Chapter VII: Part FIVE: EVE

I

During a rehearsal of a new play in which he was engaged Wynne noticed Eve Dalry. She was walking-on in the crowd, and did not seem of a piece with the other girls. When her scene was over she slipped away to a quiet corner and produced a book. Finding the required page, she shook her head as though to banish other considerations, seated herself on an upturned box, and began to read with great absorption.

Partly from curiosity to see the title of the book Wynne moved toward her. Carlyle’s “Heroes and Hero Worship.” A queer choice for a girl to make, he thought, and wondered how much she understood. For awhile he stood behind her glancing at a paragraph here and there, and watching the careful way she turned over a page, then turned it back again to reread and reconsider some passage not wholly understood. He was unused to women who read so seriously, and, despite the semi-cynical smile at the corners of his mouth, her studiousness impressed him.

Presently, impelled by a new and curious familiarity, he drew a long, tapered forefinger over the straight, thin parting in her hair. She looked up slowly, as though his action had been scarcely enough to distract her attention.

“I like the shape of your head,” he found himself saying in reply to the query in her eyes, “it is the kind of vessel which is never empty. The square of your chin, too, is so very right. One seldom sees the two together.”

She met the critical survey with equal candour.

“I have been liking your head,” she said, “but not the chin. Its—”

She drew a slanting line in the air.

“I know,” he nodded; “but it’s not significant.”

“I meant that—insignificant.”

Wynne was not at his best when humour turned against him. His smile and his frown struck a balance.

“I could quote the names of a dozen brilliant men who did not carry their strength or wit in the lower half of their faces, and illustrate my instances at the National Portrait Gallery.”

“Are you brilliant?” There was no barb to the question.

“It pleases me to think so.”

“One wonders, then, why you are doing this little jobbery in a theatre.”

“Yes, that’s reasonable enough. I wonder, too, sometimes. I suppose I was hungry when I took the engagement.”

“This is not your real work, then?”

“I hardly know what my real work is, but it is not in the market. In theory real work never should be in the market.”

“‘And no one shall work for money
And no one shall work for fame,’”

quoted Eve.

“Spare me from Kipling. It is so disheartening to find one’s views supported by quotations.”

“I’m not so advanced as that. I’m rather proud of quotations—I look on them as medals for reading.”

He made an intolerant gesture.

“But no sane persons show their medals.”

“While I’m young I had rather not be altogether sane.”

“Good! I take back sanity. It’s the worst asset an artist can possess.”

She looked at him with a faint, intricate smile.

“You are easy to catch out,” she said.

“Possibly. I don’t aspire to be a cricketer. Indeed, cricket stands for all I dislike most. Cricket is an Englishman’s notion of the proper conduct of life—a game with rules. If he resists seducing a friend’s wife it is because to do so is not cricket.”

“Do you favour his doing so?”

“Not I—but it depends on the mood and the man, and the attraction. I simply do not admit the existence of cricket in these matters.”

“Do you know,” said Eve, “you seem to me to be expressing ideas and not thoughts. Tell me, what is your real work?”

“I assume that one day I shall know, but I don’t know yet. If I were to say painting—writing—talking—acting—I should be equally right. I have searched the dictionaries in vain to find a word to describe myself. The verb ‘to lead’ is the nearest approach. I think, by nature, I am the centre of a circle—a circle that is even widening. Sounds absurd, doesn’t it?—to lead from the centre of a circle.”

The conviction and frankness with which he discussed himself was remarkable, and, strangely enough, not offensive. He possessed a quality of magnetism which robbed his words of half their arrogance. Eve allowed her eyes to travel over him with calm interest. His clothes were careless and shabby, his collar too big, and his cuffs frayed; his tie seemed anywhere but in the right place. At the first glance she saw he was ill-nourished, and felt an immediate impulse to feed him up with possets and strong beef tea. Frailty excites kindly resolves from the generous-hearted. She found his features attractive, despite their irregularity, and his eyes appealed to her enormously. They were such plucky eyes, eyes that would look the world in the face unfalteringly and support with impertinent courage the wildest views which the mobile, cynical, and weak mouth might choose to utter.

When anything pleased her, Eve laughed—not so much a laugh of amusement as a purr of satisfaction. The unusual appealed to her, and beyond all doubt Wynne Rendall was unusual. Hers were plucky eyes too. They rested frankly, and seemed to read the meanings of what they reflected. Eve had a broad forehead, straight brows, and clean-cut, clearly defined features. Her mouth was sweet and tolerant; to borrow from a painter’s terminology, it was a beautifully drawn mouth. One felt she would be very sure in all her dealings—analytic and purposeful. Hers was not a present-day face, but belonged rather to the period of the old Florentine Masters.

For quite a while these two young people surveyed each other with calm appreciation, and presently Wynne broke the silence.

“You are a new type to me,” he said—“a perplexing type. I’ve seen you on canvas, but never in the flesh. Something of Leonardo’s Lucretia! We might see more of each other, I think.”

“Yes,” she said.

He was about to speak again when the leading man came through a door in the canvas scene and moved toward them. In an instant Wynne pulled down the corners of his mouth pathetically.

“Oh dear! I must go.”

“Why? Your scene is a long way ahead.”

“I know, but here’s K. G. If I stayed he might think I wanted to talk to him—and I don’t.”

Eve understood the feeling very well. Those whose future is all to make are wary and resentful of patronage, and often needlessly shun the society of others more successful than themselves. None is more jealous of his pride than the climber.

She allowed Wynne to depart unhindered, and presently the eminent K. G. came near enough to condescend a “Good morning.”

“Been talking to young Rendall?” he queried.

She nodded.

“A queer boy—quite a clever actor—quite! A good sense of character!”

“Very.”

“Know him well?”

“About five minutes.”

“Oh, yes—yes. Sadly opinionated! Notice it?”

“He has opinions, certainly.”

