CHAPTER II

IN A PARLOUR

I

Lights in all the windows and in the street lamps as Mr. Wriford regained the town. Night approaching--and he terrified of its approach. Little chill was in the air, yet as he walked he trembled and his teeth chattered. He was shaken and acutely distressed by revulsion of the effort to cling on and achieve his purpose against Mr. Pennyquick's domineering savagery. He was worse shaken and worse distressed by mounting continuance of the panic at his plight that had driven him to the interview. That plight and to what it might lead had suddenly been revealed to him as he walked away after the first rebuff. Now it utterly consumed him. He shrunk from the gaze of passers-by. He avoided with more than the fear of an evil-doer the police constables who here and there were to be seen. His urgent desire was concealment, to be left alone, to be quiet. His fear was to be apprehended, found destitute, questioned, interfered with. Questioning: that was his terror; solitude: that was his want. He wanted to hide. He wanted to hide from every sort of connection with what in two different phases he had lived through, and in each come only to misery. He told himself that if, in obedience to his bodily desires--his hunger, his extreme physical wretchedness--he were somehow to get in communication with London and enjoy the money and the place that waited him there--that would be the very quick of intolerable meeting with his old self again. Unthinkable that! If his bodily desires--his faintness, his extreme exhaustion--overcame him, there would be meeting the old life in guise of explanations, of dependence again in infirmary or workhouse. No, he must somehow be alone; he must somehow live where none should interfere with him and where he might on the one hand be occupied and on the other be able to sit aside from all who knew him or might bother him, and thus pursue his quest: was there some secret of happiness in life that he had missed? These bodily miseries would somehow, somewhere, be accommodated or would kill him: this mental searching--ever?

There was upon him accumulation of wretchedness such as in all his wretchedness of his accursed life he never had endured. At its worst in the old days, the days of being one of the lucky ones, there had shone like a lamp to one lost in darkness the belief that if he could get out of it all he would end it all. Ah, God, God, he had escaped it and was in worse condition for his escape! The belief had been tested--the belief was gone. In the wild Puddlebox days he had beaten off wretchedness with violence of his hands and of his body, believing that it ever could thus be beaten. God, it had beaten him, never again in that deluded spirit could be faced. In the infirmary he had begun his wondering after something in life that he had missed. Lo, here was he come out to find it, and Christ! it was not, and Christ! he might not now so much as sit and rest and ponder it.

He felt himself hunted. He felt every eye turned upon him within whose range he came; every hand tingling suddenly to clutch him and stop him; every voice about to cry: "Here, you! You, I say! What are you doing? Where do you live? Who are you?"

He felt himself staggering from his dreadful faintness and thereby conspicuous. Thrice as he stumbled round any corners that he met he found himself passing a constable who each time more closely stared. He took another turning. It showed him again that same policeman at the end of the street. He dared not turn back. That would be flight, his disordered mind told him, and he be followed. He dared not go on. There was a little shop against where he stood. Its lighted window displayed an array of gas-brackets, a variety of glass chimneys and globes for lamps and gas, some coils of lead piping, and in either corner a wash-basin fitted with taps. There was inscribed over this shop

HY. BICKERS, CERT. PLUMBER

and attached to a pendent gas bracket within the window was a card with the announcement:

LODGER TAKEN

Mr. Wriford made a great effort to steady himself; steadied his shaking hand to press down the latch; and to the very loud jangle of an overhead bell entered the tiny shop that the door disclosed.

II

There was sound of conversation and the clatter of plates from a brightly-lit inner parlour. Mr. Wriford heard a voice say: "I'll go, Essie, dear," and there came out to him a nice-looking little old woman, white-haired and silvery-hued, rather lined and worn, yet radiating from her face a noticeable happiness, as though there was some secret joy she had, who smiled at him in pleasant inquiry.

"I'm looking for a lodging," said Mr. Wriford.

At her entry she had left the parlour door open behind her, and at Mr. Wriford's words there came to him through it a bright girlish voice which said: "There, now! Jus' what I was saying! Isn't that funny, though! Let's have a laugh!" and with it, as though Mr. Wriford's statement had conveyed the jolliest joke in the world, the merriest possible ring of laughter.

