Chapter IV: Part II: Lilian (2)

He went to the reporters' room; nobody was there except Wratten, just finishing his work. Humphrey sat down at a desk, and began to write. His brain was whirling with the facts he had learnt; they tumbled over one another, until he did not know how to tell them all. He started to write, and he found that he could not even begin the story. He tore up sheet after sheet in despair. The clock went past the quarter and Humphrey was still staring helplessly at the blank paper. Wratten finished his work and dashed out with his copy to the sub-editor's room.

"I'm drunk," he said to himself. "That's what's the matter."

And later: "What a fool I was to drink so much."

And then, as if in excuse: "But I shouldn't have got the story if I hadn't drunk with them."

A boy came to him. "Mr Selsey says have you got the first sheets of your story."

"Tell him he'll have them in a few minutes," Humphrey said.

And when Wratten came into the room he found Humphrey with his head on his outstretched arms, and his shoulders shaken with his sobbing.

"Hullo! What's up, old man?" asked Wratten, bending over him. "Not well?"

Humphrey lifted a red-eyed face to Wratten. "I'm drunk," he said. "My head's awful."

"Bosh!" Wratten said cheerfully, "you're sober enough. Selsey's delighted you've got your story. I suppose it was a hard story to get."

Humphrey groaned. "I can't write it.... I can't get even the beginning of it."

"That happens to all of us. I have to begin my story half a dozen times before I get the right one. Look here, let me help you. Tell me as much as you can." He touched the bell, and a boy appeared. "Go and get a cup of black coffee--a large cup, Napoleon," he said jovially to the boy, giving him a sixpenny piece.

By the time the coffee had arrived, Humphrey had told Wratten the story. "By George!" said Wratten, "that's fine! Now, let's do it between ourselves. Don't bother about plans. Start right in with the main facts and put them at the top. Always begin with the fact, and tell the story in the first two paragraphs--then you've got the rest of the column to play about in."

The coffee woke Humphrey up. In a quarter of an hour, with Wratten's help, the story was well advanced, and Selsey's boy had gone away with the first slips. Whenever he came to a dead stop, Wratten told him how to continue. "Wrap it up carefully," Wratten said. "Talk about the dead man's pure love for anything that was artistic: say that he was a slave to art, and that Miss Sycamore typified art for him. That'll please her. Say that she never encouraged his attentions, and that realizing life was empty without her, he killed himself. Make it the psychological tragedy of a man in love with an Ideal that he could never attain. And don't gloat."

The story was finished. "That's all right," Wratten said.

"Look here--" Humphrey began, but something choked his throat. He felt as if Wratten had rescued him from the terror of failure: his glimpse of brotherhood overwhelmed him.

"Stow it!" said Wratten, unconcernedly. "It's the paper I was thinking of. Well, I'm off. Don't say a word about it in the morning."

* * * * *

And there it was, in the morning, the whole story with glaring headlines, an exclusive story for _The Day_. Humphrey, riding down Gray's Inn Road, saw the bills in the shop-windows, and two men in the omnibus were discussing it: his head was dull with the drink of last night, but he felt exhilarated when he thought of it all. He wanted to tell the two men in the omnibus that he had written the story in _The Day_. He came to the office and the fellows in the reporters' room seemed as glad as he was. Willoughby told him of his Surbiton adventure, and how Mrs Bellowes declined to see anybody. And when he went into Rivers' room, the great man smiled and said facetiously, "Well, young man, I suppose you're pleased with yourself." He winked at Wratten. "You'll be editor one day, eh?"

"It's a jolly good story," said Wratten, "the best _The Day's_ had for a long time."

Humphrey smiled weakly. He would have told Rivers just how it came to be such a jolly good story, if Wratten had not frowned meaningly at him. And not until Rivers said: "Come off that desk, young man, and see what you can do with this--" handing him a job, did Humphrey realize that he was at ease, dangling his legs with the great ones.

III

Not everything that Humphrey did was difficult, nor undesirable. There were times when his card with _The Day_ on it opened the doors of high places, magically: there were many people who welcomed him, actors and playwrights and people to whom publicity such as the reporter can give is necessary. He was received by countesses who were engaged in propaganda work, and by lordlings who were interested in schemes for the alleged welfare of the people: these people wanted to be interviewed, many of them even prepared their statements beforehand. But, in spite of the advantage they gained, they always treated him with that polite restraint which the English aristocracy adopt towards the inferior classes. He obtained wonderful peeps into grand houses, with huge staircases, and enormous rooms with panelled walls and candelabra and rare pictures; into Government offices, too, when an inquiry was necessary, where permanent officials worked, heedless of the change of Ministers that went on with each new Government; and once he went into the dressing-room of Sir Wimborne Johns, that very famous actor, who shook him by the hand, and treated Humphrey as one of his best friends, and told him two funny stories while the dresser was adjusting his make-up for Act II.

