THE FIFTH CHAPTER

It had been exceedingly difficult for John to explain his defection to Mr. Clotworthy and to Tarleton. The only mitigating feature of the business was that the matter to be reported was only a concert. Both Mr. Clotworthy and Tarleton trembled when they thought of the calamity that would have befallen the paper if the forgotten report had been of a murder! They hardly dared contemplate such a devastating prospect. They invited John to think of another profession and wished him a very good morning. Tarleton quitted the room, leaving John alone with the editor, and as he went he showed such contempt towards him as is only shown towards the meanest of God's creatures.

"Well, where's your Ulster now?" said Mr. Clotworthy very sardonically when they were alone together.

"I know rightly I'm in the wrong from your point of view, Mr. Clotworthy," John replied, "but I'd do the same thing again if twenty jobs depended on it. It's hard to make you understand, and mebbe I'm a fool to try, but there it is. The minute I clapped my eyes on her, I forgot everything but her. I'm sorry I've lost my post here, but I'd be sorrier to have lost her. That's all about it. You were very kind to give me the work, and I wish I hadn't let your paper down the way Hinde says I did, but it's no good me pretending about it. I'd do it again if the same thing happened another time. That's the beginning and end of it all. I'd rather be her husband than edit a dozen papers like yours. I'd rather be her husband than be anything else in the world!"

"Well, good afternoon!" said Mr. Clotworthy.

"Good afternoon!" said John, turning away.

He moved towards the door of the room, feeling much less assurance than he had felt when he came into it.

"If you care to send in some articles for page six," Mr. Clotworthy added, "I'd be glad to see them!"

"Thank you," said John.

"Not at all," the editor replied without glancing up.

He left the Daily Sensation office, and walked towards Charing Cross. A queer depression had settled upon his spirits. Hinde had treated him as if he were mentally deficient, and he knew that Mr. Clotworthy and Tarleton, particularly Tarleton, regarded him with coldness, but he was not deeply affected by their disapproval. Nevertheless, depression possessed him. He felt that Eleanor would fail to keep her appointment. Quietly considered, there seemed to be no reason why she should keep it. She knew absolutely nothing of him except what he had told her while she leaned out of the window. How was she to know that he was speaking the truth? What right had he to expect her to pay any heed to him at all? Dreary, drizzling thoughts poured through his mind. He felt as certain that his novel would not be published as he felt that Eleanor would not be at the bookstall at Charing Cross station when he arrived there. The tragedy on which he was working had seemed to him to be a very marvellous play, but now he thought it was too poor to be worth finishing. He had been in London for what was quite a long time, but he had achieved nothing. He had not even written the music-hall sketch for the Creams. He had not earned a farthing during the time that he had been in London. All the exaltation which had filled him as he walked along the Bayswater Road on the previous night, with his mind full of Eleanor and love and starshine and moonlight and gleaming streets and trees hanging with mist and friendliness for all men, had gone clean out of him. Fleet Street was a dirty, ill-ventilated alley full of scuffling men and harassed women. London itself was a great angry thing, a place of distrust and contention, where no one ever offered a friendly greeting to a stranger. He would go to Charing Cross station and he would stand patiently in front of the bookstall, but Eleanor would not come to meet him. He would stand there, dumb and uncomplaining, and no one of the hurrying crowd of people would turn to him and say, "You're in trouble. I'm sorry!" They would neither know nor care. They would be too busy catching trains. He would stand there for an hour, for two hours ... until his legs began to ache with the pain of standing in one place for a long time ... and then, when it was apparent that waiting was useless and he had, perhaps, aroused the suspicions of policemen and railway porters concerning his purpose in loitering thus so persistently in front of the bookstall, he would go home in his misery to a contemptuous Hinde!...

And while these bitter thoughts poured through his mind, he entered Charing Cross station, and there in front of the bookstall was Eleanor Moore. The bitter thoughts poured out of his mind in a rapid flood. He felt so certain that his novel would be published that he could almost see it stacked on the bookstall behind Eleanor. He would finish the tragedy that week and in a short while England would be acclaiming him as a great dramatist!... He hurried towards her and held out his hand, and she shyly took it.

"Have you been here long?" he anxiously asked.

"No," she answered, "I've only just come!"

"Let's go and have some tea," he went on.

"I've had mine, thanks!..."

"Well, have some more. I've not had any!..."

"I don't think I can, thanks. I've really come to say that I can't!..."