The woman smiled at Mr. Wriford; and there was in the laugh something so infectious as to make him, despite his wretchedness, smile in response. She went back to the door and closed it. "That's our Essie," she said, speaking as though Mr. Wriford in common with everybody else must know who Essie was. "She's such a bright one, our Essie!" The secret happiness that seemed to lie behind her years and behind the lines of her face shone strongly as she spoke. One might guess that "Our Essie" was it. Then she answered Mr. Wriford's statement. "Well, we've got a very nice bedroom," she told him. "Would you like to see it?"

"I'm sure it's nice," said Mr. Wriford. His voice, that he had tried to strengthen for this interview, for some ridiculous reason trembled as he spoke. The reason lay somewhere in the woman's motherly face and in her happy gleaming. He felt himself stupidly affected just as he had been affected--recurrence of the sensation brought the scenes before his eyes--by the last appeal to him of the oldest sea-captain living, and by the kindly action of the woman in the coffee-shop who had given him a piece of bread early that morning. "I'm sure it's nice," he said again, repeating the words to correct the stupid break in his voice. "Would you tell me the price?"

"Won't you sit down?" said the woman. "You do look that tired!"

He murmured some kind of thanks and dropped into a chair that stood by the counter.

She looked at him very compassionately before she answered his question. "Tiring work looking for lodgings," she said.

He nodded--very faint, very wretched, very vexed with himself at that stupid swelling from his heart to his throat that forbade him speech.

"Would you be living in?" he was asked.

"I think I should be out all day."

"Jus' breakfast and supper? That's the usual, of course, isn't it? And full Sundays. That would be twelve shillings."

Twelve shillings was to be his wage from Mr. Pennyquick. He could not spend it all.

"I couldn't pay it," said Mr. Wriford and caught at the counter to assist himself to rise.

"Well, I am sorry, I'm sure," said the woman, and she added: "Hadn't you better rest a little?"

His difficulty in rising warned him that if he did get up he might be unable to stand. "I will, just a moment," he told her, "if you don't mind. It's very kind of you. I've had rather a long day."

She had said she was sorry, and she stood looking at him as though she were genuinely grieved and more than a little disturbed in mind. "How much could you pay?" she asked.

"I could pay ten."

"And when might you want to begin?"

"Now."

"Would it be for long?"

"I can't say. I don't think it would."

She said briskly, as though her obvious disturbance of mind had dictated a sudden course, "Look here, jus' wait a minute, will you?" and went into the parlour, closing the door behind her.

Murmur of voices.

"You know," she said, coming back to him, "if it was likely to be regular perhaps we could arrange ten shillings. But not knowing, you see, that's awkward. We like our lodger more to be one of us like. We don't want the jus' come and go sort. That's how it stands, you see. You couldn't say, I suppose?"

"It's very kind of you," said Mr. Wriford. "I'm afraid I can't. I'll tell you. I'm engaged with Mr. Pennyquick at Tower House School--"

"Oh, Mr. Pennyquick!"

"You know him, I expect?"

"Oh, I know Mr. Pennyquick," said the woman, and seemed to have some meaning in her tone.

"Well, it's only for a week, or by the week. I can't say how long."

He was given no reply to this. It was as if mention of Mr. Pennyquick's name placed him as very likely to be among the "come and go sort." "I had better be going, I think," he said, and this time got to his feet.

"Well, I am sorry," the woman said again. "I'm sure I'm very sorry, and you know I can't say straight off where you'll get what you want for ten shillings. There's places, of course. But you know you don't look fit to go trudging round after them this time of night. Hadn't you better go just for the night somewhere? There's Mrs. Winter I think would take you for the night. She's at--"

Mr. Wriford went to the door. "You needn't trouble," he said weakly. "It can't be by the night. I can only pay at the end of the week."

The woman gave a little sound of dismay. "But--do you mean no money till then?"

He nodded. That was what he meant--and must face.

"But, dearie me, you won't find any will take you without deposit. They're very suspicious here, you know."

"Well," said Mr. Wriford. "Well--" and with fingers as helpless as his voice began to fumble at the latch.

"But where are you going?"

"This handle," he said. "It's rather stiff." He took his hand from it as she came round the counter to him, then immediately caught at it again and supported himself against it.

