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A MAN FROM THE NORTH

BY

ARNOLD BENNETT

AUTHOR OF "THE OLD WIVES' TALE,"
"BURIED ALIVE"

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN

1911

TO THE ONE WHOM I MOST HONOUR

A MAN FROM THE NORTH

CHAPTER I

There grows in the North Country a certain kind of youth of whom it
may be said that he is born to be a Londoner. The metropolis, and
everything that appertains to it, that comes down from it, that goes up
into it, has for him an imperious fascination. Long before schooldays
are over he learns to take a doleful pleasure in watching the exit of
the London train from the railway station. He stands by the hot engine
and envies the very stoker. Gazing curiously into the carriages, he
wonders that men and women who in a few hours will be treading streets
called Piccadilly and the Strand can contemplate the immediate future
with so much apparent calmness; some of them even have the audacity to
look bored. He finds it difficult to keep from throwing himself in the
guard's van as it glides past him; and not until the last coach is a
speck upon the distance does he turn away and, nodding absently to the
ticket-clerk, who knows him well, go home to nurse a vague ambition and
dream of Town.

London is the place where newspapers are issued, books written, and
plays performed. And this youth, who now sits in an office, reads all
the newspapers. He knows exactly when a new work by a famous author
should appear, and awaits the reviews with impatience. He can tell you
off-hand the names of the pieces in the bills of the twenty principal
West-end theatres, what their quality is, and how long they may be
expected to run; and on the production of a new play, the articles of
the dramatic critics provide him with sensations almost as vivid as
those of the most zealous first-nighter at the performance itself.

Sooner or later, perhaps by painful roads, he reaches the goal of his
desire. London accepts him--on probation; and as his strength is, so
she demeans herself. Let him be bold and resolute, and she will make
an obeisance, but her heel is all too ready to crush the coward and
hesitant; and her victims, once underfoot, do not often rise again.

CHAPTER II

The antique four-wheeler, top-heavy with luggage, swung unsteadily
round by Tattersall's and into Raphael Street. Richard thrust down the
window with a sharp bang, indicative of a strange new sense of power;
but before the cab came to a standstill he had collected himself, and
managed to alight with considerable decorum. When the door opened
in answer to his second ring, a faint, sour odour escaped from the
house, and he remembered the friendly feminine warnings which he had
received at Bursley on the subject of London lodgings. The aspect of
the landlady, however, reassured him; she was a diminutive old woman
in ridiculously short skirts, with a yellow, crinkled face, grey eyes,
and a warm, benevolent smile that conquered. As she greeted Richard she
blushed like a girl, and made a little old-fashioned curtsey. Richard
offered his hand, and, after wiping hers on a clean apron, she took it
timidly.

"I hope we shall get on well together, sir," she said, looking straight
up into her new lodger's eyes.

"I'm sure we shall," answered Richard, sincerely.

She preceded him up the narrow, frowsy staircase, which was full of
surprising turns.

"You'll find these stairs a bit awkward at first," she apologised.
"I've often thought of getting a bit of nice carpet on them, but what's
the use? It would be done for in a week. Now, here's your room, sir,
first floor front, with two nice French windows, you see, and a nice
balcony. Now, about tidying it of a morning, sir. If you'll step out
for a walk as soon as you get up, my daughter shall make the bed,
and dust, and you'll come in and find it all nice and straight for
breakfast."

"Very well," assented Richard.

"That's how I generally arrange with my young men. I like them to have
their breakfast in a nice tidy room, you see, sir. Now, what will you
have for tea, sir? A little nice bread and butter...."

When she was gone Richard formally surveyed his quarters: a long,
rather low room, its length cut by the two windows which were Mrs.
Rowbotham's particular pride; between the windows a table with a faded
green cloth, and a small bed opposite; behind the door an artfully
concealed washstand; the mantelpiece, painted mustard yellow, bore
divers squat earthenware figures, and was surmounted by an oblong
mirror framed in rosewood; over the mirror an illuminated text,
"Trust in Jesus," and over the text an oleograph, in collision with
the ceiling, entitled, "After the Battle of Culloden." The walls were
decorated with a pattern of giant pink roses; and here and there,
hiding the roses, were hung photographs of persons in their Sunday
clothes, and landscapes hand-painted in oil, depicting bridges, trees,
water, and white sails in the distance. But the furnishing of the room
caused Richard no uneasiness; in a few moments he had mentally arranged
how to make the place habitable, and thenceforth he only saw what
should and would be.

Tea was brought in by a girl whose face proclaimed her to be Mrs.
Rowbotham's daughter. At the sight of her Richard privately winked; he
had read in books about landladies' daughters, but this one gave the
lie to books; she was young, she was beautiful, and Richard would have
sworn to her innocence. With an accession of boldness which surprised
himself, he inquired her name.

"Lily, sir," she said, blushing like her mother.

He cut the new, heavy bread, and poured out a cup of tea with the
awkwardness of one unaccustomed to such work, and, having made space
on the tray, set the evening paper against the sugar basin, and began
to eat and read. Outside were two piano organs, children shouting,
and a man uttering some monotonous unintelligible cry. It grew dark;
Mrs. Rowbotham came in with a lamp and cleared the table; Richard
was looking through the window, and neither spoke. Presently he sat
down. That being his first night in London, he had determined to spend
it quietly _at home_. The piano organs and the children were still
strident. A peculiar feeling of isolation momentarily overcame him, and
the noises of the street seemed to recede. Then he went to the window
again, and noticed that the children were dancing quite gracefully; it
occurred to him that they might be ballet children. He picked up the
paper and examined the theatrical advertisements, at first idly, but
afterwards in detail.

With a long sigh, he took his hat and stick, and went very slowly
downstairs. Mrs. Rowbotham heard him fumbling with the catch of the
front door.

"Are you going out, sir?"

"Only just for a walk," said Richard, nonchalantly.

"Perhaps I'd better give you a latch-key?"

"Thanks."

Another moment and he was in the delicious streets, going east.

Although he had visited London but once before, and then only for a few
hours, he was not unfamiliar with the topography of the town, having
frequently studied it in maps and an old copy of Kelly's directory.

He walked slowly up Park Side and through Piccadilly, picking out as
he passed them the French Embassy, Hyde Park Corner, Apsley House,
Park Lane, and Devonshire House. As he drank in the mingled glare and
glamour of Piccadilly by night,--the remote stars, the high sombre
trees, the vast, dazzling interiors of clubs, the sinuous, flickering
lines of traffic, the radiant faces of women framed in hansoms,--he
laughed the laugh of luxurious contemplation, acutely happy. At last,
at last, he had come into his inheritance. London accepted him. He
was hers; she his; and nothing should part them. Starvation in London
would itself be bliss. But he had no intention of starving! Filled with
great purposes, he straightened his back, and just then a morsel of mud
thrown up from a bus-wheel splashed warm and gritty on his cheek. He
wiped it off caressingly, with a smile.

Although it was Saturday night, and most of the shops were closed,
an establishment where watches and trinkets of "Anglo-Spanish" gold,
superb in appearance and pillowed on green plush, were retailed at
alluring prices, still threw a brilliant light on the pavement, and
Richard crossed the road to inspect its wares. He turned away, but
retraced his steps and entered the shop. An assistant politely inquired
his wishes.

"I want one of those hunters you have in the window at 29/6," said
Richard, with a gruffness which must have been involuntary.

"Yes, sir. Here is one. We guarantee that the works are equal to the
finest English lever."

"I'll take it." He put down the money.

"Thank you. Can I show you anything else?"

"Nothing, thanks," still more gruffly.

"We have some excellent chains...."

"Nothing else, thanks." And he walked out, putting his purchase in his
pocket. A perfectly reliable gold watch, which he had worn for years,
already lay there.

At Piccadilly Circus he loitered, and then crossed over and went
along Coventry Street to Leicester Square. The immense façade of the
Ottoman Theatre of Varieties, with its rows of illuminated windows and
crescent moons set against the sky, rose before him, and the glory of
it was intoxicating. It is not too much to say that the Ottoman held a
stronger fascination for Richard than any other place in London. The
British Museum, Fleet Street, and the Lyceum were magic names, but
more magical than either was the name of the Ottoman. The Ottoman, on
the rare occasions when it happened to be mentioned in Bursley, was a
synonym for all the glittering vices of the metropolis. It stank in
the nostrils of the London delegates who came down to speak at the
annual meetings of the local Society for the Suppression of Vice. But
how often had Richard, somnolent in chapel, mitigated the rigours of a
long sermon by dreaming of an Ottoman ballet,--one of those voluptuous
spectacles, all legs and white arms, which from time to time were
described so ornately in the London daily papers.

The brass-barred swinging doors of the Grand Circle entrance were
simultaneously opened for him by two human automata dressed exactly
alike in long semi-military coats, a very tall man and a stunted boy.
He advanced with what air of custom he could command, and after taking
a ticket and traversing a heavily decorated corridor encountered
another pair of swinging doors; they opened, and a girl passed out,
followed by a man who was talking to her vehemently in French. At
the same moment a gust of distant music struck Richard's ear. As he
climbed a broad, thick-piled flight of steps, the music became louder,
and a clapping of hands could be heard. At the top of the steps hung
a curtain of blue velvet; he pushed aside its stiff, heavy folds with
difficulty, and entered the auditorium.

The smoke of a thousand cigarettes enveloped the furthest parts of
the great interior in a thin bluish haze, which was dissipated as
it reached the domed ceiling in the rays of a crystal chandelier.
Far in front and a little below the level of the circle lay a line
of footlights broken by the silhouette of the conductor's head. A
diminutive, solitary figure in red and yellow stood in the centre
of the huge stage; it was kissing its hands to the audience with a
mincing, operatic gesture; presently it tripped off backwards, stopping
at every third step to bow; the applause ceased, and the curtain fell
slowly.

The broad, semicircular promenade which flanked the seats of the grand
circle was filled with a well-dressed, well-fed crowd. The men talked
and laughed, for the most part, in little knots, while in and out,
steering their way easily and rapidly among these groups, moved the
women: some with rouged cheeks, greasy vermilion lips, and enormous
liquid eyes; others whose faces were innocent of cosmetics and showed
pale under the electric light; but all with a peculiar, exaggerated
swing of the body from the hips, and all surreptitiously regarding
themselves in the mirrors which abounded on every glowing wall.

Richard stood aloof against a pillar. Near him were two men in evening
dress conversing in tones which just rose above the general murmur of
talk and the high, penetrating tinkle of glass from the bar behind the
promenade.

"And what did she say then?" one of the pair asked smilingly. Richard
strained his ear to listen.

"Well, _she_ told _me_," the other said, speaking with a dreamy drawl,
while fingering his watch-chain absently and gazing down at the large
diamond in his shirt,--"_she_ told _me_ that she said she'd do for him
if he didn't fork out. But I don't believe her. You know, of course....
There's Lottie...."

The band suddenly began to play, and after a few crashing bars the
curtain went up for the ballet. The rich _coup d'oeil_ which presented
itself provoked a burst of clapping from the floor of the house and the
upper tiers, but to Richard's surprise no one in his proximity seemed
to exhibit any interest in the entertainment. The two men still talked
with their backs to the stage, the women continued to find a pathway
between the groups, and from within the bar came the unabated murmur of
voices and tinkle of glass.

Richard never took his dazed eyes from the stage. The moving pageant
unrolled itself before him like a vision, rousing new sensations,
tremors of strange desires. He was under a spell, and when at last the
curtain descended to the monotonous roll of drums, he awoke to the fact
that several people were watching him curiously. Blushing slightly,
he went to a far corner of the promenade. At one of the little tables
a woman sat alone. She held her head at an angle, and her laughing,
lustrous eyes gleamed invitingly at Richard. Without quite intending to
do so he hesitated in front of her, and she twittered a phrase ending
in _chéri_.

He abruptly turned away. He would have been very glad to remain and say
something clever, but his tongue refused its office, and his legs moved
of themselves.

At midnight he found himself in Piccadilly Circus, unwilling to go
home. He strolled leisurely back to Leicester Square. The front of the
Ottoman was in darkness, and the square almost deserted.

CHAPTER IV

He walked home to Raphael Street. The house was dead, except for a
pale light in his own room. At the top of the bare, creaking stairs he
fumbled a moment for the handle of his door, and the regular sound of
two distinct snores descended from an upper storey. He closed the door
softly, locked it, and glanced round the room with some eagerness. The
smell of the expiring lamp compelled him to unlatch both windows. He
extinguished the lamp, and after lighting a couple of candles on the
mantelpiece drew a chair to the fireplace and sat down to munch an
apple. The thought occurred to him: "This is my home--for how long?"

And then:

"Why the dickens didn't I say something to that girl?"

Between the candles on the mantelpiece was a photograph of his sister,
which he had placed there before going out. He looked at it with a half
smile, and murmured audibly several times:

"Why the dickens didn't I say something to that girl, with her _chéri_?"

The woman of the photograph seemed to be between thirty and forty years
of age. She was fair, with a mild, serious face, and much wavy hair.
The forehead was broad and smooth and white, the cheek-bones prominent,
and the mouth somewhat large. The eyes were a very light grey; they
met the gaze of the spectator with a curious timid defiance, as if to
say, "I am weak, but I can at least fight till I fall." Underneath the
eyes--the portrait was the work of an amateur, and consequently had not
been robbed of all texture by retouching--a few crowsfeet could be seen.

