THE SIXTH CHAPTER
I
Now that he had found Eleanor again, he was able to settle down to work. It was necessary, he told himself, that he should have some substantial achievements behind him before she and he were married, particularly as he had lost his employment on the Daily Sensation. The money he possessed would not last for ever and he could hardly hope to sponge on his Uncle William ... even if he were inclined to do so ... for the rest of his life. He must earn money by his own work and earn it quickly. In one way, it was a good thing that he had lost his work on the newspaper ... for he would have all the more time to write his tragedy. The sketch for the Creams had been hurriedly finished and posted to them at a music-hall in Scotland where they were playing, so Cream wrote in acknowledging the MS., to "enormous business. Dolly fetching 'em every time!..." Two pounds per week, John told himself, would pay for the rent and some of the food until he was able to earn large sums of money by his serious plays. The tragedy would establish him. It would not make a fortune for him, for tragedians did not make fortunes, but it would make his name known, and Hinde had assured him that a man with a known name could easily earn a reasonable livelihood as an occasional contributor to the newspapers. It was Hinde who had proposed the subject of the tragedy to him. For years he had dallied with the notion of writing it himself, he said, but now he knew that he would never write anything but newspaper stuff!...
"Do you know anything about St. Patrick?" he said to John.
"A wee bit. Not much."
"Well, you know he was a slave before he was a saint?" John nodded his head. "A man called Milchu," Hinde continued, "was his master. An Ulsterman. He was the chieftain of a clan that spread over Down and Antrim. Our country. He had Patrick for six years, and then he lost him. Patrick escaped. He returned to Ireland as a missionary and sent word to Milchu that he had come to convert him to Christianity, and Milchu sent word back that he'd see him damned first. Milchu wasn't going to be converted by his slave. No fear. And he destroyed himself ... set fire to his belongings and perished in his own flames rather than have it said that an Ulster chieftain was converted by his own slave. That's a great theme for a tragedy. I suppose you're a Christian, Mac?"
"I am. I'm a Presbyterian!"
"Oh, well, you won't see the tragedy of it as well as I see it. Think of a slave trying to convert a free man to a slave religion. There's a tragedy for you!..."
"I don't understand you," said John.
"No? Well, it doesn't matter. There's a theme for you to write about. A free man killing himself rather than be conquered by a slave! Of course, the real tragedy is that St. Patrick converted the rest of Ireland to Christianity! ... Milchu escaped: the others surrendered. It wasn't the English that beat the Irish, Mac. They were beaten before ever the English put their feet on Irish ground. St. Patrick beat them. The slave made slaves of them!..."
"Is that what you call Christians?" John indignantly demanded. "Slaves?"
Hinde shrugged his shoulders. "The Irish people are the most Christian people on earth," he said. "That's all!..."
They put the subject away from them, because they felt that if they did not do so, there must be antagonism between them. But John determined that he would write a play about St. Patrick and the Pagan Milchu. Hinde lent him his ticket for the London Library, and he spent his mornings reading biographies of the saint: Todd and Whitley, Stokes and Zimmer and Professor J. B. Bury; and accounts of the ancient Irish church. Slowly there came into his mind a picture of the saint that was not very like the picture he had known before and was very different from Hinde's conception of the relationship between Milchu and St. Patrick. To him, the wonderful thing was that the slave had triumphed over his owner. Milchu, in his conception, had not been sufficiently manly to stand before Patrick and contend with him, and to own himself the inferior of the two. He had run away from St. Patrick! With that conception of the two men in his mind, he began to write his play.
"You're wrong" said Hinde. "Milchu was a gentleman and Patrick was a slave!..."
"The son of a magistrate!" John indignantly interrupted.
"A lawyer's son!" Hinde sneered. "And Milchu, being a gentleman, would not be governed by a slave. Think of an Irish gentleman being governed by an Irish peasant!" There was a wry look on his face, "And a little common Irish priest to govern a little common Irish peasant!... They won't get gentlemen to live in a land like that!"
"I'm a peasant," said John. "There's not much difference between a shopkeeper and a peasant!..."
"I'm talking of minds," said Hinde, "not of positions. I believe in making peasants comfortable and secure, but I believe also in keeping them in their place. I'm one of the world's Milchus, Mac. I'd rather set fire to myself than submit to my inferiors!"
John sat in his chair in silence for a few moments, trying to understand Hinde's argument. "Then why do you write for papers like the Daily Sensation?" he asked at last.