She saw the action and cried out in consternation. "Oh," she cried. "Why, you can't hardly stand, and going off nowhere! Why, you jus' can't. You'll have to stop."

He asked wearily: "Stop! How can I stop?"

"Why, ten shillings. That'll be all right. Our Essie, you know--"

He could say no more than "Thank you. Thank you."

"You'll come right along. We're just sitting down to supper. No, I'll just tell them first."

He effected speech again as, with her last words, she went to the parlour door. "But deposit," he said, and recalled the phrase she had used. "Aren't you suspicious?"

"Why, that can't be helped," she smiled back at him. "Our Essie, you know, she'd never forgive me if I sent you off like you are. Jus' sit down."

He had scarcely taken a seat when she was back again and calling him from the threshold of the open parlour door. "That's all right. Come right along. You didn't give your name, did you?"

"Wriford," and he reached her where she stood smiling.

She turned within and announced him: "Well, here's our lodger. That's Mr. Bickers."

A man of stature and of strength, once, this Hy. Bickers, Cert. Plumber. Bent now and stooping, but with something very strong, very confident in his face: lined and worn as his wife's, silvery as hers. Slightly whiskered, of white, otherwise clean shaven. A smoking-cap on his head. Little enough hair beneath it. In his face that same suggestion of a very happy secret happiness. "Expect you're tired," said Mr. Bickers and gave a warm hand-clasp.

"And that's our Essie."

A very cool, vigorous young hand, this time, that grasped Mr. Wriford's and shook it strongly. A slim, brown little thing, our Essie, eighteen perhaps, very pretty, with extraordinarily bright eyes; wearing a blue cotton dress with white spots.

"Pleased to meet you," said Essie.

III

Such a cheerful, jolly room, the parlour. Here was a round table set out for supper, and Essie bustling in and out of what appeared to be the kitchen, giving final touches and laying a fourth place. A great number of framed texts all round the walls, with two or three religious pictures, a highly coloured portrait of Queen Victoria and another of General Booth. A bright little fire burning, with an armchair of shining American cloth on each side of it, and a sofa and chairs, similarly covered, all with antimacassars, set around the room. A bookcase near the window, and near one armchair a little table carrying an immense Bible with other Bibles and prayer-books placed upon it. Some shells on the mantelpiece in front of an immense, gilt-framed mirror, and with them a great number of cups and saucers and vases all inscribed as "A present from" the place whence they were purchased.

Mr. Wriford sat on the sofa, silent, better already from the warmth and the fragrant savour from the kitchen; not less wretched though: somehow more wretched, somehow overcome and utterly consumed with that swelling feeling from his heart to his throat. Mr. Bickers sat in one of the armchairs, silent. Mrs. Bickers in the kitchen.

Mrs. Bickers appears. "Now Essie, dear, I'll dish up. You jus' look after the lodger, dear. I expect the lodger will like to wash his hands. Hot water, dear, and there's his bundle."

Essie comes out of the kitchen with a steaming jug in one hand and a candle in the other, puts down the candle to tuck Mr. Wriford's parcel under her arm, and then takes it up again. "This way," says Essie and leads the way through another door and up a flight of very steep and very narrow stairs. "Aren't they steep, though?" says Essie over her shoulder. "We don't half want a lift!"

The stairs give onto a passage with doors leading off from the right, and the passage terminates in a door which Essie butts open with her knee, and here is a bedroom. "This is the lodger's room," says Essie, setting down the candle and then removing the jug from the basin and pouring out the water. "Course it don't look much jus' at present, not expecting you, you see. But I'll pop up after supper an' put it to rights. Find your way down, can't you? I'll get you a bit of soap out of my room to go on with." There is a second door to the bedroom, and Essie goes through it and returns with soap. "That's my room," says Essie. "I call this my dressing-room when we haven't got a lodger, jus' like as if I was a duchess," and she gives the bright laugh that Mr. Wriford had heard in the shop. "That's all right then. Bring the candle. That mark on the wall there's where a lodger left his candle burning all night. Oh, they're cautions, some of our lodgers! Don't be long."