As far back as Richard's memory went, he and Mary had lived together
and alone in the small Red House which lay half a mile out of Bursley,
towards Turnhill, on the Manchester road. At one time it had been
rurally situated, creeping plants had clothed its red walls, and the
bare patch behind it had been a garden; but the gradual development
of a coal-producing district had covered the fields with smooth,
mountainous heaps of grey refuse, and stunted or killed every tree
in the neighbourhood. The house was undermined, and in spite of iron
clamps had lost most of its rectangles, while the rent had dropped to
fifteen pounds a year.

Mary was very much older than her brother, and she had always appeared
to him exactly the mature woman of the photograph. Of his parents he
knew nothing except what Mary had told him, which was little and vague,
for she watchfully kept the subject at a distance.

She had supported herself and Richard in comfort by a medley of
vocations, teaching the piano, collecting rents, and practising the
art of millinery. They had few friends. The social circles of Bursley
were centred in its churches and chapels; and though Mary attended
the Wesleyan sanctuary with some regularity, she took small interest
in prayer-meetings, class-meetings, bazaars, and all the other minor
religious activities, thus neglecting opportunities for intercourse
which might have proved agreeable. She had sent Richard to the
Sunday-school; but when, at the age of fourteen, he protested that
Sunday-school was "awful rot," she answered calmly, "Don't go, then;"
and from that day his place in class was empty. Soon afterwards the
boy cautiously insinuated that chapel belonged to the same category as
Sunday-school, but the hint failed of its effect.

The ladies of the town called sometimes, generally upon business, and
took afternoon tea. Once the vicar's wife, who wished to obtain musical
tuition for her three youngest daughters at a nominal fee, came in and
found Richard at a book on the hearthrug.

"Ah!" said she. "Just like his father, is he not, Miss Larch?" Mary
made no reply.

The house was full of books. Richard knew them all well by sight, but
until he was sixteen he read only a select handful of volumes which had
stood the test of years. Often he idly speculated as to the contents of
some of the others,--"Horatii Opera," for instance: had that anything
to do with theatres?--yet for some curious reason, which when he grew
older he sought for in vain, he never troubled himself to look into
them. Mary read a good deal, chiefly books and magazines fetched for
her by Richard from the Free Library.

When he was about seventeen, a change came. He was aware dimly, and as
if by instinct, that his sister's life in the early days had not been
without its romance. Certainly there was something hidden between her
and William Vernon, the science master at the Institute, for they were
invariably at great pains to avoid each other. He sometimes wondered
whether Mr. Vernon was connected in any way with the melancholy which
was never, even in her brightest moments, wholly absent from Mary's
demeanour. One Sunday night--Richard had been keeping house--Mary,
coming in late from chapel, threw his arms round his neck as he opened
the door, and, dragging down his face to hers, kissed him hysterically
again and again.

"Dicky, Dick," she whispered, laughing and crying at the same time,
"something's happened. I'm almost an old woman, but something's
happened!"

"I know," said Richard, retreating hurriedly from her embrace. "You're
going to marry Mr. Vernon."

"But how could you tell?"

"Oh! I just guessed."

"You don't mind, Dick, do you?"

"I! Mind!" Afraid lest his feelings should appear too plainly, he asked
abruptly for supper.

Mary gave up her various callings, the wedding took place, and William
Vernon came to live with them. It was then that Richard began to read
more widely, and to form a definite project of going to London.

He could not fail to respect and like William. The life of the married
pair seemed to him idyllic; the tender, furtive manifestations
of affection which were constantly passing between Mary and her
sedate, middle-aged husband touched him deeply, and at the thought
of the fifteen irretrievable years during which some ridiculous
misunderstanding had separated this loving couple, his eyes were
not quite as dry as a youth could wish. But with it all he was
uncomfortable. He felt himself an intruder upon holy privacies; if
at meal-times husband and wife clasped hands round the corner of
the table, he looked at his plate; if they smiled happily upon no
discoverable provocation, he pretended not to notice the fact. They
did not need him. Their hearts were full of kindness for every living
thing, but unconsciously they stood aloof. He was driven in upon
himself, and spent much of his time either in solitary walking or
hidden in an apartment called the study.

He ordered magazines whose very names Mr. Holt, the principal
bookseller in Bursley, was unfamiliar with, and after the magazines
came books of verse and novels enclosed in covers of mystic design, and
printed in a style which Mr. Holt, though secretly impressed, set down
as eccentric. Mr. Holt's shop performed the functions of a club for
the dignitaries of the town; and since he took care that this esoteric
literature was well displayed on the counter until called for, the
young man's fame as _a great reader_ soon spread, and Richard began to
see that he was regarded as a curiosity of which Bursley need not be
ashamed. His self-esteem, already fostered into lustiness by a number
of facile school successes, became more marked, although he was wise
enough to keep a great deal of it to himself.

One evening, after Mary and her husband had been talking quietly some
while, Richard came into the sitting-room.

"I don't want any supper," he said, "I'm going for a bit of a walk."

"Shall we tell him?" Mary asked, smiling, after he had left the room.

"Please yourself," said William, also smiling.

"He talks a great deal about going to London. I hope he won't go
till--after April; I think it would upset me."

"You need not trouble, I think, my dear," William answered. "He talks
about it, but he isn't gone yet."

Mr. Vernon was not quite pleased with Richard. He had obtained for
him--being connected with the best people in the town--a position as
shorthand and general clerk in a solicitor's office, and had learnt
privately that though the youth was smart enough, he was scarcely
making that progress which might have been expected. He lacked
"application." William attributed this shortcoming to the excessive
reading of verse and obscure novels.

April came, and, as Mr. Vernon had foretold, Richard still remained
in Bursley. But the older man was now too deeply absorbed in another
matter to interest himself at all in Richard's movements,--a matter in
which Richard himself exhibited a shy concern. Hour followed anxious
hour, and at last was heard the faint, fretful cry of a child in the
night. Then stillness. All that Richard ever saw was a coffin, and in
it a dead child at a dead woman's feet.

Fifteen months later he was in London.

CHAPTER V

Mr. Curpet, of the firm of Curpet and Smythe, whose name was painted in
black and white on the dark green door, had told him that the office
hours were from nine-thirty to six. The clock of the Law Courts was
striking a quarter to ten. He hesitated a moment, and then seized the
handle; but the door was fast, and he descended the two double flights
of iron stairs into the quadrangle.

New Serjeant's Court was a large modern building of very red brick
with terra-cotta facings, eight storeys high; but in spite of its
faults of colour and its excessive height, ample wall spaces and
temperate ornamentation gave it a dignity and comeliness sufficient
to distinguish it from other buildings in the locality. In the centre
of the court was an oval patch of brown earth, with a few trees whose
pale-leaved tops, struggling towards sunlight, reached to the middle of
the third storey. Round this plantation ran an immaculate roadway of
wooden blocks, flanked by an equally immaculate asphalt footpath. The
court possessed its own private lamp-posts, and these were wrought of
iron in an antique design.

Men and boys, grave and unconsciously oppressed by the burden of the
coming day, were continually appearing out of the gloom of the long
tunnelled entrance and vanishing into one or other of the twelve
doorways. Presently a carriage and pair drove in, and stopped opposite
Richard. A big man of about fifty, with a sagacious red and blue face,
jumped alertly out, followed by an attentive clerk carrying a blue
sack. It seemed to Richard that he knew the features of the big man
from portraits, and, following the pair up the staircase of No. 2, he
discovered from the legend on the door through which they disappeared
that he had been in the presence of Her Majesty's Attorney-General.
Simultaneously with a misgiving as to his ability to reach the standard
of clerical ability doubtless required by Messrs. Curpet and Smythe,
who did business cheek by jowl with an attorney-general and probably
employed him, came an elevation of spirit as he darkly guessed what
none can realise completely, that a man's future lies on his own knees,
and on the knees of no gods whatsoever.

He continued his way upstairs, but Messrs. Curpet and Smythe's portal
was still locked. Looking down the well, he espied a boy crawling
reluctantly and laboriously upward, with a key in his hand which
he dragged across the bannisters. In course of time the boy reached
Messrs. Curpet and Smythe's door, and opening it stepped neatly over a
pile of letters which lay immediately within. Richard followed him.

"Oh! My name's Larch," said Richard, as if it had just occurred to him
that the boy might be interested in the fact. "Do you know which is my
room?"

The boy conducted him along a dark passage with green doors on
either side, to a room at the end. It was furnished mainly with
two writing-tables and two armchairs; in one corner was a disused
copying-press, in another an immense pile of reporters' note-books; on
the mantelpiece, a tumbler, a duster, and a broken desk lamp.

"That's your seat," said the boy, pointing to the larger table, and
disappeared. Richard disposed of his coat and hat and sat down, trying
to feel at ease and not succeeding.

At five minutes past ten a youth entered with the "Times" under his
arm. Richard waited for him to speak, but he merely stared and took off
his overcoat. Then he said,--

"You've got my hook. If you don't mind I'll put your things on this
other one."

"Certainly," assented Richard.

The youth spread his back luxuriously to the empty fireplace and opened
the "Times," when another and smaller boy put his head in at the door.

"Jenkins, Mr. Alder wants the 'Times.'"

The youth silently handed over the advertisement pages which were lying
on the table. In a minute the boy returned.

"Mr. Alder says he wants the inside of the 'Times.'"

"Tell Mr. Alder to go to hell, with my compliments." The boy hesitated.

"Go on, now," Jenkins insisted. The boy hung on the door-handle,
smiling dubiously, and then went out.

"Here, wait a minute!" Jenkins called him back. "Perhaps you'd better
give it him. Take the damn thing away."

A sound of hurried footsteps in the next room was succeeded by an
imperious call for Jenkins, at which Jenkins slipped nimbly into his
chair and untied a bundle of papers.

"Jenkins!" the call came again, with a touch of irritation in it, but
Jenkins did not move. The door was thrust open.

"Oh! You are there, Jenkins. Just come in and take a letter down." The
tones were quite placid.

"Yes, Mr. Smythe."

"I never take any notice of Smythe's calls," said Jenkins, when he
returned. "If he wants me, he must either ring or fetch me. If I once
began it, I should be running in and out of his room all day, and I've
quite enough to do without that."

"Fidgety, eh?" Richard suggested.

"Fidgety's no word for it, _I_ tell you. Alder--that's the manager, you
know--said only yesterday that he has less trouble with forty Chancery
actions of Curpet's than with one county-court case of Smythe's. I know
I'd a jolly sight sooner write forty of Curpet's letters than ten of
Smythe's. I wish I'd got your place, and you'd got mine. I suppose you
can write shorthand rather fast."

"Middling," said Richard. "About 120."

"Oh! We had a man once who could do 150, but he'd been a newspaper
reporter. I do a bit over a hundred, if I've not had much to drink
overnight. Let's see, they're giving you twenty-five bob, aren't they?"

Richard nodded.

"The man before you had thirty-five, and he couldn't spell worth a
brass button. I only get fifteen, although I've been here seven years.
A damn shame I call it! But Curpet's beastly near. If he'd give some
other people less, and me a bit more...."

"Who are 'some other people'?" asked Richard, smiling.

"Well, there's old Aked. He sits in the outer office--you won't have
seen him because he doesn't generally come till eleven. They give him a
pound a week, just for doing a bit of engrossing when he feels inclined
to engross, and for being idle when he feels inclined to be idle. He's
a broken-down something or other,--used to be clerk to Curpet's father.
He has some dibs of his own, and this just finds him amusement. I bet
he doesn't do fifty folios a week. And he's got the devil's own temper."

Jenkins was proceeding to describe other members of the staff when the
entry of Mr. Curpet himself put an end to the recital. Mr. Curpet was a
small man, with a round face and a neatly trimmed beard.

"Good morning, Larch. If you'll kindly come into my room, I'll dictate
my letters. Good morning, Jenkins." He smiled and withdrew, leaving
Richard excessively surprised at his suave courtesy.

In his own room Mr. Curpet sat before a pile of letters, and motioned
Richard to a side table.

"You will tell me if I go too fast," he said, and began to dictate
regularly, with scarcely a pause. The pile of letters gradually
disappeared into a basket. Before half a dozen letters were done
Richard comprehended that he had become part of a business machine of
far greater magnitude than anything to which he had been accustomed
in Bursley. This little man with the round face dealt impassively
with tens of thousands of pounds; he mortgaged whole streets, bullied
railway companies, and wrote familiarly to lords. In the middle of one
long letter, a man came panting in, whom Richard at once took for Mr.
Alder, the Chancery manager. His rather battered silk hat was at the
back of his head, and he looked distressed.

"I'm sorry to say we've lost that summons in Rice _v._ The L. R.
Railway."

"Really!" said Mr. Curpet. "Better appeal, and brief a leader, eh?"

"Can't appeal, Mr. Curpet."

"Well, we must make the best of it. Telegraph to the country. I'll
write and keep them calm. It's a pity they were so sure. Rice will have
to economise for a year or two. What was my last word, Larch?" The
dictation proceeded.

One hour was allowed for lunch, and Richard spent the first moiety
of it in viewing the ambrosial exteriors of Strand restaurants. With
the exception of the coffee-house at Bursley, he had never been in
a restaurant in his life, and he was timid of entering any of those
sumptuous establishments whose swinging doors gave glimpses of richly
decorated ceilings, gleaming tablecloths, and men in silk hats greedily
consuming dishes placed before them by obsequious waiters.

At last, without quite knowing how he got there, he sat in a long,
low apartment, papered like an attic bedroom, and odorous of tea and
cake. The place was crowded with young men and women indifferently
well-dressed, who bent over uncomfortably small oblong marble-topped
tables. An increasing clatter of crockery filled the air. Waitresses,
with pale, vacant faces, dressed in dingy black with white aprons,
moved about with difficulty at varying rates of speed, but none of
them seemed to betray an interest in Richard. Behind the counter, on
which stood great polished urns emitting clouds of steam, were several
women whose superior rank in the restaurant was denoted by a black
apron, and after five minutes had elapsed Richard observed one of these
damsels pointing out himself to a waitress, who approached and listened
condescendingly to his order.