"There's a little place near here," he interrupted hurriedly, "where they give you lovely home-made bread. I found it one day when I was wandering about. We'll just go there and talk about whatever you want to say. Give me that umbrella of yours!" He took it from her hand as he spoke. "This is the way," he said, leading her from the station. As they crossed the road, he took hold of her arm. "These streets are terribly dangerous," he said. "You never know what minute you're going to be run over!"

He still held her arm when they were safely on the pavement, but she contrived to free herself without making a point of doing so. He tried to bring her back to the mood in which they were when she leaned out of the window to listen to him ... "like Romeo and Juliet," he told himself ... but the congestion of the streets made such intimacies impossible. They were constantly being separated by the hurrying foot-passengers, and so they could only speak in short, dull sentences. He brought her at last to the quiet tea-shop where he ordered tea and home-made bread and honey!...

"Eleanor," he said, when the waitress had taken his order and had departed to fulfil it, "it's no good, you telling me that you can't go out with me. You must, my dear. I want to marry you!..."

"But it's absurd," she expostulated. "How can you possibly talk like that when we're such strangers to each other!"

"You're no stranger to me. I've loved you for two months now. I've hardly ever had you out of my mind. I was nearly demented mad when I lost you. I used to go and hang about that office of yours day after day in the hope that you'd come out!... And if ever I get the chance, I'll break that liftman's neck for him. He insulted me the day I asked him what office you were in. He called me a Nosey Parker!"

She laughed at him. "But that was right, wasn't it?" she said. "You wouldn't have him give information about me to any man who chooses to ask for it?"

"He should have known that I was all right. A child could have seen that I wasn't just playing the fool. But you're mebbe right. I'll think no more about him. Do you know what happened last night?"

"No."

He told her of his relationship with the Daily Sensation.

"Then you've lost your work?" she said.

He nodded his head, and they did not speak again for a few moments. The waitress had brought the tea and bread and honey, and they waited until she had gone.

"I'm so sorry," she said.

"It doesn't bother me," he replied. "I only told you to show you how much I love you. I'm not codding you, Eleanor. You matter so much to me that I'd sacrifice any job in the world for you. I told Clotworthy that ... he's the editor of the paper ... I told him I'd rather be your husband than have his job a hundred times over. And so I would. Will you marry me, Eleanor?"

"I've never met anyone like you before!..."

"I daresay you haven't but I'm not asking you about that. Will you marry me? We can fix the whole thing up in no time at all. I looked it up in a book this morning, and it says you can get married after three weeks' notice. If I give notice the morrow, we can be married in a month from to-day!"

"Oh, stop, stop," she said. "Your mind is running away with you. I spoke to you for the first time last night!..."

"Beg your pardon," he said, "you spoke to me the first day we met. I handed you your letter!..."

"Oh, but that doesn't count. That was nothing. I really only spoke to you last night, and I don't know you. I'm not in love with you ... no, please be sensible. How can I possibly love you when I don't know you!..."

"I love you, don't I?" he demanded.

"You say so!"

"Well, if I love you, you can love me, can't you. That's simple enough!"

She passed a cup of tea to him. "Do all Irishmen behave like this?" she said.

"I don't know and I don't care. It's the way I behave. I know my mind queer and quick, Eleanor, and when I want a thing, I don't need to go humming and hahhing to see whether I'm sure about it. I want you. I know that for a fact, and there's no need for me to argue about it. I'll not want you any more this day twelvemonth than I want you now, and I won't want you any less. Will you marry me?"

"No!"

"How long will it be before you will marry me, then?"

She threw her hands with a gesture of comical despair. "Really," she said, "you're unbelievable. You seem to think that I must want to marry you merely because you want to marry me. I take no interest whatever in you!..."

"No, but you will!"

She shrugged her shoulders. "It isn't any use talking," she said. "Your mind is made up!..."

"It is. I want to marry you, Eleanor, and I'm going to marry you. I have a lot to do in the world yet, but that's the first thing I've got to do, and I can't do anything else till I have done it. So you might as well make up your mind to it, and save a lot of time arguing about it when it's going to happen in the end!"

She pushed her cup away, and rose from her seat. "I'm going home," she said. "This conversation makes me feel dizzy!"

"There's no hurry," he exclaimed.

She spoke coldly and deliberately, "It's not a question of hurry," she replied. "It's a question of desire, I wish to go home. Your conversation bores and annoys me!"

"Why?"