“H’m! Never get on—people with too many views. He won’t learn—clever enough in himself, but won’t learn from others.”

“I rather thought he had learnt a good deal from others.”

“Oh no—most inaccessible.”

“Does that mean he wouldn’t learn from you?” she inquired, very frankly.

K. G. looked down in mild surprise. Young ladies who are “walking-on” should agree with and not interrogate those lofty beings whose salaries are paid by cheque. But this young lady ignored the principle, and seemed to expect an answer.

“Yes,” he replied, very frankly. “Of course it’s his own affair if he cares to ignore the advice of—well—” Modesty forbade the mention of his own name, and he finished the sentence by a gesture.

“Of course it is,” said Eve.

K. G. frowned. The conversation was not proceeding on orthodox lines.

“Still, as I say, young men of that sort do not get on.”

“I can’t see why. Perhaps he thought you could teach him nothing.”

It was the protective mother instinct compelled the words. The remark annoyed K. G. excessively. It was not, however, his habit to vent irritation upon a woman, even though she might be its original cause, consequently he attacked Wynne Rendall.

“He is a fellow who wants a good kicking, and has never had it.”

“A man always wants to kick what he cannot understand,” said Eve.

To defend some one who is absent from the attacks of a third person is a sure basis upon which friendships are established. When Eve returned to her little bed-sitting-room after the rehearsal, Wynne Rendall occupied a large share of her thoughts.

“I like him,” she said to herself. “He’s all wrong in all sorts of ways, but there’s something tremendous about him in spite of that—and I like him.”

She fell to wondering how he had arrived at what he was, what queer turns of circumstance or inclination had aged the youth from him. With quickening sympathy she recalled his sunken cheeks, the nervous sensitive movements of his hands and head.

“Looks as if he never had enough to eat. I’m sure he doesn’t eat enough.”

Then she laughed, for in her own existence eating did not enter very largely. A salary of one pound one shilling per week does not admit of extravagant _menus_. A woman can keep the roses of her cheeks flowering upon very little. With a man it is different. A man, to be a man, must set his teeth in solid victuals, or nature denied will deny.

She thought over her exchange with the leading man, and was glad she had stood up for Wynne. It offended her that a fat, luxurious fellow should say what he chose, and imagine himself immune from counter-attack on account of his position in the company. She would not have been at ease with her conscience if she had acted otherwise. In the circumstances Eve did not prosper well with her reading that night. “Heroes and Hero Worship” was cast aside to make room for other considerations.

At the rehearsal next day it was with almost a proprietary interest she responded to Wynne’s flickering greeting.

“You are making a reputation,” he said, and added, “by the easiest way.”

“What way is that?”

“Being frank with your superiors.”

“Is it easy?”

“Assuredly—if you have the courage. Most people are content to accept their superiors as being superior. Invert the principle—tell an accepted success you consider him an ass—and you create an immediate interest in yourself.”

“It wasn’t my reason,” said Eve.

“Wasn’t it?” He seemed quite surprised.

“No. He annoyed me, and I showed him I was annoyed.”

“You were sincere, then?”

“Of course.”

“How queer of you.”

“Why queer?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It seems so odd to be sincere with a man like that. Are you often sincere?”

“Yes. Aren’t you?”

“Inside I am. Been at the stage long?”

“This is the beginning.”

“The egg stage?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me, where do you live?”

“A room—anywhere.”

“You’ve no people, then?”

“None to whom I matter—or who matter to me.”

“I know. D’you know I was afraid you might have been rich and comfortable.”

Eve fingered a piece of her dress and held it out.

“Eight-three a yard, and made at home.”

“There are rich women who disguise themselves.”

“I am not one. I have king’s treasures, that is all.”

“A row of books over your bed, h’m.”

“That was clever,” she smiled.

“I could guess the authors.”

“Try.”

“Meredith—Browning—Hardy—Wendell Holmes.”

“Pretty good—especially Meredith.”

“You mustn’t overdo Meredith—he is a cult, not an author. You’re intricate—with the ‘Diana’ courage, and that’s dangerous. If you care to borrow I have some books. Come and choose a few.”

“May I? I should like that.”

“Come tonight?”

“It’s the first night of the play.”

“I’d forgotten. Well”—with a sudden impulse—“why not after it is over?”

“If you like.”

He rubbed his chin with his long, sensitive fingers, and nodded approvingly.

“You’d make a friend,” he said.

He could say things very attractively when he chose. The remark was a compliment to Eve and her sex.

II

Wynne’s part ended with the first act, but he waited at the stage door till the close of the play. Presently Eve came out and joined him.

Very small she looked wrapped in a long brown coat, with her hands tucked in the pockets. She wore a little close-fitting hat which accentuated the oval of her gravely piquant face.

“Which way?” she asked.

“Through Covent Garden, if we walk. Be jollier to walk, I think, don’t you?”

He suddenly remembered when last he had put the same question, and almost flushed at the memory. Then, as now, he had been seeking a friend. He had been a long time finding one.

“Yes, much,” said Eve. “I always walk back. I like it, and it saves the pennies.”

“I like it, and try not to remember that it saves the pennies,” he remarked whimsically. “’Tisn’t bad being poor when one doesn’t mean to be poor for ever. I have tremendous beliefs that this is only a passing stage, haven’t you?”

“A valley?”

“Yes, which in passing through gives us the answer to all manner of whys and wherefores.”

Eve nodded. “What a queer old street!” she said. “I haven’t been this way before.”

“There’s a coffee stall at the corner where I buy provender; that’s why I brought you. There it is.”

They stopped at the stall, with the proprietor of which Wynne seemed on excellent terms, and bought some hard-boiled eggs, “balls of chalk” as they are familiarly called.

“A friend to every one that man is,” said Wynne as they proceeded on their way. “Does all manner of good turns to the queer folk whose business keeps ’em abroad late. He lent me three suppers once, at a time when I needed them badly.”