A thin man, rather more than middle-aged, with a grey beard and
slightly red nose, entered and sat down opposite to Richard. Without
preface he began, speaking rather fast and with an expressive vivacity
rarely met with in the ageing,--

"Well, my young friend, how do you like your new place?"

Richard stared at him.

"Are you Mr. Aked?"

"The same. I suppose Master Jenkins has made you acquainted with all my
peculiarities of temper and temperament.--Glass of milk, roll, and two
pats of butter--and, I say, my girl, try not to keep me waiting as long
as you did yesterday." There was a bright smile on his face, which the
waitress unwillingly returned.

"Don't you know," he went on, looking at Richard's plate,--"don't you
know that tea and ham together are frightfully indigestible?"

"I never have indigestion."

"No matter. You soon will have if you eat tea and ham together. A young
man should guard his digestion like his honour. Sounds funny, doesn't
it? But it's right. An impaired digestive apparatus has ruined many a
career. It ruined mine. You see before you, sir, what might have been
an author of repute, but for a wayward stomach."

"You write?" Richard asked, interested at once, but afraid lest Mr.
Aked might be cumbrously joking.

"I used to." The old man spoke with proud self-consciousness.

"Have you written a book?"

"Not a book. But I've contributed to all manner of magazines and
newspapers."

"What magazines?"

"Well, let me see--it's so long ago. I've written for 'Cornhill.' I
wrote for 'Cornhill' when Thackeray edited it. I spoke to Carlyle once."

"You did?"

"Yes. Carlyle said to me--Carlyle said to me--Carlyle said--" Mr.
Aked's voice dwindled to an inarticulate murmur, and, suddenly ignoring
Richard's presence, he pulled a book from his pocket and began to
finger the leaves. It was a French novel, "La Vie de Bohème." His face
had lost all its mobile expressiveness.

A little alarmed by such eccentricity, and not quite sure that this
associate of Carlyle was perfectly sane, Richard sat silent, waiting
for events. Mr. Aked was clearly accustomed to reading while he ate;
he could even drink with his eyes on the book. At length he pushed his
plates away from him, and closed the novel with a snap.

"I see you're from the country, Larch," he said, as if there had been
no lapse in the conversation. "Now, why in God's name did you leave the
country? Aren't there enough people in London?"

"Because _I_ wanted to be an author," answered Richard, with more
assurance than veracity, though he spoke in good faith. The fact was
that his aspirations, hitherto so vague as to elude analysis, seemed
within the last few minutes mysteriously to have assumed definite form.

"You're a young fool, then."

"But I've an excellent digestion."

"You won't have it if you begin to write. Take my word, you're a young
fool. You don't know what you're going in for, my little friend."

"Was Murger a fool?" Richard said clumsily, determined to exhibit an
acquaintance with "La Vie de Bohème."

"Ha! We read French, do we?"

Richard blushed. The old man got up.

"Come along," he said peevishly. "Let's get out of this hole."

At the pay-desk, waiting for change, he spoke to the cashier, a thin
girl with reddish-brown hair, who coughed,--

"Did you try those lozenges?"

"Oh! yes, thanks. They _taste_ nice."

"Beautiful day."

"Yes; my word, isn't it!"

They walked back to the office in absolute silence; but just as they
were going in, Mr. Aked stopped, and took Richard by the coat.

"Have you anything special to do next Thursday night?"

"No," said Richard.

"Well, I'll take you to a little French restaurant in Soho, and we'll
have dinner. Half a crown. Can you afford?"

Richard nodded.

"And, I say, bring along some of your manuscripts, and I'll flay them
alive for you."

CHAPTER VI

An inconstant, unrefreshing breeze, sluggish with accumulated impurity,
stirred the curtains, and every urban sound--high-pitched voices of
children playing, roll of wheels and rhythmic trot of horses, shouts
of newsboys and querulous barking of dogs--came through the open
windows touched with a certain languorous quality that suggested a
city fatigued, a city yearning for the moist recesses of woods, the
disinfectant breath of mountain tops, and the cleansing sea.

On the little table between the windows lay pen, ink, and paper.
Richard sat down to be an author. Since his conversation with Mr.
Aked of the day before he had lived in the full glow of an impulse
to write. He discerned, or thought he discerned, in the fact that he
possessed the literary gift, a key to his recent life. It explained,
to be particular, the passion for reading which had overtaken him at
seventeen, and his desire to come to London, the natural home of the
author. Certainly it was strange that hitherto he had devoted very
little serious thought to the subject of writing, but happily there
were in existence sundry stray verses and prose fragments written at
Bursley, and it contented him to recognise in these the first tremulous
stirrings of a late-born ambition.

During the previous evening he had busied himself in deciding upon a
topic. In a morning paper he had read an article entitled "An Island of
Sleep," descriptive of Sark; it occurred to him that a similar essay
upon Lichfield, the comatose cathedral city which lay about thirty
miles from Bursley, might suit a monthly magazine. He knew Lichfield
well; he had been accustomed to visit it from childhood; he loved it.
As a theme full of picturesque opportunities it had quickened his
imagination, until his brain seemed to surge with vague but beautiful
fancies. In the night his sleep had been broken, and several new ideas
had suggested themselves. And now, after a day of excited anticipation,
the moment for composition had arrived.

As he dipped his pen in the ink a sudden apprehension of failure
surprised him. He dismissed it, and wrote in a bold hand, rather
carefully,--

 MEMORIES OF A CITY OF SLEEP.

That was surely an excellent title. He proceeded:--

 _On the old stone bridge, beneath which the clear, smooth waters of
 the river have crept at the same pace for centuries, stands a little
 child, alone. It is early morning, and the clock of the time-stained
 cathedral which lifts its noble gothic towers scarce a hundred yards
 away, strikes five, to the accompaniment of an unseen lark overhead._

He sat back to excogitate the next sentence, staring around the room
as if he expected to find the words written on the wall. One of the
gilt-framed photographs was slightly askew; he left his chair to put
it straight; several other pictures seemed to need adjustment, and
he levelled them all with scrupulous precision. The ornaments on the
mantelpiece were not evenly balanced; these he rearranged entirely.
Then, having first smoothed out a crease in the bedcover, he sat down
again.

But most of the beautiful ideas which he had persuaded himself
were firmly within his grasp, now eluded him, or tardily presented
themselves in a form so obscure as to be valueless, and the useful few
that remained defied all attempts to bring them into order. Dashed by
his own impotence, he sought out the article on Sark, and examined it
afresh. Certain weekly organs of literature had educated him to sneer
at the journalism of the daily press, but it appeared that the man who
wrote "An Island of Sleep" was at least capable of expressing himself
with clearness and fluency, and possessed the skill to pass naturally
from one aspect of his subject to another. It seemed simple enough....

He went to the window.

The sky was a delicate amber, and Richard watched it change to rose,
and from rose to light blue. The gas-lamps glared out in quick
succession; some one lowered the blind of a window opposite his own,
and presently a woman's profile was silhouetted against it for a
moment, and then vanished. A melody came from the public house, sung
in a raucous baritone to the thrumming of a guitar; the cries of the
playing children had now ceased.

Suddenly turning into the room, he was astonished to find it almost in
darkness; he could distinguish only the whiteness of the papers on the
table.

He was not in the mood for writing to-night. Some men wrote best in
the evening, others in the morning. Probably he belonged to the latter
class. Be that as it might, he would rise at six the next morning and
make a new beginning. "It's only a question of practice, of course," he
said, half aloud, repressing a troublesome dubiety. He would take a
short walk, and go early to bed. Gradually his self-confidence returned.

As he closed the front door there was a rustle of silks and a transient
odour of violets; a woman had gone by. She turned slightly at the sound
of the door, and Richard had a glimpse of a young and pretty face
under a spreading hat, a full, ripe bust whose alluring contours were
perfectly disclosed by a tight-fitting bodice, and two small white
hands, in one a dangling pair of gloves, in the other an umbrella. He
passed her, and waited at the corner by Tattersall's till she overtook
him again. Now she stood on the kerb within six feet of him, humming an
air and smiling to herself. Up went the umbrella to signal for a hansom.

"The Ottoman," Richard heard her say across the roof of the cab, the
driver leaning forward with his hand to his ear. What a child's voice
it seemed, lisping and artless!

The cabman winked at Richard, and gently flicked his horse. In a moment
the hansom was two dwindling specks of red in a shifting multitude of
lights.

An hour later he saw her in the promenade of the theatre; she stood
against a pillar, her eyes on the entrance. As their glances met,
she threw her head a little backwards, like one who looks through
spectacles on the end of his nose, and showed her teeth. He sat down
near her.

Presently she waved her hand to a man who was coming in. He seemed
about thirty, with small, clear eyes, bronzed cheeks, a heavy jaw, and
a closely trimmed brown moustache. He was fashionably garbed, though
not in evening dress, and he greeted her without raising his hat.

"Shall we have a drink?" she suggested. "I'm so thirsty."

"Fizz?" the man drawled. She nodded.

Soon they went out together, the man carelessly stuffing change for a
five-pound note into his pocket.

"What's the difference between him and me?" Richard reflected as he
walked home. "But just wait a bit; wait till I've...."

When he reached his lodging the meanness of the room, of his clothes,
of his supper, nauseated him. He dreamed that he was kissing the
Ottoman girl, and that she lisped, "Nice boy," whereupon he cast a
handful of sovereigns on her lap.

At six o'clock the next morning he was working at his article. In
two days it was finished, and he had despatched it to a monthly
magazine, "together with a stamped directed envelope for its return if
unsuitable," in accordance with the editorial instructions printed
below the table of contents in every number. The editor of the
"Trifler" promised that all manuscripts so submitted, and written on
one side of the paper only, should be dealt with promptly.

He had been expecting to discuss his work with Mr. Aked at the
proposed dinner, but this had not taken place. On the morning after
the arrangement had been made, Mr. Aked fell ill, and in a few days he
wrote to resign his post, saying that he had sufficient to live on, and
felt "too venerable for regular work."

Richard held but the frailest hope that "A City of Sleep" would be
accepted, but when the third morning arrived, and the postman brought
nothing, his opinion of the article began to rise. Perhaps it had
merit, after all; he recalled certain parts of it which were distinctly
clever and striking. Hurrying home from the office that afternoon, he
met the landlady's daughter on the stairs, and said casually,--

"Any letters for me, Lily?"

"No, sir." The girl had an attractive blush.

"I'll take a couple of eggs for tea, if Mrs. Rowbotham has them."

He remained at home in the evening, waiting for the last delivery,
which occurred about 9:30. The double knocks of the postman were
audible ten or twelve houses away. At last Richard heard him mounting
the steps of No. 74, and then his curt rat-tat shook the house. A
little thud on the bare wooden floor of the hall seemed to indicate a
heavier package than the ordinary letter.

As, when a man is drowning, the bad actions of a whole lifetime present
themselves to him in one awful flash, so at that moment all the faults,
the hopeless crudities, of "A City of Sleep" confronted Richard. He
wondered at his own fatuity in imagining for a single instant that the
article had the barest chance of acceptance. Was it not notorious that
famous authors had written industriously for years without selling a
line!

Lily came in with the supper-tray. She was smiling.

"Warm work, eh, Lily?" he said, scarcely knowing that he spoke.

"Yes, sir, it's that hot in the kitchen you wouldn't believe." Setting
down the tray, she handed him a foolscap envelope, and he saw his own
handwriting as if in a dream.

"For me?" he murmured carelessly, and placed the letter on the
mantelpiece. Lily took his orders for breakfast, and with a pleasant,
timid "Good-night, sir," left the room.

He opened the envelope. In the fold of his manuscript was a sheet
of the best cream-laid note-paper bearing these words in flowing
copperplate: "The Editor presents his compliments to Mr. Larch
[written] and regrets to be unable to use the enclosed article, for the
offer of which he is much obliged."

The sight of this circular, with the offices of the magazine
illustrated at the top, and the notification in the left-hand corner
that all letters must be addressed to the editor and not to any member
of the staff individually, in some mysterious way mitigated Richard's
disappointment. Perhaps the comfort of it lay in the tangible assurance
it afforded that he was now actually _a literary aspirant_ and had
communications, however mortifying, with _the press_.

He read the circular again and again during supper, and determined to
re-write the article. But this resolve was not carried out. He could
not bring himself even to glance through it, and finally it was sent to
another magazine exactly as it stood.

Richard had determined to say nothing in the office about his writing
until he could produce a printed article with his name at the foot;
and frequently during the last few days his mouth had watered as he
anticipated the sweetness of that triumph. But next day he could not
refrain from showing to Jenkins the note from the "Trifler." Jenkins
seemed impressed, especially when Richard requested him to treat the
matter as confidential. A sort of friendship arose between them, and
strengthened as time went on. Richard sometimes wondered how precisely
it had come about, and why it continued.

CHAPTER VII

Albert Jenkins was nineteen years of age, and lived with his parents
and seven brothers and sisters in Camberwell; his father managed a
refreshment bar in Oxford Street. He had been in the employ of Messrs.
Curpet and Smythe for seven years,--first as junior office boy, then
as senior office boy, and finally as junior shorthand clerk. He was
of the average height, with a shallow chest, and thin arms and legs.
His feet were very small--he often referred to the fact with frank
complacency--and were always encased in well-fitting hand-made boots,
brightly polished. The rest of his attire was less remarkable for
neatness; but at intervals an ambition to be genteel possessed him,
and during these recurrent periods the nice conduct of his fingernails
interfered somewhat with official routine. He carried his hat either
at the back of his head or tilted almost upon the bridge of his nose.
In the streets he generally walked with sedate deliberation, his hands
deep in his pockets, his eyes lowered, and an enigmatic smile on his
thin lips.

