A Man from the North

CHAPTER XXIII

They had been to the National Gallery; it was Saturday afternoon. Adeline said that she would go home; but Richard, not without a little trouble, persuaded her to dine in town first; he mentioned a French restaurant in Soho.

As they walked up Charing Cross Road, he pointed out the Crabtree, and referred to the fact that at one time he had frequented it regularly. She stopped to look at its white-and-gold frontage. In enamel letters on the windows were the words: "Table d'hôte, 6 to 9, 1/6."

"Is it a good place?" she asked.

"The best in London – of that kind."

"Then let us dine there; I have often wanted to try a vegetarian restaurant."

Richard protested that she would not like it.

"How do you know? If you have been so often, why shouldn't I go once?" She smiled at him, and turned to cross the street; he hung back.

"But I only went for economy."

"Then we will only go for economy to-day."

He dangled before her the attractions of the French restaurant in Soho, but to no purpose. He was loth to visit the Crabtree. Most probably Miss Roberts would be on duty within, and he felt an inscrutable unwillingness to be seen by her with Adeline… At last they entered. Looking through the glass doors which lead to the large, low-ceiled dining-room on the first floor, Richard saw that it was nearly empty, and that the cash-desk, where Miss Roberts was accustomed to sit, was for the moment unoccupied. He led the way in rather hurriedly, and selected places in a far corner. Although it was scarcely beginning to be dusk, the table electric lights were turned on, and their red shades made glimmering islands of radiance about the room.

Richard kept a furtive watch on the cash-desk; presently he saw Miss Roberts take her seat behind it, and shifted his glance to another quarter. He was preoccupied, and answered at random Adeline's amused queries as to the food. Between the soup and the entrée they were kept waiting; and Adeline, Richard being taciturn, moved her chair in order to look round the room. Her roving eyes stopped at the cash-desk, left it, and returned to it. Then a scornful smile, albeit scarcely perceptible, appeared on her face; but she said nothing. Richard saw her glance curiously at the cash-desk several times, and he knew, too, that Miss Roberts had discovered them. In vain he assured himself that Miss Roberts was not concerned in his affairs; he could not dismiss a sensation of uneasiness and discomfort. Once he fancied that the eyes of the two girls met, and that both turned away suddenly.

When the dinner was over, and they were drinking the coffee for which the Crabtree is famous, Adeline said abruptly, —

"I know someone here."

"Oh!" said Richard, with fictitious nonchalance. "Who?"

"The girl at the pay-desk, – Roberts, her name is."

"Where have you met her?" he inquired.

Adeline laughed inimically. He was startled, almost shocked, by the harsh mien which transformed her face.

"You remember one night, just before uncle died," she began, bending towards him, and talking very quietly. "Someone called while you and I were in the sitting-room, to inquire how he was. That was Laura Roberts. She used to know uncle – she lives in our street. He made love to her – she didn't care for him, but he had money and she encouraged him. I don't know how far it went – I believe I stopped it. Oh! men are the strangest creatures. Fancy, she's not older than me, and uncle was over fifty!"

"Older than you, surely!" Richard put in.

"Well, not much. She knew I couldn't bear her, and she called that night simply to annoy me."

"What makes you think that?"

"Think! I know it… But you must have heard of the affair. Didn't they talk about it at your office?"

"I believe it was mentioned once," he said hastily.

She leaned back in her chair, with the same hard smile. Richard felt sure that Miss Roberts had guessed they were talking about herself, and that her eyes were fixed on them, but he dared not look up for confirmation; Adeline gazed boldly around her. They were antagonistic, these two women, and Richard, do what he would, could not repress a certain sympathy with Miss Roberts. If she had encouraged Mr. Aked's advances, what of that? It was no mortal sin, and he could not appreciate the reason of Adeline's strenuous contempt for her. He saw a little gulf widening between himself and Adeline.

"What tremendously red hair that girl has!" she said, later on.

"Yes, but doesn't it look fine!"

"Ye-es," Adeline agreed condescendingly.

