CHAPTER XVI

EASTER SUNDAY

One Easter Sunday, soon after his first clandestine meeting with Jill, John was seated alone in his room in Fetter Lane. The family of Morrell and the family of Brown--the plumber and the theatre cleaner--had united in a party and gone off to the country--what was the country to them. He had heard them discussing it as they descended the flights of uncarpeted wooden stairs and passed outside his door.

"As long as we get back to the Bull and Bush by five," Mr. Morrell had said emphatically, and Mr. Brown had said, "Make it half-past four." Then Mrs. Morrell had caught up the snatch of a song:

"I've a tickly feelin' in the bottom of me 'eart For you--for you,"

and Mrs. Brown has echoed it with her uncertain notes. Finally the door into the street had opened--had banged--their voices had faded away into the distance, and John had been left alone listening to the amorous frolics on the stairs of the sandy cat which belonged to Mrs. Morrell, and the tortoise-shell, the property of Mrs. Brown.

Unless it be that you are an ardent churchman, and of that persuasion which calls you to the kirk three times within the twenty-four hours, Easter Sunday, for all its traditions, is a gladless day in London. There is positively nothing to do. Even Mass, if you attend it, is over at a quarter to one, and then the rest of the hours stretch monotonously before you. The oppressive knowledge that the Bank Holiday follows so closely on its heels, overburdens you with the sense of desolation. There will be no cheerful shops open on the morrow, no busy hurrying to and fro. The streets of the great city will be the streets of a city of the dead and, as you contemplate all this, the bells of your neighbourhood peal out in strains that are meant to be cheerful, yet really are inexpressibly doleful and sad. You know very well, when you come to think about it, why they are so importunate and so loud. They are only ringing so persistently, tumbling sounds one upon another, in order to draw people to the fulfilment of a duty that many would shirk if they dared.

The bells of a city church have need to be loud, they have to rise above the greater distractions of life. Listen to the bells of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. The bell-ringers there know only too well the sounds they have to drown before they can induce a wandering pedestrian within. It was just the same in Fetter Lane. John listened to them clanging and jangling--each bell so intent and eager in its effort to make itself heard.

He thought of the country to which the families upstairs had departed; but in the country it is different. In the country, you would go to church were there no bell at all, and that gentle, sonorous note that does ring across the fields and down the river becomes one of the most soothing sounds in the world. You have only to hear it to see the old lych-gate swinging to and fro as the folk make their way up the gravel path to the church door. You have only to listen to it stealing through the meadows where the browsing cattle are steeping their noses in the dew, to see with the eye of your mind that pale, faint flicker of candle-light that creeps through the stained glass windows out into the heavy-laden air of a summer evening. A church bell is very different in the country. There is an unsophisticated note about it, a sound so far removed from the egotistical hawker crying the virtue of his wares as to make the one incomparable with the other. John envied Mrs. Brown and Mr. Morrell from the bottom of his heart--envied them at least till half-past four.

For an hour, after breakfast was finished, he sat staring into the fire he had lighted, too lonely even to work. That heartless jade, depression, one can not call her company.

Then came Mrs. Rowse to clear away the breakfast things and make his bed. He looked up with a smile as she entered.

"What sort of a day is it outside?" he asked.

"Cold, sir; and looks as if we was going to have rain."

She caught up the breakfast things, the china clattered in her fingers. He turned round a little in his chair and watched her clear away. This is loneliness--to find a sense of companionship in the woman who comes to look after one's rooms.

"Whenever a man is lonely," wrote Lamartine, "God sends him a dog." But that is not always so. Some men are not so fortunate as others. It happens sometimes that a dog is not available and then, God sends a Mrs. Rowse to clear away the breakfast things.

But Mrs. Rowse was in a hurry that morning. There was no money due to her. You would not have found the faintest suspicion of lingering in anything that she did then. Even the topic that interested her most--her daughters--had no power to distract her attention.

She was going to take them out to the country--they were going down to Denham to see her sister, as soon as her work was done--Lizzie, who stuck labels on the jam-jars in Crosse and Blackwell's, and Maud, who packed cigarettes in Lambert and Butler's.

