of the year, weighed the evidence — comprehensively

under headings. He dismissed the mediumistic

stances as trickery.

91

92 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

" Rot and imposture," said Smithers loudly, and with an oblique glance to see if his challenge reached its mark. Its mark was a grizzled little old man with a very small face and very big grey eyes, who had been standing listlessly at one of the laboratory windows until the discussion caught him. He wore a brown velvet jacket and was reputed to be enor- mously rich. His name was Lagune. He was not a regular attendant, but one of those casual out- siders who are admitted to laboratories that are not completely full. He was known to be an ardent spiritualist — it was even said that he had challenged Huxley to a public discussion on materialism, and he came to the biological lectures and worked inter- mittently, in order, he explained, to fight disbelief with its own weapons. He rose greedily to Smithers' controversial bait.

" I say no ! " he said, calling down the narrow laboratory and following his voice. He spoke with the ghost of a lisp. " Pardon my interrupting, sir. The question interests me profoundly. I hope I don't intrude. Excuse me, sir. Make it personal. Am I a — fool, or an impostor? "

" Well," parried Smithers with all a South Ken- sington student's want of polish, " that's a bit personal."

" Assume, sir, that I am an honest observer."

•'Well?"

MANIFESTATIONS 93

" I have seen spirits, heard spirits, felt the touch of spirits." He opened his pale eyes very widely.

" Fool, then," said Smithers in an undertone which did not reach the ears of the spiritualist.

" You may have been deceived," paraphrased Lewisham.

" I can assure you . . . others can see, hear, feel. I have tested, sir. Tested ! I have some scientific training and I have employed tests. Scientific and exhaustive tests ! Every possible way. I ask you, sir — have you given the spirits a chance? "

" It is only paying guineas to humbugs," said Smithers.

" There you are ! Prejudice ! Here is a man denies the facts and consequently wofit see them, won't go near them."

*' But you wouldn't have every man in the three kingdoms, who disbelieved in spirits, attend seatices before he should be allowed to deny? "

" Most assuredly yes. Most assuredly yes! He knows nothing about it till then."

The argument became heated. The little old gentleman was soon under way. He knew a person of the most extraordinary gifts, a medium . . .

" Paid ?" asked Smithers.

" Would you muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn? " said Lagune promptly.

Smithers* derision was manifest.

94 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

" Would you distrust a balance because you bought it ? Come and see." Lagune was now very excited and inclined to gesticulate and raise his voice. He invited the whole class incontinently to a series of special stances. " Not all at once — the spirits — new influences." But in sections. " I warn you we may get nothing. But the chances are ... I would rejoice infinitely ..."

So it came about that Lewisham consented to witness a spirit-raising. Miss Heydinger it was ar- ranged should be there, and the sceptic Smithers, Lagune, his typewriter and the medium would com- plete the party. Afterwards there was to be an- other party for the others. Lewisham was glad he had the moral support of Smithers. " It's an even- ing wasted," said Smithers, who had gallantly re- solved to make the running for Lewisham in the contest for the Forbes medal. "But I'll prove my case. You see if I don't." They were given an address in Chelsea.

The house, when Lewisham found it at last, proved a large one with such an air of mellowed dignity that he was abashed. He hung his hat up for himself beside a green-trimmed hat of straw in the wide, rich-toned hall. Through an open door he had a glimpse of a palatial study, book shelves bearing white busts, a huge writing-table lit by a green-shaded electric lamp and covered thickly with

MANIFESTATIONS 95

papers. The housemaid looked, he thought, with infinite disdain at the rusty mourning and flam- boyant tie, and flounced about and led him up-stairs.

She rapped, and there was a discussion within. " They're at it already, I believe," she said to Lewis- ham confidentially. " Mr. Lagune's always at it."

There were sounds of chairs being moved, Smithers' extensive voice making a suggestion and laughing nervously. Lagune appeared opening the door. His grizzled face seemed smaller and his big grey eyes larger than usual.

" We were just going to begin without you," he whispered. " Come along."

The room was furnished even more finely than the drawing-room of the Whortley Grammar School, hitherto the finest room (except certain of the State Apartments at Windsor) known to Lewisham. The furniture struck him in a general way as akin to that in the South Kensington Museum. His first impres- sion was an appreciation of the vast social superiority of the chairs ; it seemed impertinent to think of sitting on anything quite so quietly stately. He perceived Smithers standing with an air of bashful hostility against a bookcase. Then he was aware that Lagune was asking them all to sit down. Already seated at the table was the Medium, Chaffery, a benevolent- looking, faintly shabby gentleman with bushy iron- grey side-whiskers, a wide, thin-lipped mouth tucked

96 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

in at the corners, and a chin like the toe of a boot. He regarded Lewisham critically and disconcert- ingly over gilt glasses. Miss Heydinger was quite at her ease and began talking at once. Lewisham's repHes were less confident than they had been in the Gallery of Old Iron ; indeed there was almost a reversal of their positions. She led and he was abashed. He felt obscurely that she had taken an advantage of him. He became aware of another girlish figure in a dark dress on his right.

Everyone moved towards the round table in the centre of the room, on which lay a tambourine and a little green box. Lagune developed unsuspected lengths of knobby wrist and finger directing his guests to their seats. Lewisham was to sit next to him, between him and the Medium ; beyond the Medium sat Smithers with Miss Heydinger on the other side of him, linked to Lagune by the type- writer. So sceptics compassed the Medium about. The company was already seated before Lewis- ham looked across Lagune and met the eyes of the girl next that gentleman. It was Ethel ! The close green dress, the absence of a hat, and a cer- tain loss of colour made her seem less familiar, but did not prevent the instant recognition. And there was recognition in her eyes.

Immediately she looked away. At first his only emotion was surprise. He would have spoken but

MANIFESTATIONS 97

a little thing robbed him of speech. For a moment he was unable to remember her surname. More- over, the strangeness of his surroundings made him undecided. He did not know what was the proper way to address her — and he still kept to the super- stition of etiquette. Besides — to speak to her would involve a general explanation to all these people . . .

" Just leave a pin-point of gas, Mr. Smithers, please," said Lagune, and suddenly the one surviv- ing jet of the gas chandelier was turned down and they were in darkness. The moment for recogni- tion had passed.

The joining of hands was punctiliously verified, the circle was linked little finger to little finger. Lewisham's abstraction received a rebuke from Smithers. The Medium, speaking in an affable voice, premised that he could promise nothing, he had no " directing^' power over manifestations. Thereafter ensued a silence. . . .

For a space Lewisham was inattentive to all that happened.

He sat in the breathing darkness, staring at the dim elusive shape that had presented that remem- bered face. His mind was astonishment mingled with annoyance. He had settled that this girl was lost to him for ever. The spell of the old days of longing, of the afternoons that he had spent after his 7

98 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

arrival in London, wandering through Clapham with a fading hope of meeting her, had not returned to him. But he was ashamed of his stupid silence, and irritated by the awkwardness of the situation. At one moment he was on the very verge of breaking the compact and saying " Miss Henderson " across the table. . . .

How was it he had forgotten that " Henderson?" He was still young enough to be surprised at for- getfulness.

Smithers coughed, one might imagine with a warning intention.

Lewisham, recalling his detective responsibility with an effort, peered about him, but the room was very dark. The silence was broken ever and again by deep sighs and a restless stirring from the Medium. Out of this mental confusion Lewisham's personal vanity was first to emerge. What did she think of him ? Was she peering at him through the darkness even as he peered at her ? Should he pre- tend to see her for the first time when the lights were restored ? As the minutes lengthened it seemed as though the silence grew deeper and deeper. There was no fire in the room, and it looked, for lack of that glow, chilly. A curious scepticism arose in his mind as to whether he had actually seen Ethel or only mistaken someone else for her. He wanted the seance over in order that

MANIFESTATIONS 99

he might look at her again. The old days at Whort- ley came out of his memory with astonishing detail and yet astonishingly free from emotion. . . .

He became aware of a peculiar sensation down his back, that he tried to account for as a draught. . . .

Suddenly a beam of cold air came like a touch against his face, and made him shudder convulsively. Then he hoped that she had not marked his shud- der. He thought of laughing a low laugh to show he was not afraid. Someone else shuddered too, and he perceived an extraordinarily vivid odour of violets. Lagune's finger communicated a nervous quivering.

What was happening?

The musical box somewhere on the table began playing a rather trivial, rather plaintive air that was strange to him. It seemed to deepen the silence about him, an accent on the expectant stillness, a thread of tinkling melody spanning an abyss.

Lewisham took himself in hand at this stage. What zvas happening? He must attend. Was he really watching as he should do? He had been wool-gathering. There were no such things as spirits, mediums were humbugs, and he was here to prove that sole remaining Gospel. But he must keep up with things — he was missing points. What was that scent of violets ? And who had set the

loo LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

musical box going? The Medium of course : but how? He tried to recall whether he had heard a rustling or detected any movement before the music began. He could not recollect. Come ! he must be more on the alert than this !

