Chapter 2

always interested me, none the less, and I showed them special consideration; no doubt because I remembered a period when I took much secret pride and satisfaction in having obtained entrance to their ranks, from what in all countries which I have visited is accounted a lowlier walk of life. And yet, as I see it now, I must confess that I am inclined to think the handy lad in the open air has rather the best of it. I admit this is open to question, however. Fortunately there are compensations in both cases.

'For a young fellow you do a lot of thinking,' said Mr. Smith to me as we walked slowly down to the ferry stage in leaving Manly. Of course I indulged in one of my idiotic blushes.

'No; oh no,' I told him. 'I was only watching the people.'

'Well, there's nothing to be ashamed of in thinking,' he justly said. 'If most of the youngsters in Sydney did a deal more of it, it would be a lot better for them.'

'Ah, you mean thinking about their work.' I knew instinctively, and because of remarks he had made, that my elderly room-mate thought well of me as being a very practical lad, seriously determined to get on in the world. And so, also instinctively, I played up, as they say, to this view of my character, and I dare say overdid it at times; certainly to the extent of making myself appear more practical, or more concentrated upon material progress, than I really was.

'Oh, I don't know about that,' said Mr. Smith as we boarded the steamer. 'Business isn't the only thing in life, and there are plenty other things worth thinking about.' Yes, odd as it seems, it was I who was being reminded that there were other things worth thinking of besides business; I ... 'No, but it would be better for 'em to do a lot more thinking about all kinds of things. Thinking is better than running after little chits of girls who ought to be smacked and put to bed.'

Two refulgent youths had just passed us, in the wake of damsels whose favour they apparently sought to win as favour is perhaps won in poultry-yards--by cackling.

'I've had to do a powerful lot of talking in my time,' continued Mr. Smith; 'and now I like to see any one, and especially any young fellow, understand that it's not necessary to talk for talking's sake, and that when you've nothing particular to say, it's better to be quiet and think, than--than just to blither, as so many do.'

I endeavoured to look as much as possible like a deep thinker as I acquiesced, and made mental note of the fact that I had evidently been rather neglecting my companion.

'Mind you,' he added, 'it isn't only in office hours and at his work that a man makes for success in business. Not a bit of it. It's when he's thinking things out away from the office. Why, some of the best business I ever brought off I've really done in bed--the planning out of it, you know.'

I nodded the understanding sympathy of a wily and experienced hand at business. I wonder if the average youth is equally adaptive! Probably not, for I suppose it means I was a good deal of a humbug. All I knew of business, so far, was what Sussex Street had shown me; and if I had been perfectly candid, I should have admitted that, so far from striking me as interesting, it seemed to me absurdly, incredibly dull and uninteresting; so much so as to have a guise of unreality to me. But my letters interested me none the less.

The facts of the situation were unreal. I cared nothing about Canning and Son's profits, or the prices of Mr. Gubbins's butter; nothing whatever. But I derived considerable satisfaction from turning out a letter the fluent suavity of which I thought would impress Mr. Gubbins. Primarily, my satisfaction came from the impression the letters made upon me personally. Also, I enjoyed the sense of importance it gave me to open the firm's letters myself, and to tell myself that, given certain bald facts to be acquired from this man or the other, I could reply to them far better than Mr. John could. I liked to make him think my smugly correct phrasing was his own, because I knew it was much more polished, and I thought it much more effective than his own; and I liked to figure myself a sort of anonymous power behind the throne--the Sussex Street throne!

As we breasted the hill together from the North Shore landing-place, Mr. Smith delivered himself of these sapient words, designed, I am sure, to be of real help to me:

'What they call success in life is a simple business, really; only nobody thinks so, and so very few find it out. They're always looking round for special dodges, and wasting time following up special methods recommended by this fool or the other. There's only one thing wanted really for success, and that's just keeping on. Just keeping on; that's all. If you never let go of yourself--never, mind you, but just keep on, steady and regular, you can't help succeeding. It just comes to you. But you must keep on. It's no good having a shot at this, and trying the other. The way is just to keep on.'

My mentor was in a seriously practical vein on this Saturday night; partly perhaps because, as the event proved, he was within four days of one of his periodical disappearances.

XVI

In the early afternoon of Sunday I set out upon the visit I had originally intended to pay on the previous day.

Three o'clock found me rather nervously ringing a bell at the door of Filson House in Macquarie Street. Under the brightly polished bell-pull was the name C. F. Rawlence, and the legend: 'Do not ring unless an answer is required.' It was my first experience of such a notice, and I felt uncertain how it was intended to apply. Neither for the moment could I understand why in the world any sane person should ring a bell unless desirous of eliciting a response of some kind. Finally, I decided that it must be a plaintive and exceedingly trustful appeal to the good nature of urchins who might be tempted to ring and run away.

A smiling young Chinaman presently opened the door to me, and said: 'You come top-side alonga me, pease; Mr. Lollance he's in.'

So I walked upstairs behind the silent, felt-shod Asiatic, and wondered what was coming next. I had hitherto associated Chinamen in Australia exclusively with market-gardening and laundry work. The house was not a very high one, but it really was its 'top-side' we walked to, and, arrived there, I was shown into what I thought must certainly be the largest and most magnificent apartment in Sydney.

I dare say the room was thirty feet long by twenty feet wide, without counting the huge fireplace at one end, which formed a room in itself, and did actually accommodate several easy chairs, though I cannot think the weather was ever cold enough in Sydney to admit of people sitting so close to a log fire as these chairs were placed. There were suits of armour, skins of beasts, strange weapons, curious tapestries, and other stock properties of artists' studios, all conventional enough, and yet to me most startling. I had never before visited a studio, and did not know that artists affected these things. The magnificence of it all impressed me enormously. It almost oppressed me with a sense of my own temerity in venturing to visit any one who maintained such state.

'This is what it means to be a famous artist,' I told myself, well assured now, in my innocence, that Mr. Rawlence must be very famous. 'Every one else probably knew it before,' I thought. And just then the great man himself appeared, not at the door behind me, but between heavy curtains which hid some other entrance. He came forward with a welcoming smile. Then, for a moment this gave place to rather blank inquiry. And then the smile returned and broadened.

'Why, it's-- No, it can't be. But it is--my young friend of St. Peter's. I'm delighted. Welcome to Sydney. Sit down, sit down, and let me have your news.'

He reclined in a sidelong way upon a sort of ottoman, and gracefully waved me to an enormous chair facing him.

'There are always a few charitable souls who drop in upon me of a Sunday afternoon, but I'd no idea you would be the first of them to-day.'

Here was a disturbing announcement for me!

'Perhaps it would be more convenient if I came one evening, Mr. Rawlence,' I said awkwardly, half rising from the chair.

'Tut, tut, my dear lad! Sit down, sit down. Why should other visitors disturb you? There will only be good fellows like yourself. Ladies are rarities here on a Sunday. And in any case-- Why, you are quite the man of the world now.' This with kindly admiration. Then he screwed up his eyes, moved his head backward and from side to side, as though to correct his view of a picture. 'Just one point out of the picture. Dare I alter it? May I?' And, stepping forward, he thrust well down in my breast coat pocket Mrs. Gabbitas's gorgeous silk handkerchief. 'Yes,' as he moved backward again, 'that's better. One never can see these things for oneself. But let me make sure of your important news before we are interrupted.'

So I told my story as well as I could, and Mr. Rawlence was in the act of expressing his kindly interest therein, when I heard steps and voices on the stairs below.

'If you're not otherwise engaged you must stay till these fellows go, Nick,' said my host. 'We haven't half finished our talk, you know. And--er--if you should be talking to any one here of--er--your present situation, I should leave it quite vague, if I were you; secretarial work you know--something of that sort. We may have some newspaper men here who might be useful to you one day--you follow me?'

'Ah! Hail! Good of you to have come, Landon. Ah, Foster! Jones! Good men! Do find seats. Oh, let me introduce a new arrival--Mr. Nicholas Freydon; Mr. Landon, the disgracefully well-known painter, Mr. Foster and Mr. Jones, both of the Fourth Estate, though frequently taken for quite respectable members of society. We may not have a Fleet Street here, you know, Freydon, but we have one or two rather decent newspapers, as you may have noticed.'

He turned to the still smiling young Chinaman. 'Let's have cigars and cigarettes, Ah Lun.'

I gathered that I had been presented as a new arrival from England. It was rather startling; but so far I found that an occasional smile was all that seemed expected of me, and I was of course anxious to do my best. 'Good thing I've started smoking,' I thought, as Ah Lun began passing round two massive silver boxes, with cigars and cigarettes. The visitors were mostly young, rather noticeably young, I thought, in view of the greying hair over Mr. Rawlence's temples; and I felt less and less alarmed as I listened to their talk. In fact, shamelessly disrespectful though the idea was, I found myself, after a while, wondering whether Mr. Smith might not have called some of the conversation 'cackle.' And then some technicalities, journalistic and artistic, began to star the talk, and I meekly rebuked my own presumption. But I have no doubt whatever that Mr. Smith would have called most of it 'cackle,' and it is possible he would have been tolerably near the truth.

Within an hour I had been introduced to perhaps a score of visitors, and Ah Lun was just as busy as he could be, serving tea, whisky, wine, soda-water, cigars, cigarettes, sandwiches, and so forth. It was all tremendously exciting to me. The mere sound of so many voices, apart from anything else, I found wonderfully stimulating, if a trifle bewildering.

'This,' I told myself, in a highly impressive, though necessarily inarticulate stage-whisper of thought, 'This is Society; this is what's called the Social Vortex; and I am right in the bubbling centre of it.' And then I thought how wonderful it would have been if Mr. Jokram, of Dursley's School of Arts Committee, and one or two others--say, Sister Agatha, for example--could have been permitted to take a peep between the magnificent curtains, and have a glimpse of me, engaged in brilliant conversation with a celebrity of some kind, whose neck-tie would have made an ample sash for little Nelly Fane--of me, the St. Peter's orphan, in Society!

Truly, I was an innocent and unlicked cub. But I believe I managed to pull through the afternoon without notably disgracing my distinguished host and patron; and, too, without referring even to 'secretarial work.' I might have been heir to a dukedom, a distinguished remittance man, or even a congenital idiot, for all the company was allowed to gather from me as to my means of livelihood.

XVII

Towards six o'clock the company began to thin out somewhat, and within the hour I found myself once more alone with Mr. Rawlence.

'Well, and what do you think of these few representatives of Sydney's Bohemia?' asked my host. 'They are not, perhaps, leading pillars of our official society, as one may say--the Government House set, you know--but my Sunday afternoon visitors are apt to be pretty fairly representative of our best literary and artistic circles, I think. Interesting fellows, are they not? I was glad to notice you had a few words with Foster, the editor of the _Chronicle_. If you still have literary or journalistic ambitions, and have not been entirely captivated by the pundits of commerce and money-making, Foster might be of material assistance to you.'

Just then Ah Lun passed before us (still smiling), carrying a tray full of used glasses.

'We'll have a bit of dinner here, Ah Lun. I won't go out to-night. I dare say you have something we can pick over. Let us know when it's ready.'

Really, as I look back upon it, I see even more clearly than at the time that the artist was extraordinarily kind to me; to an obscure and friendless youth, none too presentable, and little likely just then to do him credit. I would prefer to set down here only that which I understood and felt at the time. Perhaps that is not quite possible, in the light of subsequently acquired knowledge and experience. This much I can say: there was no hint at this time of any wavering or diminution in the almost worshipful regard I felt for Mr. Rawlence.

Seen in his own chosen setting, he was the most magnificent person I had met. Æstheticism of a pronounced sort was becoming the fashion of the day in London; and, as I presently found, Mr. Rawlence followed the fashions of London and Paris closely. Indeed, I gathered that at one time he had settled down, determined to live and to end his days in one or other of those Old World capitals. But after a year divided between them, he had returned to Sydney, and gradually formed his Macquarie Street home and social connections. No doubt he was a more important figure there than he would have been in Europe. His private income made him easily independent of earnings artistic or otherwise. I apprehend he lived at the rate of about a thousand pounds a year, or a little more, which meant a good deal in Sydney in those days. I remember being told at one time that he did not earn fifty pounds in a year as a painter; but, of course, I could not answer for that.

I think he derived his greatest satisfactions from the society of young aspirants in art, literature, and journalism; and I incline to think it was more to please and interest, to serve and to impress these neophytes, than from any inclination of his own, that he also assiduously cultivated the society of a few maturer men who were definitely placed in the Sydney world as artists, writers, editors, and so forth. But such conclusions came to me gradually, of course. I had not thought of them during that delightfully exciting experience--my first visit to the Macquarie Street studio.

The simple little dinner was for me a thrilling episode. The deft-handed Chinaman hovering behind our chairs, the softly shaded table-lights, the wine in tall, fantastically shaped Bohemian glasses, the very food--all unfamiliar, and therefore fascinating: olives, smoked salmon--to which I helped myself largely, believing it to be sliced tomato--a cold bird of sorts, no slices of bread but little rolls in place of them, no tea, and no dishes ever seen in Mrs. Gabbitas's kitchen, or at my North Shore lodging. And then the figure of my host, lounging at table in the rosy light, a cigarette between the shapely fingers of his right hand--I had not before seen any one smoke at the dinner-table--his brown velvet coat, his languidly graceful gestures, the delicate hue of his flowing neck-tie, the costly sort of negligence of his whole dress and deportment--all these trifling matters were alike rare and exquisite in my eyes.

After their fashion the day, and in particular the evening, were an education for me. I spent a couple of hours over the short homeward journey to Mill Street, the better to savour and consider my impressions. The previous day belonged to my remote past. I had travelled through ages of experience since then. For example, I quite definitely was no longer proud of being a clerk in an office. As I realised this I smiled down as from a great height upon a recollection of the chorus of a Scots ditty sung by a sailor on board the _Ariadne_. I have no notion of how to spell the words, but they ran somewhat in this wise:

'Wi' a Hi heu honal, an' a honal heu hi, Comelachie, Ecclefechan, Ochtermochty an' Mulgye, Wi' a Hi heu honal, an' a honal heu hi, It's a braw thing a clairk in an orfiss.'

Well, it was no such a braw thing to me that night, as it had seemed on the previous day. I had heard the word 'commercial' spoken with an intonation which I fancied Mr. Smith would greatly resent. But I did not resent it. And that was another of the fruits of my immense experience: Mr. Smith would never again hold first place as my mentor. How could he? Why, even some of my own innocent notions of the past--of pre-Macquarie Street days--seemed nearer the real thing than one or two of poor Mr. Smith's obiter dicta. I had noted the hats of that elect assemblage, and there had not been a billycock among them. Not a single example of the headgear which Mr. Smith held necessary for the self-respecting man in Sydney! But, on the contrary, there had been quite a number of a kind which approximated more or less to the soft brown hat purchased by me in Dursley, and discarded upon Mr. Smith's urgent recommendation in favour of the more rigid and precise billycock. I reflected upon this significant fact for quite a long while.

Certainly, the world was a very wonderful place. Was it possible that a week ago I had been a handy lad, dressed merely in shirt and trousers, and engaged in planting out tomatoes? I arrived at the corner of Mill Street, and turning on my heel walked away from it. I wanted to try over, out loud, one or two such phrases as these:

'I've been dining with an artist friend in Macquarie Street!'--'I was saying this afternoon to the editor of the _Chronicle_'--'I met some delightful people at my friend Mr. Rawlence's studio this afternoon!'

But, upon the whole, there was a more subtle joy in the enunciation of certain other remarks, supposed to come from somebody else:

'I met Mr. Freydon, Mr. Nicholas Freydon, you know, this afternoon. He had looked in at Rawlence's studio in Macquarie Street. In fact, I believe he stayed there to dinner before going on to his rooms at North Shore. Rawlence certainly does get all the most interesting people at his place. Landon, the painter, was deep in conversation with Mr. Freydon. No, I don't know what Mr. Freydon does--some secretarial appointment, I fancy. He's evidently a great friend of Rawlence's.'

It is surprising that I can set these things down with no particular sense of shame. I distinctly remember striding along the deserted roads, speaking these absurdities aloud, in an only slightly subdued conversational voice. My mood was one of remarkable exaltation. I wonder if other young men have been equally mad!

'How d'ye do, Foster?' I would murmur airily as I swung round a corner. 'Have you seen my new book?'; or, 'I noticed you published that article of mine yesterday!' Presently I found myself in open, scrub-covered country, and singing, quite loudly, the old sailor's doggerel about its being a braw thing to be a 'clairk in an orfiss'; my real thought being that it was a braw thing to be Nicholas Freydon, a clerk in an office, who was very soon to be something quite otherwise.

I am not quite sure if this mood was typical of the happy madness of youth. There may have been a lamentable kind of snobbery about it; I dare say. I only know this was my mood; these were my apparently crazy actions on that remote Sunday night. And, too, before getting into bed that night--fortunately for himself, perhaps, poor Mr. Smith was already asleep, and so safe from my loquacity--I carefully folded the two magnificent rainbow-hued silk handkerchiefs which good Mrs. Gabbitas had given me, and stowed them away at the very bottom of my ancient carpet-bag.

The sort of remarks which I had been addressing to the moon were not remarks which I ever should have dreamed of addressing to any human being. I think in justice I might add that. But I had greatly enjoyed hearing myself say them to the silent night.

XVIII

Actually, I dare say the process of one's sophistication was gradual enough. But looking back now upon my Dursley period, and the four years spent in Sydney--and, indeed, my stay in the Orphanage, and my life with my father in Livorno Bay--it appears to me that my growth, education, development, whatever it may be called, came at intervals, jerkily, in sudden leaps forward. The truth probably is that the development was constant and steady, but that its symptoms declared themselves spasmodically.

It would seem that there ought to have been a phase of smart, clerkly dandyism; but perhaps Mr. Rawlence's kindly hospitality in Macquarie Street nipped that in the bud, substituting for it a kind of twopenny æstheticism, which made me affect floppy neckties and a studied negligence of dress, combined with some neglect of the barber. In these things, as in certain other matters, there were some singular contradictions and inconsistencies in me, and I was distinctly precocious. The precocity was due, I take it, to the fact that I had never known family life, and that my companions had always been older than myself. I fancy that most people I met supposed me to be at least three or four years older than I was, and were sedulously encouraged by me in that supposition. I was precocious, too, in another way. I could have grown a beard and moustache at seventeen. Instead, I assiduously plied the razor night and morning, and derived satisfaction from something which irritated me greatly in later years--the remarkably rapid and sturdy growth of my beard.

As against these extravagances I must record the fact that my parsimony in monetary matters survived. Mr. John, in Sussex Street, presently raised my salary to two pounds ten shillings a week; but I continued to share Mr. Smith's bedroom, and to pay only sixteen shillings weekly for my board and lodging. What was more to the point, I was equally careful in most other matters affecting expenditure, and never added less than a pound each week to my savings bank account; an achievement by no means always equalled in after years, even when earnings were ten times larger. I may have, and did indulge in the most extravagant conceits of the mind. But these never seriously affected my pocket.

There is perhaps something rather distasteful in the idea of so much economic prudence in one so young. A certain generous carelessness is proper to youth. Well, I had none of it, at this time, in money matters. And, distasteful or not, I am glad of it, since, at all events, it had this advantage: at a very critical period I was preserved from the grosser and more perilous indulgences of youth. When the time did arrive at which I ceased to be very careful in money spending, I had presumably acquired a little more balance, and was a little safer than in those adolescent Sydney years.

Here again my qualities were presumably the product of my condition and circumstances. To be left quite alone in the world while yet a child, as I had been, does, I apprehend, stimulate a certain worldly prudence in regard, at all events, to so obvious a matter as the balance of income and expenditure. I felt that if I were ever stranded and penniless there would be no one in the whole world to lend me a helping hand, or to save me from being cut adrift from all that I had come to hold precious, and flung back into the slough of manual labour--for that, curiously enough, is how I then regarded it. Not, of course, that I had found manual work in itself unpleasant in any way; but that I then considered my escape from it had carried me into a social and mental atmosphere superior to that which the manual worker could reach.

Except when he was absent from Sydney, Mr. Rawlence always received his friends at the Macquarie Street studio on Sundays, and none was more regular in attendance than myself. It would be very easy, of course, to be sarcastic at Mr. Rawlence's expense; to poke fun at the well-to-do gentleman approaching middle age, who clung to the pretence of being a working artist, and to avoid criticism, or because more mature workers would not seek his society, liked to surround himself with neophytes--a Triton among minnows. And indeed, as I found, there were those--some old enough to know better, and others young enough to be more generous--who were not above adopting this attitude even whilst enjoying their victim's hospitality; aye, and enjoying it greedily.

But neither then nor at any subsequent period was I tempted to ridicule a man uniformly kind and helpful to me; and this, not at all because I blinded myself to his weaknesses and imperfections, but because I found, and still find, these easily outweighed by his good and genuinely kindly qualities. His may not have been a very dignified way of life; it was too full of affectations for that; particularly after he began to be greatly influenced by the rather sickly æsthetic movement then in vogue in London. But it was, at least, a harmless life; and, upon the whole, a generous and kindly one.

Its influence upon me, for example, tended, I am sure, to give me a pronounced distaste for the coarse and vulgar sort of dissipation which very often engaged the leisure of my office companions, and other youths of similar occupation in Sydney. It may be that the causes behind my aloofness from mere vulgar frivolity, and worse, were pretty mixed: part pride, or even conceit, and part prudence or parsimony. No matter. The influence was helpful, for the abstention was real, and the distaste grew always more rooted as time wore on. Also, the same influence tended to make me more fastidious, more critical, less crude than I might otherwise have been. It led me to give more serious attention to pictures, music, and literature of the less ephemeral sort than I might otherwise have given. It was not that Mr. Rawlence and his friends advised one to study Shakespeare, or to attend the better sort of concerts, or to learn something of art and criticism. But talk that I heard in that studio did make me feel that it was eminently desirable I should inform myself more fully in these matters.

Listening to a discussion there of some quite worthless thing more than once moved me to the investigation of something of real value. I was still tolerably credulous, and when a man's casual reference suggested that he and every one else was naturally intimate with this or that, I would make it my business, so far as might be, really to obtain some knowledge of the matter. I assumed, often quite mistakenly, no doubt, that every one else present had this particular knowledge. Thus the spirit of emulation helped me as it might never have done but for Mr. Rawlence and his sumptuous studio, so rich in everything save examples of his own work.

* * * * *

I fancy it must have been fully a year after my arrival in Sydney that I met Mr. Foster, the editor of the _Chronicle_, as I was walking down from Sussex Street to Circular Quay one evening.

'Ah, Freydon,' he said; 'what an odd coincidence! I was this moment thinking of you, and of something you said last Sunday at Rawlence's. I can't use the article you sent me. It's-- Well, for one thing, it's rather too much like fiction; like a story, you know. But, tell me, what do you do for a living?'

'I'm a correspondence clerk, at present, in a Sussex Street business house.'

'H'm! Yes, I rather thought something of the sort--and very good practical training, too, I should say. But I gather you are keen on press work, eh?'

I gave an eager affirmative, and the editor nodded.

'Ye--es,' he said musingly as we turned aside into Wynyard Square. 'I should think you'd do rather well at it. But, mind you, I fancy there are bigger rewards to be won in business.'

'If there are, I don't want them,' I rejoined, with a warmth that surprised myself.

'Ah! Well, there's only one way, you know, in journalism as in other things. One must begin at the foundations, and work right through to the roof. I'll tell you what; if you'd care to come on the _Chronicle_--reporting, you know--I could give you a vacancy now.'

No doubt I showed the thrill this announcement gave me when I thanked him for thinking of me.

'Oh, that's all right. There's no favour in it. I wouldn't offer it if I didn't think you'd do full justice to it. And, mind you, there's nothing tempting about it, financially at all events. I couldn't start you at more than two or three pounds a week.'

Now here, despite my elation, I spoke with a shrewdness often recalled, but rarely repeated by me in later life. A curious thing that, in one so young, and evidence of one of the inconsistencies about my development which I have noted before in this record.

'Oh, well,' I said, 'I should not, of course, like to lose money by the change; but if you could give me three pounds a week I shouldn't be losing, and I'd be delighted to come.'

It falls to be noted that I was earning two pounds ten shillings a week from Messrs. J. Canning and Son at that time. I do not think there was anything dishonest in what I said to Foster; but it certainly indicated a kind of business sharpness which has been rather noticeably lacking in my later life. The editor nodded ready agreement, and it was in this way that I first entered upon journalistic employment.

XIX

The work that I did as the most junior member of the _Chronicle's_ literary staff no doubt possessed some of the merits which usually accompany enthusiasm.

Memory still burdens me with the record of one or two articles thought upon which makes my skin twitch hotly. It is remarkable that matter so astoundingly crude should have seen the light of print. But, when one comes to think of it, the large, careless newspaper-reading public, the majority, remains permanently youthful so far as judgment of the written word is concerned; and so it may be that raw youngsters, such as I was then, can approach the majority more nearly than the tried and trained specialist, who, just in so far as he has specialised as a journalist, has removed himself from the familiar purview of the general, and acquired an outlook which, to this extent, is exotic.

At all events, I know I achieved some success with articles in the _Chronicle_ of a sort which no experienced journalist could write, save with his tongue in his cheek; and tongue-in-the-cheek writing never really impressed anybody. What seems even more strange to me, in the light of later life and experience, is the fact that upon several occasions I proved of some value to the business side of the _Chronicle_. My efforts actually brought the concern money, and increased circulation. I find this most surprising, but I know it happened. There were due solely to my initiative 'interviews' with sundry leading lights in commerce, and in the professional sporting world, which were highly profitable to the paper; and this at a time when the 'interview' was a thing practically unknown in Australian journalism.

Stimulated perhaps by the remarks of the good Mr. Smith, my room-mate, I planned ventures of this kind in bed, descending fully armed with them upon Mr. Foster by day, in most cases to fire him, more or less, by my own enthusiasm. Upon the whole I earned my pay pretty well while working for the _Chronicle_, even having regard to the several small increases made therein. If I lacked ability and experience, I gave more than most of my colleagues, perhaps, in concentration and initiative.

The two things most salient, I think, which befell in this phase of my life were my determination to go to England, and my only adolescent love affair; this, as distinguished from the sentimental episodes of infancy and childhood, which with me had been a rather prolific crop.

The determination to make my way to England, the land of my fathers, did not take definite shape until comedy, with a broad smile, rang down the curtain upon my love affair. But I fancy it had been a long while in the making. I am not sure but what the germ of it began to stir a little in its husk even at St. Peter's Orphanage; I feel sure it did while I browsed upon English fiction in my little wooden room beside the tool-shed at Dursley. It was near the surface from the time I began to visit Mr. Rawlence's studio in Macquarie Street, and busily developing from that time onward, though it did not become a visible and admitted growth, with features and a shape of its own, until more than two years had elapsed. Then, quite suddenly, I recognised it, and told myself it was for this really that I had been 'saving up.'

In the Old World the adventurous-minded, enterprising youth turns naturally from contemplation of the humdrum security of the multitudinously trodden path in which he finds himself to thoughts of the large new lands; of those comparatively untried and certainly uncrowded uplands of the world, which, apart from the other chances and attractions they offer, possess the advantage of lying oversea, from the beaten track--over the hills and far away. 'Here,' he may be supposed to feel, as he gazes about him in his familiar, Old World environment, 'there is nothing but what has been tried and exploited, sifted through and through time and again, all adown the centuries. What chance is there for me among the crowd, where there is nothing new, nothing untried? Whereas, out there--' Ah, the magic of those words, 'Out there!' and 'Over there!' for home-bred youth! It is good, wholesome magic, too, and it will be a bad day for the Old World, a disastrous day for England, when it ceases to exercise its powers upon the hearts and imaginations of the youth of our stock.

Well, and in the New World, in the case of such sprawling young giants among the nations of the future as Australia, what is the master dream of adventurous and enterprising youth there? Australia, like Canada, has its call of the west and the north, with their appealing tale of untried potentialities. Canada has also, across its merely figurative and political southern border, a vast and teeming world, reaching down to the equator, and comprising almost every possible diversity of human effort and natural resource. Australia, the purely British island continent, is more isolated. But, broadly speaking, the very facts which make the enterprising Old World youth fix his gaze upon the New World cause the same type of youth in Australia, for example, to look home-along across the seas, toward those storied islands of the north which, it may be, he has never seen: the land which, in some cases, even his parents have not seen since their childhood.

'Here,' he may be imagined saying, as he looks about him among the raw uprising products of the new land, where the past is nothing and all hope centres upon the future, 'Here everything is yet to do; everything is in the making. Here, money's the only reward. Who's to judge of one's accomplishment here? Fame has no accredited deputy in this unmade world. Whereas, back there, at home--' Oh, the magic of those words 'At Home!' and 'In England!' alike for those who once have seen the white cliffs fade out astern, and for those who have seen them only in dreams, bow on!

Everything has been tried and accomplished there. The very thought that speeds the emigrant pulls at the heart-strings of the immigrant; drawing home one son from the outposts, while thrusting out another toward the outposts, there to learn what England means, and to earn and deserve the glory of his birthright. That, in a nutshell, is the real history of the British Empire....

But, as I said, before final recognition of the determination to go to England came my youthful love affair. With every apparent deference toward the traditions of romance, I fell in love with the daughter of my chief; and my fall was very thorough and complete. I was in the editorial sanctum one afternoon, discussing some piece of work, and getting instructions from Mr. Foster--'G.F.' as we called him--when the door was flung open, as no member of the staff would ever have opened it, and two very charming young women fluttered in, filling the whole place by their simple presence there. One was dark and the other fair: the first, my chief's daughter Mabel; the second, her bosom friend, Hester Prinsep.

'Oh, father, we're all going down to see Tommy off. I want to get some flowers, and I've come out without a penny, so I want some money.'

My chief had risen, and was drawing forward a chair for Miss Prinsep. I do not think he intended to pay the same attention to his daughter, but I did, and received a very charming smile for my pains. Upon which G.F. presented me in due form to both ladies. Turning then to his daughter, he said with half-playful severity:

'You know, Mabel, we are not accustomed to your rough and ready Potts Point manners here. We knock at doors before we open them, and do at least inquire if a man is engaged before we swoop down upon him demanding his money or his life.'

'Father! as though I should think of you as being engaged! And as for the money part, I thought this was the very place to come to for money.'

'Ah! Well, how did you come?'

'The cab's waiting outside.'

'Dear me! You may have noticed, Freydon, that cabmen are a peculiarly gallant class. They don't show much inclination to drive us about when we have no money, do they?'

Then he turned to Miss Prinsep. 'And so your brother really starts for England to-day, Hester? I almost think I'll have to make time to dash down and wish him luck.'

'Oh, do, Mr. Foster! Tommy would appreciate it.'

'Yes, do, father,' echoed Miss Foster. 'Come with us now. That will be splendid.'

'No, I can't manage that. You go and buy your flowers, and I'll try and get away in time to take you both home. Here's a sovereign; and-- Ah! you'd better have some silver for your cab. H'm! Here you are.'

'Thanks awfully, father. You are a generous dear. That will be lots. The cab's Gurney's, you see, so I can tell him to put it down in the account. But the silver's sure to come in handy, for I'm dreadfully poor just now.'

G.F. shrugged his shoulders, with a comic look in my direction. 'Feminine honesty! Take the silver, and tell the cabman to charge me! Freydon, perhaps you'd be kind enough to see this brigand and her friend to their cab, will you? I think we are all clear about that article, aren't we? Right! On your way ask Stone to come in and see me, will you?'

So he bowed us out, and I, in a state of most agreeable fluster, escorted the ladies to their waiting cab.

'Good-bye, Mr. Freydon,' said Mabel Foster as she gave me her softly gloved little hand over the cab door. And, from that moment, I was her slave; only realising some few minutes later that I had been so unpardonably rude as never even to have glanced in Miss Prinsep's direction, to say nothing of bidding her good-bye.

Miss Foster's was a well recognised and conventional kind of beauty, very telling to my inexperienced eyes, and richly suggestive of romance. Her eyes were large, dark, and, as the novelists say, 'melting.' Her face was a perfectly regular oval, having a clear olive complexion, with warm hints of subdued colour in it. Her lips were most provocative, and all about the edges of that dark cloud, her hair, the light played fitfully through a lattice of stray tendrils. A very pretty picture indeed, Miss Foster was perfectly conscious of her charms, and a mistress of coquettishness in her use of them. A true child of pleasure-loving Sydney, she might have posed with very little preparation as a Juliet or a Desdemona, and to my youthful fancy carried about with her the charming gaiety and romantic tenderness of the most delightful among Boccaccio's ladies. (Sydney was just then beginning to be referred to by writers as the Venice of the Pacific, and I was greatly taken with the comparison.)

A week or so later, I was honoured by an invitation to dine at my chief's house one Saturday night; and from that point onward my visits became frequent, my subjugation unquestioning and complete. This was the one brief period of my youth in which I flung away prudence and became youthfully extravagant, not merely in thought but in the expenditure of money. I suppose fully half my salary, for some time, was given to the purchase of sweets and flowers, pretty booklets and the like, for Mabel Foster; and, of the remainder of my earnings, the tailor took heavier toll than he had ever done before.

For example, when that first invitation to dinner reached me--on a Monday--I had never had my arms through the sleeves of a dress-coat. Mr. Smith kindly offered the loan of his time-honoured evening suit, pointing out, I dare say truly, that such garments were being 'cut very full just now.' But, no; I felt that the occasion demanded an epoch-marking plunge on my part; and to this end Mr. Smith was good enough to introduce me to his own tailor, through whom, as I understood, I could obtain the benefit of some sort of trade reduction in price, by virtue of Mr. Smith's one time position as a commercial traveller.

During the week the eddies caused by my plunge penetrated beyond the world of tailoring, and doubtless produced their effect upon the white tie and patent leather shoe trade. But despite my lavish preparations, Saturday afternoon found me in the blackest kind of despair. Fully dressed in evening kit, I had been sitting on my bed for an hour, well knowing that all shops were closed, and facing the lamentable fact that I had no suitable outer garment with which to cloak my splendour on the way to Potts Point. It was Mr. Smith who discovered the omission, and he, too, who had made me feel the full tragedy of it. The covert coat he pressed upon me would easily have buttoned behind my back, and Mrs. Hastings's kindly offer of a shawl (a vivid plaid which she assured me had been worn and purchased by no less an authority upon gentlemen's wear than her father) had been finally, almost bitterly, rejected by me.

It was then, when my fate seemed blackest to me, that Mr. Smith discovered in the prolific galleries of his well-stored memory the fact that it was perfectly permissible for a gentleman in my case to go uncovered by any outer robe, providing--and this was indispensable--that he carried some preferably light cloak or overcoat upon his arm.

'And the weather being close and hot, too, as it certainly is to-night, I'll wager you'll find you're quite in the mode if you get to Potts Point with my covert coat on your arm. So that settles it.'

It did; and I was duly grateful. It certainly was a hot evening, and in no sense any fault of Mr. Smith's that its warmth brought a heavy thunderstorm of rain just as I began my walk up the long hill at Potts Point, so that, taking shelter here and there, as opportunity offered, but not daring to put on the enormously over-large coat, I finally ran up to the house in pouring rain, with a coat neatly folded over one arm. A few years later, no doubt, I should have been glad to slip the coat on, or fling it over my head. But--it did not happen a few years later....

My worshipful adoration of Miss Foster made me neglectful even of Mr. Rawlence's Sunday afternoon receptions. To secure the chance of being rewarded by five minutes alone with her, in the garden or elsewhere, I suppose I must have given up hundreds of hours from a not very plentiful allowance of leisure. And it is surprising, in retrospect, to note how steadfast I was in my devotion; how long it lasted.

The young woman had ability; there's not a doubt of that. For, ardent though I was, she allowed no embarrassing questions. I am free to suppose that my devotion was not unwelcome or tiresome to her, and that she enjoyed its innumerable small fruits in the shape of offerings. But she kept me most accurately balanced at the precise distance she found most agreeable. My letters--the columns and columns I must have written!--were most fervid; and a good deal more eloquent, I fancy, than my oral courtship. But yet I have her own testimony for it that Mabel approved my declamatory style of love-making; the style used when actually in the presence.

The end was in this wise: I called, ostensibly to see Mrs. Foster, on a Saturday afternoon, when I knew, as a matter of fact, that my chief and his wife were attending a function in Sydney. It was a winter's day, very blusterous and wet. The servant having told me her mistress was out, and Miss Mabel in, was about to lead me through the long, wide hall to the drawing-room, which opened through a conservatory upon a rear verandah, when some one called her, and I assured her I could find my own way. So the smiling maid (who doubtless knew my secret) left me, and I leisurely disposed of coat and umbrella, and walked through the house. The shadowy drawing-room was empty, but, as I entered it, these words, spoken in Mabel's voice, reached me from the conservatory beyond:

'My dear Hester, how perfectly absurd. A little unknown reporter boy, picked up by father, probably out of charity! And, besides, you know I should always be true to Tommy, however long he is away. Why, I often mention my reporter boy to Tommy in writing. And he is delicious, you know; he really is. I believe you're jealous. He is a pretty boy, I know. But you'd hardly credit how sweetly he-- Well, romances, you know. He really is too killingly sweet when he makes love-- Oh, with the most knightly respect, my dear! Very likely he will come in this afternoon, and you shall hear for yourself. You shall sit out here, and I'll keep him in the drawing-room. Then you'll see how well in hand he is.'

It was probably contemptible of me not to have coughed, or blown my nose, or something, in the first ten seconds. But the whole speech did not occupy very many seconds in the making, and was half finished before I realised, with a stunning shock, what it meant. It went on after the last words I have written here, but at that point I retired, backward, into the hall to collect myself, as they say. I had various brilliant ideas in the few seconds given to this process. I saw myself, pitiless but full of dignity, inflicting scathing punishment of various kinds, and piling blazing coals of fire upon Mabel's pretty head. I thought, too, of merely disappearing, and leaving conscience to make martyrdom of my fair lady's life. But perhaps I doubted the inquisitorial capacity of her conscience. At all events, in the end, I rattled the drawing-room door-handle vigorously, and re-entered with a portentous clearing of the throat. There was a flutter and patter in the conservatory, and then the hitherto adored one came in to me, an open book in her hand, and witchery in both her liquid eyes.

And then a most embarrassing and unexpected thing happened. My wrath fell from me, carrying with it all my smarting sense of humiliation, and every vestige of the desire to humiliate or punish Mabel. I was left horribly unprotected, because conscious only of the totally unexpected fact that Mabel was still adorable, and that now, when about to leave her for ever, I wanted her more than at any previous time. Then help came to me. I heard a tiny footfall, light as a leaf's touch, on the paved floor of the conservatory. I pictured the listening Hester Prinsep, and pride, or some useful substitute therefor, came to my aid.

'I'm afraid I've interrupted you,' I said, making a huge effort to avoid seeing the witchery in Mabel's eyes. 'I only came to bring this book for Mrs. Foster. I had promised it.'

'But why so solemn, poor knight? What's wrong? Won't you sit down?' said Mabel gaily.