When he paid the bill, on the way out, Miss Roberts greeted him with an inclination of the head. He met her eye steadily, and tried not to blush. As she checked the bill with a tapping pencil, he could not help remarking her face. Amiability, candour, honesty, were clearly written on its attractive plainness. He did not believe that she had been guilty of running after Mr. Aked for the sake of his money. The tales told by Jenkins were doubtless ingeniously exaggerated; and as for Adeline, Adeline was mistaken.

"Good evening," Miss Roberts said simply, as they went out. He raised his hat.

"You know her, then!" Adeline exclaimed in the street.

"Well," he answered, "I've been going there, off and on, for a year or two, and one gets acquainted with the girls." His tone was rather petulant. With a quick, winning smile, she changed the subject, and he suspected her of being artful.

CHAPTER XXIV

"I am going to America," she said.

They sat in the sitting-room at Carteret street. Richard had not seen her since the dinner at the vegetarian restaurant, and these were almost the first words she addressed to him. Her voice was as tranquil as usual; but he discerned, or thought he discerned, in her manner a consciousness that she was guilty towards him, that at least she was not treating him justly.

The blow was like that of a bullet: he did not immediately feel it.

"Really?" he questioned foolishly, and then, though he knew that she would never return: "For how long are you going, and how soon?"

"Very soon, because I always do things in a hurry. I don't know for how long. It's indefinite. I have had a letter from my uncles in San Francisco, and they say I must join them; they can't do without me. They are making a lot of money now, and neither of them is married… So I suppose I must obey like a good girl. You see I have no relatives here, except Aunt Grace."

"You many never come back to England?"

(Did she colour, or was it Richard's fancy?)

"Well, I expect I may visit Europe sometimes. It wouldn't do to give England up entirely. There are so many nice things in England, – in London especially…"

Once, in late boyhood, he had sat for an examination which he felt confident of passing. When the announcement arrived that he failed, he could not believe it, though all the time he knew it to be true. His thoughts ran monotonously: "There must be some mistake; there must be some mistake!" and like a little child in the night, he resolutely shut his eyes to keep out the darkness of the future. The same puerility marked him now. Assuming that Adeline fulfilled her intention, his existence in London promised to be tragically cheerless. But this gave him no immediate concern, because he refused to contemplate the possibility of their intimacy being severed. He had, indeed, ceased to think; somewhere at the back of the brain his thoughts lay in wait for him. For the next two hours (until he left the house) he lived mechanically, as it were, and not by volition, subsisting merely on a previously acquired momentum.

He sat in front of her and listened. She began to talk of her uncles Mark and Luke. She described them in detail, told stories of her childhood, even recounted the common incidents of her daily life with them. She dwelt on their kindness of heart, and their affection for herself; and with it all she seemed a little to patronise them, as though she had been accustomed to regard them as her slaves.

"They are rather old-fashioned," she said, "unless they have altered. Since I heard from them, I have been wondering what they would think about my going to theatres and so on – with you."

"What should they think?" Richard broke in. "There's nothing whatever in that. London isn't a provincial town, or even an American city."

"I shall tell them all about you," she went on, "and how kind you were to me when I scarcely knew you at all. You couldn't have been kinder if you'd been my only cousin."

"Say 'brother,'" he laughed awkwardly.

"No, really, I'm quite serious. I never thanked you properly. Perhaps I seemed to take it all as a matter of course."

He wished to heaven she would stop.

"I'm disgusted that you are going," he grumbled, putting his hands behind his head, – "disgusted."

"In many ways I am sorry too. But don't you think I am doing the right thing?"

"How am I to tell?" he returned quickly. "All I know is that when you go I shall be left all alone by my little self. You must think of me sometimes in my lonely garret." His tone was light and whimsical, but she would not follow his lead.

"I shall often think of you," she said musingly, scanning intently the toe of her shoe.

It seemed to him that she desired to say something serious, to justify herself to him, but could not gather courage to frame the words.