Hinde winced. "I suppose because I'm not enough of a Milchu," he replied.
II
John had met Eleanor at their customary trysting-place, in front of the bookstall at Charing Cross Road, and they had walked along the Embankment towards Blackfriars. The theme of his tragedy was very present in his mind and he told the story to Eleanor as they walked along the side of the river in the glowing dusk. They stood for a while, with their elbows resting on the stone balustrade, and looked down on the dark tide beneath them. The great, grim arches of Waterloo Bridge, made melancholy by the lemon-coloured light of the lamps which surmounted them, cast big, black shadows on the water. They could hear little lapping waves splashing against the pillars, and presently a tug went swiftly down to the Pool. Neither of them spoke. Behind them the tramcars went whirring by, and once when John looked round, he felt as if he must cry because of the beauty of these swift caravans of light, gliding easily through the misty darkness of a London night. He had turned quickly again to contemplate the river, and as he did so, Eleanor stirred a little, moving more closely to him, demanding, so it seemed, his comfort and protection, and instantly he put his arm about her and drew her tightly to him. He did not care whether anyone saw them or not. It was sufficient for him that in her apprehension she had turned to him. Both his arms were about her, and his lips were on her lips. "Dear Eleanor," he said....
Then she released herself from his embrace. "I felt frightened," she said. "I don't know why. It's so lovely to-night ... and yet I felt frightened!"
"Will we go?" he asked.
"Yes!"
He put his arm in hers and she did not resist him. "You're my sweetheart now, aren't you, Eleanor?" he whispered to her, as they walked along towards Westminster.
She did not answer.
"My dear sweetheart," he went on, "and presently you'll be my dear wife, and we'll have a little house somewhere, and we'll love each other for ever and ever. Won't we?" He pressed her arm in his. "Won't we, Eleanor? Every night when I come home from work and we have had our supper, we'll go for a walk like this, and I'll talk and you'll listen, and we'll be very happy, and we'll never be lonely again. Oh, I pity the poor men who don't know you, Eleanor!..."
She smiled up at him, but still she did not speak.
"I couldn't have believed I should be so happy as I am," he continued. "I wonder if it's right for one woman to have so much power over a man ... to be able to make him happy or miserable just as the fancy takes her ... but I don't care whether it's right or wrong. I'm content so long as I have you. We're going to be married, aren't we, Eleanor? Aren't we?"
He stopped and turned her round so that they were facing each other.
"Aren't we, Eleanor?" he repeated.
"Don't let's talk about that," she murmured. "I'm so happy to-night, and I don't want to think about what's past or what's to come. I only want to be happy now!"
"With me?"
"Yes," she replied.
"Then you do love me?..."
"I don't know. I can't tell. But I'm frightfully happy. I expect I shall feel that I've made a fool of myself ... in the morning, but just now I don't care whether I'm fool or not. I'm like you. I'm content. Let's go on walking!"
They turned back at Boadicea's statue, and when they were in the shadows again, he took his arm from hers and put it about her waist. "Let's pretend there's nobody else here but us," he said.
III
They dined in Soho, and when they had finished their meal, they walked to Oxford Circus and once more climbed to the top of a 'bus that would take them along the Bayswater Road.
"You must like me, Eleanor," he said to her, as they sat huddled together on the back seat, "or you wouldn't come out with me as you do!"
"Yes," she answered, "I think I do like you. It seems odd that I should like you, and I made up my mind that I shouldn't ever like you. But I do. You're very likeable, really. It's because you're so silly, I suppose. And so persistent!"
"Then why can't we get married, my dear? Isn't it sickening for you to be living in that club and me to be living at Brixton, when we might be living in our own home? I hate this beastly separation every night. Let's get married, Eleanor!"
"I suppose we will in the end," she said, "but I don't feel like getting married to you. After all, John!..." She called him by his Christian name now. "After all, John, if I were to marry you now, when we know so little of each other, it would be very poor fun for me, if you discovered after we were married that you did not care for me as much as you imagined. And suppose I never fell in love with you?"
"Yes," he said gloomily.
"How awful!"
"But I'd have you. I'd have the comfort of being your husband and of having you for my wife!"
"It mightn't be a comfort. Oh, no, it's too risky, John. We must wait. We must know more of each other!..."
"Will you get engaged to me then?" he suggested.
"But that's a promise. No. Let's just go on as we are now, being friends and meeting sometimes!"