From a glowing oven on wheels nearer his lodging they bought baked potatoes.

“Put one in each pocket. Finest things in the world to keep your hands warm.” As she followed his advice he nodded encouragingly.

“That’s the way. It’s a fire and a good dinner all in one. I’ve a very great regard for a baked potato; it’s the president of the republic of vegetables, as the hot pie is the dowager queen of confectionery.”

“What do you call a hot pie?”

“Just that! They used to be cooked in the streets in little portable ovens. Did you never meet a pieman?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Daresay not, for the last one died two years ago. A fine fellow he was. I went to his funeral.”

“I’d love to have seen a real pieman. Didn’t Simple Simon meet one going to a fair?”

“So it’s said.”

“And now they’ve all gone for ever. How sad!”

“Tell you what,” exclaimed Wynne, “there’s an old man Richmond way who sells hot turnovers. When the spring comes we might ’bus down there, have a walk in the park, and munch turnovers in the night on the way home.”

“Yes, let’s do that.”

Very ordinary affairs assume a delicate outline when approached in a romantic spirit. The idea of eating turnovers on the top of a ’bus does not sound very attractive, and yet to Wynne, as he suggested it, and to Eve as she listened, the promised expedition seemed full of the happiest possibilities. They felt the touch of a spring breeze blowing in their hair, and saw the whitey-green of the new leaves, and the blue sky turn to a lavender in which the stars appeared. Almost they could taste the good baked crust and the sour-sweet apples of the midnight feast.

“D’you know,” said Eve, “I think, of all things in the world, the most glorious are those we mean to do.”

They stopped before an old Queen Anne house, and producing a latchkey Wynne unlocked the door.

“Top floor,” he said, “and rather a climb.”

They mounted the creaky stairs, and he was puffing gustily when they reached the top landing. For a young man he seemed unduly exhausted. Striking a light on his boot, he entered and lit a shaded lamp.

“Take off your hat and I’ll get the fire going. Look! I must have paid the rent, for it is actually laid.”

Eve smiled as he went down on his knees before a tiny basket grate, then let her gaze travel round the room. Inset, in the damp-stained slanting roof, were two gable windows, broad silled and littered with books and papers. Before one of these was a writing table, dilapidated but glorious with age; this, too, was liberally sprinkled with half-written manuscripts, pens, cigarette ends, and the jumble of odds and ends with which a man surrounds himself. A small Jacobean table stood in the middle of the uncarpeted floor, a tarnished copper bowl, battered but still shapely, giving tone to its dark fissured surface. Two age-worn grandfather chairs were drawn up near the fire. In each recess in the walls was a bookcase, piled ceiling-high with books. A couple of Holbein prints, and an unframed Albrecht Dürer completed the decoration. It was a shabby, unkempt room, yet, like its owner, it possessed individuality and charm.

“I like this,” said Eve. “I’m glad I came.”

“You like it. I thought you would—hoped so, too. I’ve never shown it to any one else. It is good though, isn’t it? Try that chair. I carried it back on my head from a ragshop in Holloway Road, and having nearly deprived me of life it gave it back to me in sweet repose. Take off your coat first, won’t you? That’s right. Don’t forget the ’taters though. Thanks! I’ll put ’em on the trivet. Good. Thank God the fire means to burn. D’you know sometimes I’ve almost cried when it wouldn’t. I can’t lay a fire, and I loathe to be defeated.”

He began wandering round the room and producing plates and knives from unexpected quarters. Presently he stopped and puzzled.

“Can you think of a likely place to find the bread?” he asked.

“Where did you see it last?”

“I don’t know. I have meals at all sorts of odd times and places, so one loses track. Wait a minute, though.”

He disappeared into the bedroom and emerged with a loaf and a saucer with butter on it.

“Breakfasted while I was dressing,” he explained, “or else I had supper in there over night. I don’t know which—but let’s make a start.”

They feasted very royally off bread and hard-boiled eggs and hot potatoes and raspberry jam, followed by a pot of tea. The tea they drank from little Chinese Saki cups without handles.

“I only use these on the especialist occasions,” he announced, adding with a smile, “In fact I have never used them before.”

“Haven’t you many friends?”

“No. Have you?”

“No.”

“I thought you hadn’t.”

“Why?”

“People with lots of friends don’t like me—but then I don’t like them—so that’s that—isn’t it. Let’s draw near the fire. The poor little thing means well, but it can’t reach us at such a distance.”

So they drew up their chairs and talked. They talked of books, of dead men, and of great ambitions. Under the influence of her society Wynne seemed to lose much of his arrogance and cynicism. He spoke of the things he loved naturally and with reverence. Ever and again he would dart to the shelves for a volume and read some passage to the point of the subject they had been discussing. Then he would throw it aside and paraphrase with a clear and almost inspired insight.

“One should always paraphrase,” he said. “One should paraphrase one’s own thoughts and every one else’s. It’s the sure way of getting down to basic facts. If I were to produce a play of Shakespeare’s I should make every actor translate his lines into colloquial schoolboy English. Then we should know he had his meanings right. Some glimmer of that necessity occurred to me the first time I went to a theatre, but now I see how absolutely essential it is.”

The talk always led back to himself. His own ego was the all-important factor.

“Extraordinary wrong most people are in their ideas!”

“When will you start to put them right?”

He looked at her keenly—on guard lest she should be laughing at him. But the question was sincere enough.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t believe in beginnings—gradual ascent, ladder of fame, and all that. Life to me is divided into two halves—the period of finding out and the period of handing out. I don’t intend to be a person who is beginning to be spoken of. When I am spoken of it will be by every one—simultaneously. In the meantime it is better to be obscure—and absorbent.”

“You want success.”

“I shall have it too.”

“For the world’s sake.”

“Ye-es—and for mine.”

Quarter after quarter boomed out from the neighbouring clocks. It was after two when Eve rose and took her coat from the nail on the door.