'No, I mustn't stay,' I replied, with Spartan firmness. And then, on a sudden impulse: 'Don't you think we've both been rather mistaken, Mabel? I've been silly and presumptuous, because, of course, I'm nobody--just a penniless newspaper reporter. And you--you are very dear and sweet, and will soon marry some one who can give you a house like this, in Potts Point. I--I've all my way to make yet, and--and so I'd like to say good-bye. And--thank you ever so much for always having been so sweet and so patient. Good-bye!'

'Why? Aren't you--Won't you--Good-bye then!'

And so I passed out; and, having quite relinquished any thought of reprisals, I believe perhaps I did, after all, bring a momentary twinge of remorse to pretty, giddy Mabel Foster. I never saw her again but once, and that as a mere acquaintance, and when almost a year had passed.

XX

I have no idea what made me fix upon the particular sum of two hundred pounds as the amount of capital required for my migration oversea to England; but that was the figure I had in mind. At the time it seemed that the decision to go home--England is still regularly spoken of as 'home' by tens of thousands of British subjects who never have set eyes upon its shores, and are not acquainted with any living soul in the British Isles--came to me after that eventful afternoon at Potts Point. And as a definite decision, with anything like a date in view, perhaps it did not come till then. But the tendency in that direction had been present for a long while.

It would seem, however, that at every period of my life I have always been feeding upon some one predominant plan, desire, or objective. For many months prior to that afternoon at Potts Point, my adoration of Mabel Foster had overshadowed all else, and made me most unusually careless of other interests. This preoccupation having come to an abrupt end was succeeded almost immediately by the fixed determination to go to England as soon as I could acquire the sum of two hundred pounds. Into the pursuit then of this sum of money I now plunged with considerable vehemence.

As a matter of fact, I suppose the task of putting together a couple of hundred pounds, in London say, would be a pretty considerable one for a youngster without family or influence. It was not a hard one for me, in Sydney. I might probably have possessed the amount at this very time, but for my single period of extravagance--the time of devotion to Miss Foster. Putting aside the vagaries of that period, I saved money automatically. Mere living and journeying to and from the office cost me less than a pound each week. My pleasures cost less than half that amount all told; and as one outcome of my year's extravagance, I was now handsomely provided for in the matter of clothes.

But I will not pretend that hoarding for the great adventure of going to England did not involve some small sacrifices. It did. To take one trifle now. I had formed a habit of dropping into a restaurant, Quong Tart's by name, for a cup of afternoon tea each day; in the first place because I had heard Mabel Foster speak of going there for the same purpose with her friend Hester Prinsep. Abstention from this dissipation now added a few weekly shillings to the great adventure fund. To the same end I gave up cigarettes, confining myself to the one foul old briar pipe. And there were other such minor abstinences, all designed to increase the weight of the envelope I handed across the bank counter each week.

The disadvantages of the habit of making life a consecutive series of absorbing preoccupations are numerous. The practice narrows the sphere of one's interests and activities, tends to introspective egoism, and robs the present of much of its savour. But, now and again, it has its compensations. Save for a single week-end of rather pensive moping, the end of my love affair changed the colour of my outlook but very little indeed. Its place was promptly filled, or very nearly filled, by the other preoccupation. And, keen though I was about this, I did not in any sense become an ascetic youth held down by stern resolves. I think I rather enjoyed the small sacrifices and the steady saving; and I know I very much enjoyed applying for and obtaining another small increase of salary, after completing a trumpery series of sketches of pleasure resorts near Sydney, the publication of which brought substantial profit to the _Chronicle_.

One thing that did rather hurt me at this time was a comment made upon myself, and accidentally overheard by me in the reporters' room at the office. This was a remark made by an American newspaper man, who, having been a month or two on the staff, was dismissed for drunkenness. He spoke in a penetrating nasal tone as I approached the open door of the room, and what he said to his unknown companion came as such a buffet in the face to me that I turned and walked away. The words I heard were:

'Freydon? Oh yes; clever, in his ten cent way. I allow the chap's honest, mind, but, sakes alive, he's only what a N'York thief would call a "sure thing grafter."'

The phrase was perfectly unfamiliar to me, but intuitively I knew exactly what it meant, and I suppose it hurt because I felt its applicability. A 'sure thing grafter' was a criminal who took no chances, I felt; an adventurer who played for petty stakes only, because he would face no risks. Even the American pressman knew I was no criminal. He probably would have despised me less if he thought I stole. But--there it was. The chance shaft went home. And it hurt.

I dare say there was considerable pettiness about the way in which I saved my earnings instead of squandering them with glad youthfulness, as did most of my colleagues. There was something of the huckster's instinct, no doubt, in many of the trivial journalistic ideas I evolved, took to my chief, and pleased my employers by carrying out successfully. I suppose these were the petty ways by which I managed somehow to clamber out of the position in which my father's death had left me. They are set down here because they certainly were a part of my life. I am not ashamed of them, but I do wonder at them rather as a part of my life; not at all as something beneath me, but as something suggesting the possession of a kind of commercial gift for 'getting on,' of which my after life gave little or no indication. In all my youth there was undoubtedly a marked absence of the care-free jollity, the irresponsible joyousness, which is supposed to belong naturally to youth. This was not due, I think, to the mere fact of my being left alone in the world as a child. We have all met urchins joyous in the most abject destitution. I attribute it to two causes: inherited temperamental tendencies, and the particular circumstances in which I happened to be left alone in the world. Had I been born in a slum, and subsequently left an orphan there; or had my father's death occurred half a dozen years earlier than it did; in either case my circumstances would, I apprehend, have influenced me far less.

As things were with me when I found myself in the ranks of the friendless and penniless, I had formed certain definite tastes and associations, the influence of which was such as to make me earnestly anxious to get away from that strata of the community which my companions at St. Peter's Orphanage, for example, accepted unquestioningly as their own. Now when a youngster in his early teens is possessed by an earnest desire of that sort, I suppose it is not likely to stimulate irresponsible gaiety and carelessness in him.

But, withal, I enjoyed those Sydney years; yes, I savoured the life of that period with unfailing zest. But, incidents of the type which dear old Mrs. Gabbitas called 'Awful warnings,' were for me more real, more impressive, than they are to youths who live in comfortably luxurious homes, and know the care of mother and sisters. The normal youth is naturally not often moved to the vein of--'There, but for the grace of God, goes ---- etc.' But I was, inevitably.

For instance, there was the American journalist who so heartily despised my bourgeois prudence and progress. As I walked through the Domain one evening, not many months after I had heard myself compared with a 'sure thing grafter,' I saw a piece of human wreckage curled up under a tree in the moonlight. It was not a very infrequent sight of course, even in prosperous Sydney, This particular wreck, as he lay sleeping there, exposed the fact that he wore neither shirt nor socks. He was dreadfully filthy, and his stertorous breathing gave a clue to the cause of his degradation. As I drew level with him, the moon shone full on his stubble-grown face. He was the American reporter.

Here was a chance to return good for evil. I might have done several quite picturesque things, and did think of leaving a coin beside the poor wretch. Then I pictured its inevitable destination, and impatiently asked myself why sentimentality should carry money of mine into public-house tills. So I passed on. Finally, after walking a hundred yards, I retraced my steps and slid half a crown under the man's grimy hand, where it lay limply on the grass.

XXI

The work that gave me most satisfaction at this time was writing of a kind which I could not induce my chief to favour for his own purposes. He said it was not sufficiently 'legitimate journalism' for the _Chronicle_. (The 'eighties were still young.) And only at long intervals was I able to persuade him to accept one or two examples, though I insisted it was the best work I had ever attempted for the paper; as, indeed, it very likely was.

'But this is practically a story,' or 'This is really fiction,' or 'This is a sketch of a personal character, not a newspaper feature,' he would say. And then, one day, in handing me back one of my rejected offspring, he said: 'Look here, Freydon, see if you can condense this a shade, and then send it to the editor of the _Observer_. I've written him saying I should tell you this.'

I followed this kindly advice, and, a month later, enjoyed the profound satisfaction of reading my little contribution in the famous Australian weekly journal. The fact would have no interest for any one else, of course, but I have always remembered this little sketch of a type of Australian bushman, because it was the first signed contribution from my pen to appear in any journal of standing; the first of a series which appeared perhaps once in a month during the rest of my time in Sydney.

People I met in Mr. Rawlence's studio occasionally mentioned these sketches, and I took great pleasure in them. Incidentally, they added to my hoard at the bank. Mr. Smith, my room-mate at North Shore, had hitherto regarded my newspaper work strictly from a business standpoint; judging it solely by the salary it brought. Suddenly now I found I had touched an unsuspected vein of his character. He was surprisingly pleased about these signed _Observer_ sketches. This was authorship, he said; and he spoke to every one, with most kindly pride, of his young friend's work.

My account at the savings bank touched the desired two hundred pounds mark, when I had been just three years and nine months in Sydney. I decided to add to it until I had completed my fourth year; and, meantime, made inquiries about the passage to England. From this point on I made no secret of my intentions, and a very kindly reply came from Mrs. Perkins in Dursley to the letter in which I told her of my plan. At a venture I addressed a letter to Ted, my old friend of _Livorno_ days; but it brought no answer. Neither had the letter of nearly four years earlier, in which his loan of one pound had been returned with warm thanks.

The months slipped by, and the fourth anniversary of my start in Sydney arrived; and still I postponed from day to day the final step of resigning my appointment, and booking my passage. I cannot explain this at all, for I had become more and more eager for the adventure with every passing month. I do not think timidity restrained me. No, I fancy a kind of epicurean pleasure in the hourly consciousness that I was able now to take the step so soon as I chose induced me to prolong the savouring of it; just as I have sometimes found myself deliberately refraining for hours, and even for a day or so, from opening a parcel of books which I have desired and looked forward to enjoying for some time previously.

The awakening from this sort of epicurean dalliance was, as the event proved, somewhat sharp and abrupt.

I did presently resign my post and engage my second-class berth in the mail steamer _Orion_. Upon this reservation I paid a deposit of twenty pounds; and it seemed that when my passage had been fully paid, and one or two other necessary expenses met, I might still have my two hundred pounds intact to carry with me to England.

Thus I felt that I was handsomely provided for; and, upon the whole, I think the average person who has reached middle life, at all events, would find it easy to regard with understanding tolerance the fact that I was rather proud of what I had accomplished. It really was something, all the attendant circumstances being taken into account. But, perhaps, it is not always safe to trust too implicitly in the genial old faith that Providence helps those who help themselves; though the complementary theory, that Providence does not help those who do not help themselves, may be pretty generally correct. Maybe I was too complaisant. (If I have a superstition to-day, it is that a jealous Nemesis keeps vengeful watch upon human complaisance.)

On a certain Thursday morning, and in a mood of some elation, I walked into the bank to close my account. The amount was two hundred and forty-seven pounds ten shillings. Of this some twenty-five pounds was destined to complete the payment that morning of my passage money. The cashier was able to furnish me with Bank of England notes for two hundred pounds, and the balance, for convenience and ready-money, I drew in Australian notes and gold. Never before having handled at one time a greater sum than, say, five-and-twenty pounds, it was with a sense of being a good deal of a capitalist that I buttoned my coat as I emerged from the bank, and set out for the shipping-office. The sun shone warmly. My arrangements were all completed. I was going home. Yes, it was with something of an air, no doubt, that I took the pavement, humming as I passed along the bright side of Pitt Street.

All my life I have had a fondness for byways. Main thoroughfares between the two great arteries, Pitt and George Street, were at my service; but I preferred a narrow alley which brings one to the back premises of Messrs. Hunt and Carton's, the wholesale stationers. Bearing to the left through that firm's stableyard, one passes through a little arched opening which debouches upon Tinckton Street, whence in twenty paces one reaches George Street at a point close to the office for which I was bound.

I can see now the sleek-sided lorry horses in Hunt and Carton's yard, and I recall precisely the odour of the place as I passed through it that morning; the heavy, flat wads of blue-wrapped paper, and the fluttering bits of straw; the stamp of a draught horse's foot on cobble-stones. I saw the black, clean-cut shadow of the arched place. I turned half round to note the cause of a soft sound behind me. And just then came the dull roar of a detonation, in the same instant that a huge weight crashed upon me, and I fell down, down, down into the very bowels of the earth....

* * * * *

'No actual danger, I think. Excuse me, nurse!'

Those were the first words I heard. The first I spoke, I believe, were:

'I suppose the arch collapsed?'

'Ah! To be sure, yes. There was quite a collapse, wasn't there?' said some one blandly. 'However, you're all right now. Just open your mouth a little, please. That's right. Better? Ah! H'm! Yes, there's bound to be pain in the head; but we'll soon have that a bit easier.'

After that, it seemed to me that I began to take some kind of warm drink, and to talk almost at once. As a fact, I believe there was another somnolent interval of an hour or so before I did actually reach this stage of taking refreshment and asking questions. It was then late evening, and I was in bed in the Sydney Hospital. There had been no earthquake, nor yet even the collapse of an archway. Nothing at all, in fact, except that I had been smitten over the head with an iron bar. There had been two blows, I believe; and, if so, the second must really have been a work of supererogation, for I was conscious only of the one crash.

In one illuminating instant I recalled my visit to the bank, my two hundred and forty-seven pounds ten shillings, my intended visit to the shipping-office, the approaching end and climax of my work in Sydney and Dursley--six years of it.

'Nurse,' I said, with sudden, low urgency, 'will you please see if my pocket-book is in my coat?'

'Everything is taken out of patients' pockets and locked up for safety,' she said.

'Well, will you please inquire what amount of money was taken from my pockets, nurse. It's--it's rather important,' I told her.

The nurse urged the importance of my not thinking of business just now; but after a few more words she went out, gave some one a message, and, returning, said my matter would be seen to at once.

It seemed to me that a very long time passed. My head was full of a tremendous ache. But my thoughts were active, and full of gloomy foreboding. Just as I was about to make another appeal to the nurse, the doctor came bustling down the ward with another man, a plain clothes policeman, I thought, with recollection of sundry newspaper reporting experiences. The surmise was correct. The doctor had a look at my head--his fingers were furnished apparently with red-hot steel prongs--and held my right wrist between his fingers. The police officer sat down heavily beside the bed, drew out a shiny-covered note-book, and began, in an astoundingly deep voice, to ask me laboriously futile questions.

'Look here!' I said, after a few minutes, 'this is all very well, but would you be kind enough to tell me what money was found in my pockets?'

'Two sovereigns, one half sovereign, seven shillings in silver, and tuppence in bronze,' said the sepulchral policeman, as though he thought 'tuppence' was usually 'in' marble, or _lignum vitæ_, or something of the sort. 'Also one silver watch with leather guard, one plated cigarette-case, and----'

'No pocket-book?' I interrupted despondently. The policeman brightened at that.

'So there was a pocket-book? I thought so,' the brilliant creature said. And after that I lost all interest in these bedside proceedings. I referred the man to the _Chronicle_ office, the bank, and the shipping-office, and requested as a special favour that Mr. Smith should be sent for; also, on a journalistic afterthought, a reporter from the _Chronicle_. The numbers of the bank-notes had been written down. Oh yes, on the advice of the bank clerk, I had done this carefully at the bank counter, and preserved the record scrupulously--in the missing pocket-book.

The police--marvellous men--ascertained next morning that the notes had been cashed at the Bank of New South Wales, in George Street, within half an hour of the time at which I obtained them from the savings bank. And that was the last I ever heard of them.

Twenty-four hours later I was called upon to identify an arrested suspect who had been seen in the vestibule of the bank at the time of my call. I did identify the poor wretch. He was the American reporter who had been discharged from the _Chronicle_ staff. But nobody at the Bank of New South Wales remembered ever having seen the man, and I said at once that I could not possibly identify my assailant, not even having known that any one had attacked me until I was told of it in hospital.

The police appeared to regard me as a most unsatisfactory kind of person, as I doubtless was from their point of view. But they had to release the American, although, when arrested, he had two shining new sovereigns in his ragged pockets, and was full of assorted alcoholic liquors. Their theory was that in some way or another the American had known of my movements and plans, and communicated these to a professional 'strong arm' thief; that I had been shadowed to and from the bank, and that I might possibly have escaped attack altogether but for my addiction to byways.

Their theory did not greatly interest me. For the time the central fact was all my mind seemed able to accommodate. My savings were gone, my passage to England forfeited, my bank account closed, and--so my hot eyes saw it--my career at an end.

XXII

From the medical standpoint there were no complications whatever in my case; it was just as simple as a cut finger. Regarded from this point of view, a broken head is a small matter indeed, in a youth of abstemious habits and healthy life. Well, he was a very thoroughly chastened youth who accepted the cheery physician's congratulations upon his early discharge from hospital.

'Nuisance about the money,' admitted the doctor genially, as he twiddled his massive gold watch-chain. 'But it might have been a deal worse, you know; a very great deal worse. After all, health's the thing, the only thing that really matters.'

The remark strikes me now as reasonable enough. At the time I thought it pretty vapid twaddle. Four quiet days I spent at my North Shore lodging, and then (by Mr. Foster's freely and most kindly given permission) back to the _Chronicle_ office again, just as before, save for one detail--I no longer had a banking account. But was it really, 'just as before,' in any single sense? No, I think not; I think not.

Often in the years that have passed since that morning chat with the cheerful physician in Sydney Hospital, I have heard folk speak lightly of money losses--other people's losses, as a rule--and talk of the comparative unimportance of these as against various other kinds of loss. Never, I think, at all events, since those Sydney days of mine, could any one justly charge me with overestimating the importance of money. And yet, even now, and despite the theories of the philosophers, I incline to the opinion that few more desolating and heart-breaking disasters can befall men and women than the loss of their savings. I would not instance such a case as mine. But I have known cases of both men and women who, in the later years, have lost the thrifty savings of a working life, savings accumulated very deliberately--and at what a cost of patient, long-sustained self-denial!--for a specific purpose: the purchase of their freedom in the closing years; their manumission from wage-earning toil. And I say that, in a world constituted as our world is, life knows few tragedies more starkly fell.

As for my little loss I now think it likely that in certain ways I derived benefits from it; and, too, in other ways, permanent hurt. I was still standing in the doorway of my manhood; all my life and energy as a man before me. But it did not seem so at the time. At the time I thought of this handful of money as being the sole outcome and reward for six years of pretty strenuous working effort. (What a lot I overlooked!) I was far from telling myself that a lad of one-and-twenty had his career still to begin. On the contrary, it seemed my career had had for its culminating point the great adventure of going to England, to attain which long years of toilsome work had been necessary. These years had passed, the work was done, the culmination at hand; and now it was undone, the career was broken, all was lost. Oh, it was a dourly tragical young man who shared Mr. Smith's bedroom during the next few months.

One odd apparent outcome of my catastrophe in a teacup has often struck me since. No doubt, if the truth were known quite other causes had been at work; but it is a curious fact that never, at any period of my life since the morning on which I so gaily closed that savings bank account, have I ever taken the smallest zest, interest, or pleasure in the saving of money. This seems to me rather odd and noteworthy. It is, I believe, strictly true.

For a few weeks after resuming my working routine I plodded along in a rather dazed fashion, and without any definite purpose. And then, during a wakeful hour in bed (while Mr. Smith snored quite gently and inoffensively on the far side of our little room), I came to a definite decision. The brutal episode of the crowbar--the weapon which had felled me was found beside me, by the way; a heavy bar used for opening packing-cases, which the thief had evidently picked up as he came after me through Hunt and Carton's yard--should not be allowed to divert me from my course. Diversion at this stage was what I could not and would not tolerate. I would go to England just the same, and soon. I would put by a few pounds, and then work my passage home. I was perfectly clear about it, and fell asleep now, quite content.

On the next day I began making inquiries. At first I thought I could manage it as a journalist, by writing eloquent descriptions of the passage. A little talk at the shipping-office served to disabuse my mind of this notion. Then I would go as a deck-hand. I was gently apprised of the fact that my services as a deck-hand might not greatly commend themselves to the average ship-master. My decision was not in the least affected by the little things I learned.

Finally, I secured a personal introduction to the manager of the shipping-office in which my twenty pounds deposit was still held, and induced this gentleman to promise that he would, sooner or later, secure for me a chance to work my passage home. He would advise me, he said, when the chance arrived.

With this I was satisfied, and returned in a comparatively cheerful mood to my plodding. I have a shrewd suspicion that my chief, Mr. Foster, used his good offices on my behalf with the shipping company's manager.

Three months went slowly by. And then one morning a laconic note reached me from the shipping-office.

'Could you do a bit of clerking in a purser's office? If so, please see me to-day.'

It appeared that the assistant purser of one of the mail-boats had died while on the passage between Melbourne and Sydney. The company preferred to fill such vacancies in England, and so a temporary clerical assistant for the purser would be shipped. Would I care to undertake it for a five-pound note and my passage?

Forty-eight hours later I had said good-bye to Sydney friends, and was installed at a desk in the purser's office on board the _Orimba_. I had twenty-two pounds and ten shillings in my trunk, and the promise of a five-pound note when the steamer should reach London. It was a kind of outsetting upon my great adventure quite different from that which I had planned. But it was an outsetting, and a better one than I had expected, for I had been prepared to work my passage as a deck-hand or steward.

And so it fell out that when I did actually leave Australia I was too busy at my clerking, and at inventing soporific answers to the mostly irrelevant inquiries of more or less distracted passengers, to catch a glimpse of the land disappearing below the horizon--the land in which I had spent the most formative years of my life--or to spare a thought for any such matter as sea-sickness.

MANHOOD--ENGLAND: FIRST PERIOD

I

Of late years the printers have given us reams and reams of first impressions of such world centres as London and New York. Not to mention the army of unknown globe-trotters and writers, celebrities of every sort and kind have recorded their impressions. I always smile when my eyes fall upon such writings; and, generally, I recall, momentarily at all events, some aspect of my own arrival in England as purser's clerk on board the _Orimba_.

When I read, for example, the celebrity's first impressions of New York--a confused blend of bouquets, automobiles, newspaper interviewers, incredibly high buildings, sumptuous luncheons, barbaric lavishness, bad road surfaces, frenetic hospitality, wild expenditure of paper money--I think it would be more interesting perhaps, certainly more instructive, to have the first impressions of the immigrant, who lands with five pounds, and it may be a wife and a child or two. Then there is the immigrant from the same end of the ship who is not allowed to land, who is rejected by the guardians of this Paradise on earth, because he has an insufficient number of shillings, or a weakness in his lungs. The bouquets, automobiles, sumptuous luncheons, and things do not, one may apprehend, figure largely in the first impressions of these last uncelebrated people, though their impressions may embrace quite as much of the reality concerned as do those of the famous; and, it may be, a good deal more.

Broadly speaking, and as far as outlines go, I was in the position of one who sees England for the first time. There were, I know, subtle differences; yet, broadly speaking, that was my position. The native-born Australian, approaching the land of his fathers for the first time, comes to it with a mass of cherished lore and associations at least equal in weight and effect to my childhood's knowledge and experience of England. He very often comes also to relatives. I came, not only having no claim upon any single creature in these islands, but having no faintest knowledge of any one among them. I carried two letters of introduction: one from Mr. Foster to a London newspaper editor whom he knew only by correspondence, and the other from Mr. Rawlence to a painter, who just then (though I knew it not) was in Algiers.

The purser paid me my five pounds before I left the ship, wished me luck, and vowed, as his habit was in saying good-bye to people, that he was very glad he had met me. And then I got into the train with my luggage, and set out for Fenchurch Street and the conquest of London.

The passengers had all disappeared long since. England swallows up shiploads of them almost every hour without winking. My arrival differed in various ways from theirs. For instance, I had had no leisure in which to think about it, to anticipate it, until I was actually seated in the train, bound for Fenchurch Street. They had been arriving, in a sense, ever since we left the Mediterranean; after a passage, by the way, resembling in every particular all other passages from Australia to England in mail steamers.

To be precise, I think the first impression received by me was that the England I had come to was a quite astonishingly dingy land. The people seemed to me to have a dingy pallor, like the table-linen of the cheaper sort of lodging-house. They looked, not so much ill as unwashed, not so much poor as cross, hipped, tired, worried, and annoyed about something. They wore their hats at an angle then unfamiliar to me, with a forward rake. They must laugh or, at any rate, smile sometimes, I thought. This is where _Punch_ comes from. It is the land of Dickens. It is, in short, Merry England. But, as I regarded the dingy, set faces from the railway's carriage window, it seemed inconceivable that their owners ever could have laughed, or screwed up the skin around their eyes to look out happily under sunny blue skies upon bright and cheery scenes.

Since then I have again and again encountered the most indomitable cheerfulness in Londoners, in circumstances which would drive any Australian to tears, or blasphemy, or suicide, or to all three. And I know now that many Londoners wash as frequently as Australians, or nearly so. But my first impression of the appearance of those I saw was an impression of sour, cross, unwashed sadness. And, being an impressionable person, I immediately found an explanatory theory. The essential difference between these folk and people following similarly humble avocations in Sydney, I thought, is that these people, even those of them who, personally, were never acquainted with hunger, live in the shadow of actual want; even of actual starvation. In Sydney they do not. That accounts for the don't-care-a-damn light-heartedness seen in Australian faces, and for the dominance of care in these faces.

I still had everything to learn, and have since learned some of it. And I do not think now that my theory was particularly incorrect. The mere physical fact that the working men in Sydney take a bath every day as a matter of course, and that in London they do not all take one every week, trifling as it may seem, is itself accountable for something. But the ever-present knowledge that starvation is a real factor in life, not in Asia, but in the house next door but one, if not in one's own house--that is a great moulder of facial expression. It plays no part whatever in the life of the country from which I had come.

As my train drew to within half a dozen miles of its destination, I became vaguely conscious of the real inner London as distinguished from its extraordinary dockland and water approaches. We passed a huge and grimy dwelling-house, overlooking the railway, a 'model' dwelling-house; and in passing I caught sight of an incredible legend, graven in stone on the side of this building, intimating that here were the homes of more than one thousand families. That rather took my breath away.

Then we dived into a tunnel, and emerged a few seconds later, screeching hoarsely, right in London. It hit me below the belt. I experienced what they call a 'sinking' feeling in the pit of my stomach. I thought what a fool I was, how puny and insignificant; and, again, what a fool I must be, to come blundering along here into the maw of this vast beast, this London--I and my miserable five-and-twenty pounds! For one wild moment the panic-born thought of hurrying back to my purser and begging re-engagement for the outward trip to Australia scuttled across my mind. And then the train jolted to a standstill, and, with a faint kind of nausea in my throat, I stepped out into London.

I have to admit that it was not at all a glorious or inspiriting home-coming. It was as different from the home-coming of my dreams (when a minor capitalist) as anything well could be. But yet this was indubitably London, my destination; the objective of all my efforts for a long time past. A uniformed boot-black gave me a sudden thought of St. Peter's Orphanage--the connection, if any existed, must have been rather subtle--and that somehow stiffened my spine a little. Here I was, after all, the utterly friendless Orphanage lad who, a dozen thousand miles away, had willed that he should go out into the world, do certain kinds of things, meet certain kinds of people, and journey all across the world to his native England. Well, without much assistance, I had accomplished these things, and was actually there, in London. There was tingling romance in the thought of it, after all. No drizzling rain could alter that. Having successfully adventured so far, surely I was not to be daunted by dingy faces, bricks, and mortar, and houses said to accommodate a thousand families!

And so, with tolerably authoritative words to a porter about luggage, I squared my shoulders in response to life's undeniable appeal to the adventurous.

II

When I had been a dozen years or more in London, a man I knew bewailed to me one night the fact that he had to leave Fenchurch Street Station in the small hours of the next morning, and did not know how on earth he would manage it.

'Why not sleep there to-night?' I suggested carelessly.

'Sleep there!' he repeated with a stare. 'But there are no hotels in that part of the world.'

'Oh, bless you, yes!' said I. 'You try the Blue Boar. You will find it almost as handy as sleeping in the booking-office, without nearly so strong a smell of kippers and dirt.'

I do not think my friend ventured upon the Blue Boar; but I did, a dozen years earlier, and stayed there for two nights. I wonder if any other new arrival from Australia has done that! Hardly, I think. And yet there is something to be said for it. It was quite inexpensive, as London hotels go. (They are all much more expensive than Australian hotels, though the cost of living in England is appreciably lower than it is in the Antipodes.) And putting up there obviates the embarrassing necessity of taking a cab from the station, when you cannot think of a place to which you can tell the man to drive.

I cherish the thought that I have become something of a tradition at the Blue Boar, where I have reason to think I am probably remembered to-day by a now aged Boots and others--many, many others--as 'The genelmun as orduder bawth.'

On rising after my first insomnious night there, I went prowling all about the house in search of the bathroom. Finally, I was routed back to my room by a newly-wakened maid (in curl-pins), who told me rather crossly that I could not have a 'bawth' unless I ordered it 'before'and.' She did not say how long beforehand. But I was in a hurry to get out of doors, so I did without my bath, and promised myself I would see to it later in the day.

That afternoon, footsore, tired, and feeling inexpressibly grimy, I interviewed the lady again, and begged permission to have a bath. She was then in a much brighter humour, and in curls in place of pins. She promised to arrange the matter shortly, and send some accredited representative to warn me when the psychological moment arrived. Where could I be found?

'Oh, I'll go and undress at once,' I said.

'No, don't do that, sir; I cawn't get a bawth all in a minute,' she told me. 'Perhaps you'd like to wite in the smokin'-room.'

Grateful for the absence of the morning's crossness I agreed at once, and retired to the fly-blown smoking-room, where there was ample choice of distraction for a writing man between a moth-eaten volume called _King's Concordance_ and a South-Eastern Railway time-table cover, very solidly fashioned, with lots of crimson and gold, but no inside. Here I smoked half a pipe, and would have rested, but that I felt too dirty. Presently Boots came in, elderly and sad but furtively bird-like, both in the way he held his head on one side and in the jerky quickness of his movements:

'You the genelmun as orduder bawth?' he asked anxiously. I admitted it, and he gave a long sigh of relief.

'Oo! All right,' he said, almost gladly. 'I'll letcher know when it's ready.'

And he hopped out. I finished my pipe, yawned, opened the Concordance, and shut it again hastily, by reason of the extraordinarily pungent mustiness its pages emitted. Then I went prospecting into the passage between the stairs and the private bar. Here I passed a sort of ticket-office window, at which a middle-aged Hebrew lady sat, eating winkles from a plate with the aid of a hairpin. Her face lit up with sudden interest as she saw me:

'Oo!' she cried with spirit, 'er you the genelmun has orduder bawth?' Again I pleaded guilty, and with a broad, reassuring smile, as of one who should say: 'Bless you, we've had visitors just as mad as you before this, and never attempted to lasso or otherwise constrain them. There's no limit to our indulgence toward gentlemen afflicted as you are,' she nodded her ringleted head, and said: 'Right you are, sir. I'll send Boots to letcher know when it's ready.'

Apart from consideration of her occupation, which seemed to me to demand privacy, I could not stand gazing at this lady, though I was momentarily inclined to ask if the Lord Mayor and his Aldermen had been invited to attend my bathing; so I passed on to the only refuge from the Concordance room--the private bar. There was a really splendid young lady in attendance here, who smiled upon me so sweetly that I felt constrained to order something to drink. Also, I was greatly athirst. But the trouble was it happened I had never tasted beer, and could think of nothing else suitable that was likely to be available. While I pondered, one hand on the counter, the still smiling barmaid opened conversation brightly:

'Er you the genelmun what's orduder bawth?' she asked engagingly.

I began to feel that there must be some kind of a special London joke about this formula. Perhaps it is a phrase in the current comic opera, I thought. A pity that ignorance should prevent my capping it! At all events I was saved for the moment from choosing a drink, for three hilarious city gentlemen entered from the street just then, and demanded instant attention. As I hung indeterminately, waiting, I heard a voice in the passage outside, and recognised it as belonging to that elderly bird, the Boots.

'No, I ain't awastin' uv me time,' it said. 'I'm alookin' fer somebody. I serpose you ain't seed the genelmun as orduder bawth anywhere abart, 'ave yer?'

Fearful lest further delay should lead to the bricking up of the bathroom, or to a crier being sent round the town for 'the genelmun,' etc., I hastened out almost into the arms of the retainer, and forcibly checked him, as he began on an interrogative note to cheep out: 'You the genelmun as orduder----'

Coming from a country where, even in the poorest workman's house, the bathroom at all events is always in commission, I was greatly struck by this incident; more especially when, an hour later, I heard the chambermaid cry out over the banisters:

'Mibel! The genelmun as orduder bawth sez 'e'll 'ave a chop wiv 'is tea!'

III

It was at the beginning of the second day at the Blue Boar that I counted over my money, and was rather startled to discover that expenditure in pennies can mount up quite rapidly.

In those days pennies were comparatively infrequent, almost negligible, in Australia; the threepenny-bit representing for most purposes the lowest price asked for anything. (It still is a coin more generally used in Australia than anywhere else, I think.) Now, during my first day or so in London I was so struck by the number of things one could do and get for a penny, that it seemed I was really spending hardly anything. I covered enormous distances on the tops of omnibuses, and talked a great deal with their purple-faced drivers, most of whom wore tall hats, and carried nosegays in their coats. When beggars and crossing-sweepers asked, I gave, unhesitatingly, in the Australian fashion, as one gives matches when asked for them. I gave only pennies; and now was startled to find what a comparatively large sum can be disbursed in a day or so, in single pennies, upon 'bus fares, newspapers, charity, and the like.

The two men to whom my only letters of introduction were addressed were both out of town: one in Algiers, the other, I gathered, on the Riviera. I suppose most people in London have never reflected on the oddity of the position of that person in their midst who does not know one solitary soul in the entire vast city. And yet, there must always be hundreds in that position. There was a time when I had serious thoughts of asking a policeman to recommend to me the cheapest quarter in which one might obtain a lodging, for I had already conceived a great admiration for the uniformed wardens of London's streets.

I studied the newspaper advertisements under the heading 'Apartments.' But some instinct told me these did not refer to London's cheapest lodgings, and I felt a most urgent need for economy in the handling of my small hoard. These few pounds must support me, I thought, until I could cut out a niche for myself, here where there seemed hardly room for the feet of the existing inhabitants. Already in quite a vague way I had become conscious of the shadow of that dread presence whose existence colours the outlook of millions in England. I wonder if the consciousness had begun to affect my expression!

My choice of a locality was made eventually upon ridiculously inadequate grounds. In a newspaper article dealing with charitable work, I came upon some such words as these: 'Life is supported upon an astoundingly small outlay of money among the poor householders, and even poorer lodgers, in these streets opening out of the Seven Sisters Road in the district lying between Stoke Newington and South Tottenham. Here are families whose weekly rental is far less than many a man spends on his solitary dinner in club or restaurant,' etc.

'This appears to be the sort of place for me,' I told myself. Remembering certain green omnibuses that bore the name of Stoke Newington, I descended from one of them an hour later outside a hostelry called the Weavers' Arms. (Transatlantic slang has dubbed these places 'gin-mills'; a telling name, I think.)

One of my difficulties was that I had no clear idea what amount would be considered cheap in London, by way of rent for a single room. The one thing clear in my mind was that I must, if possible, find the cheapest. I had already gathered from chance talk, on board the _Orimba_ and elsewhere, that the Australian 'board and lodging' system was not much used in London, save in strata which would be above my means. The cheaper way, I gathered, was to pay so much for a room and 'attendance,' which should include the preparation of one's own food. The cheapest method of all, I had heard, and the method I meant to adopt, was to rent a furnished room, but without 'attendance,' and to provide meals for myself in the room or outside.

By this time the thing most desirable in my eyes was the possession of a room of my own. I wanted badly to be able to shut myself in with my luggage; to secure privacy, and be able to think, without the distracting consciousness of my small capital melting away from me at an unnecessary and alarmingly rapid pace. Anything equivalent to the comparative refinement, quietness, cleanliness, and spacious outlook of my North Shore quarters was evidently quite out of the question; and would have been, as a matter of fact, even at double their cost in Sydney.

Late that afternoon a cab conveyed me with my baggage to No. 27 Mellor Street, a small thoroughfare leading out of the Seven Sisters Road. Here I had secured a barely furnished top-floor room, with a tiny oil-stove in it, for 4s. 6d. per week. I paid a week's rent in advance, and, having deposited my bags there, I sallied forth into the Seven Sisters Road, with the room key in my pocket, to make domestic purchases. Billy cans were not available, but I bought a tin kettle for my oil-stove, some tea, a very little simple crockery and cutlery, some wholemeal brown bread (which I had heard was the most nutritious variety), butter, and cheese. Also some lamp oil, for the simple furniture of my room included, in addition to its oil-stove, a blue china lamp with pink and silver flowers upon its sides. Most of these things I ordered in one shop, and then, carrying one or two other purchases, hurried back to my room to be ready for the shop-boy who was to deliver the remainder.

Over the little meal that I presently prepared, with the aid of the oil-stove, my spirits, which had fallen steadily during the hunt for a room, brightened considerably. Pipe in mouth I made some alterations in the disposition of my furniture, placing the little table nearer to the window, and shifting the bed to give me a glimpse of sky when I should be occupying it. The oil-stove made a regrettable stench I found, and the lamp appeared to suffer from some nervous affection which made its flame jump spasmodically at intervals. The mattress on my bed was extraordinarily diversified in contour by little mountain ranges, kopjes which could not be induced to amalgamate with its general plan. Also, I was not so much alone in my sanctum as I had hoped to be. There were other forms of life, whose company I do not think I ever entirely evaded during my whole period as a lodger of the poorest grade in London.

But for the time these trifles did not greatly trouble me. Drunken brawls which occurred later in the evening, immediately under my window, were a nuisance. But it was all new; my health of mind and body was sound and unstrained; and I presently went to bed rather well pleased with myself, after an hour spent in considering and adding to sundry notes I had accumulated, for articles and sketches presently to be written.

My hope was to be able to win a place in London journalism without having any sort of an appointment. The very phrase 'free-lance' appealed to my sense of the romantic. 'All the clever fellows are free-lances, you know, in the Old Country.' I recalled many such statements made to me in Sydney. Prudence might have led me to offer myself for a post of some kind, if the editor to whom my letter of introduction was addressed had been visible. But he was not in London; and, in my heart, I was rather glad. It should be as a free agent, an unknown adventurer in Grub Street, that I would win my journalistic and literary spurs in the Old World. Other men had succeeded....

Musing in this hopeful vein I fell asleep, with never a hint of a presentiment of what did actually lie before me. I suppose the chiefest boon that mortals enjoy is just that negative blessing: their total inability to see even so far into the future as to-morrow morning.

IV

The compilation of anything like a detailed record of my first two years in London would be a task to alarm a Zola. I could not possibly face it; and, if I did, no good end could be served by such a harrowing of my own feelings.

Such a compilation would be a veritable monument of squalid details; of details infinitely mean and small, and, for the most part, infinitely, unredeemedly ugly. Heaven knows I have no need to remind myself by the act of writing of all those dismal details. Mere poverty, starvation itself, even, may be lightsome things, by comparison with the fetid misery which surrounded me during the major part of those two years.