Then there were the meetings--amazingly futile gatherings of people who met in the rooms of hotels, the Caxton Hall at Westminster or the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street. These meetings gave young Humphrey an insight into the petty little vanities of life. They were hot-beds of mutual admiration. What was their business and what did they achieve? Heaven only knows! They had been in existence for years; this was perhaps the seventh or eighth or twenty-sixth annual meeting of the Anti-Noise Society, and the world was not yet silent. Yet here were the old ladies and the old gentlemen and the secretary (in a frock coat) congratulating themselves on an excellent year's work, and passing votes of thanks to each other, as though they were giving lollipops to children. These meetings were all built on one scheme. They always began half an hour late, because there were so few people in the room. The reporters (and here Humphrey sometimes met Beaver) sat at a green baize-covered table near the speakers, and were given all sorts of printed matter--enough to fill the papers they represented, and, occasionally, men and women would sidle up to them, and give their visiting-cards, and say, "Be sure and get the initials right," or, "Would you like to interview me on Slavery in Cochin-China?" Then the chairman (Sir Simon Sloper) arrived, whiskered and florid-faced, and every one clapped their hands; and the secretary read letters and telegrams of regret which he passed to the reporters' table; and then they read the balance-sheet and the annual report, and Miss Heggie Petty, with the clipped accent of Forfarshire, gave her district report, and W. Black-Smith, Esq. ("Please don't forget the hyphen in _The Day_"), delivered _his_ district report, and then the secretary spoke again, and the treasurer reminded them with a sternly humorous manner, that the annual subscriptions were overdue, and, finally, came the great event of the afternoon: Sir Simon Sloper rose to address the meeting. Everybody was hugely interested, except the reporters, to whom it was platitudinous and tediously stale: they had heard it all before, times without number, at all the silly little meetings of foolish people the Sir Simon Slopers had their moments of adulation and their reward of a paragraph in the papers. Nothing vital, nothing of great and lasting importance, was ever done at these meetings, yet every day six or seven of them were held.

There were societies and counter societies: there was a society for the suppression of this, and a society for the encouragement of that; there was the Society for Sunday Entertainment, and the Society for Sunday Rest; every one seemed to be pulling in opposite directions, and every one imagined that his or her views were best for the people. Humphrey found the reflection of all this in the advertisement columns of _The Day_, where there were advertisements of lotions that grew hair on bald heads, or ointment that took away superfluous hair; medicines that made fat people thin, or pills that made thin people fat; tonics that toned down nervous, high-strung people, and phosphates that exhilarated those who were depressed. Life was a terribly ailing thing viewed through the advertisement columns; one seemed to be living in an invalid world, suffering from lumbago and nervous debility. It was a nightmare of a world, where people were either too florid or too pale, too fat or too thin, too bald or too hairy, too tall or too short ... and yet the world went on unchangingly, just as it did after the meetings of all the little societies of men or women who met together to give moral medicine to the world.

It is necessary that you should see these things from the same point of view as Humphrey, to realize the effect of it all on the development of his character. For after a dose of such meetings, when the careful reports of speeches that seemed important enough at the time, were either cut down by the sub-editors to three lines, or left out of the paper altogether, he asked himself the question: Why?

Why do all these people hold meetings?

And the answer came to him with a shock: "They are doing it all for _me_. Everything that is going on is being done for _me_."

And as he realized that he was only an onlooker, a creature apart, something almost inhuman without a soul for pity or gladness, a dweller on the outskirts of life, a great longing came over him to join in it all himself. It seemed that this gigantic game of love and passion and sudden death and great achievement, was worth learning, and those who did not learn it, and only looked on while the tumult was whirling about them, were but shadows that faded away with the sunset of years.

He wanted to join in. He saw, now, that he was drifting nowhere. He, too, wanted to share in the great game, playing a part that was not to be ignored, that was needful to the success of the game. Alone he brooded on it. Beaver chaffed him and asked him what was up. Impossible to explain the perplexities of his inmost mind to Beaver.

"I don't know," he said, "I've got the hump."

They were having breakfast in the common sitting-room.

"Haven't they printed your stuff?"

"It isn't that," Humphrey said.

"Well, what's up?" demanded the insistent Beaver.

"Everything!" said Humphrey, gloomily, looking round the room. The bulrushes were still there. "Everything. This ... I feel as we used to feel at Easterham!"

"I know what's the matter with you," said Beaver, folding his napkin, and pushing back his chair from the table. He regarded Humphrey with tremendous wisdom, and bit his nails. "You've got the hump," he said smiling at his inspiration. "Too many late hours."

"I suppose so."

"Well, look here, don't you get brooding. You want company. I vote we have lunch together to-day. You come and call for me at the office, at one."

"Right you are, I will if I can," Humphrey replied.

All the morning he remained in the same mood, grappling with the new aspect of things that had come to him. Alone he brooded on it: he heard Rivers running through the programme of the day's events--the King going to Windsor, a new battleship being launched, a murderer to be tried at the Old Bailey, a society scandal in the Law Courts--the usual panorama of every day, at which Rivers told his men to look. And it was a great thing for the people of Windsor that the King was coming; there would be flags and guards of honour, and the National Anthem; and the reputation of a ship-building firm, and the anxiety of thousands rested on the successful launch of the battleship, and a weary woman in a squalid slum was waiting tremblingly for the issue of the murder trial; but all these things, of such great import to those who played in the game, were not shared by those who looked on. And as Humphrey listened to Rivers, he realized that though they all moved with life, they were not of it.

