Chapter X: Part III: Elizabeth (3)

And then his moment faded away into the irrevocable past, as she disengaged herself with a gentle, graceful movement, and they stood facing each other in silence. He saw her eyes, inexpressibly mild and soft, droop downwards, as she bent her head; he marked the colour mounting up her cheeks, flushing faintly the whiteness of her neck, and her fingers straying nervously in the thin, golden loop of the chain that fell across her bosom.

The wonder of his emotions dazed him. All that he could realize was that, in the space of a second, their relations had been absolutely changed. Henceforth, she appeared to him in another aspect. Quite suddenly and swiftly they had become isolated from all the countless millions in the world by the sorcery of a kiss. It seemed unreal and absurd to him. He wanted to laugh.

"You had better sit down," she said in a low voice, that had a note of appeal in it. "I hear Ellen coming.... It will not do to let her notice anything...."

Astonishing, he thought, how tranquil and undisturbed she could remain. She could talk to Ellen as if nothing at all had happened; she could hand him sandwiches and prattle about little things as long as Ellen was in the room, and even when the door closed on Ellen she seemed loath to let him speak.

But he stopped her, emboldened by the privilege of his love. He went over to her and, placing his hands on each side of her face, drew her forehead towards his kiss, and looked at her with sparkling, victorious eyes.

"You have made me happier than I have ever been," he said. "I will be very grateful and good to you."

Her eyes met his searchingly. "You will, really?" she asked.

"Really," he said, and he kissed her again.

Now they could talk--he had so much to say. With her acceptance of his pledge, her smiling "Really," and his reply, he became normal again. His thoughts descended from their eminence and came back to their matter-of-fact, everyday plane.

"Tell me," he said, with a lover's vanity, "when did you first know that I loved you?"

"I don't know ..." she said. "Perhaps to-night."

"Only to-night!" he echoed, disappointed. "Oh, I have loved you long before this. I think it began when we went to the forest together that day with the children.... I shall be able to help you with your work," he cried, buoyantly, "or will you drop it now?"

She laughed merrily. "How you hurry things on!" she said. "Give me time to think, like a good boy. We're not going to be married to-morrow, are we?"

"No ... no," he protested, "I didn't mean that. Let's have a really long, lovely engagement. Give me months in which I can do all sorts of things for you; we'll see things together that I've never seen before--museums and picture-galleries. Do you know, there's hundreds of things in London I've never seen."

"Why not?"

"I put off the seeing until I go there with my love."

The consummate joy of the hour infected him. He walked up and down the room promising great things ... vanity and egotism tinged his talk.

"I shall get on, you know. I shall do something great in Fleet Street, one day. There's no knowing where I shall stop. And then there are the books I mean to write. Oh yes! Kenneth's sown the seeds of book-writing in me. And plays ... plays are the things to make money with...."

"You won't need money," she said, kindly. "I have enough for both of us."

"Dearest," he answered. (It seemed the most natural thing in the world, now, that he should call her "dearest.") "You must not say that.... You won't mind waiting, just a little, will you? Until I feel I can come to you and say that I do not need your money.... I can't explain it ... I should never be happy if I took a penny from you."

She took his hand and caressed it. "I like you all the better for that, Humphrey." (He noticed that she did not use the word "love.")

He saw the future splendid, and roseate. He thought, with a smile, of Ferrol. Ferrol could not check him now. He had made his own identity, he was conscious of his own will to achieve that which he set out to do. Besides, there was such a difference between Lilian and Elizabeth.

He emerged from the house, a new being in a new world, living in the amazement of the last hour.

IX

It seemed strange to him that, with such a change in his life, the old work should proceed unaltered: he stood in Rivers' room, listening to Rivers' talk and banter as the news-editor gave him his work to do; he came before Selsey at night, copy in hand; he mingled with the reporters in their big, bare room, talking of the day's paper, and discussing their jobs and their troubles with them; he came into that close, personal contact with men whom he knew, and men who knew him, and yet there was always an abyss that divided his two lives.

So it was with all of them: in their friendship they seemed to say, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no further"; their homes, their private sorrows and eager hopes, the real lives that they lived, in fact, were left behind them with the closing of their house-door, and they came to the office different beings.