When he got out of the house, his thoughts sprang forth. It was a chilly night; he turned up the collar of his overcoat, plunged his hands deep into the pockets, and began to walk hurriedly, heedlessly, while examining his feelings with curious deliberation. In the first place, he was inexpressibly annoyed. "Annoyed," – that was the right word. He could not say that he loved her deeply, or that there was a prospect of his loving her deeply, but she had become a delightful factor in his life, and he had grown used to counting upon her for society. Might he not, in time, conceivably have asked her to marry him? Might she not conceivably have consented? In certain directions she had disappointed him; beyond doubt her spiritual narrowness had checked the growth of a passion which he had sedulously cherished and fostered in himself. Yet, in spite of that, her feminine grace, her feminine trustfulness, still exercised a strong and delicate charm. She was a woman and he was a man, and each was the only friend the other had; and now she was going away. The mere fact that she found a future with her uncles in America more attractive than the life she was then leading, cruelly wounded his self-love. He, then, was nothing to her, after all; he had made no impression; she could relinquish him without regret! At that moment she seemed above and beyond him. He was the poor earthling; she the winged creature that soared in freedom now here, now there, giving her favours lightly, and as lightly withdrawing them.

One thing came out clear: he was an unlucky fellow.

He ran over in his mind the people who would remain to him in London when she had gone. Jenkins, Miss Roberts – Bah! how sickeningly commonplace were they! She was distinguished. She had an air, a je ne sais quoi, which he had never observed in a woman before. He recalled her gowns, her gestures, her turns of speech, – all the instinctive touches by which she proved her superiority.

It occurred to him fancifully that there was a connection between her apparently sudden resolve to leave England, and their visit to the Crabtree and encounter with Miss Roberts. He tried to see in that incident a premonition of misfortune. What morbid fatuity!

Before he went to sleep that night he resolved that at their next meeting he would lead the conversation to a frank discussion of their relations and "have it out with her." But when he called at Carteret Street two days later, he found it quite impossible to do any such thing. She was light-hearted and gay, and evidently looked forward to the change of life with pleasure. She named the day of departure, and mentioned that she had arranged to take Lottie with her. She consulted him about a compromise, already effected, with her landlord as to the remainder of the tenancy, and said she had sold the furniture as it stood, for a very small sum, to a dealer. It hurt him to think that she had given him no opportunity of actively assisting her in the hundred little matters of business involved in a change of hemisphere. What had become of her feminine reliance upon him?

He felt as if some object was rapidly approaching to collide with and crush him, and he was powerless to hinder it.

Three days, two days, one day more!

CHAPTER XXV

The special train for Southampton, drawn up against the main-line platform at Waterloo, seemed to have resigned itself with an almost animal passivity to the onslaught of the crowd of well-dressed men and women who were boarding it. From the engine a thin column of steam rose lazily to the angular roof, where a few sparrows fluttered with sudden swoops and short flights. The engine-driver leaned against the side of the cab, stroking his beard; the stoker was trimming coal on the tender. Those two knew the spectacle by heart: the scattered piles of steamer trunks amidst which passengers hurried hither and thither with no apparent object; the continual purposeless opening and shutting of carriage doors; the deferential gestures of the glittering guard as he bent an ear to ladies whose footmen stood respectfully behind them; the swift movements of the bookstall clerk selling papers, and the meditative look of the bookstall manager as he swept his hand along the shelf of new novels and selected a volume which he could thoroughly recommend to the customer in the fur coat; the long colloquies between husbands and wives, sons and mothers, daughters and fathers, fathers and sons, lovers and lovers, punctuated sometimes by the fluttering of a handkerchief, or the placing of a hand on a shoulder; the unconcealed agitation of most and the carefully studied calm of a few; the grimaces of porters when passengers had turned away; the slow absorption by their train of all the luggage and nearly all the people; the creeping of the clock towards the hour; the kisses; the tears; the lowering of the signal, – to them it was no more than a common street-scene.

