Chapter V: Part II: Lilian (3)

She told him that she was five years older than he was, and it only puffed him with greater pride, to think that he had conquered her in spite of his youth.

In very truth, it was a conquest! For days and days she had withstood the eager battery of his assault on her heart. "No," she had said gently, "you're a dear boy and I like you ... but let's be friends."

He went through all the phases of anger, sulkiness, despair and gloom, pleading with her daily, until the final exultation came. He used to see her home as far as Battersea, whenever his work allowed him freedom. There was a narrow, dark lane through which they walked, so that he could talk in the darkness of his love for her. Always, before they parted, she allowed him to kiss her. She kissed him too, and often they stood, with beating hearts, and lips met in one long kiss. He drew her to him, yielding and supple, and told her that she must marry him. She could resist no more, she let her head sink on his shoulder, and his finger caressed her chin and neck, and they stayed thus fettered with the exquisite moments of love.

"I will be so good to you," Humphrey murmured.

"Yes ... yes ..." she whispered, her last resistance gone. And that was how they became engaged.

But out of the glamour of their love and kisses there emerged the grey talk of practical things. "We don't know anything about each other," she cried.

"I know you.... I feel that I have known you all my life!" he insisted. "Don't you feel like that towards me?" he asked, anxiously.

"Perhaps I do," she said, and Humphrey went into raptures over it. "Isn't it wonderful," he said, "to think that only a few weeks ago we were really strangers, and now you have been in my arms--how can we be strangers, Lilian, and kiss as we do?"

"Have you told your mother yet?" he asked, one day.

"No--not yet," she said.

"Oughtn't I to meet her?"

"I suppose so--wait a little longer," she pleaded. "Have you told your aunt?"

"You asked me not to. I'd love to take you down to her--she'd like you, I'm certain. It wouldn't matter if she didn't."

They made plans, of course: nothing was settled about the day of their marriage. It was a question whether life was possible for them both on three pounds a week. "I'm sure to get a rise, soon," said Humphrey. "I'll go and ask for one, and tell Ferrol I'm going to be married. We can live splendidly on four pounds a week. Heaps of people live on less."

"I don't know.... It's mother I'm thinking of," she confessed.

"What about mother?" he asked.

"I'm wondering what she'll do without me."

"There are your sisters," he said. "How many are there, let me see"--he ticked them off--"Mabel, Florence and Edith. That's enough for her to go on with."

Her face grew wistful. "Yes--that's enough," she echoed, her eyes not looking at him. "I ought to have told you, Humphrey, long before this, but mother's rather dependent on me and Edith. There's Harry, of course, but he's still at the Technical Institute--he'll be able to help some day. Florence is still at school--and Mabel--Mabel's got something the matter with her hip."

"Well, what about your father?"

She winced. "Father--father doesn't help much. He's--he's an invalid."

Humphrey was young, and this was his first love, and the more obstacles there were to overcome, the greater seemed the prize to him. "We could send your mother a little money each week ..." he said. "It won't cost so much when you're not there."

"Yes, we could do that. And I could still go on with my work."

"What," he cried, horrified, "you go to the Special News Agency after we're married?"

"Yes, why not?"

"Oh, Lilian dear, I don't want you to do that. I want you to have a home of your own, just to sit there and arrange it as you like, and do nothing but loll in an arm-chair all day until I come home in the evening, and then we'll loll together."

She laughed. "You are a funny boy," she said. "I suppose you think a house doesn't want looking after. It's much harder work than typewriting."

"But don't you want a _home_," he persisted, mournful disappointment in his voice.

"Of course I do, dear; I know what you mean--I was only teasing you. But, I do think, for the beginning, I ought to go on with my work. It's so much safer. Supposing you get out of work, then I could keep things going for a time."

"I'm hanged if I'm going to live on you," he said indignantly.

They compromised by agreeing to the purchase of a typewriter--Lilian was to found a little business of her own that could be done at home. Plenty of people wanted typewriting, and she could earn almost a pound a week, she said, that would be enough for mother....

These practical discussions were very bitter to Humphrey: they robbed the whole thing of the last vestige of beauty; they depressed him, he knew not why. She did not mean it, but everything she said, that had nothing to do with endearment and love, made him feel hopeless. He was only really happy when they rested as children in one another's arms, talking delightful nonsense between their kisses, and not thinking at all of the plans of their lives that puzzled them so much when they came to talk about them.

It was about this period that Wratten came back from his honeymoon, and asked Humphrey to come and dine with him at home, always assuming that neither of them would be kept by work. "Tommy Pride is coming if he can, and I've asked Willoughby." It happened that Humphrey was the only one of the invited guests from the office who was able to come. The news of a Regent Street burglary published in the afternoon papers, made Willoughby champ his false teeth--a habit of his when he was excited--run his hand through his tangled hair, and depart in mysterious ways. Tommy Pride was sent to a lecture that began at eight. "Just my luck," he said to Humphrey, with a wry smile. "The missis will be disappointed."

So Wratten and Humphrey went out together. "I say," said Humphrey, on the way, "don't tell any one, but I'm engaged to be married."

"No--are you?" Wratten said. "Congratulations. When did that happen?"

"Quite recently." Out came the photograph.