IV

Most savoury and most welcome soup opens the supper. After it a shoulder of mutton, Essie doing all the helping and the carving and the running about. She sits opposite Mr. Wriford. Her eyes--there is something quite extraordinarily bright about her eyes as he watches them. They are never still. They are for ever sparkling from this object to that; and wherever momentarily they rest he sees them sparkle anew and sees her soft lips twitch as though from where her eyes alight a hundred merry fancies run sparkling to her mind. Her eyes flicker over the dish of potatoes and rest there a moment, and there they are sparkling, and her mouth twitching, as though she is recalling comic passages in buying them or in cooking them, or perhaps it is their very appearance, grotesquely fat and helpless, heaped one upon the other, in which she sees something odd that tickles her. Most extraordinarily bright eyes, and with them always most funny little compressions of her lips, as if she is for ever tickled onto the very brink of breaking into laughter.

This at last, indeed, she does. Presence of the new lodger seems to throw a constraint about the table, and the meal is eaten almost to the end of the mutton course in complete silence. Very startling, therefore, when Essie suddenly drops her knife and fork with a clatter and leans back in her chair, eyes all agleam. "Oh, dear me!" cries Essie, as Mr. and Mrs. Bickers stare at her. "Oh, dear me! I'm very sorry, but just munching like this, you know, all of us, without speaking a word! Oh, dear!" and she uses the expression that Mr. Wriford had heard when he first spoke to Mrs. Bickers. "Oh, dear, let's have a laugh!"

Mrs. Bickers glances at Mr. Wriford and says reprovingly: "Oh, Essie!" But there is no help for it and no avoiding its infection. Essie puts back her head and goes into a ring of the brightest possible laughter, and Mrs. Bickers laughs at her, and Mr. Bickers laughs at her, and even Mr. Wriford smiles; and thereafter Essie chatters without ceasing to her parents on an extraordinary variety of topics connected with what she has done or seen during the day, in every one of which she finds subject for amusement and many times declares of whatever it may be: "Oh, aren't they funny, though! Let's have a laugh!"

Mr. Wriford smiles when she laughs--impossible to avoid it. Otherwise he contributes nothing to the chatter. This strange, this kind and happy and generous ending to his day, acts upon him only in increasing sensation of that upward swelling from his heart to his throat that forbids him speech. He has the feeling that if he talks his voice will break in tears--of weakness, of wretchedness: nay, of worse than these--of their very apotheosis. There is happiness here. There is here, among these three, that which he is seeking, seeking and cannot find. They have found it: what is it then? It is all about them--shining in their faces, singing in their words. He is not of it. He is outside it. They are on the heights; he in the depths, the depths! Let him not speak, let him not speak! If he speaks he must sob and cry, get to his feet, while wondering they look at him, and stare at them, and break from them and go. If he so betrays himself he must cry at them: "What have you found? Why are you happy? This kills me, kills me, to sit here and watch you. Don't touch me. None of you touch me. Let me go. Just let me go."

They seem to see his plight. They smile encouragingly at him to draw him into their talk; Mr. Bickers, when the women are clearing away, offers him a new clay pipe and the tobacco jar. But they seem to understand. They accept without comment or offence the negation of these advances which he gives only by shaking his head as they are made.

"Well, that's done!" says Essie, coming down from the lodger's room after the supper has been cleared away. "Bed made and everything nice and ready. One of the castors of the bed is shaky, Dad. You'll have to see to it in the morning. I can't think how I never noticed it till now. Oh, those lodgers! They're fair cautions!"

Mrs. Bickers smiles at Mr. Wriford. "Well, I expect you'd like to go straight to bed, wouldn't you now?"

Painful this distrust of his voice. He rises and manages: "Yes, I would."

"You'll be ever so much better in the morning after a good sleep. What about--" and Mrs. Bickers looks at her husband.

"It's our custom," says Mr. Bickers in his deep voice, "all to read a piece from the Bible before we go to bed--all that sleep under this roof. We'll do it now so you can get along. Essie, dear."

Essie puts chairs to the table, and then Bibles. The immense Bible for Mr. Bickers, one but a little smaller for Mrs. Bickers, and one for herself. "There's my Church-service for you," says Essie to Mr. Wriford. All the Bibles have a ribbon depending from them whereat they are opened, and Essie finds the place for Mr. Wriford. "Twenty-fourth Psalm," says Essie. "My fav'rit. Isn't it a short one, though!"

