Chapter 6

"One lump or two?" asked Elizabeth, holding the sugar-tongs poised over his cup of tea.

"One, please," said Humphrey.

"Milk or cream?"

"Milk."

She handed him the cup in silence. There was something in the frank, questioning look in her blue eyes that made him avert his gaze. Their meeting had not been at all as he had imagined it. He did not spring towards her, boyishly, and take her in his arms and kiss her. He had approached her humbly and timidly when she stood before him, in all her white purity and beauty, and their lips had met in a brief kiss of greeting. Her manner had been curiously formal and restrained, empty of all outward display of emotion.

And now they sat at tea in her room with the conversation lagging between them. As he looked round at the room with its chintzes and rose-bowls, its old restfulness reasserted itself. But to Humphrey it seemed now more than restful—it seemed stagnant and out of the world.... Somewhere, in Paris, there were music and laughter, but here, in this quiet backwater of London, one's vision became narrow, and life seemed a monotonous repetition of days. He felt moody, depressed; a sense of coming disaster hung over his mind, like a shadow. Her quick sympathy perceived his gloom.

"You ought not to have gone," she said, softly.

"You mean to the funeral?"

"Yes; you are too susceptible ... too easily influenced[323] by surroundings. There was no need to come all this way to make yourself miserable."

"I don't know why I went," he said. "We never had much in common, my aunt and I, but somehow ... I don't know ... I couldn't bear the thought of not being present at her funeral. I had a silly sort of idea that she would know if I were not there."

"You are too susceptible," she repeated. "Sometimes I wish you were stronger. You are too much afraid of what people will think of you. This death has meant nothing at all to you, but you are ashamed to say so."

"It has meant something to me," he said. "I don't mean that I felt a wrench, as if some one whom I loved very dearly had gone ... I felt that when my father died ... but her death has changed me somehow—here—" and he tapped his breast, "I feel older. I feel as if I had stood over the grave and seen the burial of my youth."

"It has made you gloomy," Elizabeth said. "I think you would have been truer to yourself if you had remained in Paris."

He reflected for a few moments, drinking his tea. He felt sombre enough in his black clothes and black tie—dreary concessions to conventionality.

"Ah, but I wanted to see you, Elizabeth," he said earnestly. "It's terribly lonely without you."

She leaned forward and laid her hand lightly on his, with a soft, caressing touch. "It's good of you to say that," she said, and then, with a frank smile, "tell me, Humphrey, do you really miss me very much?"

"I do," he said; and he began talking of himself and all that he did in Paris. Elizabeth listened with an amused smile playing about her lips. He told her of his work and his play, growing enthusiastic over Paris, speaking with all the self-centredness of the egotist.

[324]

"It seems very pleasant," she said. "You are to be envied, I think. You ought to be very happy: doing everything that you want to do; occupying a good position in journalism."

He purred mentally under her praise. Already he felt better; her presence stimulated him; but he could not see, nor understand, the true Elizabeth, for the mists of vanity, ambition and selfishness clouded his vision at that moment. If only he had forgotten himself ... if only he had asked her one question about herself and her work, or shown the smallest interest in anything outside his own career, he might have risen to great heights of happiness.

This was the second in which everything hung in the balance. He saw Elizabeth lean her chin in the palm of her hand and contemplate reflectively the distance beyond him. He marked the beauty of her lower arm, bare to the rounded charm of the elbow, as it rested on the curve of the arm-chair. So, he thought, would she sit in Paris, and grace his life.

And then, suddenly, her face became grave, and she said, abruptly:

"Humphrey, I want to talk to you very seriously. I want to know whether you will give up journalism."

He remembered her hint of this far back in the months when she had first allowed him to tell her of his love. He had thought the danger was past, but now she came to him, with a deliberate, frontal attack on the very stronghold of his existence.

"Give up journalism!" he echoed. "What for?"

All the weapons of her sex were at her command. She might have said, "For me"; she might have smiled and enticed and cajoled. But she brushed these weapons aside disdainfully. Hers was the earnest business of putting Humphrey to the test.

[325]

"Because I think you and I will never be happy together if you do not. Because, if I marry you (he noticed she did not say, 'When I marry you'), I should not want your work to occupy a larger place in our lives than myself. Because I hate your work, and I think you can do better things. Those are my reasons."