People say, with a smile or a sigh, as their mood dictates, that one half the world does not know how the other half lives. So far is that truism from comprehending the tragic reality of what poverty in London means, that I have no hesitation in saying this: there is no wider divergence between the lives of tigers and the lives of men than lies between the lives of English people, whose homes in some quarters I could name are separated by no more than the width of a street, a mews, and, it may be, a walled strip of blackened grass and tree-trunks.

It is not simply that some well-to-do people are ignorant regarding details of the lives of the poor. It is that not a single one among the cultivated and comfortably off people, with whom I came to mix later on, had any conception at all regarding the nature and character of the sort of life I saw all round me during my first two years in London. I consider that London's cab horses were substantially better off than the section of London's poor among whom I lived in places like South Tottenham, the purlieus of that long unlovely highway--the Seven Sisters Road.

Had I been of a more gregarious and social bent, the experience must have broken my heart, or unhinged my mind, I think. But, from the very first day, I began systematically to avoid intercourse with those about me; and in time this became more and more important to me. So much so indeed that, as I remember it, quite a large proportion of my many changes of lodgings were due to some threatened intimacy, some difficulty over avoiding a fellow lodger. Other moves were due to plagues of insects, appalling odours, persistent fighting and screaming in the next room, wife-beating; in one case a murder; in another the fact that a sodden wretch smashed my door in, under the impression that I had hidden his wife, by whose exertions he had lived, and soaked, for years. I must have removed more than a score of times in those two years, and more than once it was to seek a cheaper lodging--cheaper than the previous hell!

No, it would never do for me to attempt a detailed record of this period. Even consideration of it in outline causes the language of melodrama to spring to the pen. Melodrama! What drama ever conceived in the mind of man could plumb the reeking depths of the life of the vicious among London's poor? Things may be a little better nowadays. Beyond all question, the way of the aspirant in Grub Street appears vastly smoother than in my time. It is all cut and dried now, they say--schools of journalism, literary agents, organisations of one sort and another. But with regard to the life of the very poor, of the submerged, I have seen signs in the twentieth century which to my experienced eye suggested that no fundamental change had taken place since I lived among these cruelly debased people.

One would never dare to say it in print, of course, but I know very well that, while I lived among them, I was perfectly convinced that, for very many--not for all, of course, but for very many--there could be no fundamental improvement this side of the grave. For them the only really suitable and humane institution, I told myself a hundred times, would be a place of compulsory euthanasia--comfortably equipped lethal cubicles. For some there would be little need of the compulsory element. Police court officials (especially the court missionaries, the only philanthropic workers who earned my admiration; and they, of course, belonged to a properly organised corps, working on salary) know something of these people; but the big, bright, busy world of cleanly, educated folk know less of them than they know of prehistoric fauna.

I have lived under the same roof with men who beat their wives every week of their lives, and figured in police courts every month of their lives, when not in prison; with women who, in their lives, had swallowed up a dozen small homes, through the pawn-shops and in the form of gin; with men and women who, so degraded were they, were like as not to kick an infant as they passed if they saw one on the ground; with human beings who had fallen so very low that on my honour I had far liefer share a room with a hog than with one of them. Yes, the close companionship of swine would have been much less distasteful; and, be it noted, less unwholesome. I have written articles about Australian wattle blossom, about the bush and the sea--oh, about a thousand things!--with nothing more than a few inches of filthy lath and plaster between my aching head and such human wrecks as these.

'Quite brutal!' one has heard some ignorant innocent exclaim, when accident gave him a fleeting glimpse of a denizen of the under world. Brutal! I know something of brutes, and something of London's under world, and I am well assured no brute known to zoology ever reaches the loathsome depths touched by humanity's lowest dregs. It would sicken me to recall instances in proof of this; but I have known scores of them. The beast brutes have no alcohol. That makes a world of difference. They are actuated mainly by such cleanly motives as healthy hunger. They have no nameless vices; and they live in surroundings which make dirt, as dirt exists among humanity's under world, impossible. In changing my lodging I have fled from neighbours who, at times, sheltered acquaintances of whom it might literally be said that you could not walk upon pavement they had trodden without risk of physical contamination.

Drink! A man occupied a room next to mine, at one time, of which his mother was the tenant. Somewhere, I was told, he had at least one wife, upon whom he sponged, and children. (His kind invariably beget children, many children.) This man was in middle life, and his mother, a frail creature, was old. She had some small store of money; enough, I was told, for the few more months she was likely to live, and to save her from a pauper funeral. She had some lingering internal complaint. When the man had finished drinking his mother's little hoard away, he drove her out of doors--not merely with shameful words, but with blows--to get work, and earn liquor for him. Incredible as it seems she did get work, and he did take her earnings, and drink them, for a number of weeks. Then came the morning when she could not leave her bed. That week the rest of her furniture was sold, and the son drank it. On Saturday night he threw his mother from her bed to the floor, removed the bed and bedding, and drank them. She was dead when he returned, and on Sunday morning he took from his murdered mother's body the wedding ring which she, miraculously, had preserved to the end, and drank that. No one slew him. There was no lethal chamber for him. He did not even figure in a police court for this particular murder.

People think _L'Assommoir_ dreadful, horrible. I cannot imagine what stayed Zola's hand; I am at a loss to account for his astonishing reticence, if he really knew anything of the worst degradation for which drink is accountable. In two short years I must have come upon a score of instances in every respect as horrible as that I have mentioned. And some that were worse; yes, more vile; too vile to recall even in thought. Brothers and sisters, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons-- Oh! shame and degradation unspeakable! I do not know if any section of the community is to blame. I do know that the glory and brightness of life, the romance and the splendour of life--beauty, chivalry, loyalty, pomp, grandeur, nobility--all have been for ever robbed of some of their refulgence for me, as the result of two years in the under world of London. Life could never be quite the same again.

I stood at the base of a statue and watched the stately passage among her cheering subjects of the most venerable lady in Christendom. My very soul thrilled loyalty to Queen Victoria, loyalty that was proud and glad. And on the instant it was stabbed by the thought of another widowed mother, flung from the death-bed her worn fingers had toiled to save, and flung to die on the floor, by her son. The shame of it, in Christian London!

Were the poor always with us? Probably. But the awful human vermin that I knew, were they always with us? I doubt it; nay, I do not believe it. I believe they are part of England's sin, of England's modern wickedness. I believe they are the maggots bred out of the sore upon which our modern industrialism is based. When I looked upon the vilest of this city spawn, if my rising gorge permitted thought at all, I always had visions of little shrinking children whipped to work in English factories and mines and potteries; of souls ground out of anæmic bodies that Manchester might fatten. Free trade--licensed slaughter! The rights of the individual--the sacred liberty of the subject! Oh, I know it made England the emporium of the world, and built up some splendid fortunes, and--well, I believe it gave us the human vermin of our cities.

There is no cure for them in this world. Nor yet for their damned and doomed offspring--while the individual liberty shibboleths endure, while mere numbers rule, or while our degenerate fear of every form of compulsion lasts. And the present tendency is, not merely to stipulate for complete freedom of action for the poor wretches, but to invite them to govern, by count of heads. So marvellously enlightened are we becoming!

Those nightmarish two years seem a long way off. I must be careful not to mislead myself regarding them. I have used such phrases as 'The poor of London.' I think I would delete those phrases if I were writing for other than my own eyes. I would not pretend that I like the poor of London, as companions. But they have, as a class, notable and admirable qualities. And many of the very poorest of them have more of courage, and more I think of honesty, than the average member of the class I came to know better later on: the big division which includes all the professional people. The human wrecks are of the poor, of course. But the really typical poor people are workers; the wrecks, their parasites.

Nothing in life is much more remarkable to me than an old man or an old woman of the poorer working-class, say, in South Tottenham, who, at the end of a long, struggling life remains decent, honest, cleanly, upright, and self-respecting. That I think truly marvellous. I am moved to uncover my head before such an one. The innate decency of such people thrills me to pride of race, where a naval review or a procession of royalties would leave me cold. I know something of the environment in which those English men and women have lived out their arduous lives. Among them I have seen evidences of a bravery which I deliberately believe to be greater than any that has won the Victoria Cross.

I once had a room--which I had to leave because of its closeness to a noisy street--immediately over a basement in which one old bed-ridden man and two women lived. The man had been bed-ridden for more than thirty years, and still was alive; for more than thirty years! His wife and daughter supported him and themselves. The daughter made match-boxes, and was paid 2 1/4d. for each gross; but out of that generous remuneration she had to buy her own paste and thread. The mother lived over a wash-tub. They all worked, slept, and ate, in the one room, of course, and the man was never outside it for a moment.

At the time of my arrival in that house, the daughter had recently taken to her bed. She was a middle-aged woman, far gone in consumption. It happened that a notorious inebriate, a woman, during one of her periodical visits to the local police court, told a missionary about my neighbours. He visited them, and was impressed, though accustomed to such sights. But he could do nothing to help, it seemed. They were very proud, and the mother washed very well; so well that she had work enough to keep her going day and night; and, working day and night, was able to earn an average of close upon eleven shillings weekly, of which only four shillings had to be paid in rent, and a trifle in medicine, soap, fuel, etc., leaving from five to six shillings a week for the two invalids and herself to live upon. So there was nothing to worry about, she said. She had stood at the tub for thirty years, and ...

Well, the missionary spoke to other folk, and other folk were touched, and finally a lady and a gentleman came, with an ambulance and a carriage, and twenty golden sovereigns. The old woman's liberty was not to be interfered with. She herself was to have the spending of the money. She was to take her patients to the seaside, and rest for a few weeks, after her thirty years at the tub. I find a difficulty in setting the thing down, for I can smell the steamy odours of that basement now.

This remarkable old woman quite civilly declined the gift, and explained how well she could manage without assistance; proudly adding that she had no fear of failing in her weekly subscription to the funeral club, so that her husband was happy in the knowledge that no pauper funeral awaited him. She was barely sixty-two herself, and had managed very well these thirty years and more, and trusted, with thanks, that she would manage to the end without charity.

Argument was futile. So the lady and gentleman drove away with their bright sovereigns; and when my next removal came the old woman was still at her tub, the other two helpless ones still on their beds, and living yet. One need not consider the wild unwisdom of it; but in the astounding courage and endurance of it, I hold there is lesson and ensample for the bravest man in British history. And among the working poor such incidents cannot be very rare, because I knew of quite a number in my very brief experience.

That the England from whose loins such master men and women have sprung should have bred also the festering spawn of human vermin that litters many of the mean streets of London, aye, and the seats in its parks and gardens, is a tragic humiliation; an indictment, too, as I see it. Charity may cover a multitude of sins. It can never cover this running sore; or, if it should ever cover it completely, so much the worse; for I swear it can never heal, cleanse, or remove it. Nothing sentimental, personal, and voluntary, nothing sporadic and spasmodic can ever accomplish that. And to approach it with bleatings about the will of the people, universal suffrage, old age, or any other kind of pension, dole, or the like, is to be guilty of a cruel and contemptible kind of mockery.

V

Looking back across the long succession of crowded years upon the period of my struggle to obtain a foothold in the London world of journalism and literature, I see a certain amount of pathos, some bathos, and something too in the way of steadfast, unmercenary endurance, which is not altogether unworthy of respect.

In my humble opinion a foothold in that world was at least rather better worth having in those days than it is to-day for a thinking man of literary instincts. It was certainly vastly harder to obtain, in the absence of any influence or assistance from established friends.

Of late years I have met representatives of a type of young journalist which had not yet come into existence when I arrived in London. In those days (when the published price of novels was still 31s. 6d., and halfpenny dailies were unknown) there were three kinds of newspaper men. There were the hacks, very able fellows, some of them, but mostly given to bar and taproom life; there were thoroughly well qualified, widely informed, sober pressmen of the middle sort, who often spent their whole lives in one employ; and there were literary men, frequently of high scholarly attainments, who wrote for newspapers. To-day, there are not very many representatives of these three divisions. The modern host of journeymen, with their captains, keen men of business, may represent a great advance upon their predecessors. Since I am told we live in an age of wonderfully rapid progress, I suppose they must. They certainly are different. To realise this fully one has only to come in contact, once, with one of the few surviving practitioners of the earlier type. They stand out like trees in--shall I say?--a flower-bed.

Ignorance of journalistic conditions and requirements, combined with a foolish sort of personal sensitiveness or vanity, had more to do with my early hardships and difficulties than anything in the quality of my work. In the light of practical knowledge acquired later I see that I might with ease have earned at least five times the amount of money I did earn in those first years by doing about half the amount of work I did, and--knowing how to dispose of it. I concentrated my entire stock of youthful energy upon writing and reading, and really worked very hard indeed. That, I thought, was my business. Some vague, benevolent power, 'the World,' I suppose, was to see to it that I got my reward. My part was to do the work. Good work might be trusted to bring its own reward. And, in any case, I asked no more than that I should be able to live with decency and go on with my work. I no longer had the faintest sort of interest in the idea of saving money. That ambition died with the end of my saving days in Sydney. I never thought about it at all. It simply had ceased to exist.

Well, my work, as a matter of fact, was not at all bad, and it was amazingly abundant. I would wager I wrote not less than three hundred articles, sketches, and stories during my first year, probably more, and always in the most hostile and unsuitable sort of environments. And my reward in that first year was slightly less than twenty pounds sterling, something well below an average of two guineas each month. I suppose I might have starved in that first year if I had not had some twenty pounds in hand at the beginning of it. I had not twenty shillings in hand at the end of it, and yet I had already learned what hunger meant; not the bracing sensation of being sharp set and enjoying one's meal, but the dull, deadening, sickly sensation which comes of sustained work during weeks of bread and butter (or dripping) diet, and none too much of that.

The devilish thing about an insufficient dietary is that it saps one's manhood. Few people whose circumstances have been uniformly comfortable realise that the stomach is the real seat of self-respect, courage, dignity, good manners, and the higher sort of honour, not to mention the spirits and emotions. Most would scoff at the suggestion, of course, feeling that it showed the low nature of the suggester. And the thing of it is they cannot possibly test the truth of it. For, given an average share of self-control and will-power, any educated person can starve him or herself for a week or more, deliberately and of set purpose, without much inconvenience, with no difficulty, and no loss of self-respect.

It is starvation, or semi-starvation _from necessity_, combined with a hard-working routine of life, and without the soul-supporting knowledge that one can stop and order a good meal whenever one chooses; it is continuous and enforced lack of proper nutriment, endured throughout sustained and unsuccessful efforts to overcome the poverty that enforces it, that tells upon one's humanity and coarsens the fibre of one's personality. There is a certain sustaining exhilaration about voluntary abstinence from food, due to the contemplation of one's mind's mastery. The reverse is true of the hunger due to the unsuccess of one's efforts to obtain the wherewithal to get better food and more of it.

Poverty is a teacher, a most powerful schoolmaster, I freely grant. But the most of the lessons it teaches are lessons I had liefer not learn. As a teacher its one vehicle of instruction is the cane. First, it weakens and humiliates the pupil; and then, at every turn, it beats him, teaching him to walk with cowering shoulders, furtive eyes, a sour and suspicious mind. I have no good word to say for poverty; and I believe an insufficient dietary to be infernally bad for any one--worse, upon the whole, than an over-abundant one--and especially so for young men or women who are striving to produce original work.

I have heard veterans criticise their sleek juniors, with a round assertion that if these youngsters had had to fight their way on a crust, as the veteran said he did, they would be vastly better men for it. I do not believe it. Hard work, and even disappointment and loss, are doubtless rich in educational and disciplinary values; but not that wolfish, soul-crushing fight for insufficient food, not mere poverty. I have tried them, and I know.

Every day a procession of more or less battered veterans in life's fight straggles across the floors of the police courts, from waiting-room to dock and dock to cells. 'How extraordinarily vicious the poor are!' says some shallow observer. In reality, a very large proportion of these battered ones are there as drinkers. And, in any case, the whole of them put together (including the many who require not penal but medical treatment), supposing they were all viciously criminal--all violent thieves, say--what a tiny handful they represent of the poor of London!

The enormous majority of the poor never set foot in a police court. And yet, for one who knows anything of the conditions in which they live, how marvellous that is! Most educated people, after all, go through life, from cradle to grave, without once experiencing any really strong temptation to break the law of the land. The very poor are hardly ever free from such temptation; hardly ever free from it. I know. I, with all the advantages behind me of traditions, associations, memories, hopes, knowledge, and tastes, to which most very poor people are strangers, I have felt my fingers itch, my stomach crave woundily, as I passed along a mean street in which food-stuffs were exposed outside shop windows; a practice which, upon a variety of counts, ought long since to have been abolished by law.

Oh, the decency, the restraint, and the enduring law-abidingness of London's poor, in the face of continuously flaunting plenty, of gross ostentation! It is the greatest miracle of our time. The comparative absence of either religion or philosophy among them to-day makes the spectacle of their docility, to me, far more remarkable than anything in the history of mediaeval martyrdom. When I come to consider also the prodigiously irritant influences of modern life in its legislation, journalism, amusements, swift locomotion, and, not least, its education for the masses, then I see wireless telegraphy and such things as trifles, and the abiding self-restraint of the very poor as our greatest marvel.

VI

After my second year in London I became approximately wealthy. Early in the third year, at all events, I earned as much as five guineas in a single month, and ate meat almost every day; in other words I began to earn pretty nearly one-third as much as I had earned some years previously in Sydney. I now bought books, and no longer always, as before, at the cost of a meal or so. Holywell Street was a great delight to me, and I never quite comprehended how Londoners could bring themselves to let it go. I doubt if Fleet Street raised a single protest, and yet-- Well, it was surprising.

I wrote rather less in this period, and used more method in my attacks upon the editors. I even succeeded in actually interviewing one or two of them, including the gentleman to whom I carried a note of introduction from a colleague he had never met. But I do not think I gained anything by these interviews. I might possibly have done so had they come earlier, while yet the freedom of easier days and of sunshine was in my veins. But my mean street period had affected me materially. It had made me morbidly self-conscious, and suspiciously alive to the least hint of patronage or brusqueness.

It is true I gave hours to the penetration of editorial sanctums; but in nearly every case my one desire, when I reached them, was to escape from them quickly without humiliation. In a busy man's very natural dislike of interruption, or anxious glance toward his clock, I saw contempt for my obscurity and suspicion of my poverty. And, after all, I had nothing to say to these gentlemen, save to beg them to read the effusions I pressed upon them; an appeal they would far rather receive on half a sheet of notepaper. As to impressing my personality upon them in any way, as I say, my uneasy thoughts in their presence were usually confined to the problem of how best I might escape without actual discredit.

Once, I remember, in a very lean month, I chanced to see one of the Olympians passing with god-like nonchalance into the restaurant of a well-known hotel. On the instant, and without giving myself time for reflection, I followed him down the glittering vestibule, and into a palatial dining-hall. The hour was something between one and two o'clock, and a minute before I had been thoughtfully weighing the relative merits of an immediate allowance of sausages and mashed potatoes for fivepence, or a couple of stale buns for one penny, to be followed at nightfall by a real banquet--seven-pennyworth of honest beef and vegetables. Now, with a trifle over four shillings in my pocket, I was, to outward seeming, carelessly scanning a menu, in which no single dish, not even the soup, seemed to cost less than about three times the price of one of my best dinners.

But at the next table sat a London editor. I was free to contemplate him. Was not that feast enough for such as I? Evidently I thought it was, for I told the waiter with an elaborate assumption of boredom that I did not feel like eating much, but would see what I could make of a little of the soup St. Germain. I wondered often if the man noticed the remarkable manner in which the crisp French rolls on that table disappeared, while I toyed languidly with my soup. I did not dare to ask for more rolls when I had made an end of the four or five that were on the table; but I could have eaten a dozen of them without much difficulty.

'No, thank you, I think I shall be better without anything to-day,' I said to the waiter who drew my attention to a sumptuous volume which I had already discovered to be the wine-list. There was a delicate suggestion in my tone (I hoped) that occasional abstinence from wine, say, at luncheon had been found beneficial for my gout. Certainly, if he counted his rolls, the man could hardly have suspected me of a diabetic tendency.

All this time I studied the profile of the editor, while he leisurely discussed, perhaps, half a sovereign's worth of luncheon. I hoped--and again feared--he might presently recognise me; but he only looked blandly through me once or twice to more important objects beyond. And just as I had concluded that it was not humanly possible to spend any longer over one spoonful of practically cold soup, he rose, gracefully disguised a yawn, and strolled away to an Elysian hall in which, no doubt, liqueurs, coffee, and cigars of great price were dispensed. This was not for me, of course.

They managed somehow to make my bill half a crown, and, as a trifling mark of my esteem, I gave the waiter the price of two of my ordinary dinners, for himself. I badly wanted to give him sixpence, but lacked the requisite moral courage, though I do not suppose he would have wasted a thought upon it either way, and if he had--but, as I say, I gave him a shilling. After all I do not suppose the poor fellow earned much more in a day than I earned in a week. And then (still with prudent thought for my gouty tendency, no doubt) I loftily waved aside all suggestions of coffee in the lounge, and made my way to the street, with the air of one who found luncheon a rather annoying interruption in his management of great affairs.

'Now if you had as much enterprise and resourcefulness as--as a bandicoot,' I told myself, passing down the Thames Embankment, 'you would have entered into conversation with A----, and by this time he would be pressing you to write articles for him. Instead of that, you'll have to content yourself with dry bread to-night and to-morrow, my friend.'

But I did not altogether regret that bread and soup luncheon, after all. It was an adventure of sorts, and quite a streak of colour in its way, across the drab background of South Tottenham days.

There were times when the spirit of revolt filled my very soul, and all life seemed black or red in my eyes. But I do not recall any day of panic or suggested surrender. On one day of revolt, when I told myself that this slum life in London was too horrible for a self-respecting dingo, let alone a man, I buttoned up my coat and walked with angry haste all the way to Epping Forest. In that noble breathing-place I raged to and fro under trees and through scrub, delighting in the prickly caress of brambles, and pausing in breathless ecstasy to watch rabbits at play in a dim, leafy glade. Fully twelve miles I must have walked, and then, healed and tamed, but somewhat faint from unwonted exercise and wonted lack of good food, I sat down in a little arbour and wolfishly devoured just as much as I could get in the form of a ninepenny tea. I fear there can have been no margin of profit for the good woman who served me.

At that period my digestive faculties still were holding up miraculously, or my sufferings on the homeward tramp would have been acute. As a fact I reached home in rare spirits, and almost--so cheery was I--cancelled the notice I had given that morning of my intention to vacate the current garret. But the smell of the house smiting my forest freshness as I stepped over the boards, jammed in its threshold to keep crawling children in, saved me from that indiscretion. There were fewer drunkards, less fighting, and not many more insects in that house than in most of my places of residence; but the smell of it I shall never, never forget. In that respect it was the vilest in a vile series of slum dwellings, and many and many a time had caused me to revile my naturally keen olfactory organs. I had endured it for almost a month, and would suffer its unmanning horrors no more. Indeed, I would suffer nothing like it again. Why should I? My earnings were increasing. I would escape from the whole district, its miseries, its smells, its infamies, and its thousand dehumanising degradations. I would emigrate.

Yes, that tramp in Epping Forest was quite epoch-making. It came after more than two years of struggle in London. I had made fully five pounds in the past month. I had actually laid aside a couple of sovereigns, and doubtless that salient fact emboldened me. Also, I had had a number of quite meaty meals of late. But the wild stamping to and fro under trees, the sight of the bonny, white-sterned rabbits at play, the copious tea in a pleached arbour, the clean forest air--these I am sure had been as a fiery stimulant to my drooping manhood. I went to bed full of the most reckless resolves, and astonishingly light-hearted.

In the morning, having feasted (as well as the prevailing smell permitted) upon an apple, brown bread, and tea--butter was 'off' that day, I remember--I set forth upon a prospecting tour, working westward from my north-easterly abode, through Holloway, Finsbury, the Camden Road, and such places, into the neighbourhood of Regent's Park. The park, which was strange to me, pleased me greatly; as did also certain minor streets in its neighbourhood, a mews which I found quaint and quite rural in its suggestions, and sundry white houses with green shutters which, for some reason, I remember I called 'discreet.' There was nothing here that looked poor enough for me, but none the less I inquired at one or two of the smaller houses whose windows held cards indicating that rooms were to let in them.

At length, in a quiet and decent thoroughfare called Howard Street, I happened upon Mrs. Pelly's house--No. 37. The girl who answered my knock had a pleasant little face, and a soft, kindly tone in speaking. I supposed she was not more than one-and-twenty, perhaps less. Her mother was out, she said, but she would show me the only vacant room they had. Indeed--with a little smile--she really did more for the lodgers than her mother did.

The room was at the back of the house on the first floor, and there was but one other floor above it. It had a French window, with a tiny iron balcony, three feet by eighteen inches. The furnishings were greatly superior to any I had had in London. There was actually a little writing-table with drawers, and from the window one could see distinctly the waving green tops of trees in the park. The rent was eleven shillings. Whereat I sighed heavily. But the writing-table, and, above all, the actual view of tree-tops in the distance! I sighed again, and explained regretfully that I feared my limit was eight shillings. Then the young woman sighed too, and mentioned, with apparent irrelevance, that her mother might be in any moment now.

I had earned five pounds in the previous month. With reasonable care my food need not cost more than seven to ten shillings a week. Of course I had managed on considerably less. I knew very well that that sort of semi-starvation was in every way bad; but, when I thought of that quiet back room, the distant tree-tops, the absence of smells, the fact that I had seen no filthy or drunken people in the neighbourhood, the soft-spoken girl at my side--'By heavens! It's worth it,' I said to myself.

And just then--we were in the narrow ground floor passage--the mother arrived, bringing with her an unmistakable whiff of a public-house bar. This stiffened my relaxing prudence considerably. I had no kindly feeling left for taverns, especially where women were concerned. But, by an odd chance, it happened that Mrs. Pelly was not only in a talkative mood, but also in higher spirits than I ever saw her afterwards. She insisted on reinspection of the room, a sufficiently dangerous thing in itself for me. And then, standing beside its open window, with arms folded over the place in which her waist once had been, she avowed that she thought the room would suit me, and that I should suit the room.

'There's a writing-table in it, an' all, ye see,' she said, having received a hint as to my working habits.

There was indeed. I was little likely to forget it. It now seemed the charge for the room was eleven shillings weekly, without 'attendance.' But Mrs. Pelly had never been a woman to stick out over trifles, that she hadn't; and, right or wrong, though she hoped she might never live to rue the day, she would let the gentleman this room for nine shillings a week, and include 'attendance' in that merely nominal rate--'So there, Miss!' This, to her daughter Fanny, and in apparent forgetfulness of my presence.

It was a thrilling moment for me, standing there with one hand on the writing-table, my gaze fixed over the scantily covered top of Mrs. Pelly's head--she wore no hat--upon the trees in the distance. Prudence gabbled at me: 'You can't afford it. You must eat. You'll be sold up, and serve you right.' But, of course, the table and the window won. After all, had I not earned five pounds in the past month? And, excepting boots, my outfit was still pretty good!

I could not wait for Monday. The window and the table pulled too hard. So I installed myself at No. 37 on the Saturday afternoon, and thanked God sincerely that I was no longer in a slum.

VII

On fine mornings I used to leave door and window blocked open in my room, and take half an hour's walk in the park before breakfast. The weather was sometimes unkind, of course, but Fanny never, and she would neglect the rooms of other lodgers in order to hasten the straightening of mine. The other lodgers were all folk whose business took them away from Howard Street as soon as breakfast was dispatched, and kept them away till evening.

It often happened that I would work at my little writing-table until the small hours of the morning; and in such cases, more often than not, I would leave the house directly after breakfast, walk down Tottenham Court Road, and tack through Bloomsbury to Gray's Inn and Fleet Street, or wherever else the office might lie for which the manuscript I carried was destined. Where possible, I preferred this method of disposing of manuscripts. Not only did it save stamps--a considerable item with me--but it seemed quicker and safer than the post. I had a dishonest little formula for porters and bell boys in these offices, from the enunciation of which I derived a comforting sense of security and dispatch.

'You might let the editor have this directly he comes in,' I would say as I handed over my envelope; 'promised for to-day, without fail.'

Well, I had promised--myself. And this little formula, in addition to making for prompt delivery, I thought, gave one a sense of actual relationship with the editor. Save for the trifling fact that the manuscript would, probably, in due course be returned, or even consigned to the waste-paper basket, my method seemed to put me on the footing of one who had written a commissioned article. The dramatic value of the formula was greatly enhanced where one happened to know the editor's name, and could say in a tone of urgent intimacy: 'You might let Mr. ---- have this directly he comes in,' etc. In those cases one walked down the office stairway humming an air. It was next door to being one of the Olympians, and that without sacrificing one's romantic liberty as a free-lance.

As my earnings rose--and they did rise with agreeable rapidity after my establishment in Howard Street--I wrote less and thought more. I also walked more, and saw more of London, But I was still writing a great deal; more probably than any salaried journalist in the town, though a large proportion of my writings never saw the light of print. When I had been living for five or six months in Howard Street, my earnings were averaging from ten pounds to fifteen pounds each month. For a long time I seemed able to maintain something like this average, but not to improve upon it. It may be that my efforts slackened at that point, and that I gave more time to reading and walking. This is the more likely, because I know I felt no interest whatever in the progress of the account I opened in the Post Office savings bank.

It was about this time, I fancy, though only in my twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth year, that I began seeking advice from chemists and their assistants, under whose guidance I tapped the fascinating but deadly field of patent medicines. The fact was I had completely disorganised my digestive system during two years and more of catering for myself upon an average outlay of six or seven shillings weekly (sometimes much less, of course), whilst living an insanely sedentary life in which the allowance of sleep, exercise, and fresh air had been as inadequate as my dietary. A wise physician might possibly have been able to steer me into smooth waters now, especially if he had driven me out of London. But the obstinate energy and conceit of youth was still strong in my veins. I had no money to waste on doctors, I told myself. And so I held desultory consultations across the counters of chemist's shops, and, supremely ignorant as to causes, attacked symptoms with trustful energy, consuming great quantities of mostly valueless and frequently harmful nostrums.

Another step I took at this time, after quaintly earnest discussion with Fanny, was to arrange an additional payment of eight shillings a week to Mrs. Pelly, in return for the provision of my very simple breakfast and a bread and cheese luncheon each day. This relieved me of a task for which I had never had much patience, and very likely it was also an economy. My evening meal I preferred, as a general thing, to obtain elsewhere. It was one of my few entertainments this foraging after inexpensive dinners, and watching and listening to other diners. At that time my prejudices were the exact antithesis of those that came later on, and I preferred foreign restaurants and foreign service and cooking, quite apart from the fact that I found them nearly always cheaper and more entertaining than the native varieties.

It was in a dingy little French eating-house near Wardour Street (where I must say the cooking at that time really was skilful, though I dare say the material used was villainously bad, since the prices charged were low, even judged by my scale in such matters) that I first made the acquaintance of Sidney Heron. I felt sure that Heron must be a remarkable man, even before I spoke to him, or heard him speak, for he lived with a monocle fixed in his right eye, and never moved it, even when he blew his nose and gesticulated violently, as he so often did. The monocle was attached to a broad black ribbon which, in some way, seemed grotesque as contrasted with the dingy greyish-white flannel cricketing shirts which Heron always wore, with a red tie under the collar. Linen in any guise he clearly scorned. I do not think his boots were ever cleaned, and he appeared to spend even less upon clothing than I did. I do not know just how he disposed of his money, but he earned two hundred or three hundred a year as a writer, and he was invariably short of funds. I think it quite conceivable that he may have maintained some poor relation or relations, but in all the years of our acquaintance I never heard him mention a relative. He certainly lived poorly himself.

Our acquaintance resulted from his tipping a rum omelette into my lap. The tables at this little restaurant were exceptionally narrow, and I suppose Heron was exceptionally cross, even for him. The omelette was burnt, he said, and after pishing and tushing over it for a moment or two he shouted to the overworked waiter, giving his plate so angry a thrust at the same time that it collided violently with mine, and the offending omelette ricochetted into my lap.

Heron's apologies indicated far more of anger than contrition, I thought; but they led to conversation, at all events, and as he lived in the Hampstead Road we walked a mile or more together after leaving the restaurant. It was the beginning of companionship of a sort for me, and if we did not ever become very close friends, at all events our intimacy endured without rupture for many years.

At the outset I was given an inkling of the irascibility of his temper, and my subsequent method, in all our intercourse, was simply to leave him whenever he became quarrelsome, and to take up our relations when next we met at the point immediately preceding that at which temper had overcome him. At heart an honourable and I am sure kindly man, Heron had a temper of remarkable susceptibility to irritation. The stomachic causes which, as time went on, produced melancholy and dense, black depression in me, probably accounted for his eruptions of violent irascibility. And I fancy we were equally ignorant and brutal in our treatment of our own physical weaknesses.

Heron certainly became one of my distractions, one of my human interests outside work, at this time. But there was another, and the other came closer home to me.

I suppose I spent seven or eight months in discovering that Mrs. Pelly was a singularly unpleasant woman. But the thing did eventually become plain to me, so plain indeed that it would have caused me to give up my French window and writing-table and migrate once more, but for certain considerations outside my own personal comfort. That Mrs. Pelly consumed far more gin than was good for her became apparent to me during my first week, if not my first day, in Howard Street. But as she rarely entered my room, and our encounters were merely accidental and momentary, this weakness would never have affected me much.

What did affect me was my very gradual discovery of the fact that this woman treated her own daughter with systematic cruelty--a thing happily unusual in her class, as it is also, I think, among the very poor of London. At the end of eight or nine months my increasing knowledge of Mrs. Pelly's harsh unkindness to Fanny had begun to weigh on my mind a good deal. It was a singular case, in many ways. Here was a girl, a young woman rather, in her twenty-first year, who to all intents and purposes might be said to be carrying on with her own hands the entire work of a house which sheltered five lodgers; and, as a fact, it was rarely that a day passed without her suffering actual physical violence at the hands of that gin-soaked termagant, her mother.

The woman positively used to pinch Fanny in such a way as to leave blue bruises on her arm. She used to pull her hair violently, slap her face, and strike at her with any sort of weapon that happened to be within reach. Further, when the vicious fit took her, she would lock up pantry and kitchen, and make this hard-working girl go hungry to bed at night, by way of punishment for some pretended misdeed. And the astounding thing was that, with all this and more, Fanny retained a very real affection for her unnatural parent; and used to plead that, but for the effect of liquor upon her, Mrs. Pelly would be and was a good mother.

It appeared that Fanny had lost her father when she was about twelve years old, and ever since that time her mother's extraordinary attitude towards her had become increasingly harsh and cruel. She never had a penny of her own, though she did the work of two servants, and her clothes were mostly home-made make-shifts from discarded garments of her mother's. When necessity caused her to ask for new boots, for example, the penalty would be perhaps a week of vile abuse and bullying, of slaps, pinches, docked meals and other humiliations, all of which must be endured before the wretched woman would buy a pair of the cheapest and ugliest shoes obtainable, and fling them to her daughter from out her market-basket. If they were a misfit, Fanny would have to suffer them as best she could. Or, in other cases, new shoes would be refused altogether, and she would be ordered to make shift with a pair her mother had worn out.

It was only very gradually that I came to know these things. Once, when I knew no more than that Fanny worked very hard and seldom stirred out of the house, I chanced to encounter mother and daughter together on the stairs early on a Sunday evening. The girl looked pinched and unhappy, and something moved me to make a suggestion I should hardly have ventured upon then, if the mother had not happened to be present.

'You look tired, Fanny,' I said. 'Why not come out for a walk in the park with me? The air would do you good, and perhaps you will have a bit of dinner somewhere with me before getting back. Do! It would be quite a charity to a lonely man.'

I saw her tired brown eyes brighten at the thought, and then she turned timidly in Mrs. Pelly's direction.

'Oh!' said I, on a rather happy inspiration, 'I believe you're one of the vain people who fancy they are indispensable. I am sure Mrs. Pelly would be delighted for you to come; wouldn't you, Mrs. Pelly? There will be no lodgers home till late this fine evening.'

Mrs. Pelly simpered at me, with a rather forbidding light in her eye, I thought. But I had struck the right note in that word 'indispensable.'

'Oh, she's very welcome to go, for me, Mr. Freydon; and I'm sure it's very kind of you to ask her. Girls nowadays don't do so much when they are at work but what it's easy enough to spare 'em. But, haven't you got a tongue, miss? Why don't you thank Mr. Freydon?'

'No, indeed,' I laughed. 'The thanks are coming from me. I'll just go back to my room and write a letter, and you will let me know as soon as you're ready, won't you, Fanny?'

Well, I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoyed that little outing. I thought there never had been any one who was so easily pleased and entertained. Doubtless her worshipful attitude flattered my youthful vanity. But, apart from this, it was a real delight to see the flush of enjoyment come and go in her pale, pretty face, when we rode on the top of an omnibus, examined flowers in the park, and sat down to a meal with the preparation and removal of which she was to have no concern whatever. It was a pretty and touching sight, I say, to see how these very simple pleasures delighted her. But I very soon learned that this experience must not be repeated. Indeed, it was in this wise that I obtained my first inklings of the real wretchedness of Fanny's life. She had to suffer constant humiliations for a week or more, as the price of the little jaunt she had with me. Her mother found it hard to forget or forgive the fact that her daughter had had an hour or two of freedom and enjoyment. Realisation of this made me detest the woman.

And then, it may have been three months after this little outing, there came another Sunday incident that moved me. I returned to my room unexpectedly about six o'clock, having forgotten to take out with me a certain paper. The house was very silent, and perhaps that made me walk more softly than usual up the stairs. As I opened my door the warm, yellow light of the setting sun was slanting across my writing-table, and in the chair before it sat Fanny, reading a magazine.

My first thought was of irritation. I did not like to see any one sitting at my writing-table. I was touchy regarding that one spot--the table, my papers, and so forth. In the same instant irritation gave place to some quite other feeling, as the sunlight showed me that tears were rolling down Fanny's pale face.

She sprang to her feet in great confusion, murmuring almost passionate apologies in her habitually soft, small voice.

'Oh, please forgive me, Mr. Freydon! I know it was a liberty. Please do forgive me. I will never do it again. Please say you will overlook it, and--and not tell my mother.'

She unmistakably shrank, trembling, almost cowering before me, so that I was made to feel a dreadful brute.

'My dear Fanny,' I said, touching her arm with my fingers, 'there's nothing to forgive. How absurd! I hope you will always sit there whenever you like. As though I should mind! But what were you reading?'

The question had no point for me, and was designed merely to relieve the tension.

'Oh, your story, Mr. Freydon. It's--it's too beautiful. That was what made me forget where I was, and sit on here. I just glanced at it--like; and then--and I couldn't leave it. Oh!'

And she drew up her apron and dabbed her eyes. I don't believe the poor soul possessed a handkerchief. Here was a pretty pass then! I had forgotten for the moment that one of the three magazines on the table contained a short story of which, upon its appearance, I had been inordinately proud. I was young, and no one else flattered me. Literally nobody had shared my gratification in the publication of this story. Here was somebody from whom it drew indubitable tears; some one who was deeply moved by its beauty....