"Supposing we were engaged without anybody knowing about it?" he said. "Would that do?"
"I don't want either of us to be bound ... not yet. Oh, not yet. Do be sensible, John!"
"I am sensible. I know that I want to marry you. That's sensible, isn't it?"
"Yes, I suppose it is," she replied, laughing.
"Well, isn't it sensible to want to be sensible as soon as possible? You needn't laugh. I mean it. It's just foolishness to be going on like this. I'm as sensible as anybody, and I can't see any sense in our not marrying at once. Get engaged to me for a while anyway!"
"But what would be the good of that?"
"All the good in the world. I just want the comfort of knowing there's a chance of you marrying me!"
"It seems so unsatisfactory to me ... and so risky!" she protested.
"I'm willing to take the risk. I'll wait as long as you like."
"I'll think about it. But if I do get engaged to you, we won't get married for a long time!"
"How long?"
"Oh, a long time. A very long time."
"What do you mean? Six months?"
"No, years. Oh, five years, perhaps!"
"My God Almighty!" he said. "Do you know what you're saying! Five years? We might all be dead and buried long before then. What age will I be in five years time. Oh, wheesht with you, Eleanor, and don't be talking such balderdash. Five years! Holy O!"
"What does 'Holy O!' mean?" she demanded.
"I don't know. It's just a thing to say when you can't think of anything else. Five years! Five minutes is more like it!"
"We're too young to be married yet, and in five years' time we'll know each other much better!"
"I should think so, too," he said. "It's a lifetime, woman! Whatever put that idea into your head!"
"If I get engaged to you at all," she replied, "and I'm not sure that I will, it'll be for five years or not at all. You may be willing to take risks, but I'm not. Risks are all right for men ... they can afford to take them ... but women can't. If you don't agree to that, you'll have to give up the idea altogether!"
"Then you'll get engaged to me?"
"No, I didn't say that. I said that if I got engaged to you at all, it would be for five years. I'm not sure that I shall get engaged to you. I don't think I really like you. I think I'd just get tired of saying 'No' to you!..." She could see that his face had become glum, and she hurriedly reassured him. "Yes, I do like you! I like you quite well ... but I'm not going to marry you ... if I ever marry you ... till I'm sure about you!"
They descended from the 'bus and walked towards her club.
"Anyway," he said, "I consider myself engaged to you. And I'll buy you a ring the morrow morning!"
"Indeed, you won't," she said.
"Indeed, I will," he replied. "I'll have it handy for the time you agree to have me!"
"You won't be able to get one until you know the size, and I won't tell you that!..."
They wrangled on the doorstep until it was late, but she would not yield to him. He could consider himself engaged to her if he liked ... she could not prevent him from considering anything he chose to consider ... but she would not consider herself engaged to him nor would she wear a ring until she was sure of her feelings.
He kissed her when they parted, and she did not resist him. It was useless to try to resist an accomplished thing. His childlike insistence both attracted and irritated her. She felt drawn to him because his mind seemed to be so completely centred upon her, and repelled by him because his own wishes appeared to be the only considerations he had. She could not decide whether the love he had for her ... and she believed that he loved her ... was complete devotion or complete selfishness. Love at first sight was a perfectly credible, though unusual thing. It was possible that he had fallen in love with her ... her vanity was pleased by the thought that he had done so ... but she certainly had not fallen in love with him either at first or at second sight. She was not in love with him now. She felt certain of that. He was likeable and kind and a very comforting person, and there was much more pleasure to be had from a walk with him than from an evening spent in the club!... Ugh, that club, that dreadful conglomeration of isolated women! Oh, oh, oh! She gave little shudders as she reflected on her club-mates. Most of them were girls like herself, working as secretaries either in offices or in other places ... to medical men or writers ... and, like her, they had few friends in London. Their homes were in the country. Among them were a number of aimless spinsters, subsisting sparely on private means ... poor, wilting women without occupation or interest. They were of an earlier generation than Eleanor, the generation which was too genteel to work for its living, and they had survived their friends and their families and were left high and dry, without any obvious excuse for existing, among young women who were profoundly contemptuous of a woman who could not earn a living for herself. They sat about in the drawing-room and sizzled! They knew exactly at what hour this girl came in on Monday night, and at exactly what hour the other girl came in on Tuesday night. They whispered things to each other! They thought it was very peculiar behaviour for a girl to come back to the club alone with a man at twelve o'clock ... "midnight, my dear!" they would say, as if "midnight" had a more terrible sound than twelve o'clock ... and they were certain that Miss Dilldall's parents should be informed of the fact that on Saturday evening she went off in a taxi-cab with a man who was wearing dress-clothes and a gibus-hat. Miss Dilldall publicly boasted of the fact that she had smoked a cigarette in a restaurant in Soho!...