He became acutely desirous of a successful ex- posure. He figured the dramatic moment he had prepared with Smithers — Ethel a spectator. He peered suspiciously into the darkness.

Somebody shuddered again, someone opposite him this time. He felt Lagune's finger quiver still more palpably, and then suddenly the raps began, abruptly, all about him. Rap ! — making him start violently. A swift percussive sound, tap, rap, dap, under the table, under the chair, in the air, round the cornices. The Medium groaned again and shud- dered, and his nervous agitation passed sympatheti- cally round the circle. The music seemed to fade to the vanishing point and grew louder again.

How was it done ?

He heard Lagune's voice next him speaking with a peculiar quality of breathless reverence. *' The alphabet ? " he asked, " shall we — shall we use the alphabet ? "

A forcible rap under the table.

" No!" interpreted the voice of the Medium.

The raps were continued everywhere.

Of course it was trickery. Lewisham endeavoured

MANIFESTATIONS loi

to think what the mechanism was. He tried to de- termine whether he really had the Medium's little finger touching his. He peered at the dark shape next him. There was a violent rapping far away behind them with an almost metallic resonance. Then the raps ceased, and over the healing silence the little jet of melody from the musical box played alone. And after a moment that ceased also. . . .

The stillness was profound. Mr. Lewisham was now highly strung. Doubts assailed him suddenly, and an overwhelming apprehension, a sense of vast occurrences gathering above him. The darkness was a physical oppression. . . .

He started. Something had stirred on the table. There was the sharp ping of metal being struck. A number of little crepitating sounds like paper being smoothed. The sound of wind without the move- ment of air. A sense of a presence hovering over the table.

The excitement of Lagune communicated itself in convulsive trembhngs ; the Medium's hand quiv- ered. In the darkness on the table something faintly luminous, a greenish-white patch, stirred and hopped slowly among the dim shapes.

The object, whatever it was, hopped higher, rose slowly in the air, expanded. Lewisham's attention followed this slavishly. It was ghostly — unaccount- able—marvellous. For the moment he forgot even

102 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

Ethel. Higher and higher this pallid luminosity rose overhead, and then he saw that it was a ghostly hand and arm, rising, rising. Slowly, deliberately it crossed the table, seemed to touch Lagune, who shivered. It moved slowly round and touched Lewisham. He gritted his teeth.

There was no mistaking the touch, firm and yet soft, of finger-tips. Almost simultaneously, Miss Heydinger cried out that something was smoothing her hair, and suddenly the musical box set off again with a reel. The faint oval of the tambourine rose, jangled, and Lewisham heard it pat Smithers in the face. It seemed to pass overhead. Immediately a table somewhere beyond the Medium began mov- ing audibly on its castors.

It seemed impossible that the Medium, sitting so still beside him, could be doing all these things — grotesquely unmeaning though they might be. After all. . . .

The ghostly hand was hovering almost directly in front of Mr. Lewisham's eyes. It hung with a slight quivering. Ever and again its fingers flapped down and rose stiffly again.

Noise! A loud noise it seemed. Something moving? What was it he had to do?

Lewisham suddenly missed the Medium's little finger. He tried to recover it. He could not find it. He caught, held and lost an arm. There was

MANIFESTATIONS 103

an exclamation. A faint report. A curse close to him bitten in half by the quick efTort to suppress it. Tzit! The little pin-point of light flew up with a hiss.

Lewisham, standing, saw a circle of blinking faces turned to the group of two this sizzling light re- vealed. Smithers was the chief figure of the group ; he stood triumphant, one hand on the gas tap, the other gripping the Medium's wrist, and in the Medium's hand — the incriminatory tambourine.

" How's this, Lewisham," cried Smithers, with the shadows on his face jumping as the gas flared.

** Caught ! " said Lewisham loudly, rising in his place and avoiding Ethel's eyes.

"What's this?" cried the Medium.

" Cheating," panted Smithers.

" Not so," cried the Medium. " When you turned up the light . . . put my hand up . . . caught tambourine ... to save head."

" Mr. Smithers," cried Lagune. " Mr. Smithers, this is very wrong. This — shock — "

The tambourine fell noisily to the floor. The Medium's face changed, he groaned strangely and staggered back. Lagune cried out for a glass of water. Everyone looked at the man, expecting him to fall, save Lewisham. The thought of Ethel had flashed back into his mind. He turned to see how she took this exposure in which he was such

104 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

a prominent actor. He saw her leaning over the table as if to pick up something that lay across it. She was not looking at him, she was looking at the Medium. Her face was set and white. Then, as if she felt his glance, her eyes met his.

She started back, stood erect, facing him with a strange hardness in her eyes.

In the moment Lewisham did not grasp the sit- uation. He wanted to show that he was acting upon equal terms with Smithers in the exposure. For the moment her action simply directed his attention to the object towards which she had been leaning, a thing of' shrivelled membrane, a pneuma- tic glove, lying on the table. This was evidently part of the mediumistic apparatus. He pounced and seized it.

*' Look ! " he said holding it towards Smithers. *' Here is more ! What is this?"

He perceived that the girl started. He saw Chaffery, the Medium, look instantly over Smithers' shoulders, saw his swift glance of reproach at the girl. Abruptly the situation appeared to Lewisham ; he perceived her complicity. And he stood, still in the attitude of triumph, with the evidence against her in his hand ! But his triumph had vanished.

" Ah ! " cried Smithers, leaning across the table to secure it. " Good old Lewisham ! . . . Now we have it. This is better than the tambourine."

MANIFESTATIONS 105

His eyes shone with triumph. " Do you see, Mr. Lagune?" said Smithers. "The Medium held this in his teeth and blew it out. There's no denying this. This wasn't falling on your head, Mr. Me- dium, was it ? This — this was the luminous hand ! "

CHAPTER XII

LEWISHAM IS UNACCOUNTABLE

That night, as she went with him to Chelsea station, Miss Heydinger discovered an extraordi- nary moodiness in Lewisham. She had been vividly impressed by the scene in which they had just par- ticipated, she had for a time believed in the mani- festations ; the swift exposure had violently revolu- tionised her ideas. The details of the crisis were a little confused in her mind. She ranked Lewisham with Smithers in the scientific triumph of the even- ing. On the whole she felt elated. She had no ob- jection to being confuted by Lewisham. But she was angry with the Medium. " It is dreadful," she said. " Living a lie ! How can the world grow bet- ter, when sane, educated people use their sanity and enlightenment to darken others ? It is dreadful !

" He was a horrible man — such an oily, dishonest

voice. And the girl — I was sorry for her. She must

have been oh ! — bitterly ashamed, or why should she

have burst out crying? That </z"^ distress me. Fancy

crying like that ! It was — yes — abandon. But what

can one do ? " 1 06

LEWISHAM IS UNACCOUNTABLE 107

She paused. Levvisham was walking along, look- ing straight before him, lost in some grim argument with himself.

" It makes me think of Sludge the Medium," she said.

He made no answer.

She glanced at him suddenly. " Have you read Sludge the Medium?"

" Eigh ? " he said, coming back out of infinity. *' What ? I beg your pardon. Sludge, the Medium ? I thought his name was — it tvas — ChafTery."

He looked at her, clearly very anxious upon this question of fact.

" But I mean Browning's "■ Sludge." You know — the poem."

" No — I'm afraid I don't," said Lewisham.

" I must lend it to you," she said. " It's splendid. It goes to the very bottom of this business."

"Does it?"

" It never occurred to me before. But I see the point clearly now. If people, poor people, are offered money if phenomena happen, it's too much. They are bound to cheat. It's bribery — immorality ! "

She talked in panting little sentences, because Lewisham was walking in heedless big strides. " I wonder how much — such people — could earn hon- estly."

Lewisham slowly became aware of the question at

io8 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

his ear. He hurried back from infinity. " How much they could earn honestly? I haven't the slightest idea."

He paused. " The whole of this business puzzles me," he said. " I want to think."

" It's frightfully complex, isn't it?" she said— a little staggered.

But the rest of the way to the station was silence. They parted with a hand-clasp they took a pride in — a little perfunctory so far as Lewisham was con- cerned on this occasion. She scrutinised his face as the train moved out of the station, and tried to ac- count for his mood. He was staring before him at unknown things — as if he had already forgotten her.

He wanted to think ! But two heads, she thought, were better than one in a matter of opinion. It troubled hp: .o be so ignorant of his mental states. *' How we are wrapped and swathed about— soul from soul ! " she thought, staring out of the window at the dim things flying by outside.

Suddenly a fit of depression came upon her. She felt alone— absolutely alone— in a void world.

Presently she returned to external things. She became aware of two people in the next compart- ment eyeing her critically. Her hand went patting at her hair.