"Because you treat me as if I were not human, and had no desires of my own. I'm to marry you, of whom I know absolutely nothing, merely because you want me to marry you. I don't know whether you are a gentleman or not. You have a very funny accent!..."

"What's wrong with my accent?" he demanded.

"I don't know. It's just funny. I've never heard an accent like that before, and so I can't tell whether you're a gentleman or not. If you were an Englishman, I should know at once, but it's different with Irish people. Your very queer manners may be quite the thing in Ireland!"

He put out his hand to her, but she drew back. "Sit down," he said. "Just for a minute or two till I talk to you. I'll let you go then!"

She hesitated. Then she did as he asked her. "Very well!" she said primly.

"Listen to me, Eleanor, I know very well that my behaviour is strange to you. It's strange to me. Till last night we'd never exchanged a dozen words. I know that. But I tell you this, if you live to be a hundred and have boys by the score, you'll never have a man that'll love you as I love you. I'm in earnest, Eleanor. I'm not codding you. I'm not trying to humbug you. I love you. I'm desperate in love with you!..."

She leant forward a little, moved by his sincerity. "But," she said, and then stopped as if unable to find words, adequate to her meaning.

"There's no buts about it," he replied. "I love you. I don't know why I love you, and I don't care whether I know or not. All I know is that the minute I saw you, I loved you. I wanted to see you again, and I schemed to make you talk to me!..."

"Yes, and very silly your schemes were. Asking me if I wanted the Graphic back again!..."

"You remember that, do you?" he asked.

"Well, it was so obvious and so stupid," she answered.

"Listen. Tell me this. Do you believe me when I tell you I love you? It's no use me telling you if you don't believe me!"

"It's so difficult to say!..."

"Do you believe me," he insisted. "Do I look like a man that would tell lies to a girl like you. Answer me that, now?"

She raised her eyes, and gazed very straightly at him. "No," she said; "I don't think you would. I ... I think you mean what you say!..."

"I do, Eleanor. As true as God's in heaven, I do. Will you not believe me?"

"But I don't love you," she burst out.

"Well, mebbe you don't. That's understandable!" he admitted.

"And the whole thing's so unusual," she protested.

"What does that matter? If I love you and you get to love me, does it matter about anything else? Have wit, woman, have wit!"

"Don't speak to me like that. You're very abrupt, Mr. MacDermott!..." "My name's John to you! Now, don't flare up again. You were nice and amenable a minute ago. You can stop like that. You and me are going to marry some time. The sooner the better. All I want you to do now, as you say you don't love me, is to give me a chance to make you love me. Come out with me for a walk ... or we'll go to a theatre, if you like! Anyway, let's be friends. I don't know anybody in this town except one man, and him and me's had a row over the head of the Daily Sensation!..." "Yes," she interrupted, "you've lost your work through your foolishness. What are you going to do now? It isn't very easy to get work." "I'll get it all right if I want it, I've enough money to keep me easy for a year without doing a hand's turn, and I daresay my mother and my Uncle William 'ud let me have more if I wanted it. I don't want to be on a paper much. I want to write books!" Her interest was restored. "Tell me about the book you've written. Is it printed yet?" she said. He told her of his work, and of the Creams and of Hinde. He told her, too, of his life in Ballyards. "Where do you come from?" he said. "Devonshire," she answered. "My father was rector of a village there until he died. Then mother and I lived in Exeter until she died!..." "You're alone then?" he asked. "Yes. My mother had an annuity. That stopped when she died. My cousin ... he's a doctor in Exeter ... settled up her affairs for me, and when everything was arranged, there was just enough money to pay for my secretarial training and keep me for a year. I trained for six months and then I went as a stop-gap to that office where you saw me. I'm in an office in Long Acre now—a motor place!" "And have you no friends here—relations, I mean?" "Some cousins. I don't often see them. And one or two people who knew father and mother!" "You're really alone then ... like me?" he said. "Yes," she answered. "Yes, I suppose I am!" He leant back in his chair. "It seems like the hand of God," he said, "bringing the two of us together!" "I wish," she said, "you wouldn't talk about God so much!"