I patted her shoulder. I drew confidences from her regarding the wretchedness of her home life. I laid down emphatic instructions that she was to regard my room as her sanctuary; to use it whenever and howsoever she might choose, irrespective of my presence or absence. I bade her make free with my few books--as though the poor soul had abundance of leisure--comforted her to the best of my ability; and-- Yes, let me evade nothing. I stroked her hair, and in leaving her, with reiterated instructions to remain there and rest, I touched her cool white cheek with my lips, and was strangely thrilled by the touch.

A warm wave of what I thought pity and sympathy passed over me as I walked from her.

VIII

It is rather a matter of regret with me now that I never kept a diary. Mine has been upon the whole a somewhat lonely life, and lonely men often do keep diaries. But, in my case, I suppose writing was too much the daily business of life to permit of leisure being given to the same task.

However, the dates of certain volumes of short stories, which appeared long ago with my name upon their covers, are for me evidence that, after the first six months of my stay in Howard Street, my work began to tend more and more towards fiction, and away from newspaper articles. My dealings at this time brought me more closely into touch with magazines than with newspapers. I became more concerned with human emotions and character, but especially with emotions, than with those more abstract or again more matter-of-fact themes which had served me in the writing of newspaper articles.

This may have helped me in some ways, since it meant that my name was fairly frequently seen in print now. But the point I have in mind is, that I take this tendency in my work to have been an indication of the particular phase of character development through which I was passing at the time. It was at this period that I indulged myself in occasional dreams of fame. I do not know that my conceit made me offensive in any way. I hardly think it went so far. But, in my inmost heart, I believe I judged myself to be a creative artist of note. I certainly had a lively imagination, a good deal of fluency--too much, indeed--as a writer, and a considerable amount of emotional capacity and sympathy.

Later in life I often wondered, not without depression, why I no longer seemed able to move people, to influence them in a given direction, or to arouse their enthusiasm, with the same facility which I had known in my twenties. I see now the reasons of this. My emotional capacity spent itself rapidly in writing and living; and with its exhaustion (and the development of my critical faculties) came an attenuation, a drying up, so to say, of the quality of facile emotional sympathy, which in earlier years had made it easy for me to attract, prepossess, or influence people at will.

Given some practical organising qualities which I certainly did not possess, I apprehend that at this period I might have engineered myself into a considerable vogue of popularity as a writer of fiction. A little later I might almost have slid into the same position, even in the absence of the practical qualities aforesaid, but for the trend of circumstances which then became highly antagonistic to that sort of development.

But I note with some interest that the stories I took to writing at this period were highly emotional in tone, and somewhat exotic in their setting. The exotic settings may have been due in part to the fact that I had travelled, and yet more I fancy to revulsion from the material background of my early life in London. And the emotionalism must be attributed, I apprehend, in part to my age and temperament, and in part to my comparative solitude.

I find it extremely difficult justly to appraise or analyse my relations with Fanny. In one mood I see merely youth, folly, vanity, and romantic emotionalism, directing my conduct; and again I fancy I discern some loftier motive, such as sincerely chivalrous generosity, humanity, unselfish desire to help and uplift, etc. Doubtless, in this as in most matters, a variety of motives and influences played their part in shaping one's conduct. Single and entirely unmixed motives are much more rare than most people believe, I fancy. Pride and vanity have a way of dogging generosity's footsteps very closely; steadfast endurance and selfish obstinacy are nearly related; and I dare say real kindness of heart often has a place where we most of us see only reckless self-indulgence.

I remember very well a cold, clear moonlight night in the Hampstead Road, when reaction from solitary reflection made me unbosom myself a good deal to Sidney Heron, in the form of seeking his advice. On previous occasions I had told him something of Fanny and her dismal position, and he had seen her once or twice at my lodging.

'H'm! Yes. Precisely. So I inferred.'

It was with such ejaculations, rather sardonic in tone, I thought, that he listened to me as we walked.

'Well, what shall I do?' I said at length as we reached his gate.

'What will you do?' he echoed. 'Well, my friend, since you are an inspired ass, and a confirmed sentimentalist, I imagine you----'

'What would you advise in the circumstances, I mean?' I interpolated hurriedly.

'My advice. Oh, that's another matter altogether, and of absolutely no value.'

'But, on the contrary, you are older than I.'

'I am indeed--centuries.'

'And your advice should be very helpful to me.'

'So it should. But it won't be, because you won't follow it.'

'How can you know that?'

'From my knowledge of human nature, sir; and, in particular, my observation of your sub-species.'

'Try me, anyhow.'

'Very well. Change your lodging to-morrow, and never set foot in Howard Street again. There's my advice, and it's the best you'll ever get--and the last you'd ever think of following. Give me a cigarette if you want to continue this perfectly useless conversation.'

'But, my dear Heron, I'm anxious to do the wisest thing----'

'Not you!'

'But consider the plight of that poor girl.'

'Oh, come! This opens new ground. I thought I was engaged to advise you.'

'Certainly. But in relation to--to what we've been talking about.'

'H'm! In relation, you mean, to Fanny Pelly? Phoebus, what a name! I wonder if you know what you mean, Freydon! Let's assume you mean having equal regard to your own interests and those of your gin-drinking landlady's daughter. Hey?'

'Well, yes. Always remembering, of course, that I am only a man, and she----'

'Oh, Lord! Excuse me. Yes; you are only a man, as you so truly say; and she is--your landlady's daughter. Well, well, upon the whole, and giving her interests a fair show, I think my advice would be precisely the same--clear out to-morrow.'

'And what about her future?'

'My dear man, am I a reasoning human being, or a novelette-reading jelly-fish? Did I not say that having regard to the interests of both, that is my advice? Kindly credit me with the modicum of intelligence required for adequate consideration of both sides. It isn't an international complication, you know; neither is it a situation entirely without precedent in history. But, mind you, I'm perfectly well aware that no advice, however good, is ever of any practical use; least of all in circumstances of this order. It does, I believe, occasionally impel its victim in the direction opposite to the one indicated. Yes, and especially in such cases. Well, my friend, upon reconsideration then, my advice is that first thing to-morrow morning you proceed to Doctors' Commons, wherever and whatever that may be, procure a special licence, and many the girl. Only--don't you dare to ask me to have anything to do with it.'

The suggestion has a fantastic look, but I am more than half inclined to think Heron's final piece of advice did have its bearing upon my subsequent actions. For it started a train of thought in my mind regarding marriage. It gave a practical shape to mere vague imaginings. It set me looking into details. For example, I distinctly remember murmuring to myself as I turned the corner of Heron's street:

'Yes, after all, I suppose getting married is quite a simple job, really. There are registrar's offices, aren't there? I suppose it's pretty well as simple, really, as getting a new coat.'

How Heron would have grinned if he had been able to follow this soliloquy!

Fanny was on her knees before my hearth when I reached my room. The lamp burned clear and soft beside my blotting-pad. The fire glowed cheerily, and Fanny had just swept the hearth, so that no speck showed upon it. And my slippers were in the fender. Less than a year earlier my homecomings had been singularly different; a dark, cold room in a malodorous house, with very possibly a drunken couple brawling on the landing outside.

But there were tears in Fanny's eyes. The mother was in one of her vicious tempers, it seemed, and had gone to bed in her basement room with the keys of larder and kitchen, and a bottle of gin. The daughter's last meal had been whatever she could get for midday dinner. And it was now nine o'clock in the evening.

'Just you wait there. Don't stir from where you arc. I'll be back in three minutes,' I told her.

There was a ham and beef shop at the junction of Howard and Albany Street. Thither I hastened. Leaving this convenient repository of ready-cooked comestibles, I bethought me of the question of something to drink. I was bent on doing this thing well, according to my lights. Presently I reached my room again, armed with pressed beef, cold chicken, bread, butter, mustard, salt, plates, cutlery, a segment of vividly yellow cake, and, crowning triumph, a half bottle of Macon.

The Dickensian tradition rather suggests that the ripe experience of a middle-aged _bon vivant_ is desirable in the host at such occasions. Well, in that master's time youth may have lasted longer in life than it does with us. My own notion is that mine was the ideal age for such a part. I think of that little supper--Fanny's tremulous sips of Burgundy from my wash-stand tumbler, the warm flush in her pale cheeks, and the sparkle in her brown eyes--as crystallising a good deal of the phase in which I was living just then. I am quite sure I did it well, very well.

In buying those viands I knew I should keenly enjoy our little supper. I pictured very clearly how delightful it would all seem to poor Fanny; her flushed enjoyment; just what a rare treat the whole episode would be for her. I knew how pleasantly that spectacle would thrill me. I thought too, in a way, what a devilish romantic chap I was, rushing out at night to purchase supper--and Burgundy; that was important; claret would not have served--for a forlorn and unhappy girl, who, but for my resourcefulness, would have gone starving to bed. How oddly mixed the motives! The Burgundy, now; I believed it a more generous and feeding wine than any other. Also, for some reason, it was for me a more romantic wine; more closely associated with, say, the Three Musketeers and with Burgundian Denys, comrade of Reade's Gerard.

I quite genuinely wanted to help Fanny, to do her good, to brighten her dull life. The contemplation of her pleasure gave me what some would call the most unselfish delight. Withal, as I say, how oddly various are one's motive springs, especially in youth! And, in some respects, what a blind young fool I was! That wine, now.... Who knows? ... I took but a sip or two, for ceremony's sake, and insisted on fragile Fanny finishing the half bottle. And I kissed her lips, not her cheek, as I held the lamp high to light her on her way to the garret where she slept.

* * * * *

I have not the smallest desire to make excuses for such foolishness as I displayed, at this or any other period. But I think it just to remind myself that there are worse things than foolishness, and that my relations with Fanny might conceivably have formed a darker page for me to look back upon than they actually did form. We both were young, both lonely; neither of us had found much tenderness in life, and I--I was passing through an extremely emotional phase of life, as my work of that period clearly shows.

Within a month of that evening of the supper in my room, Fanny and I were married in a registrar's office in St. Pancras, and set up housekeeping in one tiny bedroom and a sitting-room in Camden Town. I had convinced Fanny that this was the only way out of her troubles, and goodness knows I believed it. Heron refused point blank to witness the ceremony, such as it was; but he shared our table at his favourite little French restaurant that evening, and even consented to prolong the festive occasion by spending a further hour with us in our new quarters.

I think Fanny was pretty much preoccupied in wondering what her mother would make of the joint note we had left for her. (I had removed all my belongings from No. 37 several days before.) But I thought she made a pretty little figure as a bride--gentle, clinging, tender, and no more than agreeably shy. And Heron, what a revelation to me his manner was! Throughout the evening there appeared not one faintest hint of his habitual acidulated brusqueness. Not one sharp word did he speak that night, and his manner toward my wife was the perfection of gentle and considerate courtesy. I was dumbfounded and deeply moved by his really startling behaviour. He was so incredibly gentle. His parting words, such words as I had never thought to hear upon his lips, were:

'Heaven bless you both!' And then, as I could have sworn, with moisture in his eyes, he added: 'You are both good souls, and--after all, some are happy!'

For so convinced and angry a cynic and pessimist, his behaviour had been remarkable. When I returned to Fanny she was admiring her pretty, new, dove-coloured frock in the fly-blown mirror of our sitting-room. Poor child, her experience of new frocks had not been extensive.

'He's a real gentleman, is Mr. Heron,' she said with a little welcoming smile to me. I liked the smile; but, almost for the first time I think, on that day at all events, her words jarred on me a little. But what jarred more perhaps was the fact that these words, so apparently innocent and harmless, sent a vagrant thought through my mind that filled me with harsh self-contempt. The thought will doubtless appear even more paltry than it was if put into words, but it was something to the effect that-- Of course, Heron was a gentleman! Why else would he be a friend of mine?

Perhaps the thought was hardly so absurd as my solemn self-contempt over it! ...

IX

I have sometimes thought that, in its early days at all events, and before the more serious trouble arose, our married life might have been a little brighter if we had quarrelled occasionally. It would perhaps have shown a more agreeable disposition in me. But we did not quarrel. I felt, and probably showed, displeasure and dissatisfaction; and Fanny-- But how shall I presume to tell what Fanny felt? She showed occasional tears, and what I grew to think rather frequent sulks and peevishness.

Our first difficulties began within a day or two of our marriage. Chief among them I would place what I regarded as my wife's altogether unaccountable and quite unreasonable determination to keep up relations with her mother. I thought I was unfairly treated here, and I made no allowance for filial feelings, or the influence of Fanny's life-long tutelage. I only saw that she had very gladly allowed me to rescue her from the tyranny of a spiteful, gin-drinking, old woman; and that, within forty-eight hours, she was for visiting her mother as a regular thing, and even proposed that I should join her in this.

That was one of the early difficulties; and another, more distressing in its way, was my discovery of the fact that it was apparently impossible for me to think consecutively, or to write when I had thought, in a room which was my wife's living place. It was strange that I should never have given a thought before marriage to a practical point so intimately touching my peace of mind and means of livelihood.

At present it did not seem to me that I could possibly afford to rent another room. I certainly was not prepared to banish Fanny to our tiny bedroom, separated from the other room by folding doors. She had no notion as yet that her presence or doings constituted any sort of interruption in my work. The change from carrying on the whole work of a lodging-house to living in lodgings with practically no domestic work to do was one which, in my foolish ignorance, I had thought would prove immensely beneficial to overworked Fanny. As a fact I think it bored her terribly after the first week. She sometimes liked to read, but never, I think, for more than half an hour at a stretch. She never wrote a letter, and did not care for thinking.

I have found very few people in any class of life who like to sit and think; very few, even among educated people, who showed any sympathy or comprehension in the matter of my own lifelong desire for leisure in which to think. To do this or that, yes; but just to think! That seems to be a lamentable and most boring kind of futility, as most folk see it. It has for many years figured as the most desirable thing in life to me.

Looking back upon my married life, I believe I may say with truth that for two years I did not relax in my sincere efforts to make it a success. It would be more exact perhaps to say that for one year I tried hard to make it a success, and for another year I tried hard to make it tolerable. Yes, I did my best through that period, though my efforts were quite unsuccessful. I realise that this does not justify or excuse the fact that, to all intents and purposes, I then gave up trying. In that, of course, I was to blame; very much to blame. Well, I did not go unpunished.

It would not be easy for a literary man who had never tried it to understand what it means to live practically in one room (with a sleeping cubicle opening out of it) with a woman. I suppose a woman would never forgive or see much excuse for the man who makes a failure of married life. I wonder how it would strike a literary woman if she tried life in these circumstances with an unliterary man who, whilst clinging to leisure and having no inclination to forfeit an hour of it in a day, yet was bored extremely from lack of occupation and resource.

The horrid intimacy of urban life for all poor and needy people must be very wearing. Its lack of privacy is most distressing. But this becomes enormously aggravated, of course, where the bread-winner must do his work within the walls of the cramped home. And that aggravation of difficulties is multiplied tenfold if the bread-winner's work must not only be done inside the home, but must also be the product of sustained and concentrated thought; if it be work of that sort which lends itself readily to interruption, in which a moment's break may mean an hour's delay, and an hour's delay may mean for the worker a fit of hot disgust in which his unfinished task finds its way into fireplace or waste-paper basket.

The year which I gave to trying to make a success of our married life appears to me in the retrospect as a monotonous series of abortive honeymoons, separated by interludes of terribly hard and unfruitful labour for me (more exhausting than any long sustained working effort I ever made), throughout which, out of respect for my praiseworthy resolutions as a would-be good husband, my exacerbated temper was cloaked in a sort of waxy fixative, even as some men discipline their moustaches. I see myself in these periods as a man acutely tired, miserably conscious of the barren nature of his exhausting daily toil, and wearing a horrible set smile of connubial amiability; the sort of smile which, in time, produces a kind of facial cramp.

My wife, poor little soul, was not, I think, burdened by any self-imposed task touching the set of her lips. And it may be this was so much the worse for her. In the absence of any recognised duty she knew of no distraction save her visits to her mother, regarding which she felt a certain furtiveness to be necessary, by reason of my ill-judged show of impatience in this matter, and my refusal to open my own arms to the woman who, for years, had made Fanny's life a burden to her.

'Confound it!' I thought. 'My part was to release her from this harridan's clutches, not to go round and mix tears and gin with the woman.'

But I was wrong. I should have gone much farther, or not near so far. (How often that has been my fault!) Either I should have prevented those visits, or sterilised them by taking part in them.

By the time that a spell of the set smile and the barren labours had brought me near to breaking point, Fanny would be frequently tearful and desperately peevish from her boredom, and from poor health; for I fancy she was in little better case than I as regards the penalties of a faulty and inadequate dietary, combined with long confinement within doors. These conditions would produce in me a day or two (and a sleepless night or two) of black, dyspeptic melancholy, and quite hopeless depression. Then, as like as not, I would try a long tramp, probably in Epping Forest, and after that--another abortive honeymoon. In other words, full of wise resolutions and determined hopefulness, I would apply the fixative to my domestic circle smile and amiability, and make an entirely fresh start, with a little jaunt of some kind as a send off.

I fancy Fanny's faith in these foredoomed attempts remained permanently unsullied. I know she used to resolve to discontinue the long gossipy afternoons with her mother in Howard Street--in some mysterious way the mother had lain aside all her old pretensions as a tyrannical autocrat, and they met now, I gathered, as friendly gossips--and to become an ideal wife for a literary man. She would even tell our landlady not to clean or tidy our rooms any more, since she, Fanny, intended to do this in future. And she would do it--for a week or so; just as I would keep up my sickening grin, and the attempt to make myself believe that I really liked doing my work in public libraries, reading-rooms, waiting-rooms, and other such inspiring places. Not even on the first day of a new honeymoon could I force myself to fancy I liked the attempt to work in our joint sitting-room. That affected me like a neuralgia.

The point, and perhaps the only point I can make in extenuation of my admitted failure to conduct my married life to a successful issue, I have made already; for one year I did, according to my poor lights, strive consistently and hard for success. Throughout another year I did strive as hardly, and almost equally consistently to make our joint life tolerable for us both. More than that I cannot claim, and, in the light of all that happened, I feel that this much is rather pitifully little.

X

It may very well be that during the first years after my marriage some of the chickens I had hatched out in the preceding years of slum life and incessant scribbling came home to roost. In the case of my reckless sins against hygiene and my digestion, I know they did. But also, I fancy, as touching work, and its monetary reward; for my earnings increased somewhat, while my work suffered deterioration, both in quality and quantity.

If it had not chanced to reach me in the black fit which preceded one of my make-believe new honeymoons, I should doubtless have been a good deal more elated than I was by the letter I received from Mr. Sylvanus Creed, the well-known connoisseur and arbiter of literary taste, who presided over the fortunes of the publishing house that bore his name. This letter--written with distinction and a quill pen upon beautifully embossed deckle-edged paper, which seemed to me to have a subtle perfume about it--requested the pleasure of my company at luncheon with the great Sylvanus; the place his favourite club--the Court, in Piccadilly.

He received me with beautiful urbanity, if a thought languidly. It was clearly a point of honour with him to refer to nothing so prosaic as any kind of work until he had plied me with the best which his luxurious club had to offer; and I gladly record that our luncheon was by far the most ambitious meal I had ever made, or even dreamed of, up to that day. And then, over the delicate Havannahs and fragrant coffee and liqueurs--the enterprise of youth was still mine in these matters, and in those days I accepted any such delicacies as the gods sent my way with never a thought of question, or of consequence--I was informed, with truly regal complaisance, that a certain bundle of manuscript short stories of mine (which by this time had been the round of quite a number of publishers' readers without making any perceptible progress towards germination and print) had been chosen for the honour of inclusion in the new _Fin de siècle_ Library of Fiction, which, as all the world knows--or knew, at all events, during that season--represented the last word, both in literary excellence and artistic publishing.

I was perhaps less overpowered than I might, and no doubt ought to have been, by reason of the fact that I had at least been shrewd enough to know in advance that it was hardly for my bright eyes the famous publisher was entertaining me. However, I assumed a decent amount of ecstasy, and was genuinely glad of the prospect of seeing my first book handsomely published. After a proper interval I ventured upon a delicate inquiry as to terms; whereupon the deprecatory wave of Sylvanus Creed's white and jewelled hand made me feel (or pretend to feel) a low fellow for my pains. I gathered that on our return to the sumptuously appointed studio from which my host directed the destinies of his publishing house, one of his secretaries of state would submit to me a specimen of the regulation agreement for the publication of first books.

That airy mention of 'first books' caused a chill presentiment to pierce the ambrosial fumes by which I was surrounded. The transaction was to bring me no particular profit, I thought. Well, the luncheon had been superfine. The format of Sylvanus Creed's books was indubitably pleasing to hand and eye. And, true enough, it was a 'first book.' Money, after all--and particularly after such a luncheon ...

But I will say that in subsequently signing the daintily embossed agreement (subtly perfumed, I thought, like the letter paper) I was blissfully ignorant of the fact that it also gave Mr. Sylvanus Creed my second book, whatever that might prove to be, upon the same exiguous terms. The fault was wholly mine, of course. There was the agreement (in the most elegant sort of copper-plate script) quite open for my perusal. I fancy, perhaps, the Court Club's liqueurs were even more agreeably potent than its wines. I know it seemed absurdly curmudgeonly that I should think of wading through the document, and while Sylvanus's own fair hand held a pen waiting for me, too. And, indeed, I do not in the least grudge that signature now.

And thus, with every circumstance of artistic fitness and ease, I was committed to authorship. The second floor back in Camden Town looked a shade dingy after my publisher's sanctum; but I carried a couple of gift copies of the _Fin de siècle_ books in my hand, and my own effusions were to form the fifth volume of the series. With such news I clearly was justified in bidding Sidney Heron take his dinner with us that night. Fanny rather cooled about the great event, when its monetary insignificance was made partially clear to her. But she enjoyed the little dinner with Heron; and, as a matter of fact, we were doing rather well in the monetary way just then, though hardly well enough to enable me to rent a third room for use as study.

I found that sovereigns had somehow shrunken and lost much of their magic in Fanny's hands with the passage of time. At the time of our marriage, I had been agreeably surprised to learn that Fanny was a cleverer economist than I, with all my grim learning in South Tottenham. The few pounds I was able to give her on the eve of our marriage had been made to work miracles I thought. But lately it had seemed a little different. Fanny had, of course, changed in many small ways; and one result, as I gathered, was that our sovereigns had become less powerful. Their purchasing power was notably reduced, it seemed. Fortunately, I was earning more. But it was clear the increase in my earnings would not as yet permit of any increase in our expenditure upon rent. Sometimes in the Cimmerian intervals immediately preceding one of our fresh starts, my reflections upon such a point were very bitter. There was no sort of doubt that the quality of my work was suffering seriously from lack of a private workshop....

On the day my second book was published--the first, while favourably reviewed, had not precisely taken the world by storm; its successor was my first novel--I had said that I should not get back to our rooms before about seven o'clock, in time for the evening meal. A dizzy headache, combined with a series of interruptions in the public reading-room where I had been at work, brought me to Camden Town between four and five, determined to take a couple of hours' rest, to sleep if possible on our bed. It happened that I met our landlady on the steps of the house, and asked her casually if my wife had returned yet. Fanny had said in the morning that she had promised to go and see her mother that day. The landlady looked at me a little oddly, I thought. Her reply was normal, and, characteristically enough, more wordy than informing:

'Oh, I couldn't sye, Mr. Fr'ydon; I reely couldn't sye. I know Mrs. Fr'ydon went art early this mornin', because she 'appened to speak to me in passin', an' she said she was goin' to see 'er mother, "Oh, are yer?" I says. "An' I 'ope you'll find 'er well," I says.'

I passed on indoors and upstairs, thinking dizzily about Cockney dialect--I had the worst kind of dyspeptic headache--and feeling rather glad my wife was away. 'An hour's sleep will set me right,' I muttered to myself as I entered our tiny bedroom.

But Fanny was lying on the bed, fully dressed, even to her hat, and with muddy boots. She was maundering over to herself the silly words of some inane song of the day. She was horribly flushed, and-- But let me make an end of it. My wife was grossly and quite unmistakably drunk, and the stuffy little room reeked of gin.

As it happened I never had been drunk. It was not one of my weaknesses. But if it had been, I dare say I should have been no whit the less horrified and alarmed and disgusted by this lamentable spectacle of my wife--stupid, maundering, helpless, and looking like ... But I need not labour the point.

In a flash I recalled a host of tiny incidents. It was extraordinary how recollection of the series rattled through my aching brain like bullets from a machine gun.

'This has been going on for some time,' I thought. And then, 'I suppose this is hereditary.' And then, 'This comes of the visits to Howard Street.' And then, curiously, recollection of those wedding night words of Heron's which had so touched me: 'Heaven bless you! You are both good souls, and--after all, some are happy!'

'Perhaps some are,' I thought bitterly. 'I wonder how much chance there is for us!'

In just the same way that I think the beginning of our married life might have been more agreeable, less strained, if we had had occasional quarrels, so I dare say at this critical juncture, when I discovered that my wife had taken to drinking gin, my right cue would have been that of open anger, or, at all events, of very serious remonstrance. It is easy to be wise after the event. I did not seem to be capable just then of talk or remonstrance. All I did actually say was commonplace and unhelpful enough. I said as I remember very well:

'Good God, Fanny! I never thought to see you in this state.' And then--the futility of it--I added, 'You'd better take your hat and boots off.'

With that I walked into the sitting-room, closing the dividing door after me, and subsided, utterly despondent, into the chair beside the empty grate. A man could hardly have been more wretched; but after a minute or two I could not help noticing, as something singular, the fact that my sick, dizzy headache had disappeared. The pain had been horridly severe, or I should hardly have noticed its cessation. But now, with my spirits at their lowest and blackest, my head was clear again; not by a gradual recovery, but in one minute.

XI

Fanny had spoken no word to me, and I wondered greatly at that. She had only smiled and laughed in a foolish way. And a few minutes later I knew by her breathing--even through the closed doors, so much was unmistakable--that she slept.

I may have sat there for an hour, nursing the bitterest kind of reflections. Then I decided to go out, and found I had left my hat in the bedroom. Very cautiously I opened one leaf of the folding doors, tip-toed into the small room, and took my hat from the chair on which it lay. My gaze fell for one instant across the recumbent figure of my wife, and was withdrawn sharply. I went out with anger and revulsion in my heart, and walked rather quickly for an hour, conscious of no relief from bitterness, no softening of my feelings.

Then I happened to pass a familiar restaurant, and told myself I would have some dinner. 'She must go her own way,' I muttered savagely.

I entered the place, found a seat, and consulted the bill of fare. A greasily smiling Italian came to take my order.

'Madame is not wiz you, sare?' the fellow said.

We had not been there for a month, but he remembered; and, on the instant, I recalled our last visit--the beginning of one of our fresh starts. And this was the end of it. Well!

Suddenly I found myself reaching for my hat.

'No,' I said, 'madam is late. I will go and look for her.' And out I went. In that moment I had seen pictures: Fanny, before our marriage, on her knees at my hearth in the room in Howard Street; in her dove-coloured frock on our marriage night, clinging to my arm when she was fresh from the excitement of leaving Howard Street. There were other scenes. What an immature and helpless child she was! And how much help had I given her? After all, food and clothing and so forth, freedom from tyranny--well, these were not everything. She needed more intimate care and guidance. The responsibility was mine.

In the end I went to a shop and bought the materials for a meal, even as on an evening which seemed very long ago, when I had given her supper in my bedroom. Only, on this occasion, with a sigh which contained considerable self-reproach, I omitted Burgundy, or any equivalent thereto. We had the wherewithal for brewing tea in our rooms. And so, carrying a supper for us both, I returned to the lodging. And there was Fanny on her knees before the hearth in the sitting-room, just as she had been on that previous occasion. And now she was crying. Her nerveless fingers held no brush. The hearth was far from speckless, and the grate held only dead grey ashes, and some scraps of torn paper--my own wasted manuscript.

Fanny was weeping, weakly and quietly. She knew, then. She had not forgotten that I had seen her. But her hair had been brushed. She wore a different gown. She looked shrinkingly and fearfully up at me as I came in.

'You better, little woman?' I said as I began to put down my parcels. I had tried hard to make the words sound careless and normal, kindly and cheerful. But I thought as I heard them that a man with a quinsy might have managed a better tone.

In another moment she was clinging to me somehow, without having risen to her feet, and sobbing out an incoherent expression of her penitence and shame. I was tremendously moved. And, while seeking to console her, my real sympathy for this sobbing child was shot through and illumined by the most fatuous sort of optimism.

'I've been making a tragedy out of a disagreeable mishap,' I told myself. 'She is only a child who has made herself ill. The thing won't happen again, one may be sure. This is a lesson she will never forget. No one could possibly mistake the genuineness of all this.' By which I meant her heaving shoulders, streaming eyes, and penitent self-abasement.

In the process of soothing her, of course, I made light of her self-confessed baseness. I suppose I spent at least half an hour in comforting her. Then we supped, with a hint of April gaiety towards the end. I endeavoured to be humorous in a lover-like way. Fanny dabbed her eyes, smiled, and choked, and even laughed a little. But the vows, protestations, resolves for the future--these were all most solemn and impressive.

And they all held good, too,--for a week and a half. And then our landlady gave me notice, because in the broad light of mid-afternoon Fanny had stumbled over the front door-mat on entering the house, and lain there, laughing and singing; she had refused to move, and had had to be dragged upstairs for appearance's sake.

The landlady must have occupied ten minutes, I think, in giving me notice. Almost, I could have struck the poor soul before she was through with it. When at length she drew breath, and allowed me to escape, I thought her Cockney dialect the basest and vilest ever evolved among the tongues of mankind. Yet the good woman was really very civil, and rather kindly disposed towards me than otherwise, I think. There was no good reason why I should have felt bitter towards her. Rather, perhaps, I should have been apologetic. And it was clean contrary to my nature and disposition, this savage bitterness. But one of the curses of squalor is that it exacerbates the mildest temper, corrodes and embitters every one it touches.

On the third morning after our instalment in new lodgings--two almost exactly similar rooms, a little farther away from Mrs. Pelly and Howard Street, in a turning off the lower Hampstead Road--I received a letter, forwarded on from our first lodging, from Arncliffe, the editor to whom, some four years before this time, I had taken a letter of introduction. At intervals Arncliffe had accepted and published quite a number of articles from my pen, but we had not again met, unless one counts the occasion upon which I followed him into an expensive restaurant at luncheon time, on the off-chance of being noticed by him. The letter ran thus:

'Dear Mr. Freydon,--As you are probably aware, I am now in the chair of the _Advocate_, and a pretty uneasy seat I find it, so far. It occurs to me that we might be able to do something for each other. Will you give me a call here between three and four one afternoon this week, if you are not too busy.--Yours sincerely, Henry Arncliffe.'

The letter gave me rather a thrill. Sylvanus Creed had published two books of mine, and my work had recently appeared in several of the leading journals. But the _Advocate_ was certainly one of the oldest and most famous of London's daily newspapers--I vaguely recalled having read somewhere that it had changed its proprietors during the past week or so--and I had never before received a summons from the editor of such a journal. Fanny had a headache and was cross that morning; but I told her of the letter, and explained that it might easily mean some increase in my earnings.

'If he would commission me for a series of articles, we might afford to take a room on the next floor for me to work in,' I said rather selfishly perhaps.

'Groceries seem to be dearer every week,' said Fanny, 'and Mrs. Heaps charges sevenpence for every scuttle of coal. I never heard of such a price. Mother never charges more than sixpence, no matter if coal goes up ever so.'

This touched a sore spot between us. It seemed Mrs. Pelly had two rooms empty, and Fanny did not find it easy to forgive me for my refusal to go and live in Howard Street.

If Arncliffe found his editorial chair an uneasy seat, it was not the chair's fault. A more dignified and withal more ingeniously contrived and padded resting-place for mortal limbs I never saw. And the editorial apartment, how spacious, silent, and admirably adapted, in the dignity of its lines and furnishings, for the reception of Cabinet Ministers, and the excogitation of thunderbolts for the chancelleries of Europe! It was currently reported in Fleet Street that Lord Beaconsfield had been particularly familiar with the interior of that apartment.

I found the great man in cheerful spirits, and looking fresher than ordinary mortals, I suppose because his day had only just begun. From him I learned how, some eight days previously, the _Advocate_ had been purchased, lock, stock, and barrel (from the family whose members had inherited possession of it), by Sir William Bartram, M.P., head of the great engineering and contracting firm which bore his name. It seemed Sir William had been advised by a very great statesman indeed to secure the editorial services of Mr. Arncliffe; and he had managed to do it in forty-eight hours by dint of the exercise of a certain amount of political and social influence in various quarters, and by entering into a contract which, for some years, at all events, would make Arncliffe a tolerably rich man.

A good deal was left to my imagination, of course. It was assumed, very kindly, that I understood the relations existing between this nobleman and the other, as touching Sir William's precise influence and sphere in the world of politics. Naturally, when the Party Whip heard so and so, he went to Mr. ----, and the result, of course, was pressure from Lord ----, which settled the matter in five minutes. I nodded very intelligently at intervals, to show my recognition of the inevitableness of it all; and so an end was reached of that stage in our conversation.

In the slight pause which followed Arncliffe touched a spring releasing the door of a cabinet apparently designed to hold State Papers of the highest importance, and disclosed some beautiful boxes of cigars and other creature comforts. It became clear to me, as I thanked Arncliffe for the match he handed me, that he must have forgotten the first impressions he had formed of me some years earlier. Perhaps he had confused me in his mind with some other more important and affluent person. And yet he did remember some of my articles. His remarks proved that. I wondered if he could also remember that they had reached him, some of them, from South Tottenham. Probably not. And, if he did, his editorial omniscience could hardly have given him knowledge of any of my slum garrets. On the other hand, he clearly assumed that I was familiar with the life of the House of Commons and the clubs of London, if not with that of the other august and crimson-benched Chamber.

'You know L----,' he said, casually mentioning a leader in literary journalism so prominent that I could not but be familiar with his reputation.

'By name, of course,' I agreed.

'Ah! To be sure. And T----, and R----, and, I think, J----; yes, I've got 'em all. So we ought to make the _Advocate_ move things along, if the most brilliant staff in London can accomplish it.'

I nodded sympathetically, and presently gathered that over and above all this the kindly and intimate relations subsisting between Arncliffe and the principal occupants of the Treasury Bench (not to mention a certain moiety of influence which might conceivably be exercised by the new proprietor, Sir William) were such as to ensure brilliant success and greatly increased prestige to the _Advocate_, under the new regime.

All this was very pleasant hearing, of course, and at suitable intervals I offered congratulatory movements of the head and eyebrows, with murmured ejaculations to similar effect. But, as touching myself and my obscure problems (of which such an Olympian as Arncliffe could, naturally, have no conception), it was all somewhat insubstantial and remote; rather of the stuff of which dreams are compounded. And so, watching my opportunity, I presently ventured a tentative inquiry as to the direction in which I might hope to justify the terms of Mr. Arncliffe's letter, and be of any service.

'Oh! Well, of course, that's for you to say,' said the editor, with a suggestion of having been suddenly curbed in full career. 'I may be quite wrong in supposing such things would have any interest for you. But I--I have followed--er--your work, you know; followed your work and, in fact, it struck me you might like to join us here, you know. It is a staff worth joining, I think, and-- But, of course, you are the best judge of your own affairs.'

'It's extremely kind of you, extremely kind.'

'Not at all. I think you could do good work for the _Advocate_.'

'There's nothing I'd like better. But-- Do I understand that you mean me to join your permanent staff, and come and work here in the building every day?'

'Why, yes; yes, to be sure.'

'I see.'

It meant an end to my free-lancing then. But, after all, what had this free-lancing meant, since my marriage? It would provide a place to work in. The hours might not be excessive. The pay ... Fanny was for ever talking of the increase in prices. My earnings, though on the up grade, had seemed very insufficient of late. There certainly was nothing to make me cling to our home as a place in which to carry on my work.

'And in the matter of salary?' I said, as who should say that in such a business it is well to glance at even the most trivial of details.

'Ah!' replied Arncliffe. 'Yes; that's a point now, isn't it? You see the fact is I had a bit of a scene with the business side here yesterday. We are new to each other as yet, you know--the manager and myself. But he's a very decent fellow, and I shall soon have him properly in hand, I'm sure of that. Meantime, of course, I have been rather going it, you know, from his point of view. You can't get L----, and T----, and R----, for tuppence-ha'penny, you know.'

'No, indeed, that's true,' said I, with the air of one who had tried this game and proved its impossibility.

'No. And so, in the matter of pay I must go gently, you know, at first. I must ca' canny for a while. I shall be able to make things all right a little later on, you know, but just to begin with I'm afraid I couldn't manage more than three or four hundred a year.'

I did not think it necessary to mention that my London record so far was little more than half the lower sum mentioned. On the contrary, I pinched my chin and said: 'Oh!' rather blankly, and without really knowing what I said, or why I said it. I wanted to think, as a matter of fact. But what I said was well enough.

'H'm! Yes, I see what you mean. It is poor, I know,' said Arncliffe, in his quick, burbling way. 'But, as I say, I should hope to improve it a little later on, you know. And, meantime, you may probably continue to earn something outside, you know; so that two or three hundred--say three hundred--but of course you're the best judge.'

Perhaps I was. I wonder! At all events, my mind was made up. The life of the last few months had made it clear that I needed more money.

'Oh, I'll be very glad,' I said. 'By the way, you did mention at first three or four, not two or three hundred.'

'Did I? Ah! Well, say three to begin with.'

I gathered it was rather difficult for the real Olympian to think at all in figures so absurdly low. So we let it go at that, and, this being a Friday, I agreed to start work at the office on the following Monday.

'I shall be able to get a room here, shall I not?' I asked with some anxiety.

'A room? Oh, surely, surely. Yes, yes, that's all right. Ask for me. Come and see me before doing anything, and I'll see to it. So glad we've fixed it. Good-bye!'

And so, very affably, I was bowed out of my free-lance life, the which I had entered by way of the north-eastern slums.

XII

My first Monday in the _Advocate_ office was not a pleasant day. Arriving there about ten o'clock in the morning, I learned that the editor was never expected before three in the afternoon. I knew no other person in the building, and so no place was open to me except the waiting-room. However, I whiled away the morning in that apartment by making a pretty thorough study of a file of the _Advocate_, in the course of which I took notes and made memoranda of suggestions which would have kept an editor busy for a week or two had he acted upon one half of them.

The time thus spent was far from wasted, since it gave me more of an insight into current politics (as reflected in the pages of this particular organ) than I had obtained during my whole life in England up till then, and it gave me a thorough grasp of the policy of the _Advocate_. After a somewhat Barmecidal feast in a Fleet Street eating-house (domestic expenditure left me very short of funds at this time), I returned to my post and wrote a political leading article which I ventured to think at least the equal in persuasive force and profundity of anything I had read that morning. At three o'clock precisely, my name, written on a slip of paper, was placed on the editorial table. There were then nine other people in the waiting-room. At four I began a second leading article, which was finished at half-past five. At a quarter to six the manuscript of both effusions was sent in to the editor. At a quarter to seven inquiry elicited the information that the editor had left the building almost an hour since, with Sir William Bartram, after a crowded afternoon which had brought disappointment to many beside myself who had wished to see him.