He remembered a story that Willoughby told of a Salvation Army meeting in the Albert Hall, when General Booth had walked up and down the platform speaking of the glories of salvation, and, suddenly, he pointed a finger at the table below. "Are you saved?" he asked, with his finger shaking at a man who was looking up at him. "Me?" said the man, looking about him confusedly, and then, with a touch of indignation at being suddenly dragged into the game, "Me? I'm a reporter!"

He remembered that story now, and all that it expressed. At the time Willoughby told it, he thought it was a good joke, but now he saw the cruel irony of it.

And, in this frame of mind, as he was at grips with himself, he went to call for Beaver. A light glimmered in the darkness of his mind, and the Joy and Spirit of Life itself, playing, instead of the Pipes of Pan, the keys of a typewriter, smiled upon him, and gave him the vision of a girlish face in a halo of fair hair that seemed threaded with gold as the sunlight touched it.

IV

He went into the office of the Special News Agency and found himself in a room where half-a-dozen girls were typewriting. They were making manifold copies of the hundred and one events that the Special News Agency "covered" with its Beavers, and supplied at a fixed annual rate to the newspapers. The Special News Agency were, so to speak, wholesale dealers in news. You bought the reports of Ministers' speeches or out-of-the-way lawsuits by the column. It was the same principle that governed the _Easterham Gazette_ and its columns of stereo. No newspaper could afford a sufficiently large staff of reporters to cover everything. So the Special News Agency had its corps of verbatim shorthand writers, its representatives in every small village, and in every police-court. There was, of course, no room for the play of imagination or fantasy or style in these Special News Agency reports, and it was because of their rather stilted writing that the reporters on papers like _The Day_ and _The Sentinel_ and _The Herald_ were sent sometimes over the same ground that the News Agency men had covered, to see if they could infuse some fresh interest into the story, or at all events to rewrite it, so that instead of each paper being uniform, it would strike its individual note in the presentation of news. The Special News Agency did for London and England what Reuter does for the world.

There was among the cluster of girls working at their typewriters one who looked up at Humphrey and smiled, as he waited for Beaver. She was not a particularly pretty girl, but there was a quality in her hair and eyes and in the expression of her face that lifted it out of the commonplace. The mere fact that out of all the girls who were at work in the office, she alone left the memory of her face to Humphrey, is sufficient tribute to her personality.

She smiled--and Humphrey remembered that smile, and the hair, that was dull brown in shadow and gleaming with golden threads in the sunlight, and the eyes, that were either grey or blue, and very large. And then, Beaver came and took him to lunch.

They went to a Fleet Street public-house, and lunched off steak and bubble-and-squeak for a shilling, and all through the lunch Humphrey was thinking of other things--especially a smile.

"Well," said Beaver, "got over your hump?"

"I suppose so," Humphrey answered. ("I wonder what her name is?")

"Life's not so bad when you get used to it?" Beaver remarked, contemplating his inky thumbs. "The trouble is that just as you're getting used to it, it's time to die. Eh?"

Humphrey's thoughts were wandering again. ("I believe those eyes were saying something to me?") Beaver continued in his chatter, and occasionally Humphrey, catching the sense of his last few words, agreed with a mechanical "Yes," or a nod ("Why did she smile at me?"), and at last he blurted out, "I say, Beaver, what's the name of the girl that sits nearest the door in your office?"

"O lord! I don't know their names," said Beaver; "I've got other things to think about. What d'you want to know for?"

"She's like some one I knew in Easterham," Humphrey replied, glibly.

"I'll find out for you, if you like."

"No--don't bother. It doesn't matter at all."

The next day he was walking down Fleet Street when he perceived her looming through the crowd. He was conscious of a queer emotion that attacked him, a sudden dryness of the throat, and a quickening of all the pulses of his body. His whole being became swiftly taut: he almost stood still. And, as she bore down upon him, he saw that she was not so tall as he had imagined, but her face looked divinely attractive under the shadow of the spreading hat, and because the sun was shining her hair glittered like a halo. Now, she was close to him, and he found himself praying to God that she would look at him, and smile again; and the next moment he felt that the ground would sink beneath him if she did so, and he longed to look the other way, but could not. The people passing to and fro knew nothing of the terrific disturbance that was going on in the mind of the young man walking down Fleet Street. Now they were level--he raised his hat--it was over, and the memory of her smile had sunk yet deeper within him. Yes, she had remembered him, and nodded to him, and that smile--what did it mean? It was not an enticing smile, it was an almost imperceptible movement of the closed lips, yet it held some magic in it. It seemed to him that though they had never spoken, she knew all about him; she came across his life, smiling in silence, and he was aware that something triumphant and fresh had come into his life, with her passing, just as he knew for a certainty that, before long, he would learn the secret of her smile, when he spoke to her.

He went back to work, curiously elated and happy for no reason at all that he could understand. Things were unaltered, and yet, somehow or other, they were different. He felt, suddenly, as if years had been added to his age; he felt that he had met something real in life at last, and, when he came to analyse it, it was nothing but an intangible smile, and the glance of two grey eyes.

