Part 6

He grinned a little wryly in the solitude of the homestead. Yes, it would have been a queer kind of life here for a woman of her talent! "I should bore myself to death." Like a knife through him when she said it. Of course, he had not grasped then what the life would be. If he had thoroughly divined----Looking back, he wondered whether he would have found the pluck to tackle it himself. That first awful year, when he had ploughed a bit of wilderness, craving in every hour for the sight of a girl in England!... Well, time worked wonders, and his labours interested him now. He pulled, and viewed proudly, a few heads of the wheat he had sown with his own hands. Jolly colour they were! Better than a clerkship; no more London for _him_. Irene Barton was finding it a Tom Tiddler's ground, he supposed. Good luck to her! Oh, of course, she had done the sensible thing in refusing him--and, heaven be praised, he wasn't broken up about it any longer. One could get over any blow.

By way of thanks for the book, he scribbled a friendly letter, in which there was no endearment, definite or indefinite, to object to. It implied that her choice had been a wise one, and he congratulated her very cordially. The letter was sincere; he felt that it would give her pleasure. And when it reached her and she read between the lines, the woman's heart sank, and tears crept down her face.

He wondered mildly why he didn't hear from her any more.

* * * * *

The novel that the papers praised so warmly had enriched her by the sum of ten pounds; and when she was five years older than she had been on the day she said good-bye to him, she was writing in a boarding-house much like the one where he had met her. She remembered wistfully that within five years she had foreseen herself rejoicing in Upper Bohemia.

She wrote well. She did not think as well as she wrote, of course--her horizon was clouded by myths, like those that have it that Scots are all skinflints, and Jews are all rogues--but her work had beauty; and critics saw it, and she made a reputation. But the general public did not see it, or, seeing the beauty, were a Channel's width from perceiving that it was beautiful, so she did not make money. And without money she found a literary reputation was less ecstatic than she had presumed. It did not mean congenial society, because she could not afford to join the clubs where congenial society might be supposed to exist. It did not mean concerts, or picture-galleries, or less physical discomfort, or a breath of sea air when she was sick for it; it did not mean a single amelioration of her life's asperities, because Press notices were not to be tendered in lieu of cash. Even those who lauded her fiction remained strangers to her. Only for a few weeks after each book was issued, she read, in her boarding-house attic, that she was a "distinguished novelist," and then she was again ignored.

And meanwhile her youth was fading, and her eyes were dimming, and she looked in the glass and mourned. In the emptiness of her "distinction" she longed for laughter and a home. Desperate at last, she did join a club of professional women; but nominal as the fees were, considering the splendour of the place, it was an annual effort for her to pay the subscription. And she did not go there often enough to make any intimate friends, because she was generally too tired.

And every year she grew more tired still.

* * * * *

When she had been growing tired for sixteen years she was in a dreary lodging, in a dingy street, toiling at a novel, between the fashion articles by which she earned her daily bread. Mr. Humphreys, in easy circumstances by this time, was in London too, though when memories awoke in her she pictured him in Manitoba. He was indulging in a trip, and had been in England three weeks. One afternoon, in the hall of the new and expensive hotel, he picked up a book and came upon her name among the publisher's advertisements. It was an advertisement of one of her shattered hopes, but Mr. Humphreys didn't know that--he merely saw her referred to as a "distinguished novelist." She was, at the moment, trudging from a modiste's to a milliner's, to gather something to say in her inevitable article. It was raining, and she had a headache, and she would have to hammer out a sprightly column about Paris models before she could lie down. His holiday was proving rather dull, and he wondered idly whether it would be a foolish impulse to recall himself to such a prominent woman.

His formal note, re-directed by the publisher's clerk, and re-directed again, reached her some days later. "If you have not quite forgotten our old friendship, I should be glad of an opportunity to call and congratulate you on your triumphs." She read that line many times. Her face was white, and her eyes were wide. She looked again at the name of the expensive hotel, and stared at the sordid parlour in which she sat--the pitiable parlour with its atrocious oleographs on drab walls, and two mottled vases, from the tea-grocer's, on the dirty mantelpiece. He would be "glad to congratulate her"!