Richard, having obtained leave from the office, arrived at a quarter to twelve. He peered up and down. Could it be that she was really going? Not even yet had he grown accustomed to the idea, and at times he still said to himself, "It isn't really true; there must be some mistake." The moment of separation, now that it was at hand, he accused of having approached sneakingly to take him unawares. He was conscious of no great emotion, such as his æsthetic sense of fitness might have led him to expect, – nothing but a dull joylessness, the drab, negative sensations of a convict foretasting a sentence of years.

There she stood, by the bookstall, engaged in lively talk with the clerk, while other customers waited. Lottie was beside her, holding a bag. The previous night they had slept at Morley's Hotel.

"Everything is all right, I hope?" he said, eyeing her narrowly, and feeling extremely sentimental.

"Yes, thank you… Lottie, you must go and keep watch over our seats… Well," she went on briskly, when they were left alone, "I am actually going. I feel somehow as if it can't be true."

"Why, that is exactly how I have felt for days!" he answered, allowing his voice to languish, and then fell into silence. He assiduously coaxed himself into a mood of resigned melancholy. With sidelong glances, as they walked quietly down the platform, he scanned her face, decided it was divine, and dwelt lovingly on the thought: "I shall never see it again."

"A dull day for you to start!" he murmured, in tones of gentle concern.

"Yes, and do you know, a gentleman in the hotel told me we should be certain to have bad weather, and that made me so dreadfully afraid that I nearly resolved to stay in England." She laughed.

"Ah, if you would!" he had half a mind to exclaim, but just then he became aware of his affectation and trampled on it. The conversation proceeded naturally to the subject of seasickness and the little joys and perils of the voyage. Strange topics for a man and a woman about to be separated, probably for ever! And yet Richard, for his part, could think of none more urgent.

"I had better get in now, had I not?" she said. The clock stood at five minutes to noon. Her face was sweetly serious as she raised it to his, holding out her hand.

"Take care of yourself," was his fatuous parting admonition.

Her hand rested in his own, and he felt it tighten. Beneath the veil the colour deepened a little in her rosy cheeks.

"I didn't tell you," she said abruptly, "that my uncles had begged me to go to them weeks and weeks ago. I didn't tell you – and I put them off – because I thought I would wait and see if you and I – cared for each other."

It had come, the explanation! He blushed red, and stuck to her hand. The atmosphere was suddenly electric. The station and the crowd were blotted out.

"You understand?" she questioned, smiling bravely.

"Yes."

He was dimly conscious of having shaken hands with Lottie, of the banging of many doors, of Adeline's face framed in a receding window. Then the rails were visible beside the platform, and he had glimpses of people hurriedly getting out of the train at the platform opposite. In the distance the signal clattered to the horizontal. He turned round, and saw only porters, and a few forlorn friends of the voyagers; one woman was crying.

Instead of going home from the office, he rambled about the thoroughfares which converge at Piccadilly Circus, basking in the night-glare of the City of Pleasure. He had four pounds in his pocket. The streets were thronged with swiftly rolling vehicles. Restaurants and theatres and music halls, in evening array, offered their gorgeous enticements, and at last he entered the Café Royal, and, ordering an elaborate dinner, ate it slowly, with thoughtful enjoyment. When he had finished, he asked the waiter to bring a "Figaro." But there appeared to be nothing of interest in that day's "Figaro," and he laid it down… The ship had sailed by this time. Had Adeline really made that confession to him just before the train started, or was it a fancy of his? There was something fine about her disconcerting frankness … fine, fine… And the simplicity of it! He had let slip a treasure. Because she lacked artistic sympathies, he had despised her, or at best underestimated her. And once – to think of it! – he had nearly loved her… With what astonishing rapidity their intimacy had waxed, drooped, and come to sudden death!.. Love, what was love? Perhaps he loved her now, after all…

"Waiter!" He beckoned with a quaint movement of his forefinger which brought a smile to the man's face – a smile which Richard answered jovially.

"Sir?"

"A shilling cigar, please, and a coffee and cognac."

At about nine o'clock he went out again into the chill air, and the cigar burnt brightly between his lips. He had unceremoniously dismissed the too importunate image of Adeline, and he was conscious of a certain devil-may-care elation.