His countenance was of a pale yellow complexion just tinged with red,
and he never coloured; his neck was a darker yellow. Upon the whole,
his features were regular, except the mouth, which was large, and
protruded like a monkey's; the eyes were grey, with a bold regard,
which not seldom was excusably mistaken for insolence.

Considering his years, Jenkins was a highly accomplished person, in
certain directions. Upon all matters connected with her Majesty's mail
and inland revenue, upon cab fares, bus-routes, and local railways,
upon "Pitman outlines," and upon chamber practice in Chancery, he
was an unquestioned authority. He knew the addresses of several
hundred London solicitors, the locality of nearly every street and
square within the four-mile radius, and, within the same limits, the
approximate distance of any one given spot from any other given spot.

He was the best billiard-player in the office, and had once made a
spot-barred break of 49; this game was his sole pastime. He gambled
regularly upon horse-races, resorting to a number of bookmakers, but
neither winning nor losing to an appreciable extent; no less than three
jockeys occasionally permitted him to enjoy their companionship, and he
was never without a stable-tip.

His particular hobby, however, was restaurants. He spent half his
income upon food, and quite half his waking hours either in deciding
what he should consume, or in actual drinking and mastication. He had
personally tested the merits of every bar and house of refreshment in
the neighbourhood of the Law Courts, from Lockhart's to Gatti's, and
would discourse for hours on their respective virtues and defects. No
restaurant was too mean for his patronage, and none too splendid; for
days in succession he would dine upon a glass of water and a captain
biscuit with cheese, in order to accumulate resources for a delicate
repast in one of the gilded establishments where the rich are wont to
sustain themselves; and he had acquired from his father a quantity of
curious lore, throwing light upon the secrets of the refreshment trade,
which enabled him to spend the money thus painfully amassed to the best
advantage.

Jenkins was a cockney and the descendant of cockneys; he conversed
always volubly in the dialect of Camberwell; but just as he was subject
to attacks of modishness, so at times he attempted to rid himself of
his accent, of course without success. He swore habitually, and used
no reticence whatever, except in the presence of his employers and of
Mr. Alder the manager. In quick and effective retort he was the peer
of cabmen, and nothing could abash him. His favourite subjects of
discussion were restaurants, as before mentioned, billiards, the turf,
and women, whom he usually described as "tarts." It was his custom to
refer to himself as a "devil for girls," and when Mr. Alder playfully
accused him of adventures with females of easy virtue, his delight was
unbounded.

There were moments when Richard loathed Jenkins, when the gross and
ribald atmosphere which attended Jenkins' presence nauseated him, and
utter solitude in London seemed preferable to the boy's company; but
these passed, and the intimacy throve. Jenkins, indeed, had his graces;
he was of an exceedingly generous nature, and his admiration for the
deep literary scholarship which he imagined Richard to possess was
ingenuous and unconcealed. His own agile wit, his picturesque use of
slang, his facility in new oaths, and above all his exact knowledge of
the byways, and backwaters of London life, endowed him, in Richard's
unaccustomed eyes, with a certain specious attractiveness. Moreover,
the fact that they shared the same room and performed similar duties
made familiar intercourse between them natural and necessary. With no
other member of the staff did Richard care to associate. The articled
clerks, though courteously agreeable to everyone, formed an exclusive
coterie; and as for the rest, they were either old or dull, or both.
He often debated whether he should seek out Mr. Aked, who was now
recovered, and had once, unfortunately in Richard's absence, called at
the office; but at length he timidly decided that the extent of their
acquaintance would not warrant it.

"Where shall we go to lunch to-day?" was almost the first question
which Richard and Jenkins asked each other in the morning, and a
prolonged discussion would follow. They called the meal "lunch," but it
was really their dinner, though neither of them ever admitted the fact.

Jenkins had a predilection for grill-rooms, where raw chops and
steaks lay on huge dishes, and each customer chose his own meat and
superintended its cooking. A steak, tender and perfectly cooked, with
baked potatoes and half a pint of stout, was his ideal repast, and he
continually lamented that no restaurant in London offered such cheer
at the price of one shilling and threepence, including the waiter.
The cheap establishments were never satisfactory, and Jenkins only
frequented them when the state of his purse left no alternative. In
company with Richard he visited every new eating-house that made its
appearance, in the hope of finding the restaurant of his dreams, and
though each was a disappointment, yet the search still went on. The
place which most nearly coincided with his desires was the "Sceptre,"
a low, sombre room between the Law Courts and the river, used by
well-to-do managing clerks and a sprinkling of junior barristers. Here,
lounging luxuriously on red plush seats, and in full sight and hearing
of a large silver grill, the two spent many luncheon hours, eating
slowly, with gross, sensual enjoyment, and secretly elated by the
proximity of men older and more prosperous than themselves, whom they
met on equal terms.

Richard once suggested that they should try one of the French
restaurants in Soho which Mr. Aked had mentioned.

"Not me!" said Jenkins, in reply. "You don't catch me going to those
parley-voo shops again. I went once. They give you a lot of little
messes, faked up from yesterday's dirty plates, and after you've eaten
half a dozen of 'em you don't feel a bit fuller. Give me a steak and a
potato. I like to know what I'm eating."

He had an equal detestation of vegetarian restaurants, but once, during
a period of financial depression, he agreed to accompany Richard,
who knew the place fairly well, to the "Crabtree" in Charing Cross
Road, and though he grumbled roundly at the insubstantiality of the
three-course dinner _à la carte_ which could be obtained for sixpence,
he made no difficulty, afterwards, about dining there whenever
prudence demanded the narrowest economy.

An air of chill and prim discomfort pervaded the Crabtree, and the
mingled odour of lentils and sultana pudding filled every corner. The
tables were narrow, and the chairs unyielding. The customers were for
the most eccentric as to dress and demeanour; they had pale faces, and
during their melancholy meals perused volumes obviously instructive, or
debated the topics of the day in platitudinous conversations unspiced
by a single oath. Young women with whom their personal appearance was
a negligible quantity came in large numbers, and either giggled to one
another without restraint or sat erect and glared at the males in a
manner which cowed even Jenkins. The waitresses lacked understanding,
and seemed to resent even the most courteous advances.

One day, just as they were beginning dinner, Jenkins eagerly drew
Richard's attention to the girl at the pay-desk. "See that girl?" he
said.

"What about her? Is she a new one?"

"Why, she's the tart that old Aked used to be after."

"Was she at that A. B. C. shop in the Strand?" said Richard, who began
to remember the girl's features and her reddish brown hair.

"Yes, that's her. Before she was at the A. B. C. she was cashier at
that boiled-beef place opposite the Courts, but they say she got the
sack for talking to customers too much. She and Aked were very thick
then, and he went there every day. I suppose his courting interfered
with business."

"But he's old enough to be her father!"

"Yes. He ought to have been ashamed of himself. She's not a bad kind,
eh?"

"There wasn't anything between them, really, was there?"

"_I_ don't know. There might have been. He followed her to the A. B. C,
and I think he sometimes took her home. Her name's Roberts. We used to
have him on about her--rare fun."

The story annoyed Richard, for his short _tête-à-tête_ with Mr. Aked
had remained in his mind as a pleasant memory, and though he was aware
that the old man had been treated with scant respect by the youngsters
in the office, he had acquired the habit of mentally regarding him
with admiration, as a representative of literature. This attachment to
a restaurant cashier, clearly a person of no refinement or intellect,
scarcely fitted with his estimate of the journalist who had spoken to
Carlyle.

During the meal he surreptitiously glanced at the girl several times.
She was plumper than before, and her cough seemed to be cured. Her
face was pleasant, and undoubtedly she had a magnificent coiffure.

When they presented their checks, Jenkins bowed awkwardly, and she
smiled. He swore to Richard that next time he would mention Mr.
Aked's name to her. The vow was broken. She was willing to exchange
civilities, but her manner indicated with sufficient clearness that a
line was to be drawn.

In the following week, when Richard happened to be at the Crabtree
alone, at a later hour than usual, they had rather a long conversation.

"Is Mr. Aked still at your office?" she asked, looking down at her
account books.

Richard told what he knew.

"Oh!" she said, "I often used to see him, and he gave me some lozenges
that cured a bad cough I had. Nice old fellow, wasn't he?"

"Yes, I fancy so," Richard assented.

"I thought I'd just ask, as I hadn't seen him about for a long time."

"Good afternoon--Miss Roberts."

"Good afternoon--Mr.----"

"Larch."

They both laughed.

A trivial dispute with Jenkins, a few days later, disclosed the
fact that that haunter of bars had a sullen temper, and that his
displeasure, once aroused, was slow to disappear. Richard dined alone
again at the Crabtree, and after another little conversation with Miss
Roberts, having time at his disposal, he called at the public library
in St. Martin's Lane. In a half-crown review he saw an article, by a
writer of considerable repute, entitled "To Literary Aspirants," which
purported to demonstrate that a mastery of the craft of words was only
to be attained by a regular course of technical exercises; the nature
of these exercises was described in detail. There were references to
the unremitting drudgery of Flaubert, de Maupassant, and Stevenson,
together with extracts chosen to illustrate the slow passage of the
last-named author from inspired incompetence to the serene and perfect
proficiency before which all difficulties melted. After an unqualified
statement that any man--slowly if without talent, quickly if gifted by
nature--might with determined application learn to write finely, the
essayist concluded by remarking that never before in the history of
literature had young authors been so favourably circumstanced as at
that present. Lastly came the maxim, _Nulla dies sine linea_.

Richard's cooling enthusiasm for letters leaped into flame. He had
done no writing whatever for several weeks, but that night saw him
desperately at work. He took advantage of the quarrel to sever all
save the most formal connection with Jenkins, dined always frugally at
the Crabtree, and spent every evening at his lodging. The thought of
Alphonse Daudet writing "Les Amoureuses" in a Parisian garret supported
him through an entire month of toil, during which, besides assiduously
practising the recommended exercises, he wrote a complete short story
and began several essays. About this time his "City of Sleep" was
returned upon his hands in a condition so filthy and ragged that he was
moved to burn it. The short story was offered to an evening daily, and
never heard of again.

It occurred to him that possibly he possessed some talent for dramatic
criticism, and one Saturday evening he went to the first performance
of a play at the St. George's theatre. After waiting for an hour
outside, he got a seat in the last row of the pit. Eagerly he watched
the critics take their places in the stalls; they chatted languidly,
smiling and bowing now and then to acquaintances in the boxes and dress
circle; the pit was excited and loquacious, and Richard discovered that
nearly everyone round about him made a practice of attending first
nights, and had an intimate knowledge of the _personnel_ of the stage.
Through the hum of voices the overture to "Rosamund" fitfully reached
him. During whole bars the music was lost; then some salient note
caught the ear, and the melody became audible again until another wave
of conversation engulfed it.

The conclusion of the last act was greeted with frenzied hand-clapping,
beating of sticks, and inarticulate cries, while above the general
noise was heard the repeated monosyllable "'thor, 'thor." After what
seemed an interminable delay the curtain was drawn back at one side
and a tall man in evening dress, his face a dead white, stepped before
the footlights and bowed several times; the noise rose to a thunderous
roar, in which howls and hissing were distinguishable. Richard shook
from head to foot, and tears unaccountably came to his eyes.

The whole of Sunday and Monday evening were occupied in writing a
detailed analysis and appreciation of the play. On Tuesday morning he
bought a weekly paper which devoted special attention to the drama, in
order to compare his own view with that of an acknowledged authority,
and found that the production was dismissed in ten curt lines as mere
amiable drivel.

A few days afterwards Mr. Curpet offered him the position of cashier
in the office, at a salary of three pounds a week. His income was
exactly doubled, and the disappointments of unsuccessful authorship
suddenly ceased to trouble him. He began to doubt the wisdom of making
any further attempt towards literature. Was it not clear that his
talents lay in the direction of business? Nevertheless a large part
of his spare cash was devoted to the purchase of books, chiefly the
productions of a few celebrated old continental presses, which he had
recently learned to value. He prepared a scheme for educating himself
in the classical tongues and in French, and the practice of writing was
abandoned to make opportunity for the pursuit of culture. But culture
proved to be shy and elusive. He adhered to no regular course of study,
and though he read much, his progress towards knowledge was almost
imperceptible.

Other distractions presented themselves in the shape of music and
painting. He discovered that he was not without critical taste
in both these arts, and he became a frequenter of concerts and
picture-galleries. He bought a piano on the hire-purchase system, and
took lessons thereon. In this and other ways his expenditure swelled
till it more than swallowed up the income of three pounds a week which
not long before he had regarded as something very like wealth. For
many weeks he made no effort to adjust the balance, until his debts
approached the sum of twenty pounds, nearly half of which was owing to
his landlady. He had to go through more than one humiliating scene
before an era of economy set in.

One afternoon he received a telegram to say that William Vernon had
died very suddenly. It was signed "Alice Clayton Vernon." Mrs. Vernon
was William's stately cousin-in-law, and Richard, to whom she had
spoken only once,--soon after Mary's wedding,--regarded her with awe;
he disliked her because he found it impossible to be at ease in her
imposing presence. As he went into Mr. Curpet's room to ask for leave
of absence, his one feeling was annoyance at the prospect of having
to meet her again. William's death, to his own astonishment, scarcely
affected him at all.

