CHAPTER XXXIII

THE SIXTEENTH OF FEBRUARY--LONDON

The abhorrence of Nature for a vacuum, is nothing to her abomination of unfinished work. In the great Tapestry which Time sits eternally weaving with the coloured threads of circumstance, there are no loose ends allowed. Every little picture which finds its way into the mighty subject of that vast material, must be complete in its symbol of accomplished Destiny. No ragged edges must there be; no lines unfinished, no shadow left out. And even, in so inconsequent a matter as a story of Beautiful Nonsense, some definite completion must be shown to round the whole, to leave no hanging thread by which the picture might be unravelled.

When John said good-bye to Jill on the steps of the _fondamenta_, when the last wave of her little white handkerchief had fluttered into a curling light upon the water, he had turned back into the house, believing that the story was irretrievably ended. The last word had been written. So far as Jill was concerned, he might well close the book and thank the pen of Chance that it had shown him an ideal as high above the common conception of life as it is good for the eyes of a man to lift.

But he had not, in this calculation, counted the presence of those two white heads in the window up above. For him, so far as his eye could see, Destiny had had its fill, had drained the cup of possibility to its utmost dregs. But this was not so for them. They had yet to be appeased. For them, the matter had only just begun. To them, it was the last shuttle, whose speeding to and fro, would weave in the past with the present and so fulfil their final justification.

From that day, the little old white-haired lady looked forward to John's marriage with Jill as to the consummation of her whole life's desire. She lived--she thought--she ordered her existence for nothing else. Her disappointment was pathetic to witness when she received Jill's little note telling her departure the next day. But her beliefs were not shaken; her hopes were not thwarted. She still saw the last burning of her romance before the flame should flicker and become a light no more.

She spoke to John about it of course. Sitting in the window one day, the window that looked down on to the old gentleman's garden, she told him what she knew; what was not the slightest use his contradicting. They loved each other. Oh, not a doubt of it! She spoke authoritatively, as women will on these subjects. Who better able to than they?

"You really think she loves me, mother?" he asked in a quick moment of hopefulness.

She took his hand. She lifted one tired arm about his neck.

"Why do you think she came like that to Venice?" she asked. "There's not a thing she wouldn't do for you--not a place she wouldn't go to in order to see you. Don't you realise that?"

It was unfortunate she should have chosen that phrase. There were things, Jill would not do for him. It had needed every effort from him to find the full value of unselfishness in what she was about to do; but he could not think that she loved him as his mother would have him believe. It was unfortunate, her choosing of that phrase. From that moment, John shrank into himself. He could not bring himself to tell her the whole truth of it; therefore, it was no good talking any more.

"Her people are too well off," he said, rising with a gesture of despair from the seat in the window. "They're in a different position altogether. I've no right to tell her. I've no right to try and win her affection. It would only be a hopeless business all through."

From that moment, he avoided the subject; from that moment, he became impregnable whenever the little old white-haired lady tried to assail him with the weapons of her worldly knowledge.

"I can get John to say nothing," she said one night to her husband. "He won't speak about it at all."

He put his arms round her in the darkness.

"You're worrying yourself, little woman," he said, sleepily. "I woke up once last night and you were wide awake. Did you sleep at all?"

"Very little," she admitted.

"Well--you mustn't worry. Leave it to Nature. John will tell her everything about it one of these days. Young men are always getting on the high horse and trying to tilt against Nature, and women are forever offering to assist Nature, thinking she must come off the worst. It's waste of time either way, my dearest. Nature's a windmill. It'll grind the flour out of everyone of us when the wind blows. It's no good tilting at it on a windy day; and it's no good trying to turn the sails round when it's calm. The wind'll blow,"--he yawned and turned over on his side--"soon enough." And he was asleep.

She believed so much in what her husband said, did the little old white-haired lady. It is not often, that after twenty odd years of married life, a man keeps still alive that ideal of unquestionable reliability which his wife first found in everything he said. Usually there comes a time--sad enough in its way, since ideals are almost everything--when those which once were words of wisdom, fall tainted with the odour of self-interest. It becomes a difficult thing to believe in then, that aphorism of your philosopher, which brings him the warmest seat in the chimney corner, or the softest place in the bed. And that is the wisdom of a lot of people--a philosophy of self, translated into a language for others.