CHAPTER XIII

LEWISHAM INSISTS

Ethel Henderson sat at her machine before the window of Mr, Lagune's study, and stared blankly at the greys and blues of the November twi- light. Her face was white, her eyelids were red from recent weeping, and her hands lay motionless in her lap. The door had just slammed behind Lagune.

" Heigh-ho ! " she said. " I wish I was dead. Oh I I wish I was out of it all."

She became passive again. " I wonder what I have done," she said, "that I should be punished like this."

She certainly looked anything but a Fate-haunted soul, being indeed visibly and immediately a very pretty girl. Her head was shapely and covered with curly dark hair, and the eyebrows above her hazel eyes were clear and dark. Her lips were finely shaped, her mouth was not too small to be expres- sive, her chin small, and her neck white and full and

pretty. There is no need to lay stress upon her

109

no LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

nose — it sufficed. She was of a mediocre height, sturdy rather than slender, and her dress was of a pleasant, golden-brown material with the easy sleeves and graceful line of those aesthetic days. And she sat at her typewriter and wished she was dead and wondered what she had dotie.

The room was lined with bookshelves and con- spicuous therein were a long row of foolish pre- tentious volumes, the "works" of Lagune — the witless, meandering imitation of philosophy that oc- cupied his life. Along the cornices were busts of Plato, Socrates and Newton. Behind Ethel was the great man's desk with its green-shaded electric light, and littered with proofs and copies of Hesperus, " A Paper for Doubters," which, with her assistance, he edited, published, compiled, wrote, and (without her help) paid for and read. A pen, flung down forci- bly, quivered erect with its one surviving nib in the blotting pad. Mr. Lagune had flung it down.

The collapse of the previous night had distressed him dreadfully, and ever and again before his retreat he had been breaking into passionate monologue. The ruin of a life-work, it was, no less. Surely she had known that Chaffery was a cheat. Had she not known ? Silence. " After so many kindnesses — "

She interrupted him with a wailing " Oh, I know — I know."

But Lagune was remorseless and insisted she had

LEWISHAM INSISTS. in

betrayed him, worse — made him ridiculous ! Look at the " work " he had undertaken at South Kensing- ton — how could he go on with that now? How could he find the heart ? When his own typewriter sacrificed him to her stepfather's trickery ? " Trick- ery ! "

The gesticulating hands became active, the grey eyes dilated with indignation, the piping voice eloquent.

" If he hadn't cheated you, someone else would," was Ethel's inadequate muttered retort, unheard by the seeker after phenomena.

It was perhaps not so bad as dismissal, but it cer- tainly lasted longer. And at home was Chaffery, grimly malignant at her failure to secure that pneu- matic glove. He had no right to blame her, he really had not ; but a disturbed temper is apt to fal- sify the scales of justice. The tambourine, he in- sisted he could have explained by saying he put up his hand to catch it and protect his head directly Smithers moved. But the pneumatic glove there was no explaining. He had made a chance for her to secure it when he had pretended to faint. It was rubbish to say anyone could have been looking on the table then — rubbish.

Beside that significant wreck of a pen stood a little carriage clock in a case, and this suddenly lifted a slender voice and announced y^zr. She turned round

112 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

on her stool and sat staring at the clock. She smiled with the corners of her mouth down. " Home," she said, " and begin again. It's like bat- tledore and shuttlecock. . . .

" I was silly. . . .

" I suppose I've brought it on myself. I ought to have picked it up, I suppose. I had time. . . .

" Cheats . . . just cheats.

" I never thought I should see him again. . . .

" He was ashamed, of course. . . He had his own friends."

For a space she sat still, staring blankly before her. She sighed, rubbed a knuckle in a reddened eye, rose.

She went into the hall where her hat, transfixed by a couple of hat pins, hung above her jacket, assumed these garments, and let herself out into the cold grey street.

She had hardly gone twenty yards from Lagune's door before she became aware of a man overtaking her and walking beside her. That kind of thing is a common enough experience to girls who go to and from work in London, and she had had perforce to learn many things since her adventurous Whortley days. She looked stiffly in front of her. The man deliberately got in her way so that she had to stop. She lifted eyes of indignant protest. It was Lewis- ham — and his face was white,

LEWISHAM INSISTS 113

He hesitated awkwardly and then in silence held out his hand. She took it mechanically. He found his voice. " Miss Henderson," he said.

" What do you want? " she asked faintly.

" I don't know," he said. ..." I want to talk to you."

" Yes? " Her heart was beating fast.

He found the thing unexpectedly difficult.

" May I — ? Are you expecting — ? Have you far to go ? I would like to talk to you. There is a lot . . . "

" I walk to Clapham," she said. " If you care ... to come part of the way ..."

She moved awkwardly. Lewisham took his place at her side. They walked side by side for a mo- ment, their manner constrained, having so much to say that they could not find a word to begin upon.

" Have you forgotten Whortley ? " he asked ab- ruptly.

"No."

He glanced at her ; her face was downcast. " Why did you never write ? " he asked bitterly.

" I wrote."

" Again, I mean."

" I did— in July."

" I never had it."

*' It came back." 8

114 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

" But Mrs. Munday ..."

" I had forgotten her name. I sent it to the Grammar School."

Lewisham suppressed an exclamation.

" I am very sorry," she said.

They went on again in silence. " Last night," said Lewisham at length. " I have no business to ask. But — "

She took a long breath. " Mr. Lewisham," she said. " That man you saw — the Medium — was my stepfather."

" Well ? "

" Isn't that enough ? "

Lewisham paused. " No," he said.

There was another constrained silence. " No," he said less dubiously. " I don't care a rap what your stepfather is. Were you cheating ? "

Her face turned white. Her mouth opened and closed. ** Mr. Lewisham," she said deliberately, "you may not believe it, it may sound impossible, but on my honour ... I did not know — I did not know for certain, that is — that my stepfather ..."

" Ah ! " said Lewisham, leaping at conviction. " Then I was right ..."

For a moment she stared at him, and then, " I did know," she said, suddenly beginning to cry, *' How can I tell you ? It is a lie. I did know. I did know all the time,"

LEWISHAM INSISTS 115

He stared at her in white astonishment. He fell behind her one step, and then in a stride came level again. Then, a silence, a silence that seemed it would never end. She had stopped crying, she was one huge suspense, not daring even to look at his face. And at last he spoke.

" No," he said slowly. " I don't mind even that. I don't care — even if it was that."

Abruptly they turned into the King's Road, with its roar of wheeled trafific and hurrying foot-passen- gers, and forthwith a crowd of boys with a broken- spirited Guy involved and separated them. In a busy highway of a night one must needs talk dis- connectedly in shouted snatches or else hold one's peace. He glanced at her face and saw that it was set again. Presently she turned southward out of the tumult into a street of darkness and warm blinds, and they could go on talking again.

" I understand what you mean," said Lewisham. " I know I do. You knew but you did not want to know. It was like that."

But her mind had been active. "At the end of this road," she said, gulping a sob, "you must go back. It was kind of you to come, Mr. Lewisham. But you were ashamed — you are sure to be ashamed. My employer is a spiritualist, and my stepfather is a professional Medium, and my mother is a spiritual- ist. You were quite right not to speak to me last

Ii6 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

night. Quite. It was kind of you to come, but you must go back. Life is hard enough as it is . . . You must go back at the end of the road. Go back at the end of the road ..."

Lewisham made no reply for a hundred yards. " I'm coming on to Clapham," he said.

They came to the end of the road in silence. Then at the kerb corner she turned and faced him. " Go back," she whispered.

" No," he said obstinately, and they stood face to face at the cardinal point of their lives.

"Listen to me," said Lewisham. " It is hard to say what I feci. I don't know myself. . . . But I'm not going to lose you like this. I'm not going to let you slip a second time. I was awake about it all last night. I don't care where you are, what your people are, nor very much whether you've kept quite clear of this medium humbug. I don't. You will in future. Anyhow. I've had a day and night to think it over. I had to come and try to find you. It's you. I've never forgotten you. Never. I'm not going to be sent back like this."

" It can be no good for either of us," she said as resolute as he.

" I shan't leave you."

" But what is the good? . . ."

'* I'm coming," said Lewisham, dogmatically.

And he came,

LEWISHAM INSISTS 117

He asked her a question point blank and she would not answer him, and for some way they walked in grim silence. Presently she spoke with a twitching mouth. " I wish you would leave me," she said. " You are quite different from what I am. You felt that last night. You helped find us out. ..."

" When first I came to London I used to wander about Clapham looking for you," said Lewisham, " week after week."

They had crossed the bridge and were in a narrow little street of shabby shops near Clapham Junction before they talked again. She kept her face averted and expressionless.

" I'm sorry," said Lewisham, with a sort of stiff civility, " if I seem to be forcing myself upon you. I don't want to pry into your affairs — if you don't wish me to. The sight of you has somehow brought back a lot of things. ... I can't explain it. Per- haps— I had to come to find you — I kept on think- ing of your face, of how you used to smile, how you jumped from the gate by the lock, and how we had tea ... a lot of things.