Those matters that touched their innermost lives were never discussed. Occasionally, the birth of a baby in the home of a reporter or a sub-editor would bring a queer suggestion of humanity and ordinary life into their affairs: sometimes, the news would filter through of a wife seriously ill in some home at Herne Hill or Wimbledon, and there were solicitous inquiries (Ferrol would send down the greatest specialist in one of those deep, generous moods of his), for the rest they displayed no interest in each other's private affairs.

As a matter of fact, it was assumed, by the law of the Street, that they had no private lives of their own. It is impossible to imagine Humphrey saying: "If you please, I am engaged to be married, may I have the evening off," if at seven in the evening anything from a fire at the docks to the kidnapping of a baby occurred.

Therefore he told no one of the new wonder that had come into his life, not even Tommy Pride, who, by the way, had of late taken to sending out for a glass of whisky and soda, and doing his work with the glass before him on the table. They looked at each other in the reporters' room, and sighed, "Poor old Tommy."

Least of all would he tell Ferrol. He would have liked to have gone to Ferrol, and told him, but he remembered Ferrol's outburst. He was older now, and he could not trust himself to listen calmly to the old arguments. And he felt that it would be a slur on Elizabeth if he were forced to plead the cause of his marriage....

So the days followed each other, and he was happy with that mixed happiness which is, perhaps, the most perfect. After the first great moment when he had declared his love, their relations had fallen back to their original groove. It was safer thus: one could not live always on the exalted plane of that moment.

His love-affair with Elizabeth Carr was of a different calibre from that with Lilian. It was truer, and rested on a firmer basis of friendship, but it lacked the ardour, and the passionate moments and kisses of the days when love held the ascendancy over his work....

Once, when he was moved with most eager desire during one of their lonely meetings, he caught her to him, and kissed her, and he was conscious of an unspoken reproach in her lips and eyes, that took from him, for the moment, all the savour of his love.

It seemed to him that he was most successful when he was not playing the lover, when they met just as if they were rather exceptional friends instead of betrothed, and this irked him from time to time. He wanted to love, and be loved, he wanted to give all and take all. But when, in those rare moods, she answered his kisses recklessly, she was splendidly beautiful and magnificent, atoning lavishly for all that she had withheld from him.

In one thing this wooing ran parallel with the wooing of Lilian: there were the same interruptions and postponement of plans; Fleet Street for ever intruded, and always there was the remorseless, inexorable conflict between his love and his career.

After an unfortunate week of shattered plans for spending an evening together, she sighed impatiently. "I wish you would give up Fleet Street," she said. "You could do better work."

"Oh!" he said, light-heartedly, "one day I will. I'll sit down and write my book. But it's too soon yet."

She looked at him with doubt in her eyes. She seemed to be feeling her way through the dark corridors of his mind.

"But surely you don't like the work," she said.

He laughed. "Some days I don't, and some days I do. Some days I think it loathsome, and some days I think it glorious.... We're all like that."

* * * * *

A day came when he thought it glorious, when Fleet Street gave him of its best, a swift reward for his allegiance.

He was in the reporters' room one evening, talking the latest office gossip with Jamieson and Willoughby, which concerned the marriage of _The Day's_ Miss Minger, with young Hartopp of _The Gazette_. It was an event in Fleet Street, marking, in its way, the end of the epoch of the woman reporter.

"I don't think a reporters' room is a fit place for a woman," Willoughby said. "They're all right for their special work--cooking and dress and weddings, and all that--but hard, right-down chasing after stories is man's work."

"I didn't mind Miss Minger," remarked Humphrey. "She was a jolly good sport, but women have us at a disadvantage. Remember that time when we all fell down on the gun-running story at Harwich, and Miss Minger sailed in, smiled her prettiest, and squeezed a scoop out of them."

"Ah, well," Jamieson said. "They're all the same ... marriage, you know, and a happy home, with jolly children. They soon find out that it's better to let hubby do the reporting.... Hullo, young man Trinder, what do you want?" he said, breaking off as the pink-faced secretary stood in the doorway.

"_You're_ wanted," Trinder said, nodding to Humphrey.

"Me!" said Humphrey. "What's up?"