“You going?”

“Yes.”

“Shall I walk with you?”

“No, it isn’t far.”

“Very well—I want to work too. But you’ll come again, won’t you?”

“If I may.”

“’Course you may. You must. You’re an easy person—easier than I’d have thought possible—you sort of—don’t bother me. Take a Walter Pater with you. Better for you than Meredith. Treat it gently, though; I starved a whole week to buy that book.”

She took the white-vellum bound volume, nodded, and tucked it under her arm.

“Good-night.”

“’Night. You are rather an admirable person.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. A girl is generally frightened to be in a man’s rooms in the middle of the night.”

“It wouldn’t occur to me to be frightened of you,” said Eve.

“Why not?”

“A man who starved for a week to buy this.” She touched the book under her arm.

For some reason her gently spoken words piqued him, and he replied:

“Yet I am a man just the same.”

“A man but not the same,” she said, and, smiling, passed out on to the landing.

She had descended the first flight before he moved and followed her to the front door.

“I will walk back with you.” It was what any man would have said.

“No, please not. I had rather think of you as the student working for the day.”

He hesitated—then, “Very well. Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

He retraced his steps slowly. The memory of her attitude and her words puzzled him.

“More like a boy,” he concluded, which if you think it out was a very fine form of conceit.

His thoughts wandered from his work, and he bit his pen for a long, long while. His eyes rested unseeingly on the black patch which was the window.

“More like a boy—much more.”

He nodded to convince himself. After all, the friendship of a boy who is really a girl is very pleasant.

Never once did it cross his mind how entirely negligible was the physical side of his nature. A man whose brain works with febrile intensity night and day, and whose earnings are scarcely sufficient to buy the meanest fare, knows little or nothing of passionate callings. Unlike your idle, over-fed fellow whose intellect performs no greater task than finding excuses for bodily indulgence, the student’s sensuality lies in words and colour. His worst vice is the prostitution of an artistic standard.

III

It was the neuter quality in Wynne Rendall which made possible the all-hour intimacy which came to exist between Eve and himself. She would come to his rooms, indifferent to time and convention, and stay far into the night.

Sometimes they conversed little, and then, while he worked or wandered about in a seemingly aimless fashion, seeking some cherished but elusive word, she would read, curled up in the age-worn chair. When the talking mood possessed him she would lay her book aside and contribute endorsement or censure to his ideas. In this respect her courage was boundless, for she never hesitated to dispute with him when she felt he was at fault. He would fight for his mental holdings to the last breath of argument, then of a sudden swing round and say:

“Yes, I know you are right—but how do you know?”

His extraordinary belief in himself filled her with a queer mixture of distress and admiration, but the distress was outweighed by the admiration and the joy she took in their brain to brain fencing or accord. Their talks, although embracing nearly every subject under the sun, were, as a rule, impersonal, or rather impersonal in so far as their relations to one another was concerned.

In common with many folk, Wynne thought more highly of his lesser deeds than of his greater, and vaunted them enthusiastically. He was inordinately proud of his truculence and acerbity to men who were more successful than himself, and took pleasure in recounting the fine-edged verbal tools he had employed against them. He was mortally offended when Eve told him frankly the attitude was unworthy and easily misconstrued.

“They only think you are envious,” she said.

“I envious of them? Good God!”

Her frankness had its effect, however, for he modified the characteristic, and no longer shouted “Yah” at lesser intellects and longer purses.

Another change she brought about was the matter of diet. Very drastically she quashed the nibbling habit which with him had taken the place of meals.

“Wynne,” she said, “what did you have for breakfast?”

“Lord knows. I don’t! Nothing, I expect.”

“Would you like to please me?”

“Yes,” he answered, “I suppose so.”

“You are starving yourself.”

“What nonsense!”

“You are. You won’t be able to stand the strain if you don’t eat properly.”

“I shan’t if I do,” he replied. “How can I buy books and pay rent and all that if I lavish my substance on victuals.”

“How much do you spend a week on food?”

“Never thought.”

“Think then.”

“Not I. Look! You haven’t seen this copy of ‘Erewhon,’ have you? It’s a first edition!”

“I want you to answer my question.”

He tossed his head petulantly.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” he implored. “The world is peopled with folk who worry about these matters; let’s be away from them. You’ll want me to buy a dinner-gong next so that half the street may know I am sitting down to table.”

“Perhaps I shall, for I want you to sit at table—regularly.”

He caught the word “regularly,” and played tunes upon it.

“I know,” said Eve, “and I like you for feeling that way—but you are fighting against nature—not convention—and that’s all wrong. We funny little things who walk about on the world must follow certain laws—we can’t help ourselves—and we may as well follow them sensibly. We have to lie down and get up and wash our faces and brush our hair and eat our dinners; we have to—if we didn’t we should accomplish nothing. It is foolish to fight with the ‘musts’ when there are armies of ‘needn’t be’s’ to draw the sword against.”

He snorted derisively and ridiculed prosaic philosophy. When he had finished she calmly repeated her question.

“How much do you spend a week on food?”

Very reluctantly he produced a sheet of paper and a pencil and scribbled a rough estimate.

“Will you give me the nine shillings and let me cater for you?”

“No,” he said emphatically.

“Please do.”

“Why should I spend money on a dinner when I can stave off hunger with a stick of chocolate?”

“Couldn’t we make a common fund and have one meal together each day. I’d cook it here.”

His expression brightened instantly.

“You would? You’d come each day?”

“If you consent.”

Hitherto her comings had been sporadic—too sporadic. He had felt, when she was absent, the consciousness of something lacking.

“I should like you to come here every day,” he said.

He was willing to accept a routine of her society, though rebelling against a time-table for meals. She smiled as the thought crossed her mind, but to have voiced it would have been to sacrifice the gains she had made.

“If you consent,” she repeated.

“All right; do what you will,” he said.