He stopped again.

"A lot of things."

" If I may come," he said, and went unanswered. They crossed the wide streets by the Junction and went on towards the Common.

Ii8 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

" I live down this road," she said stopping ab- ruptly at a corner. " I would rather ..."

" But I have said nothing."

She looked at him with her face white, unable to speak for a space. " It can do no good," she said. " I am mixed up with this. ..."

She stopped.

He spoke deliberately. " I shall come," he said, " to-morrow night."

" No," she said.

" But I shall come."

" No," she whispered.

" I shall come." She could hide the gladness of her heart from herself no longer. She was fright- ened that he had come, but she was glad and she knew he knew that she was glad. She made no further protest. She held out her hand dumbly. And on the morrow she found him awaiting her even as he had said.

CHAPTER XIV

MR. LAGUNE'S point OF VIEW

For three days the Laboratory at South Kensing- ton saw nothing of Lagune, and then he came back more invincibly voluble than ever. Every one had expected him to return apostate, but he brought back an invigorated faith, a propaganda unashamed. From some source he had derived strength and con- viction afresh. Even the rhetorical Smithers availed nothing. There was a joined battle over the insuf- ficient tea-cup3, and the elderly young assistant de- monstrator hovered on the verge of the discussion, rejoicing, it is supposed, over the entanglements of Smithers. For at the outset Smithers displayed an overweening confidence and civility, and at the end his ears were red and his finer manners lost to him.

Lewisham, it was remarked by Miss Heydinger, made but a poor figure in this discussion. Once or twice he seemed about to address Lagune, and thought better of it with the words upon his lips.

Lagune's treatment of the exposure was light and

vigorous. " The man Chaffery," he said, " has

made a clean breast of it. His point of view — "

119

120 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

" Facts are facts," said Smithers.

" A fact is a synthesis of impressions," said La- gune ; " but that you will learn when you are older. The thing is that we were at cross purposes. I told ChafTery you were beginners. He treated you as beginners — arranged a demonstration."

" It was a demonstration," said Smithers.

" Precisely. If it had not been for your interrup- tions ..."

" Ah ! "

" He forged elementary effects ..."

"You can't but admit that."

" I don't attempt to deny it. But, as he explained — the thing is necessary — justifiable. Psychic phe- nomena are subtle, a certain training of the observa- tion is necessary. A medium is a more subtle in- strument than a balance or a borax bead, and see how long it is before you can get assured results with a borax bead ! In the elementary class, in the introductory phase, conditions are too crude. ..."

" For honesty."

" Wait a moment. Is it dishonest — rigging a dem- onstration ? "

"Of course it is."

" Your professors do it."

" I deny that in toto," said Smithers, and repeated with satisfaction, " in toto."

"That's all right," said Lagune, " because I have

MR. LAGUNE'S POINT OF VIEW 121

the facts. Your chemical lecturers — you may go downstairs now and ask, if you disbelieve me — al- ways cheat over the indestructibility of matter ex- periment— always. And then another — a physiog- raphy thing. You know the experiment I mean ? To demonstrate the existence of the earth's rotation. They use — they use — "

" Foucault's pendulum," said Lewisham. " They use a rubber ball with a pin-hole hidden in the hand,

and blow the pendulum round the way it ought to

»» go.

" But that's different," said Smithers.

" Wait a moment," said Lagune, and produced a piece of folded printed paper from his pocket. " Here is a review from Nature of the work of no less a person than Professor Greenhill. And see — a convenient pin is introduced in the apparatus for the demonstration of virtual velocities ! Read it — if you doubt me. I suppose you doubt me."

Smithers abruptly abandoned his position of de- nial "in toto." "This isn't my point, Mr. Lagune; this isn't my point," he said. " These things that are done in the lecture theatre are not to prove facts, but to give ideas."

" So was my demonstration," said Lagune.

•* We didn't understand it in that light."

" Nor does the ordinary person who goes to Science lectures understand it in that light. He is

122 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

comforted by the thought that he is seeing things with his own eyes."

" Well, I don't care," said Smithers ; " two wrongs don't make a right. To rig demonstrations is wrong."

" There I agree with you. I have spoken plainly with this man Chaffery. He's not a full-blown pro- fessor, you know, a highly salaried ornament of the rock of truth like your demonstration-rigging pro- fessors here, and so I can speak plainly to him with- out offence. He takes quite the view they would take. But I am more rigorous. I insist that there shall be no more of this. . . ."

" Next time — " said Smithers with irony.

*' There will be no next time. I have done with elementary exhibitions. You must take the word of the trained observer — just as you do in the matter of chemical analysis."

" Do you mean you are going on with that chap when he's been caught cheating under your very nose r

" Certainly. Why not ? "

Smithers set out to explain why not, and hap- pened on confusion. " I still believe the man has powers," said Lagune.

" Of deception," said Smithers.

" Those I must eliminate," said Lagune. " You might as well refuse to study electricity because it

MR. LAGUNE'S POINT OF VIEW 123

escaped through your body. All new science is elusive. No investigator in his senses would refuse to investigate a compound because it did unexpected things. Either this dissolves in acid or I have noth- ing more to do with it — eh ? That's fine research ! " Then it was the last vestiges of Smithers' manners vanished. " I don't care tvhat you say," said Smith- ers. " It's all rot — it's all just rot. Argue if you like — but have you convinced anybody ? Put it to

the vote ? "

" That's democracy with a vengeance," said La- gune. " A general election of the truth half-yearly,

eh ? "

" That's simply wriggling out of it," said Smith- ers. " That hasn't anything to do with it at all."

Lagune, flushed but cheerful was on his way down- stairs when Lewisham overtook him. He was pale and out of breath, but as the staircase invariably rendered Lagune breathless he did not remark the younger man's disturbance. " Interesting talk," panted Lewisham. " Very interesting talk, sir."

" I'm glad you found it so — very," said Lagune.

There was a pause, and then Lewisham plunged desperately. " There is a young lady — she is your typewriter. . . ."

He stopped from sheer loss of breath.

"Yes?" said Lagune.

** Is she a medium or anything of that sort ? "

124 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

" Well," Lagune reflected. " She is not a me- dium, certainly. But — why do you ask.'' "

" Oh ! ... I wondered."

" You noticed her eyes, perhaps. She is the step- daughter of that man Chaffery — a queer character but indisputably mediumistic. It's odd the thing should have struck you. Curiously enough I myself have fancied she might be something of a psychic — judging from her face."

" A what ? "

" A psychic — undeveloped of course. I have thought once or twice. Only a little while ago I was speaking to that man Chaffery about her."

" Were you ? "

" Yes. He of course would like to see any latent powers developed. But it's a little difficult to begin, you know."

" You mean — she won't ? "

" Not at present. She is a good girl, but in this matter she is — timid. There is often a sort of dis- inclination— a queer sort of feeling — one might al- most call it modesty."

" I see," said Lewisham.

" One can override it usually. I don't despair."

" No," said Lewisham shortly. They were at the foot of the staircase now. He hesitated. " You've given me a lot to think about," he said with an at- tempt at an offhand manner. " The way you talked

MR. LAGUNE'S POINT OF VIEW 125

upstairs ; " and turned towards the book he had to sign.

" I'm glad you don't take up quite such an intol- erant attitude as Mr. Smithers," said Lagune ; " very glad. I must lend you a book or two. If your cramnihig here leaves you any time, that is."

" Thanks," said Lewisham shortly, and walked away from him. The studiously characteristic sig- nature quivered and sprawled in an unfamiliar manner.

" I'm damned if he overrides it," said Lewisham, under his breath.

CHAPTER XV

LOVE IN THE STREETS

Lewisham was not quite clear what course he meant to take in the high enterprise of foihng Lagune, and indeed he was anything but clear about the entire situation. His logical processes, his emo- tions and his imagination seemed playing some sort of snatching game with his will. Enormous things hung imminent, but it worked out to this, that he walked home with Ethel night after night for — to be exact — seven and sixty nights. Every week night through November and December, save once, when he had to go into the far East to buy himself an overcoat, he was waiting to walk with her home. A curious, inconclusive affair, that walk, to which he came nightly full of vague longings and which ended invariably under an odd shadow of disappointment. It began outside Lagune's most punctually at five, and ended — mysteriously — at the corner of a side road in Clapham, a road of little yellow houses with sunk basements and tawdry decorations of stone.

Up that road she vanished night after night, into a 126

LOVE IN THE STREETS 127

grey mist and the shadow beyond a feeble yellow gas-lamp, and he would watch her vanish, and then sigh and turn back towards his lodgings.

They talked of this and that, their little superficial ideas about themselves, and of their circumstances and tastes, and always there was something, some- thing that was with them unspoken, unacknowledged, which made all these things unreal and insincere.

