CHAPTER XXIII

AMBER

But there is no oblivion to be found in a game of draughts. For some days, John bore with the society of the amiable Mr. Chesterton. He listened to his stories of visits that he had paid in other establishments, where they had prevailed upon him to do odd jobs about the house, even to the cleaning of the knives and boots. The only time when he seemed to have resolutely refused to do anything, was on the occasion he had spent seven days with the lady journalist who had a beard and a fair tidy moustache.

"I wouldn't even have shaved her if she'd asked me to," he said.

This sort of thing may be amusing; but it needs the time, it needs the place. In those rooms of his, where only a few days before, Jill had been sitting--at that period of his life when hope was lowest and despair triumphant, John found no amusement in it at all.

He wanted his oblivion. His whole desire was to forget. The life that had held all promise for him, was gone--irrevocably broken. He sought for that, which would, by contrast, close the memory of it, as you shut a book that is read. It was not to be done by playing draughts with Mr. Chesterton. It was not to be done in the ways that the crowd of men will choose. He had attempted that--found it impossible and flung it aside.

It was then that he thought of Amber. She had had a rightful place once, a place that had accorded with his ideas of the cleanliness of existence. Only that he had met Jill--only that he had loved--only that he had found the expression of his ideal in her, Amber would still have been there. And now--now that he had lost everything--why not return? It was the most human thing in the world. Life was not possible of such ideals.

So he argued, the darkness slowly diminishing--the light of some reason creeping again into his mind. But the bitterness was still there. He still did not care and, as yet, his mind did not even rebel against such callousness.

One evening, then, he left Mr. Chesterton finishing the reading of his book. He hailed the first hansom he saw and, screwing himself into the corner of the seat, took a deep breath of relief as he drove away.

Then began the fear as he drove, the fear that he would not find Amber, that since she had gone out of his life, she would have readjusted her mind, found other interests, or even that she might not be there when he arrived. And now, once his destination was made, he dreaded the thought that Circumstance should balk his desire.

Jumping quickly out of the hansom, he paid his fare, hurried up the steps and rattled the flap of the letter-box. This was the knocker of friends. All those who used the proper means were creditors, not answered until inspected carefully from behind lace curtains.

For a few moments, his heart beat tentatively. There was no sound, no light from within. Then came the quick tapping of high-heels. He took a breath. The door opened. He saw her face of amazement in the darkness.

"You!" she exclaimed. The door opened wider to her hand. "Come in."

He took off his hat and stepped in. His manner was strange. He knew it was strange; he understood the look of question in her eyes as she stared at him--it reflected the look in his own mind.

"Are you alone?" he asked.

She nodded her head.

"My aunt is staying with me," she explained, "but she's gone to bed. She's got my bedroom. The mater's gone to bed. I'm sleeping on the floor in the drawing-room. I was sitting there. Come in."

He followed her into the drawing-room. There was her bed upon the floor--a mattress, sheets and blanket. That was all.

"You're sleeping there?" he said.

She said--"hm" with a little jerk of the head, in the most natural way in the world. If he thought he knew what it was to be poor, he flattered himself. He had been without meals, but he had never slept on the floor.

"Isn't it hard?" he questioned. "Do you go to sleep at all?"

She laughed gently under her breath.

"Good heavens, yes! I'm used to it. But what have you come for?"

She sat down in a heap, like a journeyman tailor, upon her bed, and gazed up at him. At first, he did not know how to say it. Then he blurted it out.

"I want you to come back again to see me in Fetter Lane."

She smiled with pride. Her mind reached for its box of bricks. He had sent her away from Fetter Lane. That was all over--past--done with.

"That's rather unexpected--isn't it?"

"I can't help that," he exclaimed, with a moment of wildness.

"But after all you've said?"

"I can't help what I've said. It holds good no longer. I take it all back. It means nothing."

She knelt up quickly on her knees. Dignity comes often before humanity with a woman, but pity will always outride the two. Something had happened to him. He was in trouble. The old appeal he had once made to her rose out of the pity that she felt. She stretched up her hands to his shoulders.

"What's happened?" she asked--"tell me what's happened."

He dropped on to the mattress on the floor. He told her everything. He told her how far his ideals had fallen in those last few days. He stripped the whole of his mind for her to lash if she chose; he stripped it, like a child undressing for a whipping.

When he had finished, she sat back again in her former position. She stared into the empty grate.

"I wonder," said she--"I wonder does the man exist who can bear disappointment without becoming like that."

That was the only lash that fell from her. And she did not direct it upon him, but it whipped across the nakedness of his mind with a stinging blow. He winced under it. It made him long to be that man. Yet still, there was his desire; still there was the fear, that circumstance would balk him of his oblivion.

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"Because, I thought you would be different," she said.

"I'm as human as the rest," said he. "I'm the crank, of course--but I'm a human crank. Will you come back to me again?"

She rose to her knees again. She was trembling, but she took his hand in hers and gripped it hard to hide it from him.

"What will you say afterwards?" she asked gently. "What will you feel? You'll be full of remorse. You'll hate me. You'll hate yourself. What about your ideal?"

"I have none," he exclaimed blindly.

"I said that once," she whispered--"and you said I was wrong, that I had an ideal, that everybody had, only they lost sight of it."

He remembered all that. He remembered the reasoning of his mind. He knew it was true. He knew it was true even then.

"Now you've lost sight of yours," she continued. "But you'll see it again, you'll realise it again to-morrow, and then--heavens! How you'll hate me! How you'll hate yourself."

He stared at her. Were women as good, as fine as this? Was he the only vile thing in existence then? What would Jill think if she could see into the pit of his mind now? So low had he fallen that he thought it impossible to struggle upwards; so low, that it seemed he must touch the utmost depth before he could get the purchase to regain his feet. And if he touched the lowest, he might rise again, but it would not be so high as before.

Amber watched all the thoughts in his face. She had done her utmost. She could not do more. If he did not fight it out from this, then, what must be, must be.

Yet one more thing she could do. If she spoke of Venice. But why should she say it? It was his battle, not hers. She had given him every weapon to wage it but this. Why should she say it? The battle was against herself. Yet she answered to the best. There was her ideal as well, however unconscious it may have been.

"When are you going to Venice?" she asked hoarsely.

He told her how he had spent some of the money--more than a pound of it was gone.

She pulled out her purse, quickly, fiercely, feverishly.

"Then won't you be able to go?" she asked.

"Not for a while."

"Won't your mother be disappointed,--the little old white-haired lady?"

He tried to beat back the emotion in his throat, then felt something cold and hard in his hand. He looked down. It was a sovereign.

"You must take that," she said breathlessly. "Pay it back some other time and go--go to Venice to-morrow."

John looked full in her eyes.

"And you called yourself the fly in the amber," he said. Then he tightened her fingers round the coin--kissed them and walked to the door.

"I'll go to Venice," he said--"I'll go--somehow or other. I'll be the man who can bear things without becoming like that. You shan't be disappointed."

He came back again and seized her hand. Then he hurried out.

She listened to the door slamming. She heard his footsteps in the quiet street, then she dropped down on the mattress on the drawing-room floor.

"Oh, you fool!" she whispered under her breath. "Oh, you fool!"

But wisdom and folly, they are matters of environment. Behind it all, there was the most wonderful satisfaction in the world in saying--"Oh, you fool!"