"You're a lucky fellow. When are you going to get married?"

"I don't know yet--we haven't decided. Do you think we can live on three pounds a week?"

"Is that all you get, old man--you're worth more: it's a bit of a tight fit." Humphrey wondered what Wratten's salary was. Perhaps Wratten guessed his thoughts, for he said: "I don't like telling people what I get--there's a sort of secrecy about it--but, if you don't let it go any further, I'll tell you--I get ten pounds a week."

Humphrey felt himself shrink into insignificance before that mighty sum. Ten pounds seemed a tremendous salary to earn--no wonder Wratten had married. It was too much for one man's needs.

"I say, that's pretty good," he said, admiringly.

"Oh! you'll be worth more than that, some day," Wratten said. "You're the kind of chap that gets on, I can see.... That's why I shouldn't be in a hurry to marry if I were you," he added; "I've seen lots of fellows stick in the mud by marrying too early. It doesn't give them a chance. Marriage helps in some ways, and holds back in others ... a man is not so independent when he marries. He has to think of others besides himself. Unless, of course, his wife has a little means of her own."

He has to think of others besides himself!

That point of view had never come to Humphrey before. Why, he was marrying solely to please himself. Marriage seemed to him, then, necessary to the fulfilment of his dreams. Lilian was a mere excuse. He told her that he wanted to make her happy, blinding himself to the fact that he wanted to make himself happy. He was going to use her as a motive for his life, that was all. She would urge him on to success, encourage him, look after him, comfort him when he was in need of it--he had never thought of her at all, except as an accessory to his life. Of course, if anybody had told Humphrey this, at the time, he would have denied it, vehemently; protested his eternal love; sworn that she was always uppermost in his mind; and that it was his most ardent desire to work for her happiness. Love not only blinds us to the imperfections of others, but twists the vision we have always held of ourselves.

Wratten had taken a flat at Hampstead--a little box of a flat--at a ridiculously high rent, but to Humphrey, as he came into the sitting-room, it appeared as an ideal home. There was an air of repose and rest about it, the walls papered in a soft green, chintz curtains drawn over the windows, a carpet of a shade of green deeper than the walls, and old furniture about the room.

The artistic nature is always hidden below the practical journalist, and it comes to light in different ways. With some men it shows itself in a love of old books; with others, it bursts out in the form of writing other things than ephemeral newspaper "copy"; and with nearly all, the artist in them shakes itself free from its hiding-place and shines clear and strong in the home. There is no time for art during the day; no need for it, indeed. The standard of what is good is not made by the reporter, but by the paper for which he writes.

And here, in Wratten's home, Humphrey found the vein of the artist in him, in his perception and appreciation of old furniture. He fondled his pieces. "Here's a nice little rocking-chair," he said. "Don't see many of these now."

"I like this," said Humphrey, touching another old chair.

"Ah! yes, that's a beauty," Wratten replied. "I picked that up in Ipswich frightfully cheap. It's an old Dutch back chair of the seventeenth century." He tilted it up and ran his palm over the perfect curve of the cabriole legs, entirely absorbed in the pleasure of touching the chair.

"I didn't know you went in for this sort of thing," Humphrey said.

"I've been getting things like this together for years ... they're so restful, these old things. Can you imagine anything more peaceful than that book-case?" and he pointed to a beautiful Empire book-case, with rows of books showing through the latticed glass and brass rosettes for handles to the drawers that rested on claw feet.

The change in Wratten was really remarkable. Although he was still serious, and his face in repose was gloomy, he seemed to have lost his brusque manner. Marriage had undoubtedly softened him.

Mrs Wratten came into the room and welcomed Humphrey. Wratten slipped his arm through his wife's, and she looked up at him and smiled at him.... Humphrey saw himself standing thus, in his own home, with Lilian close to him, his companion for ever. It all seemed so very desirable. This little home was very compact and peaceful, thousands of miles removed from the restlessness of Fleet Street....

While they were talking, a young man and a woman were ushered into the room by the little maid-servant. The likeness between the two was unmistakable--they were obviously brother and sister. The young man was the taller of the two, very slender, with the thin and delicate hands of a woman. Humphrey noticed the long fingers tapering to the well-kept nails. The face was the face of an ascetic, thin-lipped and refined. The eyes were peculiarly glowing, and set deeply beneath the overhanging eyebrows; the nose was finely chiselled; the nostrils sensitive and curling, with a faint suspicion of superciliousness. He was introduced to Humphrey as Kenneth Carr, and Humphrey knew the name at once. Kenneth Carr had the reputation of being a brilliant descriptive writer; he was on the staff of _The Herald_, but, besides that, he had written several historical biographies, many novels, and was at work on a play. He belonged to a type which is a little apart from Fleet Street, with its wear and tear--a shy, scholarly man, who found that historical biographies and novels did not yield sufficient income, and, therefore, the grinding work of everyday journalism was preferable to pot boiling. Fleet Street was, to him, a stepping-stone. He would have been happier in the editorial chair of a weekly paper, or writing essays for _The Spectator_ and the _Saturday Review_, but, as it was, he threw in his lot with Fleet Street, and did his work so well that he stood at the top of the ladder. But Fleet Street had left its mark on his face--it was pale and thin, and the eyes had a strained, nervous look in them.