Yet out of their talk he began to form vague ideas of the home from which she came. There was, of course, no servant, and the mother was something meandering, furtive, tearful in the face of troubles. Sometimes of an afternoon or evening she grew garrulous. " Mother does talk so — sometimes." She rarely went out of doors. Chaffery always rose late, and would sometimes go away for days together. He was mean, he allowed only a weekly twenty-five shillings for housekeeping and sometimes things grew unsatisfactory at the week-end. There seemed to be little sympathy between mother and daughter ; the widow had been flighty in a dingy fashion, and her marriage with her chief lodger Chaffery had led to unforgettable sayings. It was to facilitate this marriage that Ethel had been sent to Whortlcy, so that was counted a mitigated evil. But these were far-off things, remote and unreal down the long, ill- lit vista of the suburban street which swallowed up Ethel nightly. The walk, her warmth and light and

128 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

motion close to him, her clear little voice, and the touch of her hand ; that was reality.

The shadow of Chaffery and his deceptions lay indeed across all these things, sometimes faint, some- times dark and present. Then Lewisham became insistent, his sentimental memories ceased, and he asked questions that verged on gulfs of doubt. Had she ever " helped " ? She had not, she declared. Then she added that twice at home she had " sat down " to complete the circle. She would never help again. That she promised — if it needed prom- ising. There had already been dreadful trouble at home about the exposure at Lagune's. Her mother had sided with her stepfather and joined in blaming her. But was she to blame ?

" Of course you were not to blame," said Lewis- ham.

Lagune, he learnt, had been unhappy and restless for the three days after the stance — indulging in wearisome monologue — with Ethel as sole auditor (at twenty-one shillings a week). Then he had de- cided to give Chaffery a sound lecture on his disas- trous dishonesty. But it was Chaffery gave the lec- ture. Smithers, had he only known it, had been overthrown by a better brain than Lagune's, albeit it spoke through Lagune's treble.

Ethel did not like talking of Chaffery and these other things. " If you knew how sweet it was to

LOVE IN THE STREETS 129

forget it all," she would say ; ** to be just us two together for a little while." And, " What good does it do to keep on?" when Lewisham was pressing. Lewisham wanted very much to keep on at times, but the good of it was a little hard to demonstrate. So his knowledge of the situation remained imper- fect and the weeks drifted by.

Wonderfully varied were those seven and sixty nights, as he came to remember in after life. There were nights of damp and drizzle, and then thick fogs, beautiful, isolating, grey-white veils, turning every yard of pavement into a private room. Grand indeed were these fogs, things to rejoice at mightily, since then it was no longer a thing for public scorn when two young people hurried along arm in arm, and one could do a thousand impudent, significant things with varying pressure and the fondling of a little hand (a hand in a greatly mended glove of cheap kid). Then indeed one seemed to be nearer that elusive some- thing that threaded it all together. And the dangers of the street corners, the horses looming up suddenly out of the dark, the carters with lanterns at their horses' heads, the street lamps, blurred, smoky orange at one's nearest, and vanishing at twenty yards into dim haze, seemed to accentuate the infinite need of protection on the part of a delicate young lady who had already traversed three winters of fogs, thornily alone. Moreover, one could come right down the

130 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

quiet street where she lived, half-way to the steps of her house, with a delightful sense of enterprise.

The fogs passed all too soon into a hard frost, into nights of starlight and presently moonlight, when the lamps looked hard, flashing like rows of yellow gems, and their reflections and the glare of the shop windows were sharp and frosty, and even the stars hard and bright, snapping noiselessly (if one may say so) instead of twinkling. A jacket trimmed with imitation Astrachan replaced Ethel's lighter coat, and a round cap of Astrachan her hat, and her eyes shone hard and bright, and her forehead was broad and white beneath it. It was exhilarat- ing, but one got home too soon, and so the way from Chelsea to Clapham was lengthened, first into a loop of side streets, and then when the first pul- verulent snows told that Christmas was at hand, into a new loop down King's Road, and once even through the Brompton Road and Sloane Street, where the shops were full of decorations and enter- taining things.

And, under circumstances of infinite gravity, Mr. Lewisham secretly spent three-and-twenty shillings out of the vestiges of that hundred pounds, and bought Ethel a little gold ring set with pearls. With that there must needs be a ceremonial, and on the verge of the snowy, foggy Common she took off her glove and the ring was placed on her finger.

LOVE IN THE STREETS 131

Whereupon he was moved to kiss her — on the frost- pink knuckle next to an inky nail.

" It's silly of us," she said. "What can we do? —ever?"

" You wait," he said, and his tone was full of vague promises.

Afterwards he thought over those promises, and another evening went into the matter more fully, telling her of all the brilliant things that he held it was possible for a South Kensington student to do and be — of head-masterships, northern science schools, inspectorships, demonstratorships, yea, even professorships. And then, and then — To all of which she lent a willing and incredulous ear, finding in that dreaming a quality of fear as well as delight.

The putting on of the pearl-set ring was mere ceremonial, of course ; she could not wear it either at Lagune's or at home, so instead she threaded it on a little white satin ribbon and wore it round her neck — " next her heart." He thought of it there warm " next her heart."

When he had bought the ring he had meant to save it for Christmas before he gave it to her. But the desire to see her pleasure had been too strong for him.

Christmas Eve, I know not by what deceit on her part, these young people spent together all day. Lagune was down with a touch of bronchitis and

132 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

had given his typewriter a holiday. Perhaps she forgot to mention it at home. The Royal College was in vacation and Lewisham was free. He de- clined the plumber's invitation ; " work " kept him in London, he said, though it meant a pound or more of added expenditure. These absurd young people walked sixteen miles that Christmas Eve, and parted warm and glowing. There had been a hard frost and a little snow, the sky was a colourless grey, icicles hung from the arms of the street lamps, and the pavements were patterned out with frond- like forms that were trodden into slides as the day grew older. The Thames they knew was a wonder- ful sight, but that they kept until last. They went first along the Brompton Road. . . .

And it is well that you should have the picture of them right ; Lewisham in the ready-made overcoat, blue cloth and velvet collar, dirty tan gloves, red tie, and bowler hat ; and Ethel in a two-year-old jacket and hat of curly Astrachan ; both pink-cheeked from the keen air, shyly arm in arm occasionally, and very alert to miss no possible spectacle. The shops were varied and interesting along the Brompton Road, but nothing to compare with Piccadilly. There were windows in Piccadilly so full of costly little things, it took fifteen minutes to get them done, card shops, drapers' shops full of foolish, entertaining attractions. Lewisham, in spite of his old animosities, forgot to

LOVE IN THE STREETS 133

be severe on the Shopping Class, Ethel was so vastly entertained by ail these pretty follies.

Then up Regent Street by the place where the sham diamonds are, and the place where the girls display their long hair, and the place where the little chickens run about in the window, and so into Oxford Street, Holborn, Ludgate Hill, St. Paul's Churchyard, to Leadenhall, and the markets where turkeys, geese, ducklings and chickens — turkeys pre- dominant, however — hang in rows of a thousand at a time.

" I must buy you something," said Lewisham, re- suming a topic.

" No, no," said Ethel with her eye down a vista of innumerable birds.

" But I must," said Lewisham. " You had better choose it, or I shall get something wrong." His mind ran on brooches and clasps.

" You mustn't waste your money, and besides, I have that ring."

But Lewisham insisted.

" Then — if you must — I am starving. Buy me something to eat."

An immense and memorable joke. Lewisham plunged recklessly — orientally — into an awe-inspir- ing place with mitred napkins. They lunched on cutlets — stripped the cutlets to the bone — and little crisp brown potatoes, and they drank between them

134 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

a whole half bottle of — some white wine or other, Lewisham selected in an off-hand way from the list. Neither of them had ever taken wine at a meal be- fore. One-and-ninepence it cost him, Sir, and the name of it was Capri ! It was really very passable Capri — a manufactured product, no doubt, but warm- ing and aromatic. Ethel was aghast at his magnifi- cence and drank a glass and a half.

Then, very warm and comfortable, they went down by the Tower, and the Tower Bridge with its crest of snow, huge pendant icicles, and the ice blocks choked in its side arches, was seasonable seeing. And as they had had enough of shops and crowds they set off resolutely along the desolate Embank- ment homeward.

But indeed the Thames was a wonderful sight that year ! ice-fringed along either shore, and with drift- ice in the middle reflecting a luminous scarlet from the broad red setting sun, and moving steadily, in- cessantly seaward. A swarm of mewing gulls went to and fro, and with them mingled pigeons and crows. The buildings on the Surrey side were dim and grey and very mysterious, the moored, ice-blocked barges silent and deserted, and here and there a lit window shone warm. The sun sank right out of sight into a bank of blue, and the Surrey side dissolved in mist save for a few insoluble spots of yellow light, that presently became many. And after our lovers had

LOVE IN THE STREETS 135

come under Charing Cross Bridge the Houses of Parliament rose before them at the end of a great crescent of golden lamps, blue and faint, halfway between the earth and sky. And the clock on the Tower was like a November sun.