Mr. Curpet readily granted him two days' holiday, and he arranged to go
down to Bursley the following night for the funeral.

CHAPTER VIII

Wearied of sitting, Richard folded his overcoat pillow-wise, put it
under his head, and extended himself on the polished yellow wood. But
in vain were his eyes shut tight. Sleep would not come, though he
yawned incessantly. The monstrous beat of the engine, the quick rattle
of windows, and the grinding of wheels were fused into a fantastic
resonance which occupied every corner of the carriage and invaded his
very skull. Then a light tapping on the roof, one of those mysterious
sounds which make a compartment in a night-train like a haunted room,
momentarily silenced everything else, and he wished that he had not
been alone.

Suddenly jumping up, he put away all idea of sleep, and lowered the
window. It was pitch dark; vague changing shapes, which might have been
either trees or mere fancies of the groping eye, outlined themselves a
short distance away; far in front was a dull glare from the engine, and
behind twinkled the guard's lamp.... In a few seconds he closed the
window again, chilled to the bone, though May was nearly at an end.

The thought occurred to him that he was now a solitary upon the face
of the earth. It concerned no living person whether he did evil or
good. If he chose to seek ruin, to abandon himself to the most ignoble
impulses, there was none to restrain,--not even a brother-in-law. For
several weeks past, he had been troubled about his future, afraid
to face it. Certainly London satisfied him, and the charm of living
there had not perceptibly grown less. He rejoiced in London, in its
vistas, its shops, its unending crowds, its vastness, its wickedness;
each dream dreamed about London in childhood had come true; and surer
than ever before was the consciousness that in going to London he had
fulfilled his destiny. Yet there was something to lack in himself.
His confidence in his own abilities and his own character was being
undermined. Nearly a year had gone, and he had made no progress, except
at the office. Resolutions were constantly broken; it was three months
since he had despatched an article to a newspaper. He had not even
followed a definite course of study, and though his acquaintance with
modern French fiction had widened, he could boast no exact scholarship
even in that piquant field. Evening after evening--ah! those long,
lamplit evenings which were to be given to strenuous effort!--was
frittered away upon mean banalities, sometimes in the company of some
casual acquaintance and sometimes alone. He had by no means grasped the
full import and extent of this retrogression; it was merely beginning
to disturb his self-complacence, and perhaps, ever so slightly, his
sleep. But now, hurrying to the funeral of William Vernon, he lazily
laughed at himself for having allowed his peace of mind to be ruffled.
Why bother about "getting on"? What did it matter?

He still experienced but little sorrow at the death of Vernon. His
affection for the man had strangely faded. During the nine months that
he had lived in London they had scarcely written to one another, and
Richard regarded the long journey to attend William's obsequies as a
tiresome concession to propriety.

That was his real attitude, had he cared to examine it.

At about four o'clock it was quite light, and the risen sun woke
Richard from a brief doze. The dew lay in the hollows of the fields but
elsewhere there was a soft, fresh clearness which gave to the common
incidents of the flying landscape a new and virginal beauty--as though
that had been the morn of creation itself. The cattle were stirring,
and turned to watch the train as it slipped by.

Richard opened the window again. His mood had changed, and he felt
unreasonably joyous. Last night he had been too pessimistic. Life lay
yet before him, and time enough to rectify any indiscretions of which
he might have been guilty. The future was his, to use as he liked.
Magnificent, consoling thought! Moved by some symbolic association of
ideas, he put his head out of the window and peered in the direction of
the train's motion. A cottage stood alone in the midst of innumerable
meadows; as it crossed his vision, the door opened, and a young woman
came out with an empty pail swinging in her left hand. Apparently she
would be about twenty-seven, plump and sturdy and straight. Her hair
was loose about her round, contented face, and with her disengaged
hand she rubbed her eyes, still puffed and heavy with sleep. She wore
a pink print gown, the bodice of which was unfastened, disclosing a
white undergarment and the rich hemispheres of her bosom. In an instant
the scene was hidden by a curve of the line, and the interminable
succession of fields resumed, but Richard had time to guess from her
figure that the woman was the mother of a small family. He pictured her
husband still unconscious in the warm bed which she had just left; he
even saw the impress of her head on the pillow, and a long nightdress
thrown hastily across a chair.

He was deeply and indescribably affected by this suggestion of peaceful
married love set in so great a solitude. The woman and her hypothetical
husband and children were only peasants, their lives were probably
narrow and their intellects dormant, yet they aroused in him a feeling
of envy which surged about his brain and for the moment asphyxiated
thought....

Later on the train slackened speed as it passed through a
shunting-yard. The steam from the light shunting-engine rose with
cloud-like delicacy in the clear air, and an occasional short whistle
seemed to have something of the quality of a bird's note. The men with
their long poles moved blithely among the medley of rails, signalling
one another with motions of the arm. The coupling-chains rang with a
merry, giant tinkle, and when the engine brought its load of waggons to
a standstill, and a smart, metallic bump, bump, bump ran _diminuendo_
from waggon to waggon, one might have fancied that some leviathan game
was being played. Richard forgot the girl with the pail, and soon after
went to sleep.

At six o'clock the train reached Knype, where he had to change. Two
women with several children also alighted, and he noticed how white
and fatigued were their faces; the children yawned pitifully. An icy,
searching wind blew through the station; the exhilaration of the
dawn was gone, and a spirit of utter woe and disaster brooded over
everything. For the first time William's death really touched him.

The streets of Bursley were nearly empty as he walked through the town
from the railway station, for the industrial population was already
at work in the manufactories, and the shops not yet open. Yet Richard
avoided the main thoroughfares, choosing a circuitous route lest he
might by chance encounter an acquaintance. He foresaw the inevitable
banal dialogue:--

"Well, how do you like London?"

"Oh, it's fine!"

"Getting on all right?"

"Yes, thanks."

And then the effort of two secretly bored persons to continue a
perfunctory conversation unaided by a single mutual interest.

A carriage was driving away from the Red House just as Richard got
within sight of it; he nodded to the venerable coachman, who gravely
touched his hat. The owner of the carriage was Mr. Clayton Vernon,
William's cousin and an alderman of Bursley, and Richard surmised that
Mrs. Clayton Vernon had put herself in charge of the place until the
funeral should be over. He trembled at the prospect of a whole day to
be spent in the company of these excellent people, whom William had
always referred to with a smile, and yet not without a great deal of
respect. The Clayton Vernons were the chief buttress of respectability
in the town; rich, strictly religious, philanthropic, and above all
dignified. Everyone looked up to them instinctively, and had they
possessed but one vice between them, they would have been loved.

Mrs. Clayton Vernon herself opened the door. She was a stately woman of
advanced middle age, with a suave, imperious manner.

"I left Clayton to have breakfast by himself," she said, as she led
Richard into the sitting-room; "I thought you would like someone here
to welcome you after your long night journey. Breakfast will be ready
almost directly. How tired you must be! Clayton said it was a pity you
should come by the night train, but of course it is quite right that
you should inconvenience your employers as little as possible, quite
right. And we admire you for it. Now will you run upstairs and wash?
You've not forgotten the way?..."

The details of the funeral had been settled by Mr. Clayton Vernon,
who was the chief mourner, and Richard had nothing to do but fall in
with preconcerted plans and answer decorously when spoken to. The
arrangement was satisfactory in that it relieved him from duties which
would have been irksome, but scarcely gratifying to his pride. He had
lived nearly all his life in that house, and had known the dead man
perhaps more intimately than anyone else present. However, he found it
convenient to efface himself.

In the evening there was an elaborate tea at which were present the
Clayton Vernons and the minister who had conducted the funeral service.
The minister and the alderman left immediately afterwards to attend a
meeting, and when they were gone Mrs. Clayton Vernon said,--

"Now we are all alone, Richard. Go into the drawing-room and I will
follow. I do want to have a chat with you."

She came in with needle and thread and scissors.

"If you will take off your coat, I will stitch on that button that is
hanging by one thread. I noticed it this morning, and then it went
quite out of my mind. I am so sorry!"

"Oh, thanks!" he blushed hotly. "But I can stitch myself, you know--"

"Come, you needn't be shy of an old woman seeing you in your
shirt-sleeves. Do as I ask."

He doffed the coat.

"I always like young men to be immaculately neat," she said, cutting
off a piece of cotton. "One's personal character is an index to one's
character, don't you think? Of course you do. Here, thread the needle
for me. I am afraid since your dear sister died you have grown a little
careless, eh? She was _most_ particular. Ah, what a mother she was to
you!"

"Yes," said Richard.

"I was very grieved to see you go to the funeral in a soft
hat--Richard, really I was. It wasn't respectful to your
brother-in-law's memory."

"I never thought. You see, I started in rather a hurry." The fact was
that he had no silk hat, nor could he easily afford to buy one.

"But you _should_ think, my dear boy. Even Clayton was shocked. Are
those your best clothes?"

Richard answered that they were. He sheepishly protested that he never
bothered about clothes.

There was a silence, broken by her regular stitching. At last she
handed him the coat and helped him to put it on. He went to the old
green sofa, and somewhat to his dismay she sat down by his side.

"Richard," she began, in a changed, soft voice, and not without
emotion, "do you know we are expecting great things from you?"

"But you shouldn't. I'm a very ordinary sort of person."

"No, no. That you are not. God has given you great talents, and you
must use them. Poor William always used to say that you were highly
gifted and might do great things."

"Might!"

"Yes--if you tried."

"But how am I gifted? And what 'great things' are expected?" he asked,
perhaps angling for further flattering disclosures.

"I cannot answer that," said Mrs. Clayton Vernon; "it is for you to
answer. You have given all your friends the impression that you would
do something worth doing. You have raised hopes, and you must not
disappoint them. We believe in you, Richard. That is all I can say."

"That's all very well; but--" He stopped and played with the seal on
his watch-chain. "The fact is, I am working, you know. I want to be an
author--at least a journalist."

"Ah!"

"It's a slow business--at first--" Suddenly moved to be confidential,
he went on to give her some account, incomplete and judiciously
edited, of his life during the past year.

"You have relieved my mind greatly, and Clayton will be so glad. We
were beginning to think--"

"Why were you 'beginning to think'?"

"Well, never mind now."

"But why?"

"Never mind. I have full confidence in you, and I am sure you will get
on. Poor boy, you have no near connections or relatives now?"

"No, none."

"You must look on Clayton and myself as very near relatives. We have no
children, but our hearts are large. I shall expect you to write to me
sometimes and to come and stay with us now and then."

CHAPTER IX

In the centre of the reading-room at the British Museum sit four men
fenced about by a quadruple ring of unwieldy volumes which are an index
to all the knowledge in the world. The four men know those volumes as
a good courier knows the Continental Bradshaw, and all day long, from
early morning, when the attendants, self-propelled on wheeled stools,
run around the rings arranging and aligning the huge blue tomes, to
late afternoon, when the immense dome is like a dark night and the
arc lamps hiss and crackle in the silence, they answer questions,
patiently, courteously; they are seldom embarrassed and less seldom in
the wrong.

Radiating in long rows from the central fortress of learning, a
diversified company of readers disposes itself: bishops, statesmen,
men of science, historians, needy pedants, popular authors whose
broughams are waiting in the precincts, journalists, medical students,
law students, curates, hack-writers, women with clipped hair and black
aprons, idlers; all short-sighted and all silent.

Every few minutes an official enters in charge of an awed group of
country visitors, and whispers mechanically the unchanging formula:
"Eighty thousand volumes in this room alone: thirty-six miles of
bookshelves in the Museum altogether." Whereupon the visitors stare
about them, the official unsuccessfully endeavours not to let it appear
that the credit of the business belongs entirely to himself, and the
party retires again.

Vague, reverberating noises roll heavily from time to time across the
chamber, but no one looks up; the incessant cannibal feast of the
living upon the dead goes speechlessly forward; the trucks of food are
always moving to and fro, and the nonchalant waiters seem to take no
rest.

Almost Richard's first care on coming to London had been to obtain
a reader's ticket for the British Museum, and for several months he
had made a practice of spending Saturday afternoon there, following
no special line of study or research, and chiefly contenting himself
with desultory reading in the twenty thousand volumes which could be
reached down without the slow machinery of an order form. After a time
the charm of the place had dwindled, and other occupations filled his
Saturday afternoons.

But when upon his return from William's funeral he stepped from
Euston Station into Bloomsbury, the old enthusiasms came back in all
their original freshness. The seduction of the street vistas, the
lofty buildings, and the swiftly flitting hansoms once more made mere
wayfaring a delight; the old feeling of self-confident power lifted his
chin, and the failures of the past were forgotten in a dream of future
possibilities. He dwelt with pleasure on that part of his conversation
with Mrs. Clayton Vernon which disclosed the interesting fact that
Bursley would be hurt if he failed to do "things." Bursley, and
especially Mrs. Clayton Vernon, good woman, should not be disappointed.
He had towards his native town the sentiments of a consciously clever
husband who divines an admiring trust in the glance of a little
ignoramus of a wife. Such faith was indeed touching.

One of the numerous resolutions which he made was to resume attendance
at the British Museum; the first visit was anticipated with impatience,
and when he found himself once more within the book-lined walls of the
reading-room he was annoyed to discover that his plans for study were
not matured sufficiently to enable him to realise any definite part
of them, however small, that day. An idea for an article on "White
Elephants" was nebulous in his brain; he felt sure that the subject
might be treated in a fascinating manner, if only he could put hands
on the right material. An hour passed in searching Poole's Index
and other works of reference, without result, and Richard spent the
remainder of the afternoon in evolving from old magazines schemes
for articles which would present fewer difficulties in working out.
Nothing of value was accomplished, and yet he experienced neither
disappointment nor a sense of failure. Contact with innumerable books
of respectable but forbidding appearance had cajoled him, as frequently
before, into the delusion that he had been industrious; surely it was
impossible that a man could remain long in that atmosphere of scholarly
attainment without acquiring knowledge and improving his mind!