III

When he went home that evening, he wrote to his mother. Dear Mother, he wrote, I've got acquainted with a girl here called Eleanor Moore, and I've made up my mind I'm going to marry her. She's greatly against it at present, but I daresay she'll change her mind.... There was more than that in the letter, but it is not necessary to repeat the remainder of it here. He also wrote to Eleanor. My dearest, the letter ran, I'm looking forward to meeting you again tomorrow night at the same place. I know you said you wouldn't meet me, but I'm hoping you'll change your mind. I'll be waiting for you anyway, and I'll wait till seven o'clock for you. Remember that, Eleanor! If you don't turn up, it'll be hard for you to sit in comfort and you thinking of me waiting for you. You'll never have the heart to refuse me, will you? We can have our tea together, and then go for a walk or a ride on a 'bus till dinner-time, and then, if you like, after we've had something to eat, we'll go to a theatre. Don't disappoint me, for I'm terribly in love with you. Yours only, John MacDermott. P. S. Don't be any later than you can help. I hate waiting about for people.

She came, reluctantly so she said, to the bookstall at Charing Cross station, but only to tell him that she could not do as he wished her to do. She would take tea with him for this once, but it was useless to ask her to go for a walk with him or for a 'bus-ride either, and she certainly would not dine with him nor would she go to a theatre. Yet she went for a walk on the Embankment with him, and they paced up and down so long that she saw the force of his argument that she might as well have her dinner in town as go back to her club where the food would be tepid, if not actually cold, by the time she was ready to eat it. She need not go to a theatre unless she wished to do, but he could not help telling her that a great deal of praise had been given to a piece called Justice by a man called Galsworthy. Mebbe she would like to see it. She was not to imagine that he was forcing her to go to the theatre.... And so she went, and they sat together in the pit, hearing with difficulty because of the horrible acoustics of the Duke of York's Theatre; and when the play was over, he had to comfort her, for the fate of Falder had pained her. They climbed on to the top of a 'bus at Oxford Circus and were carried along Oxford Street to the Bayswater Road. They sat close together on the back seat of the 'bus, with a waterproofed apron over their knees because the night was damp and chilly; and as the 'bus drove along to Marble Arch they did not speak. The rain had ceased to fall before they quitted the theatre, but the streets were still wet, and John found himself again realising their beauty. Trees and hills and rivers in the country and flowers and young animals were beautiful, but until this moment he had never known that wet pavements and wooden or macadamised roads were beautiful, too, when the lamps were lit and the cold grey gleam of electric arcs or the soft, yellow, reluctant light of gas lamps fell upon them. He could see a long wet gleam stretching far ahead of him, past the Marble Arch and the darkness of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens into a region of which he knew nothing; and as he contemplated that loveliness, he remembered that the sight of tramlines shining at night had unaccountably moved him more than once. Once, at Ballyards, he had stood still for a few moments to look at the railway track glistening in the sunshine, and he remembered how puzzled he had been when, in some magazine, he had read a complaint of trains, that they marred the beauty of the fields. He had seen trains a long way off, moving towards him and sending up puffs of thick white smoke that trailed into thin strips of blown cloud, and had waited until the silence of the distant engine, broken once or twice by a shrill, sharp whistle, had become a stupendous noise, and the great machine, masterfully hauling its carriages behind it, had galloped past him, roaring and cheering and sending the debris swirling tempestuously about it! ... The sight of a train going at a great speed had always seemed to him to be a wonderful thing, but now he realised that it was more than wonderful, that it was actually beautiful.... He turned his head a little and looked past Eleanor to the Park. Little vague yellow lights flickered through the trees, all filmy with the evening mists, and he could smell the rich odour of wet earth. He looked at Eleanor and as he did so, they both smiled, and he realised that suddenly affection for him had come to life in her. Beneath the protection of the waterproofed apron, his hand sought for hers and held it. Half-heartedly she tried to withdraw her fingers from his grasp, but he would not let them go, and so she did not persist in her effort.

"Look!" he said, snuggling closer to her.

She turned towards the Park, and then, after a little while, turned back again. "I've always loved the Park," she said. "It's the most friendly thing in London!"

He urged his love for her again. He had seen affection for him in her eyes and had felt that her hand was not being firmly withdrawn from his.

"No, no," she protested, "don't let's talk about it any more. I don't love you!..."

"Well, marry me anyhow!"

Backwards and forwards their arguments passed, returning always to that point: But I don't love you! Well, marry me anyhow!...

He took her to the door of her club, and for a while, they stood at the foot of the steps talking of the play they had seen that evening and of his love for her.

"It's no good," she said, trying to leave him, but unable to do so because he had taken hold of her hand and would not release it.

"Don't go in yet," he pleaded. "Wait a wee while longer!"