"Ferrol wants you."

"My word!" said Willoughby. "Are you going to be sacked, or is your salary to be raised?"

"Our blessings on you," cried Jamieson, as he followed Trinder out of the room, upstairs, and along the corridor to Ferrol's door.

Ferrol stood with his hat and coat on waiting for him.

"Oh, Quain," he said, shortly. "Get your things and come along. I want to talk to you."

Humphrey paused, bewildered. "Hurry up," said Ferrol. He took his watch from his pocket, glanced at it, and clicked its case hurriedly. "I've got to be back here at ten."

"Very well, sir," said Humphrey. He ran back to the reporters' room, and gathered together his hat and his coat and his stick.

"What's up?" chorused Jamieson and Willoughby.

"Lord knows!" he gasped. "_He_ wants me to go somewhere or the other with him."

"Most certainly you are either going to be sacked or have your salary raised," remarked Willoughby. "But if you are going to be made editor, be kind to us when you are all-powerful."

"Ass!" laughed Humphrey, in reply.

He went back. Ferrol made a noise of satisfaction, and led the way out of his room, carefully switching off the lights. Down the stairs they went, side by side, Humphrey walking beside the mighty Ferrol, just as he did in his dreams. Down the stairs they went, and the men coming up--his colleagues--raised their hats to Ferrol, for they always gave him respect, and the heart of him throbbed with the strangeness of it all.

The commissionaire saluted stiffly, and gazed at Humphrey with a new esteem. A small boy in uniform darted with haste before them, and opened the door of a limousine car, reflecting the lights of the night in its lacquered brilliance. The chauffeur touched the polished peak of his hat. It seemed that everybody paid homage to Ferrol, greatest of all men in the eyes of Humphrey Quain.

For this man was the symbol, the personification of the Street and the paper for which he had worked with all his heart, with all his might, and with all his soul.

He stood aside to let Ferrol step into the car first, but Ferrol, with a smile, urged him into the lighted interior. He received an impression of superlative comfort and riches in that small, blue-lined room with its little electric lamp overhead. There were rugs of deliciously soft camel-hair, and, as he settled in the yielding cushions, his outstretched feet struck something hard, that gave warmth instantly, even through the leather of his boots. A silver cone-shaped holder, filled with red roses, confronted him; their very scent suggested ease and luxury. There were touches of silver everywhere: an ash-tray at his right hand, a whistle attached to a speaking tube, and a row of books in a silver case--an A B C Railway Guide, a diary, an address book, and a postal guide. They gave the Ferrol touch of concentrated energy, even in these surroundings of comfortable, upholstered rest.

The car sped along with a soft movement, almost noiseless, except for the low purring of its engines. Through the windows, past the strong face of Ferrol, he caught glimpses of a wet world with people walking upon their own reflections in the glistening pavements, of ragged beggars slouching along with hunched-up shoulders, of streaming crowds passing and repassing, ignoring entirely the passage of this splendid, immaculate room on wheels, never questioning the right of those people within it to the shelter which was denied to them.

And he felt extraordinarily remote from all these people: an odd thrill of contempt for them moved him to think: "What fools they are not to get cars for themselves." It was as if he had been suddenly translated to another world: a world inhabited by a superior race of men and women, almost god-like in the power of their possessions, who looked down on other struggling mortals from their exalted plane, with a vision blurred by warmth and security.

The silence enchanted him. If Ferrol had spoken, the spell of that journey would have been snapped. The silence enabled him to enjoy to the full the extraordinary sensation of being whirled along in the darkness by the side of Ferrol towards some unknown destiny. The discipline had made him always regard Ferrol with awe; but now, as he sat wrapped in the warm rugs of the motor-car, the social barriers dropped. He wondered why Ferrol was doing this.

The speed of the car slackened gradually. He caught a glimpse of railings and the lights shining among the trees, bringing back to him the old memories of his first impression of the park. But they were on the Kensington side, and the breadth of the park from Bayswater to Kensington made all the difference. Here there seemed to be a culture and dignity in the very houses themselves: they did not suggest the overbearing, self-made prosperity of that broad road that ran parallel with it on the other side of the trees and meadows.