Ugh! Even if John were selfish, he was preferable to these drab women, these pitiful females herded together. Women in the mass were very displeasing to look at, and they frightened you. They turned down the corners of their mouths and looked coldly and condemningly at you. It was extraordinary how unanimous the girls were in their dislike of working under women. The woman in authority was more hateful to women even than to men. Eleanor had done some work for an advanced woman, an eminent suffragette, who had crept about the house in rubber-soled shoes so that she might come unexpectedly into the room where Eleanor was working and assure herself that she was getting value for her money!... She was always spying and sneaking round! What an experience that had been! How impossible it had been to work with that woman! A girl in the club had worked for a royal princess ... not at all an advanced woman ... and she, too, had had to seek for employment under a man. The princess was a foolish, spoilt, utterly incompetent person who did not know her own mind for two consecutive hours. She sneaked around, too, and spied!... All these women in authority seemed to spend half their day peering through keyholes.... Perhaps it was because the club was such a dingy, cheerless hole that she liked to go out with John. The food was meagre and poor in quality and vilely cooked. Somehow, women living together seemed unable to feed themselves decently. Miss Dilldall, gay little woman of the world, had solemnly proposed that a man should be hired to growse about the meals. "We'll never get good food in this damned compound," she said, "until we get some men into it. Bringing them as guests isn't any good. They're too polite to their hostesses to say anything, but I'm sure that every man who has a meal in this place goes away convinced that the food we are content to eat is a strong argument against votes for women! And so it is. What a hole!"
"That's really why I like going out with him," Eleanor confided to her reflection in the looking-glass as she brushed her hair. "It's really to escape from this dreary club! But I can't marry him for that reason. It wouldn't be fair to him. It would be much less fair to me. Of course, I like him!... Oh, no! No, no!..."
IV
Lizzie was in the hall when John let himself into the house that night.
"Hilloa," he said, "not gone to bed yet?"
"I never 'ave time to go to bed," she said. "'Ow can I get any sleep when I 'ave to look after men! You an' Mr. 'Inde!" She came nearer to him. "You'll get a bit of a surprise when you go upstairs," she said very knowingly.
"Me!"
She nodded her head and giggled.
"What sort of a surprise?" he demanded.
"You'll see when you get upstairs. It's been, waitin' for you 'ere since seven o'clock!..."
"Seven o'clock! What is it? A parcel?"
Lizzie could not control her laughter when he said "parcel." "Ow!" she giggled. "Ow, dear, ow, dear! A parcel! Ow, yes, it's a parcel all right! You'll see when you get up!..."
He began to mount the stairs. "You're an awful fool, Lizzie," he said crossly, leaning over the banisters.
"Losin' your temper, eih?" she replied, bolting the street door.
He hurried up to the sitting-room and as he climbed the flight of stairs that led directly to it, Hinde called out to him, "Is that you, Mac?"
"Yes," he answered.
Hinde came to the door and opened it fully. "There's someone here to see you," he said.
"To see me! At this hour?"
He entered the room as he spoke. His mother was sitting in front of the fire.
"Mother!" he exclaimed, remembering just in time not to say "Ma!" which would have sounded very childish in front of Hinde.
"This is a nice hour of the night to be coming home," she said, trying to speak severely, but she could not maintain the severity in her voice, for his arms were about her and she was hugging him.
"You never told me you were coming," he said. "What brought you over?"
"I've come to see this girl you've got hold of," she answered.
V
"But why didn't you tell me you were coming?" he asked. "I'd have met you at the station!"
She ignored his question. "This is a terrible town," she said. "Mr. Hinde says there's near twice as many people in this place as there is in the whole of Ireland. How in the earthly world do they manage to get about their business?"
"Oh, quite easily," he said nonchalantly, and as he spoke he realised that he had come to be a Londoner.
"When I got out at the station," Mrs. MacDermott continued, "I called a porter and said to him, 'Just put that bag on your shoulder and carry it for me!' 'Where to, ma'am?' says he, and then I gave him your address. I thought the man 'ud drop down dead. 'Is it far?' says I. 'Far!' says he. 'It's miles!' By all I can make out, John, you live as far from the station as Millreagh is from Ballyards. I had to come here in one of them things that runs without horses ... what do you call them?"