That night, as he was on his way home, he chanced to meet Wratten. This tall man with the high forehead and curly hair was one of the puzzles of the office. He was a man who held aloof from his fellows, and because of that, they thought he was morose. Humphrey had a tremendous admiration for him, since the night when Wratten had helped him. He seemed so very splendid: he did daring things, and he never failed. The secret of his success was a brutality that stultified all his better feelings when he was on business. And he was a man who never left his quarry, though it meant waiting hours and hours for him.

"Hullo," said Wratten, "where are you off to?"

"Home," said Humphrey; "where are you?"

"I'm going home too. I live at the Hampden Club at King's Cross."

They were near Guilford Street "Won't you come up, Wratten, and have a drink in my rooms--I live here, you know."

"I don't take anything stronger than lemonade," said Wratten.

Humphrey laughed, and unlocked the door. He felt it an honour to have Wratten as a guest, if only for a few minutes. They went upstairs, and Humphrey apologized for the bulrushes. Wratten laughed: "Why don't you suggest to Rivers that you should write a story about the dangers of bulrushes in sitting-rooms: interview a doctor or two, and make 'em say that bulrushes accumulate dust. Invent a new disease, 'Bulrush Throat.' That'll make your landlady nervous."

"By George," Humphrey said, "I will; that's a fine idea." Doubtless, you remember the scare that was raised a few years ago when _The Day_ discovered the terror that lurked in the sitting-room bulrush; you remember, perhaps, the correspondence, and the symposium of doctors' views that followed, and _The Day's_ leading article on the mighty matter. Humphrey Quain set the ball rolling, and was careful to leave marked copies of _The Day_ in places where Mrs Wayzgoose was certain to see them, and the bulrushes disappeared very soon afterwards. Thus is history made.

"I owe you a lot of thanks," Humphrey said, "for the way you helped me the other night."

It was the first time they had referred to the matter of the street suicide.

"I didn't want you to be let down," said Wratten. "The life's rough enough as it is, a little help goes a long way. But you steer clear of too much drink, Quain. That's the ruin of so many good men...."

"I couldn't help it."

"Of course you couldn't--most men are drunkards from habit and not from choice. But you can take it from me, there's no room in Fleet Street for a man who drinks too much. They used to think it was fine Bohemianism in the old days, when a man wasn't a genius unless he was drunk half the time. Don't you believe it. It's the sober men who do the work and win through."

"It depends on what you mean by winning through."

"Well, there are many ways.... I suppose we've all got different ideas and ideals. I want to rear a family and keep a wife."

"You aren't married then?"

"Not yet. I'm going to be married ... soon," said Wratten, simply. "I think marriage is the best thing for us. We want something to humanize our lives. It is the only chance of happiness for most of us ... the knowledge that whatever happens, however hard the work may be, we come home ... and there's a wife waiting. I know plenty of journalists who would have gone under if it were not for the wives. Splendid wives! They sit at home patiently, knowing all our troubles, comforting us, and keeping us cheerful. By God! Quain, the journalists' wives are the most beautiful and loyal women in the world...."

Humphrey smiled--and this was the man they thought was morose!

"I get maudlin and sentimental when I think of 'em. They know our weaknesses, and our mistakes, and they bear with us. They smooth our hair and touch our faces, and all the misery of the day goes away with the magic of their fingers. They make little dinners for us, that we never eat, and they never let us see how unhappy they are, too ... I know, I know ... I've seen so many journalists' homes, and they're all the same ... they're simply overgrown children who let themselves be mothered by their wives."

Humphrey thought of the girl he had passed that day in the street.... "I wish I were you," he said. "It must be rather fine to have some one pegging away at you always to do your best: it must be rather fine to have a smile waiting for you at the end of the long day's work."

"Fine!" said Wratten, "it's the only thing that's left to us. We're robbed of everything else that matters. We haven't a soul to call our own, and we can't even rule our lives. Time, that precious heritage of every one else, doesn't belong to us. We're supposed to have no hearts, we're just machines that have always to be working at top speed ... but, thank God, there's one woman who believes in us, and who is waiting for us always."

"It's funny you should talk like this," Humphrey said, "to-night, of all nights...." He was thinking again of himself and the girl who had crossed the path of his life.

Wratten knocked out the ashes of his pipe, and coughed with that little dry cough that was characteristic of him. "Oh! I don't know," he said. "Nothing funny when you come to think about it. I thought you might have heard it in the office. I'm being married to-morrow. By the way, I wish you'd come along and be best man: I haven't had time to fix up for one."

V

It was just an incident of almost less importance than the daily work, this business of getting married. But it was an incident that left a singular impression on Humphrey. Wratten's marriage was a prosaic affair, in a registry office, horribly formal, without the idealizing surroundings of a church and the grand solemnity of the marriage service. It took place at ten o'clock on a rather cold morning in June. Wratten himself was extremely nervous, and it was his nervousness that made his manner almost brusque; he must have been a gloomy lover, and yet, as Humphrey saw the dark-eyed bride he was wedding, and marked the pride in her eyes as she looked up to him, and the fluttering of her lips as she whispered things to him, he knew that somewhere in this rugged blunt nature of Wratten there was a vein of golden tenderness and beauty.