There were those living in Peabody Buildings, who said that Lizzie would have a beautiful voice, if she'd only practise. She could sing, "Love Me and the World Is Mine." She could sing that lovely. And Maud--well, Mrs. Rowse had even got a piano in their little tenement rooms for Maud to learn on, but Maud would never practise neither. True, she could pick up just anything she heard, pick it up quite easy with the right hand, though she could only vamp, foolish-like, with the left.

Yet upon these portentous matters, Mrs. Rowse would say nothing that morning. They were going to catch a mid-day train from Marylebone down to Denham, and she had no time to waste.

"Would you mind me coming with you, Mrs. Rowse?" said John suddenly. As suddenly he regretted it, but only because of its impossibility.

There is some sort of unwritten law which says that when you accompany ladies on a journey by train, you must pay for their tickets, and all women are ladies if they do not swear or spit on the ground. You should take off your hat to everyone of them you know when in the street. It may be that they are charwomen, that they stick labels upon jam-jars in their spare hours, that they pack up little boxes of cigarettes when there is nothing else to do, but in the street, they are women--and all women, with the restrictions here mentioned, are ladies.

Now John could not possibly pay for their tickets. He could ill-afford to pay for his own. It would mean no meal the next day if he did. And here let it be said--lest any should think that his poverty is harped upon--John was always poor, except for five minutes after an excursion to the pawn-shop, and perhaps five days after the receipt of the royalties upon his work. You may be sure at least of this, that John will jingle the money in his pocket and run his finger-nail over the minted edge of the silver when he has any. If he has gold, you will see him take it out under the light of a lamp-post when it is dark, in order to make sure that the sovereign is not a shilling. On all other occasions than these, assume that he is poor,--nay, more than assume, take it for granted.

Accordingly, directly he had made this offer to accompany Mrs. Rowse and her daughters to Denham, he had to withdraw it.

"No," said he, "I wish I could come--but I'm afraid it's impossible. I've got work to do."

Quite soon after that Mrs. Rowse departed.

"Hope you'll enjoy yourselves," said he.

"We always do in the country," replied she as she put on her hat outside the door. And then--"Good-morning, sir,"--and she too had gone; the door into the street had banged again, and the whole house, from floor to roof, was empty but for the sandy cat, the tortoiseshell cat and John.

He sat on there in the stillness. Even the cats grew tired of play and were still. Then came the rain, rain that turned to sleet, that drove against the roofs outside and tried, by hiding in the corners of the chimneys, to look like snow. John thought of the tulips in Kensington Gardens. Spring can come gladsomely to England--it can come bitterly, too. Those poor people in the country! But would the country ever permit such weather as this? Even supposing it did, they would not be lonely as he was. Mr. Morrell had Mrs. Brown to talk to, and Mr. Brown had the company of Mrs. Morrell. There were Lizzie and Maud for Mrs. Rowse. Perhaps going down in the train, they would get a carriage to themselves and Lizzie would sing, "Love Me and the World Is Mine," and Maud would count cigarettes in her mind, and pack them up in her mind, or more probably forget that there ever were such things as cigarettes in the fresh delight of seeing the country with bread and cheese on all the hedges. Those young green buds on the hawthorn hedges are the pedestrian's bread and cheese. But you know that, every bit as well as I.

Well, it seemed that everyone had company but John. He took out of his pocket the last letter his mother had written him from Venice--took it out and spread it before him. If only she were there! If only her bright brown eyes were looking at him, what thousands of things there would be to say! What short stories and beginnings of new books would there not be to read her! And how sympathetically would she not listen. How frequently would she not place those dear paralysed hands of hers in his, as he read, at some new passage that she liked!

"_My darling boy----_"

He could hear that gentle voice of hers--like the sound you may hear in the ring of an old china tea-cup--he could hear it, as she had dictated it to his father to write----

"_This is where I begin counting the days to your visit. I dare not begin sooner--too many figures always bewildered me. It is now just about three months. Your father is much better than he was, and is doing a little work these days._"

And here was added in a quaint little parenthesis of his father's: "_She calls it work, my dear boy, just to please me--but when old men play, they like to hear it called work. You've got to do my work. And she is so quick--she has seen I have been writing more than she has said. I shall persuade her to let this stay in nevertheless._"

Then, uninterrupted for a space the letter continued.

"_I'm so pleased that your work is going on so well. I thought your last story was too sad, though. Must stories end unhappily? Yours always seem to. But I think I guess. They won't always end like that. But your father says I am not to worry you on that point; that you can't paint in a tone of gold what you see in a tone of grey, and that what you see now in a tone of grey, you will as likely as not see one day in a tone of gold._"

Then, here, another parenthesis.