"We read in turn," says Mr. Bickers. He has one hand on the great Bible and stretches the other to Mrs. Bickers, who takes it and holds it. Mr. Wriford sits opposite them, then Essie, next her father on his other side and snuggling against him, and they begin.

Mr. Bickers, very deep and slow and reverent:

"_The earth is the Lord's and all that therein is: the compass of the world and they that dwell therein._"

Mrs. Bickers, very gently:

"_For he hath founded it upon the seas, and prepared it upon the floods._"

Mr. Wriford. He is trembling, trembling, trembling. They are waiting for him. They are looking at him. Round swings the room, around and around. Who is waiting? Who is looking? Others are here. He hears the oldest sea-captain living, plainly as if he stood before him in the room: "Matey! Matey!" He sees Mr. Puddlebox, plainly as if he were here beside him. "Wedge in, boy; wedge in!" They are surely here. They are surely calling him. He is on the rock with the sea about him. He is in the little room with the figure on the bed. Darkness, darkness. Is this Puddlebox? Is this Captain? Is he by the sea? Is he by the bed? Round swings the darkness, around and around. He is not! He is here! He is here where happiness is. They are waiting for him. They are watching him. Wriford! Wriford! He tries to read the words that swim before his eyes. He must. They are very few. They are a question. He must! Trembling he gives voice:

"_Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord: or who shall rise up in his holy place?_"

Essie, strong and clear and eager, emphasising the first word as though strongly and directly she answered him:

"_Even he that hath clean hands, and a pure heart: and that hath not lift up his mind unto vanity, nor sworn to deceive his neighbour._"

Mr. Bickers, as one that feels the words he reads, and is sure of them:

"_He shall receive the blessing from the Lord: and righteousness from the God of his salvation._"

Mrs. Bickers in gentle confirmation:

"_This is the generation of them that seek him: even of them that seek thy face, O Jacob._"

His turn again. He cannot! Let him get out of this! Let him away! This is not to be borne. Unendurable this. What are they reading? Why have they chosen these words. "Who shall ascend?" They know his misery, then! They know the depths that he is in! Hateful that they should know it, hateful, insufferable, horrible. They see his state and have chosen words that mean his state. He is exposed before them. Let him away! Let him get out of this! They shall not know! His turn. He cannot, cannot. They are watching. They are waiting. Do they see how his face is working? Do they see how he twists and twists his hands? His turn. Ah, ah, he is in the depths, the depths! He is physically, actually down, down--struggling, gasping, suffocating. All this room and these about him stand as it were above him--watching him, waiting for him, knowing his misery. He is sinking, sinking. He is in black and whirling darkness. There is shouting in his ears. Let him away! Let him go!

Some one says: "Essie, dear."

Essie--strong and loud and clear, with tremendous emphasis upon the first word as though her strong young voice performed its meaning:

"_Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors: and the King of glory shall come in._"

He gets to his feet, overturning his chair. He stumbles away, with blind eyes, with groping hands.

"Not that door!" cries Essie and runs to him. "Here's the door. Here's the stairs. Look, here's your candle."

He blunders up. He blunders to his room. He extinguishes the candle. Let him have the dark, the dark! He throws off his clothes, tearing them from him as though they were his agonies. God, if he could but tear these tortures so! He flings himself upon the bed and trembles there and clutches there and thrusts the sheet between his teeth to stay him crying aloud. Inchoate thoughts that rend him, rend him! Unmeaning cries that with the sheet he stifles. What, what consumes him now? He cannot name it. What tortures him? He does not know. Writhe, writhe in the bed; and now it is the sea, and now the Infirmary ward, and now the coffee-shop, and now the parlour. Ah, beat down, beat down these torments! Ah, sit up and stare into the darkness and rid the spirit, rid the mind, of all these shapes and scenes that press about the pillow. Has he slept? Is he sleeping? Why suffers he? What racks him? In God's name what? In pity, in pity what?

"_Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors: and the King of glory shall come in._"

Ah, ah!