He stood up and walked to the window, looking out on the trees that made an avenue of the quiet road. A man with a green baize covered tray on his head came round the corner, swinging a bell up and down.

"Well?" she said.

"Oh but look here, Elizabeth," he began, "you spring something like this on me suddenly, and expect me to answer at once...."

"Oh, no! you can have time to think it over. You've had nearly a year, you know."

"How do you make that out?"

"Have you forgotten? When you were going to Paris—before you were going to Paris even—I tried to show you that I wanted you to give up the work. I remember you promised things. You said you'd write books, or do essays for the weeklies...."

"But, dear, you can't make a living writing books—unless you fluke, or unless you're a genius; as for essays for the weeklies, frankly, I don't believe I can do them—I'm not brilliant enough."

"Yes, you are," Elizabeth urged. (Fatal mistake to make, it smoothed all his vanity the right way.) "I believe in you, Humphrey. If I didn't believe in you, I wouldn't be talking as I am now. And, besides, I've told you before, I have enough for us both."

Though she was offering him freedom; though, if he wished, he could accept her offer and be rid for ever from the torments of Fleet Street, he could not leave its joys.

[326]

"You don't understand," he said. "You couldn't expect me to live on you...."

"Why not? I should be prepared to live on you, if I were poor."

"That's different. You're a woman."

She laughed. "We won't go into the side-issues of arguments over ethics," she said. "You need not live on me. You told me that you had saved four hundred pounds. If we lived simply that would keep us both for a start, and you could be adding to your income by writing. Humphrey, don't you see I'm trying to rescue you. I want you to do something fine and noble; I want you to go forward."

"Well, I've gone forward," he said. "I've made myself in the Street. You don't know what you ask when you want me to give it up. Nobody can understand it unless he's been in the game. I can't think what it is—it isn't vanity, because all that we write is unsigned; it's sheer love of the work that drives us on."

"But you hate it, too."

"We hate it as fiercely as we love it..." he said, simply. "One day we say to ourselves, 'We will give it up.' That's what I say to you, now. I'm going to give it up, one day."

"That you have also promised before," she said, in a gentle voice. "Let us talk it over between ourselves. Why shouldn't you leave now?"

He was cornered: he stood at bay, facing her beauty, but behind it and above it he saw all the struggles and endeavour and splendid triumph that awaited him in the restless years to come, when each day would be a battle-field, and any might bring him defeat or conquest. He saw the world opening before him, and far-off cities close at hand; he saw himself wandering through the years, touching the lives of men; a privileged person, always behind the scenes of life, with a hint of power[327] perhaps.... And, in exchange, she offered him peace and rest, both of which corroded the soul eager for war; peace and rest and love, that would be so beautiful until the years made them familiar and wearisome, until he would be forced to go out again into the thick of the battle ... and by that time his armour would be rusty, and the years of peace would have blunted his sword.

"Elizabeth," he said slowly, "I can't live in a room, now. I can't always look out of the window on the same scene. I must keep moving. Each day must bring me a fresh scene, a fresh experience. I have grown so used to change and movement that a week without it makes life dull and unbearable. I'm not fit for anything else but the work I do. I'm born to do that and nothing else. Everything in life now I see from the point of view of 'copy.'" He laughed, but there was a sob in his laughter at his shameful confession. "Why, even at the funeral, as I stood over the grave, and watched them lower the coffin, I felt that I could write a splendid column about it, and instead of feeling the solemnity of it all, I found that I was watching the white surplices against the green trees, and looking at the faces of the people, and painting a picture in my mind...."

He paused. Her eyes were downcast, and her fingers played absently with the loops of the chain that hung from her neck.

"It's a habit," he went on. "It's grown on me, so that I see life and its emotions as a series of things to be written about. Why shouldn't I have thought as I did at the funeral? I have been taught to do it, when I go to the funerals of great men that I have to report. I'm a journalist ... a reporter. I've seen men eat their hearts out in a year, after they've left the Street light-heartedly. The reaction comes suddenly. Things are happening all around them, and they're out of it. And they creep back, and try to get a job again. That's[328] what Kenneth himself will do one day.... I don't want to be one of those, Elizabeth. I want to go through with it, right through to the failure at the end of all, and when the failure comes, I'll build up again."