"Awfully good of you to ask us," he said to Mrs Wratten. "Elizabeth and I don't go out much, she gets so tired from her slumming."

His sister smiled--Humphrey saw that the handsome features of Kenneth Carr became beautiful in his sister's face. The sharp lines about the nose and mouth were softened, her eyes were bluer and larger, her face rounded more fully, and devoid of the hollows which made the face of Kenneth so intellectual. The likeness between brother and sister finished with the lips--hers were very red, and were faintly parted, so that one had a glimpse of her teeth, like a string of white pearls. She wore her hair in two loops from a parting in the centre, and she had a habit of carrying her head a little forward, so that the outward curve of her neck was emphasized in its perfect grace.

"What does your brother mean by slumming, Miss Carr?" Humphrey asked as they sat at dinner.

"He calls it slumming," Elizabeth Carr laughed, "but it isn't exactly that. I'm rather fond of the people who have no chance in life. I want to make a chance for them." She spoke banteringly, but her eyes had a curious way of growing large and earnest as if they were anxious to counteract the lack of seriousness in her voice. "I'm trying to make a thoroughfare through the Blind Alley," she said. "Isn't it dramatic? Can't you imagine me with pick and shovel, Mr Quain."

"What do you mean by the Blind Alley?" he asked.

She suddenly became grave. "Of course, you've never thought of that--have you? It's just a phrase.... Some day I'll explain to you fully. It's where the people who have no chance live."

"How do you help them?"

"We don't help them much, at present--we're only beginning. It's a life's work," she said, earnestly, "and it's a work for which a life would be gladly given. You've asked me the question I'm always asking myself--How is it to be done?"

"Does your brother help?"

"Kenneth--oh, as best he can. It's the apathy that we want to overcome. That's what makes the Blind Alley." She laughed. "We'll do it some day--I don't know how--but we'll do it."

Kenneth Carr's voice drawled across the table. "Look out, Mr Quain, or Elizabeth will have you in her toils. I'll bet she's talking slumming to you. You can't be a social reformer and a reporter, you know, nowadays. The two don't hang together."

"Kenneth!" his sister said, with pretended indignation.

"Look at me! She's making me compile a book about poverty that'll be nothing but statistics--who wants them outside blue books. She's got me in her toils."

The phrase amused Humphrey: he thought of Lilian, and began comparing her with the woman next to him. Of course, they were not alike; the comparison irritated him, why compare people so entirely different. One might know Elizabeth Carr for years, and yet never _know_ her; Lilian was different. She seemed simpler, and yet.... He wondered if Lilian had ever heard of the Blind Alley, or bothered about the people who have no chance.

When the dinner was finished, and they were all settling down to chatter, the telephone bell rang. Wratten went to answer it. "It's the office," Mrs Wratten said, with disappointment in her voice.

Wratten came back. "I'm frightfully sorry," he said. "The office wants me ... Collard's arrested." He went over to his wife. "I shall be late, dear, don't sit up," he said.

"Who's Collard?" she asked.

"Oh! the Company promoter--reg'lar crook--but he might have waited until the morning to be arrested."

"Filthy luck!" he grumbled, as he reappeared, shouldering himself into his overcoat. "Having to leave all you people like this.... Can't be helped."

The maid came in with coffee. Wratten gulped a thimbleful, kissed his wife, and went out. The evening seemed to have lost something of its pleasure with his sudden departure. They fell to talking over the ways of work and the calls of the office. It was as if Fleet Street had suddenly asserted itself, and shown the futility of trying to escape from it even for a few hours.

"Poor Mr Wratten," Elizabeth Carr sighed, "I do think they're heartless."

"Why don't you help us, Miss Carr?" Humphrey said, with a laugh. "We're in the Blind Alley too."

VIII

The weeks passed into August, and Humphrey took eagerly all the work that was given to him by Rivers. He became a mental ostrich, assimilating all sorts of knowledge. One day, perhaps, he would have to describe a cat show at the Crystal Palace, the next he might be attending a technical exhibition at the Agricultural Hall and Olympia, and have his head stuffed with facts and figures of this and that industry. He was acquiring knowledge all day long, but it was only superficial; there was no time to go deeply into any subject, and indeed, his one object was to unburden his mind of all the superfluous things he learnt during the day. If reporters were to keep a book of cuttings of everything they wrote--and they know the value of their work sufficiently not to do that--they would be amazed, looking back over ten years (those cuttings would fill several mighty volumes), at the vast range of subjects they touched upon, at the inside knowledge they had of the little--and even big--things of life; of the great men with whom they had come into contact, perhaps for a few minutes, perhaps for a day; of the men they had even helped to make great by the magic of publicity--they would be astounded at the broadness of their lives, at the things they had forgotten long ago, and perhaps they would pity themselves, looking over their cuttings, for the splendid futility of it all.

You remember Kipling's poem of "The Files," bound volumes of past years; which are repositories of all lost endeavours and dead enthusiasm. Heaven help us when we can write and achieve no more, and the only work of our youth and manhood lies buried, forgotten, in the faded yellow sheets of the files.