The marriage was oddly depressing: perhaps it was that the shadow of coming disaster hovered over them; perhaps Humphrey heard Wratten's words echoing in his ears, "They sit at home patiently ... knowing all our troubles, and they never let us see that they, too, are unhappy."

Humphrey did his duty as best man: there was a girl friend of the bride there, and he looked after them all, and cracked jokes, and made them sign their names in the right places, and Wratten had half a dozen little commissions for him to carry out. He had been so busy yesterday, that there had not been time to clear up everything.

When it was all over, and Wratten stood on the threshold of a new life, with his wife at his side, and a glad, proud smile on his handsome face, they came out of the registry office, and the girl friend emptied a bag of confetti over them, as they stepped into the cab that was to take them to Waterloo--they were going to Weymouth for a honeymoon. Some of the coloured pieces of paper fell on Humphrey's coat collar.

"Good-bye, good luck," Humphrey said.

Wratten clasped his hand very tightly. Once again he smiled, and gave his little dry, nervous cough. "Good-bye, old man," he said affectionately. "Thanks awfully for coming. I think I'm going to be happy at last," and the cab drove away.

Humphrey saw the girl friend into an omnibus. "Didn't Maisie look splendid." He noticed that the girl friend wore an engagement-ring on her finger, and thenceforth he lost all interest in her.

He went to the office as usual, but he did not tell any one that he had been to Wratten's wedding. Now, he could feel quite at home in the reporters' room, and he even had a desk which, by custom, had become his own. He was more sure of himself than he had been a few months ago, though, in his inmost heart, he was still a little afraid of Rivers.

It was Ferrol who gave Humphrey confidence in himself. He called him into his room, and asked him bluntly how he liked the work.

"Very much," Humphrey replied, his eyes glistening brightly, and again Ferrol was reminded of the long years that had passed, when romantic days were his. The boy was shaping well. That was fine, thought Ferrol. He meant Humphrey to have every chance; he wanted to see what stuff was in him.

"That's good," said Ferrol, stroking his moustache. "Mr Rivers gives a satisfactory account of you."

The passion that ruled him, the passion for making men and reputations, was strong upon him just then. He saw Humphrey as raw material, and he meant to mould him into a finished article after his own heart. He would make no mistakes, it should be done slowly, step by step; he would leave Humphrey to fight his own battles, and only if he fell bloody and wounded, would he come forward and succour the boy.

"I hope you'll keep it up," he said. "Don't get into trouble, but come to me if you do." He smiled and still caressed that fierce moustache. "I suppose you've heard I'm an ogre--don't believe any tale you hear. Just come straight to me when you are in any difficulty."

Humphrey came out of the room, exhilarated, and almost drunk with pride and happiness. It was Ferrol's magic again: a few words from him were like drops of oil to creaking machinery--they instilled fresh energy and desire into men, and made their hearts ardent for conquest. It was worth working night and day to have smooth words of praise from Ferrol himself, to know that he was watching you, powerful in his invisibility.

* * * * *

That afternoon, as he was returning from some engagement, he saw the girl with the smile coming towards him again. Afar off, it seemed, he was aware of her coming. It was as if her presence sent silent messages to him, vibrating through the air. Long before she appeared he had looked expectantly before him, knowing that she would approach him. Something in his mind linked up this neat blue-clad figure with the episode of the morning, and the little registry office, and Wratten saying, with that radiant smile of his, "I think I am going to be happy at last."

And, quite on the impulse of the moment, he made up his mind. She passed him, and left him all a-quiver with excitement, and then he turned and overtook her. His heart was beating quickly in the rhapsody of it all. She stopped, noticing him at her side, hesitating, nervous.

"I say...."

"Oh!" She smiled, and he saw her cheeks flush with colour, and at once he noted her wonderfully slender throat and the mysterious beauty of her breathing.

He was tongue-tied for a moment. She had stopped and he was speaking to her, and he was lost in the miracle of those few seconds, when he realized that in all the loneliness of this vast London, they had met and spoken at last. They stood in a little island of their own making, while people coming and going broke in a hurried surge all about them. The newsboys ran up Fleet Street calling the hour of the latest race, and, above all, came the noise and restlessness of the traffic beating up and down the street.

"I say..." Humphrey began, "it's awfully rude of me to stop you like this...."

She smiled again. "Not at all," she said, in a gentle voice.

"Could you tell me if Mr Beaver happens to be in the office now?" he asked.

"I don't think he is," she said. "Why not come up and see?"

"N--no--it doesn't really matter." Humphrey laughed nervously. "I shall see him this evening. We dig together, you know."

"Then it doesn't matter...?" she said.

"It doesn't matter," Humphrey agreed.

He waited forlornly: now she would pass away again, always elusive, just flitting in and out of his life like this, a disturbing factor.

But still she waited, and Humphrey was emboldened.

"I say ..." he stammered. "Won't you come and have a cup of tea?"

She glanced upwards at the clock.

"Do come," he said, half turning to lead the way. "There's a Lyons just near here."

"Oh, well ..." she laughed and followed him.

* * * * *

"My name's Quain," he said, as they were drinking their cups of tea. "Humphrey Quain." He waited longingly, hoping that she would understand why he had told her his name.