Presently he abandoned the concoction of attractive titles for his
articles, and began to look through some volumes of the "Biographie
Universelle." The room was thinning now. He glanced at the clock; it
was turned six. He had been there nearly four hours! With a sigh of
satisfaction he replaced all his books and turned to go, mentally
discussing whether or not so much application did not entitle him, in
spite of certain resolutions, to go to the Ottoman that evening.

"Hey!" a voice called out as he passed the glass screen near the door;
it sang resonantly among the desks and ascended into the dome; a number
of readers looked up. Richard turned round sharply, and beheld Mr.
Aked moving a forefinger on the other side of the screen.

"Been here long?" the older man asked, when Richard had come round
to him. "I've been here all day--first time for fifteen years at
least. Strange we didn't see each other. They've got a beastly new
regulation about novels less than five years old not being available. I
particularly wanted some of Gissing's--not for the mere fun of reading
'em of course, because I've read 'em before. I wanted them for a
special purpose--I may tell you about it some day--and I couldn't get
them, at least several of them. What a tremendous crowd there is here
nowadays!"

"Well, you see, it's Saturday afternoon," Richard put in, "and Saturday
afternoon's the only time that most people can come, unless they're men
of independent means like yourself. You seem to have got a few novels
besides Gissing's, though." About forty volumes were stacked upon Mr.
Aked's desk, many of them open.

"Yes, but I've done now." He began to close the books with a smack and
to pitch them down roughly in new heaps, exactly like a petulant boy
handling school-books. "See, pile them between my arms, and I bet you
I'll carry them away all at once."

"Oh, no. I'll help you," Richard laughed. "It'll be far less trouble
than picking up what you drop."

While they were waiting at the centre desk Mr. Aked said,--

"There's something about this place that makes you ask for more volumes
than can possibly be useful to you. I question whether I've done any
good here to-day at all. If I'd been content with three or four books
instead of thirty or forty, I might have done something. By the way,
what are you here for?"

"Well, I just came to look up a few points," Richard answered vaguely.
"I've been messing about--got a notion or two for articles, that's all."

Mr. Aked stopped to shake hands as soon as they were outside the
Museum. Richard was very disappointed that their meeting should have
been so short. This man of strange vivacity had thrown a spell over
him. Richard was sure that his conversation, if only he could be
persuaded to talk, would prove delightfully original and suggestive;
he guessed that they were mutually sympathetic. Ever since their
encounter in the A. B. C. shop Richard had desired to know more of
him, and now, when by chance they met again, Mr. Aked's manner showed
little or no inclination towards a closer acquaintance. There was of
course a difference between them in age of at least thirty years, but
to Richard that seemed no bar to an intimacy. It was, he surmised, only
the physical part of Mr. Aked that had grown old.

"Well, good-bye."

"Good-bye." Should he ask if he might call at Mr. Aked's rooms or
house, or whatever his abode was? He hesitated, from nervousness.

"Often come here?"

"Generally on Saturdays," said Richard.

"We may see each other again, then, sometime. Good-bye."

Richard left him rather sadly, and the sound of the old man's quick,
alert footsteps--he almost stamped--receded in the direction of
Southampton Row. A minute later, as Richard was turning round by
Mudie's out of Museum Street, a hand touched his shoulder. It was Mr.
Aked's.

"By the way," the man's face crinkled into a smile as he spoke, "are
you doing anything to-night?"

"Nothing whatever."

"Let's go and have dinner together--I know a good French place in Soho."

"Oh, thanks. I shall be awfully pleased."

"Half a crown, _table d'hôte_. Can you afford?"

"Certainly I can," said Richard, perhaps a little annoyed, until
he recollected that Mr. Aked had used exactly the same phrase on a
previous occasion.

"I'll pay for the wine."

"Not at all--"

"I'll pay for the wine," Mr. Aked repeated decisively.

"All right. You told me about this Soho place before, if you remember."

"So I did, so I did, so I did."

"What made you turn back?"

"A whim, young friend, nothing else. Take my arm."

Richard laughed aloud, for no reason in particular, except that he felt
happy. They settled to a brisk walk.

The restaurant was a square apartment with a low and smoky beamed
ceiling, and shining brass hat-pegs all round the walls; above the
hat-pegs were framed advertisements of liqueurs and French, Italian,
and Spanish wines. The little tables, whose stiff snowy cloths came
near to touching the floor at every side, gleamed and glittered in the
light of a fire. The place was empty save for an old waiter who was
lighting the gas. The waiter turned a large, mild countenance to Mr.
Aked as the two entered, and smiling benignly greeted him with a flow
of French, and received a brief reply in the same language. Richard
failed to comprehend what was said.

They chose a table near the fire. Mr. Aked at once pulled a book from
his pocket and began to read; and Richard, somewhat accustomed by this
time to his peculiarities, found nothing extraordinary in such conduct.
This plain little restaurant seemed full of enchantment. He was in
Paris,--not the great Paris which is reached _via_ Charing Cross, but
that little Paris which hides itself in the immensity of London. French
newspapers were scattered about the room; the sound of French voices
came musically through an open door; the bread which was presently
brought in with the _hors d'oeuvre_ was French, and the setting of the
table itself showed an exotic daintiness which he had never seen before.

Outside a barrel organ was piercingly strident in the misty dusk. Above
the ground-glass panes of the window, Richard could faintly descry the
upper storeys of houses on the opposite side of the road. There was a
black and yellow sign, "Umberto Club," and above that a blue and red
sign, "Blanchisserie française." Still higher was an open window from
which leaned a young, negligently dressed woman with a coarse Southern
face; she swung a bird-cage idly in her hand; the bird-cage fell
and was swallowed by the ground glass, and the woman with a gesture
of despair disappeared from the window; the barrel organ momentarily
ceased its melody and then struck up anew.

Everything seemed strangely, delightfully unsubstantial, even the
meek, bland face of the waiter as he deftly poured out the soup. Mr.
Aked, having asked for the wine list, called "Cinquante, Georges, s'il
vous plait," and divided his attention impartially between his soup
and his book. Richard picked up the "Echo de Paris" which lay on a
neighbouring chair. On the first page was a reference in displayed type
to the success of the feuilleton "_de notre collaborateur distingué_,"
Catulle Mendès. How wondrously enticing the feuilleton looked, with its
descriptive paragraphs cleverly diversified by short lines of dialogue,
and at the end "CATULLE MENDÈS, _à suivre. Réproduction interdite!_"
Half Paris, probably, was reading that feuilleton! Catulle Mendès was a
real man, and no doubt eating his dinner at that moment!

When the fish came, and Georges had gently poured out the wine, Mr.
Aked's tongue was loosed.

"And how has the Muse been behaving herself?" he began.

Richard told him, with as little circumlocution as pride would allow,
the history of the last few sterile months.

"I suppose you feel a bit downhearted."

"Not in the least!" answered Richard, bravely, and just then his reply
was approximately true.

"_Never_ feel downhearted?"

"Well, of course one gets a bit sick sometimes."

"Let's see, to-day's the 30th. How many words have you written this
month?"

"How many words!" Richard laughed. "I never count what I do in that
way. But it's not much. I haven't felt in the humour. There was the
funeral. That put me off."

"I suppose you think you must write only _when the mood is on you_."
Mr. Aked spoke sarcastically, and then laughed. "Quite a mistake. I'll
give you this bit of advice and charge nothing for it. Sit down every
night and write five hundred words descriptive of some scene which has
occurred during the day. Never mind how tired you are; do it. Do it
for six months, and then compare the earlier work with the later, and
you'll keep on."

Richard drank the wisdom in.

"Did you do that once?"

"I did, sir. Everyone does it that comes to anything. I didn't come to
anything, though I made a bit of money at one time. But then mine was
a queer case. I was knocked over by dyspepsia. Beware of dyspepsia. I
was violently dyspeptic for twenty years--simply couldn't write. Then
I cured myself. But it was too late to begin again." He spoke in gulps
between mouthfuls of fish.

"How did you cure yourself?"

The man took no notice of the question, and went on:--

"And if I haven't written anything for twenty years, I'm still an
author at heart. In fact, I've got something 'in the air' now. Oh! I've
always had the literary temperament badly. Do you ever catch yourself
watching instinctively for the characteristic phrase?"

"I'm afraid I don't quite know what you mean."

"Eh?"

Richard repeated what he had said, but Mr. Aked was absorbed in pouring
out another glass of wine.

"I wish you'd tell me," Richard began, after a pause, "how you first
_began_ to write, or rather to get printed."

"My dear little friend, I can't tell you anything new. I wrote for
several years and never sold a line. And for what peculiar reason,
should you think? Simply because not a line was worth printing. Then my
things began to be accepted. I sold a story first; I forget the title,
but I remember there was a railway accident in it, and it happened to
come before the editor of a magazine just when everyone was greatly
excited about a railway smash in the West of England. I got thirty
shillings for that."

"I think I should get on all right enough if only I could sell _one_
thing." Richard sighed.

"Well, you must wait. Why, damn it all, man!"--he stopped to drink, and
Richard noticed how his hand shook. "How long have you been working
seriously? Not a year! If you were going in for painting, you surely
wouldn't expect to sell pictures after only a year's study?" Mr. Aked
showed a naïve appreciation of himself in the part of a veteran who
deigns to give a raw recruit the benefit of vast experience.

"Of course not," assented Richard, abashed.

"Well, then, don't begin to whine."

After the cheese Mr. Aked ordered coffee and cognac, and sixpenny
cigars. They smoked in silence.

"Do you know," Richard blurted out at length, "the fact is I'm not
sure that I'm meant for writing at all. I never take any pleasure
_in_ writing. It's a confounded nuisance." He almost trembled with
apprehension as he uttered the words.

"You like thinking about what you're going to write, arranging,
observing, etc.?"

"Yes, I like that awfully."

"Well, here's a secret. No writer does like writing, at least not one
in a hundred, and the exception, ten to one, is a howling mediocrity.
That's a fact. But all the same they're miserable if they don't write."

"I'm glad; there's hope."

When Richard had finished his coffee, it occurred to him to mention
Miss Roberts.

"Do you ever go to the Crabtree?" he asked.

"Not of late."

"I only ask because there's a girl there who knows you. She inquired of
me how you were not long since."

"A girl who knows me? Who the devil may she be?"

"I fancy her name's Roberts."

"Aha! So she's got a new place, has she? She lives in my street. That's
how I know her. Nice little thing, rather!"

He made no further remark on the subject, but there remained an absent,
amused smile on his face, and he pulled at his lower lip and fastened
his gaze on the table.

"You must come down sometime, and see me; my niece keeps house for me,"
he said before they separated, giving an address in Fulham. He wrung
Richard's hand, patted him on the shoulder, winking boyishly, and went
off whistling to himself very quietly in the upper register.

CHAPTER X

The slender, badly hung gate closed of itself behind him with a
resounding clang, communicating a little thrill to the ground.

In answer to his ring a girl came to the door. She was rather short,
thin, and dressed in black, with a clean white apron. In the half light
of the narrow lobby he made out a mahogany hat-rack of conventional
shape, and on a wooden bracket a small lamp with a tarnished reflector.

"No," Richard heard in a quiet, tranquil voice, "Mr. Aked has just gone
out for a walk. He didn't say what time he should be back. Can I give
him any message?"

"He sent me a card to come down and see him this afternoon, and--I've
come. He said about seven o'clock. It's a quarter past now. But perhaps
he forgot all about it."

"Will you step inside? He may only be away for a minute or two."

"No, thanks. If you'll just tell him I've called--"

"I'm so sorry--" The girl raised her hand and rested it against the
jamb of the doorway; her eyes were set slantwise on the strip of
garden, and she seemed to muse an instant.

"Are you Mr. Larch?" she asked hesitatingly, just as Richard was saying
good-day.

"Yes," answered Richard.

"Uncle was telling me he had had dinner with you. I'm _sure_ he'll be
back soon. Won't you wait a little while?"

"Well--"

She stood aside, and Richard passed into the lobby.

The front room, into which he was ushered, was full of dim shadows,
attributable to the multiplicity of curtains which obscured the
small bay window. Carteret Street and the half-dozen florid, tawny,
tree-lined avenues that run parallel to it contain hundreds of living
rooms almost precisely similar. Its dimensions were thirteen feet by
eleven, and the height of the ceiling appeared to bring the walls,
which were papered in an undecipherable pattern of blue, even closer
together than they really were. Linoleum with a few rugs served for
a carpet. The fireplace was of painted stone, and a fancy screen of
South African grasses hid the grate. Behind a clock and some vases
on the mantelpiece rose a confection of walnut and silvered glass. A
mahogany chiffonier filled the side of the room farthest from the
window; it had a marble top and a large mirror framed in scroll work,
and was littered with salt-cellars, fruit plates, and silver nicknacks.
The table, a square one, was covered by a red cloth of flannel-like
texture patterned in black. The chairs were of mahogany and horsehair,
and matched the sofa, which stretched from the door nearly to the
window. Several prints framed in gilt and oak depended by means of
stout green cord from French nails with great earthenware heads. In the
recess to the left of the hearth stood a piano, open, and a song on the
music-stand. What distinguished the room from others of its type was
a dwarf bookcase filled chiefly with French novels whose vivid yellow
gratefully lightened a dark corner next the door.