But Humphrey Quain at this period, just like every other young man, whether he be a haberdasher or a reporter, did not contemplate the remote future. He was young, and his brain was clear and fresh, and he wrote everything with a pulsing eagerness, as though it were his final appeal to posterity. He found his style improving, as he read, and his understanding broadened. He wrote in the crisp style that suited _The Day_; he had what they call the "human touch"--that was a phrase which Ferrol was very fond of using. Rivers began to entrust him with better things to do: now and again he was sent out of London on country assignments. That was a delightful business, to escape for a day or so from the office routine, and be more or less independent in some far-away town or village. You were given money for expenses, and told to go to Cornwall, where something extraordinary was about to happen, or some one had a grievance, or else there was some one to interview, and you packed a handbag, and went in a cab to Paddington, and had lunch on the train, and stopped at the best hotel, and generally tried to pretend that you were holiday making. But, more often than not, the idea of a holiday fell away when you got to the place, and you had to bustle and bother and worry to get what you wanted. Then you had to write your message, and that meant generally being late for dinner, or perhaps it was the kind of story that kept you hanging about and made it necessary to telephone news late at night.

But going out of town held a wonderful charm for Humphrey--it gave him a sense of responsibility. It made him feel that the office trusted him; somehow or other he felt more important on these country jobs, as if he bore the burden of _The Day_ on his own shoulders.

There was the charm, too, of writing the story in the first person, instead of adopting the impersonal attitude that was the rule with London work; and the charm of fixing the little telegraph pass to the message, which franked it at press rates to _The Day_ without pre-payment. Sometimes there were other men on the same story, and they forgathered after work, and as all journalists do, talked shop, because they cannot talk of anything without it touches the fringe of their work. The men he met were, for the most part, thoroughly experienced and capable, they were tremendously enthusiastic, though they tried to appear blasé, because it was considered the correct thing among themselves. They never discussed each other's work, nor told of what they had written. Even when they met in the morning, though they had all read their colleagues' messages in the papers, and compared them with their own, they kept aloof from all reference to the merits or demerits of these messages. But it used to rejoice Humphrey's heart to see, sometimes, how older men who were inclined to patronize him as a beginner and a junior the night before, treated him as one of themselves in the morning at the breakfast-table. And he nearly burst with pride when he first saw his messages headed: "From _The Day_ Special Correspondent." Even though he were no further afield than Manchester or Birmingham, it seemed to place him in the gallant band of great ones just as if he were a Steevens, a Billy Russell, or an Archibald Forbes.

And all the time he was learning,--learning more swiftly than any one else can learn, in the school of journalism, where every hour brings its short cut to knowledge and worldly wisdom.

The occasional separations from Lilian, however, modified a little the charm of going away. These orders to go out of town had a habit of coming at the most undesirable moments, generally upsetting any plans they had made together for spending an enjoyable evening somewhere.

"When we are married," said Humphrey, on the eve of a departure for Canterbury to describe the visit of a party of priests from France and Italy who were making a pilgrimage to the Cathedral, "when we are married, you shall come away with me. It's not bad fun, if the job isn't hard."

"I wish you didn't have to go away so often," she pouted.

There was a hint of conflict, but Humphrey was too blind to see it. He only wished he had to go away more often, for the measure of his success on _The Day_ was in proportion to the frequency of special work they gave to him. "All will be well when we are married," he said, comforting her.

His love-story wove in and out of his daily work. The date of their marriage had not yet been fixed, because Ferrol was away somewhere in the south of France, and that business of the extra pound a week on his salary could not, of course, be settled until Ferrol came back. It seemed, too, that Lilian was in no hurry to be married; she loved these days of his wooing to linger, with their idyllic moments, and rapturous embraces, and the wistfulness of all too insufficient kisses.

For the period of engagement was to them a period of licensed kissing. Nor was it always possible to meet beneath the moon. Humphrey grew cunningly expert in finding places where they could kiss in broad daylight. There was an Italian restaurant in the Strand (now pulled down for improvement), which had an upstairs dining-room where nobody but themselves ever seemed to go, and then there was the National Gallery, surprisingly empty, where the screens holding the etchings gave them their desired privacy, and on Saturday afternoon they went in the upper circles of theatres, sometimes, on purpose not to see the play, but to sit in the deserted lounges during the acting, and enjoy each other's company. Their love-affair was tangled by circumstance; scamped and impeded--they made the best of it, and lived many hours of happiness.

And then, one day, when he least expected it, she said: "I suppose you ought to come down and see mother."

Humphrey went out to Battersea to the home of his betrothed. The circumstances of his visit were not happy. It was raining, and there is no city in the world so miserable as London when it rains. The house was in a rather dreary side-street, a long distance from Battersea Park, a mere unit in the army of similar houses, that were joined to one another in a straight row, fronted by railings that had once been newly painted, but were now grimed and blackened. These houses appalled one: they were absolutely devoid of any kind of beauty, never could they have been deemed beautiful by their architect. They were as flat-fronted and as hideously symmetrical as a doll's-house; nor, apparently, did the people who dwelt in them take any pains to lessen the hideousness of their exteriors: ghastly curtains were at every window, curtains of mid-Victorian ugliness, leaving a cone-shaped vacancy bounded by lace. In the windows of the lower floors one caught a glimpse of a table, with a vase on it, and dried grass in the vase, and behind the glass panes above the front doors there was, in house after house, as Humphrey walked down the street, a trumpery piece of crockery or some worthless china statuette, or the blue vase of the front window, with more grass in it, or a worse abomination in the shape of a circular fan of coloured paper.