She drooped her eyes; everything she did was exaggerated in Humphrey's imagination. She gave him her name as if she were yielding up part of herself to him.

"Mine is Filmer."

It was terribly unsatisfactory just to know that.

"I suppose you'll think me rude ..." he began.

"Oh! you must guess...."

"I never could. I should guess wrong."

"Try," she coaxed. "It begins with L."

He guessed Lily the second time, and she corrected him. "You're nearly right," she said, "it's Lilian."

"Lilian," he echoed, admiringly.

"It's a hateful name," she pouted.

"It's a lovely name," he said.

"Do you really think so?"

"Rather!"

"Why?" she smiled again.

What an absurd question to ask. Why, because--but how could Humphrey tell her, when they had hardly known each other for a quarter of an hour.

"I hope you didn't think it rude of me stopping you like that," he ventured, after a pause.

"Oh no ... though I suppose you think it's dreadful of me to be sitting with you like this."

To tell the truth, Humphrey considered the whole thing was extraordinarily dashing--that he should be sitting facing her over a cup of tea; to have learnt her name--Lilian Filmer--Lilian, beautiful name!--and to be carrying it off so calmly.

"Not at all," he said.

Her next words fell like a shower of cold water over him.

"You're such a boy," she said, with her eyes smiling indulgently at him.

He resented that, of course. "I'm twenty-one," he said loudly. "You're not more than twenty-one, I'm sure."

"Perhaps I'm not," she answered, taking a tiny watch from her bosom. She sighed. "I must go."

"Look here," said Humphrey, "are we going to meet again?"

"What do you want to see me again for?"

"I just want to," Humphrey said. "I'm all alone."

"Alone in London," she laughed. "Tragic boy ... oh, how miserable you look. Don't you like being called a boy?"

"I don't mind what you call me, so long as you'll let me see you again. To-morrow's Saturday...."

"Oh! I can't manage to-morrow."

"Well, on Sunday, then."

"I never go out on Sundays."

"On Monday," said Humphrey, desperately.

She considered the matter. "I know I'm engaged on Monday evening."

"We'll have lunch together."

"Very well," she said.

And, after that, they shook hands quite formally, and parted in Fleet Street. He had been in heaven for twenty minutes.

There were three days to Monday.

Lilian!

VI

Out of this period of his career, Humphrey rescued memories of moments of ineffable happiness. They came intermittently, between long blanks of doubt and painful uncertainty, when his mind was troubled with unsatisfied yearnings and half-understood desires. He was able one day to look back upon it all, with an air of detached interest, like a man looking at a cinematograph picture, and he saw meetings, and partings, and all the ferment of his wooing of Lilian.

There was something intimate and secret about their meetings that pleased his palate, hungry for adventure, and this was a part of life that belonged wholly to them; he was indeed taking a part in the great game.

They met on the Monday at the hour appointed, and it seemed extraordinarily unreal, like a dream within a dream, that she should be wonderfully alive and smiling by his side. Fleet Street, the office, Rivers, and the long toil of the day were forgotten in a moment, such was the miracle of her being. It seemed impossible to him, on that day, that unhappiness and failure could darken his world. There was something eternal about her that moved him with strong, unquenchable desires for triumph and conquest. Her voice vibrated through him like the throb of a war-march, urging him to great endeavour.

So commonplace their greeting; so utterly inadequate to express the prodigious flutterings of his heart! They should have met alone in some solitary forest, when all the colours of the world were rushing to the clouds, in the hours of the sunset. He could have led her to a resting-place of moss and fern, and whispered to her all the thoughts that were in his mind....

But here in the world of everyday, what romance could survive the prosy clamour of it all. There was nothing to say but "Good-morning," and halting, nervous things about the weather, and the theatre, and each other's work. Anything of deeper import must be told by sighs and silences.

And thus, they parted again, after their lunch in a dingy Italian restaurant in the Strand, he with all his longings unfulfilled, and with a deeper sense of something that had been lacking in his life. Why could he not have told her all that he had felt? Why was it necessary for him to mask and screen his emotions with absurd talk that only seemed to waste precious opportunities? She rose before him in his imagination, amazingly distinct and real, no longer a shadow, but a real person. He conjured her presence at will before him, and she appeared as he liked to see her best, with her eyes grey and thoughtful, and the sunlight gilding her hair where it swept up from her white brow. Thus, when she was not there, he lived with her, and told her all the things he dared not say to her.

And nobody knew of these exquisite moments but himself. To mention her to Beaver, now, would be sacrilege. There was but one man who, he thought, would understand what was passing through him, and that was Wratten, who was away on his honeymoon.

They met several times during the next few weeks; it seemed to him that she would not consent to meet him if her heart did not echo his own. And yet, she gave no sign. There was always an air of chastened constraint about them both. He helped her adjust her fluffy feather boa once, and his hand brushed her cheek, and he remembered the feel of it, smooth and soft, like the touch of the downy skin of a peach.