Unused as I was now to salary earning I felt uneasy. It seemed to me rather dreadful that any institution should be mulcted to the extent of a guinea in the day, by way of payment to a man who spent that day in a waiting-room. I looked anxiously for my leading articles next morning. But, no; the editorial space was occupied by other (much less edifying) contributions upon topics which had not occurred to me. During that morning I began to fancy that the very bell-boys were suspicious, and might be contemplating the desirability of laying a complaint against me for not earning my princely salary.

However, at a few minutes after three o'clock, I was escorted by the head messenger--who had rather the air of a seneschal or chamberlain--to the editorial apartment, where I found Arncliffe giving audience to his news editor, Mr. Pink, and one of his leader-writers, a very old _Advocate_ identity, Mr. Samuel Harbottle---a white-whiskered and rubicund gentleman, who was entitled to use most of the letters of the alphabet after his name should he so choose. I was presented to both these gentlemen, and in a few minutes they took their departure.

'Poor old Harbottle!' said Arncliffe, when the door had closed behind the leader-writer. 'An able man, mind you, in his prehistoric way; but-- Well, he can hardly expect to live our pace, you know. He has had a very fair innings. Still, we must move gradually. The change has to be made, but we don't want to upset these patriarchs more than is absolutely necessary. Have a cigar? Sure? Well, I dare say you're right. I'll have a cigarette. Sorry I couldn't see you yesterday. Now I'll tell you what I want you to tackle for me, first of all: Correspondence.'

For a moment I had a vision of almost forgotten days in Sussex Street, Sydney: 'Dear Mr. Gubbins,--With regard to your last consignment of butter,' etc.

'The correspondence of this paper has been disgracefully neglected. And, mind you, that's a serious mistake. Nothing people like better than seeing their names in the paper. They make their relatives read it, and for each time you print their rubbish, they'll be content to scan your every column for a fortnight. I mean to do it properly. We'll give two or three columns a day to our Letters to the Editor. But, the point is, they must be handled intelligently, both with regard to which letters should be used and which should not; and also in the matter of condensation. We can't let 'em ramble indefinitely, or they'd fill the paper. Now that's what I want you to tackle for me for a start. I can't possibly get time to wade through them myself; but if you once get the thing licked into proper shape, it will make a good permanent feature, and--er--you will gradually drop into other things, you know.'

'Yes. I've made notes of a few suggestions,' I began.

'Quite so. That's what I want. That's where I hope we shall be really successful. There's no good in having a brilliant editorial staff if one doesn't get suggestions from them, and act on 'em.'

I drew some memoranda from my pocket. But the editor swept on.

'I'm a thorough believer in suggestions. The moment I have got things running a little more smoothly, I shall have a round table conference every afternoon to deal with suggestions for the day. Meantime, I'll tell my secretary to have all letters for publication passed straight on to you, so that you can sift and prepare a correspondence feature every day. They may want helping out a bit occasionally, of course. A friendly lead, you know, from "An Old Reader," or "Paterfamilias," to keep 'em to their muttons. You'll see.'

'And where can I work?' I asked.

'Ah, to be sure. Yes. You want a room. Come with me now. I'll introduce you to Hutchens, the manager, and he'll fix you up.'

Mr. Hutchens proved to be a miracle of correctness. I never knew much of Lombard Street, Cornhill, Threadneedle Street, and their purlieus; but I felt instinctively that Mr. Hutchens, in his dress, tone, and general deportment, had attained as closely as mortal might to the highest city standards of what a leading city man should be. I never saw a speck of dust on his immaculately shining boots or hat. His manner would have been almost priceless, I should suppose, in the board room of a bank. His close-clipped whiskers--resembling some costly fur--his large, perfectly white hands and frozen facial expression were alike eloquent of massive dividends, of balance sheets of sacred propriety, of gravely cordial votes of thanks to noble chairmen, of gilt-edged security and success.

There was something, too, of the headmaster in the way in which he shook hands with me, and in the automatic geniality of the smile with which he favoured Arncliffe. (In this connection, of course, Arncliffe was a parent, and I a future incumbent of the swishing block.)

'Another star in our costly galaxy,' he said; and, having reduced me by one glance to the proportions of a performing flea, rather poorly trained, he gave his attention indulgently to the editor.

'With regard to that question of the extra twenty minutes for the last forme,' he began.

'Yes, I know,' said Arncliffe. 'Drop in and see me about it later, will you?' (I marvelled at his temerity. As soon would I have thought of inviting the Lord Mayor to forsake his Mansion House and turtles to 'drop in and see me later!') 'Meantime, I want you to find a home for Freydon, will you? He's going to tackle the--a new feature, you know, and must have a room.'

'There's not a vacant room in the building, Mr. Arncliffe--hardly a chair, I should suppose. We now have a staff, you know, which----'

'Yes, I know, I know; there's got to be a good deal of sifting, but we must go gently. We don't want to set Fleet Street humming. Look here! What about old Harbottle? He has a room, hasn't he?'

'Mr. Harbottle has had his room here, Mr. Arncliffe, for just upon twenty-seven years.'

'Yes; I thought so. Where is it?'

'Mr. Harbottle's room is immediately overhead.'

'Let's have a look at it. Do you mind? Can you spare a minute?'

'Oh, I am quite at your service, of course, Mr. Arncliffe.'

A minion from the messenger's office walked processionally before us bearing a key, and presently we were in Mr. Harbottle's sanctuary. Two well-worn saddle-bag chairs stood before the hearth, and between them a chastely designed little table. On the rug was a pair of roomy slippers. In a glass-fronted cabinet one saw decanters and tumblers. Against one wall stood a large and comfortable couch. The writing-table was supplied with virgin blotting-paper, new pens, works of reference, ash-tray, matches, and the like; and over the mantel hung a full-length portrait of Lord Beaconsfield. There was also an ivory-handled copper kettle, and a patent coffee-making apparatus.

'H'm! The old boy makes himself comfortable,' said Arncliffe. 'He has written one short leader note since--since the change. And where does the other old gentleman work, Hutchens? The one with gout, you know. What's his name? The very old chap, I mean.'

'Dr. Powell? Dr. Powell's room is the next one to this.'

A key was brought to us, and we inspected another very similar apartment, which had a green baize-covered leg-rest on its hearth-rug.

'H'm! Dr. Powell is not quite so busy, of course. We haven't had a line from him yet. Well, Hutchens, you might have Dr. Powell's things put in Mr. Harbottle's room at once, will you? or the other way about, you know. It doesn't matter which. Then Freydon here can have one of these rooms. He will want to start in at once.'

'As you like, of course, Mr. Arncliffe,' said the manager, with portentous suavity. 'These gentlemen are of your staff, not mine. But, really! Well, it is for you to say, but I greatly fear that one or both of these gentlemen will be quite likely to resign if we treat them in so very summary a fashion.'

'No! Do you really think that?' asked Arncliffe, so earnestly that I felt my chance of having a room to myself was irretrievably lost.

'I do indeed, Mr. Arncliffe. You see, these gentlemen have been accustomed for very many years to--well, to a considerable amount of deference, and----'

'Well, then, in that case, I'll tell you what, Hutchens; put 'em both in the other old gentleman's room upstairs, will you? Mr. Thingummy's, you know, who specialises on Egyptology. I know he's got a nice room, because he insisted on my drinking a glass of port there the other night. Port always upsets me. Put 'em both in there, will you? Then we'll give one of these rooms to L----, and you might let Freydon here start work in the other right away, will you? By Jove! If you're only right, you know, that will simplify matters immensely. An excellent idea of yours, Hutchens. I'm no end obliged to you.'

'But, Mr. Arncliffe, I really----'

'Right you are! I'll see you later about that last forme question. Look in in about an hour, will you? I must bolt now--half a dozen people waiting. You'll get the letters from my secretary, Freydon, won't you? Come and see me whenever you've got any suggestions. Always ready for suggestions, any time!'

His last words reached us faintly from the staircase.

'Tut, tut!' said Mr. Hutchens. 'I am afraid these violent upheavals will make for a good deal of trouble; a good deal of trouble. However!' And then he glared formidably upon me, as who should say: 'At least, _you_ cannot give me any orders. Let me see you open your mouth, you confounded newcomer, and I will smite you to the earth with a managerial thunderbolt!'

'Well,' said I cheerfully, 'I'd better go and fetch those letters. And which of these rooms would you prefer me to take?'

'I would prefer, sir, that you took neither of them. But as Dr. Powell's gout is very bad, and he is therefore not likely to be here this week, you had better occupy this room--for the present.'

The emphasis he laid on these last words seemed meant to convey to me a sense of the extreme precariousness of my tenure of any room in that building, if not of existence in the same city.

'I trust you understand that this choice of rooms is no affair of mine,' I said.

I thought his frozen expression showed a hint of softening at this, but he only said as he swept processionally away:

'I will give the requisite instructions.'

XIII

For some weeks I was rather interested by the manipulation of that correspondence. Treated in a romantic spirit, the work was not unlike novel or play-writing; and, on paper, I established interesting relations with quite a number of rural clergymen, country squires, London clubmen, a don or two, and some lady correspondents.

I availed myself generously of the hint about giving an occasional lead, and in starting new topics of discussion entered with zest into the task of creating and upholding imaginary partisans with one hand, whilst with the other hand bringing forth caustic opponents to vilify and belittle them. As a fact, I believe I made its correspondence the most amusing and interesting feature in the paper. But, as his way was, Arncliffe lost his enthusiasm for it after a time, and, delegating the care of its remains to some underling, spurred me on to fresh fields of journalistic enterprise.

It was not easy for me to develop quite the same interest in these later undertakings, whatever their intrinsic qualities, for the reason that my domestic circumstances were becoming steadily more and more of a preoccupation and an anxiety. It had not taken very long for me to learn that, in my case at all events, the fact of one's income being doubled does not necessarily mean that one's life is made smooth and easy upon its domestic side. By virtue of my increased earnings we had moved, after my first month as a salaried man, to rather better rooms; but there seemed no point in having more than two of them, since I now had a room of my own at the _Advocate_ office, _vice_ poor Dr. Powell and his leg-rest, now no longer to be met with in that building.

As time went on many unpleasant things became evident, among them the conclusion that ours, Fanny's and mine, was to be a nomadic sort of existence, though it was apparently never to fall to me to give notice of an intended change of residence. The notice invariably came from our landladies. And the better the lodging, the briefer our stay in it, because our notice came the sooner. In view of this it was, more than for any monetary reason--though, as a fact, it did seem to me that I was rather more short of money now than in my poorer days--that we took to living in shabby quarters, and in the frowzier types of apartment houses, where few questions are asked, and no particular etiquette is observed....

So I set these things down as though looking back across the years upon the affairs of some unfortunate stranger on the world's far side. But, Heaven knows, this is not because I have forgotten, or shall ever forget, any of the squalid misery, the crushing, all-befouling humiliation and wretchedness of those years. Just as one part of the period burnt its mark into me for ever by means of its effects upon my bodily health, just as surely as it burned its way through my poor wife's constitution; so indelibly did every phase of it imprint itself upon my brain, and permanently colour my outlook upon life.

Men, and even women, who have never come into personal contact with the pestilence that infected my married life, are able to speak lightly enough of it.

'Bit too fond of his glass, I'm told!'

'His wife is a bit peculiar, you know. Yes, he has to keep the decanters under lock and key, I believe.'

Remarks of that sort, often semi-jocular, are common enough. The pastry-cooks and the grocers know a lot about the feminine side of this tragedy, at which so many folk smile. But those who, from personal experience, know the thing, would more likely smile in the face of Death himself, or joke about leprosy and famine.

I had seen something of the working of the curse among London's very poor people. Now, I learned much more than I had ever known. At first I thought it terrible when, once in a month or so, Fanny became helpless and incapable from drinking gin. I came eventually to know what it meant to see ground for thankfulness, if not for hope, in a period of forty-eight consecutive hours of sobriety for my wife.

The practical difficulties in these cases are very great for people as comparatively poor as we were. They are intolerably acute in the households of workmen earning from one to two pounds a week. In such families the presence of children--and there generally are children--is an added horror, which sometimes leads to the most gruesome kind of murder; murder for which some poor, unhinged, broken-hearted devil of a man is hanged, and so at last flung out of his misery.

I never gave Fanny any money now if I could possibly avoid it. Accordingly, I discovered one day, when I had occasion to look for my dress clothes, that, having sold practically every garment of her own, my wife had cleared out the major portion of my small wardrobe.

But a far worse thing happened shortly afterwards, when my wife pawned some plated oddments belonging to our landlady. This episode kept me on the rack for a full week. Replacing the stolen articles was, fortunately, not difficult; but the landlady was. She was bent upon prosecution, and our escape was an excruciatingly narrow one. I had a four days' 'holiday' over this episode, during which my editor was allowed to picture me in cheerful recuperation up-river--one of a merry boating party.

After this I made inquiries about trained nurses, and gathered that they were quite beyond my means; not alone in the matter of the scale of remuneration they required, but, even more markedly, in the scale of household comfort which their employment necessitated. I talked the matter over very seriously with Fanny, and begged her to try the effect of three months in a curative institution of which I had obtained particulars. At first she was very bitter and angry in her refusal to discuss this. Then she wept, sobbed, and became hysterical in imploring me never to think of such a thing for her. But the extremely difficult and harrowing escape from police court proceedings had impressed me very deeply.

As soon as we could get together the bare necessities by way of furnishings, I insisted on our moving into unfurnished rooms in which we could cater for ourselves. But the result was not merely that there was never a meal prepared for me, but also that Fanny never had a proper meal. I engaged servants. They either gave notice after a week, or worse, much worse, my wife made boon companions of them. We moved again, this time into unfurnished rooms in a house whose landlady undertook to serve meals to us at stated hours. But the house was too respectable for us, and in a month we were given notice.

No, it was not easy to develop any very warm interest in Mr. Arncliffe's projects for the stimulation of the _Advocate's_ circulation. But I occupied Dr. Powell's old room during most days, and did my best; and, rather to my surprise, when I quite casually said I was not able to afford some luxury or another--lawn tennis, I believe it was, recommended by my chief as a remedy for my fagged and unhealthy appearance--I was given an increase of salary to the extent of an additional fifty pounds a year. I expressed my thanks, and Arncliffe said:

'Not at all, not at all. I'm only too glad. Your work's first rate, and I much appreciate your suggestions. I don't want you to work less; but, in all seriousness, my dear fellow, you should take it easier. Do just as much work, but don't worry so much about it. Carry your whatsaname more lightly, you know. Believe me, that's the thing.'

I agreed of course, and went home to give Fanny the news of the increased salary. I found her helpless and comatose on the hearth-rug.

I had talked to doctors, and gleaned little or nothing therefrom. Now I tried a lawyer, with a view to finding out the legal aspect of my position. Was it possible to oblige my wife to enter a curative institution against her will? Certainly not, save by a magistrate's order, and as the result of repeated appearances in the dock at police courts.

The lawyer told me that our 'man-made' laws were pretty hard upon husbands in such cases as mine. They offered no relief or assistance whatever, he said; though in the case of a persistently drunken husband, the law was fortunately able to do a good deal for the wife. 'But nothing at all when it's the other way round,' he added; 'a fact which leads to much misery, and not a little crime, among the poorer classes. I'm very sorry for you,' he added; 'but to be frank, I must say that the law will not help you one atom; neither will it offer you any kind of redress if your wife sells up your home once a week. Neither may you legally put her out from your home because of that. Under our law a wife may claim and hold her husband's company until she drives him into the bankruptcy court, or the lunatic asylum--or his grave. It is worse than senseless, but it is the law; and if your business prevents you keeping watch and ward over your wife yourself, the only course is to employ some relative, or a professed caretaker, to do it for you. The law shows a little more common sense where the case is the other way round. A wife can always get a separation order to relieve her of the presence of a persistently drunken husband; and, with it, an order for her maintenance, which he must obey or go to prison.'

So I did not get very much for my six-and-eightpence, beyond an explicit confirmation of the impression already pretty firmly rooted in my mind, that the most burdensome portion of my particular load in life was something which nobody could help me to carry.

By this time Fanny had lost the sense of shame and humiliation which had characterised all her early recoveries, and informed all her good resolutions and frantic promises of amendment. She made no resolutions now, and in place of shame, poor soul, was conscious only of the physical penalties which her excesses brought in their train. These made her very sullen, and, at the same time, very irritable. There were times, as I well knew, when she had no other means of obtaining drink, but yet did obtain it, from that misguided woman--her mother, whose craving she inherited, without a tithe of the brute strength which apparently enabled the older woman to defy all consequences.

I do not think it necessary to set down here precisely the miserable ways in which I saw her habits gradually sap all self-restraint and womanly decency from my wife. The process was gradual, pitilessly inexorable as the growth of a malignant tumour, and a ghastly and humiliating thing to witness. In the case of a woman, my impression is that alcoholism reacts even more directly upon character, and the mental and nervous system, than it does in men. Their fall is more complete. At least, for a man it is more horrible to witness than any degradation of another man.

XIV

In these days it was my habit each evening to make my way as directly as might be from the _Advocate_ office to our home of the moment. There was, of course, always a certain measure of uncertainty in my mind as to what might await me in our rooms; and there were many occasions when my presence there as early as possible was highly desirable. It was my dismal task upon more than two or three occasions to visit police stations, and enter into bail to save my wife from spending a night in the cells.

Naturally, in view of all these circumstances, I remained as much a hermit as though living in Livorno Bay, so far as the social life of my colleagues and of London generally was concerned. During all this time social intercourse was for me confined to Fanny (who became steadily less social in her habits and inclinations) and to occasional meetings with Sidney Heron. Once and again a man at the office would ask me to dine with him (regarding me as a bachelor, of course), and always I felt bound to plead a prior engagement. One night, when Fanny had gone early to bed, feeling wretchedly ill, and sullenly angry because I would have no liquor of any sort on the premises, not even the lager beer which it had been my own habit for some time past to drink with meals, Heron sat with me in our living-room, smoking and staring into the fire. It was late, and something had moved Heron to stir me into giving him the outline of my early life and Australian experiences.

'Yes, you're a queer bird,' he opined, after a long silence. 'And your life confirms my old conviction that, broadly speaking, there are only two kinds of human beings: those who prey--with an "e," and rarely with an "a"--and those who are preyed upon: parasites and their hosts. There are doubtless subdivisions in infinite variety; but I have yet to meet the man or woman who, in essence, is not parasite or host, the preyer or the preyed upon.'

'And I----'

'Oh, clearly, and all along the line, you're the host. Mind, I waste no great sympathy upon you. It is quite an open point which class is the less deserving or the better off. But in your case it is, perhaps, rather a pity, because upon the whole I doubt if your fibre is tough enough to sustain the part. On the other hand, you haven't half enough--well--suction for a successful parasite; and those between are apt to get ground up rather small. My advice to you-- But, Lord, is there any greater folly in all this foolish world than the giving of advice?'

'Never mind. Let's have it.'

'No, I'll not give advice. But I will state what I believe to be a fact; and that is that you would be the better for it if you were sedulously to cultivate a self-regarding policy of _laissez-faire_. It may be as rotten as you please as a national policy. Our own beloved countrymen are even now, I think, preparing for the world a most convincing demonstration of that. But for certain individuals--you among 'em--it has many points, and, pursued with discretion, is likely to prove highly beneficial.'

'Ah! The let-be policy?'

Heron nodded. 'Of all creeds,' he said, 'perhaps the one that calls for the most rigid self-control--for a certain type of man, the type that most needs its use.'

I had lowered my voice involuntarily, though I knew that Fanny had long since been sleeping heavily. 'Do you realise what it would mean in my particular case, on the domestic side?' I asked.

'Well, yes; I think so.'

'Hardly, my friend. It would mean relinquishing the care of my wife to the police.' There were no secrets between us in this matter.

'Yes, something rather like that, I suppose,' said Heron. 'And don't you think upon the whole they may be rather better equipped for the task?'

'My dear Heron!'

'Oh, of course, that tone's unanswerable. But lay aside the sentimental aspect, and consider the practical logic of it. You might as well see where you really stand, you know. It won't affect your actions, really. You belong to the wrong division of the race. But what are you doing to remedy your wife's case?'

I admitted I was doing nothing. I had tried in many directions, including the clandestine administration of costly specifics, which had merely seemed to rob poor Fanny of all appetite for food, without in any way affecting the lamentable craving which wrecked her life.

'Precisely,' resumed Heron. 'You are doing nothing to remedy it, because there is nothing you are in a position to do. You are merely "standing by," as sailors say, from sentimental motives. It is _laissez-faire_, of a sort; only, it's an infernally painful and wearing sort for you. It reduces your life to something like her own, without, so far as I can see, benefiting her in the least. I think the police could do as well. In fact, in your place, I should clear out altogether, and give Mrs. Pelly a show. But, failing that, I would at least wash my hands, so to say. I would refuse the situation any predominant place in my mind, join a club and use it, and-- O Lord! what is the use of talking of absolutely hopeless things? I don't know that I'd do anything of the sort, and I do know very well that you won't.'

There fell another silence between us, which lasted several minutes. And then Heron rose to his feet, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and said he must be going. I walked down the road with him, and paused at its corner, where he would pick up an omnibus. The moon emerged from behind a cloud, touching with a delicate sepia some fleecy edge of cumuli.

'Has it ever occurred to you, my innocent, that there is anything in England beyond the metropolitan radius?' asked Heron suddenly. 'Honest, now; have you ever been ten miles from Charing Cross since you landed from that blessed ship?'

'Well, it does seem queer, now you mention it; but I don't believe I have-- Except to Epping Forest, you know. I'm not sure how far that is; but I used often to go there at one time, not lately, but----'

'Before you mortgaged your soul to the _Advocate_, eh? Though I suppose the more serious mortgage was the one before that. Look here! Bring your wife on Saturday, and meet me at Victoria at ten o'clock. We'll go and have a look at Leith Hill. A tramp will do you both good. Will you come?'

By doing a certain amount of work there on Sunday, I could always absent myself from office on a Saturday. So I agreed to go. On the Friday Fanny seemed unusually calm and well. I was quite excited over the prospect of our little jaunt, and Fanny herself appeared to think cheerfully and kindly of it. In the lodging we occupied at that time I had a tiny bedroom of my own. I woke very early on the Saturday morning, but when I found it was barely five o'clock turned over for another doze. When next I woke it was to find, greatly to my annoyance, that the hour was half-past eight; and there were several little things I wanted to have done before starting for Victoria. I hurried into our sitting-room before dressing, meaning to rouse Fanny, whose room opened from it. But she was not in her bedroom, and returning to the other room I found a note on the table.

'I am not feeling well,' the note said, 'and cannot come with you to-day. So I shall spend the day with mother, and be back here about tea-time.'

For a moment I thought of hurrying round to Mrs. Pelly's, and seeing if I could prevail on Fanny to change her mind. But I hated going to that house, and, of late, I had had some experience of the futility of trying to influence Fanny in any way during these sullen morning hours, when she was very often possessed by a sort of lethargy, any interference with which provoked only excessive irritation.

It was most disappointing. But-- 'Very well, then,' I muttered to myself, 'she must stay with her mother. I can't leave Heron waiting at Victoria.'

So I dressed and proceeded direct to the station, relying upon having a few minutes to spare there during which to break my fast in the refreshment-room.

Heron nodded rather grimly over my explanation of Fanny's absence, and we were both pretty silent during the journey to Dorking. But once out in the open, and tramping along a country road, we breathed deeper of an air clean enough to dispel town-bred languors. I felt my spirits rise, and we began to talk. The day was admirable, beginning with light mists, and ripening, by the time we began our tramp, into that mellow splendour which October does at times vouchsafe, especially in the gloriously wooded country which lies about Leith Hill.

The foliage, the occasional scent of burning wood--always a talisman for one who has slept in the open--glimpses of new-fallowed fields of an exquisite rose-madder hue, bracken and heather underfoot, and overhead blue sky sweetly diversified by snowy piles of cloud--these and a thousand other natural delights combined to enlarge one's heart, ease one's mind, and arouse one's dormant instinct to live, to laugh, and to enjoy. Worries rolled back from me. I responded jovially to Heron's grim quips, and felt more heartily alive than I had felt for years.

Having walked swingingly for four or five hours we sat down in a pleasant inn to a nondescript meal, at something like the eighteenth-century dining hour; consuming large quantities of cold boiled beef, salad, cheese, home-baked bread, and brown ale. (I had learned now to drink beer, on such occasions as this, at all events; and did it with a childish sense of holiday 'swagger.' Its associations with rural life pleased me. But in the town I was annoyed to find that even half a glass of it was apt to make my head ache villainously.) We sat and smoked, talking lazily in the twilight; missed one train, and walked leisurely to the next station to catch a later one.

The approach to London rather chilled and saddened me by the sharp demand it seemed to make for the laying aside of calm reflection or cheerful conversation, and the taking up of stern realities, practical considerations--the hard, concrete facts of daily life. The outlines of the huddled houses, the moving lights of thronged streets, the Town-- It seemed to grip me by the shoulder.

'Come! Wake up from your fancies. Been laughing, joking, chatting, drawing deep breaths, have you? Ah, well, here am I. You know me. Hear the ring of the hurrying horses' feet on my hard ways? See the anxious ferret faces of my workers? I am Reality. I am your master, and the world's master. You may escape me for a day, and dream you are a free man in the open. Grrrr!--' The train jars to a standstill. 'That may be well enough for a dream; but I am Reality. Come! There's no time here for reflection. Pick up your load. Get on; get on; or I'll smash you down in my gutters, where my human wastage lies!'

That is how cities have always spoken to me as I have entered them from the country. And yet--and yet, most of my life has been spent within their confines. Long imprisonment makes men fear liberty, they say. But how could a man fear the kindly country and its liberty for reflection? And, attaining to it, how could he possibly desire return to the noisy, crowded cells of the city? Impossible, surely, unless of course the city offered him a living, his life; and the country--calm and beautiful--refused it. And that perhaps is rather often the position, for your sedentary man, at all events; your modern, who cannot dig and is ashamed to beg--a numerous and ever increasing body.

Big Ben struck the hour of eight as we trundled past into Whitehall on the top of an omnibus. I thought of Fanny with some self-reproach. She would have reached the lodgings by about five, and our evening meal hour was seven. I hoped she had not waited without her meal. I left Heron on the 'bus, for he had farther than I to go, and hurried along to No. 46 Kent Street--the dingy house in which we had been living now for a month or more.

Fanny was not there, and, to my surprise, the landlady told me she had not been in all day, save for five minutes in the early afternoon, after which she went out carrying a parcel. I went to my bedroom for an overcoat, as the night was chilly. I possessed two of these garments at the time--one rather heavy and warm, the other a light coat. Both were missing from their accustomed pegs.

'Tcha! Now what does this mean?' I growled to myself; knowing quite well what it meant. 'And I take holidays in the country! I might have known better.'

And with that--all the brightness of the day forgotten now--I hurried out, bound for Howard Street and Mrs. Pelly's house.

But Mrs. Pelly had no idea as to her daughter's whereabouts. It seemed Fanny had left her before three o'clock, intending to go home.

Then began a search of the kind which had become only too familiar with me of late. I suppose I must have entered upon scores of such dismal quests since my marriage. First, I visited some twenty or thirty different 'gin-mills.' (In one of them I stayed a few minutes to eat a piece of bread and cheese.) Then I went to two police stations, at the two opposite ends of that locality. Finally, I tramped back to Kent Street, thinking to find Fanny there, and picturing in advance the condition in which I should find her. The most I ventured to hope was that she had been able to reach her room without assistance. But she had not been there at all.

I went out again into the street, somewhat at a loss. It was now past ten o'clock. After some hesitation I caught a passing omnibus and journeyed back towards Howard Street, near which stood a third police station, which I had not before visited.

'Wait there a minute, will you?' said the officer to whom my inquiry here was addressed. A moment later I heard his voice from an adjacent corridor; 'Has the doctor gone?' it asked. I did not hear the answer. But a minute or two later a tall man in a frock coat entered the room and walked up to me. I could see the top of a stethoscope protruding from one of his inner breast-coat pockets.

'Name of Freydon?' he said tersely.

'Yes.'

'Ah! Will you step this way, please, to my room?'

And, as we passed into an inner room, he wheeled upon me with a look of grave sympathy in his eyes. 'I have serious news for you, Mr. Freydon; if--if it is your wife who is here.'

Then I knew. Something in the doctor's grave eyes and meaning voice told me. It was not really necessary for me to ask. I knew quite certainly, and had no wish, no intention to say anything. My subconscious self apparently was bent upon explicitness. For, next moment, I heard my own voice, some little distance from me, saying, in quite a low tone:

'My God! My God! My God!' And then: 'You don't mean that she is dead?'

But I knew all the time.

Then I heard the doctor speaking. His body was close to me, but his voice, like my own, came from some distance away.

'A woman was brought here by a constable this afternoon ... helpless ... intoxication.... Did your wife ... is she addicted to drink?' I may have nodded. 'There was a pawnticket in the name of Freydon.... She passed away less than an hour ago.... The condition ... heart undoubtedly accelerated ... alcoholism ... a very short time, in any case.... Medically, an inquest would be quite unnecessary, but.... Will you come with me, and ...'

From a long way off now these phrases trickled into my consciousness, the sense of them somewhat blurred and interrupted by a continuous buzzing noise in my head. We walked along dead white passages, and down steps. We stopped at length where a man in uniform stood at a door, which he opened for us at a sign from the doctor. Inside, a woman was bending over a low pallet, and on the little bed was my wife Fanny. A greyish sheet was drawn over her body to the chin. I think it was so drawn up as we entered the room. I stared down upon Fanny's calm, white face, in which there was now a refinement, a pathetic dignity, a something delicate and womanly which I had not seen there before; not even in the early days, when gentle prettiness had been its quality.

The thought that flashed through my mind as I stood there was not the sort of thought that would be associated with such a scene. The buzzing noise was still going on in my head, but yet I was conscious of a vast silence all about me; and looking down upon my wife's face, I thought:

'Death has certainly been courteous, considerate, to poor Fanny.'

MANHOOD--ENGLAND: SECOND PERIOD

I

My wife was buried in Kensal Green cemetery, a populous London city of the dead. And that afternoon I resigned my position on the staff of the _Advocate_.

I do not think that even at the time I had any definite reason for this step, and I do not know of any now. I remember Arncliffe remonstrated very kindly with me, spoke of plans he had in view for me, about which he was unable to enter into detail just then, and strongly urged me to reconsider the matter. I told him, without much relevance really, that I had buried my wife that morning; and he, very naturally, said he had not even known I was a married man.

'Look here, Freydon,' he said; 'be guided by me. Take a month's holiday, and then come and talk to me again.'

This was no doubt both wise and kindly advice, but I merely repeated that I must leave; and, within a week or two, I did leave, Arncliffe, in the most friendly way, making things easy for me, and agreeing to take a certain contribution from me once a week. This gave me three guineas a week, and I was grateful for the arrangement.

'You must let me see something of you occasionally. I'm really sorry to lose you. You know I've always appreciated your suggestions,' said Arncliffe, when I looked in to bid him good-bye. He spoke with a friendly sincerity which I valued; because it was a fact that he had, as editor, adopted and developed a good many suggestions of mine, without apparent acknowledgment, and after keeping them in his pigeon-holes until, as I thought, he had forgotten their existence, and come to think the ideas subsequently acted upon were his own.

With funds in hand amounting to something well under twenty pounds, I took lodgings on the outskirts of Dorking--a bedroom and a sitting-room in the rather pretty cottage of a jobbing carpenter and joiner named Gilchrist. Mrs. Gilchrist, a wholesome, capable woman, performed some humble duties in the church close by, in which she made use of a very long-handled feather duster, and sundry cloths of a blue and white checked pattern. Her husband had a small workshop in the cottage garden, but his work more often than not took him away from home during the day. Jasmine and a crimson rambler strayed about the window of my little study, from which the view of the surrounding hills was delightful. For some days I explored the neighbourhood assiduously. And then I began to write my fourth book. The third--a volume of short stories of mean streets, written in the days preceding my marriage--was then passing through the press.

When I first went to Dorking my health was in a very poor way. I imagine I must at the time have been on the verge of a pretty bad breakdown. The preceding six or eight months had greatly aggravated my digestive troubles, and I had also suffered a good deal from neuralgia. The constantly increasing stress of my domestic affairs, superimposed upon steady sedentary work in which the quest for new ideas was a continuous preoccupation, and combined with the effects of an irregular and indifferent dietary and lack of air and exercise, had reduced me physically to a low ebb.

During those last weeks in London, after Fanny's death, I was not conscious of this collapse; and my first week in Dorking had a curiously stimulating effect upon me. Indeed, I fancy that week was the saving of me. But at the end of it, after one long day's writing, I took to my bed with influenza, and remained there for some time, dallying also with bronchitis, incipient pneumonia, gastritis, and a diphtheritic throat.

Six weeks passed before I left my bedroom, but during only one of those weeks did I fail to produce my weekly contribution to the _Advocate_. If the quality of those contributions in any way reflected my low and febrile condition, Arncliffe mercifully refrained from drawing my attention to it. At the end of the six weeks I sat at an open window, amused by the ghostly refinement of my hands, and grateful to Providence for sunshine and clean air.

The doctor was a cheery soul, toward whom I felt most strongly drawn, because he was the only man I ever met in England who smoked my particular brand of Virginia plug tobacco. I had suffered from the lack of it since leaving Australia, but this good doctor told me how to get it in England, from an agent in Yorkshire; and I was deeply grateful to him for the information. He also told me, as I sat at the open window, that he did not think much of my stewardship of my own body.

'Let me tell you, Mr. Freydon, you have been sailing several points closer to the wind than a man has any right to sail. If you treated a child so, or a servant, aye, or a dumb beast, some preventive society would be at you for cruelty and neglect. They'd call me for the prosecution, and by gad, sir, my evidence would send you to Portland or Dartmoor--fine healthy places, both of 'em, by the way! But people seem to think they're licensed to treat their own bodies with any amount of cruelty and neglect. A grave mistake; a grave mistake! In the ideal state, sir, Citizen Jones will no more be allowed to maltreat and injure the health of Citizen Jones than he will be allowed to break the head or poison the food of Citizen Smith. Why should he? Each is of the same value in the eyes of the state; and, we may suppose, in the eyes of his Maker.'

The good man blew his nose, and endeavoured to introduce extreme severity into his kindly and indomitably cheerful expression.

'Yes, sir,' he resumed. 'You've got to turn over a new leaf from now on. Three good, plain meals a day, taken to the stroke of the clock. Eight hours in bed every night of your life, and nine if you can get 'em. Two hours of walkin', or other equally good exercise--if you can discover its equal; I can't--in the open air every day. And anything less will be a flat dereliction of duty, and bad citizenship, remember that. This is for by and by, of course. Just now you want twelve hours in bed, and half a dozen light meals a day. Mrs. Gilchrist knows all about that. Good, sensible woman, Mrs. Gilchrist. Wish there were more like her, these days. Oh, I'll be seeing you again, from time to time. Don't you bother your head about "accounts," my dear sir. And when you begin to get about now do oblige me by remembering your duty to yourself, as I've told you. As your doctor, I warn you, it's necessary in your case--absolutely necessary. _Good_-morning!'

And so he trotted off to his high dog-cart and his morning rounds. An excellent and kindly man, designed by Nature, his own temperament, and long use, for the precise part in life he played. Such adequacy and fitness are rare, and very admirable. I sometimes think that if I could have exactly obeyed this excellent physician, my whole life had been quite different. But then, to be able exactly to obey him, perhaps it would have been necessary for me to have been a different person in the beginning. And then, I might never have met him, and--there's the end of a profitless speculation.

As a fact I surreptitiously resumed work on that book long before the doctor gave permission, and within a week of settling his account I was once more living a life of which he would have strongly disapproved; though it certainly was a very much less wearing and unwholesome one than the life I had always lived in London. But, as against that, I now had a good deal less in the way of staying power and force of resistance. So far from having paid up in full, and wiped off all old scores, in the matter of those first years in London, I had barely discharged the first instalment of a penalty which was to prove part and parcel of every subsequent year in my life. And yet, as I have said, I sometimes think that doctor gave me my chance, if only it had been in me to live by his instructions. But, apparently, it was not.

II

Sidney Heron, the man who had introduced me to the country round about Leith Hill, was the first visitor received in my Dorking lodging. He came one Saturday morning when I had resumed work (though the doctor knew it not), and returned to town on the Sunday night.

I think Heron enjoyed his visit, though, out of consideration for my lack of condition, he walked less than he would have chosen. It was a real pleasure to me to have him there; and, in the retrospect, I can clearly see that I was powerfully stimulated by talk with him on literary subjects. So much was this so, that on the Saturday night when I lay down in bed I found my brain in a ferment of activity. I read for half an hour; but even then, after blowing out my candle, the plots of new books, ideas for future work, literary schemes of every sort and kind, all promising quite remarkable success, were spinning through my mind in most exhilarating fashion. The morning found me somewhat weary, though not unpleasantly so; and consideration of all this made me realise, as I had not realised before, the isolation and retirement of my life there in Dorking; the very marked change it represented from the busy routine of days spent in the _Advocate_ office. I prized my retirement more than ever after this.

'For,' I thought, 'of what use or purport was all that ceaseless mental stress and fret in London? It was all quite barren and fruitless, really. Whereas, here--one can develop thoughts here. This life makes creative work possible.'

I am afraid I gave no credit to Heron, or to the stimulating effects upon my own mind of contact with his bracing, if somewhat harsh, intelligence. All was attributed by me at the time to the advantages of my sequestered life. The effect of mental stimulus was not by any means so evanescent as such things often are, and the Monday following upon Heron's return to town saw me hard at work upon the book which I had outlined and begun before my illness.

There followed, in that modest little cottage room of mine, some three or four months of incessant work at high pressure; long days, and nights, too, at the table, during which my only exercise and relaxation in a week would be an occasional five minutes' walk to the post-office, or a stroll after midnight, when I found the cool night silence soothed me greatly before going to my bedroom. The doctor's counsels were all forgotten, of course, or remembered only in odd moments, as when going to bed, or shaving in the morning. Then I would promise myself reformation when the book was finished. That done I would live by rote and acquire bucolic health, I told myself.

In most respects that period was thoroughly typical of my life during the next half dozen years. When the end of a book was reached, there came the long and wearing process of its revision. Then interviews with publishers, the correction of proof sheets, the excogitation of writings for magazines--fuel for the fire that kept my pot a-boiling. There were intervals of acute mental weariness, and there were intervals of acute bodily distress. But the intervals of reformed living, when they came at all, were too brief and spasmodic to make a stronger or a healthier man of me. My business visits to London were sometimes made to embrace friendly visits to Sidney Heron's lodgings. Two or three times I dined with Arncliffe, and very occasionally I was visited at Dorking by two of the literary journalists who had joined Arncliffe's staff at the time of his appointment.