So every afternoon Eve cooked a meal over a grubby little gas-ring, assisted by a methylated spirit stove, and had the satisfaction of seeing her labours rewarded by a slightly added tinge of colour to his cheeks.

In buying the food she contributed more toward the cost than he, for in the matter of money he was strangely unmindful. Frequently he forgot his weekly contribution altogether, and returned home with some trifle of china or an old print by way of alternative. On these occasions it did not occur to him to question how meals still appeared upon his table, and Eve would not have told him for the world how hard it had been that this should be so.

Increasingly her thoughts centred on his welfare, and her own personality took second place. Even her ambitions—and they had been many and glorious—became merged in the task of helping him to success.

He had not taken into consideration the possibility that she, too, was a climber at heart, and had set her sails for the port where the dreams come true. He was quite offended when one day she spoke of herself.

“But can you act?” he staccatoed.

“One day I shall,” she answered. “One day I shall feel I know so much more than all the others—then I shall act, and people will sit up and say so.”

“H’m.”

“You think it unlikely?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” He fidgeted with a cup on the mantelshelf. “It seemed you were echoing those things which I say to myself.”

“We have thoughts in common.”

He shook his head irritably.

“I don’t admit it. There is no common currency in thoughts or ideas. To me parallel lines are antagonistic lines. Why should you want to act?”

“I want to express myself as strongly as you do. I want to succeed.”

“I don’t like women who succeed. Why should you succeed? Where’s the necessity—?”

“Born in me,” she answered.

His words for the moment had hurt her bitterly, but the subtler side of her nature took comfort from the almost childishly petulant tone in which he had spoken them.

“The necessity is born by the things around you,” he said. “They are the impulses toward success.”

“Yes, that’s true. Perhaps it was the wretched drabness of my surroundings which fired the impulse in me. We haven’t talked to each other of our people, you and I?”

“I never think back,” he said.

“I do, because it’s the impetus to think forward.”

He looked at her critically.

“You might have come from princely stock by the look of you. You haven’t the seeming of the drab.”

“Perhaps I did; but it was the inbred collapsed finish of the good stock. My father idled backward to the slums—my mother was gentle, but that was all. He was dead before I could remember. Oh, that dreadful back-street life! You can’t understand. We were only a little removed from the gossipy-doorstep folk who talk of a neighbour’s confinement as they lean on the rickety railings. We played with their children, my sister and I, bought from their horrid mean shops—went to the same wretched school. Oh! how I hated it all—the miserable rooms, the bargaining for food, the squabbles, and the never-ending economy and thrift. Grey—grey—grey! I used to lash a purple whiptop at the corner of the street, and pray sometimes a great chariot of fire would snatch me up into the skies.”

It was Wynne’s habit to ignore central ideas in another’s conversation, hence the question:

“Why a _purple_ top?”

“I hardly know—but it was _always_ purple. I kept a patch of purple on my horizon.”

He looked at her queerly.

“What do you mean by that?”

“The Royal Purple. Somehow it stands out as the colour which rises above all sordidness. Can’t explain it otherwise.”

He nodded. “I know what you mean. Strange you should feel like that, too.” The “too” was scarcely audible.

“When I was ever so little I had that feeling, and it has grown up with me. I used to believe that a purple goodness lined the great clouds above and the hilltops of my imagination. I could travel in my imagination, too. Just close my eyes and say to myself: Now the world is falling away, and I’m floating upwards, and I would pass above all the slates and see down all the chimneys until the houses became cities, and the cities grey marks on the green earth—and the rivers twisted silver wires which curled from the mountains to the sea.”

“You should meet Uncle Clem,” said Wynne.

“Who is he?”

“A man who thinks that way. But what is it like up there in the clouds?”

“Do you know, strangely, it isn’t very different—only fuller. Just as if one went up discontented and found contentment in what one had left behind. I used to think this was because my imagination couldn’t picture a better state, but I believe that no longer.”

“The climb is for nothing, then?”

“Oh, no, for the climb proves that what you sought is the best of what you left behind.”

“H’m! Sometimes,” he said. “You have queer notions. Have you found out what is the best of your possessions?”

“I don’t know them by heart, yet.”

“Why by heart?”

“I am a woman.”

“Yes, and sometimes, I think, just like any other.”

“I am.”

“Once I tried to define my motives—can you define yours?”

“I want a place in the sun—want it tremendously. I want to be able to think and feel and move among lovely things and people. I have given away twenty years to sordidness, and all I have earned is appreciation of the beautiful. I want to live the beautiful now, and rise above the trivial bother of a washpail and a gas-ring.”

“Mammon, Mammon,” cried Wynne, for want of a better thought.

“Oh no. Don’t think I crave for money, for it isn’t so; but one must have money if one is never to think of it.”

“Why?”

“Isn’t half the sorrow in the world traceable to such little causes as an extra halfpenny on a quartern of bread?”

“Not untrue,” Wynne nodded. His eyes fell on the dirty gas-ring of the grate, and he frowned. “Why do you come here, then?”

“Don’t you know?” she replied.

“No. It’s squalid enough!”

“Then it is because you are the first real person I have ever met outside the cover of a book.”

“I give you something, then?”

“A great deal.”

A modesty seized him, touched with self-reproach.

“Only because it pleases me,” he said, brusquely. “The giving is done by you. That much I realize.”

“I’m glad—and I’m glad to give.”

“Yes, a woman’s life is to give—that’s natural law—the only kind of law worth accepting.” He hesitated—then, “Are you satisfied to give?”

She smiled her wise, intricate smile, and he did not wait for the answer.

“You never smile as you should,” he reproached. “Yours is a thinking smile—perplexing. Do you never smile or laugh from sheer happiness?”

“Perhaps I have never yet been sheerly happy.”

“What would make you?”

“I haven’t found out.”

“But I want to know. If you smiled for me you would seem less remote.”

“Am I remote?”