All the time, of course, in the intervals of these meetings, there was the same breathless round of work to be done. Sometimes he would have to cancel their arrangements because he was given an assignment just at the very hour they had set apart for themselves--it was done by a hurried scrawl on office paper--"Dear Miss Filmer, I'm so sorry," and so forth. Once he had written "Dearest," but he tore it up, fearing he might lose her for ever. He could not risk offending her. He knew that she was rigorously strict in certain conventions.

"I say ... may I call you Lilian?" he had asked one day, and she had glanced at him with a stricken look, and said, "Oh--please, please don't, Mr Quain." She had even laid her hand upon his, with a persuasive gesture. It was a distinct pat--the sort of pat one bestows when a child is to be coaxed into goodness.

She was very perplexing.

Her manner could alter in the most unexpected and unaccountable manner. One day she might be quite gay, and he would feel that now it was merely a question of moments before he could storm her heart and carry it: and the next time he saw her she would be strangely distant, as though she regretted the progress they had made. Or else, she would be provokingly casual, and wound him deliberately in his weakest spot. She would call him a boy, with a little smile and play of the eyebrows. Ah! that rankled more than anything she said or did, for the whole happiness of his life depended on his being taken seriously, and at his own valuation--and he valued himself as a man of the world, with the experience of double his years.

It was, perhaps, this attitude of hers towards him that made him tell her of his work, which, in these days, became so magnified in importance to him. When by virtue of _The Day_ he got behind the scenes of any phase of London life, he used to make a point of telling her just how it was done, in a rather cock-a-whoop manner.

"Do you know," she said, "we have in our office thirty men who are doing the same thing, and, in all London, there are hundreds more?"

That crushed him entirely. She thought him vain. They very nearly quarrelled seriously.

One day Jamieson, the dramatic critic of _The Day_, met him in the office. Jamieson was a tubby little man with a high Shakespearean forehead, who exuded cheeriness. He was a professional optimist. He used to depress the reporters' room with his boisterous happiness: he was so glad that the flowers were blooming, and the grass was green, and that there were children, and the joy of life, and so forth.

He accosted Humphrey with twinkling eyes. "Glorious day, Quain," he said; "makes you feel glad that you're alive, doesn't it? Ah! my boy, it's fine to see the streets on a day like this--full of pretty girls in their spring dresses."

"I don't get time to think about the weather, unless I'm writing about it," said Humphrey, with a laugh.

"Buck up, my boy," said Jamieson, patting him on the back. "You want to look on the bright side of things on a day like this.... By the way, would you like to have two stalls for the Garrick to-morrow. It's the same old play they've had for two hundred nights--they only want a paragraph for _The Day_. I've got a first night on at His Majesty's."

Humphrey accepted the tickets gladly, for he had a vision of an evening at the theatre with Lilian, and Jamieson went on his way, leaving in his wake a trail of chuckling optimism. It happened to be a Saturday night, when he was quite free, and so he arranged with Lilian to meet her at Victoria--she lived at Battersea Park--and then they would have some dinner before they went to the theatre.

* * * * *

In those days Humphrey had not risen to the luxury of an opera hat; he wore a bowler hat, and his coat-collar buttoned up over the white tie of his evening-dress. He thrust his hands into his pockets and waited at Victoria Station for her. She was to meet him at a quarter to seven, and it was now five minutes to the hour and she had not come. He stood there, absolutely white with the tension of the passing moments. It seemed that he had been waiting an eternity, and he had lived through a thousand moments of disappointed expectation. Others who had been waiting there when he came had long since claimed those whom they had come to meet, and walked them off with smiles and laughter. He was still waiting.

* * * * *

Seven o'clock!

What on earth could have happened?

Visions of possible disasters crossed his mind: a train wreck and a cab accident; or perhaps she was ill and was not coming. There would be no way of communicating with him, and he would have to go on waiting. Or, perhaps, she had repented of her consent to make the evening glorious for him. The suspense was really terrible. There was nothing to do except to watch the newsboys cheerily gathering the magazines and papers together into piles, and shuttering the bookstall. He saw people running for trains, and whenever the hiss of steam announced the arrival of another train, he hurried to the wicket-gate to peer into the recesses of the crowd that struggled through it, in the hope of seeing her face a second before she actually appeared in person.

At five past seven he was still moodily waiting.

It was cruel of her to keep him dallying with patience like this. She must have known that he would be waiting for her on the moment. How little she cared if she could not even be punctual to the time they had arranged. He began to feel stale and dusty, as if he had been in his evening-dress for years.

He made up his mind to be very angry with her when she came.

And lo! she was at his side: more wonderful than ever, so wonderful that he scarcely recognized her. She had come through the crowd at the wicket-gate, floating towards him, it seemed, like a cloud of filmy, fluffy white. Her face was radiantly flushed and smiling, and he sprang towards her with a cry of relief and gladness.

"Here I am," she announced. "I wondered if you'd be here." (As if he had not been waiting heart in mouth, for all that time.)

She wore no hat, but her hair was done in a way that he had never seen before. It seemed to change her strangely. If anything, it made her look more beautiful, as it rose in little waves from her forehead and fell about her ears in wayward threads of sparkling brown. And there was a black velvet ribbon that went in and out among the glory of her hair.

He slipped his hand beneath her white cloak that was fastened tightly to her chin, to guide her through the clumsy throng of station people. Her arm was warm and bare, as soft as satin, and there was something sacred in the very touch of it.