She remembered the unaffected cheeriness of the previous congratulations, the letter that had shown her his love was dead. She had fancied that nothing could hurt more deeply than that letter, but she had been wrong--to expose her mistake to him would be bitterer still. The humiliation of it, the punishment! All the arrogance of her rejection, all the boasts of her girlhood thronged back upon her tauntingly. God! if she could have seen ahead--if only she could have her life again.

She debated her reply. To say that she was leaving town would sound ungracious. The alternative was to receive him at the club. Almost for the first time she was devoutly thankful to be a member--the club would spare her the ignominy of revealing her parlour; the stationery would avert the need for betraying her address.

On the imposing stationery she wrote that she would be "pleased to see him here on either Wednesday or Thursday next." Her clothes, she supposed, wouldn't give her away, as he was a man.

Was he married? There was no hint of a wife in his letter. How much changed would she find him? Would the change in herself shock him greatly? There were women as old as she who were still spoken of as "young," but their lives had run on smoother lines than hers--and when he saw her last she had been twenty-two and sanguine. It seemed to her that he would meet a stranger. She trembled in the club on Wednesday afternoon, and began to hope that his choice would fall on "Thursday."

She was told that he had come. She rose with an effort. A big man, with greying hair, approached her uncertainly. She smiled with stiff lips. "Mr. Humphreys," she faltered. And a voice that she didn't remember, a new deep voice that wasn't like Jack's at all, was saying, "Why, Miss Barton! This is very kind of you."

"How d'ye do? So glad to see you again," she murmured. "Let--let us go and sit down." Her heart was thumping, and she felt a little deaf.

"So--er Well, how does London look to you after such a long time? Are you home for good?"

"No, about a couple of months. My home is on the other side now. Well, this is a real pleasure! I never expected--I was rather nervous about writing, but----"

"It would have been too bad if you hadn't," she said.

"Well, I thought I'd take my chance. Er--yes, London looks rather different. I managed to get lost in it the other day; I had to find a taxi to take me back. No taxis when I was here before!"

"You take tea?"

The alcove was very comfortable, and the long room was exquisite in all its tones. The beauty of the carpet, she felt, more than repaid her for that annual effort. And how deferential was the service!

"A fine place," said Mr. Humphreys admiringly.

"Yes, it's rather decent," she drawled; "they do one very well here. A club is one of the necessaries of life."

"I suppose so." He was remembering the way her tea had been served in the boarding-house. "Wealth buys more in the old country than over there--you get more for your money than I do."

"Do you have to rough it very badly?" Her tone was gentler. "Are you still in the same place?"

"Well, I haven't known I was roughing it of recent years, but I don't see luxury like this in Manitoba. Not bad. And I've got a gramophone. Pretty rotten records, I'm afraid. Verdi is about the most classical of them."

"Isn't it lovely, how Verdi reminds one?" she said. "If I hear Verdi, I'm about ten years old again, and--it's funny--I'm always in the same bow window, and it's always a summer's afternoon, though I suppose the organs used to come in the winter, too. Just as, if I hear that hymn with 'pilgrims of the night' in it, it's always the nursery, and the gas over the mantelpiece is lighted. Verdi gives me my childhood back. I hope to hear Verdi in heaven. You've nothing very dreadful to complain of, then? You aren't sorry you went?"

"Well, no--I'm glad I went. It has panned out all right. It has been a funny thing to walk down the Strand again and remember that the last time I was in it I was short of sixpences. The other day I looked in at the office where I used to clerk. Two of the boys I had known were there still--grown round-shouldered and pigeon-chested. I suppose they've had a rise of about fifty pounds a year in the meantime. They came round to dinner at the hotel last night, and it made me melancholy to hear them talk. I used to want them to chuck the office and go out to Canada with me--they'd got the stamina once--but they hadn't got the grit. Now it's too late.... You know, it's capital to see you flourishing like this! You're about the only survivor of the old days that it hasn't given me the hump to meet. You always _were_ sure you'd get on, weren't you?"

"I was," she said. "Yes, I used to say so."

"Do you remember the people in that house? And how we used to groan about the extras in the bills?"

"It was a bad time for us both," she stammered.