"_You will understand what I mean, my dear boy. I've read the story, and I don't think it ought to end sadly, and you will no doubt say, 'Oh, he's quite old-fashioned; he does not know that a sad ending is an artistic ending.' But that is not because I am old-fashioned. It is simply because I am old. When you are young, you see unhappy endings because you are young enough to bear the pain of them. It is only when you get older that you see otherwise. When you have had your sorrow, which, you know, only as an artist I wish for you, then you will write in another strain. Go on with your unhappy endings. Don't take any notice of us. All your work will be happy one day, and remember, you are not writing for but because of us. By the way, I think you spelt paregoric wrong._"

Now again the dictation.

"_Well, anyhow, though I know nothing about it, I feel you write as though you loved. You would tell me, would you not, if you did? I am sure it must be the way to write, the way, in fact, to do everything. Your father says the pictures he paints now lack strength and vigour; but I find them just as beautiful; they are so gentle._"

Parenthesis.

"_One can't always love as one did at twenty-six--T.G. That sounds like reverential gratitude for the fact, but you understand it is only my initials._"

"_He has written something again, John--and he won't tell me what it is. If he has said he is getting too old to love, don't believe him. He has just leant forward and kissed me on my forehead. I have insisted upon his writing this down. Your story about the girl in the chapel and the last candle amused us very much. It interested me especially. If it had been me, I should have fallen in love with you then and there for being so considerate. What was she like? Have you ever seen her since? I can't feel that you were meant to meet her for nothing. I have tried to think, too, what she could have been praying to St. Joseph for, but it is beyond me. It is not like a woman to pray for money for herself. Perhaps some of her relations have money troubles. That is all I can imagine, though I have thought over it every day since I got your letter. God bless you, my darling. We are waiting eagerly for the reviews of your new book. When will it be out--the exact date? I want to say a novena for it, so let me know in good time. And if you meet the Lady of St. Joseph--as you call her--again, you must promise to tell me all about it. Your father wants the rest of the sheet of note-paper on which to say something to you--so, God bless you always._"

"_Don't read the reviews when they come out, John. Send them along to me, and I'll sort out the best ones and send them back to you to read. As far as I can see, there are so many critics who get the personal note into their criticisms, and to read these, whether praising or blaming, won't do you any good; so send them all along to me before you look at them. The first moment you can send me a copy, of course, you will. Your loving father._"

Here the letter ended. Long as it was, it might well have been longer. They were good company, those two old people, talking to him through those thin sheets of foreign paper, one breaking in upon the other with all due courtesy, just as they might with a "Finish what you have to say, my dear," in ordinary conversation.

And now they had gone to the country, too--they had left him alone. When he had folded up the letter, it was almost as if he could hear the door bang again for the third time.

He leant back in his chair with an involuntary sigh. What a few people, after all, there were in the world whom he really knew! What a few people who would seek out his company on such a day as this! He stood up and stretched out his arms above his head--it was----

He stopped. A sound had struck to his heart and set it beating, as when the bull's-eye of a target is hit.

The bell had rung! His electric bell! The electric bell which had raised him immeasureably in station above Mrs. Morrell and Mrs. Brown, who had only a knocker common to the whole house--one, in fact, of the landlord's fixtures! It had rung, and his heart was beating to the echoes of it.

In another second, he had opened his door; in another moment, he was flying down the uncarpeted wooden stairs, five at a time. At the door itself, he paused, playing with the sensation of uncertainty. Who could it be? If the honest truth be known, it scarcely mattered. Someone! Someone had come out of nowhere to keep him company. A few personalities rushed to his mind. It might be the man who sometimes illustrated his stories, an untidy individual who had a single phrase that he always introduced into every conversation--it was, "Lend me half-a-crown till to-morrow, will you?" It would be splendid if it were him. They could lunch together on the half-crown. It might be the traveller from the wholesale tailor's--a man whom he had found begging in the street, and told to come round to Number 39 whenever he was at his wit's end for a meal. That would be better still; he was a man full of experiences, full of stories from the various sleeping-houses where he spent his nights.

Supposing it were Jill! A foolish, a hopeless thought to enter the mind. She did not know where he lived. She might, though, by some freak of