"Uncle is very forgetful," the girl began. There was some sewing on the
table, and she had already taken it up. Richard felt shy and ill at
ease, but his companion showed no symptom of discomposure. He smiled
vaguely, not knowing what to reply.

"I suppose he walks a good deal," he said at length.

"Yes, he does." There was a second pause. The girl continued to sew
quietly; she appeared to be indifferent whether they conversed or not.

"I see you are a musician."

"Oh, no!" She laughed, and looked at his eyes. "I sing a very little
bit."

"Do you sing Schubert's songs?"

"Schubert's? No. Are they good?"

"Rather. They're _the_ songs."

"Classical, I suppose." Her tone implied that classical songs were
outside the region of the practical.

"Yes, of course."

"I don't think I care much for classical music."

"But you should."

"Should I? Why?" She laughed gaily, like a child amused. "Hope Temple's
songs are nice, and 'The River of Years,' I'm just learning that. Do
you sing?"

"No--I don't really sing. I haven't got a piano at my place--now."

"What a pity! I suppose you know a great deal about music?"

"I wish I did!" said Richard, trying awkwardly not to seem flattered.

A third pause.

"Mr. Aked seems to have a fine lot of French novels. I wish I had as
many."

"Yes. He's always bringing them in."

"And this is the latest, eh?" He picked up "L'Abbé Tigrane," which lay
on the table by the sewing.

"Yes, I fancy uncle got that last night."

"You read French, of course?"

"I! No, indeed!" Again she laughed. "You mustn't imagine, Mr. Larch,"
she went on, and her small eyes twinkled, "that I am at all like uncle.
I'm not. I've only kept house for him a little while, and we are
really--quite different."

"How do you mean, 'like uncle'?"

"Well," the quiet voice was imperceptibly raised, "I'm not a great
reader, and I know nothing of books. I'm not clever, you know. I can't
bear poetry."

Richard looked indulgent.

"But you do read?"

"Yes, sometimes a novel. I'm reading 'East Lynne.' Uncle bought it for
me the other day."

"And you like it?"

There was a timid tap at the door, and a short, stout servant with red
hands and a red face entered; her rough, chubby forearms were bare, and
she carried a market basket. "Please, 'm," she ejaculated meaningly and
disappeared. Mr. Aked's niece excused herself, and when she returned
Richard looked at his watch and rose.

"I'm very sorry about uncle--but it's just like him."

"Yes, isn't it?" Richard answered, and they exchanged a smile.

He walked down Carteret Street humming a tuneless air and twirling
his stick. Mr. Aked's niece had proved rather disappointing. She was
an ordinary girl, and evidently quite unsusceptible to the artistic
influences which subtly emanated from Mr. Aked. But with the exception
of his landlady and his landlady's daughter, she was the first woman
whom Richard had met in London, and the interview had been somewhat of
an ordeal.

Yes, it was matter for regret. Suppose she had been clever, witty, full
of that "nameless charm" with which youths invest the ideal maidens of
their dreams--with which, indeed, during the past week he had invested
her! He might have married her. Then, guided by the experience of a
sympathetic uncle-in-law, he would have realised all his ambitions. A
vision of Mr. Richard Larch, the well-known editor, and his charming
wife, giving a dinner-party to a carefully selected company of literary
celebrities, flitted before him. Alas! The girl's "East Lynne," her
drawing-room ballads, the mean little serving-maid, the complacent
vulgarity of the room, the house, the street, the neighbourhood,
combined effectually to dispel it.

He felt sure that she had no aspirations.

It was necessary to wait for a train at Parson's Green station. From
the elevated platform grass was visible through a gently falling mist.
The curving rails stole away mysteriously into a general greyness,
and the twilight, assuaging every crudity of the suburban landscape,
gave an impression of vast spaces and perfect serenity. Save for the
porter leisurely lighting the station lamps, he was alone,--alone, as
it seemed to him, in an upper world, above London, and especially above
Fulham and the house where lived the girl who read "East Lynne." How
commonplace must she be! Richard wondered that Mr. Aked could exist
surrounded by all the banalities of Carteret Street. Even his own
lodging was more attractive, for at least Raphael Street was within
sound of the central hum and beat of the city.

A signal suddenly shone out in the distance; it might have been a
lighthouse seen across unnumbered miles of calm ocean. Rain began to
fall.

CHAPTER XI

Richard's Sabbaths had become days of dismal torpor. A year ago, on
first arriving in London, he had projected a series of visits to
churches famous either for architectural beauty or for picturesque
ritual. A few weeks, however, had brought tedium. He was fundamentally
irreligious, and his churchgoing proceeded from a craving, purely
sensuous, which sought gratification in ceremonial pomps, twilight
atmospheres heavy with incense and electric with devotion, and dim
perspectives of arching stone. But these things he soon discovered lost
their fine savour by the mere presence of a prim congregation secure in
the brass armour of self-complacency; for him the worship was spoilt
by the worshippers, and so the time came when the only church which he
cared to attend--and even to this he went but infrequently, lest use
should stale its charm--was the Roman Catholic oratory of St. Philip
Neri, where, at mass, the separation of the sexes struck a grateful
note of austerity, and the mean appearance of the people contrasted
admirably with the splendour of the priests' vestments, the elaborate
music, and the gilt and colour of altars. Here deity was omnipotent
and humanity abject. Men and women of all grades, casting themselves
down before the holy images in the ecstatic abandonment of repentance,
prayed side by side, oblivious of everything save their sins and the
anger of a God. As a spectacle the oratory was sublime.

He visited it about once a month. The mornings of intervening Sundays
were given to aimless perambulation of the parks, desultory reading,
or sleep; there was nothing to prevent him leaving town for the day,
but he was so innocent of any sort of rural lore that the prospect of a
few hours in the country was seldom enticing enough to rouse sufficient
energy for its accomplishment. After dinner he usually slept, and in
the evening he would take a short walk and go early to bed. For some
reason he never attempted to work on Sundays.

It had rained continuously since he left Parson's Green station on the
previous night, till midday on Sunday, and in the afternoon he was
lounging half asleep with a volume of verse on his knee, considering
whether or not to put on his hat and go out, when Lily entered; Lily
was attired for conquest, and with her broad velvet hat and pink
bows looked so unlike a servant-girl that drowsy Richard started up,
uncertain what fairy was brightening his room.

"Please, sir, there's a young gentleman as wants to see you."

"Oh!--who is it?" No one had ever called upon him before.

"I don't know, sir; it's a young _gentleman_."

The young gentleman was ushered in. He wore a new black frock coat, and
light grey trousers which fell in rich folds over new patent-leather
boots. The shortcomings of his linen, which was dull and bluish in
tint, were more than atoned for by the magnificence of a new white silk
necktie with heliotrope spots. He carried a silk hat and a pair of
unworn kid gloves in one hand, and in the other a half-smoked cigar and
a stick, with whose physiognomy Richard was quite familiar.

"Hello, Jenkins!"

"Good afternoon, Mr. Larch. I was just passing this way, and I thought
I'd look you up." With an inclination of the head more ridiculous even
than he intended, Jenkins placed his hat, stick, and gloves on the bed,
and, nicely adjusting the tails of his coat, occupied a chair.

The quarrel between Richard and Jenkins had been patched up a few days
before.

"So this is your digs. Nice large windows!"

"Yes, decent windows."

Although these two were on terms of almost brutal familiarity during
office hours, here each felt slightly uncomfortable in the other's
presence. Jenkins wiped his pallid, unhealthy face with a cambric
handkerchief which he unfolded for the purpose.

"Been to church this morning?"

Meditatively Jenkins flicked some cigar-ash into the fire-grate, and
then answered, "Yes."

"I thought so."

"Why?"

"Because you're such a swell."

"Ain't I, just!" Jenkins spoke with frank delight. "Two guineas the
suit, my boy! Won't I knock 'em in the Wal--worth Road!"

"But where's your ring?" Richard asked, noticing the absence of the
silver ring which Jenkins commonly wore on his left hand.

"Oh! I gave it to my sister. She wanted to give it to her young man."

"She's engaged, is she?"

"Yes--at least I suppose she is."

"And when are you going to get engaged?"

Jenkins emitted a sound expressive of scorn. "You don't catch me
entering the holy bonds. Not this child! It ain't all lavender, you
bet. I say, you know Miss Roberts at the veg--red-haired tart." Jenkins
was unaware that Richard had been going regularly to the Crabtree. "I
was passing the place last night just as they were closing, and I
walked down to Charing Cross with her. I asked her to meet me to-day
somewhere, but she couldn't."

"You mean she wouldn't. Well, and what sort's she?"

"Devilish nice, _I_ tell you. But not my style. But there's a girl
I know--lives down the Camberwell New Road. She is a treat now,--a
fair treat. About seventeen, and plump as a pigeon. I shall see her
to-night."

"Oh, indeed!" said Richard, for the hundredth time marvelling that he
should be on a footing of intimacy with Albert Jenkins. The girl at
Carteret Street, whatever her imperfections, did not use the Cockney
dialect. And her smile was certainly alluring. Moreover, she had
dignity. True, she liked "East Lynne" and Hope Temple's songs, but
it occurred to Richard that it might be pleasanter to listen even to
these despised melodies than to remain solitary at Raphael Street or
to accompany Jenkins on a _prowl_. Why should he not go down that
afternoon to see Mr. Aked--and his niece? He immediately decided that
he would do so.

"It's turned out fine," said Jenkins. "What are you up to to-night?
Will you come and have a turn round with me?"

"Let me see.... The fact is, I can't." He fought desperately against
the temptation to mention that he proposed to call on a lady, but in
vain. Forth it must come. "I'm going to see a girl."

"Aha!" exclaimed Jenkins, with a terribly arch look. "So that's the
little game, eh! Who's the mash?"

Richard smiled reticently.

"Well, I'll be off." Jenkins rose, and his eye caught Richard's little
bookcase; he scanned the titles of the volumes.

"Oh! Likewise ah! Zola! Now we're getting at the secret. No wonder
you're so damn studious. Zola, indeed! Well, so long. See you
to-morrow. Give my love to the girl.... I say, I suppose you haven't
got Zola in English, have you?"

"No."

"Never mind. So long."

CHAPTER XII

The little red-armed servant beamed an amiable recognition.

"Very hot day!" Richard said.

"Beg pardon, sir."

"Very hot day," rather louder. They were in the passage.

The door of the sitting-room opened, and Mr. Aked's niece stood before
him, her finger on her lips and her eyebrows raised in a gesture of
warning. She suddenly smiled, almost laughed. Richard remembered that
smile for a long time afterwards. It transformed not only a girl's
face, but the whole of Carteret Street. He had never seen anything like
it. Shaking hands in silence, he followed her into the room, and she
gently closed the door.

"Uncle's not well," she explained. "He's asleep now, and I don't
want you to wake him. In this house, you know, if any one speaks in
the passage, you can hear it even in the attic. Uncle was caught in
the rain last night; he has a very weak chest, and gets bronchitis
directly."

"I'm awfully sorry I disturbed you," said Richard. "The fact is I
was down this way, and I thought I'd call." It sounded a sufficiently
reasonable excuse, he considered. "I hope you weren't asleep too."

"Yes, I was dozing in this chair." She put her head back, and drummed
with her fingers lightly on the arms of the chair. "But I'm glad you've
called."

"Why?"

"Oh! Because one wants to see some one--some one new, especially after
being in a sick-room."

"You've been sitting up late." His tone was accusing. It seemed to him
that somehow they were already intimate.

"Only till three o'clock, and I slept later this morning. How
changeable the sun is to-day!" She moved her chair, and he saw her
in profile. Her hands were on her lap. She coaxed a foot stool into
position with her toes, and placed her feet on it.

"You look just like a picture in this week's 'Illustrated London
News'--I mean in general pose," he exclaimed.

"Do I? How nice that sounds! What is it?"

"Whistler's 'Portrait of his Mother.' But I hope you don't think I
think you look old."

"How old do I look?" She turned her head slightly towards him.

"About twenty-three, only I imagine you're much younger."

Although she did not reply, she made no pretence of being annoyed, nor
did Richard tax himself with a _gaucherie_.

"It took me years to like Whistler's pictures," she said; and in
response to Richard's surprised question she was beginning to explain
that a large part of her life had been passed in the companionship of
works of graphic art, when a slippered step was heard in the hall and
some one fumbled with the door-handle. Mr. Aked entered.

"Uncle! You wicked old man!" She sprang up, flushed, and her eyes
sparkled angrily. "Whatever did you get up for? It's enough to kill
you."

"Calm yourself, my child. I got up because I didn't want to stay in
bed,--exactly that." Mr. Aked paused to take breath and sank into a
chair. "Larch, I heard your voice in the passage. Upon my word, I
quite forgot you yesterday. I suppose Adeline's been telling you I'm
seriously ill, eh? Ah! I've had many a worse attack than this. Put that
antimacassar over my shoulders, child."

He had given Richard a hot, limp hand, on which the veins formed soft
ridges in the smooth, brittle skin. His grey hair was disarranged, and
he wore a dirty, torn dressing-gown. His face had lost its customary
alert expression; but his sunk, shining eyes glanced with mysterious
restlessness first at Richard, then at Adeline, who, uttering no
further word, covered him well and put the hassock under his feet.

"Well, well, well!" he sighed and closed his eyes wearily. The other
two sat silent for a time; then Adeline, talking very quietly, and
with a composure not quite unaffected, took up their interrupted
conversation. Richard gathered that her justifiable vexation would
remain in abeyance till he had gone. Soon her tone grew more natural;
she leaned forward with hands clasped round one knee, and Richard felt
like a receiver of confidences as she roughly outlined her life in the
country which had come to an end only two years ago. Were all the girls
so simply communicative, he wondered; it pleased him to decide that
they were not, and that to any other but himself she would have been
more reserved; that there was, in fact, an affinity between them. But
the presence of her uncle, which Adeline seemed able to ignore utterly,
hindered Richard from being himself.

