Chapter 4

He was reading a letter in the bold, firm handwriting of Elizabeth Carr.

    "Dear Mr Quain," she wrote, "I don't think I ever thanked you for the article you wrote of our day in the forest with the children. I asked Kenneth to tell you how glad I was, but I expect he forgot all about it. I think your article was most sympathetic, though I wish you hadn't made quite so much of that unfortunate child who was dressed so grotesquely. I will tell you what I mean when I see you, for I am writing to know if you can come to dinner here. I'm sorry Kenneth won't be able to come—he's away in Lancashire on that dreadful strike. Thank Heaven—he'll be leaving it all soon."

There was a postscript.

    "Of course, I know the nature of your work will not let you say 'yes' definitely, but I've made the day Saturday, on purpose to give you a chance. And if I don't have a wire from you, I shall expect you."

It was quite a month since he had spent that day in Loughton with Elizabeth Carr, and though he could not name offhand the things he had done since then, day by day, that day and its incidents remained sharply defined in his memory.

Had he really taken more than usual care to write his account of their doings? Or, was it that the vision of her, and the recollection of her earnest eyes, inspired him to better work? Or, had there been nothing very[229] special about the story after all, and was her letter merely a courtesy?

The fact remained that he was flattered to receive the letter with its invitation. Kenneth had certainly forgotten to deliver her message. He looked upon it as something of a triumph for him: very patiently he had waited for a word from Elizabeth Carr.

There was that extraordinary remark of hers when he had watched the children sing their grace. He had asked her what she meant by it, and she had declined to say. He had felt humiliated by her words: did she imagine that he had no heart at all? She seemed to think that because he was a reporter on a halfpenny paper, he must be absolutely callous.

He re-read the letter. She was curiously captious. She seemed ready to take offence now because he had made a "story" out of that wretched child clad in its mother's cape and bedraggled blouse. Well, of course, she wasn't a journalist. She couldn't be expected to see human interest from the same point of view as The Day. He wrote, accepting her invitation provisionally.

In the days that followed, thoughts of Elizabeth Carr recurred with disturbing persistency. He recalled the odd way in which she had come into his life: first at that evening at the Wrattens, when Lilian Filmer had been his foremost thought, then, intermittently, at Kenneth Carr's, something unusually antagonistic in her attitude to him; and now she had come into the heart of his work, bringing with her a touch of intimacy. She, who had always averted herself from him, was now asking him to be her guest.

She, who had always seemed to ignore him, was, of a sudden, extending towards him tentacles of influence, vague and shadowy; he was uneasily aware of their presence.

He read her letter several times before the Saturday[230] came—the gentle perfume of it reminded him of her own fragrance. He was sensitive to praise and appreciation, and he dwelt often on those words which spoke of his work. It was pleasant to know that he had at last shown Elizabeth Carr what he could do. She was, he knew, judging him always by Kenneth's standard, in life as well as writing, and of course every one knew that Kenneth's ideals were high, that his writing was brilliant.... So Kenneth was going to leave Fleet Street. It was the first that Humphrey had heard of it. "I shall have to chuck it," Kenneth had said, and he was going to keep his word. He contemplated the prospect with melancholy. Kenneth was a good friend; his departure would leave an intolerable gap in London life. The chats and the evening meetings would be gone.... They would pass out of each other's daily life....

Thus Saturday came, and Humphrey found himself free to carry out his acceptance of Elizabeth's invitation.

Humphrey had always imagined that Elizabeth lived in a flat with some woman-friend: he was surprised when he found the address led to a little white house, one of a row of such houses, in a broad, peaceful road at the back of Kensington High Street. It was one of those houses that must have been built when Kensington was a village; it was like a cottage in the heart of London. The Virginian creeper made its drapery of green over the trellis-work that framed the window, and the walls were green with ivy. An elderly woman opened the door to his knock, and he found himself in a low-ceilinged hall, with a few black-and-white drawings on the walls, and a reproduction of Whistler's Nocturne.

He was ushered into the sitting-room. Even if he had not known that it was her house, he could have chosen this room, out of all the rooms in London, as the room of Elizabeth Carr. Wherever he looked, he found a reflex of her peace and gentle calm.

[231]

In the few moments of waiting he took in all the details of the room: the soft-toned wall-paper, with a woodland frieze of blue and delicate shades of green, the old Japanese prints on the walls, and the little leather-bound books on the tables here and there. He had sat so many times in the rooms of different people whom he went to interview, that his observation had trained itself mechanically to notice such details. He heard a rustle on the stairs, the door opened gently, and Elizabeth Carr came into the room.

She looked as beautiful as a picture in the frame of her own room. So had he imagined her, her hair looped back from its centre parting piled in gleaming coils just above the nape of her neck, leaving its delicate outline unbroken; a long necklet of amethysts made a mauve rivulet against the whiteness of her bosom till it fell in a festoon over her bodice, and blended with the colour of her dress, amethystine itself. And in her hair there gleamed a comb beaten by a Norwegian goldsmith, and set with moonstone and chrysoprase.