It was a day without a flaw, or at most but the slightest speck. And that only came at the very erd.

" Good-bye, dear," she said. " I have been very happy to-day."

His face came very close to hers. "Good-bye," he said, pressing her hand and looking into her eyes.

She glanced round, she drew nearer to him. " Dearest one," she whispered very softly, and then, " Good-bye."

Suddenly he became unaccountably petulant, he dropped her hand. " It's always like this. We are happy. / am happy. And then — then you are taken away. . . ."

There was a silence of mute interrogations.

" Dear," she whispered, " we must wait."

A moment's pause. " Wait ! " he said, and broke off. He hesitated. " Good-bye," he said as though he was snapping a thread that held them together.

CHAPTER XVI

MISS heydinger's private thoughts

The way from Chelsea to Clapham and the way from South Kensington to Battersea, especially if the former is looped about a little to make it longer, come very near to each other. One night close upon Christmas two friends of Lewisham's passed him and Ethel. But Lewisham did not see them, because he was looking at Ethel's face.

" Did you see ? " said the other girl, a little mali- ciously.

" Mr. Lewisham — wasn't it ? " said Miss Heydinger in a perfectly indifferent tone.

Miss Heydinger sat in the room her younger sisters called her " Sanctum. ' Her Sanctum was only too evidently an intellectualised bedroom, and a cheap wall-paper of silvery roses peeped co- quettishly from among her draped furniture. Her particular glories were the writing-desk in the mid- dle and the microscope on the unsteady octagonal table under the window. There were bookshelves

of workmanship patently feminine in their facile 136

MISS HEYDINGER'S THOUGHTS 137

decoration and structural instability, and on them an array of glittering poets, Shelley, Rossetti, Keats, Browning, and odd volumes of Ruskin, South Place Sermons, Socialistic publications in torn paper covers, and above, science text-books and note- books in an oppressive abundance. The autotypes that hung about the room were eloquent of aes- thetic ambitions and of a certain impermeability to implicit meanings. There was the Mirror of Venus by Burne Jones, Rossetti's Annunciation, Lippi's Annunciation, and the Love of Life and Love and Death of Watts. And among other photographs was one of last year's Debating Society Committee, Lewisham smiling a little weakly near the centre, and Miss Heydinger out of focus in the right wing. And Miss Heydinger sat with her back to all these things, in her black horsehair arm-chair, staring into the fire, her eyes hot, and her chin on her hand.

" I might have guessed — before," she said. " Ever since that stance. It has been different . . ."

She smiled bitterly. " Some shop girl . . ."

She mused. " They are all alike, I suppose. They come back — a little damaged, as the woman says in " Lady Windermere's Fan". Perhaps he will. I wonder ...

"Why should he be so deceitful? Why should he act to me? . . ."

" Pretty, pretty, pretty — that is our business.

138 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

What man hesitates in the choice ? He goes his own way, thinks his own thoughts, does his own work . . .

" His dissection is getting behind — one can see he takes scarcely any notes. . . ."

For a long time she was silent. Her face became more intent. She began to bite her thumb, at first slowly, then faster. She broke out at last into words again.

" The things he might do, the great things he might do. He is able, he is dogged, he is strong. And then comes a pretty face ! Oh God ! W/ij; was I made with heart and brain ? " She sprang to her feet, with her hands clenched and her face contorted. But she shed no tears.

Her attitude fell limp in a moment. One hand dropped by her side, the other rested on a fossil on the mantel-shelf, and she stared down into the red fire.

" To think of all we might have done ! It mad- dens me !

" To work, and think, and learn. To hope and wait. To despise the petty arts of womanliness, to trust to the sanity of man ....

" To awake like the foolish virgins," she said, " and find the hour of life is past ! "

Her face, her pose, softened into self-pity.

"Futility . . ,

MISS HEYDINGER'S THOUGHTS 139

" It's no good. . . ." Her voice broke.

" I shall never be happy. . . ."

She saw the grandiose vision of the future she had cherished, suddenly rolled aside and vanishing, more and more splendid as it grew more and more remote-— like a dream at the waking moment. The vision of her inevitable loneliness came to replace it, clear and acute. She saw herself alone and small in a huge desolation — infinitely pitiful, Lewisham callously receding. With " some shop girl." The tears came, came faster, until they were streaming down her face. She turned as if looking for some- thing. She flung herself upon her knees before the little arm-chair, and began an incoherent sobbing prayer for the pity and comfort of God.

The next day one of the other girls in the biolog- ical course remarked to her friend that " Hey- dinger-dingery " had relapsed. Her friend glanced down the laboratory. " It's a bad relapse," she said. •' Really ... I couldn't . . . wear my hair like that."

She continued to regard Miss Heydinger with a critical eye. She was free to do this because Miss Heydinger was standing, lost in thought, staring at the December fog outside the laboratory windows. "She looks white," said the girl who had originally spoken. " I wonder if she works hard."

140 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

*' It makes precious little difference if she does," said her friend. " I asked her yesterday what were the bones in the parietal segment, and she didn't know one. Not one."

The next day Miss Heydinger's place was vacant. She was ill — from overstudy — and her illness lasted to within three weeks of the terminal examination. Then she came back with a pallid face and a strenu- ous unavailing industry.

CHAPTER XVII

IN THE RAPHAEL GALLERY

It was nearly three o'clock, and in the Biological Laboratory the lamps were all alight. The class was busy with razors cutting sections of the root of a fern to examine it microscopically. A certain silent frog-like boy, a private student who plays no further part in this story, was working intently, looking more like a frog than usual, — his expression modest with a touch of effort. Behind Miss Hey- dinger, jaded and untidy in her early manner again, was a vacant seat, an abandoned microscope and scattered pencils and note-books.

On the door of the class-room was a list of those who had passed the Christmas examination. At the head of it was the name of the aforesaid frog- like boy ; next to him came Smithers and one of the girls bracketed together. Lewisham inglor- iously headed the second class, and Miss Heydinger's name did not appear — there was, the list asserted, "one failure." So the student pays for the finer

emotions.

141

142 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM '

And in the spacious solitude of the museum gal- lery devoted to the Raphael cartoons, sat Lewis- ham, plunged in gloomy meditation. A negligent hand pulled thoughtfully at the indisputable mous- tache, with particular attention to such portions as were long enough to gnaw.

He was trying to see the situation clearly. As he was just smarting acutely under his defeat, this speaks little for the clearness of his mind. The shadow of that defeat lay across everything, blotted out the light of his pride, shaded his honour, threw everything into a new perspective. The rich pret- tiness of his love-making had fled to some remote quarter of his being. Against the frog-like youngster he felt a savage animosity. And Smithers had be- trayed him. He was angry, bitterly angry with " swats " and " muggers " who spent their whole time grinding for these foolish chancy examinations. Nor had the practical examination been altogether fair, and one of the questions in the written portion was quite outside the lectures. Biver, Professor Biver, was an indiscriminating ass, he felt assured, and so too was Weeks, the demonstrator. But these obstacles could not blind his intelligence to the manifest cause of his overthrow, the waste of more than half his available evening, the best time for study in the twenty-four hours, day after day. And that was going on steadily, a perpetual leakage of

IN THE RAPHAEL GALLERY 143

time. To-night he would go to meet her again, and begin to accumulate to himself ignominy in the second part of the course, the botanical section, also. And so, reluctantly rejecting one cloudy excuse after another, he clearly focussed the antagon- ism between his relations to Ethel and his immedi- ate ambitions.

Things had come so easily to him for the last two years that he had taken his steady upward progress in life as assured. It had never occurred to him, when he went to intercept Ethel after that sdance, that he went into any peril of that sort. Now he had had a sharp reminder. He began to shape a picture of the frog-like boy at home — he was a pri- vate student of the upper middle class — sitting in a convient study with a writing-table, book-shelves and a shaded lamp — Lewisham worked at his chest of drawers, with his great coat on, and his feet in the lowest drawer wrapped in all his available linen — and in the midst of incredible conveniences the frog-like boy was working, working, working. Meanwhile Lewisham toiled through the foggy streets, Chelsea-ward, or, after he had left her, tramped homeward — full of foolish imaginings.

He began to think with bloodless lucidity of his entire relationship to Ethel. His softer emotions were in abeyance, but he told himself no lies. He cared for her, he loved to be with her and to talk

144 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

to her and please her, but that was not all his desire. He thought of the bitter words of an orator at Hammersmith, who had complained that in our present civilisation even the elemental need of marriage was denied. Virtue had become a vice. " We marry in fear and trembling, sex for a home is the woman's traffic, and the man comes to his heart's desire when his heart's desire is dead." The thing which had seemed a mere flourish, came back now with a terrible air of truth. Lewisham saw that it was a case of divergent ways. On the one hand that shining staircase to fame and power, that had been his dream from the very dawn of his ad- olescence, and on the other hand — Ethel.