"What's the use?" she exclaimed.

"You'll meet me again to-morrow?..."

"I can't meet you everynight!"

"Why not?" he demanded. "Tell me why not!"

"Well... well, because I can't. It's ridiculous. You're so absurd. You keep on saying the same thing over and over... and it's so silly. If I were in love with you, I might go out with you every evening, but!..."

"Do you like me!"

"I don't know. I... I suppose I must or I wouldn't go out with you at all. Really, I'm sorry for you!..."

"Well, if you're sorry for me, come out with me tomorrow night. We'll have our dinner in town again!"

"No, no! Don't you understand, Mr. MacDermott!..."

"John, John, John!" he said.

"I can't call you by your Christian name!..."

"Why not? I call you by yours, don't I?"

"Yes, but you oughtn't to. I've asked you not to call me Eleanor, but it doesn't seem to be any good asking you to do anything that you don't want to do. But even you must understand that I can't let you take me out every evening. I can't let you pay for things!..."

"Oh," he said, as if his mind were illuminated. "Is that your trouble? We can soon settle that. If you won't let me pay for things, pay for them yourself ... only let me be with you when you're doing it. You have to have food, haven't you? Well, so have I. We have no friends in London that matter to us, and you like me ... you admitted it yourself ... and I love you ... so why shouldn't we have our meals together even, if you do pay for your own food?"

"Of course, it sounds all right as you put it," she answered, "but it isn't all right. I can't explain things. I don't know how to explain them, but I know about them all the same. And I know it isn't all right. You'll begin to think I'm in love with you!..."

"I hope you will be, but you'll never be certain unless you see me fair and often. You'll come again to-morrow, won't you?"

"Oh, good-night," she said impatiently, suddenly breaking from him. "You're like a baby. You think you've only got to keep on asking for things and people will get tired of saying 'No!' I won't go out with you again. You make me feel tired and cross!..."

"Well, if you won't meet me to-morrow night, will you meet me the next night?"

"No!"

"Then will you stay a wee while longer now?"

She turned on the top step and looked at him, and he saw with joy that the anger had gone out of her eyes and that she was smiling at him. "You really are!..." she said, and then she stopped. He waited for her to go on, but she shrugged her shoulders and said only, "I don't know! It simply isn't any good talking to you!"

He went up the steps and stood beside her and took hold of her hand. "Let me kiss you, Eleanor," he said.

She started away from him. "No, of course I won't!"

"Just once!"

"No!"

"Well, why not? You've let me hold your hand. What's the difference?"

"There's every difference. Besides I didn't let you hold my hand. You took it. I couldn't prevent you. You're so rough!..."

"No, my dear, not rough. Not really rough. Eleanor, just once!..."

"No," she said again, this time speaking so loudly that she startled herself. "Please go away. I shan't go out with you again. I was silly to go out with you at all. You don't know how to behave!..."

She broke off abruptly and turned to open the door, but she had difficulty with the key because of her anger.

"Let me open it for you," he said, taking the key from her hand and inserting it in the lock. "There!" he added, when the door was open.

"Thank you," she said, taking the key from him. "Good-night!"

"Good-night, Eleanor!" he replied very softly.

They did not move. She stood with, her hand on the door and he stood on the top step and gazed at her.

"Well—good-night," she said again.

"Dear Eleanor," he replied. "My dear Eleanor!"

She gulped a little. "Goo—good-night!" she said.

"I love you, my dear, so much. I shall never love anyone as I love you. I have never loved anybody else but you, never, never!... Well, I thought I loved someone else, but I didn't!..."

"It's no good," she began, but he interrupted her.

"Well, meet me again to-morrow night at the same place!..."

"No, I won't!"

"At five o'clock. I'll be there before you ... long before you. You'll meet me, won't you?"

"No."

"Please, Eleanor!"

She hesitated. Then she said, "Oh, very well, then! But it'll be the last time. Good-night!"

She pushed the door to, but before she could close it, he whispered "Good-night, my darling!" to her, and then the door was between them.

He waited until he saw the flash of the light in her room, and hoped that she would come to the window; but she did not do so, and after a while he went away.

Up in her room, she was staring at her reflection in the mirror, while he was waiting below on the pavement for her to come to the window, and as he walked away, she began to talk to the angry, baffled girl she saw before her.

"I won't marry him," she said. "I won't marry him. I don't love him. I don't even like him. I won't marry him!..."