“Yes—remote is the word.” He looked at her fixedly, then shook himself and began to pace up and down the room. When next he spoke his voice was querulous and irritable:

“I should have been working all this while. The train of my thoughts is all upset—disordered. It is unlike you to disturb me. I’ve lost an hour. Tomorrow I must work all day—alone.”

“Go back to yourself,” she said, gently.

She did not leave at once, but half an hour later he looked up and saw she was buttoning her coat.

“You needn’t go.”

“I had better,” she said; and at the door—“I come here too often, perhaps. It is selfish of me.”

“But I like you to be here—I want you here. I meant nothing—only I’m a little keyed up and worried. I don’t know why.”

“It’s all right,” said Eve. “Just for tomorrow I’ll stay away.”

“You want to?”

“No; but it is good sometimes to do what one doesn’t want. G’bye.” And she was gone.

That night, as he lay in bed, the same feeling of self-reproach which had sprung into being for an instant during their talk came back to him heavily.

“What do I do for her? Nothing.”

IV

The thought awoke with him next day, and seemed to write itself across the pages of his manuscript. He could not concentrate, and the ink on his dipped pen dried times without number, and not a line was committed to the paper. The hour for their united meal came, and with it a feeling of loneliness and disappointment. He made no attempt to set the table for himself, but sat staring dully at the criss-cross lines of the window transoms, fiddling aimlessly with the books and papers before him.

Once he thought he would go out, but changed his mind, and threw his hat aside before he had reached the door of the room. He tried to read, but the words were meaningless and confused, and conveyed nothing to his mind, so he dropped the book to the floor and fell back to the fruitless staring again. The words she had spoken about her childhood recurred, and with the startling reproductive faculty which he possessed he was able to picture it all very vividly. He could almost visualize the cheap short dress she would have worn when, years before, she lashed her purple top at the corner of that grey side street. The houses there would have narrow and worn steps leading down to the pavement; they would have mean areas, and windows repaired with gelatine lozenges. One of the lodgers would boast a row of geranium pots on the window-sill, stayed from falling by a slack string. No flowers would bloom in those pots—a few atrophied leaves on a brown stalk would be the only reward of the desultory waterings. In the yards at the back queer, shapeless garments would flap and fill upon a line, and gaunt cats would creep along the sooty walls. There would be querulous voices somewhere raised in argument or rebuke, and the shrill cries of children at unfriendly games. On Sundays vulgar youths with button-holes would loaf by the letter-box at the street corner, making eyes and blowing coarse kisses to the giggling girls who warily congregated on the far side. At times there would be chasings, slaps, and rough-and-tumble courtships. Old men without coats would blink and smoke complacently on the doorsteps, and women would nod and whisper of their misfortunes and their fears.

“She came from there—untouched by it all,” thought Wynne. “She deserves her place in the sun.”

A strange restlessness seized him, and he started to pace up and down.

V

Wynne arrived at the theatre earlier than usual that night, and met Eve in one of the corridors.

“Well,” he said.

“Well?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t worked all day—I couldn’t.”

“I’m sorry. What have you done?”

“Walked about—and thought.”

“Of what?”

“Of you mostly.”

“Have you? I’m glad. I wanted you to think of me today.”

“Why today?”

“It’s my birthday.”

“No!”

She nodded.

“How old?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Twenty-one!”

It seemed rather sad. Twenty-one is a great birthday. Had she been an earl’s daughter there would have been laughter and dancing in the hall that night—white flowers and scarlet in happy clusters everywhere. There would have been pearls from her father, and a dream dress to wear. Wax candles would have glittered the silver on the board, and pink-coated huntsmen would have led her to the dance.

It seemed rather sad she should be walking-on in a crowd to earn three shillings and sixpence. And with this reflection there came to Wynne an idea—one of the first that did not actually concern himself. It smote him gloriously, and sent a pulsation of delight throbbing through his veins. But all he said was:

“You will come to the rooms after the play?”

She hesitated. “I said I would not.”

“But it’s your birthday.”

“Then, if I shan’t disturb you.”

“Even if you do, I want you to come.”

“Very well. Will you wait for me?”

“No. Follow me round. I’ve something to do first. Here, take a key and keep it if you will. I give you the freedom of the rooms.”

“I wish you’d wait,” she said.

“Sorry,” he replied, shaking his head.

“After all, a birthday means very little to a man,” thought Eve. Yet she was disappointed he had refused so small a service.

When his scene was over, Wynne dressed quickly and hurried from the theatre. In his pocket was a sum of six shillings and threepence. He counted it by touch as he walked down Maiden Lane and struck across Covent Garden. Before a modest wine shop in Endell Street he stopped and considered. In the window was a pyramid of champagne bottles, the base composed of magnums, the first tier of quarts, the second of pints, and, resting proudly on top, a single half-pint. Each size was carefully priced, even the tiny bottle showing a ticket on which was printed, “Two shillings and eightpence.”

Wynne squared his shoulders and entered the shop with an air of some importance.

“This Dry Royal,” he said, “is it a wine you can recommend?”

“It is a very drinkable wine,” replied the merchant. “Of course it does not compare—”

But Wynne interrupted with:

“I’ll take one of the half-pints to sample.”

“I have no half-pints.”

“There is one in the window.”

“It is not for sale.”

“Why not?”

“There is no demand for that size.”

“I am supplying the demand.” His tone was irritatingly precise, and the merchant was offended.

“I regret, sir, I cannot undertake to spoil my window dressing for so small an order.” He spoke with finality that could not be misconstrued.

“Good God!” exclaimed Wynne. “You call it a small order? It is nearly half of all I possess. Am I to be cheated of a celebration for the sake of your damned ideas of symmetry?”

His very genuine concern excited interest.