By some kink of chance perhaps--though rather it would be kinder to think, by some quality of mutual affection--the old gentleman had avoided this tragedy. It is a tragedy; for no man likes a mean motive to be attributed to his philosophy--especially when it is true. And so, the old lady still believed in the infallibility of her husband's wisdom which in its way was quite good. That night at least then, she worried no more. She turned over her white head in his direction and she fell asleep. And whenever he turned through the night, she turned as well. After twenty years or so, these things become mechanical. Life is easier after twenty years, if you can bear with it till then.

But before John had left, her worries began again and, not daring to speak to him any more, she was driven to bear her trouble in silence.

She hoped up to the last that he would mention it once more, and a thousand different times in a thousand different ways, decoyed their conversations into topics which would suggest it to his mind. Yet always with the caution of some wary animal pursued, John avoided it--sheered off and chose another path.

Even on the day of his departure, she yet thought that he would speak and, clinging gently to him, with her arms about his neck, she whispered:

"Have you nothing to say to me, John?"

"Nothing--nothing, dearest," he replied, adding the term of endearment as he saw the bitter look of disappointment in her eyes.

Then he was gone. For another year that vast chamber with its high windows, and that tiny room which peeped out into it, would be silent of the sound of his voice. For another year, night after night, these two old people would continue to look up in surprise when Claudina entered for the ceremony; they would continue to exclaim: "You don't mean to say it's ten o'clock, Claudina!" And perhaps, as the days wore on and the year drew itself out to the thin grey thread, the surprise would get fainter, the note of exclamation not so emphatic as it used to be. She took her breath in fear as she thought of it. Supposing the year were to pass and John had not married Jill? She went into the little altar in her bedroom and commenced a novena--one of the many that she began and dutifully finished, before that year had gone.

So, it may be seen, in these two old people, who have woven themselves so inextricably into this whole story of Nonsense, how Time has by no means finished with the picture it set itself the weaving on that mysterious 18th of March, whereof the calendar still keeps its secret.

John went back to his labours in London, but he left behind him, forces at work of which he knew nothing. The old gentleman was quite right. Nature has no need of the meddling hand. The seed had been transplanted into the mind of the little old white-haired lady and, in her, will the completion of Destiny be found.

For the first few weeks, she wrote her usual letters to John, avoiding the subject with a rigid perseverance which, she might have known, which certainly her husband knew, she could never hope to maintain. This perseverance did not break down all at once. She began with inconsequent allusions to Jill; then at last, when they called forth no word of a reply from John, she gave way to the passionate desire that was consuming her, commencing a long series of letters of counsel and advice such as an old lady will give, who believes that the world is the same place that it was when she was a girl.

"_Have you ever spoken to her, John?_" she asked in one of her letters. "_With your eyes you have. I saw you do it that afternoon at tea. But the language of the eyes is not enough for a woman, who has never heard the sound of the spoken word in her ears._"

"_Tell her you love her--ask her to marry you, and if she says no--don't believe her. She doesn't mean it. It's more or less impossible for a woman to say yes the first time. It's over so soon._"

"_You say her people are wealthy; that they are in a very different position to you. Of course, I know blood is thicker than water, but love is stronger than them both. And, after all, their position is one of luxury--that is of the body. Your's is a position of the mind. There is no comparison._"

"_I lie awake sometimes at night, thinking of all the trials and troubles your father and I had to go through before we found our corner in the world, and then I know how much more worth than youth or luxury, pleasure or ease, is love._"

"_I believe in that short time she was here, she became very fond of me, and in one of those moments when one woman shows her heart to another--they are very seldom--it was when she came to wash her hands after eating the jam sandwiches--she said she thought you were very like me. Now comparisons, with women, are not always odious; it is generally the only way they have of describing anything._"

"_I am sending you a bracelet of jade to give to her. It is very old. I will send you the history of it another time. I have it all written out somewhere. Anyhow, it belonged to one of the great Venetian ladies when Leonardo Loredano was Doge. Give it to her as coming from you. It does come from you. I give it you. A gift, however small, however poor, means a great deal to a woman. She reads a meaning into it--the very meaning I send with this._"

"_Oh, my dear boy, will you tell me nothing. Don't you know how my heart must be aching to hear some news of your happiness. It is the last happiness I shall know myself. Don't delay it too long._"

These extracts from the letters written by the little old white-haired lady to her son, John, over that period of the first three months after her meeting with Jill, could occupy the space of many a page in this history. But these few which, with John's permission, I have quoted here, are sufficient to show how close her heart was wrapt up in the fortunes of his love-making.