She came forward to greet him, moving with the subtle grace of womanhood. Her charm, her frank beauty, filled him with a peculiar sense of unworthiness and embarrassment. Before the wonder of her, before the purity of her, everything else in life seemed incomprehensibly sordid.

"I am so glad you were able to come," she said. She looked him in the eyes as she spoke, and there was this, he noticed, about Elizabeth Carr: she meant every word she said—even the most trivial of greetings took on significance when she uttered them. Her words gave him confidence.

"It was good of you to ask me...." There was a slight pause. "I nearly missed the house," he said with an inconsequential smile. "I always thought you lived in a flat."

[232]

"Did you?" she replied. "Oh no!—(Do sit down—I'm expecting some more visitors shortly.) I've had this house for a long time." She sighed. "It's an inheritance, you know, and I thought I'd live in it myself, instead of letting it. Kenneth and I have dreadful squabbles—he says it's too far out for him, and wants me to keep a flat with him in town—and I loathe flats. I've got a small garden at the back, and it's blessed in the summer. There's a walnut tree and a pear tree just wide enough apart to hold a hammock."

"A hammock in London!" cried Humphrey; "I envy you! Think of our Clifford's Inn."

"I really don't know how you people can live on the doorsteps of your offices. I'm sure it's not good for you. Anyway, Kenneth's giving it up."

"I hadn't heard of it before your letter."

"It was only settled a few days ago. Grahams, the publishers, liked his last book well enough to offer him a good advance; and the book's sold in America—he's got enough to get a year's start in the country, and so he's going down there to write only the things he wants to."

Humphrey smiled in his cocksure way. "Aha! he'll soon get sick of it, Miss Carr."

Elizabeth Carr's fingers strayed into the loops of her amethyst necklace; the light shone on the violet and blue gems as she gathered them into a little heap, and let them fall again. Her brows hinted at a frown for a moment, and then they became level again.

"Nothing would make you give up Fleet Street, I suppose?" she asked.

"No ... the fever's in me," he said. "I couldn't live without it."

"Are you so wrapped up in it?"

"Well," said Humphrey, "I suppose I am. It's rather fine, you know, the way things are done. You[233] ought to go through a newspaper office and see it at work ... all sorts of people, each of them working daily with only one aim—to-morrow's paper...."

"And you never think of the day when Ferrol doesn't want you any more?"

"Well, you know," Humphrey said, with a smile, "it's difficult to explain. We just trust to luck. After all, lots of men have drifted into journalism; when they're done, they drift back again."

"I see," Elizabeth Carr said, nodding her head gently. "And there are always fresh men to drift."

"I suppose so."

"And, you're quite content."

Humphrey shrugged his shoulders. "What else can I do?"

The bell rang. "Ah! what else!" she exclaimed, rising to meet her visitors.

The new-comers were introduced to Humphrey. One was a tall, thin man, with remarkable eyes, black and deep-sunken, and the thin mobile lips of an artist. His name was Dyotkin; he spoke English fluently, with a faint Russian accent. The other was a woman whose youthful complexion and features of middle age were in conflict, but whose hair tinged with grey left no doubt of her years. Although her dress was in excellent taste, it suggested an unduly overbearing wealth. Humphrey recognized her name when he heard it: Mrs Hayman. She was one of the philanthropists who helped Elizabeth in her work.

They went into dinner, to sit at a little oval Chippendale table just big enough for the four of them; Dyotkin and he faced one another, sitting between Elizabeth and Mrs Hayman.

"Your work must be very interesting," Mrs Hayman said.

Humphrey smiled. That was the commonest[234] remark he heard. Those who did not know what the work was, perceived dimly its interest, but not one of them could ever be made to understand the intense, eager passion of the life.

"It is interesting," Humphrey said. "Miss Carr knows a good deal of it."

"I suppose you go everywhere—it must be splendid."

"When you talk like that, I, too, think it must be splendid. Sometimes, it's very funny."

"Still, it's nice to see everything, isn't it? And I suppose you go to theatres and concerts."

"Oh no! I'm not a critic. That's another man's work. I'm just a reporter."

"I don't know how you get your news. What do you do? Go out in the morning and ask people? And isn't it dreadfully difficult to fill the paper?"

It was always the same; nobody could understand the routine of the business. Everybody had the same idea that newspaper offices lived in a day of tremulous anticipation lest there should not be enough news. Nobody understood that the happenings in the world were so vast and complex, that their sole anxiety was to compress into four pages the manifold events that had happened while the earth had turned on its axis for one day.

"Now, yesterday, for instance?" Mrs Hayman said, with an inviting smile. "What did you do yesterday?"