A servant stood by the open door of the car. His face was implacably dignified. His white shirt-front and tie were splendidly correct for his station, in that he wore three obvious bone studs and a black tie. He held the door of the house open, and Humphrey followed Ferrol inside.

He had been to many houses such as this as a reporter, when he had waited with a sense of social inferiority in halls hung with old masters, and furnished with rare old oak ... at those times the servants had treated him with a mixture of deference and contempt. But this was different: respectful, eager hands relieved him of his coat and hat; vaguely he knew he had to follow one of the owners of these hands up a broad staircase, along a soft carpeted passage, to a room which, suddenly flooded with light, showed its possession of a basin fitted with shining silver taps. He washed luxuriously; the towels were warm to the touch. He felt at peace with the world.

Down the stairs again, with a portrait on the white panelled wall for each step, to the inner hall lined with tapestries and brocade, where a bronze statue held an electric torch aloft to light the way to the dining-room.

Ferrol was standing by the fire. "Chilly to-night," he said, as Humphrey came into the room. His voice echoed in the spacious loneliness of the room.

"Yes," said Humphrey, "it is." He hesitated a moment, and then added "sir." It seemed the correct thing to do, though Ferrol and he might have been, for all that had happened in the last half-hour, excellent personal friends, of equal status in the world.

"Come and warm yourself," said Ferrol, motioning him to a high-backed chair by the fire. Humphrey sat down, and put his hands to the fire. This room with its bright lights and its high ceiling filled him with a realization of his own comparative poverty. The walls, again, reflected the artistic in Ferrol.

His glance wandered to the table. Dishes of delicacies in aspic and mayonnaise gave colour to the white glitter of glass and silver. A bowl of great chrysanthemums rose out of the centre-piece of crystal, whose lower tiers were crowded with peaches, apricots, green figs, grapes, and other exotic fruits....

A whimsical vision came to him of a sausage-shop in Fleet Street where, often, kept late on a job, without opportunity for dinner, he had sat on a high stool at the counter eating sausages and onions and potatoes as they came hot from the sizzling trays of fat in the window. The thought made him smile.

"What's the joke?" asked Ferrol, smiling too.

Humphrey went a diffident pink. After all, why shouldn't he tell Ferrol? He was quite right: the great man bubbled with laughter. He saw the ingenuousness of the thought. It endeared Humphrey to him.

"Ah, young man," he said, "I know that shop."

Humphrey's eyebrows raised.

"I've passed it many a time and seen the inviting sausages. By God!" he continued, bringing his fist down on the mantelpiece, "I'd give you everything on the table, every night of your life, if I could go in and sit at the counter and eat them." He laughed. "So don't you be in too much of a hurry to give up sausages."

A servant appeared, bearing a silver soup-tureen. Ferrol sat at the top of the table, and Humphrey took the seat at his right hand. The soup was clear and delicious, possessing a faint, elusive flavour of sherry. While he was eating, he became aware of the butler pouring light-coloured wine into a high stemmed glass. He looked up and saw Ferrol regarding his wine glass.

"It's all I drink," said Ferrol. "A little hock with dinner. In my day, many a fellow was ruined with too much drink. Are they as bad now?" he asked.

It was a strange experience to have Ferrol question him on the doings of the Street.

"Oh no!" he said, hastily, "there's not much of that now. Perhaps a half dozen or so here and there, but nothing serious." (But he thought of the shaking hand of Tommy Pride as he spoke.)

"None of my men drink, eh?" Ferrol said. It was more of an assertion than a query. "Do you know we've got the finest staff in London--in England."

During the whole of that delightful dinner Humphrey listened to Ferrol talking about the men with whom he worked. He knew them all: knew all that they had done, and all that they were capable of doing. He asked Humphrey's opinion on this man and that man, and listened attentively to the reply. Sometimes Humphrey made a joke, and Ferrol laughed.

And, as the dinner progressed, and the clear, cold wine invigorated his mind and warmed his perceptions, he conceived a greater liking for this man, who was so human at the core of him. In the office one saw him with the distorted, disciplined view, as an unapproachable demi-god, surrounded by people who sacrificed his name to their own advancement. Ah! if one could always be on these terms of privileged intimacy with him, what a difference it would make in the work. If one dared tell Ferrol of the obstacles and the petty humiliations that obscured the path to good work for the sake of the paper....