"But it's good to look back on now it's over. Helps one to appreciate. When you're feeling dull now, you can drive round here and have a chat with a friend, and say, 'Well, it used to be much worse--I used to be poor.' Isn't that so?"

She nodded helplessly. Her mind was strained to find another subject.

"I wish _you'd_ come round to dinner with me one evening, if you've nothing better to do?"

"I'm not going out very much just now," she demurred. "I---"

"It'd be a charity, I'm all alone, and--by the way, I don't know if 'Miss Barton' is just your literary name now? If there is a lucky man, I hope he will give me the pleasure, too?"

"No, I'm not married," she said.

"Like me, you've been too busy. You know, I really think our victories should be fêted. It'd be friendly of you to come. You can find one evening free before I go back?"

"I suppose," she said, trying to laugh, "I'm not so full of engagements that I can't do that!"

And, though neither of them had foreseen the invitation, she was pledged to dine with him. Heavily she reflected that, when the dinner finished, she would be obliged to ask him to send for a taxi and that it would probably cost her a half-crown.

* * * * *

She went by train. That her solitary evening gown was wrong, having been bought three years since, did not worry her, though as "Lady Veronica," in her _The Autocrat at the Toilet-Table_ column, she wrote of things being "hopelessly last season's" when their vogue had been declining for a week; but she was embarrassed by her lack of evening shoes. At the table she bore herself bravely, supported by the knowledge that the epoch of her sleeves was unsuspected by him, but when she rose she found it difficult to conceal her feet.

Yet, if it had not been that the shame of failure poisoned each mouthful that she took, the evening would have had its fascination. When she led him to speak of his early blunders on the homestead, while he told her how he had shrunk dismayed from the first bleak sight of that patch of prairie, she forgot she was pretending, and forgot to feel abased. In moments she even forgot to feel old. The story of his struggles bore her back. As she heard these things, the greying man became to her again the boy that had loved her--and as the woman leant listening, the man caught glimpses of the girl that she had been.

His trip was proving queerly unlike his forecast of it on the farm. When he packed his bags he had had no idea of seeing her, but he had looked for emotions that he hadn't obtained. The strangeness of sauntering on the London pavements as a prosperous man had been less exhilarating than his anticipation of it. To drive to a fashionable tailor's and order clothes had failed to induce a burst of high spirits, though on the way he had laudably reminded himself that once it would have been the day of his life. He was, in fact, feeling solitary, and to loll in stalls at the theatres, instead of being jammed in the pit, would have seemed livelier to him if he had had a companion. In the circumstances, it was not astonishing that he proposed to take Irene Barton to the theatre a night or two later--and as he insisted a good deal, she compromised with a matinée.

Somehow or other he was having tea with her, at the club again, the day afterwards. And on the day after that, there was something else.

They had always found much to say to each other in the old days--they found much to say now, when the constraint wore off. The man told himself that he felt a calm friendship for the woman whom he had once wanted for his wife. And the woman told herself that, since he would soon be gone, she'd snatch happy hours with the man she loved while he was here. Her philosophy had changed since she expounded it in the garden of the square.

And then--the claims of _The Autocrat at the Toilet-Table_ had compelled her to break an appointment--it manifested itself to Mr. Humphreys that his feelings were not so calm as he had thought. Irritable in the hotel hall, he perceived that this "friendship" threatened his holiday with a disastrous end. He wanted no second experience of fevering in Canada for a face in England. Grimly he decided that the acquaintance must be dropped. If it came to that, why remain in England any longer? It was time for him to go.

On the morrow, in another charming corner of the familiar club, he told her his intention, and she tried to disguise how much it startled her. When she had "hoped that he hadn't received bad news" and he had said briefly that he hadn't, there was a pause. In his endeavour to be casual he had been curt, and both were conscious of it. He wondered if he had hurt her. Perhaps he should have offered an excuse for his sudden leave-taking? He began to invent one--and she politely dismissed it. He was certain now that he had hurt her. After all, why not be candid?

He leant forward, and spoke in a lowered tone:

"Do you know why I'm going? I'm going because, if I stopped, I should make a fool of myself again."