"Oh, yesterday was an unpleasant day. I had to go to Camberwell late at night. A man had given himself up somewhere in Wales. He said he'd murdered Miss Cott—you remember the train murder, three years ago.... He kept a chemist's shop in Camberwell, we found out. So I had to go there. I got there dreadfully late. The door was opened by a girl. Her eyes were swollen and red. She was his daughter, I guessed.... I can tell you, I felt awkward."

[235]

"I should think so," Elizabeth said. He looked at her, and saw that she was annoyed.

"What did you do—go away?" Mrs Hayman asked.

"Go away? Good gracious, no. I interviewed her."

"Interviewed her!"

"Well, I talked with her, if you like. They were very pleased at the office."

"I think it's repulsive," Elizabeth remarked.

"Oh, come!" Humphrey remonstrated.

The dinner was finished. It occurred to Humphrey that he had fallen from grace.

"We will go into the next room," Elizabeth said, "and Mr Dyotkin shall play to us." As she passed by him, Humphrey went forward and opened the door for her. Dyotkin and Mrs Hayman lingered behind. He passed into the adjoining room with Elizabeth. He wanted to defend himself.

"You're a little hard on me, you know," he said.

"I don't understand how you can do it," she said.

"Do what?"

"Forget all your finer feelings, and make a trade of it."

"I don't make a trade of it," he said, hotly. "You cannot separate the good from the bad. You must take us just as we are—or leave us."

The words came from him quietly, almost unconsciously, as though in an unguarded moment his tongue had taken advantage of his thoughts. She turned her face sideways to his, and he was conscious of a queer look in her eyes—an expression which was absolutely foreign to them. He saw doubt, uncertainty and surprise in the swift glance of a moment. "I ought not to have said that," he thought to himself. And, then, hard upon that, defiantly, "I don't care what she thinks; it's what I thought."

The expression in her eyes softened. Though he[236] had said nothing more, it was as if he had subtly communicated to her that which was passing in his mind.

"Yes," she said, with softness in her voice, "we must take the good with the bad, but we must separate the sincere from the insincere. I saw you that day in the forest when your eyes showed how you felt the pity of it all—and yet, you see, you did not put that in The Day. You did not write as you felt."

So that was her explanation. How could he make her comprehend the conflict that was for ever in his mind, and even his explanation could not redeem him in her eyes.

John Davidson's verse ran through his mind like a dirge:—
"Ambition and passion and power,
Came out of the North and the West,
Every year, every day, every hour,
Into Fleet Street to fashion their best.
They would write what is noble and wise,
They must live by a traffic in lies!"

Ah, but it was wrong of her to take that view. As if one could ever tell the truth in a world where the very fabric of society is woven from lies and false conceptions. How could he tell her and make her believe that he was thrilled, and that his throat tightened at things that he saw—and yet he never dared give way to his emotions, and write them. Why, the most vital things in his life were not the things he wrote, but the things he did not write.

Though his mind was rioting with indignation, he laughed. "We mustn't take our work too seriously," he said. "It's too ephemeral for that. Things only last a day."

She did not answer. She turned from him without a word. He had meant to anger her, and he had succeeded. There was a chatter of voices in the[237] passage and Mrs Hayman came into the room with Dyotkin. Elizabeth went towards him.

"Won't you play something?" she begged.

Dyotkin sat down by the piano. The seat was too low; he wanted a cushion, or some books, and Elizabeth went to fetch them.

The sight of her waiting on Dyotkin filled Humphrey with an increasing annoyance. It jarred on him somehow. He attempted to help in an ungainly way, but Elizabeth, without conveying it directly, held aloof from his assistance. He settled himself in the arm-chair by Mrs Hayman ... and Dyotkin played.

Humphrey had no knowledge of music. He did not even know the name of the piece that was being played, but as the fingers of Dyotkin struck three grand chords, something stirred within his soul, and, gradually, a vague understanding came to him, and he followed and traced the theme through its embroidery. And the following of the theme was just like the following of an ideal. At times he was lost in waves of seductive sounds, that charmed him and led his thoughts away, and then, suddenly, the chords would emerge again, out of the bewildering maze of melody clear and triumphant, again, and yet again; he could follow them, though they were cunningly concealed beneath intricate patterns.

And then, for a moment, he would lose them, but he knew that they were still there, if he sought for them, and so he stumbled on; and, behold, once more as the dawn bursts out of the darkness, the familiar sounds struck on his ears. And now they were with him always: he hearkened to them, and they were fraught with a strange, delicious meaning. "I have thought this," he said, in his mind.

Here was something far, far removed from anything of daily life. He was uplifted, exalted from earthly things. The wonder of the music enchanted him.[238] Ah! what achievements were not possible in such moments! He felt grandiose, noble and apart from life altogether.... The music ceased. He sighed as one awaking from the glory of a dream. He looked up, and his eyes, once again, met the eyes of Elizabeth, deep and tender and unspeakably divine.