Hoping, that, in his reticence on the subject, she might in time grow to lose interest, finally even forgetting Jill's existence altogether, John procrastinated, putting off, putting off the day when he must tell her all the truth. There was, too, he has admitted it, some fanciful sense of satisfaction intricately woven in with the pain he felt when he read those letters of hers every week. It was nonsense again, perhaps, but it kept the idea a living reality in his mind. He came to look forward to them as to the expression of a life that was too wonderful, except to dream of. And so, as an Eastern takes his opium and, retiring into the gloomy shadows of his den, is transported into the glorious heavens of a phantom creation, John read these letters of his mother's in his room in Fetter Lane. There, the passings to and fro of Mrs. Rowse, the hawker's cries and the screams of the parrot on the other side of the road, had no power to waken him from his sleep, so long as it lasted.

For nearly three months--week after week--he received these letters, dreamed his dreams and, in writing back to the little old white-haired lady, tried to allay the expectancy of her mind.

At last it could be done no longer. You may put back the hands of a clock to your heart's content, but there is no warding off of the inevitable. There came a letter saying she would write of it no more. It was not impatient, it was not in anger, but in the spirit, as when an old lady lays down her sewing in her lap as the sun sets and, gently tells you, she can see the stitches no longer.

It was then, that John, knowing what he had lost, conceived another felonious means of transport--this time the transport of the mind.

Jill was only known to his people as Miss Dealtry. They did not know where she lived. They knew nothing of her relations. They could not communicate with her in any way.

For a long while he sat looking at that last letter of his mother's, where she had said she would write no more of Jill.

"She wants a love story--bless her heart," he said musingly--and Mrs. Morrell's sandy cat coming at that moment into the room, he repeated it for the cat's benefit--"She wants a love story," he said. The cat blinked its eyes, curled a rough red tongue lovingly about its whiskers, and sat down as though, having half an hour to spare and the tortoiseshell not being in the way, it was quite ready to listen to it then.

"And, by Jove!" exclaimed John--"She shall have it!"

Miss Morrell curled her tail comfortably round her in the most perfect attitude of attention.

"I'll write her a story," said John to Miss Morrell--"a story of beautiful nonsense--some of it true and some of it made up as I go along."

And, therewith, he sat himself down to answer her letter.

It was necessary, if he were to re-create the interest of the little old white-haired lady, for him to meet Jill again. Accordingly, with some ingenious preamble, in which he explained his silence of the preceding months, he began with the description of his second meeting with Jill in Kensington Gardens--that time when she came and spent the entire morning in telling him that she could not come and meet him that day.

"_Undoubtedly God could have made a place more fitted for Romance than Kensington Gardens,_" he began--"_but unquestionably He never did._"

And this was how the last tissue of nonsense came to be woven.

Of course, he told her, that it was all a secret. Jill had to keep it a secret from her people. He had to do that. Well--surely it was true? He put the question boldly for his conscience to answer, and a look of the real thing came into his eyes. It was as well, however, that he thought of doing it, for the old lady was nearly landing him in an awkward predicament. She enclosed a letter to Jill and asked him to forward it, as, of course, she did not know the address.

He made a grimace at Miss Morrell when he received it, as though asking her what she would do under the circumstances. Miss Morrell yawned. It was so simple. So far, she had taken an interest in the case, had come in every day since the writing of the first letter to get her saucer of milk and hear the latest. But if he was going to put questions to her like this, there was all probability that she would be bored. Of course there was only one thing to be done. Miss Morrell could see that. And John did it. He answered the letter himself--wrote in a woman's hand; which is to say, he wrote every letter slanting backwards--said all that was important when the letter was finished, and scribbled it in and out between the date and the address, then, with a last effort at realism, spelt two words wrong on every page.

By this means, he was getting two letters every week, answering them both himself with as much industry and regularity as he ever put into his work.

This was all very well--all very simple so long as it lasted. But even Miss Morrell, whose eye to the main chance was unerring when it concerned a saucer of milk, warned him of what would follow. One morning, he received a letter from the little old white-haired lady, asking him when they were going to be married.