With but very few exceptions the critics were very kindly to my published work, and I apprehend that other writers who read their reviews of my books must have thought of me as one of the coming men. (The early nineties was a prolific period in the matter of 'coming men.') I even indulged that thought myself for a time. But not, I think, for very long. Like every other writer who ever lived, I would have liked to reach a large and appreciative audience. But I had the most lofty scorn for the methods by which I supposed such an achievement might be accomplished.

For a long time I sincerely believed that it was not from any lack of substance, style, merit, or quality that my books failed to reach a really large public; but, rather, that they were without a certain vulgarity which would commend them to the multitude. If not precisely that they were too good, I doubtless thought that, whilst good in every literary sense, they happened to be couched in a vein only to be appreciated by the subtler minds of the minority. The critics certainly helped me to sustain this congenial theory; and it was not until long afterwards that I accepted (with more, perhaps, of sadness or sourness than philosophy) the conclusion that if my work never had appealed to a big audience, the simple reason was that it was not big enough to reach so far. It was perhaps, within the limits of literary judgment, to some extent praiseworthy. And it won praise. I should have been content.

I certainly was not content, and I dare say the life I led was too far removed from the normal, both socially and from a health standpoint, to permit of content for me, quite apart from any question of personal temperament or idiosyncrasy. I worked and I slept, and that was all. That is probably not enough for the purchase of healthy content; at all events, where the work is sedentary and productive of strain upon the mind, nerves, and emotions.

As society is constituted in England to-day, a man of my sort may be almost as completely isolated, socially, in a place like Dorking as he would expect to be in the middle of the Sahara. The labouring sort of folk, the trades-people, and the landowners and county families, each form compact social microcosms. The latter class, in normal circumstances, remains not so much indifferent to as unaware of the existence of such people as myself, as bachelors in country-town lodgings. The other two compact little worlds had nothing to offer me socially. And so, socially, I had no existence at all.

The same holds good, to a great extent, of my sort of person practically anywhere to-day. (The latter part of the nineteenth century produced a quite large number of people who belonged to no recognised class or order in our social cosmos.) But it is most noticeable in the case of such a man living in a country town. In London, or Paris, or New York, there is no longer any question of a man being in or out of society, since there is no longer any compact division of the community which forms society. Rather, the community divides itself into hundreds of circles, most of which meet others at some point of their circumference.

My doctor in Dorking was a bachelor. I did not attend any church. There literally was no person in that district with whom I held any social intercourse whatever. And then, by chance, and in a single day, I became acquainted with many of the socially superior sort of people in my neighbourhood.

Arncliffe's chief leader writer on the _Advocate_ staff was a man called Ernest Lane, who, after winning considerable distinction at Oxford, falsified cynical anticipations by winning a good deal more distinction in the world outside the university. It was known that he had been invited to submit himself to the electors of a constituency in one of the Home counties, and his work while secretary to a prominent statesman had earned him a high reputation in political circles. His book on greater British legislation and administration added greatly to this reputation, and his friends were rather surprised when Lane showed that he intended to stick to the writer's life rather than enter parliament, or accept any political appointment. Without having become very intimate, Lane and myself had been distinctly upon good and friendly terms during my time in the _Advocate_ office, and he had visited me three or four times in my retreat in Dorking. Lane thought well of my work, and he was the only man I knew whose political conversation and views had interested me. It was not without some pleasure, therefore, that I read a letter received from him in which he said he was coming to see me.

'It appears to be a case of Mohammed coming to the mountain,' this letter said; 'and, if you will put me up, I should like to spend Saturday and Sunday nights at your place. I think you will receive an invitation to Sir George and Lady Barthrop's garden-party on Saturday next, and if so I hope you will accept, and go there with me. The fact is, one of my sisters is about to marry Arnold Barthrop, the younger of the three sons, and the whole tribe of us are supposed to be there this week-end. I am not keen on these big house-parties, and would far sooner have the opportunity of seeing something of you if you would care to have me; but I have promised to attend the garden-party, and to bring you if I can. Some of the Barthrop's Dorking friends are rather interesting people, so it will be just as well for you, my dear hermit, to make their acquaintance.'

Of course, I wrote to Lane to the effect that he would be very welcome, which was perfectly true; but I was somewhat exercised in my mind regarding Lady Barthrop's garden-party, although, when her card of invitation reached me, I replied at once with a formal acceptance. Sir George Barthrop's house, Deene Place, was quite one of the show places of the district, and the baronet and his lady were very prominent people indeed in that part of the county.

Every time my eye fell upon the invitation card, I was conscious of a sense of irritation and disturbance. What had I to do with garden-parties? The idea of my attending such a function was absurd. I should have nothing whatever in common with the people there, nor they with me. Either I should never again meet one of them, or their acquaintance would be an irritation and a nuisance to me, robbing me of my treasured sense of complete independence in that countryside. Finally, I decided that I would have a headache when the time came, and get Lane to make my excuses-- 'Not that the hostess, or any one else there, would know or care anything about my absence or presence,' I thought.

But my unsocial intention was airily swept aside by Ernest Lane. I did accompany him to Deene Place, and in due course was presented by him to Sir George and Lady Barthrop. No sooner had we left the host and hostess to make way for other guests than Lane touched my elbow.

'Here's the first of the five Graces,' he whispered, nodding towards a lady who was walking down the terrace in our direction. I remembered that my friend had five sisters, and a moment later I was being introduced to this particular member of the sisterhood, whose name, as I gathered, was Cynthia. As Lane moved away from us just then, to speak to some one else, I asked my companion if she had been going to any particular place when we met her. She smiled as we walked slowly down the terrace steps to the lawn.

'I am afraid my only object just then was the ungracious one of evading Sir George and Lady Barthrop,' she said. 'Theirs is such a dreadfully busy neighbourhood. I think being solemnly introduced to a stream of people is rather a terrible ordeal, don't you?'

'The experience would at least have the advantage of novelty for me,' I told her. 'But, upon the whole, I fancy I should perhaps prefer a visit to the dentist.'

'Really!' she laughed. 'Now I didn't know men ever felt like that. It's exactly how I feel about it. It really is worse than dentistry, you know, because you are not allowed gas.'

'At least, not laughing gas, but only gaseous laughter and small talk,' I suggested.

'Which makes you all hazy and muddled without the compensating boon of unconsciousness. But you are an author and a journalist, Mr. Freydon--my brother often speaks of you, you know--and so you must have had lots of experience of this sort of thing; enough to have made you as hardened as royalty, I should think. I always think of authors and journalists as living very much in the limelight.'

I explained that some might, but that I had spent several years in Dorking without, until that day, attending a single social function of any kind. This seemed to interest her greatly, once I had overcome her initial incredulity on the point. Then I had to answer questions about my way of living, and one or two, of a discreet and gently curious kind, about my methods of working, and the like. There was flattery of the most delightful kind in the one or two casual references she made to characters in books of mine. Miss Lane never said: 'I have read your books,' or, 'I have been interested by your books,' statements which always produce an awkward pause, and are not interesting in themselves. But she showed in a much more pleasing way that one's work had entered into her life, and been welcomed by her.

Quite apart from this, I do not think I could possibly have spent a quarter of an hour with Cynthia Lane without concluding that she was the most charming woman I had ever met. 'Charming woman,' I say. Heavens! How extraordinarily inadequate these threadbare words do look, as I write them, recalling the image of Cynthia Lane as she paced with me across that smooth-shaven lawn--green velvet it seemed, deeply shaded here and there by noble copper beeches.

I suppose Cynthia was beautiful, even judged by technical standards; for her figure was lissom and very shapely, and the contour of her sweet face perfect--so far, at least, as I am any judge of such matters. Her eyes and her hair had a rare loveliness which I have not seen equalled. But it was the soul of her, the indefinable essence that was Cynthia Lane, which made her truly lovely. This personality of hers, at once tender and adroit, bright and grave, humorous and most sweetly gentle, most admirably kind, shone out upon one from her face, from her very movements and gestures even, giving to her outward person a soft radiance which I cannot attempt to describe. This nimbus of delicate sweetness, this irradiation of her person by her personality it was, which made Cynthia Lane lovely, as no other woman I have met has been.

I must have stolen fully half an hour of her time that day, to the annoyance it may be of many other people. And it was not until she was being in a sense almost forcibly drawn away from me by the claims of others that I learned, from the manner in which she was addressed by Lady Barthrop, that she, Cynthia Lane, of whom I had thought only as one of Lane's five sisters, as one among my own fellow guests, was indeed the guest of the occasion, and the betrothed of Lady Barthrop's younger son.

Other things happened, no doubt. I was presently introduced to young Barthrop, the bridegroom to be; and, mechanically, I endeavoured to comport myself fittingly as a guest. But, for me, the entertainment ended with my separation from Cynthia.

'Do please stop being a recluse, and call while I am here,' she had said as she was being drawn away from me into a sort of maelstrom of gaily coloured dresses, and laughing, compliment-paying men. And I blessed her for that.

III

Charles Augustus Everard Barthrop, third son of the baronet and his wife, was the assistant manager of some financial company in London, of which his father was a director. I fancy the young man himself was also a director, but am not sure as to that. In any case he had the reputation of being one who was likely to achieve big things in the world of finance and company promotion, a world of which I was as profoundly ignorant as though a dweller in the planet Mars. In another field, too, this young man had won early distinction. He was a mighty footballer, and a rather notable boxer. He was very blonde, very handsome, very large, and, I gathered, of a very merry and kindly disposition. He looked it. His sunny face and bright blue eyes contained no more evidence of care or anxiety than one sees in the face of a healthy boy of twelve.

'Here is a man,' I thought, 'peculiarly rich in everything that I lack; and all his life long he has been equally rich in his possession of everything I have lacked. And now he is going to marry Cynthia Lane. The rest seems natural enough, but not this.'

As yet I had little enough of evidence on which to base conclusions. But, as I saw it, Charles Barthrop was a handsome and materially well-endowed young animal, whose work was company-promoting, and whose diversions hardly took him beyond football and the Gaiety Theatre. I dare say it was partly because he was so refulgently well-dressed that I assumed him devoid of intellect. As a fact, my assumption was not very wide of the mark.

'And Cynthia,' I thought, 'has a mind and a soul. She _is_ mind and soul encased, as it happens, in a beautiful body. She is no more a mate for him than a great poet would be mate for a handsome fishwife; an Elizabeth Barrett Browning for a champion pugilist.'

It was natural that, during that Saturday evening and the following day, conversation between Lane and myself should turn more than once towards his sister Cynthia and her forthcoming marriage, which, I understood, was to take place within a few weeks at St. Margaret's, Westminster. We had become fairly intimate of late, Lane and myself, and the introduction to various members of his family seemed to have made us much more intimate.

'You have made no end of an impression on Miss Cynthia,' he said pleasantly on the Saturday evening. 'She was always the literary and artistic member of the sisterhood. She gave me special instructions to bring you along in time for some tea to-morrow, and she means to force you out of your hermitage while she is at Deene Place, so I warn you. Seriously, I think, it may be good for you. You will be sure to meet some decent people there, who will be worth knowing, not only just now, but when Cynthia is married and set up in Sloane Street. Barthrop has taken a house there, you know.'

With a duplicity not very creditable to me, I pretended thoughtful agreement. A brother can tell one a good deal without putting his information into plain words. I gathered from our talk then, and on the following day, that the Lane family occupied the difficult position of people who have, as it were, been born to greater riches than they possess. Of them more had always been expected, socially, than their straitened means permitted. The pinch had been a very real one of late years, towards the end of the grand struggle which their parents had passed through in educating and launching a family of two sons and five daughters. It was easy to gather that good marriages were very necessary for those five daughters, of whom Cynthia was the first-born. I even gathered that, a year or two earlier, there had been scenes and grave anxiety over a preference which Cynthia had shown for a painter, poor as a church mouse, who, very considerately, had proceeded to die of a fever in Southern Italy. Mrs. Lane had, to a large extent, arranged the forthcoming marriage with Charles Barthrop, I think. In the interests of the whole family Cynthia had been 'sensible'; she had been brought to see reason.

'And, mind you,' said Lane, 'I do think Barthrop is an excellent chap, you know. Oh, yes; he's quite a cut above your average city man. And a kinder-hearted chap you never met. The pater swears by him.'

I gathered that 'the pater' had been given the most useful information and guidance in financial matters by this Apollo of Throgmorton Street.

'He's modest, too,' continued Lane, 'which is unusual in his type, I think. He told me his favourite reading was detective stories, outside the sporting and financial news, of course; but he has the greatest respect for Cynthia's literary tastes-- You know she has published some verse? Yes. Not in book form, but in some of the better magazines. Oh, yes, Barthrop's a good chap: simple-minded, a shade gross, too, perhaps, in some ways. These chaps in the city do themselves too well, I think. But quite a good chap, and sure to make an excellent husband. I fancy his kind do, you know--no tension, no fret, no introspection.'

Again I made signs of agreement which were not strictly honest.

On Sunday afternoon we both drank our tea under the copper beeches at Deene Place. I deliberately monopolised Cynthia's attention as long as I possibly could, and then devoted myself to the cold-blooded study of the man she was to marry. I found him very good-natured, gifted with abundant high spirits, agreeably modest, and, as it seemed to me, intellectually about on a par with a race-horse or a handsome St. Bernard dog.

'Cynthia tells me we are to bully you into coming out of your hermitage,' he said to me with a sunny smile. 'A good idea, too, you know. After all, being a recluse can't be good for one's health; and I suppose if a man isn't fit, it tells--er--even in literary work, doesn't it?'

I felt towards him as one feels towards some bright, handsome schoolboy. And yet, in many ways, I doubt not he had more of wisdom than I had. I had spoken to Cynthia of Leith Hill, and she had said that, when staying at Deene Place, she walked almost every day either on the hill or the common. Upon that I had relinquished her attention with a fair grace.

Of course, I was entirely unused to the amenities of society. I used no subterfuges, and made no attempt to disguise my interest in Cynthia, or to pretend to other interests. I dare say my directness was smiled upon, as part of the eccentricity of these literary people; one of Ernest's friends, quite a recluse, and so forth. I gathered as much a little later on.

Looking back upon it I must suppose that my conduct during the next week or so would be condemned by most right-thinking people as ungentlemanly and even dishonourable. I have no inclination to defend it; and I could not affirm that, at the time, I loved honour more than Cynthia Lane. To speak the naked truth, I believe I would have committed forgery, if by doing so I could have won Cynthia for my wife. The one and only way in which I showed any discretion (and that, not from any moral scruple, but purely as a matter of tactics) was in withholding any open declaration to Cynthia herself.

My feeling was that my chance of a life's happiness was confined to the cruelly short period of a week or two. There was no time for taking risks. There must be no refusals. I must use my time, every day of it, I thought, in the effort to win her heart; and trust to the very end to win her consent. I availed myself fully of my advantage in living in Dorking while my rival spent his days in London. The obstacles in my path were such as to justify me in grasping every possible advantage within reach, I told myself. Every day we met. Every day I walked and talked with Cynthia. Every day love possessed me more utterly. And, I believe I may say it, every day Cynthia drew nearer to me. No word did I breathe of marriage; that which was arranged, or that which I desired. It seemed to me that every available moment must be given to the moulding of her heart, to preparation for the last crucial test, when I should ask her to sacrifice everything, and cross the Channel and the Rubicon with me.

There is no need for me to burke the words. Cynthia did love me when she left Dorking for her parents' house in London; not, perhaps, with the absorbing passion she had inspired in me; yet well enough, as I was assured, to face social disaster and a break with her family, in order that she might entrust her life to me.

'Cynthia,' I said, at the end of that last walk, 'London is not to rob me of you? Promise me!'

'If you call me, I will come,' she said, looking at me through tears, and well I knew that perfect truth shone in those dear eyes.

Regarding this as the most serious undertaking of my life, I had endeavoured to overlook nothing. I had obtained a marriage licence. A London registrar's office was to serve our purpose. I had previously secured a temporary lodging in London, and now went there with my luggage. Love did not blind me to practical considerations. While Cynthia was still in Dorking I had no time to spare. Now that she was entangled in her own home among last preparations for the wedding that was not to be, I turned my attention to matters affecting her future life with me.

Three afternoon appointments I kept with Arncliffe in the _Advocate_ office. When I left him after our third talk, I was definitely re-engaged as a member of his staff, at a salary of six hundred pounds per annum, having promised to take up my duties with him in one month from that date. Every nerve in my body had been keyed to the attainment of this result, and I was grateful, and not a little flattered by its achievement. I was still a poor man; but this salary, with the few hundred pounds I might hope to add to it in a year, by means of independent literary work, would at all events mean that Cynthia need not face actual discomfort in her life with me. Further, I sincerely believed (and may very well have been correct in this) that her influence upon me would enlarge the scope and appeal of my literary work. I realised clearly that my beautiful lady-love had very much to give me. My life till then had not entirely lacked culture or intellectuality. But it emphatically had lacked that grace, that element of gentle fineness and delicacy which Cynthia would give it.

Cynthia, who in giving me herself would give all that I desired which my life had lacked, should come to me empty-handed, I thought. I did not want her to borrow from out the life which for my sake she was relinquishing. On the day before that fixed upon for the wedding at St. Margaret's, she should come to me in the park, near her home. There would be quite another sort of wedding, and by the evening train we would leave for the Continent. Every detail was arranged for. We met on the afternoon of the preceding day. I put my whole fate to the test, and Cynthia never wavered. We arranged to meet at two o'clock next day.

On the morning itself, just before noon, I hurried out from my lodging upon a final errand, intending to change my clothes and lock my bags, upon my return, within half an hour. My papers were in the pockets of the clothes I intended to wear, and a supply of money was left locked in my handbag. The most important moment of my life was at hand, and, as I walked down the crowded Strand into Fleet Street, I was conscious of such a measure of exaltation as I had never known before that day.

And then, for the second time in my life, brute force intervened, and made utter havoc of all my plans and prospects. Crossing Fleet Street, close to Chancery Lane, the pole of an omnibus struck my shoulder and flung me several yards along the road. The driver of a hansom cab shouted aloud as he jerked his horse to its haunches to avoid running over me. And in that moment, pawing wildly, the horse struck the back of my head with one of his fore feet.

For the second time in my life I lay in a hospital, suffering from concussion of the brain. Almost twelve hours passed before I first regained consciousness, and the morning of the following day was well advanced before I was able to inform the hospital authorities of my identity. No papers, nothing but a handful of silver, had been found in my pockets.

At eleven o'clock that morning there was solemnised at St. Margaret's Church the marriage of Cynthia and Charles Barthrop.

'If you call, I will come.'

But I had not called. I had even left Cynthia to pace to and fro through an afternoon in the park; at that most critical juncture in both our lives I had failed her. In a brief letter, posted to an address given me by her brother, I acquainted Cynthia with the facts of my accident, and nothing more than the facts.

In ten days I was out of the hospital; and Cynthia, another man's wife, was in Norway.

IV

I dare say no place would have looked very attractive to me when I came out from that hospital; but London and my lodging in it did seem past all bearing unattractive. The Dorking lodging had been definitely relinquished, and in any case I had no wish now to see Dorking, Leith Hill, or the common.

Knowing practically nothing of my native land outside its capital, I packed a small bag at my lodging, and walked to the nearest large railway station, which happened to be Paddington. Arrived there, I spent some dull moments in staring at way-bills, and finally took a ticket at a venture for Salisbury. There I found a quiet lodging, and spent the evening in idly wandering about the cathedral close.

The next day found me tramping over short turf--turf more ancient than the cathedral--in the neighbourhood of Stonehenge. And so I spent the better part of a fortnight, greatly to the benefit I dare say of my bodily health. I shall always love the tiny hamlets of that sun and wind-washed countryside, between Warminster, Andover, Stockbridge, and Salisbury. Yet always they will be associated in my mind with a bowing down sense of loneliness, of empty, unredeemed sadness, and of irretrievable loss. I cannot pretend that I experienced any sense of remorse or penitence, where my abortive attempt to win another man's bride was concerned. I had no such feeling. But, discreditable as that fact may be, it did not make the aching sorrow that possessed me any the less real.

I was conscious of no remorse, and yet, God knows my state of mind was humble enough, though too sombre and despairing to be called resigned. I believe that in the retrospect my loss seemed more, a great deal more to me, than just a lover's loss; though upon that score alone I was smitten to the very dust. It was rather as though, at the one blow, I had lost my heart's desire and a fortune and a position in the world; or, at least, that these had been snatched from my grasp in the moment of becoming mine.

I do not think I could ever explain this to any one else; since I suppose that in the monetary sense the rupture of my plans left me the better off. But I, who had always been something of an outlier in the social sense, an unplaced wanderer bearing the badge of no particular caste, I had grown in some way to feel that marriage with Cynthia would in this sense bring me to an anchorage, and admit me to a definite place of my own in the complex world of London. The idea was not wholly unreasonable. I had lived very rapidly in those few critical weeks. Years of hope, endeavour, determination, and emotional experience, I had crowded into my last days in Dorking. And through it all I had been upheld and exalted by a pervasive conviction (which I apprehend is not part of the ordinary lover's capital) that now, at length, I was to know peace, rest, content; the calm, glad realisation of all the vague yearnings and strivings which had spurred me to strenuousness, to unceasing effort, all my life long.

Cynthia had been the object of my love, of my passionate adoration, indeed. But she had also been a great deal more. When she had bowed her beautiful head to my wooing, when she had promised that upon my call she would come, she had (all unconsciously, of course) become more than my beloved. She became for me the actual embodiment, the incarnate end, aim, and reward of all the strivings of my lonely life, from the night of my flight from St. Peter's Orphanage down to that very day. In my rapt contemplation of her, of the personality which enthralled me far, far more than her beautiful person could, I smiled over recollection of my bitter struggles in London slums, of the heart-racking anxiety and grinding humiliation of life with poor Fanny. I smiled happily at that squalid vista as at some trifling inconvenience by the way, too small to be remembered as an obstacle in my path toward the all-sufficing and radiant peace of union with Cynthia.

'Now I see why all my life has been worth while,' I told myself on the eve of the clumsy, brutal blow of Fate's hand that had for ever robbed me of Cynthia.

In the living, the end had sometimes seemed too hopelessly far off to justify the wearing strain of the means. There had been so little refreshment by the way. But with Cynthia's promise there had come to me an all-embracing certainty that my whole life had been justified; that the end and reward of all my struggles was actually in my hands; that I now had arrived, and was about to step definitely out from the ranks of the striving, unsatisfied, hungry outliers, into the serene company of those whose faces shine with the light of assured happiness; of those who fight and struggle no longer; for the reason that they have found their allotted place in life, and are at anchor within the haven of their ambitions.

I may have been very greatly to blame in my passionate wooing of another man's affianced wife; but, at least, I believe that my loss of Cynthia was a far greater and more crushing loss for me than the loss of any woman could possibly have been for Charles Barthrop. For me, she had stood for all life held that was desirable--the sum and plexus of my aims. For Barthrop there were his keenly relished sports and pastimes, his host of friends, his family, his luxurious and well-defined place in the world--not to mention the city of London.

V

When I left the spacious purlieus of Salisbury, it was to engage chambers--bedroom, sitting-room, and bathroom--in a remodelled adjunct to one of the Inns of Court. Here my arrangement was that a simple breakfast should be served to me each day in my sitting-room, and that I was free to obtain my other meals wherever I might choose. Thus provided for in the matter of a place of residence, I resumed the discarded journalistic life, as a member of the _Advocate's_ editorial staff, in accordance with the engagement entered into with Arncliffe, when I believed I had been arranging to secure an income for Cynthia and myself.

Before renting these rooms I had called upon Sidney Heron, and invited him to share a set of chambers with me.

'No,' he said, in his blunt way, 'I'd rather keep you as a friend.'

I dare say he was right; and, in any case, he had a fancy for living at a good distance from the centre of the town; whereas my own inclination was to avoid the town altogether, if that might be, and failing this to have one's sanctuary right in the centre of it. My chambers were within five minutes' walk of the _Advocate_ office, and not much more than half that distance from the Thames Embankment--a spot which interested me as much as its lively neighbour, the Strand, irritated and worried me. An uneasy, shoddy street I thought the Strand, full of insistent tawdriness and of broken-spirited folk whose wretchedness had something in it more despicable than pitiable. Save for its occasional gaping rustics (whom I thought sadly misguided to be there at all) I cordially hated the Strand. But the Embankment I regarded as one of the most romantic thoroughfares in London; and many a score of articles (which brought me money) do I owe to the inspiration of that broad, darkling, river-skirted road, and the queer human flotsam and jetsam one may meet with there.

Among the direct results of Cynthia Lane's influence, I must place my interest in politics. I had hardly realised that women had any concern with politics until I met Cynthia. She was in no sense a politician, but she followed the political news of the day with the same bright and illuminating intelligence which she brought to bear upon all the affairs of her life; and her attitude toward them was informed by a fine patriotism, at once reasoning and ardent. Chance phrases from her lips had opened my eyes to the existence of a love for England, for our flag, and race, such as I had not dreamed of till that time.

We spoke once or twice of my Australian experiences. And here again Cynthia's patriotism suggested whole avenues of unsuspected thought and feeling to me. It was Cynthia who introduced to my mind the conception of the British Empire, and our race, as a single family, having many branching offshoots. I do not mean that Cynthia supplied facts or theories hitherto unknown to me. But I do mean that her woman's mind first made me feel these things, intimately and personally, as people feel the joys and sorrows of members of their own households.

As a result I looked now with changed eyes upon many things. Before, I had loathed and detested the slums of London, and the vicious, ugly squalor of the lives of many of their inhabitants; hated them with the bitterness of one who has been made to feel their poison in his own veins. There had been far more of loathing than of pity or sorrow in my attitude toward the canker at London's heart. Gradually, now, because of the insight I had had into Cynthia's love of England, my view became more kindly. I looked upon the canker less with hatred, and more with the feeling one might have regarding some horrible and malignant disease in a son or a daughter, a brother or a sister. And, too, with more of a sense of responsibility and of shame.

So, from a lofty and quite ignorant scorn of things so essentially mundane, I grew to take an understanding interest in current politics, and more particularly in their wider aspects, as touching not England alone but all British lands and people. I obtained a press pass from Arncliffe, and attended an important debate in the House of Commons, subsequently recording my impressions, in the form of an article by an Outsider, from Australia. Journalistically, that article was a rather striking success; and I began to attend the House frequently, and to write more or less regular political impressions for the _Advocate_.

For several years my interest in these matters continued to be progressive. (Three volumes of a political or quasi-political and sociological character have appeared under my name.) I am grateful for that interest, because it gave me some additional hold upon life, at a time when such anchorage as I had had seemed to have been wrested from me.

There was a quite considerable period--five or six years, at least, I think--during which political work tended to broaden my mind, widen my sympathies, and enhance my esteem for a number of my contemporaries. Beyond that point I am afraid no good came to me from the study of politics; from which fact it is probably safe to assume that any influence I exercised ceased to be beneficial. For a time it had, I think, been helpful in its small way. That was while faith remained in me.

I remember conceiving a warm respect for a number of men engaged in political work as writers, organisers, and speakers. I admired these men for the fervour with which they appeared to devote their lives to the service of political ends. I even derived from my conception of their enthusiasm, strong, almost emotional interest in certain political issues, tendencies, and developments. Later, as I learned to know the men and their work better, came rather painful disillusionment. We differed fundamentally, it seemed, these eloquent fellows and myself. One actually told me in so many words, and with a cynical smile at his other companion of the moment, as who should say: 'Really, this innocent needs awakening'; that I was playing the gull's part on the surface of things. 'We are not concerned with principles,' he said, in effect. 'That may be all right for the groundlings--our audience. Our concern is parties, office--the historic game of ins and outs, in which we have our careers to make.'

Until I put the whole business for ever behind me, I never lost my interest in issues and principles; neither did I ever acquire one jot or tittle of the professional's interest in the political game, as such; or endeavour to utilise its complex machinery for the furtherance of my own career. But in the course of time the study, not so much of politics as of political life, came to fill me with a kind of sick weariness and disgust; a sort of dull nausea and shame, such as I imagine forms one of the penalties for the unfortunate sisterhood, of what is sardonically called the life of pleasure. Upon the whole, I am afraid there is a good deal in common between the political life and the life of the streets. Certainly, the camp followers in political warfare are a motley crew of mercenaries, and they take their tone from quite a number of their leaders.

It would be quite beside the mark to add that there are some fine men in British politics. There are, of course, in all professions, including (I dare say) that of burglary. There still are in the political arena gentlemen whose single aim, pursued with undeviating loftiness of purpose, is the service of their country. I will not pretend to think their number large, for I know it is not. (But I dare say it is larger than it will be a few years hence, when we have pursued a little farther the enlightened ideal of governance by the least fit for the least fit, by the most poorly equipped for the most poorly equipped, by the most ignorant and irresponsible for the most ignorant and irresponsible.) But the class of well-meaning, decent, clean-lived politicians is a fairly large one. As these worthy if unremarkable men have not a tithe of the brains of the most prominent among the quite unscrupulous sort--the undoubted birds of prey--their good intentions are of small value to their generation or their country, and represent little or nothing in the shape of hindrance to the skilled pirates of political waters.

But my personal concern was not so much with the rank and file of actual politicians as with the great army of camp followers; the band of fine, whole-souled, well-dressed, fluent fellows, for whom 'something must be done, you know,' because of this or that interest, because of the alleged wishes of this great person or the other; and because, above all, of their own quite wonderful pertinacity, untiring pushfulness, and, of course, their valuable services and great abilities as talkers, writers, 'organisers,' and what not.

I have known men who, for years, had found it worth not less than £800 or £1000 a year to them to have been spoken of by Mr. ----, Lord ----, or Sir ----, as 'an exceedingly capable organiser, and--er--devoted to the Cause.' No one ever knew precisely what they had organised (apart from their own comfortable subsistence in West End clubs and houses) or were to organise; but there they were, fine fellows all, tastefully dressed, in the best of health and spirits, and indefatigably fluent in--in--er--the service of the Cause, you know!

There was a period in which I fancied these parasites were the monopoly of one political party. But I soon learned that this was far from being the case. All the four parties which the twentieth century saw established in parliament are equally surrounded by their camp followers, who each differ from each other only superficially, and, not unseldom, transfer their allegiance in pursuit of fatter game. The differences do impress one at first, but, as I say, they are mainly superficial. All are equally self-centred and true to type as parasites; though one brood is better dressed than another, and has a more formidable appetite. What makes rich pickings for the follower of one camp would leave the follower of another camp lean and hungry indeed. But the necessary scale of expenditure being higher in one division than another, things equalise themselves pretty much. I believe it is much the same in the case of the other ancient profession I have mentioned.

I have seen quite a large number of promising young men, fresh from the Universities, and beginning life in London with high aspirations and genuine patriotism in their hearts, only to become gradually absorbed into the gigantic parasitical incubus of the body politic. The process of absorption was none the less saddening and embittering to watch, because its subjects usually waxed fatter and more apparently jovial with each stage in their gradual exchange of ideals for cash, patriotism for nepotism, enthusiasm for cynicism, and disinterestedness for toadyism. Some had in them the makings of very good and useful citizens. Their wives, so far as I was able to see, almost invariably (whether deliberately or unknowingly) egged them on in the downward path to complete surrender. As a rule, complete surrender meant less striving and contriving, a better establishment, and a freer use of hansom cabs in place of omnibuses. (I am thinking for the moment of the days which knew not taxi-cabs.)

When they were writers, a frequent sign of the beginning of their end (from my standpoint; of their success, from other standpoints, including, no doubt, those of their wives) was that they began to write of persons rather than principles; to eulogise rather than to exhort, criticise, and suggest. So surely as they began their written panegyrics of individuals, I found them laying aside the last remnants of their private hero-worship. Very soon after this stage they generally changed their clubs, becoming members of the most expensive of these establishments; and from that point on, their progress towards finished cynicism, fatty degeneration of the intellect, and smiling abandonment of all scruples, all ideals, and all modesty, was rapid and certain.

The inquiring student of such processes would perhaps have found banquets, luncheons, and public dinners of a more or less political colour his most prolific fields. Upon such occasions I always found the genus very strongly represented. In one camp the dress clothes of the followers would be of a better cut and more gracefully worn than in the other camp; and those of the better-dressed camp had more of assurance, more of brazen impudence, and more of hopelessly shallow cynicism, I think, than those of other divisions. In many cases, too, they had more of education; but, I fear, less of brains.

It was, I think, the contemplation of these gentlemen, even more perhaps than my saddening knowledge of their shifty, time-serving, shilly-shallying, or glaringly unscrupulous leaders and masters, that finally disgusted me with those branches of political work which were open to me. I have no wish to sit in judgment. Other and stronger men may find that they may keep the most evil sort of company without ever soiling their own hands. I know and very sincerely respect a few political journalists and workers of different parties, whose uprightness is beyond suspicion; whose fine enthusiasm remains untarnished, even to-day. I yield to none in my admiration for such men. But however much I admired, or even envied, it was not for me to emulate these gentlemen. I probably lacked the necessary strength of fibre.

Arncliffe was, as ever, very kindly when I showed him my feeling in the matter; and, so far as might be, he released me from all journalistic obligations of a political sort. But more, I was given a complimentary dinner. Speeches were made, and I was genuinely astonished by the length of the list of my avowed services to politics. It was affirmed that, under Providence, and Arncliffe, and one or two people with titles, I had been instrumental in starting movements, launching an organ of opinion, and bringing about all kinds of signs and portents. The occasion embarrassed me greatly.

It was true enough that, for a season, I had thrown myself heart and soul into the furtherance of certain political aims; and, in all honesty, I had worked very hard. And--heavens! how I was sick of the fluent humbugs, and the complacent parasites! If only they could have been dumb, and, in their writings, forbidden by law the use of all such words as 'patriotism,' I could have borne much longer with them.

London is our British centre, and your true parasite makes ever for the kernel. I have seen them treated with the gravest and most modest deference by working bees from outlying hives--the Oversea Dominions and the Services--as men who were supposed to be fighting the good fight, there in the hub, the heart, and centre of our House. And, listening to their complacent oozings, under the titillations of innocent flattery, I have turned aside for very shame, in my impatience, feeling that in truth the heart and centre were devoid of virtue, and that true patriotism was a thing only to be found (where it was never named) in unknown officers of either service, and obscure civilians engaged in working out their own and the Empire's destinies in its remote outposts, and upon the high seas.

And, impatient as that thought may have been, how infinitely better founded and less extravagant it was than the presumptuous arrogance of these gentlemen, who, by their way of it, were 'Bearing the heat and burden of the day, here in the busy heart of things--the historic metropolis of our race!'

VI

Upon three occasions only, in five times that number of years, did I meet Cynthia--Cynthia Barthrop; and those meetings, I need hardly say, were accidental.

The promise of Cynthia's youth was to all outward seeming amply fulfilled. As a matron she would have been notable in any company, by reason of her sedate beauty, and the dignity of her presence. But her manner suggested to me that her life had certainly not brought content to Cynthia; and I gathered from her brother Ernest that the radiant brightness of nature which had characterised her youth had not survived her assumption of wifely and maternal cares. Others might regard this change as part of a natural and inevitable process. In my eyes also it was inevitable and natural, but not as the result of the passage of time. For me it was the inevitable outcome of a marriage of convenience, which was not, for Cynthia, a natural mating. The key to the changed expression of her beautiful face, and, in particular, of her eloquent eyes, as I saw it, lay in the fact that she was unsatisfied; her life, so rich in bloom, had never reached fruition.

One letter I had written to Cynthia, within a few days of her marriage. And there had been no other communication between us. I trust that forgetfulness came more easily to her than to me.

My withdrawal from political work I connect with the death of Queen Victoria, the Coronation of King Edward, and the end of the South African War. From the same period--a time of the inception of radical, far-reaching change in England--I date also my final emergence from that phase of one's existence in which one is still thought of, by some people at all events, as a young man. The phase has a longer duration in our time, I think, than in previous generations, because we have done so much in the direction of abolishing middle age. Grey hairs were fairly plentiful with me well before the admitted end of this phase.

Those last years of the young man, the author and journalist of 'promise,' who was a 'coming man,' and, too, the maturer years which followed, ought, upon all material counts, to have been the happiest and most contented in my life; since, during this time, my position was an assured one, and I went scatheless as regards anxiety about ways and means--the burden which lines the foreheads of eight Londoners in ten, I think. Yes, by all the signs, these should have been my best and most contented years. As a fact, I do not think I touched content in a single hour of all that period.

What then was lacking in my life? It certainly lacked leisure. But the average modern man would say that this commonplace fact could hardly rob one of content. My income did not fall below from seven hundred to a thousand pounds in any year. In all this period, therefore, there was never a hint of the bitter, wolfish struggle for mere food and shelter which ruled my first years in London; neither was I ever obliged to live in squalid quarters. On the contrary, I lived comfortably, and had a good deal more of the sort of social intercourse which dining out furnishes than I desired. And, withal, though I knew much of keen effort, the stress of unremitting work, and, at times, considerable responsibility, I do not think I tasted content in one hour of all those long, crowded, respectable, and apparently prosperous years.

If one comes to that, could I honestly assert that in the years preceding these I had ever known content? I fear not. Elation, the sense of more or less successful striving, occasional triumphs--all these good things I had known. But content, peace, secure and restful satisfaction-- No, I could not truly say I had ever experienced these. Perhaps they have been rare among all the educated peoples of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; particularly, it may be, among those who, like myself, have been more or less freely admitted prospectors in the home territories of various classes of the community, without ever becoming a fully accredited and recognised member of any one among them.

I would like very much to comprehend fairly the reason of the barrenness, the failure to attain content or satisfaction, in all those years of my London life. And, for that reason, I linger over my review of them, I state the case as fully as I can. But do I explain it to myself? I fear not. Doubtless, some good people would tell me the secret lay in the apparent absence of definitely dogmatic religious influence in my life. Ah, well, there is that, of course. But it does not give me the explanation. Others would tell me the explanation could be given in one word--egoism; that there has been always too much ego in my cosmos. Yes, there is doubtless a great deal in that. And yet, goodness knows, mine has not been a self-indulgent life.

As I see it, there was a period in which I urgently desired to secure a safe foothold in London's literary and journalistic life. Material needs being moderately satisfied I happened, pretty blindly, into my marriage. That effectually shut out any possibility of content while it lasted, and added very materially to the inroads made by the previous struggling period upon my health. Later, came my strongest literary ambitions: a striving for achievement and success, and I suppose for fame, as author. And then the brief, tremendous struggle to win Cynthia for my wife. So far, naturally enough, there had been no content.

After the collapse of my attempt to win a mate, it seems to me that I became definitely middle-aged; though any outside observer of my life would probably have dated the serious beginnings of my career--the 'young man of undoubted promise,' etc.--from that time, since it was from then on that my position became more important. I directed the energies of others, was a leading editor's right hand man, initiated and controlled new departures, and commanded far more attention for my writings than ever before.