Number twenty-three, to be sure, where Lilian lived, was, as far as the outside view was concerned, different from the other houses, in that there were real flowers in the window, instead of dried grass. Humphrey felt wet and miserable when he reached it; the rain had dripped through a hole in his umbrella, and had soaked the shoulder of his coat. He went up the steps and pulled the bell. He waited a little while, and happening to glance over the railings into the area, he saw a girl of rather untidy appearance look up at him, and quickly vanish, as if she had been detected in something that she had been forbidden to do. The girl, he noticed, had the same features, on a smaller scale, as Lilian: he supposed she was Florence. Then he heard footsteps in the passage, and through the ground-glass panels of the door he could see a vague form approaching. The next moment all memory of ugliness and squalor and the dismal day departed from him, as Lilian, the embodiment of all the beautiful in his life, stood before him, smiling a welcome. How she seemed to change her personality with every fresh environment in which they met! She was the same Lilian, yet vaguely a different one here, with her brown hair done just as charmingly yet not in the same way as she did it when they went to theatres in the evening. She wore a white muslin blouse, without a collar, and round her neck was a thin gold chain necklace which he had given her. Though he did not realize it at the time, his joy in her was purely physical; the mere sight of her bared neck and throat and the warm softness of her body was sufficient to make him believe that he loved her as he could never love anybody else; he sought no further than the surface; she was pretty, and she was agreeable to be his wife. He did not stop to think of anything else.

"So it's really you!" she said, with a laugh.

As though she had not been expecting him!

He murmured something about the weather as he shook his dripping umbrella. She could invest commonplaces, courtesy phrases, with reality. Her eyes were tender as she said, "You poor thing." It was really fine to have some one so interested in your welfare that her eyes could show pity over a few rain-spots.

"You must come in and dry yourself over the fire. We had a fire because it is so wet."

She closed the door. He took off his coat and hat, and suddenly he caught her silently to him (her eyes spoke of caution, and looked towards the door, leading from the passage), and they kissed hurriedly and passionately. She disengaged herself, and began to talk about trivialities in a high tone. "I have not told any one yet," she whispered. "It is still a secret--so you needn't be afraid of mother." She led the way into the room. Somebody was sitting on the sofa, against the light.

"Mother," said Lilian, "this is Mr Quain."

"Oh," said Mrs Filmer, rising and coming forward to shake hands with him, "how do you do?"

Humphrey sat down in a gloomy, black horsehair chair by Mrs Filmer, who returned to a sofa that belonged to the same family. They began to talk. It was plain that Lilian's mother had been coached by her. She seemed to pay him a deference altogether disproportionate to the occasion, if he were to be considered as a mere casual visitor, a friend of Lilian. She was a faded woman of fifty years or so, the personification of the room itself, for everything within those four walls was irrevocably lost and faded--the photographs in their ugly frames were yellow and old-fashioned; the pictures on the walls, chiefly engravings of thirty years ago, in bevelled frames of walnut wood, were spotted with damp; the furniture was absolutely without taste, a mixture of horsehair and mahogany, and the piano had one of those frilled red satin fronts behind a fretted framework. There was a blue plush _portière_, with a fringe of pom-poms down one side of it, hanging from a brass rod over the door.

It was difficult for him to believe that she was Lilian's mother: that she had actually brought into the world that beautiful, supple being whom he loved. Had she ever been like Lilian? He could trace no resemblance to her in this little thin woman who sat before him, her hands, with the skin of them warped and crinkled, crossed in her lap, her hair sparse and faded, with threads of brown showing among the grey, and the fringe of another tint altogether. She did not even talk as Lilian did: she was too careful of aspirates. He saw that she was altogether inferior to Lilian. She talked of nothing--nothing at all. And all the time she was talking, and he was answering her, he was aware, dimly, of Lilian's presence, somewhere in the background; he was conscious of her watching him, studying him.

The weather was terrible for the time of the year.

They wanted to move out of this house; it was too large for them.

It was so nice for Lilian to have such a comfortable office to work in.

But it was a long way to come home, when the weather was bad.

The weather was very bad to-day.

The summer, one supposed, was breaking up.

After all, it was not so very out of season.

Mr Quain must find his work very interesting.

And so on.

Tea was brought in by a girl who was Lilian on a smaller scale. "Edith, this is Mr Quain," said Lilian; and to Humphrey, "This is my sister Edith." She put the tray down, and shook hands limply. He noticed that she had precisely the same coloured eyes as Lilian's, but they were weaker, and she did not carry herself well. She seemed but a pale shadow of the splendid reality of Lilian. Then Florence, the other sister, came into the room; she was the young girl whom Humphrey had seen over the railings as he stood on the doorstep. She was undeveloped, but her face and figure bore great promise of a beautiful womanhood. Her hair was of a reddish colour, and hung in a long plait down her back. Her face was quite unlike Lilian's: he judged that she resembled her father.

"You look dreadful, child," said Lilian, with a laugh. "Go and wash your face, little pig."