"How do you like London, after living so long in the country?" he asked
inevitably.

"I know practically nothing of London, real London," she said; "but I
think these suburbs are horrid,--far duller than the dullest village.
And the people! They seem so uninteresting, to have no character!"

The hoarse, fatigued voice of Mr. Aked crept in between them. "Child!"
he said--and he used the appellation, not with the proper dignity of
age, but rather like an omniscient schoolboy, home for the holiday,
addressing a sister--"Child!"--his eyes were still closed,--"the
suburbs, even Walham Green and Fulham, are full of interest, for those
who can see it. Walk along this very street on such a Sunday afternoon
as to-day. The roofs form two horrible, converging straight lines I
know, but beneath there is character, individuality, enough to make
the greatest book ever written. Note the varying indications supplied
by bad furniture seen through curtained windows, like ours" (he
grinned, opened his eyes, and sat up); "listen to the melodies issuing
lamely from ill-tuned pianos; examine the enervated figures of women
reclining amidst flower-pots on narrow balconies. Even in the thin
smoke ascending unwillingly from invisible chimney-pots, the flutter
of a blind, the bang of a door, the winking of a fox terrier perched
on a window-sill, the colour of paint, the lettering of a name,--in
all these things there is character and matter of interest,--truth
waiting to be expounded. How many houses are there in Carteret Street?
Say eighty. Eighty theatres of love, hate, greed, tyranny, endeavour;
eighty separate dramas always unfolding, intertwining, ending,
beginning,--and every drama a tragedy. No comedies, and especially no
farces! Why, child, there is more character within a hundred yards of
this chair than a hundred Balzacs could analyse in a hundred years."

All the old vivacity had returned to his face; he had been rhetorical
on a favourite subject, and he was frankly pleased with himself.

"You will tire yourself, uncle," said Adeline. "Shall we have tea?"

Richard observed with astonishment that she was cold and unmoved.
Surely she could not be blind to the fact that Mr. Aked was a very
remarkable man with very remarkable ideas! Why, by the way, had those
ideas never presented themselves to _him_? He would write an article
on the _character_ of Raphael Street. Unwillingly he announced that he
must go; to remain longer would be to invite himself to tea.

"Sit still, Larch. You'll have a cup of tea."

Adeline left the room; and when she had gone, Mr. Aked, throwing a
glance after her, said,--

"Well, what do you think of my notions of the suburb?"

"They are splendid," Richard replied, glowing.

"There's something in them, I imagine," he agreed complacently. "I've
had an idea lately of beginning to scribble again. I know there's a
book waiting to be written on 'The Psychology of the Suburbs,' and I
don't like to see copy lying about wasted. The old war-horse scenting
the battle, you understand." He smiled grandiosely. "'Psychology of the
Suburbs'! Fine title that! See how the silent _P_ takes away all the
crudity of the alliteration; that's because one never listens to words
with the ears alone, but with the eyes also.... But I should need help.
I want a clever chap who can take down from dictation, and assist me in
the details of composition. I suppose you wouldn't care to come here
two or three evenings a week?"

Richard answered sincerely that nothing would suit him better.

"I should make you joint author, of course. 'Psychology of the
Suburbs,' by Richard Aked and Richard Larch. It sounds rather catchy,
and I think it ought to sell. About four hundred octavo pages, say
a hundred thousand words. Six shillings--must be popular in price.
We might get a royalty of ninepence a copy if we went to the right
publisher. Sixpence for me and threepence for you. Would that do?"

"Oh, perfectly!" But was not Mr. Aked running on rather fast?

"Perhaps we'd better say fivepence halfpenny for me and threepence
halfpenny for you; that would be fairer. Because you'll have to
furnish ideas, you know. 'Psychology of the Suburbs, Psychology of the
Suburbs'! Fine title! We ought to do it in six months."

"I hope you'll be quite well again soon. Then we--"

"Quite well!" he repeated sharply. "I shall be as right as a trivet
to-morrow. You don't suppose that I can't take care of myself! We'll
start at once."

"You're not forgetting, Mr. Aked, that you've never seen any of my
stuff yet? Are you sure I shall be able to do what you want?"

"Oh, you'll do. I've not seen your stuff, but I guess you've got the
literary habit. The literary habit, that's the thing! I'll soon put you
up to the wrinkles, the trade secrets."

"What is your general plan of the book?" Richard asked with some
timidity, fearing to be deemed either stupid or inquisitive at the
wrong moment. He had tried to say something meet for a great occasion,
and failed.

"Oh, I'll go into that at our first formal conference, say next
Friday night. Speaking roughly, each of the great suburban divisions
has, for me at any rate, its own characteristics, its peculiar moral
physiognomy." Richard nodded appreciatively. "Take me blindfold to
any street in London, and I'll discover instantly, from a thousand
hints, where I am. Well, each of these divisions must be described in
turn, not topographically of course, but the inner spirit, the soul
of it. See? People have got into a way of sneering at the suburbs.
Why, the suburbs _are_ London! It is alone the--the concussion of
meeting suburbs in the centre of London that makes the city and West
End interesting. We could show how the special characteristics of the
different suburbs exert a subtle influence on the great central spots.
Take Fulham; no one thinks anything of Fulham, but suppose it were
swept off the face of the earth the effect would be to alter, for the
seeing eye, the character of Piccadilly and the Strand and Cheapside.
The play of one suburb on another and on the central haunts is as
regular, as orderly, as calculable, as the law of gravity itself."

They continued the discussion until Adeline came in again with a tray
in her hands, followed by the little red-armed servant. The two began
to lay the cloth, and the cheerful rattle of crockery filled the
room....

"Sugar, Mr. Larch?" Adeline was saying, when Mr. Aked, looking
meaningly at Richard, ejaculated,--

"Friday then?"

Richard nodded. Adeline eyed her uncle distrustfully.

For some reason, unguessed by Richard, Adeline left them alone
during most of the evening, and in her absence Mr. Aked continued to
discourse, in vague generalities not without a specious poetical charm,
on the subject upon which they were to collaborate, until Richard was
wholly intoxicated with its fascinating possibilities. When he left,
Adeline would not allow Mr. Aked to go to the door, and went herself.

"If I hadn't been very firm," she laughed as they were shaking hands in
the passage, "uncle would have stood talking to you in the street for
goodness knows how long, and forgotten all about his bronchitis. Oh,
you authors, I believe you are every one like babies." Richard smiled
his gratification.

"Mr. Larch, Mr. Larch!" The roguish summons came after him when he was
half-way up the street. He ran back and found her at the gate with her
hands behind her.

"What have you forgotten?" she questioned. He could see her face but
dimly in the twilight of the gas-lamps.

"I know--my umbrella," he answered.

"Didn't I say you were all like--little children!" she said, as she
whipped out the umbrella and gave it to him over the gate.

Anxious at once to add something original to the sum of Mr. Aked's
observations, he purposely chose a round-about route home, through the
western parts of Fulham and past the Salisbury hotel. It seemed to him
that the latent poetry of the suburbs arose like a beautiful vapour
and filled these monotonous and squalid vistas with the scent and the
colour of violets, leaving nothing common, nothing ignoble. In the
upturned eyes of a shop-girl who went by on the arm of her lover he
divined a passion as pure as that of Eugénie Grandet; on the wrinkled
countenance of an older woman he beheld only the nobility of suffering;
a youth who walked alone, smoking a cigarette, was a pathetic figure
perhaps condemned to years of solitude in London. When there was no
one else to see, he saw Adeline,--Adeline with her finger on her
lips, Adeline angry with her uncle, Adeline pouring out tea, Adeline
reaching down his hat from the peg, Adeline laughing at the gate.
There was something about Adeline that.... How the name suited her!...
Her past life, judging from the hints she had given, must have been
interesting. Perhaps that accounted for the charm which....

Then he returned to the book. He half regretted that Mr. Aked should
have a hand in it at all. He could do it himself. Just as plainly as if
the idea had been his own, he saw the volume complete, felt the texture
of the paper, admired the disposition of the titlepage, and the blue
buckram binding; he scanned the table of contents, and carelessly eyed
the brief introduction, which was, however, pregnant with meaning;
chapter followed chapter in orderly, scientific fashion, and the
last summoned up the whole business in a few masterly and dignified
sentences. Already, before a single idea had been reduced to words,
"The Psychology of the Suburbs" was finished! A unique work! Other
authors had taken an isolated spot here or there in the suburbs and
dissected it, but none had viewed them in their complex entirety; none
had attempted to extract from their incoherence a coherent philosophy,
to deal with them sympathetically as Mr. Aked and himself had done--or
rather were to do. None had suspected that the suburbs were a riddle,
the answer to which was not undiscoverable. Ah, that secret, that key
to the cipher! He saw it as it might be behind a succession of veils,
flimsy obstructions which just then baffled his straining sight, but
which he would rip and rend when the moment for effort came.

The same lofty sentiments occupied his brain the next morning. He
paused in the knotting of his necktie, to look out of the window,
seeking even in Raphael Street some fragment of that psychology of
environment invented by Mr. Aked. Nor did he search quite in vain. All
the phenomena of humble life, hitherto witnessed daily without a second
thought, now appeared to carry some mysterious meaning which was on the
point of declaring itself. Friday, when the first formal conference
was to occur, seemed distressingly distant. But he remembered that a
very hard day's work, the casting and completing of a gigantic bill of
costs, awaited him at the office, and he decided to throw himself into
it without reserve; the time would pass more quickly.

CHAPTER XIII

Every solicitor's office has its great client, whose affairs,
watchfully managed by the senior partner in person, take precedence of
all else, and whom every member of the staff regards with a particular
respect caught from the principals themselves. Messrs. Curpet and
Smythe were London agents to the tremendous legal firm of Pontifex,
of Manchester, said to enjoy the largest practice in the midlands;
and they were excusably proud of the fact. One of the first lessons
that a new clerk learnt in the establishment at New Serjeant's Court
was that, at no matter what expenditure of time and trouble, Pontifex
business, comprising some scores of separate causes, must be transacted
so irreproachably that old Mr. Pontifex, by repute a terrible fellow,
might never have cause of complaint. On those mornings, happily rare,
when a querulous letter did by chance arrive from Manchester, the whole
office trembled apprehensively, and any clerk likely to be charged with
negligence began at once to consider the advisability of seeking a new
situation.

The Pontifex bill of costs was made up annually in June. As the time
drew near for presenting it, more and more clerks were pressed into its
service, until at the last everyone found himself engaged, in one way
or another, upon this colossal account.

When Richard arrived at the office, he found the immense pile of
white foolscap sheets upon his table, and next it the still higher
pile of blue sheets forming the draft bill. All was finished except
the checking of the figures and the final castings. As the cashier
and accountant, he was ultimately responsible for this. He parcelled
out the sheets, keeping the largest share for himself, and the work
began. In every room there was a low muttering of figures, broken
by an occasional oath when someone happened to lose the thread of
an addition. The principals hovered about, full of solicitude and
encouragement, and, according to custom on such occasions, lunch was
served on the premises at the firm's expense. Richard continued to
add while eating, keeping his head clear and seldom making a mistake;
nothing existed for him but the column of pounds, shillings, and pence
under his eyes.

The pile of finished sheets grew, and soon the office boys, commanded
by Jenkins, were passing the earlier portion of the bill through
the copying-press. As the hours went by, the helpers from other
departments, no longer required, went back to their own neglected
duties, and Richard did the last additions alone. At length the bill
was absolutely finished, and he carried it himself to the stationer's
to be sewed. In half an hour it came back, and he laid it ceremoniously
before Mr. Curpet. The grand total went round the office, leaping
from lip to lip like the result of an important parliamentary poll.
It was higher than in any previous year by nearly a thousand pounds.
Each of the clerks took a personal pride in its bigness, and secretly
determined to petition for an increase of salary at the first
opportunity. They talked together in groups, discussing details, while
a comfortable lassitude spread from room to room.

Richard stood by the open window, absently watching the pigeons and the
cleaners at the Law Courts opposite. In a corner an office boy, new to
his work, was stamping envelopes with slow precision. Jenkins, with one
foot on a table, was tying a shoe lace. It had struck six ten minutes
ago, and everyone was gone except Mr. Smythe, whose departure Jenkins
awaited with impatience. The hot day subsided slowly to a serene and
lovely evening, and the customary noises of the Strand ascended to
Richard like the pastoral hum of a valley to a dweller on a hill, not
breaking but rather completing the stillness of the hour. Gradually his
brain freed itself from the obsession of figures, though he continued
to muse vaguely over the bill, which had just been posted. It would
certainly be settled by cheque within a week, for Messrs. Pontifex were
invariably prompt. That cheque, which he himself would enter and pay
into the bank, amounted to as much as he could earn in twenty years,
if he remained a clerk. He tried to imagine the scene in which, at
some future date, he would give Mr. Curpet notice of his intention to
resign his position, explaining that he preferred to support himself by
literature. The ineffable sweetness of such a triumph! Could he ever
realise it? He could, he must; the alternative of eternal clerkship
was not to be endured. His glance fell on Jenkins. That poor, gay,
careless, vulgar animal would always be a clerk. The thought filled him
with commiseration, and also with pride. Fancy Jenkins writing a book
called "The Psychology of the Suburbs"!

"I'm going to smoke," Jenkins said; "be blowed to Bertie dear." (Mrs.
Smythe had once addressed her husband in the office as "Bertie dear,"