Women were everywhere on the pavements. They lifted their silk skirts out of the mud, revealing ankles and lace petticoats. They smiled on him. They lured him in foreign tongues and in broken English. He broadly winked at some of the more youthful ones, and they followed him importunately, only to be shaken off with a laugh. As he walked, he whistled or sang all the time. He was cut adrift, he explained to himself, and through no fault of his own. His sole friend had left him (much she cared!), and there was none to whom he owed the slightest consideration. He was at liberty to do what he liked, without having to consider first, "What would she think of this?" Moreover, he must discover solace, poor blighted creature! Looking down a side street, he saw a man talking to a woman. He went past them, and heard what they said. Then he was in Shaftesbury Avenue. Curious sensations fluttered through his frame. With an insignificant oath, he nerved himself to a resolve.

Several times he was on the very point of carrying it out when his courage failed. He traversed the Circus, got as far as St. James's Hall, and returned upon his steps. In a minute he was on the north side of Coventry Street. He looked into the faces of all the women, but in each he found something to repel, to fear.

Would it end in his going quietly home? He crossed over into the seclusion of Whitcomb Street to argue the matter. As he was passing the entry to a court, a woman came out, and both had to draw back to avoid a collision.

"Chéri!" she murmured. She was no longer young, but her broad, Flemish face showed kindliness and good humour in every feature of it, and her voice was soft. He did not answer, and she spoke to him again. His spine assumed the consistency of butter; a shuddering thrill ran through him. She put her arm gently into his, and pressed it. He had no resistance…

CHAPTER XXVI

It was the morning of Boxing Day, frosty, with a sky of steel grey; the streets were resonant under the traffic.

Richard had long been anticipating the advent of the New Year, when new resolutions were to come into force. A phrase from a sermon heard at Bursley stuck in his memory: Every day begins a new year. But he could not summon the swift, courageous decision necessary to act upon that adage. For a whole year he had been slowly subsiding into a bog of lethargy, and to extricate himself would, he felt, need an amount of exertion which he could not put forth unless fortified by all the associations of the season for such feats, and by the knowledge that fellow-creatures were bracing themselves for a similar difficult wrench.

Now that he looked back upon them, the fourteen months which had elapsed since Adeline's departure seemed to have succeeded one another with marvellous rapidity. At first he had chafed under the loss of her, and then gradually and naturally he had grown used to her absence. She wrote to him, a rather long letter, full of details about the voyage and the train journey and her uncles' home; he had opened the envelope half expecting that the letter might affect him deeply; but it did not; it struck him as a distinctly mediocre communication. He sent a reply, and the correspondence ended. He did not love her, probably never had loved her. A little sentiment: that was all. The affair was quite over. If it had been perhaps unsatisfactory, the fault was not his. A man, he reflected, cannot by taking thought fall in love (and yet this was exactly what he had attempted to do!), and that in any case Adeline would not have suited him. Still, at moments when he recalled her face and gestures, her exquisite feminality, and especially her fine candour at their parting, he grew melancholy and luxuriously pitied himself.

At the commencement of the year which was now drawing to a close he had attacked the art of literature anew, and had compassed several articles; but as one by one they suffered rejection, his energy had dwindled, and in a short time he had again entirely ceased to write. Nor did he pursue any ordered course of study. He began upon a number of English classics, finishing few of them, and continued to consume French novels with eagerness. Sometimes the French work, by its neat, severe effectiveness, would stir in him a vague desire to do likewise, but no serious sustained effort was made.

In the spring, when loneliness is peculiarly wearisome, he had joined a literary and scientific institution, for young men only, upon whose premises it was forbidden either to drink intoxicants or to smoke tobacco. He paid a year's subscription, and in less than a fortnight loathed not only the institution but every separate member and official of it. Then he thought of transplanting himself to the suburbs, but the trouble of moving the library of books which by this time he had accumulated deterred him, as well as a lazy aversion for the discomforts which a change would certainly involve.