But--and here, it seems to me, lies the crux of the matter--in all this period the present moment of living never appealed to me in the least. I derived no suggestion of satisfaction or enjoyment from it. I was for ever striving, restlessly, uneasily, and to weariness, for something to be attained later on. And for what did I strive? Well, I know that the old ambitions in the direction of world-wide recognition as a literary master did not survive my return to Fleet Street, the landmark for me of Cynthia's marriage. Equally certain am I that I cherished no plan or desire to accumulate money and become rich. I had no desire to become a politician, or to obtain such a post as Arncliffe's. The desires of my youth were dead; the energies of my youth were dulled; the health and physical standard of my early manhood was greatly and for ever lowered. The enthusiasms of my youth had given place not to cynicism but to weary sadness. It was perhaps unfortunate for myself that I had no cynicism.

Very well. In other words, a disinterested observer might say: You became middle-aged--the common lot--and dyspeptic: the usual penalty of sedentary life. But there is a difference. If middle age brings to most, as no doubt it does, some failure of health and a notable attenuation of aims, desires, ambitions, and zest, does it not also bring some satisfaction in the present? I think so; at all events, where, as in my case, it brings the outward and material essentials of a moderate success in life. Now in my case, though the definite aims, the plans for the future, the desired goals, had merely ceased to exist, the present was Dead Sea fruit--null and void, a thing of nought. Just where does my poor personal equation enter in, and how far, I wonder, is all this typical of twentieth-century human experience, for us, the heirs of all the ages, with our wonderful enlightenment and progress? I wonder!

This, at all events, I think, is as near as I can come to explanation. Yet how very far short it falls of explaining, of furnishing me with the key which the making of this record was to provide!

However, the task shall not be shirked. At least, some matters have been made clearer. I will complete my record--if I can.

THE LAST STAGE

I

'What do you aim at in your life?' I said to Sidney Heron one night, when the first decade of the new century was drawing near its close. Heron had dined with me, and we had continued our talk in my rooms. It was a Saturday night, and therefore for me free of engagements.

'The end of it,' replied Heron, without a moment's hesitation.

'Ah! Nothing else? Nothing to come before the end?'

'Oh, well, to be precise, I suppose one does, in certain moods, cherish vague hopes of coming upon a--a way out, you know, some time before the end; time to compose one's mind decently before the prime adventure. Yes, one cherishes the notion vaguely; but I apprehend that realisation of it is only for such swells as you. I have sometimes known thrifty bursts, in which I have saved a little; but--a man doesn't buy estates out of my sort of work, you know. He's lucky if he can keep out-- Well, out of Fleet Street, say, saving your worship's presence.'

'Yes, yes; you've always done that, haven't you? A negative kind of ambition, perhaps, but----'

'Oh, naturally, you must pretend scorn for it, I see that,' said Heron.

'Not at all, my dear chap, not a bit of it. Indeed, I should be one of the last to scorn that particular aim. But I was wondering if you cherished any other. A "way out." Yes, there's something rather heart-stirring about the thought. I wonder if there is such a thing as a "way out." I forget the name of the Roman gentleman who hankered after a "way out." Once in a year or so he used to wake up, full of the conviction that he'd found it. Out came the family chariots, and off he would gallop across the Campagna to the hills beyond, where, no doubt, he had a villa of sorts, vineyards, and the rest of it. Here, in chaste seclusion, was his "way out": a glorious relief, the beginning of the great peace. And, a few weeks later, Rome would see his chariots dashing back again into the city, even harder driven than on the passage out. However, I suppose there is a "way out" somewhere for every one.'

'Well, I wouldn't say for every one,' said Heron thoughtfully. 'It doesn't matter how fast you drive, you can't get away from yourself, of course. The question of whether there is or is not a "way out" depends on what you want to get away from, and where you want to reach.'

It may be well enough to say with the poet: 'What so wild as words are?' But the fact remains that mere words, and the grouping of words, apart from their normal, everyday significance, have a notable influence upon the thoughts of some folk, and especially, I suppose, of writers. I know that Heron's careless 'way out' phrase occupied my mind greatly for many weeks after it was spoken.

'After all,' I sometimes asked myself, 'what has my whole life amounted to but an uneasy, restless, striving search for a "way out"? It has never been "to-day" with me, but always "to-morrow"; and the morrow has never come. Never for a moment have I thought: "This thing in my hand is what I want; this present Here and Now is what I desire. I will retain this, and so shall be content." No, my strivings--and I have been always striving--have been for something the future was to bring. And, behold, what was the future is more barren than the past; it is that thing which I seem incapable of valuing--the present. Is there a "way out" for me? Surely there must be. I certainly am no more fastidious than my neighbours, and indeed am much simpler in my tastes than most of them.'

And that was true. If I could lay claim to no other kind of progress, I could fairly say that I had cultivated simplicity in taste and appetite, and did in all honesty prefer simple ways. That otherwise abominable thing, my disabled digestive system, had perhaps influenced me in this direction. In days gone by, I should have said my most desired 'way out' would be the path to independent leisure for literary work. Now, if I desired anything, it was independent leisure, not for the production of immortal books, but for thinking; for the calm thought that should yield self-comprehension. Yes, I told myself, I hated the daily round of Fleet Street, with its never-slackening demand for the production of restrained moralising, polished twaddle, and non-committal, two-sided conclusions, or careful omissions, and one-eyed deductions. It was thus I thought of it, then.

'What you want is a holiday, my friend,' said Arncliffe, upon whose kindly heart and front of brass the beating of the waves of Time seemed powerless to develop the smallest fissure.

'You are right,' I thought. 'A holiday without an end is what I want. And, why not take it, instead of waiting till the other end comes, and shuts out all possibility of holidays, work, or thought? Why not?'

I began a reckoning up of my resources. But it was a perfunctory reckoning. The facts really did not greatly interest me. After all, had I not once calmly set up my establishment in the country, with a total capital of perhaps twenty pounds? Or, if one came to that, had I not cheerfully sallied forth into the world, armed only with a one-pound note? True, I told myself, with some bitterness, the youth had possessed many capabilities which the man lacked. Still, the reckoning did not greatly interest me. And, while I made it, my thoughts persistently reverted to Australian bush scenes; never, by the way, to my days of comparative prosperity in Sydney, but always to bush scenes: camp fires under vast and sombre red mahogany trees; lonely tracks in heavily timbered country; glimpses of towns like Dursley, seen from the rugged tops of high wooded ridges; little creeks, lisping over stones never touched by the feet of men or beasts; tiny clearings among the hills, where a spiral of blue smoke bespoke an open hearth and human care, though no sound disturbed the peaceful solitude save the hum of insects and the occasional cry of birds.

Now and again I would allow myself to compose a mental picture of some peaceful retreat upon the outskirts of a remote English village, where every stock and stone would have a history, and every inhabitant prove a repository of folklore and local tradition. From actual experience I still knew very little of rural England, though of late years I had done some exploring. But, vicariously, I had lived much in Wessex, East Anglia, the delectable Duchy, and other parts of the country, through the works of favourite writers. And so I did dream at times of an English retreat, but always such musings would end upon a note of scepticism. These parts were not far enough away to furnish anything so wonderful, so epoch-making, as my desired 'way out.' For persons of my temperament one of the commonest and most disastrous blunders of life is the tacit assumption that the thing easy of attainment and near at hand cannot possibly prove the thing one wants.

Gradually, then, the idea developed in my mind that the true solution of my problems lay in a working back upon my life's tracks. My thoughts wandered insistently to the northern half of the coast of New South Wales. Even now I could hardly say just how much of my retrospective vision was genuine recollection, and how much the glamour of youth. I tried to recall without sentiment the effects produced upon me, for example, by the climate of that undoubtedly favoured region. But I am not sure that my efforts gave results of any practical value. For practical purposes it is extremely difficult, in middle life, to form reliable estimates of the congeniality to one's self of any place to which one has been a stranger since youth. Recollections pitched in such a key as, 'How good one used to feel when--,' or,'How beautiful the country looked at ---- when one--,' are apt to be very misleading for a man of broken health and middle age; the one thing he cannot properly allow for being the radical change which has taken place in himself. I bore the name of the lad who tramped the roads from Myall Creek down to Dursley. In most other respects I was not now that person, but somebody else--a totally different somebody.

I could not very well talk of the plans which now took shape in my mind to Sidney Heron; because, in effect, he declined to discuss them.

'I think it would be a rather less reasonable step than suicide, and I have always declined to discuss suicide. One must see some glimmer of rationality in a project to be able to discuss it, and in this notion of yours I can see none, none whatever.'

A vague suspicion that others might be likely to share Heron's view prevented my seeking the counsel of my few friends; and also, I fear, tended rather to strengthen my inclinations to go my own way. The more I thought upon it, the more determined I became to cut completely adrift from my present life; to find a way of escaping all its insistent calls; to get far enough away from my life (so to say) to be able calmly and thoughtfully to observe it, and seek to understand it. I did not admit this, but I suppose my real aim was to escape from myself.

'Your lease is not a long one, in any case,' I told myself. 'While yet you have the chance cease to be a machine, and begin to live as a rational, reasoning creature. Be done with your petty striving after ends you have forgotten, or cannot see, or care nothing for. Get out into the open, and live, and think!'

I do not quite know the basis of my conviction that I should never make old bones, as the saying goes. The life assurance offices certainly shared this view, for they would have none of me. (I had long since thought of taking out what is called a double endowment policy.) My father died at an early age, and I had known good health hardly at all since my first two years in London. The doctor who had last examined me showed that he thought poorly of my heart; and, indeed, experience had taught me that prolonged gastric disorder is calculated to affect injuriously most organs of the human anatomy. But the thinking and planning with regard to a radical change in my life had given me a certain interest in living, and that had acted beneficially upon my health; so that, for the time being, I felt better than for a long while past.

While this fact gave a certain air of unreality to the resignation, on the grounds of ill-health, from my appointment as a member of Arncliffe's staff, it did not in the least affect my weariness of Fleet Street and all its works, or my determination to be done with them. The circle of my intimates was so very small that the task of explaining my intentions was not a formidable one, nor even one which I felt called upon to perform with any particular thoroughness. I proposed to take a voyage for the good of my health, and did not know precisely when I should return. That I deemed sufficient for most of those to whom anything at all needed to be said.

II

There was something strange, a dream-like want of reality, about my final departure from England, after five-and-twenty years of working life in London. I am not likely to forget any incident of it; but yet the whole experience, both at the time and now, seemed (and seems) to be shrouded in a kind of mist, a by no means disagreeable haze of unreality, which in a measure numbed all my senses. More than ever before I seemed to be, not so much living through an experience, as observing it from a detached standpoint.

Investigation of my resources showed that I had accumulated some means during the past dozen years of simple living and incessant work, not ill-paid. I had just upon two thousand pounds invested, and between one and two hundred pounds lying to my credit at call, I told myself that living alone and simply in the bush, a hundred pounds in the year would easily cover all my expenses. That I had anything like twenty years of life before me was a supposition which I could not entertain for one moment. And, therefore, I told myself again and again, with curious insistence, there really was no reason why I need ever again work for money, or waste one moment over petty anxiety regarding ways and means. That was a very great boon, I told myself; the greatest of all boons, and better fortune than in recent years I had dared to hope would be mine. And, puzzled by the coldness with which my inner mind responded to these assurances, I would reiterate them, watching my mind the while, and almost angered by the absence of elation and enthusiasm which I observed there.

'You have not properly realised as yet what it means, my friend,' I murmured to myself as I walked slowly through city alley-ways, after booking my passage to Sydney in a steam ship of perhaps seven times the tonnage of the old _Ariadne_ of my boyhood's journey to Australia. 'But it is the biggest thing you have ever known. You will begin to realise it presently. You are free. Do you hear? An absolutely free man. You need never write another line unless you wish it, and then you may write precisely what you think, no more, no less. You are going right away from this howling cockpit, and never need set foot in it again. You are going to a beautiful climate, a free life in the open, with no vestige of sham or pretence about it, and long, secure leisure to reflect, to think, to muse, to read, to do precisely what you desire to do, and nothing else. You are free--free! Do you hear, you tired hack? Too tired to prick your ears, eh? Ah, well, wait till you've been a week or two at sea!'

Very quietly I addressed my sluggish and jaded self in this wise. Yet more than one hurried walker in the city ways looked curiously at me, as I passed along, with a wondering scrutiny which amused me a good deal. 'Too tired to prick your ears.' The suggestion came from the contemptuously self-commiserating thought that I was rather like a worn-out 'bus horse, to whom some benevolent minor Providence was offering the freedom of a fine grazing paddock. 'You're too much galled and spavined, you poor devil, to be moved by verbal assurances. Wait till you scent the breezy upland, and your feet feel the turf. You'll know better what it all means then.'

I had entertained vague notions of a little farewell feast which I would give to Heron, and, possibly, to one or two other friends. But from the reality of such convivial enterprise I shrank, when the time came, preferring to adopt, even to Heron, the attitude of a traveller who would presently return. And when, as the event proved, I found myself the guest of honour at a dinner presided over by Arncliffe, my embarrassment pierced through all sense of unreality and caused me acute discomfort.

It is odd that I, who always have been foolishly sensitive to blame (from professed critics and others), should shrink so painfully from spoken praise or formal tribute of any kind. It makes my skin hot even to recall the one or two such episodes I have faced. The wretched inability to think where to dispose of one's hands and gaze during the genial delivery of after-dinner encomiums; the distressing difficulty of replying! Upon the whole, I think I was better at receiving punishment. But it is true, the latter one received in privacy, and was under no obligation to answer; since replying to printed criticisms was never a folly I indulged.

On the eve of my departure from London I did a curious and perhaps foolish thing, on the spur of a moment's impulse. I hailed a cab, and drove to Cynthia's house in Sloane Street. Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Barthrop were at home, and alone, the servant told me; and in another few moments I was shaking hands with them. Naturally, they called my visit an unexpected pleasure. It was, in fact, not a very pleasurable quarter of an hour for either one of us. For years I had known nothing of their interests, or they of mine. Our talk was necessarily shallow, and I dare say Cynthia, no less than her husband, was glad when I rose to take my leave. The sweet, clear candour of her face had given place, I thought, to something not wholly unlike querulousness. But, I had one glance from her eyes, as she took my hand, which seemed to me to say:

'God speed! I understand.'

It may have meant nothing, but I like to think it meant understanding.

From Cynthia's house I went on to Heron's lodging, for I had a horror of being 'seen off,' and wished to bid my friend good-bye in his own rooms. Our talk was constrained, I remember. The stress of my uprooting affected me far more than I knew at the time. Heron regarded my going with grave disapproval as a crazy step. He regretted it, too; and such feelings always tended to exaggerate his tendency to taciturnity, or to a harsh, sardonic vein in speech.

As his way was in such a matter, Heron calmly ignored my stipulation about being 'seen off,' and he was standing beside the curb when I stepped out of my cab at Fenchurch Street Station next morning. There was nearly half an hour to spare, we found, before the boat train started.

'The correct thing would be a stirrup-cup,' growled Heron.

'The very thing,' I said; conversation in such a place, and in such circumstances, proving quite impossible for me. By an odd chance I recalled my first experiences upon arrival at this same mean and dolorous station, more than twenty years previously. 'We will go to the house in which the "genelmun orduder bawth,"' I said, and led Heron across into the Blue Boar.

The forced jocularity of these occasions is apt to be a pitifully wooden business, and I suppose it was a relief to us both when my train began slowly to move.

'By the way--I had forgotten,' said Heron, very gruffly. 'Take this trifle with you-- May be of some use. Good-bye! Look me up as soon as you get back. I give you a year--or nearly.'

He waved his hand jerkily, and was gone. He had given me the silver cigarette-case which he had used for all the years of our acquaintance. It bore his initials in one corner, and under these I now saw engraved: 'To N. F., 1890-1910.' I do not recall any small incident that impressed me more than this.

I still moved through a mist. The voices of my travelling companions seemed oddly small and remote. I felt as though encased and insulated, in some curious way, from the everyday life about me. And this mood possessed me all through that day. Through all the customary bustle of an ocean liner's departure, I moved slowly, silently, aloofly, as a somnambulist. It was a singular outsetting, this start upon my 'way out.'

III

In ordinary times my thrifty instinct might have led me to travel in the second class division of the great steamer. But it had happened that the sum I set aside to cover my travelling expenses proved more than ample. Several small unreckoned additions had been made to it during my last month in England; and the upshot was that I decided to travel by first saloon, and even to indulge myself in the added luxury of a single-berth, upper-deck cabin. For me privacy had for long been one of the few luxuries I really did value. Heron had mildly satirised my sybaritic plans as representing an ingenious preparation for hut life in the Australian bush, but I had claimed that comfort and privacy on the passage would give me a deserved holiday, and help put me into good form for my fresh start oversea. I am not sure which view was the more correct.

At all events I certainly was very comfortably placed on board the _Oronta_. My books I had deliberately packed in boxes marked 'Not wanted on voyage.' There was not so much as a sheet of manuscript paper among my cabin luggage. Beyond an odd letter or two for postage at ports of call, and any casual browsing in the ship's library to which I might feel impelled in my idleness, I was prepared to give no thought to reading or writing for the present; since for five-and-twenty years I had been giving practically all my days and half my nights to these pursuits as a working man of letters.

I had amused myself of late with elaborate anticipations of the delights of idleness during this passage to Australia. My ideas of sea travel were really culled from recollections of life on a full rigged clipper ship--not a steamboat. (The homeward passage from Australia had hardly been sea-travel in the ordinary sense for me, but rather six weeks of clerking in an office.) In my anticipations of the present journey, the dominant impressions had been based upon memories of the spotless cleanliness, endless leisure, and primitive simplicity of the old time sailing ship life. I do not mean that I had thought I should trot about the decks of the _Oronta_ bare-footed, as I and my childish companions had done aboard the _Ariadne_; but I do mean that the atmosphere of the _Ariadne_ life had coloured all my thoughts of what the present trip would be for me.

And that, of course, was a mistake. The smoothly ordered life of the _Oronta's_ saloon passengers was very much that of a first-class seaside hotel, say in Bournemouth. So far from sprawling upon the snowy deck of a forecastle-head, to watch the phosphorescent lights in the water under our ship's bow, saloon passengers on board the _Oronta_ were not expected ever to intrude upon the forward deck--the ship had no forecastle-head--which was reserved for the uses of the crew. Also, in the conventional black and white of society's evening uniform for men, I suppose one does not exactly sprawl on decks, even where these are spotless, as they never are on board a steamship.

The pleasant race of sailor men, of shell-backs, such as those who swung the yards and tallied on to the halliards of the _Ariadne_, may or may not have become extinct, and given place to a breed of sea-going mechanics, who protect their feet by means of rubber boots when washing decks down in the morning. In any case, I met none of the old salted variety among the _Oronta's_ multitudinous crew. For me there was here no sitting on painted spars, or tarry hatch-covers, or rusty anchor-stocks, and listening to long, rambling 'yarns,' or 'cuffers,' in idle dog-watches or restful night-watches, when the southern Trades blew steadily, and the braces hung untouched upon their pins for a week on end. No, in the second dog-watch here, one took a solemn constitutional preparatory to dressing for dinner; and in the first night-watch one smoked and listened willy-nilly to polite small talk, and (from the ship's orchestra) the latest and most criminal products of New York's musical genius. I never heard or saw the process of relieving wheel or look-out aboard the _Oronta_, and long before the beginning of the middle watch I had usually switched off for the night the electric reading-lamp over my pillow.

The fact is, of course, that I had never had any kind of training for such a life as that in which I now found myself. I will not pretend to regret that, for, to be frank, it is a vapid, foolish, empty life enough. But there it was; one could not well evade it, and I had had no previous experience of anything at all like it. The most popular breakfast-hour was something after nine. Beef-tea, ices, and suchlike aids to indigestion were partaken of a couple of hours later. Luncheon was a substantial dinner. The four o'clock tea was quite a meal for most passengers. Caviare and anchovy sandwiches were the rule in the half hour preceding dinner, which was, of course, a serious function. But ours was a valiant company, and supper was a seventh meal achieved by many. The orchestra seemed never far away; games were numerous (here again I had hopelessly neglected my education), and at night there were concerts, impromptu dances, and balls that were far from being impromptu.

It is, I fear, a confession of natural perversity, but by the time we reached the Mediterranean I was exceedingly restless, and inclined to nervous depression.

I welcomed the various ports of call, and was properly ashamed of the unsocial irritability which made me resent the feeling of being made one of a chattering, laughing, high-spirited horde of tourists, whose descent upon a foreign port seriously damaged whatever charm or interest it might possess. At least the trading residents of these ports were far more sensible than I, their preference undoubtedly causing them to welcome the wielders of camera and guide-book in the vein of 'the more the merrier.'

It was in Naples, outside the Villa Nazionale, that it fell to me to rescue the elegant young widow, Mrs. Oldcastle, from the embarrassing attentions of a cabman, whose acquaintances were already rallying about him in great force. So far as speech went, my command of Italian was not very much better than Mrs. Oldcastle's perhaps; but at least I had a pocketful of Italian silver, while she, poor lady, had only English money. The cabman was grossly overpaid, of course, but the main point was I silenced him. And then, her flushed cheeks testifying to her embarrassment, Mrs. Oldcastle turned towards the gardens, and, in common courtesy, I walked with her to ascertain if I could be of any further service. The upshot was that we strolled for some time, took tea in the Café Umberto, walked through the Museo, visited one of the city's innumerable glove-shops, and finally, still together, drove back to the port and rejoined the _Oronta_.

As fellow-passengers we had up till this time merely exchanged casual salutations, Mrs. Oldcastle being one of the three who shared the particular table in the saloon at which I sat. No one else of her name appeared in the passenger list, in which I had already read the line: 'Mrs. Oldcastle and maid.' I imagined her age to be still something in the earliest thirties, and I had been informed by some obliging gossip that she was English by birth; that she had married an Australian squatter, who had died during the past year or so; that her permanent home was in England, but that she was just now paying a visit to the Commonwealth upon some business connected with her late husband's estates there.

'You have been most kind, Mr. Freydon,' she said, as we stepped from the gangway to the steamer's deck. 'I was in a dreadful muddle by myself, and now, thanks to you, I have really enjoyed my afternoon in Naples. Believe me, I am grateful. And,' she added, with a faint blush, 'I shall now find even greater interest than before in your books. Au revoir!'

So she disappeared, by way of the saloon companion, while I took a turn along the deck to smoke a cigarette. Naturally I had not mentioned my books or profession, and I thought it an odd chance that she should know them. She certainly had been a most agreeable companion, and----

'There's no doubt that life in any other country, no matter where, does seem to enlarge the sympathies of English people,' I told myself. 'It tends to mitigate the severity of their attitude towards the narrower conventions. If this had been her first journey out of England she might have accepted my help in the matter of the cabman, but would almost certainly have felt called upon to reject my company from that on. Instead of which-- H'm! Well, upon my word, I have enjoyed the day far more than I should have done alone. She certainly is very bright and intelligent.'

And I nodded and smiled to myself, recalling some of her comments upon certain figures in the marble gallery of the Museo that afternoon. There was nothing in the least inane or parrot-like about her conversation. I experienced a more genial and friendly feeling than had been mine till then toward the whole of my fellow-passengers.

'After all,' I told myself, 'this forming of hasty impressions of people, from snatches of their talk and mannerisms and so forth, is both misleading and uncharitable. Here have I been sitting at table for a week, and, upon my word, I had no idea that any one among her sex on board had half so much intelligence as she had shown in these few hours away from the crowd. The crowd--that's it. It's misleading to observe folk in the mass, and in the confinement of a ship.'

The passengers' quarters on an ocean liner are fully equal to the residences in a cathedral close as forcing beds of gossip and scandal. Thus, before we reached the Indian Ocean, I was aware that the gossips had so far condescended as to link my name with that of one whom I certainly rated as the most attractive of her sex on board. Indeed, it was Mrs. Oldcastle herself who drew my attention to this, with a little _moue_ of contempt and disgust.

'Really, people on board ship are too despicable in this matter of gossip,' she said. 'It would seem that they are literally incapable of evolving any other topic than the doings, or supposed doings, of those about them. And the men seem to me just as bad as the women.'

IV

Naturally, the fact that various idle people chose to use my name in their gossip in no sense disturbed my peace of mind. Neither had I any particular occasion to regret it, for Mrs. Oldcastle's sake, since I fancy that independent and high-spirited little lady took a mischievous pleasure in spurring the rather sluggish imaginations of those about her. I found a hint of this in her demeanour occasionally, and could imagine her saying, as she mentally addressed her fellow-passengers:

'There! Here's a choice crumb for you, you silly chatterers!'

With some such thought, I am assured, she occasionally took my arm when we chanced to pace the deck late in the evening. At least, I noted that such actions on her part came frequently when we happened to pass a group of lady passengers in the full glare of an electric lamp, and rarely when we were unobserved.

There is doubtless a certain forceful magic about the combined influences of propinquity and sea air, as these are enjoyed by the idle passengers upon a great ocean liner. They do, I think, tend to advance intimacy and accelerate the various stages of intercourse leading thereto, and therefrom, as nothing else does; more particularly as affecting the relations between men and women. Whilst unlike myself (as in most other respects) in that her social instincts were I am sure well developed, it happened that Mrs. Oldcastle did not feel much more drawn toward the majority of her fellow-passengers than I did. By a more remarkable coincidence, it chanced that she had read and been interested by several of my books. From such a starting-point, then, it followed almost inevitably that we walked the decks together, and sat and talked together a great deal; these being the normal daily occupations of people so situated, if not indeed the only available occupations for those not given over to such delights as deck quoits.

I am very sure that Mrs. Oldcastle was never what is called a flirt, and I believe the general tone of our conversations was sufficiently rational. Yet I will not deny that there were times--on the balcony of the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo, and on the _Oronta's_ promenade deck by moonlight--when my attitude towards this charming lady was definitely tinged by sentiment. Withal, I doubt if any raw boy could have been more shy, in some respects, than I; for I was most sensitively conscious during this time of the fact that I was a very unsocial, middle-aged man, of indifferent health, and, for that reason, unattractive appearance. Whereas, Mrs. Oldcastle had all the charms of the best type of 'the woman of thirty,' including the evident enjoyment of that sort of health which is the only real preservative of youth. Being by habit a lonely and self-conscious creature, I had even more than the average Englishman's horror of making myself ridiculous.

We were off the coast of south-western Australia when I sat down in my cabin one morning for the purpose of seriously reviewing my position, with special reference to recent conversations with Mrs. Oldcastle. Certain things I laid down as premises which could not be questioned; as, for example, that I found this gracious little lady (Mrs. Oldcastle was petite and softly rounded in figure; I am tall and inclined in these days to a stooping, scraggy kind of gauntness) a most delightful companion, admirably well-informed, vivacious, and unusually gifted in the matter of deductive powers and the sense of humour. Also, that (whatever the ship's chatterboxes might say) there had been nothing in the faintest degree compromising in our relations so far.

From such premises I began to argue with myself upon the question of marriage. It is not very easy to get these things down in black and white. I was perfectly sure that Mrs. Oldcastle was heartwhole. And yet, absurdly presumptuous as it must look when I write it, I was equally sure that it would be possible for me to woo and win her. It may seem odd, but this charming woman did really enjoy my society. She liked talking with me. She found my understanding of her ready and sympathetic, and--what doubtless appealed to both of us--she found that talk with me had a rather stimulating effect upon her; that it drew out, in combating my point of view, the best of her excellent qualities. Using large words for lesser things, she laughingly asserted that I inspired her; and she added that I was the only person she knew who never bored or wearied her. Yes, no matter how awkward the written words may look, I know I was convinced that, if I should set myself to do it, I could woo and win this charming woman, whose first name, by the way, I did not then know.

I did not know Mrs. Oldcastle's precise circumstances, of course, but there were many ways in which I gathered that she was rather rich than poor. A young Australian among the passengers volunteered to me the information that this lady had been the sole legatee of her late husband, who had owned stations in South Australia and in Queensland certainly worth some hundreds of thousands of pounds. Few men could be less attracted than myself by a prospect of controlling a large fortune or extensive properties. But, as against that, whilst marriage with any one possessed of no means would have been mere folly for me, the possession of ample means would remove the most obvious barriers between myself and matrimony.

It was passing strange, I thought, that a woman at once so charming and so rich should be travelling alone, and, so far from being surrounded by a court of admirers, content to make such a man as myself almost her sole companion. Mrs. Oldcastle had a mind at once nimble and delicate, sensitive, and quite remarkably quick to seize impressions, and to arrive at (mostly accurate) conclusions. She had a vein of gentle satire, of kindly and withal truly humorous irony, most rare I think in women, and quite delightful in a companion. I learned that her father (now dead) had been the secretary of one of the learned societies in London, and a writer of no mean reputation on archæology and kindred subjects. Her surviving relatives were few in number, of small means, and resident, I gathered, in the west of England. I had told her a good deal about my London life, and of the circumstances and plans leading up to my present journey. Her comment was:

'I think I understand perfectly, I am sure I sympathise heartily, and--I give you one more year than your friend, Mr. Heron, allowed. I prophesy that you will return to London within two years.'

'But, just why?' I asked. 'For what reasons will my attempted "way out" prove no more than a way back?'

'Well, I am not sure that I can explain that. No, I don't think I can. It may prove a good deal more than that, and yet take you back to London within a couple of years. Though I cannot explain, I am sure. It is not only that you have been a sedentary man all these years. You have also been a thinker. You think intellectual society is of no moment to you. Well, you are very tired, you see. Also, bear this in mind: in the Old World, even for a man who lives alone on a mountain-top, there is more of intellectuality--in the very atmosphere, in the buildings and roads, the hedges and the ditches--than the best cities of the New World have to offer. I suppose it is a matter of tradition and association. The endeavours of the New World are material; a proportion at least of the Old World's efforts are abstract and ideal. You will see. I give you two years, or nearly. And I don't think for a moment it will be wasted time.'

Sometimes our talk was far more suggestive of the intercourse between two men, fellow-workers even, than that of a man and a woman. Never, I think, was it very suggestive of what it really was: conversation between a middle-aged, and, upon the whole, broken man, and a woman young, beautiful, wealthy, and unattached. Love, in the passionate, youthful sense, was not for me, of course, and never again could be. I think I was free from illusions on that point. But I believed I might be a tolerable companion for such a woman as Mrs. Oldcastle, and I felt that her companionship would be a thing very delightful to me. After all, she had presumably had her love affair, and was now a fully matured woman. Why then should I not definitely lay aside my plans--which even unconventional Sidney Heron thought fantastic--and ask this altogether charming woman to be my wife? Though I could never play the passionate lover, my æsthetic sense was far from unconscious or unappreciative of all her purely womanly charm, her grace and beauty of person, as apart from her delightful mental qualities.

I mused over the question through an entire morning, and when the luncheon bugle sounded had arrived at no definite conclusion regarding it.

That afternoon it happened that, as I sat chatting with Mrs. Oldcastle---we were now in full view of the Australian coast, a rather monotonous though moving picture which was occupying the attention of most passengers--our conversation turned upon the age question; how youth was ended in the twentieth year for some people, whilst with others it was prolonged into the thirtieth and even the fortieth year; and, in the case of others again, seemed to last all their lives long. Mrs. Oldcastle had a friend in London who had placidly adopted middle age in her twenty-fifth year; and we agreed that a white-haired, rubicund gentleman of fully sixty years, then engaged in winning a quoits tournament before our eyes, seemed possessed of the gift of unending youth.

'You know, I really feel quite strongly on the point,' said Mrs. Oldcastle. 'My friend, Betty Millen, has positively made herself a frump at five-and-twenty. We practically quarrelled over it. I don't think people have any right to do that sort of thing. It is not fair to their friends. Seriously, I do regard it as an actual duty for every one to cherish and preserve her youth.'

'And _his_ youth, too?' I asked.

'Certainly, I think there is even less excuse for men who go out half-way to meet middle-age. That sort of middle-age really is a kind of slow dying. Age is a sort of gradual, piecemeal death, after all. It can be fended off, and ought to be. Men have more active and interesting lives than women, as a rule; and so have the less excuse for allowing age to creep upon them.'

'But surely, in a general way, the poor fellows cannot help it?'

'Oh, I don't agree. I have known men old enough to be my father, so far as years go, who were splendidly youthful. The older a man is, within limits of course, the more interesting he should be, and is, unless he has weakly allowed age to benumb him before his time. Then he becomes merely depressing, a kind of drag and lowering influence upon his friends; and, too, a horridly ageing influence upon them.'

I nodded, musing, none too cheerily.

'After all,' she continued vivaciously, 'science has done such a lot for us of late. Practically every one can keep bodily young and fit. It only means taking a little trouble. And the rest, I think, is just a question of will-power and mental hygiene. No, I have no patience with people who grow old; unless, of course, they really are very old in years. I think it argues either stupidity or a kind of profligacy--mental, nervous, and emotional, I mean--and in either case it is very unfair to those about them, for there is nothing so horribly contagious.'

I have sometimes wondered if Mrs. Oldcastle had any deliberate purpose in this conversation. Upon the whole, I think not. I remember distinctly that the responsibility for introducing the subject was mine. She might have been covertly instructing me for my own benefit, but I doubt it, I doubt it. My faults of melancholy and unrestfulness had not appeared, I think, in my intercourse with Mrs. Oldcastle, so cheery and enlivening was her influence. No, I think these really were her views, and that she aired them purely conversationally, and without design or afterthought, however kindly. Her own youth she had most admirably conserved, and in a manner which showed real force of character and self-control; for, as I now know, she had had some trying and wearing experiences, though her air and manner were those of a woman young and high-spirited, who had never known a care. As a fact she had known what it was, for three years, to fight against the horrid advance of what was practically a disease, and a terrible one, in her late husband, the chief cause of whose death was alcoholic poisoning.

But, though I am almost sure that this particular conversation was in no sense part of a design or meant to influence me in my relations with her, yet it did, as a matter of fact, serve to put a period to my musings, and bring me to a definite decision, which it may be had considerable importance for both of us. Within forty-eight hours Mrs. Oldcastle was to leave the _Oronta_, her destination being the South Australian capital. That I had become none too sure of myself in her company is proved by the fact that when I left her that evening, it was with mention of a pretended headache and chill. I kept my cabin next day, and before noon on the day following that we were due at Port Adelaide. Mrs. Oldcastle expressed kindly sympathy in the matter of my supposed indisposition, and that rather upset me. I could see that my non-appearance during her last full day on board puzzled her, and I was not prepared to part from her upon a pretence.

'Why, the fact is,' I said, 'I don't think I can accept your sympathy, because I had no headache or chill. I was a little moody--somewhat middle-aged, you know; and wanted to be alone, and think.'

'I see,' she said thoughtfully, and rather wonderingly.

'I don't very much think you do,' I told her, not very politely. 'And I'm not sure that I can explain--even if it were wise to try. I think, if you don't mind, I'll just say this much: that I greatly value your friendship, and want to retain it, if I can. It seemed to me better to have a headache yesterday, in case--in case I might have done anything to risk losing your friendship.'

'Oh! Well, I do not think you are likely to lose it, for I--I am as much interested as you can be in preserving it. I want you to write to me. Will you? And I will write to you when you have found your hermitage and can give me an address. I will give you my agent's address in Adelaide, and my own address in London, where I shall expect a call from you within two years. No, you wall not find it so easy to lose touch with me, my friend; nor would you if--if you had not had your headache yesterday.'

Upon that she left me to prepare for going ashore. I think we understood each other very well then. After that we had no more than a minute together for private talk. During that minute I do not think I said anything except 'Good-bye!' But I very well remember some words Mrs. Oldcastle said.

'You are not to forget me, if you please. Remember, I am not so dull but what I can understand--some headaches. But they must not be accompanied by "moody middle-age." Do please remember when the hermitage palls that it may be left just as easily as it was found. And then, apart from Mr. Heron and others, there will be a friend waiting to see you in London, and--and wanting to see you.... That's my agent, the man with the green-lined umbrella. Good-bye--friend!'

V

The _Oronta_ was a dull ship for me once she had passed Adelaide; duller even than in the grey days between Tilbury and Naples. Adelaide passed, an Australian-bound liner seems to have reached the end of her outward passage, and yet it is not over. The remainder, for Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane-bound folk, is apt to be a weariness, even as a train journey is, with passengers coming and going and trunks and boxes much in evidence.

I had lost my friend, though I had called this my method of retaining her friendship; and rightly, I dare say. To be worthy of her a man should have left in him ten times my vitality, I thought; he should be one who looked forward rather than back; he should bring to their joint wayfaring a far keener zest for life than my years in our modern Grub Street had left me. How vapid was the talk of my remaining fellow-passengers; how slow of understanding, and how preoccupied with petty things they seemed! They discussed their luggage, and questions regarding the proper amounts for stewards' tips. Had not some traveller called Adelaide Australia's city of culture? It seemed a pleasant town. The Mount Lofty country near by was beautiful, I gathered. It might well have been better for me to have left the ship there. My musings were in this sort; somewhat lacking, perhaps, in the zest and cheerfulness which should pertain to a new departure in life.

I spent a few days in Sydney, chiefly given to walks through the city and suburbs. There was a certain interest, I found, to be derived from the noting of all the changes which a quarter of a century had wrought in this antipodean Venice. Some of the alterations I noticed were possibly no more than reflections of the changes time had wrought in myself; for these--the modifications which lie between ambitious youth and that sort of damaged middle-age which carries your dyspeptic farther from his youth than ever his three score years and ten take the hale man--had been radical and thorough with me. But, none the less, Sydney's actual changes were sufficiently remarkable.

At the spot whereon I made my entry into society (as I thought), in the studio of Mr. Rawlence, the artist, stood now an imposing red building of many storeys, given over, I gathered, to doctors and dentists. The artist, I thought, was probably gathered to his fathers ere this, as my old fellow-lodger, Mr. Smith, most certainly must have been. Mr. Foster, the editor of the _Chronicle_, had died some years previously. The offices and premises of Messrs. J. Canning and Son, my first employers in Sydney, were as though I had left them but yesterday, unchanged in any single respect. But the head of the firm, as I had known him, was no more; and his son, of whom I caught one glimpse on the stairway, had grown elderly, grey, and quite surprisingly stout.

There was some interest for me in prowling about the haunts of my youth; but to be honest, I must admit there was no pleasure, even of the mildly melancholy kind. However beautiful their surroundings, no New World cities are in themselves beautiful or picturesque. That which is new in them is--new, and well enough; and that which is not new or newish is apt to be rather shabby than venerable. I apprehend that Old World cities would be quite intolerably shabby and tumble-down but for the fact that, when they were built, joint stock companies were unknown, and men still took real pride in the durability of their work. We have made wondrous progress, of course, and are vastly cleverer than our forbears; but for the bulk of the work of our hands, there is not very much to be said when its newness has worn off.

I thought seriously for an hour or more of going to Dursley to visit its Omniferacious Agent, and, more particularly, perhaps to see his wife; possibly even to settle in the neighbourhood of that pretty little town. Then I reckoned up the years, and decided against this step. The Omnigerentual One would be an old man, if alive; and his wife--I recalled her fragile figure and hopeless invalidism, and thought I would sooner cherish my recollections of five-and-twenty years than put them to the test of inquiry.