Quite placidly, he sat down and wrote----

"_We're to be married on the 16th of February. I've taken a small cottage down in the country. It costs forty pounds a year. I thought it wise to begin on economical lines. There's a little rustic porch to the front door, with William Allan Richardson roses climbing all over it. In the front, there are ten feet of garden, protected from the road by a wooden railing about two foot and a brick high with a tiny gate that's always locked to prevent burglars getting in. Three pink chestnuts combine to give it the appearance of an ambrosial park. At the back, there's a little lawn, just large enough for pitch and toss--I've measured it myself, it takes thirty-nine and a half of the longest steps I can take. And in the middle there's an apple tree,--that's likely to have a crop of three this year._"

Miss Morrell closed her eyes in silent acquiescence when he read it out to her. It is possible that she may have considered him extravagant and, having that eye to the main chance, wondered whether he would be able to afford her her basin of milk with all this expenditure on two establishments. She did not say it, however, and listened patiently when he told her of other arrangements he had made.

"I forgot to tell you," he said, taking Miss Morrell on his knee--"that Lizzie Rowse is going to give up sticking labels on the jam-jars at Crosse and Blackwell's and is coming to do housemaid, cook, and general help for seven and sixpence a week--including beer money as she doesn't drink. I wanted to pay her more, but she wouldn't take it. I asked her why and she said, because she mightn't get it; that it was better to be certain of things in this world, rather than spending your life in hoping for what was too good to be true. It was no good my telling her that the whole business was only going to be transacted on paper, and that black and white would be the colour of everything she'd ever make out of it. But no! Seven and six was what she stuck at. As it was, it was a rise of sixpence to what she was getting at the jam-jars, and she wouldn't take a penny more. She said I'd been too kind to her as it was."

Miss Morrell listened to all this with contempt. Mrs. Rowse was not in good repute just then. They thought very nasty things about her on the third and second floors--what is more, they said them, and in tones quite loud enough for Miss Morrell and her tortoiseshell companion to hear.

Mrs. Rowse, it appeared, had spilt some water on the landing mid-way between the first and second floor where was the water cock common to the entire uses of the whole establishment. Five drops would convey an idea of about the amount she had spilled. At a first glance, this may seem very slight, but when it is explained that the stairs from the first to the second floor were covered with linoleum specially purchased by Mrs. Brown to make the approach to her residence the more ornate, it will be easily understood what a heinous offence this was.

Mrs. Brown had spoken about it and the untidy habits of the people on the first floor generally, in tones so opprobrious and so loud that not only the first floor, but indeed the whole house had heard her. Following this, there had appeared, stuck upon the wall so that all who approached the fountain must read, the accompanying notice--"If persons spill the water, will they have the kindness to slop it up."

It may be imagined how, in the effort to compose so reserved a notice as this, the feelings of Mrs. Brown, aided and abetted by Mrs. Morrell, must have overflowed in speech, all of which, of course, Miss Morrell would undoubtedly have heard. Hence her contempt.

When John had finished his dissertation upon the generosity and good qualities of Lizzie Rowse, Miss Morrell climbed down quietly from his knee. She was too dignified to say what she thought about it and so, with tail erect, stiffened a little perhaps for fear he might not perceive the full value of her dignity, she walked from the room.

The time passed by. It grew perilously near to that 16th of February. But John took it all very placidly; probably that is the way, when one does these things on paper. He invented all day long, and took as much pride in the ingenuity and construction of those letters as ever he took over his work.

"We went last night to the pit of a theatre," he said one morning to Miss Morrell. "Took Mrs. Rowse and Lizzie and Maud. The two girls persisted in eating oranges till Maud put a piece of a bad one in her mouth; then they both stopped. I was rather glad, Maud got hold of a bad one, because I was just racking my brains to know how I could stop them without giving offence."

Miss Morrell looked quietly up into his face.

"You shouldn't take those sort of people to a theatre," said she.

John took no notice of her grammar. "It was Jill's idea," he replied.

On the 16th of February, right enough, they were married. Miss Morrell came that morning to drink her saucer of milk in honour of the event.

She walked in without knocking. It was her privilege. John was seated at his table, with his head buried in his hands, his shoulders shaking like a woman's with sobs that had no tears in them. And there, before him, with their paper wrappings all scattered about the place, were a pair of Dresden china shepherds, playing gaily on their lutes. Hanging about the neck of one of them was a card, on which was written: "_To John on his wedding day--from his loving father_."