She spread out her hands helplessly. "I see..." she said, "I see...." That was all for a moment, and then, again: "If you were doing something worthy, I could understand; if you were producing art, I could understand, too ... but this"—a copy of The Day was on the table, and she held it in her hand—"this is unworthy. This is all you produce with your infinite labour."

"It's not unworthy ... we have our ideals."

She laughed, and her laugh stung him.

"Humphrey, you have the ha'penny mind that does not see beyond its own nose. You just live for the day itself. Oh!" she cried, "if you knew how I hate your Ferrol, and all that he stands for: all the ignoble things in life, painting everything with the commercial taint of worldly success. There was a beautiful picture bought the other day for the National Gallery. I see it is to be known as the '￡60,000 picture.' That's the spirit behind Ferrol ... we might be crying for great reforms—I have not spoken of my work in all this—we might be lifted up with the power at his command...."

When she spoke of Ferrol, Humphrey remembered all that had been done for him. What could she know of Ferrol's personality, of his splendid force, of the thousand generous acts that remained hidden, while only the things were remembered that blackened his reputation. His admiration for Ferrol was immeasurable. He saw in the indomitable energy of the man something tangible and positive among all the negative virtues of life. Ferrol stood for achievement that crowned the indefatigable years. And with it all, this superman could[329] descend from his loftiness and be human and weave the spell of his humanity about the lives of others.

"You don't understand Ferrol," he said. "Very few people do. But he has been kind to me ... there's something in Ferrol that draws me to him. One day you will see he will do all that you expect him to do, but the time is not yet ripe for that. And you speak as if Ferrol were the only man in England who owned a newspaper. What of the others—have any of them done as much good as he has done?"

"Whatever good he has done, is done from motives of gain."

"I do not look at motives," he retorted. "I look only at the effects of the action. If a bad deed is done from good motives, it does not make the deed anything but bad."

They were standing face to face now.

"Come, Elizabeth," he said, moving towards her. "You do not know how I love you, and if you loved me, you would not ask me to give up my work."

Her face was white and beautiful, and her hand went up to her heart with a womanly gesture. She spoke in a low, deliberate voice.

"In all that we have said, there has never been a word of what giving up my work may mean to me. Yet you would have me abandon it, and forsake all the good we have tried to build up...."

"You would have to give it up, one day, Elizabeth. Besides, if you like," he said, desperately, "I'll go to Ferrol and ask him to remove me from Paris back to London. I'll do anything to meet you, I only want to make you happy."

"Oh, don't keep on saying that sort of thing," she said; "it irritates me. Those hollow repetitions of set phrases—just because they're the right thing to say."

"I think you are unreasonable," he began. "I have[330] worked all these years for success, and now, just when I've won it, you wish me to throw everything away."

"I wish you to do nothing against your will. I thought you would have seen my point of view. I thought you would be ready to share in my work, which is the work of humanity.... I am sorry. You see, we clash. We shall be better alone."

He stared at her with dull incomprehension. "We clash. We shall be better alone." The words repeated themselves over and over again in his brain. And his mind suddenly went back to a little room in the Strand and the tears of Lilian....

"You mean that," he said, slowly. "You mean that."

She nodded. "Don't you see how impossible it would be?"

"You never loved me," he flung forth as a challenge. "You could have helped me and understood me.... I am not so bad as you think I am."

A sad smile answered him. "I understand you so well, Humphrey, that I know I shall never be able to help you."

He looked about him in weak hesitation. "I suppose I must begin again," he said.

"You ... you ... all the time it is you," she cried, passionately. "And what about myself; must not I begin over again, too?"

"I'm sorry," he said, feeling the inadequacy of his words. He longed intensely to be away from her now, to be out in the open street where he could think. This room was stifling. He went through the horrid methodical business of parting as if it were all a dream. He remembered glancing at the clock in a casual way, and saying, "I'd better be going"; he remembered the ludicrous search for one glove, he murmuring that it[331] didn't really matter, and she insisting on a search with aching minuteness....

He never saw her again; her life had impinged on his, and left its impression, as many others had done. He did not regret her as he had regretted Lilian, for she had outraged his self-respect, and left him abashed and humbled.