On the fourth or fifth day I drove with my bags to the handsome new railway station which had taken the place of the rambling old Redfern terminal I remembered, and took train for the north. I found I had no wish, at present, to visit Werrina, Myall Creek, or Livorno Bay, and my journey came to an end a full fifty miles south of St. Peter's Orphanage. Here, within five miles of the substantial township of Peterborough, I came, with great ease, upon the very sort of place I had in mind: a tiny cottage of two rooms, with a good deep verandah before, and a little lean-to kitchen, or, in the local phrase, skillion, behind; two rough slab sheds, a few fruit trees past their prime, an acre of paddock, and beyond that illimitable bush.

I bought the tiny place for a hundred and five pounds, influenced thereto in part by the fact that the daughter of its owner, a small 'cockatoo' farmer's wife, lived no more than a quarter of a mile away; and was willing, for a modest consideration, to come in each day and 'do' for me, to the extent of cooking one hot meal, washing dishes, and tidying my little gunyah. Thus, simply and swiftly, I became a landed proprietor, and was able to send to Sydney for my heavy chattels, knowing that, for the first time in my life, I actually possessed in my own right a roof to shelter them withal, though it were only of galvanised iron. (The use of stringy bark for the roofing of small dwellings seemed to have ceased since my last sojourn in these parts, the practical value of iron for rain-water catchment having thrust aside the cooler and more picturesque material.)

In the township of Peterborough I secured, for the time being, the services of a decent, elderly man named Fetch--Isaiah Fetch--and together we set to work to make a garden before my little house; to fence it in against the attacks of bandicoots and wandering cattle, and to effect one or two small repairs, additions and improvements to the place. This manual work interested me, and, I dare say, bettered my health, though I was ashamed to note the poor staying power I had as compared with Isaiah Fetch, who, whilst fully ten years my senior, was greatly my superior in toughness and endurance.

VI

Wages for labour had soared and soared again since my day in Australia, even for elderly and 'down-along more than up-along 'men like Isaiah Fetch. (The phrase is his own.) And, in any case, I told myself, it was not for the likes of me to keep hired men. And so, when the garden was made, and the other needed work done, I parted with Isaiah--a good, honest, homespun creature, rich in a sort of bovine contentment which often moved me to sincere envy--and was left quite alone in my hermitage, save for the morning visit of perhaps a couple of hours, which the worthy Mrs. Blades undertook to pay for the purpose of tidying my rooms and cooking a midday meal for me. Her coming between nine and ten each morning, and going between twelve and one, formed the chief, if not the only, landmarks in the routine of my quiet days. So it was when I parted with Isaiah. So it is to-day, and so it is like to remain--while I remain.

Parting with Isaiah Fetch made a good deal of difference to me; more difference than I should have supposed it possible that anything connected with so simple a soul could have made. The plain fact is, I suppose, that while Isaiah worked about the place here, I worked with him, in my pottering way. I developed quite an interest in my bit of garden, because of the very genuine interest felt in the making of it by Isaiah. I had worked at it with him; but, once he had left it, I regret to say the ordered ranks of young vegetables tempted me but little, and soon became disordered, for the reason that the war I waged against the weeds was but a poor, half-hearted affair. And so it was with other good works we had begun together. I gave up my cow, because it seemed far simpler to let Mrs. Blades have her for nothing, on the understanding that she brought me the daily trifle of milk I needed. I left the feeding and care of my few fowls to Mrs. Blades, and finally made her a present of them, after paying several bills for their pollard and grain. It seemed easier and cheaper to let Mrs. Blades supply the few eggs I needed.

My horse Punch I kept, because we grew fond of each other, and the surrounding bush afforded ample grazing for him. When Punch began his habit of gently biting my arm or shoulder every time I led him here or there, he sealed his own fate; and now will have to continue living with his tamely uninteresting master willy nilly. Lovable, kindly, spirited beast that he is, I never could have afforded the purchase of his like but for a slight flaw in his near foreleg, which in some way spoils his action, from your horsey man's standpoint, and pleases me greatly, because it brought the affectionate rascal within my modest reach. I give him very little work, and rather too much food; but he has to put up with a good deal of my society, and holds long converse with me daily, I suppose because he knows no means of terminating an interview until that is my pleasure.

One piece of outdoor work I have continued religiously, for the reason, no doubt, that I love wood fires, even in warm weather. I never neglect my wood-stack, the foundations of which were laid for me by Isaiah Fetch. Every day I take axe and saw and cut a certain amount of logwood. My hearth will take logs of just four feet in length, and I feed it royally. The wood costs nothing; when burning it is highly aromatic, and I like to be profuse with it; I who can recall an interminable London winter, in a garret full of leaks and draught holes, in which the only warming apparatus, besides the poor lamp that lighted my writing-table, was a miserable oil-stove, which I could not afford to keep alight except for the brief intervals during which it boiled my kettle for me.

Yes, I know every speck and every cranny of my cavernous hearth, and it is rarely that it calls for any kindling wood of a morning. As a rule a puff from the bellows and a fresh log--one of the little fellows, no thicker than your leg, which I split for this purpose--is enough to set it on its way flaming and glowing for another day of comforting life. I often tell myself it would never do for me to think of giving up my hermitage and returning to England, because of Punch and my ever-glowing hearth; even if there were no other reasons, as of course there are.

For, whilst the comparative zestfulness of the first months, when I worked with Isaiah Fetch to improve my rough-hewn little hermitage, may not have endured, yet are there many obvious and substantial advantages for me in the life I lead here, in this little bush back-water, where the few human creatures who know of my existence regard me as a poor, harmless kind of crank, and no one ever disturbs the current of my circling thoughts. Never was a life more free from interruptions from without. And if disturbance ever emanates from within, why, clearly the fault must be my own, and should serve as a reminder of how vastly uneasy my life would surely be in more civilised surroundings, where interruptions descend upon one from without, thick as smuts through the window of a London garret--save where the garreteer cares to do without air. Here I sit with a noble fire leaping at one end of my unlined, wooden room, and wide open doors and windows all about me. As regards climate, in New South Wales a man may come as near as may be to eating his cake and having it too.

And, for that long-sought mental restfulness, content, peace, whatever one may call it, is not my present task a long step towards its attainment? A completed record of the fitful struggle one calls one's life, calmly studied in the light of reason untrammelled by sentiment, never interrupted by the call of affairs; surely that should bring the full measure of self-comprehension upon which peace is based! To doubt that contentment lies that way would be wretchedness indeed. But why should I doubt what the world's greatest sages have shown? True, my own experience of life has suggested that contentment is rather the monopoly of the simplest souls, whose understanding is very limited indeed. A stinging thought this, and apt to keep a man wakeful at night, if indulged. But I think it should not be indulged. To doubt the existence of a higher order of content than that of the blissfully ignorant is to brush aside as worthless and meaningless the best that classic literature has to offer us, and--such doubts are pernicious things.

Living here in this clean, sweet air, so far removed from the external influences which make for fret and stress, my bodily health, at all events, has small excuse for failure one would suppose. And, indeed, at first it did seem to me that I was acquiring a more normal kind of hardihood and working efficiency in this respect. But I regret to say the supposition was not long-lived. Four or five months after my arrival here I took to my bed for a fortnight, as the result of one of the severest attacks I have ever had; and in the fifteen months which have elapsed since then, my general health has been very much what it was during the years before I left London, while the acute bouts of neuritis and gastric trouble, when they have come, have been worse, I think, than those of earlier years.

But, none the less, without feeling it as yet, I may be building up a better general condition in this quiet life; and the bitterly sharp attacks that seize me may represent no more than a working off of arrears of penalties. I hope it may be so, for persistent ill-health is a dismal thing. But, as against that, I think I am sufficiently philosophic--how often that blessed word is abused by disgruntled mankind--to avoid hopes and desires of too extravagant a sort, and, by that token, to be safeguarded from the sharper forms of disappointment.

Contentment depends, I apprehend, not upon obtaining possession of this or that, but upon the wise schooling of one's desires and requirements. My aims and desires in life--behind the achievement of which I have always fancied I discerned Contentment sitting as a goddess, from whose beneficent hands come all rewards--have naturally varied with the passing years. In youth, I suppose, first place was given to Position. Later, Art stood highest; later, again, Intellect; then Morality; and, finally. Peace, Tranquillity--surely the most modest, and therefore practical and hopeful of all these goals.

VII

The portion of my days here in the bush which I like best (when no bodily ill plagues me) is the very early morning. Directly daylight comes, while yet the sun's Australian throne is vacant--all hung about in cool, pearly draperies--I slip a waterproof over my pyjamas, having first rolled up the legs of these garments and thrust my feet into rubber half-boots, and wander out across the verandah, down through the garden patch, over the road, with its three-inch coating of sandy dust, and into the bush beyond, where every tiny leaf and twig and blade of grass holds treasure trove and nutriment, in the form of glistening dewdrops.

The early morning in the coastal belt of New South Wales is rapture made visible and responsive to one's faculties of touch, and smell, and hearing. And yet---no. I believe I have used the wrong word. It would be rapture, belike, in a Devon coomb, or on a Hampshire hill-top. Here it is hardly articulate or sprightly enough for rapture. Rather, I should say, it is the perfection of pellucid serenity. It lacks the full-throated eternal youthfulness of dawn in the English countryside; but, for calmly exquisite serenity, it is matchless. To my mind it is grateful as cold water is to a heated, tired body. It smooths out the creases of the mind, and is wonderfully calming. Yet it has none of the intimate, heart-stirring kindliness of England's rural scenery. No untamed land has that. Nature may be grand, inspiring, bracing, terrifying, what you will. She is never simply kind and loving--whatever the armchair poets may say. A countryside must be humanised, and that through many successive generations, before it can lay hold upon your heart by its loving-kindness, and draw moisture from your eyes. It is not the emotionless power of Nature, but man's long-suffering patient toil in Nature's realm that gives our English country-side this quality.

But my rugged, unkempt bush here is nobly serene and splendidly calm in the dawn hours. It makes me feel rather like an ant, but a well-doing and unworried ant. And I enjoy it greatly. As I stride among the drenching scrub, and over ancient logs which, before I was born, stood erect and challenged all the winds that blow, I listen for the sound of his bell, and then call to my friend Punch:

'Choop! Choop! Choop, Punch! Come away, boy! Come away! Choop! Choop!'

But not too loudly, and not at all peremptorily. For I do not really want him to come, or, at least, not too hurriedly. That would cut my morning pleasure short. No; I prefer to find Punch half a mile from home, and I think the rascal knows it. For sometimes I catch glimpses of him between the tree-trunks--we have myriads of cabbage-tree palms, tree-ferns, and bangalow palms, among the eucalypti hereabouts--and always, if we are less than a quarter of a mile or so from home, it is his rounded haunches that I see, and he is walking slowly away from me, listening to my call, and doubtless grinning as he chews his cud--a great ruminator is my Punch.

At other times, when it chances that dawn has found him a full half mile from home, he does not walk away from me, but stands behind the bole of a great tree, looking round its side, listening, waiting, and studiously refraining from the slightest move in my direction, until I am within twenty paces of him. Then, with a loud whinny, rather like a child's 'Peep-bo!' in intent, I think, he will walk quickly up to me, wishing me the top of the morning, and holding out his head for the halter which I always carry on these occasions.

In the first months of our acquaintance I used to clamber on to his back forthwith, and ride home. He knows I cannot quite manage that now, and so walks with me, rubbing at my shoulders the while with his grass-stained, dewy lips, till we see a suitable stump or log, from which I can conveniently mount him. Then, with occasional thrusts round of his head to nuzzle one of my ankles, or to snatch a tempting bit of greenery, he carries me home, and together--for he superintends this operation with the most close and anxious care, his foreparts well inside the feed-house--we mix his breakfast, first in an old four-gallon oil-can, and then in the manger, and I sit beside him and smoke a cigarette till the meal is well under weigh.

I have made Punch something of a gourmand, and each meal has to contain, besides its foundation of wheaten chaff and its _pièce de résistance_ of cracked maize, a flavouring of oats--say, three double handfuls--and a thorough sprinkling, well rubbed in, of bran. If the proportions are wrong, or any of the constituents of the meal lacking, Punch snorts, whinnies, turns his rump to the manger, and demands my instant attention. I was intensely amused one day when, sitting in the slab and bark stable, through whose crevices seeing and hearing are easy, to overhear the mail-man telling Mrs. Blades that, upon his Sam, I was for all the world like an old maid with her canary in the way I dry-nursed that blessed horse; by ghost, I was! He was particularly struck, was this good man, by my insane practice of sometimes taking Punch for a walk in the bush, as though he were a dog, and without ever mounting him.

Punch provided for, my own ablutions are performed in the wood-shed, where I have learned to bathe with the aid of a sponge and a bucket of water, and have a shower worked by a cord connected with a perforated nail-can. By this time my billy-can is probably spluttering over the hearth, and I make tea and toast, after possibly eating an orange. And so the day is fairly started, and I am free to think, to read, to write, or to enjoy idleness, after a further chat with Punch when turning him out to graze. My wood-chopping I do either before breakfast or towards the close of the day; the latter, I think, more often than the former. It makes a not unpleasant salve for the conscience of a mainly idle man, after the super-fatted luxury of afternoon tea and a biscuit or scone.

An Australian bushman would call my tea no more than water bewitched, and my small pinch of China leaves in an infuser spoon but a mean mockery of his own generous handful of black Indian leaves, well stewed in a billy to a strength suited for hide-tanning. Of this inky mixture he will cheerfully consume (several times a day) a quart, as an aid to the digestion of a pound or two of corned beef, with pickles and other deadly things, none of which seem to do him much harm. And if they should, the result rather amuses and interests him than otherwise; for, of all amateur doctors (and lawyers), he is the most enthusiastic and ingenuous. He will tell you (with the emphatic winks, nods, and gestures of a man of research who has made a wonderful discovery, and, out of the goodness of his heart, means to let you into the secret) of some patent medicine which is already advertised, generally offensively, in every newspaper in the land; and, having explained how it made a new man of him, will very likely insist with kindly tyranny upon buying you a flagon of the costly rubbish.

'I assure you, Mr. Freydon, you won't know yourself after takin' a bottle or two of Simpkins's Red Marvel.' I agree cordially, well assured that in such a case I should not care to know myself. 'Why, there was a chap down Sydney way, Newtown I think it was he lived in, or it mighter bin Balmain. Crooil bad he was till they put him on to the Red Marvel. Fairly puzzled the doctors, he did, an' all et up with sores, somethin' horrible. Well, I tell you, I wouldn't be without a bottle in my camp. Sooner go without 'baccy. An', not only that, but it's such comfortin' stuff is the Red Marvel. Every night o' my life I takes a double dose of it now; sick or sorry, well or ill--an' look at me! I useter to swear by Blick's Backache Pills; but now, I wouldn't have them on me mind. They're no class at all, be this stuff. Give me Simpkins's Red Marvel, every time, an' I don't care if it snows! You try it, Mr. Freydon. I was worsen you afore I struck it; an' now, why, I wouldn't care to call the Queen me aunt!' (His father before him, in Queen Victoria's reign, had no doubt used this quaint phrase, and it was not for him to alter it because of any such trifling episodes as the accession of other sovereigns.)

VIII

I gladly abide by my word of yesterday. The portion of my days here in the bush which I like best is the dawn time. But the nights have their good, and--well--and their less good times, too. My evening meal is apt to be sketchy. There is a special vein of laziness in me which makes me shirk the setting out of plates and cutlery, and, even more, their removal when used; despite the fact that I have had, perhaps, rather more experience than most men of catering for myself. Hence, the evening meal is apt to be sketchy; a furtive and far from creditable performance, with the vessels of the midday meal for its background.

Then, with a sense of relief, I shut the door upon that episode, and the evidences thereof, and betake me to the room which is really mine; where the big hearth is, and the camp-bed, and the writing-table, the books, and the big Ceylon-made lounge-chair. The first evening pipe is nearly always good; the second may be flavoured with melancholy, but yet is seldom unpleasing. The third--there are decent intervals between--bears me company in bed, with whatever book may be occupying me at the time. The first hour in the big chair and the first hour in bed are both exceedingly good when I am anything like well. I would not say which is the better of the two, lest I provoke a Nemesis. Both are excellent in their different ways.

Nine times out of ten I can be asleep within half an hour of dousing the candle, and it is seldom I wake before three hours have passed. After that come hours of which it is not worth while to say much. They are far from being one's best hours. And then, more often than not, will come another blessed two hours, or even more, of unconsciousness, before the first purple grey forecasts of a new day call me out into the bush for my morning lesson in serenity: Nature's astringent message to egoists and all the sedentary, introspective tribe, that bids us note our own infinite insignificance, our utter and microscopical unimportance in her great scheme of things, and her sublime indifference to our individual lives; to say nothing of our insectile hopes, fears, imaginings, despairs, joys, and other forms of mental and emotional travail.

It may or may not be evidence of mental exhaustion or indolence, but I notice that I have experienced here no inclination to read anything that is new to me. I have read a good deal under this roof, including a quite surprising amount of fiction; but nothing, I think, that I had not read before. During bouts of illness here, I have indulged in such debauches as the rereading of the whole of Hardy, Meredith, Stevenson, W. E. Henley's poems, and the novels of George Gissing, Joseph Conrad, and H. G. Wells. Some of the better examples of modern fiction have always had a special topographical appeal to me. I greatly enjoy the work of a writer who has set himself to treat a given countryside exhaustively. This, more even than his masterly irony, his philosophy, his remarkable fullness of mind and opulent allusiveness, has been at the root of the immense appeal Hardy's work makes to me. ('Q,' in a different measure, of course, makes a similar appeal.) Let the Wessex master forsake his countryside, or leave his peasants for gentlefolk, and immediately my interest wanes, his wonderful appeal fails.

Since I have been here in the bush I have understood, as never before, the great and far-reaching popularity of Thomas Hardy's work among Americans. He gives so much which not all the wealth, nor all the genius of that inventive race, can possibly evolve out of their New World. But, upon the whole, I ought not to have brought my fine, tall rank of Hardy's here, still less to have pored over them as I have. There is that second edition of _Far From the Madding Crowd_ now, with its delicious woodcuts by H. Paterson. It is dated 1874--I was a boy then, newly arrived in this antipodean land--and the frontispiece shows Gabriel Oak soliciting Bathsheba: 'Do you happen to want a shepherd, ma'am?' No, I cannot say my readings of Hardy have been good for me here. There is _Jude the Obscure_ now, a masterpiece of heart-bowing tragedy that. And, especially insidious in my case, there are passages like this from that other tragedy in the idyllic vein, _The Woodlanders_:

_Winter in a solitary house in the country, without society, is tolerable, nay, even enjoyable and delightful, given certain conditions; but these are not the conditions which attach to the life of a professional man who drops down into such a place by mere accident.... They are old association--an almost exhaustive biographical or historical acquaintance with every object, animate and inanimate, within the observer's horizon. He must know all about those invisible ones of the days gone by, whose feet have traversed the fields which look so grey from his windows; recall whose creaking plough has turned those sods from time to time; whose hands planted the trees that form a crest to the opposite hill; whose horses and hounds have torn through that underwood; what birds affect that particular brake; what bygone domestic dramas of love, jealousy, revenge, or disappointment have been enacted in the cottages, the mansions, the street, or on the green. The spot may have beauty, grandeur, salubrity, convenience; but if it lack memories it will ultimately pall upon him who settles there without opportunity of intercourse with his kind._

No, that was not discreet reading for a dyspeptic man of letters, alone in a two-roomed gunyah in the midst of virgin bush, in a land where the respectably old dates back a score of years, the historic, say, fifty years, and 'the mists of antiquity' a bare century. One recollection inevitably aroused by such a passage brought to mind words comparatively recent, spoken by Mrs. Oldcastle:

'In the Old World, even for a man who lives alone on a mountain-top, there is more of intellectuality--in the very atmosphere, in the buildings and roads, the hedges and the ditches--than the best cities of the New World have to offer.'

Quite apart from its grimly ironic philosophy, the topography, the earthy quality--'take of English earth as much as either hand may rightly clutch'--of the Wessex master's work makes it indigestible reading for an exile of more than thirty or forty; unless, of course, he is of the fine and robust type, whose minds and constitutions function with the steadiness of a good chronometer, warranted for all climes and circumstances.

But this mention of Hardy reminds me of a curious literary coincidence which I stumbled upon a few months ago. For me, at all events, it was a discovery. I was reading, quite idly, the story which should long since have been dramatised for the stage, _The Trumpet Major_, written, if I mistake not, in the early 'nineties. I came to chapter xxiii., which opens in this wise:

_Christmas had passed. Dreary winter with dark evenings had given place to more dreary winter with light evenings. Rapid thaws had ended in rain, rain in wind, wind in dust. Showery days had come--the season of pink dawns and white sunsets...._

This reading was part of my Hardy debauch. A week or two earlier I had been reading what I think was his first book, written a quarter of a century before _The Trumpet Major_. I refer to _Desperate Remedies_; with all its faults, an extraordinarily full and finished production for a first book. Now, with curiosity in my very finger-tips, I turned over the pages of this volume, reread no more than a week previously. I came presently upon chapter xii., and, following upon its first sentence, read these words:

_Christmas had passed; dreary winter with dark evenings had given place to more dreary winter with light evenings. Thaws had ended in rain, rain in wind, wind in dust. Showery days had come--the period of pink dawns and white sunsets...._

That (with a quarter of a century, the writing of many books, and the building up of a justly great and world-wide reputation between the two writings) strikes me as a singular, and, in a way, pleasing literary coincidence; singular, as a freak of subconscious memory for words, pleasing, as a verification in mature life of the writer's comparatively youthful observations of natural phenomena. I wonder if the author, or any others among his almost innumerable readers, have chanced to light upon this particular coincidence!

Another writer of fiction, whose bent of mind, if sombre, was far from devoid of ironical humour, has occupied a deal of my leisure here--George Gissing. I rank him very high among the Victorian novelists. His work deserves a higher place than it is usually accorded by the critics. He was a fine story-teller, and for me (though their topographical appeal is not, perhaps, very obvious) his books are very closely packed with living human interest. But again, for such an one as myself, so situated, I would not say that a course of Gissing formed particularly wholesome or digestible reading. Here, for example, is a passage associated in my recollection with a night which was among the worst I have spent in this place:

_He thought of the wretched millions of mankind to whom life is so barren that they must needs believe in a recompense beyond the grave. For that he neither looked nor longed. The bitterness of his lot was that this world might be a sufficing Paradise to him, if only he could clutch a poor little share of current coin...._

No, for such folk as I, that was not good reading. But--and let this be my tribute to an author who won my very sincere esteem and respect--when morning had come, after a bad night, and I had had my dawn lesson from Nature, and my converse with Punch, I turned me to another volume of Gissing, and with a quieter mind read this:

_Below me, but far off, is the summer sea, still, silent, its ever changing blue and green dimmed at the long limit with luminous noon-tide mist. Inland spreads the undulant vastness of the sheep-spotted downs; beyond them the tillage and the woods of Sussex weald, coloured like to the pure sky above them, but in deeper tint. Near by, all but hidden among trees in yon lovely hollow, lies an old, old hamlet, its brown roofs decked with golden lichen; I see the low church tower, and the little graveyard about it. Meanwhile, high in the heaven, a lark is singing. It descends, it drops to its nest, and I could dream that half the happiness of its exultant song was love of England...._

That is his little picture of a recollection of summer. And then, returning to his realities of the moment, this miscalled 'savage' pessimist and 'pitiless realist' continues thus:

_It is all but dark. For a quarter of an hour I must have been writing by a glow of firelight reflected on my desk; it seemed to me the sun of summer. Snow is still falling. I can see its ghostly glimmer against the vanishing sky. To-morrow it will be thick upon my garden, and perchance for several days. But when it melts, when it melts, it will leave the snow-drop. The crocus, too, is waiting, down there under the white mantle which warms the earth._

But I would not say that even this was well-chosen reading for me--here in my bush hermitage--any more than is that masterpiece of Kipling's later concentration, _An Habitation Enforced_, followed by its inimitable _Recall_:

_I am the land of their fathers, In me the virtue stays; I will bring back my children After certain days.

* * * * *

Till I make plain the meaning Of all my thousand years-- Till I fill their hearts with knowledge, While I fill their eyes with tears._

No, nor yet, despite its healing potency in its own place, the same master craftsman's counsel to the whole restless, uneasy, sedentary brood among his countrymen:

_Take of English earth as much As either hand may rightly clutch, In the taking of it breathe Prayer for all who lie beneath-- Lay that earth upon your heart, And your sickness shall depart! It shall mightily restrain Over busy hand and brain, Till thyself restored shall prove By what grace the heavens do move._

None of these good things are wholly good for me, here and now, because--because, for example, they recall a prophecy of Mrs. Oldcastle's, and the grounds upon which she based it.

Who should know better than I, that if my life-long mental restlessness chances, when I am less well than usual, or darkness is upon me, to take the form of nostalgia, with clinging, pulling thoughts of England--never of the London I knew so well, but always of the rural England I knew so little, from actual personal experience, yet loved so well--who should know better than I (sinning against the light in the writing of this unpardonably involved sentence) that such restlessness, such nostalgia, are no more based upon reason than is a bilious headache. The philosopher should, and does, scorn such an itch of the mind, well knowing that were he foolish enough to let it affect his actions or guide his conduct he would straightway cease to be a philosopher, and become instead a sort of human shuttlecock, for ever tossing here and there, from pillar to post, under the unreasoning blows of that battledore which had been his mind. Nay, rather the strappado for me, at any time, than abandonment to foolishness so crass as this would be.

Over and above all this I deliberately chose my 'way out,' and it is good. I am assured the life of this my hermitage is one better suited to the man I am to-day than any other life I could hope to lead elsewhere. The mere thought of such a fate as a return to the maelstrom of London journalism--is it not a terror to me, and a thing to chill the heart like ice? Here is peace all about me, at all events, and never a semblance of pretence or sham. And if I, my inner self, cannot find peace here, where peace so clearly is, what should it profit me to go seeking it where peace is not visible at all, and where all that is visible is turmoil, hurry, and fret?

Australia is a good land. Its bush is beautiful; its men and women are sterling and kindly, and its children more blessed (even though, perhaps, rather more indulged) than the children of most other lands. For the wage-earner who earns his living by his hands, and purposes always to do so, I deliberately think this is probably the best country in all the world. It is his own country. He rules it in every sense of the word; and there is no class, institution, or individual exercising any mastery over him. Millionaires are scarce here, and so perhaps are men brilliant in any direction. But really poor folk, hungry folk, folk who must fight for bare sustenance, are not merely scarce--they are unknown in this land.

That is a great thing to be able to say for any country, and surely one which should materially affect the peace of mind of every thinking creature in it. Whilst very human, and hence by no means perfect, the people of this country have about them a pervasive kindliness, which is something finer than simple good nature and hospitality. The people as a whole are sincerely possessed by guiding ideals of kindness and justice. The means by which they endeavour to bring about realisation of their ideals are, I believe, fundamentally wrong and mistaken in a number of cases. Their 'ruling' class is naturally new to the task of ruling, recruited as it is from trade union ranks. But they truly desire, as a people, that every person in their midst should be given a fair, sporting chance in life. 'A fair thing!' In three words one has the national ideal, and who shall say that it is not an admirable one, remembering that its foundation and mainspring are kindness, and if not justice, then desire for justice?

'All this is very worthy, no doubt, but deadly dull. Does it not make for desperate attenuation on the artistic and intellectual side? Beautifully level and even, I dare say; like a paving stone, and about as interesting.'

Thus, my old friend Heron in a recent letter. The dear fellow would smile if I told him he was a member of England's privileged classes. But it is true, of course. Well, Australia has no privileged classes--and no submerged class. I admit that the highest artistic and intellectual levels of the New World are greatly lower than the highest artistic and intellectual levels of the Old World. But what of the average level, speaking of the populace as a whole? How infinitely higher are Australia's lowest levels than the depths, the ultimate pit in Merry England!

I am an uneasy, restless creature, mentally and bodily. I have not quite finished as yet the task, deliberation upon which, when it is completed, is to bring me rest and self-understanding. Vague hungers by the way are incidents of no more permanent importance than one's periodical colds in the head. To complain of intellectual barrenness in any given environment must surely be to confess intellectual barrenness in the complainant. I am well placed here in my bush hermitage. And, in short, _Je suis, je reste!_

IX

It is just thirteen days since I sat down before these papers, pen in hand; thirteen days since I wrote a word. A few months ago I suppose such delay would have worried me a good deal. To-day, for some reason, the fact seems quite unimportant, and does not distress me in the least. Have I then advanced so far towards self-comprehension as to have attained content of mind? Or is this merely the mental lethargy which follows bodily weakness and exhaustion? I do not know.

I have been ill again. It is a nuisance having to send for a doctor, because his fees are extremely high, and he has to come a good long way. Also, I do not think the good man's visits are of the slightest service to me. I have been living for twelve days exclusively upon milk; a healing diet, I dare say, but I have come to weary of the taste and sight of it, and its effect upon me is the reverse of stimulation. But I am in no wise inclined to cavil, for I am entirely free from pain at the moment; the weather is perfectly glorious, and my neighbours, Blades and his wife, are in their homely fashion extremely kind to me.

My one source of embarrassment is that Ash, the timber-getter in the camp across the creek, is continually bringing me expensive bottles of Simpkins's Red Marvel, his genuine kindness necessitating not only elaborate pretences of regularly consuming his pernicious specific for every human ill, from consumption and 'bad legs' to snake-bites, but also periodical discussions with him of all my confounded symptoms--a topic which wearies me almost to tears. Indeed, I prefer the symptoms of Ash's friend in Newtown--or was it Balmain?--who was 'all et up with sores, something horrible.'

Notwithstanding the brilliant sunshine and cloudless skies of this month, the weather has been exquisitely fresh and cool, and my log fire has never once been allowed to go out, Blades, with the kindness of a man who can respect another's fads, having kept me richly supplied with logs. Mrs. Blades has been feeding Punch for me, and at least twice each day that genial rascal has neighed long and loudly at the slip-rails by the stable, as I believe in friendly greeting to me. I shall, no doubt, presently feel strong enough to walk out and have a talk with Punch.

My last letter from Mrs. Oldcastle, written no more than a month ago--the mail service to Australia is improving--tells me that the park in London is looking lovely, all gay with spring foliage and blooms. She says that unless I intend being rude enough to falsify her prophecy, I must now be preparing to pack my bags and book my passage home. Home! Well, Ash, whose father like himself was born here, calls England 'Home,' I find. This is one of the most lovable habits of the children of our race all over the world.

But obviously it would be a foolish and stultifying thing for me to think of leaving my hermitage. I am not rich enough to indulge in what folk here call 'A trip Home.' And as for finally withdrawing from my 'way out,' and returning to settle in England, how could such a step possibly be justified upon practical grounds? The circumstances which led me to leave England are fundamentally as they were. Mrs. Oldcastle-- But all that was thoroughly thought out before she left the _Oronta_ at Adelaide; and to-day I am less--less able, shall I say, than I was then?

It is singular that these few days in bed should have stolen so much of my strength. The mere exertion, if that it may be called, of writing these few lines leaves me curiously exhausted; yet they have been written extraordinarily slowly for me. My London life made me a quick writer. I wonder if leisure and ease of mind would have made me a good one!

I shall lay these papers aside for another day. Perhaps even for two or three days. Blades has kindly moved my bed for me to the side of the best window, which faces north-east; in the Antipodes, a very pleasant aspect. I shall not actually 'go to bed' again in the day-time, but I think I will lie on the bed beside that open window. Sitting upright at the table here I feel, not pain, but a kind of aching weakness which I escape when lying down.

And yet, though not worried about it, I am rather sorry still farther to neglect this desultory task of mine, even for a day or two. The tree-tops are tossing bravely in the westerly wind this morning, and it is well that my banana clump has all the shelter of the gunyah, or its graceful leaves would suffer. The big cabbage palm outside the verandah makes a curious, dry, parchment-like crackling in the wind. But the three silver tree-ferns have a cool, swishing note, very pleasing to the ear; while for the bush trees beyond, theirs is the steady music of the sea on a sandy beach. I fancy this wind must be a shade too boisterous to be good for Blades's orange orchard. At all events it brings a strong citrus scent this way, after bustling across the side of Blades's hill.

There can be no doubt about it that this mine hermitage is very beautifully situated. Any man of discernment should be well content here to bide. The air about me is full of a nimble sweetness, and as utterly free from impurity as the air one breathes in mid-ocean. More, it is impregnated by the tonic perfumes of all the myriad aromatic growths that surround my cottage. Men say the Australian bush is singularly soulless; starkly devoid of the elements of interest and romance which so strongly endear to the hearts of those dwelling there the countryside in such Old World lands as the England of my birth. Maybe. Yet I have met men, both native-born and alien-born, who have dearly loved Australia; loved the land so well as to return to it, even after many days.

England! Of all the place names, the names of countries that the world has known, was ever one so simply magic as this--England? Surely not. How the tongue caresses it! In the past it has always seemed to me that the question of a man's place of birth was infinitely more significant and important than the mere matter of where he died, of where his bones were laid. And yet, even that matter of the resting-place for a man's bones.... Undoubtedly, there is magic in English earth. England! Thank God I was born in England!

EDITOR'S NOTE

Here the written record of my friend's life ends, though it clearly was not part of his design that this should be its end. Thanks to Mrs. Blades, I have a record of the date of Freydon's last writing. It came two days before his own end. He died alone, and, by the estimate of the doctor from Peterborough, at about daybreak. The doctor thought it likely that he passed away in his sleep; of all ends, the one he would have chosen.

So far as my own observation informs me, the death of Nicholas Freydon was noted by no more than three English journals: two of the oldest morning newspapers in London, and that literary weekly which, despite the commercial fret and fume of our time, has so far preserved itself from the indignity of any attempted blending of books with haberdashery or 'fancy goods.' Had Freydon died in England, I apprehend that a somewhat larger circle of newspaper readers might have been advertised of the fact. But I would not willingly be understood to suggest any kind of reproach in this.

It would probably be correct to say that the writings of Nicholas Freydon never have reached the many-headed public, whose favour gives an author's name weight in circulating libraries and among the gentlemen of 'The Trade.' He had no illusions on this point, and of late years at all events cherished no dreams of fame or immortality. But it is equally correct to say that he was genuinely a man of letters, and there is a circle of more or less fastidious readers who are aware that everything published under Freydon's name was, from the literary standpoint, worth while.

For me the news of Freydon's end had something more than literary significance. There was a period during which we shared an office room, and I recall with peculiar satisfaction the fact that it was no kind of friction or difficulty between us which brought an end to that working companionship. The much longer period over which our friendship extended was marred by no quarrel, nor even by any lapse into mutual indifference. And it may be admitted, in all affectionate respect, that Freydon was not exactly of those who are said to 'get on with any one.'

In the matter of my own recent journey to Australia, the thing which I looked forward to with keenest interest was the opportunity I thought it would afford me of seeing and talking with Freydon, in his chosen retreat in the Antipodes, and judging of his welfare there. And then, on the eve of my departure, came the news that he was no more.

Under the modest roof which had sheltered him, on the coast of northern New South Wales, I presently spent two quiet and thoughtful weeks, given for the most part to the perusal of his papers, which, along with his other personal effects, he had bequeathed to me. (His remaining property was left to the friend whose name is given here as Sidney Heron.)

Before I left that lonely, sunny spot, I had practically decided to pass on to such members of the reading world as might be interested therein what seemed to me the more salient and important of these papers: the bulky document which forms a record of its writer's life. Afterwards, as was inevitable, came much reflection, and at times some hesitancy. But, when all is done, and the proof sheets lie before me, my conviction is that I decided rightly out there in the bush; and that something is inherent in these last writings of Nicholas Freydon's which, properly understood, demands and deserves the test of publication. Therefore, they are made available to the public, in the belief that some may be the richer and the kindlier for reading them.

But, for revising, altering, dove-tailing, or shaping these papers, with a view to the attainment of an orthodox form of literary production, whether in the guise of autobiography, life-story, dramatic fiction, or what not, I desire explicitly to disclaim all thought of such a pretension. As I see it, that would have been an impertinence. I cannot claim to know what Freydon's intentions may have been regarding the ultimate disposition of these papers, having literally no other information on the point than they themselves furnish. Needless to say they would not be published now if I had any kind of reason to believe, or to suspect, that my friend would have resented such a course.

But I will say that, in the writing, I do not think Freydon had considered the question of publication. I do not think that in these last exercises of his pen he wrote consciously for the printer and the public. As those who know his published work are aware, he was much given to literary allusiveness and to quotation. In these papers such characteristic pages did occur, it is true, but in practically every case they had been scrawled over in pencil, and have been studiously omitted by me in my preparation of the manuscript for the press. Here and there it was clear that entire pages had been removed and apparently destroyed by their writer.

Again, in this record, Freydon--always in his writings for the press, literary and journalistic, meticulous in the matter of constructive detail--clearly gave no thought to the arrangement of chapters or other divisions. He wrote of his life, as he has said, to enable himself to see it as a whole. For my part I have felt a natural delicacy about intruding so far as to introduce chapter headings or the like. It was easy for me to note the points at which the writer had laid aside his pen, presumably at the day's end, for there a portion of a sheet was left blank, and sometimes a zig-zag line was drawn. At these points then, where the writer himself paused, I have allowed the pause to appear. And this, in effect, represents the sum of my small contribution to the volume; for I have altered nothing, added nothing, and taken nothing away, beyond those previously mentioned passages (literary rather than documentary) which the author's own pencil had marked for deletion; the removal, where these occurred, of references to myself; and the substitution, where that seemed desirable, of imaginary proper names for the names of actual places and living people as written by my friend.

Two other points, and the task which for me has certainly been a labour of love, is done.

Nicholas Freydon was perfectly correct in his belief that he might have wooed and won the lady who is referred to in these pages as Mrs. Oldcastle. In this, as in other episodes of his life which happen to be known to me, the motives behind his self-abnegation were in the highest degree creditable to him. This I have been asked to say, and I am glad to say it.

Among Freydon's papers was one which, for a time, greatly puzzled me. Once I had learned precisely what this paper meant, it became for me most deeply significant, knowing as I did that it must have been lying where I found it, in a drawer of Freydon's work-table, while he wrote, immediately before his last illness, the final sections of this work, including its penultimate chapter; including, therefore, such passages as these:

_Over and above all this I deliberately chose my 'way out,' and it is good. I am assured the life of this my hermitage is one better suited to the man I am to-day than any other life I could hope to lead elsewhere.... And if I, my inner self, cannot find peace here, where peace so clearly is, what should it profit me to go seeking it where peace is not visible at all, and where all that is visible is turmoil, hurry, and fret.... And, in short, _Je suis, je reste!_ ... England! Of all the place names, the names of countries that the world has ever known, was ever one so simply magic as this--England? ..._

This document was a certificate entitling Freydon to a passage to England by an Orient line steamer. Upon inquiry at the offices of the line in Sydney, I found that, twenty-eight days before his death, my friend had booked and paid for a passage to London. At his request no berth had been allotted, and no date fixed. But, by virtue of the payment then made, he was assured of a passage home when he should choose to claim it. To my mind this discovery was one of peculiar interest, considered in the light of the concluding pages of that record of Nicholas Freydon's thoughts and experiences which is presented in this volume.