“I should be very sorry to cheat you of anything,” came the answer in a more kindly voice. “Perhaps if you would explain—”

“What explanation is needed? Why does any one buy champagne except to celebrate an event? Must I sacrifice the desire to please and the hope of giving a sparkle of happiness because your hide-bound conventions won’t let you knock the top off a triangle? Is the expression of a kindly wish to be nullified because my worldly wealth won’t run to a pint? Would you decline to serve a rich man with a quart because you stock magnums? There’s no damned sense of justice in it.”

It so happened there were warm springs in the heart of the little Endell Street wine merchant—and imagination too. As he listened to this intemperate outburst he pictured very vividly the event which the small gold-braided bottle was destined to enliven. A man does not spend half his belongings for no purpose, and accordingly he said:

“I never wish to disappoint a customer, sir. If you would accept a pint for the price of the half, you would be doing me a service.”

But the rancour had not abated, and Wynne replied:

“This is a celebration—not a damned charity.”

“I see—of course not. Please forgive me,” said the little man, and opening a panelled door he took the tiny bottle from the top of the pyramid and wrapped it up.

Wynne placed two shillings and eightpence on the counter, pocketed the parcel, and walked to the door. Arrived there, he turned and came back with an outstretched hand.

“You’re a good sort,” he said.

“Thank you, sir, and a very merry evening.”

They shook hands warmly.

At a very special fruiterer’s in Southampton Row Wynne bought a quarter of a pound of hothouse grapes, and argued fiercely with the shop assistant who did not consider the purchase warranted placing the fruit on vine leaves in a basket. He next made his way to a confectioner’s, and forced an entrance as they were putting up the shutters. Here he had a windfall, and secured a small but beautifully iced cake for a shilling, on the double account of the lateness of the hour and a slight crack in the icing.

On the pavement outside he counted what remained of his original capital.

“One and tenpence—good!” he remarked.

The red and green lights of a chemist lured him to enter, and he emerged, after a period of exquisite indecision, with two elegant packages—one containing a tablet of soap, and the other a tiny bottle of perfume.

Carrying his treasures with prodigious care he hastened toward his rooms, but had hardly covered half the distance when an appalling thought occurred to him. Under the weight of it he stopped short, and beat his forehead with a closed fist.

“I’ve forgotten the candles,” he gasped. “The fairy candles—the twenty-one candles!”

Without those twenty-one candles the whole affair would be flat and meaningless. In being able to obtain them reposed the success of the scheme. He tried an oilshop, but without success—he tried another with the same result.

“My God!” he exclaimed in an ecstasy of anxiety, “where can I get the things?”

And the good angel who listens for such prayers heard, and sent toward him a small boy of pleasing exterior who whistled gaily.

“I say,” said Wynne, “ever had a Christmas-tree?”

The boy grinned and nodded.

“One with candles on it, I mean—coloured candles?”

“Yus, it was a proper tree.”

“I want some candles—want ’em tremendously. Know where I could get some?”

Appealed to as a specialist, the urchin adopted a professional mien, and paused for consideration. Eventually he said:

“Dad got ours at Dawes’s, rahnd the street. She’s still got some, ’cos my mate, Joe, bought one for his bull’s-eye.”

“Round which street?”

“Over there.”

Wynne waited for no more, and broke into a run. By a kindly Providence Mrs. Dawes had not put up the shutters, being a lady who traded sweets to little voyagers whose parents were not over particular as to the hours they kept.

“I dessay I could lay my ’and on a few,” she replied to Wynne’s fervent appeal, “though it isn’t the season for them, you understand.”

With that she opened, or rattled, an incredible number of wrong boxes, taken from beneath the counter. The sweat had beaded Wynne’s forehead when at last she discovered what she had been seeking. She did not appear to be in any hurry, and conversed on technical subjects during the search.

“There isn’t the sale for coloured candles that there used to be. Of course you may say as it is more the peg-top season, and that might account for it; but it doesn’t—not altogether, that is. Putting the Christmas trade on one side, boys don’t go for bull’s-eye lanterns as once they did—no, nor Chinese neither. It’s all iron ’oops, or roller skates nowadays, as you may say. Why, I dessay I sell as much as ten or a dozen ’oops a week.”

“Do you indeed?”

“Quite that. Let’s see! Candles! Ah, I think this is them.” And it was.

“Thank God!” exclaimed Wynne. “I want twenty-one.”

He watched in an agony of suspense as she turned out precisely that number.

“Five a penny,” she said.

“Lord!” he gasped. “I’ve only fourpence.”

“You can pay me the odd farthing when you are passing.”

Greatly to the good lady’s surprise the extraordinary young man leant across the counter and planted a kiss upon her ample cheek, then seizing his purchases raced from the shop and scuttled down the street.

“Well I never!” she exclaimed—“must be a bit mad.” But nevertheless she rubbed the spot where the kiss had fallen with a kindly touch.

VI

Probably for the first time in his life Wynne felt the need of fine linen. It is a sorry happening to lay choice dishes on a bare board. A flash of memory provided an alternative, and he unearthed a roll of white wallpaper from a cupboard. Mindful of a trick performed by small boys at gallery doors, he folded and tore the paper to a rough presentment of a lace cloth. Quite imposing it looked upon the black surface of the old oak table.

To the rim of a fine, but much-riveted blue-and-white plate he waxed the twenty-one candles, and in the centre, pedestalled upon an inverted soap-dish, he stood the birthday cake. The champagne and some glasses were placed on one side of this setpiece, the grapes on the other, while before it, squarely and precisely laid, were the two beautifully tied parcels of soap and scent.

So wrapped up was he in the exquisite pleasure of his preparations that he was quite insensible to the deliberate symmetry he had brought about—a circumstance which may prove a great deal, or nothing at all. When he had done he fell back and surveyed his handiwork as an artist before a masterpiece.

And outside rumbled the voices of the clocks saying the hour was eleven.