Florence made a grimace, and tossed her pigtail. "It's freckles," she said, hopelessly. "I've been scrubbing away for ten minutes." She looked at Humphrey appealingly, with a smile in her eyes--they all had that smile he knew so well.

"I think you're too hard on your sister, Miss Filmer," he said to Lilian, with mock gravity. (How odd the Miss Filmer sounded.) "She looks radiant. I noticed it was freckles at once." Florence went to Lilian and put her arm round her waist. They were evidently very sisterly. Edith was busy pouring out tea ("One lump or two, Mr Quain"); Mrs Filmer sat with her hands crossed in her lap looking out of the window into the garden beyond. Humphrey took a cup of tea across to her; she was too effusive in her thanks; begged him to sit down, and urged Florence to look after Mr Quain. Just then the front door clicked. "There's Harry," said Edith, putting down the teapot, and running to the door. A short, well-built young man appeared. His hair was the reddish colour of Florence's hair, and his face was frank and boyish. He was about nineteen years old, just the age of discrimination in ties and socks, and the flaunting of well-filled cigarette cases. He and Edith were apparently the greatest friends, doubtless because there was only two years' interval in their ages. Nevertheless, he pulled Florence's pigtail affectionately and gave her a brotherly kiss; pecked Lilian on the cheek ("What a horrid collar you're wearing, Harry," she said, "and you simply reek of tobacco"), and kissed his mother on her forehead. Then Lilian introduced him to Humphrey Quain, and they shook hands and regarded each other furtively, with a constrained silence.

Humphrey felt that the whole family must know of the relations between Lilian and himself, though not one of them spoke about it. But they all treated him with a certain deference, and gave him a status in the house, which invested him with a superiority that seemed to match Lilian's. For there was no doubt of her superiority in this household, now that they were all gathered together. She seemed so stalwart and broad beside them; a creature apart from them all. She did not appear to belong to them, and yet she was, indisputably, of them. They were so commonplace, and she was so rare--at least, that was what Humphrey thought. He watched her as she moved about the room bearing plates and cups, noiselessly, gracefully; she gave him a new impression of domesticity as she wandered about in her own home without the hat that he was accustomed to see her wearing. And she gave him, furthermore, an appearance of strength and character, as though she had acquired the right to rule in this household by the might of her own toil which chiefly supported it. While she was in the room, it lost some of its faded quality, and when she left it to take a cup of tea and a piece of cake to Mabel, the third sister, who was an invalid lying, he understood, on a couch upstairs, the room became desolate, and the most insistent person was the faded mother with her querulous voice.

They made him look at picture-postcard albums and photographs, and some of Florence's drawings, while Lilian was absent. Florence wanted to be a fashion artist, and though her drawings were incredibly bad and scratchy, he felt it was necessary for him to say that they showed promise.... How had Lilian grown to be Lilian in these surroundings, he wondered--surroundings of such frank ugliness and shabby gentility?

He glanced out of the window which gave a view of a narrow oblong garden at the back, where a few stunted wallflowers struggled to live. A patch of unkempt grass ran between the high walls, and there a broken wicker-work chair faced the windows. As he looked out he saw a man stumbling over the grass towards the side door: he caught a glimpse of the soiled and frayed clothes, and feet clothed in down-at-the-heel slippers, of a grey face with shrunken cheeks, and pale blue eyes that peered weakly from beneath grey wiry eyebrows. The man came across his vision like a spectre, trailing his slippered feet one after another, and swaying a little as he walked. He was fascinated by the sight, and suddenly his attention was distracted by Lilian. She had come back to the room, and was standing at his side. Her eyes had followed his, and she knew what he had seen. "Will you have some more tea?" she said, abruptly, touching him on the shoulder. He turned away hastily: his eyes met hers; they held a challenge in them, as though she were daring him to speak of the man in the garden. It was as if he had probed into a carefully hidden secret.

He knew, without being told, that this aimless, shambling man with the slippered feet was the father. He was given in a moment the explanation of this room; the mother; the invalid child; and the air of subdued failure that brooded over the house. He saw Lilian as a regenerating, purifying influence, trying to lift them out of the slough. Their eyes met, and though no word was passed between them, he understood everything.

He wished that he had not come to this house. This family depressed him, and made him feel afraid of Life. It was an odd thought that haunted him: they would be his relations when he married Lilian.

But when, after the leave-takings, she came to the door to help him on with his coat and let him out, he realized that she was unchanged, that she was still splendid for him, and as desirable as she had always been. He felt something of a hero, because he was going to rescue her from this dreadful home of hers....

The memory of the father dogged his thoughts as he came away. He wished he had not gone to the house.