"Taxi-cabs!"
"That's the name. It's a demented mad place this. Such traffic! Worse nor Belfast on the fair-day!"
"It's like that every day, Mrs. MacDermott!" Hinde interjected.
"What bothers me," she went on, "is how ever you get to know your neighbours!"
"We don't get to know them," Hinde replied. "I've lived in this house for several years, but I don't know the names of the people on either side of it!"
"My God," said Mrs. MacDermott, "what sort of people are you at all! Are you all fell out with each other?"
"No. We're just not interested!"
"I wouldn't live in this place for the wide world," she exclaimed. "And you," she continued turning to her son, "could come here where you know nobody from a place where you knew everybody. The world's queer! What was that water I passed on the way out?..."
"Water!"
"Aye. We went over it on a bridge!"
"Oh, the river!"
"What river!" she said.
"Why, the Thames, of course!"
"Is that what you call it?"
Hinde smiled at John. "So you've learned to call it the river, have you? Mrs. Hinde, in this town we always talk as if there were only one river in the world. A Londoner always says he's going up the river or down the river or on the river. He always speaks of it as the river. He never speaks of it as the Thames. In Belfast, you speak of the Lagan ... never of the river. The same in Dublin. They speak of the Liffey ... never of the river. John's become a Londoner. He knows the proper way to speak of the Thames!"
"London seems to be full of very conceited and unneighbourly people," Mrs. MacDermott said.
John demanded information of his mother. How were Uncle William and Mr. Cairnduff and the minister and Willie Logan?...
"His wife's got a child," Mrs. MacDermott replied severely.
"A boy or a girl?"
"A boy, and the spit of his father, God help him. Thon lad Logan'll come to no good. Aggie's courting hard. Some fellow from Belfast that travels in drapery. She told me to remember her to you!"
"Thank you, mother!"
Hinde rose to leave them. "You'll have a lot to say to each other, and I'm tired," he explained, as he went off to bed.
"I like that man," said Mrs. MacDermott when he had gone. "And now tell me about this girl you've got. Are you in earnest?"
"Yes, ma!" John answered, using the word "ma," now that he was alone with his mother.
"Will she have you?"
"I hope so. She hasn't said definitely yet, but I think she will!"
"Who is she? Moore you said her name was. That's an Irish name!"
"But she's not Irish. She's English. Her father was a clergyman, but he's dead. So is her mother. She has hardly any friends!"
"Does she keep herself?"
"Yes, ma. She works in a motor-place ... in the office, typing letters. She's an awful nice girl, ma! I'm just doting on her, so I am!"
"Do you like her better nor that Belfast girl that married the peeler?..."
"Och, that one," John laughed. "I never think of her now ... never for a minute. Eleanor's the one I think about!"
"Are you sure of yourself?..."
"As sure as God's in heaven, ma!"
"Oh, yes, we know all about that, but are you sure you're sure? You were queerly set on that Belfast girl, you know!"
He pledged himself as convincingly as he could to Eleanor, and told his mother that he could never be happy without her.
"And how do you propose to keep her?" she said, when he had finished.
"Work for her, of course!"
"How much have you earned since you came here?"
"Nothing!"
"And you've no work fornent you?"
"No, not at the minute. I had a job, but I lost it!"
He gave an account of his relationship with the Daily Sensation.
"You'll not be able to buy much with that amount of work," she interrupted.
He told her of the sketch for the Creams and of the tragedy of St. Patrick.
"What's the use of writing about him," she said. "Sure, he's been dead this long while back!"
He did not attempt to make her understand. "And then there's the novel I wrote when I was at home," he concluded.
"But you've heard nothing of it yet. As far as I can see you've done little here that you couldn't have done at home!"
"Oh, yes I have. I've learned a great deal more than I could ever have learned in Ballyards. And I've met Eleanor!"
"H'm!" she said, rising from her seat. "I'm going to my bed now. That girl Lizzie seems a good-natured sort of a soul. Where does Eleanor live?"
"Oh, a long way from here!..."
"Give me her address, will you?"
"Yes, ma, but why?"
"I'm going to see her the morrow!"
He had to explain that Eleanor could not be seen in the day-time because of her employment, and he proposed that his mother should go with him in the evening to meet her at the bookstall at Charing Cross station.
"Very well," she said as she kissed him, "Good-night!"