Chapter VII: Part II: Lilian (5)

"No," she said. "There's no need to do that. We'll each go our own ways."

The waiter, after discreet knocking at the door, came between them with plates of food and clatter of knives and forks. They regarded him silently, and when he was gone, they made a feeble pretence of eating.

"I ought to have known better," she said, returning to the business again with a wry smile. "I ought to have known it couldn't have lasted."

"It isn't that I love you any the less," he said, unconsciously quoting a phrase in his letter. "I don't know how to explain my attitude.... I love you just the same ... but, somehow...."

"Don't, don't explain," she interrupted. "I understand. Of course it's impossible if you think like that. And, of course, Humphrey, there's no need to talk of love...." She laughed a little, and then, really, she could not spare him any more. "Oh, what a boy you are!"

He flushed hotly. "I know you've always looked upon me as a boy," he said. "You think I'm a child ... but it takes a man to do what I'm doing ... it takes courage to face it out ... it hurts."

"Oh, you _are_ a boy," she said, with a little hysterical laugh. "Of course you're only a boy." She pushed her plate away from her. "Don't you see what you've done--you've broken up everything."

And she put her head on her arms outstretched on the table, and sobbed and sobbed again.

He watched her shoulders tremble with her sobs, and heard her accusing words repeat themselves in a pitiful refrain in his ears. At that moment he touched, it seemed, the lowest depths of meanness. He felt awkward and foolish.... She was crying, and he could do nothing. "Lilian ... Lilian," he pleaded, touching her hand that was flat on the table. "Don't--I didn't mean to." Heavens! if she did not stop, he would snatch her to him, and kiss her hotly, and let Ferrol and the world and all its success go by him for ever.

The waiter saved the situation. His knock came as a warning, and when he entered the room with more plates and a greasier smile, he found the lady at the window flinging it open widely and complaining of the heat, the gentleman looking moodily before him, and the food barely touched.

"You no like the fricassee, sare?" he said, turning the rejected food with his fork.

"It's all right," Humphrey said, in a voice that the waiter knew to mean "Get out." "No appetite to-day."

Lilian turned from the window, as the door closed behind him. Her eyes and lips were struggling for mastery over her emotions, and the lips conquered with a wan, watery smile. She placed her hand on Humphrey's shoulder. "There," she said, wiping her eyes, destroying the tension with a prosy sniff. "It's all over--I didn't mean to be so silly."

The miserable meal went on in silence. There was nothing more to be said. He was thinking of all this pitiful love-affair of his, how it ran unevenly through the fabric of work and hopes, beginning at first with a brilliant pattern--a splash of the golden sunrise--and gradually becoming worn, until now all the threads were twisted and frayed. After this, they would part, never to meet again on the old terms, never to recapture the thrill of early love. Odd, how she who had lain so close to his heart, enfolded in his arms, would have to pass him in the street henceforth, perhaps with only a nod, perhaps without any recognition at all. And nobody would know, nobody would guess of their shipwrecked love.

"I'm glad I never told mother," she said once, voicing her thoughts. She took a little package from her pocket: it held the few trinkets he had given her, wrapped up in tissue-paper--a brooch or two, a thin gold necklace with a heart dangling from it, and his own signet ring.

"No ... no ..." he said; "for God's sake, keep those. I should be happier if you kept them."

She shook her head gently. "I could not keep them," she said. "They were little tokens of your love ... they belong to you now."

There was a pause. The clock chimed two. The disillusion was complete, all the fine draperies of love had been wrenched away--they were so flimsy after all--and behind them reality stood, sordid and ashamed. She tried to strike a note of cheerful fatalism.

"Well, what must be, must be," she said, reaching for her cloak. He sprang to his feet to help her, remembering how, in other days, his hand had touched her cheek, and he had urged her lips towards him, that he might kiss her. How calm and self-possessed she was now. How magnificently she mastered the situation--a false move from her and the moments would become chaotic. He was uneasy, awkward and embarrassed ... one moment, ready to snatch her to his arms and begin all over again; the next, alertly conscious that he was unencumbered, that henceforth there was no other interest in his life but work--free!

Now she was ready to go.

"I won't come down with you," he said, "I'll say good-bye now." He could not face a parting in the street. He watched her gather her things together, her bag, her umbrella, her gloves ... she smiled at him, and now the smile was a riddle: he could not guess her thoughts: contempt or pity?

Suddenly she bent down towards him, stooped over him, with her face aglow with a divine expression, virginal and tender, the light of sacrifice in her eyes, the sweet pain of martyrdom on her lips; she bent towards him and kissed him lightly on the forehead.

"Good-bye, Humphie dear."

She had never spoken with a voice like that before, she had never shown how much she loved him, and all the misunderstandings, the torment, the doubts and uncertainties were washed away as his thoughts gushed forth in a great appreciation of his loss.

The next moment she had gone.

He was alone in the room, with her good-bye ringing in his ears. Idly he fingered a little packet of tissue-paper, opening it and laying bare the little pieces of metal that were all that remained to him of his love.

He touched the presents that he had given to Lilian--each one held memories for him.... The gold signet ring had belonged to his father.... If only Daniel Quain had been there, with his world-wisdom and philosophy....

Tears, Humphrey? Surely, not tears! Think how splendidly free you are now; think of the moment of triumph when you can go to Ferrol and tell him that you are no longer hampered; see how straight the path that leads to conquest.

XIV

That night, in a little box of a flat in Hampstead, a man was fighting his last battle, with the fingers of Death at his throat and the arm of Love for his support. It was a sharp, short battle, ended when the night itself finished, and the dawn came through the chinks in the shutters, as pale and as cold as a ghost.

This was the end of Leonard Wratten, whom so few people understood, who had always kept his own counsel, so that only he himself knew of his own struggles and ambitions--they were just like Humphrey's, just like those of every other man in the Street. He had not asked much of life, and all that he asked for was given him, and then snatched away.

They talked about it in the Pen Club, and in the offices. "Overwork," they whispered. "He was just married." Ferrol rose to the occasion: wrote handsome cheques for Mrs Wratten, straightened out affairs, sent her flowers, arranged for her to take a sea-cruise ... did all that he possibly could, except bring Leonard Wratten striding back to life again.

But there was one in Fleet Street who followed the coffin to the cemetery, who seemed to feel that he alone had understood Wratten. ("It's always the best fellows that are taken," they said, when he was gone, as they say of every one.) And, as he came away from the cemetery in the sunshine when the coffin had been lowered into the grave, and scattered with lilies, he knew that he had lost friendship inestimable, for it had not had time fully to develop and ripen.

Wratten's death, and the break with Lilian, came hard upon each other: he felt that the roots of his life were stirred, two influences of such potent possibilities had gone from him. He knew that a phase of his life was closed.