“Eleven! She will be here in a moment,” he thought. A sudden nervousness seized him. He did not know why or what it was about. He touched his pocket to be sure the matches were there. He wondered if she were all right, and had crossed Long Acre and Oxford Street safely—they were busiest in theatre traffic at that hour, and private cars and taxis paid little heed to pedestrians. It would be so easy for her to be knocked down and run over. He could picture the curious, jostling crowds that would gather round, the blue helmets of the police in the centre—and the gaunt ambulance which would appear from nowhere.

“God! What a fool I am,” he exclaimed. “She’s all right—of course she is.”

Yet, despite this guarantee of her safety, thoughts of possible disaster raced across his mind. Memory of his visit to the Morgue in Paris arose and would not be banished. He recalled what he had said that day: “Death is so horribly conclusive.” Conclusive! Suppose it were visited upon her?—something would die in him, too. He asked himself what that something would be, but could find no answer. It would be something so lately come to life that he did not know it well enough to name.

Once more his eyes fell upon the table, and the fears vanished. Of course she would come—of course nothing would happen to her. Even though it were against her will, she would be drawn by what he had prepared.

He blew out the lamp, and crossing the room opened the window and leant over the sill to wait.

It was a sweet night, starred and silent. Smoke rose ghostily from the silhouetted stacks, and a faint, murmurous wind, which seemed to have stolen from a Devon lane, touched his hair to movement. North, south, east, and west stretched the roofs of London, and in imagination he could hear the soft rustle as the dwellers beneath tucked themselves in for the night.

A hundred times before he had leant out, as now, with thoughts which ran on the groundlings who ate and slept and worked and squabbled beneath that army of stacks and slates; and how, one day, his name should come to be as familiar with them as the pictures hanging on their walls. But tonight his feelings were different. He conceived these people in their relation to each other and not to himself. In each and all those myriad abiding-places there would be folk with gentle thoughts and kindly desires, even as his were then. They would be linked together by the common tie of doing something to please. Never before had it occurred to him that in pleasing another happiness was born in oneself. Hitherto he had only thought to please by the nimbleness of his artistry—the perfection of a style, the ability to express; but now he saw the surer way was to appeal to the heart—to minister to the true sentiment—to hand over sincerity from one’s simple best.

A footfall below, and the glimpse of a grey figure in the light of the street-lamp, brought him to immediate action. He drew back from the window, and, trembling with excitement, put a match to the circle of coloured candles.

A ring of fire leapt into being—a tiny flame for every year of her in whose honour they were burnt in offering.

Standing behind the lights, and almost invisible in the twinkling glare, Wynne waited breathlessly for the door to open.

She was drawing off her gloves as she came into the room, but she stopped, and her hands fell gently to her sides. Her eyes rested on every detail of the little scene, hovering over it with an exquisite increase of lustre. And slowly her lips broke into a smile of the purest child-happiness, as, with a little catch in her voice, she breathed:

“How lovely and dear of you.”

It was hard to find a reply.

“You’re pleased?” he said. “I’m glad.”

“Pleased! Look! there are two presents for me—real champagne, with its livery all bright and goldy—and the bloom on the grapes, it’s—that’s a proper birthday cake, with ‘marzi’ inside—and twenty-one candles because I am twenty-one years old today.”

She held out her hand, and he came to her and took it in one of his. For quite a while they stood in silence.

“This is my first real birthday, and you’ve thought of it all for me. Oh, it is wonderful, you know.”

“You have done something more wonderful for me,” he said, in a voice that seemed unlike his own.

“I?”

“You smiled for me.”

“Because you made me utterly happy.”

“D’you think—I could—go on making you happy?”

For the first time she raised her eyes from the fairy candles to meet his.

“Do you want to?”

His reply was characteristic.

“Yes—for I am happier now than I have ever been.”

She laughed understandingly, and caressed his hand.

“Oh, here!” he said. “Sit down, I want to talk.” He almost thrust her into the chair and settled himself upon the arm. “All of a sudden you have become something that I want—must have. Spiritually I want you near me—you’re—you’re essential. Without you I am incomplete. If I lost you I should lose more than you—far more. D’you understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Together we could reach any heights, you and I, for you give me the atmosphere I need—the right essence. I used to believe the line, ‘He travels fastest who travels alone,’ but now I scout it—it’s lost its truth for me. I believe you are wrapped up in my happiness and my success; I believe without you they would be in jeopardy—in danger. D’you care for me well enough to take me on those terms?”

Very slowly she replied:

“I want you to have your happiness, Wynne, and your success—I want that to be a true dream.”

“Then—?”

“I’ll accept your spiritual offer—and give you all in return. But won’t you say just one thing more?”

“What have I left unsaid?”

“Did you say you loved me?”

“No,” he replied; “but, in God’s name, I believe I do.”

“My dear,” she said, with a mother’s voice.

He broke away from her and started to pace the room feverishly.

“Come back,” she pleaded. “I am so proud of that belief.”

He threw up his head.

“I was honest enough to offer all I possessed,” he cried. “A man would have taken you in his arms. God! I’m only half a man—a starveling—! You are beautiful—beautiful to me—beautiful—subtle—desirable—but I haven’t a shred of passion in my half-starved body.”

“Yours is the better half, dear. The spirit counts, and the greatest possession a woman can have is all that her man can give. Let us keep our spirits bright together.” She rose, and he came toward her, and suddenly his face lost its tragic look, and the lines at the corners of his mouth pulled down in a whimsical smile.

“What a triumph for Plato!” he said. “When shall it be?”

She smiled back at him. “Whenever you wish.”

Very delicious she looked in the dancing fairy light. A strangely new and elemental impulse seized him, and he gripped her shoulders fiercely.

“You are wonderful,” he said. “We’ll work together for the Day. The Day shall be our _real_ wedding; till then—partners.”

“Partners.”

“You shall help to make a success, and—a man; and when I’m a man I shall seek a man’s reward. We’ll pledge that! Come, let’s feast before the candles burn low.”

The tiny bottle of champagne popped bravely, and the wine tinkled against the glass.