"Tell me," said Ferrol, suddenly, pushing bunches of black grapes towards him--"tell me about Easterham, and your life there."

Now, what could there be in Easterham and its monotonous life to interest Ferrol, thought Humphrey.

Nevertheless, he told him of Easterham, and the _Easterham Gazette_ on which he had worked. That amused Ferrol vastly. And he had to answer oddly insistent questions--to describe the Market Square, and the Cathedral close, with its rooks and ivy. It astonished him to find how interested Ferrol was in these little things, and almost before he was aware of it, he found himself speaking of personal matters, of things that touched his own inner, private life, of his aunt (with her stern gospel of "Getting On"), of the mother whom he did not remember, and of Daniel Quain, his father.

And as he talked on, he saw suddenly that Ferrol was listening in a detached manner, and it occurred to him that he had rather overstepped the limits of a reply to a polite inquiry. He became confused and shy. His reminiscences withered within him. Ferrol tried to urge him along the old track.

"He's only doing it out of politeness," thought Humphrey. "I shan't tell him any more. He's making fun of me."

He cracked walnuts in silence and sipped at the port. (Ferrol touched neither nuts nor wine.) He did not interpret that air of detached interest with which Ferrol had listened to him as meaning anything else but boredom.

He did not know that, as he was speaking, the old years came back again to Ferrol, bringing with them once again the vision of Margaret and those secret walks outwards from Easterham, under the white moon of romance and love and supple youth that could be his never more.

Ferrol sighed.

"You ought to be very happy," he said. "I think the happiest time of my life was when I was reporting."

"Were you ever a reporter?" asked Humphrey.

"Oh yes! I didn't buy _The Day_ at once."

He rose and went to a cabinet to fetch silver and enamelled boxes of cigars and cigarettes. The cigarettes were oval and fat.

"I don't think you've had enough scope," said Ferrol, handing him a lighted match. "You've done well ... not as well as I hoped ... but perhaps you'd do better elsewhere."

A peculiar sensation attacked Humphrey in the regions of his throat and heart. ("Most certainly you are to have your salary raised or be sacked.") He waited tensely.

The butler came into the room, apologetically.

"Half-past nine, sir," he said; "the car's waiting, sir."

"Oh--yes. I forgot. I've got to be back at the office.... All right, Wilson.

"Let me see--what was I saying.... Oh yes, broader scope. Can you speak French?" he asked abruptly.

"Just what I learnt at school.... I can read the papers."

"You'll easily pick it up.... Look here, I'll give you a lift back to Fleet Street. Do you want to go there?"

"Yes," said Humphrey, and then, suddenly, for some odd reason, he thought of Elizabeth. He was not very sure of his geography, but the street in which she lived could not be far from here. "I think I'd rather walk, if you don't mind.... I've got a call to make." He wanted to tell Elizabeth how splendid Ferrol had been to him.

"Oh well! It doesn't matter. Come and see me at twelve to-morrow. I'm going to send you to Paris."

"Paris!" echoed Humphrey, as if Ferrol had promised him Paradise.

"Paris," repeated Ferrol. "We're changing our correspondent."

X

He did not go to Elizabeth that night: he walked, in a dream, past Knightsbridge and up Piccadilly, contemplating the fulfilment of all his dreams. Everything seemed possible now. He was a young man--and Ferrol was going to give him Paris; he was a young man--and Elizabeth had given him her love. The sequence of this thought was significant.

It would be very fine to tell her.... At last he was lifted out of the rut into a field of new endeavour. From Paris the path led to other cities, of course--to Petersburg, Vienna, and Rome. One day he would see them all. Life became at once very broad and open.

He walked on, an un-noteworthy figure in the throng of people that moved along Piccadilly, his thoughts surging with the prospects of his new life.

"Humphrey Quain ... Paris Correspondent of _The Day_."

He murmured that to himself. Glorious title! Splendid Ferrol. How noble was this work in Fleet Street, holding out great promises to those who served it well, and sacrificed everything on its altar. How could one abandon a calling where fortune may change in a moment?