It was an occasion for a cab. They chattered on the way of everyday things, though all the time, with her by his side, so close, so beautiful, he could only think of Paradise.

"I thought you were never coming," he said, with a dry throat.

"Was I so late?" she asked, with a laugh. "I couldn't help it. I ran like mad, and just saw the train going out of the station."

He wanted to tell her how beautiful she looked, but just then they arrived at the little restaurant in Soho where they were going to have dinner. He went in with her, supremely conscious that every one was staring at them. There was a stuffy smell of hot food, and the tables were crowded with diners--very few of them in evening-dress. He was passed on from waiter to waiter until a table was found, and then Lilian unfastened her white cloak, and he helped her to take it off, with a queer sensation of awe and wonder. She stood before him transformed, another Lilian from the one he had known in the street where they worked. He was amazed that she did not realize how this white display of her neck and arms and gently breathing throat was dazzling him with its splendour. He was amazed that she could sit there, revealing her richest beauty for the first time, and be totally unembarrassed--as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world....

The dinner was no doubt excellent, but Humphrey could not eat. He made a pretence of it, but he felt it was violating the ecstasy of these moments to eat before her. He only wanted to sit and look at her. He drank quite a lot of wine, almost a whole bottle in fact, for she took just half a glassful with water. It was cheap stuff, masquerading under the vague label of "Margaux," and it sent his imagination rioting. He was conscious of being deliciously extravagant when he ordered coffees and liqueurs, though the whole bill came to little more than twelve and six. Then they went to the theatre, and he bought her chocolates, and they sat in the stalls, side by side, for nearly three hours. He tried to appear normal--impossible! He knew what was coming: he fought against it for quite a long time, but some primeval instinct in him was stronger than his will--his hand sought hers, when the lights were low, and closed upon it. If she had withdrawn her hand, the whole castle of his dream would have come crashing about his ears. But she did not: she let it rest there. Once or twice he glanced at her sidewise, but she seemed oblivious of him. Her gaze was fixed on the players, her lips parted with pleasure; the pendant that hung from her neck stirring gently with the movement of her bosom. She was enjoying the play, but Humphrey could pay no attention to it. He could only think of her. How real was all this: how every moment counted as a moment of pure, throbbing enjoyment. And he thought of Rivers, and the office, and Selsey and the sub-editors' room, messenger boys and the tape machines--what did it all matter beside the incomparable happiness of these moments. Knowledge came to him subconsciously: it was for this that one worked and suffered.

* * * * *

As they were going in the cab together to Victoria through St. James's Park, where the lamps make a necklet of yellow round the dark shadows of the trees, and the moon was white in her face, he leaned towards her and kissed her on the lips. She gave a little dry sob, and her head drooped on his shoulder, so that he could bend over her and kiss her with all the impetuous longing of youth. And suddenly she shook herself free with an extraordinary melting look of tenderness and pity in her eyes. He thought she was angry, but she only smiled and patted his cheek.

And he felt as if he had passed through the portals of a new world, whose music beat gloriously on his ears, and whose colours leapt before his eyes in flashes of brilliance.

"Lilian.... Lilian," he whispered, calling her by her name for the first time.

"It's only for to-night," she said.... "Why did you kiss me?"

"Lilian," he said again.

They came out into the glare of the streets near Victoria: romance dropped away from her as the Park was left behind. She sat upright and fumbled with her hair.

"You oughtn't to have kissed me.... I oughtn't to have...."

The discussion of it was horrible to him. It jarred. He, too, came suddenly back to reality.

"It was only for to-night, of course," she said, with a nervous laugh.

"It's not!" he said, positively. "It's for to-morrow and for all time."

They drew up at the station. It was all over. The idyll ended in a clatter of horses' hoofs and hissing of steam, and engines whistling, and the hurrying to catch the last train.

"Look here ..." said Humphrey, as he stood by the carriage door.

"I'm not angry," she whispered. "It was my fault."

The guard blew his whistle and waved his flag. Humphrey's heart was bursting with the hideous intrusion of modernity.

"Good-night," she said. "Good-night and thank you. It's been beautiful."

There was just a second left to him, and he made use of it. She was leaning out of the window, and he swung himself on to the footboard and whispered--

"Lilian--I love you. I'll write to you to-night."

Before she could reply, there were cries of "Stand away there," and the train swung out of the station.

That night Humphrey wrote his first love-letter, and told her all the things he had been wanting to say for weeks.

VII

They became engaged.

It was a secret, furtive affair, for Lilian desired it. He gave her his signet ring--a present from his father--and she wore it, though not on her engagement finger, in case people should ask questions. She gave Humphrey a photograph of herself--in evening-dress--which he carried about in his pocket-book, to take out and look at frequently. He wrote to her every night--even when they had met during the day--long, long letters full of very high-sounding sentiments and praise of her. Heavens! the pages he covered with great promises. Her letters were not of the same quality: they were rather snappy and business-like, and held in them no romance or sentiment. Now and again she called him "dear" in her letters, and sometimes "dearest," but they were for the most part inadequate letters, that made him feel as if he were being cheated out of the full measure of his love-affair.