IX

At eight o'clock, on a chill morning, the women in the red-brick cottages of Hyde, which are built round the Hyde collieries, felt the earth quiver beneath their feet, and heard a low roar, reverberating about them. Their hands went up to their beating hearts; they rushed to their windows that overlooked the grey wastes where the shafts of the mines stood gaunt against the horizon; they saw a burst of flame leap from the upcast shaft of No. 3 mine; leap vividly for a swift moment, and leave behind it a vision of a twisted cable-rope, and twisted iron, and the flame that vanished swiftly bore with it the souls of two hundred men: their husbands, their sons--their men. They gathered their shawls about them, and ran, with their clogs clattering on the cobbled streets, to the pit-mouth, joining a stream of men, whose eyeballs shone whitely from the grime and black of their faces--they ran with terror clutching at their hearts and fear at their heels, and every lip was parched and dry with the horror and dread of the moment. There had been a disaster to No. 3 pit: an explosion; a fire--"What is it? Tell us?" They crowded round the mine offices, besieged the mine manager: "For the love of Heaven, for the mercy of Mary, for the sake of Christ--tell us! We must know ... we are the wives, the daughters, the mothers of those who went below to their work in the blackness of the coal.... No need to tell us: we know, now; we see the thin cloud of smoke, with its evil smell, floating above the shaft ... the engine-room is silent. The ventilation fan is not working. It has been shattered, with the lives of all those who matter, by this explosion.

"Yes, yes, we will wait. Some of our men are sure to have escaped; they know the workings. They will find their way to the Arden mine shaft adjoining, and come up in the cages. Perhaps they all will, and no lives will be lost. We will wait...."

At eleven o'clock the little tape machines in the newspaper offices printed out letter by letter the message that was sent by the Hyde reporter, who overslept himself that day, and did not hear the news until ten. "An explosion occurred in the No. 3 mine of the Hyde Collieries this morning. Two hundred men were working at the time, and it is feared that there has been a serious loss of life."

"Off you pop," said Rivers to Wratten, who had just arrived at the office. "This looks big. I think you'd better have some one with you. Boy, tell Mr Quain to come up."

Half an hour later Wratten and Quain were on their way in a cab to Euston, Humphrey thrilling with the adventure of being chosen to accompany Wratten, looking forward to a new experience. "Horrible things, these mine disasters," said Wratten. "I hate 'em," as if any one in the world was so misguided as to like them.

"Are they difficult to do?" asked Humphrey.

"Sometimes ... it depends. If there's a chance of rescue, you've got to hang about sometimes all night. They get on my nerves. This'll be your first, won't it?"

"Yes," Humphrey said. It seemed strange to him that they should be discussing such an appalling disaster so dispassionately; considering it only from their point of view. There was no sense of tragedy, of deep gloom, in their talk. It was all part of their business--a lecture, a murder, an interview, a catastrophe--it was all the same to them. They were merely lookers-on.

When they arrived at Euston, a tall man, whose chief characteristics were gold-rimmed spectacles and a black moustache, came towards them. He wore a red tie and carried a heavy ash stick in his hand. "What--ho! Wratten," he said, jovially, "coming up?"

"Hullo, Grame," said Wratten, "anybody else here yet?"

"Oh! the whole gang. We're for'rard in a reserved compartment."

Kenneth Carr, white-faced and breathless, arrived at the last moment. "Hullo!" he said, "isn't this awful.... Two hundred men! I'll join you as soon as possible."

"Poor Kenneth!" Wratten remarked to Quain, as they followed Grame to the carriage. "He really feels this quite keenly. He realizes the immensity of the tragedy to which we're going to travel. It's a mistake. It hampers one."

"I should have thought it would make you do better work," Quain answered, "if you really felt the tremendous grief of it all."

"Not a bit. It makes you maudlin. You lose your head and go slobbering sentimental stuff about. Remember, you're no one--you don't exist--you're just a reporter who's got to hustle round, find out what's happened, and tell people how it happened. Never mind how it strikes you--_The Day_ ain't interested in you and your sensations--it wants the story of the mine disaster."

"But--" Humphrey began.

Wratten turned on him savagely. "Oh! Good God! don't you think _I_ feel it too? Don't you think I hate the idea of never being able to write it as I see it? By God! I wouldn't dare tell the story of a mine disaster as I see it. _The Day_ would never print it--it would be rank socialism."

There were five other reporters in the carriage. Two of them Humphrey had met before: Mainham, who wore pince-nez, looked like a medical student, and spent every Saturday at the Zoological Garden, where he discovered extraordinary stories of crocodiles, who suffered from measles; he was, in a way, the registrar of births, deaths and marriages among the animals; and Chander, a thin-faced, thin-lipped young man, who wore long hair, whose conversation was entirely made up of a long chain of funny stories.

Chander faced the little tragedies of his work daily, but he kept himself eternally young by pretending only to see the humorous side of things. For instance, he once spent a whole morning in the rain and slush of a January, trying to verify some story. He tramped the dismal pavements of a dirty street off Tottenham Court Road, in search of a certain man in a certain house, finally gave it up in disgust, and discovered that he should have gone to another street of the same name by King's Cross. That would have disheartened the average man: but Chander turned it into a funny story--it is good to have the Chander point of view.

The other reporters were Thomas, who worked for _The Courier_--a penny paper--a well-ordered, methodical, unimaginative man, who had a secret pity for the poor devils who had to work for halfpenny papers; and a big broad-shouldered man, whose name was Gully. His face at a glance seemed handsome enough, until you noticed the narrow eyes and the coarseness of the heavy under lip. He had brought a pack of cards with him and wanted to play nap.

"Good heavens!" said Kenneth Carr, irritably, "try and behave as if you had some decency left. We're going to a mine disaster. There's two hundred dead men at the other end of the journey."