And if he chose Ethel, even then, would he have his choice? What would come of it? A few walks more or less ! She was hopelessly poor, he was hopelessly poor, and this cheat of a Medium was her stepfather! After all she was not well- educated, she did not understand his work and his aims. . . .

He suddenly perceived with absolute conviction that after the stance he should have gone home and forgotten her. Why had he felt that irresistible impulse to seek her out ? Why had his imagination spun such a strange web of possibilities about her? He was involved now, foolishly involved. . . . All his future was a sacrifice to this transitory ghost of

IN THE RAPHAEL GALLERY 145

love-making in the streets. He pulled spitefully at his moustache.

His picture began to shape itself into Ethel, and her mysterious mother and the vague dexterous Chaffery holding him back, entangled in an impalpa- ble net from that bright and glorious ascent to per- formance and distinction. Leaky boots and the splash of cabs for all his life as his portion ! Already the Forbes Medal, the immediate step, was as good as lost. . . .

What on earth had he been thinking about? He fell foul of his upbringing. Men of the upper or middle classes were put up to these things by their parents ; they were properly warned against involv- ing themselves in this love nonsense before they were independent. It was much better. . . .

Everything was going. Not only his work — his scientific career, but the Debating Society, the political movement, all his work for Humanity. . . . Why not be resolute — even now? . . . Why not put the thing clearly and plainly to her ? Or write ? If he wrote now he could get the advantage of the evening at the Library. He must ask her to forego these walks home — at least until the next examina- tion. SJie would understand. He had a qualm of doubt whether she would understand. . . . He grew angry at this possibility. But it was no good

mincing matters. If once he began to consider 10

146 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

her — Why should he consider her in that way? Simply because she was unreasonable !

Lewisham had a transitory gust of anger.

Yet that abandonment of the walks insisted on looking mean to him. And she would think it mean. Which was very much worse, somehow. W/iy mean ? Why should she think it mean ? He grew angry again.

The portly museum policeman who had been watching him furtively, wondering why a student should sit in front of the " Sacrifice of Lystra " and gnaw lips and nails and moustache, and scowl and glare at that masterpiece, saw him rise suddenly to his feet with an air of resolution, spin on his heel, and set off with a quick step out of the gallery. He looked neither to the right nor the left. He passed out of sight down the staircase.

** Gone to get some more moustache to eat, I suppose," said the policeman reflectively. . . .

" One 'ud think something had bit him."

After some pensive moments the policeman strolled along down the gallery and came to a stop opposite the cartoon.

" Figgers is a bit big for the houses," said the policeman, anxious to do impartial justice. "But that's Art. I lay V couldn't do anything . . . not arf so good."

CHAPTER XVIII

THE FRIENDS OF PROGRESS MEET

The night next but one after this meditation saw a new order in the world. A young lady dressed in an astrachan-edged jacket and with a face of dimin- ished cheerfulness marched from Chelsea to Clap- ham alone, and Lewisham sat in the flickering elec- tric light of the Education Library, staring blankly over a business-like pile of books at unseen things.

The arrangement had not been effected without friction, the explanation had proved difficult. Evi- dently she did not appreciate the full seriousness of Lewisham's mediocre position in the list. " But you have /<3:^i-^^ all right," she said. Neither could she grasp the importance of evening study. " Of course I don't know," she said judicially ; "but I thought you were learning all day." She calculated the time consumed by their walk as half an hour, "just one half hour," she forgot that he had to get to Chelsea and then to return to his lodgings. Her customary tenderness was veiled by an only too

apparent resentment. First at him, and then when

147

148 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

he protested, at Fate. " I suppose it has to be," she said. " Of course, it doesn't matter, I suppose, if we do7it see each other quite so often," with a quiver of pale lips.

He had returned from the parting with an un- easy mind, and that evening had gone in the com- position of a letter that was to make things clearer. But his scientific studies rendered his prose style " hard," and things he could whisper he could not write. His justification indeed did him no sort of justice. But her reception of it made her seem a very unreasonable person. He had some violent fluctuations. At times he was bitterly angry with her for her failure to see things as he did. He would wander about the museum conducting imag- inary discussions with her and making even scath- ing remarks. At other times he had to summon all his powers of acrid discipline and all his mem- ories of her resentful retorts, to keep himself from a headlong rush to Chelsea and unmanly capitula- tion.

And this new disposition of things endured for two weeks. It did not take Miss Heydinger all that time to discover that the disaster of the ex- amination had wrought a change in Lewisham. She perceived those nightly walks were over. It was speedily evident to her that he was working with a kind of dogged fury ; he came early, he

THE FRIENDS OF PROGRESS MEET 149

went late. The wholesome freshness of his cheek paled. He was to be seen on each of the late nights amidst a pile of diagrams and text-books in one of the less draughty corners of the Educa- tional Library, accumulating piles of memoranda. And nightly in the Students' "club" he wrote a letter addressed to a stationer's shop in Clapham, but that she did not see. For the most part these letters were brief, for Lewisham, South Ken- sington fashion, prided himself upon not being " literary," and some of the more despatch-like wounded a heart perhaps too hungry for tender words.

He did not meet Miss Heydinger's renewed ad- vances with invariable kindness. Yet something of the old relations were presently restored. He wo^uld talk well to her for a time, and then snap like a dry twig. But the loaning of books was resumed, the subtle process of his aesthetic education that Miss Heydinger had devised. " Here is a book I prom- ised you," she said one day, and he tried to re- member the promise.

The book was a collection of Browning's Poems, and it contained " Sludge " ; it also happened that it contained " The Statue and the Bust " — that stimu- lating lecture on half-hearted constraints. " Sludge" did not interest Lewisham, it was not at all his idea of a medium, but he read and re-read " The Statue

150 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

and the Bust." It had the profoundest effect upon him. He went to sleep — he used to read his Htera- ture in bed because it was warmer there, and over literature nowadays it did not matter as it did with science if one dozed a little — with these lines stimu- lating his emotion : —

" So weeks grew months, years ; gleam by gleam The glory dropped from their youth and love, And both perceived they had dreamed a dream."

By way of fruit it may be to such seed, he dreamed a dream that night. It concerned Ethel, and at last they were a-marrying. He drew her to his arms. He bent to kiss her. And suddenly he saw her lips were shrivelled and her eyes were dull, saw the wrinkles seaming her face ! She was old ! She was intolerably old ! He woke in a kind of horror and lay awake and very dismal until dawn, think- ing of their separation and of her solitary walk through the muddy streets, thinking of his position, the leeway he had lost and the chances there were against him in the battle of the world. He per- ceived the colourless truth ; the Career was im- probable, and that Ethel should be added to it was almost hopeless. Clearly the question was between these two. Or should he vacillate and lose both ? And then his wretchedness gave place to that anger that comes of perpetually thwarted desires. . . .

It was on the day after this dream that he insulted

THE FRIENDS OF PROGRESS MEET 151

Parkson so grossly. He insulted Parkson after a meeting of the " Friends of Progress " at Parkson's rooms.

No type of English student quite realises the noble ideal of plain living and high thinking nowa- days. Our admirable examination system admits of extremely little thinking at any level, high or low. But the Kensington student's living is at any rate insufificient, and he makes occasional signs of recognition towards the cosmic process.

One such sign was the periodic gathering of these '* Friends of Progress," an association begotten of Lewisham's paper on Socialism. It was understood that strenuous things were to be done to make the world better, but so far no decisive action had been taken.

They met in Parkson's sitting-room, because Parkson was the only one of the Friends opu- lent enough to have a sitting-room, he being a Whitworth Scholar and in receipt of one hundred pounds a year. The Friends were of various ages, mostly very young. Several smoked and others held pipes which they had discontinued smoking — but there was nothing to drink, except coffee, be- cause that was the extent of their means. Dunker- ley, an assistant master in a suburban school, and Lewisham's former colleague at Whortley, attended these assemblies through the introduction of

152 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

Lewisliam. All the Friends wore red ties except Bletherley, who wore an orange one to show that he was aware of Art, and Dunkerley who wore a black one with blue specks, because assistant mas- ters in small private schools have to keep up ap- pearances. And their simple procedure was that each talked as much as the others would suffer.

Usually the self-proposed " Luther of Socialism " — ridiculous Lewisham ! — had a thesis or so to main- tain, but this night he was depressed and inattentive. He sat with his legs over the arm of his chair by way of indicating the state of his mind. He had a packet of Algerian cigarettes (twenty for five pence) and appeared chiefly concerned to smoke them all before the evening was out. Bletherley was going to discourse of "Woman under Socialism," and he brought a big American edition of Shelley's works and a volume of Tennyson with the " Princess," both bristling with paper tongues against his marked quotations. He was all for the abolition of *' mono- polies," and the criche was to replace the family. He was unctuous when he was not pretty-pretty, and his views were evidently unpopular.