He passed through astonishing ranks of women whose eyes and lips simulated love: one or two of them spoke to him in foreign accents. He passed on across the Circus where the lights of the Variety Theatres made a blur of yellow in the nebulous night.

His steps led him again to Fleet Street, and he walked with the joy of a man treading the soil of his own country. It was always the same when he passed the Griffin: deep satisfaction took hold of him at the sight of the signs in all the buildings, telling of newspapers all the world over, in this narrow Street in which the lives of him and his kind were centred. The fascination of the Street was perpetual. It belonged to him. It belonged to all of them. At every hour of the day and night there were always friends to be met.

He turned into the cheery warmth of the Pen Club--friends everywhere and Fleet Street smiling! There was laughter at the wooden counter, where Larkin was telling some story to a group of men.

"Well, the next day I thought I'd go up and inquire after his lordship's health. The butler was very kind. 'Come in,' he said. 'His lordship's expecting you.' So up I went, thinking I was going to get a fine story--he was supposed to be dangerously ill in bed, mind you."

Humphrey joined the group and listened. ("Have a drink?" said Larkin, turning to him. "It's my shout.")

"Well," continued Larkin, "when I got to the room, there was his lordship in pants and undervest--you know how fat he is--with dumb-bells in his hands and whirling his arms about like a windmill. 'Do I _look_ like a dying man?' he said, dancing lightly on his toes. 'Go back, young man, and tell your editor what you've seen. Good-morning.'"

"Talking of funny experiences," said one of the others, "I remember--" And so it went on, story after story, of real things happening in the most extraordinary way. It was all this that Humphrey enjoyed, this inter-change of experiences, this telling of stories that were never written in newspapers, that belonged alone to them.

Presently Tommy Pride came in. "Hullo all!" he said, "Hullo! young Quain--been busy to-day?"

They sat down together, and Humphrey noticed that Tommy's face had changed greatly, even in the last few months. The flesh was loose and colourless, and the eyes had a nervous, wandering look in them.

"Ferrol's going to send me to Paris--he told me so to-night," Humphrey blurted out.

"Splendid," said Tommy. "Good for you." And then a look of great pathos crept into his eyes, and he seemed to grow very old all at once. "I wish I had all your chances," he said wistfully. "I wonder what will be the end of me.... I hear they're making changes."

"Don't you bother," Humphrey said. "Ferrol knows what you're worth.... But, I say, Tommy, you don't mind, do you ... aren't you taking too much of _that_," he pointed to the whisky glass.

"Oh, hell! What does it matter," said Tommy. "What does anything matter.... I'm a little worried ... they're thinking of making changes," he repeated aimlessly.

* * * * *

It was all settled in a few minutes the next morning. The Paris appointment was definitely confirmed: he was to leave immediately. He hastened to Elizabeth to tell her the wonderful news. It never occurred to him that she could be otherwise than pleased and proud at his success. But her manner was recondite and baffling.

"Have you accepted the post?" she asked.

"Why, of course," he said. "How could I refuse such a chance."

She regarded him dubiously. "No--you could not refuse it. I don't blame you for not refusing it. I think I know how you feel...."

"It's splendid!" Humphrey cried. His voice rang with enthusiasm. "Fancy Ferrol singling me out. It will be the making of me.... It might lead to anything."

"But weren't you only going to stay in journalism for another year, Humphrey?"

"Oh, of course, when I said that, I couldn't foresee that this was going to happen.... Elizabeth," he said suddenly, with a great fear on him, "do you want me to give it up now?"

"No ... no," she said in haste. "You don't understand. It's so difficult to make you see. I wasn't prepared for this...." She laughed for no reason at all. "I am glad of your success. I am glad you're happy.... Of course, you don't expect me to come to Paris, like this, at a moment's notice. You must give me time."

He smiled with relief. "Why, of course, I didn't imagine I could carry you away at once.... But after a few months, perhaps. It will take me a few months to get used to the work."

"Yes," she agreed, "after a few months. We shall see."

Her face was strangely sorrowful. Her attitude perplexed him. It hurt him to find that she did not share in his rejoicings. It took away some of the savour of his success.

He thought he was the master of his destiny. He could not discern the hand of Ferrol moving him again towards a crisis in his life.