"Well, you do talk rot," Gully replied. "Are they relations of yours?" He sniggered at his joke, and asked Mainham to play. Mainham said he couldn't play in the train, but Thomas was willing. Chander, who knew that Kenneth Carr loathed Gully and all that he stood for, joined the party out of sheer good-nature. He hated quarrelling.

"Why look on the black side of things, Carr?" he said. "Perhaps they're not dead at all. We needn't go into mourning until we know everything, and we don't know anything except what the early editions of the evening papers had. And newspapers are so inaccurate."

"Ass!" said Kenneth, with a grin, for he and Chander were good friends, and he understood Chander's tact.

Gully shuffled the cards. "I hope they're dead," he said, "because then we shall be able to get back to-morrow."

Kenneth Carr, Grame and Wratten looked at each other. Wratten gave his head a little toss, and made a clicking noise that meant, "What can you expect, after all, from Gully."

"Charitable soul," Chander said, admiringly. "What a sweet temperament you have. Won't it be sad if you find 'em all alive and ready to kick!"

Kenneth Carr, Wratten, Mainham and Humphrey went into the dining-car, as the express rocked northwards towards Luton. The journey was full of apprehension for Humphrey; he had never been on such a big story as this, and, though he knew he had to do nothing but obey Wratten, there was still a doubt of success in his mind. It interfered with his appetite. He marvelled that the other men could eat their food so calmly, as though they were going on a pleasure trip, and talk of ordinary things. Of course, they were thoroughly used to it. It was as common an incident in their lives as casting up columns of figures is to a bank clerk, or the measuring of dead bodies to an undertaker.

After luncheon, Mainham left them to go back to the carriage, and the three friends were alone over cigarettes and coffee.

"I'm sorry I lost my temper with Gully," Carr said, after a pause.

"Oh, we all know Gully." Wratten smiled and sipped his coffee.

"Don't get like Gully," Kenneth said to Humphrey, "even if you feel like him. It's bad; it's the Gullys that have brought such a lot of disrespect on journalism. He's the type of journalist whom people think it necessary to give 'free' cigars to, and 'free' whiskies and sodas; 'free' dinners, even. They think it is the correct thing to give 'free' things to us, as one throws bones to a dog. It's the Gullys who take everything greedily and never disillusion them."

"But don't you think you're too sensitive?" Humphrey ventured. "It seems to me that the work we do demands a skin thick enough to take all insults. Look at the things we have to do sometimes!"

"It's our business to take risks," Wratten interposed. "I don't mind what I do, so long as there's a good story in it. If it's discreditable, the fault isn't with me. I'm only a humble instrument. It's _The Day_ who's to blame--_The Day_ and the system. I do my duty, and any complaints can be made to Neckinger or Ferrol, with or without horsewhip. That's my position."

"You see," Kenneth Carr said, musingly, "there are, roughly, three classes of reporters. There's the man who is keenly alive to the human side of his work and talks about it, as I'm afraid I do; there's the man who feels just as keenly and shuts up, as you and Wratten and Mainham and hosts of others do; and there's the chap, like Gully, who hasn't an ounce of imagination, and gloats over things like this mine disaster, because he's a ghoul. I envy people like you and Wratten. You do the best work because, although you feel pity and sorrow, you never allow these feelings to hamper your instincts of the reporter."

Humphrey smiled. "Wratten doesn't." The time passed in recounting some of Wratten's audacious doings. His bullying a half-suspected murderer into a confession; his brutal exposure of a woman swindler--he had answered an advertisement for a partner in some scheme or other, found the advertiser was a woman with a questionable commercial past, pretended he was _bona fide_, and, when he had obtained all his material, ruthlessly exposed her in _The Day_. There was the case of the feeble-minded millionaire, who was kept a prisoner in his house. There was the case of the Gaiety girl who married a lordling, and Wratten pried into their private lives, forced the lordling into an interview, and wrote a merciless story that made London snigger. He was absolutely callous in his work, yet so human and tender-hearted out of it. Humphrey, since that night when he had been helped by him, had looked up to Wratten as the type of the ideal reporter, with courage unlimited, who never flinched, even when the work was most unsavoury and humiliating.

He was not popular with the reporters of the papers: he kept himself away from them, and restricted his friendship to one or two men. The reason of his unpopularity was simply because others feared him as a rival, and Humphrey found, later, that there was merit in that sort of unpopularity. The strong men are never popular.

The train had now sped past Rugby, and the green valleys and chequered landscapes ran by in a never-ending panorama. The sunshine held with them as far as Crewe, and then, as they came into an unlovely stretch of land bristling with factory chimneys, the clouds gathered, and the greyness settled over the day. The three friends sat silently now: Wratten and Carr, seated opposite, were looking out of the window, and Humphrey over Carr's shoulder caught glimpses of the little world to which they were journeying. He saw the great brick chimneys everywhere now, breathing clouds of foul black smoke, and then, wherever he looked, the strange-looking gearing-wheels of the coal-mine shafts came into view. Some of them were quite near the railway line, and he could see the light twinkling between their spokes as the great shaft wheels moved round, hauling up invisible cages. There were tangles of iron-work, and buildings of grimy brick, and, as they rushed on, they passed gaunt sidings where coal-stained trucks waited in a long line.