Parkson was a man from Lancashire, and a devout Quaker ; his third and completing factor was Ruskin, with whose work and phraseology he was saturated. He listened to Bletherley with a marked disap- proval, and opened a vigorous defence of that

THE FRIENDS OF PROGRESS MEET 153

ancient tradition of loyalty that Bletherley had called the monopolist institution of marriage. " The pure and simple old theory — love and faithfulness," said Parkson, " suffices for me. If we are to smear our political movements with this sort of stuff . . ."

" Does it work? " interjected Levvisham, speaking for the first time.

" What work ? "

" The pure and simple old theory. I know the theory. I believe in the theory. Bletherley 's Shelley-witted. But it's theory. You meet the inevitable girl. The theory says you may meet her anywhen. You meet too young. You fall in love. You marry — in spite of obstacles. Love laughs at locksmiths. You have children. That's the theory. All very well for a man whose father can leave him five hundred a year. But how does it work for a shopman? . . . An assistant master like Dunkerley? Or . . . Me?"

" In these cases one must exercise restraint," said Parkson. " Have faith. A man that is worth having is worth waiting for."

" Worth growing old for ? " said Lewisham.

" Chap ought to fight," said Dunkerley. " Don't see your difficulty, Lewisham. Struggle for exis- tence keen, no doubt, tremendous in fact — still. In it — may as well struggle. Two — join forces — pool the luck. If I saw, a giirl I fancied so that I wanted

154 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

to, I'd marry her to-morrow. And my market value is seventy non res."

Lewisham looked round at him eagerly, suddenly interested. " Woiild you ? " he said. Dunkerley's face was slightly flushed.

" Like a shot. Why not ? "

" But how are you to live ? "

" That comes after. If ... "

" I can't agree with you, Mr. Dunkerley," said Parkson. " I don't know if you have read Sesame and Lilies, but there you have, set forth far more fairly than any words of mine could do, an ideal of a woman's place ..."

" All rot — Sesame and Lilies," interrupted Dun- kerley. " Read bits. Couldn't stand it. Never can stand Ruskin. Too many prepositions. Tre- mendous English, no doubt, but not my style. Sort of thing a wholesale grocer's daughter might read to get refined. ?r^ can't afford to get refined."

" But would you really marry a girl . . . ? " began Lewisham, with an unprecedented admiration for Dunkerley in his eyes.

" Why not ? "

" On — ? " Lewisham hesitated.

" Forty pounds a year res. Whack ! Yes."

A silent youngster began to speak, cleared an accumulated huskiness from his throat and said " Consider the girl."

THE FRIENDS OF PROGRESS MEET 155

"Why marry?" asked Bletherley, unregarded.

" You must admit you are asking a great thing when you want a girl ..." began Parkson.

" Not so. When a girl's chosen a man, and he chooses her, her place is with him. What is the good of hankering. Mutual. Fight together."

" Good ! " said Lewisham suddenly emotional. *' You talk like a man, Dunkerley. I'm hanged if you don't."

" The place of Woman," insisted Parkson, " is the Home. And if there is no home — ! I hold that, if need be, a man should toil seven years — as Jacob did for Rachel — ruling his passions, to make the home fitting and sweet for her ..."

" Get the hutch for the pet animal," said Dunkerley, "No. I mean to marry a w^w«;/. Female sex always has been in the struggle for existence — no great dam- age so far — always will be. Tremendous idea — that struggle for existence. Only sensible theory you've got hold of, Lewisham. Woman who isn't fightin.g square side by side with a man — woman who's just kept and fed and petted is ... " He hesitated.

A lad with a spotted face and a bulldog pipe between his teeth supplied a Biblical word.

" That's shag," said Dunkerley. "I was going to say * a harem of one.' "

The youngster was puzzled for a moment. *' I smoke Perique," he said.

156 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM.

" It will make you just as sick," said Dunkerley.

" Refinement's so beastly vulgar," was the belated answer of the smoker of Perique.

That was the interesting part of the evening to Lewisham. Parkson suddenly rose, got down " Se- same and Lilies", and insisted upon reading a lengthy mellifluous extract that went like a garden roller over the debate, and afterwards Bletherley became the centre of a wrangle that left him grossly insulted and in a minority of one. The institution of mar- riage, so far as the South Kensington student is concerned, is in no immediate danger.

Parkson turned out with the rest of them at half- past ten, for a walk. The night was warm for February and the waxing moon bright. Parkson fixed himself upon Lewisham and Dunkerley, to Lewisham's intense annoyance — for he had a few intimate things he could have said to the man of Ideas that night. Dunkerley lived north, so that the three went up Exhibition Road to High Street Kensington. There they parted from Dunkerley and Lewisham and Parkson turned southward again for Lewisham's new lodging in Chelsea.

Parkson was one of those exponents of virtue for whom the discussion of sexual matters has an irre- sistible attraction. The meeting had left him elo- quent. He had argued with Dunkerley to the verge of indelicacy, and now he poured out a vast

THE FRIENDS OF PROGRESS MEET 157

and increasingly confidential flow of talk upon Lew- isham. Lewisham was distraught. He walked as fast as he could. His sole object was to get rid of Parkson. Parkson's sole object was to tell him in- teresting secrets, about himself and a Certain Per- son with a mind of extraordinary Purity of whom Lewisham had heard before.

Ages passed.

Lewisham suddenly found himself being shown a photograph under a lamp. It represented an unsymmetrical face singularly void of expression, the upper part of an " art " dress, and a fringe of curls. He perceived he was being given to under- stand that this was a Paragon of Purity, and that she was the particular property of Parkson. Park- son was regarding him proudly and apparently awaiting his verdict.

Lewisham struggled with the truth. " It's an interesting face," he said.

" It is a face essentially beautiful," said Parkson quietly but firmly. " Do you notice the eyes, Lewisham ? "

"Oh, yes," said Lewisham. "Yes. I see the eyes."

" They are . . . innocent. They are the eyes of a little child."

" Yes. They look that sort of eye. Very nice, old man. I congratulate you. Where does she live?"

158 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

"You never saw a face like that in London," said Parkson.

''Never,'' said Lewisham decisively.

" I would not show that to every one," said Park- son. " You can scarcely judge all that pure-hearted, -wonderful girl is to me." He returned the photo- graph solemnly to its envelope, regarding Lewisham with an air of one who has performed the ceremony of blood-brotherhood. Then taking Lewisham's arm affectionately — a thing Lewisham detested — he went on to a copious outpouring on Love — with illustrative anecdotes of the Paragon. It was just sufficiently cognate to the matter of Lewisham's thoughts to demand attention. Every now and then he had to answer, and he felt an idiotic desire — albeit he clearly perceived its idiocy — to recipro- cate confidences. The necessity of fleeing Parkson became urgent — Lewisham's temper under these multitudinous stresses was going.

" Every man needs a Lode Star," said Parkson — and Lewisham swore under his breath.

Parkson's lodgings were now near at hand to the left, and it occurred to him this boredom would be soonest ended if he took Parkson home. Parkson consented mechanically, still discoursing.

" I have often seen you talking to Miss Hey- dinger,'' he said. " If you will pardon my saying

It . . .

THE FRIENDS OF PROGRESS MEET 159

" We are excellent friends," admitted Levvisham, " But here we are at your diggings."

Parkson stared at his " diggings." " There's Heaps I want to talk about. I'll come part of the way at any rate to Battersea. Your Miss Hey- dinger, I was saying ..."

From that point onwards he made casual appeals to a supposed confidence between Lewisham and Miss Heydinger, each of which increased Lewis- ham's exasperation. " It will not be long before you also, Lewisham, will begin to know the infinite purification of a Pure Love. ..." Then sud- denly, with a vague idea of suppressing Parkson's unendurable chatter, as one motive at least, Lewis- ham rushed into the confidential.

" I know," he said. "You talk to me as though . . . I've marked out my destiny these three years." His confidential impulse died as he relieved it.

"You don't mean to say Miss Heydinger — ?" asked Parkson.

"Oh, damn Miss Heydinger!" said Lewisham, and suddenly, abruptly, uncivilly, he turned away from Parkson at the end of the street and began walking away southward, leaving Parkson in mid- sentence at the crossing.

Parkson stared in astonishment at his receding back and ran after him to ask for the grounds of this sudden offence. Lewisham walked on for a

i6o LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM

space with Parkson trotting by his side. Then sud- denly he turned. His face was quite white and he spoke in a tired voice.

" Parkson," he said, " you are a fool ! . . . You have the face of a sheep, the manners of a buffalo, and the conversation of a bore. Pewrity indeed ! . . . The girl whose photograph you showed me has eyes that don't match. She looks as loathsome as one would naturally expect. . . . I'm not joking now. . . . Go away ! "

After that Lewisham went on his southward way alone. He did not go straight to his room in Chel- sea, but spent