The cup in her hand jerked. She felt suffocating, voiceless. Not a word came from her.

"I'm remembering that discretion is the better part of valour, Miss Barton."

"How do you mean?" she faltered.

"I'm running away in time. You see, I--I made a mistake: I reckoned you wouldn't be dangerous to me any more, and I was wrong.... So you won't think me ungrateful for going, will you? You've given me some very happy hours; I don't want you to think I didn't appreciate them. But I appreciate, too, the fact that you're a successful woman and that I've even less to hope for now than I had before. I went through hell about you once, dear--I couldn't stick it twice."

Her hand was passed across her eyes, and she trailed it on her skirt.

"Are you running away from--from my success? If I cared for you, do you think my success would matter?"

"Do you care for me?" His voice shook, like hers. He hated the chattering groups about them, as he bent conventionally over the tea-table. "Do you mean you could give your position up to be my wife?"

She rose. Her lips twitched before her answer came. It came in a whisper:

"You've never seen my rooms. Will you drive me there?"

And on the way she was very quiet.

The taxi stopped. In a dingy street she took a latchkey from her pocket, and opened a door, from which a milk-can hung. Perplexed, he followed. She led him to a parlour--a pitiable parlour, with atrocious oleographs on drab walls, and two mottled vases on a dirty mantelpiece.

"This," she said dryly, "is where I live. You see the celebrity at home."

He tried to take her to him, and she drew swiftly back.

"I have failed," she cried; "no one has read my books; I'm as poor as when you knew me first. I've spent years in holes like this! I've shammed to you because I was ashamed. My talk of people I know, of places I go to has been lies--I know no one, I go nowhere. I refused to marry you, when I was a girl, because I didn't think it good enough for me; before you stoop to ask me again, go away and think whether it's good enough for _you_. I've lost my hopes, my youth, my looks--you'd be giving me everything, and I should bring you nothing in return!"

His arms were quick now, and they held her fast.

"Nothing?" he demanded. His eyes challenged her. "Nothing, Irene?"

"Oh, my dearest," she wept, smiling, "if my love's enough----?"

VI

PICQ PLAYS THE HERO

When he had made his choice of a career, when in spite of remonstrances he had become an actor, his father had felt disgraced. His father was the hatter in the rue de la Paroisse. The shop was not prosperous--in Ville-Nogent people made their hats last a long while--but it was at least a shop, and the old man wished his son to be respectable. This, you see, was France. The little French hatter had not heard that, across the Channel, the scions of noble houses turned actors, and he would not have believed it if he had been told.

Once, the son of a little French tradesman humiliated his father by going on the stage and became the admiration of the world; but this tradesman's son did not distinguish himself like that. Indeed, he did not distinguish himself at all. Many years later the hatter patted the artist's hand, and said feebly: "After I am gone, take a hat, my poor Olivier. Heaven knows thou needest one!" A hat, and his blessing were well-nigh all he had to give by this time.

In his youthful dreams--day-dreams behind the counter--Olivier Picq had seen himself a leading man in Paris, making impassioned love in the limelight to famous actresses. His engagements had proved so different from his dreams that not once had he attained to the hero's part, even in the least significant of provincial holes. No manager could be induced to regard him as a hero. By slow degrees he had ceased to expect it. By still slower degrees he ceased to expect even parts of prominence. He was the fatuous valet, who came on, with the laughing chambermaid, to explain what the characters that mattered had been doing between the acts; he was the gaby that made inane remarks, in order that the low comedian might reply with something funny; he was the moody defaulter that committed suicide early in the piece--and he changed his wig (alas! not his voice) to become the uninteresting figure that broke the tragic tidings to the widow.

"Ah," says the reader, "he wasn't clever. That's why he didn't get on."

Well, it is not pretended that Picq had genius; for such parts as fell to him he had not even marked ability. But the truth is, that in the rôle of romantic hero, which he had not had a chance to play, he would have been good. The laughing chambermaid used to say he would have been splendid. Often they grieved over the bad luck that had attended him, as they reviewed the years of struggle, hand in hand. He had married the chambermaid.

"Oh, I can guess the end of this story already!" says the reader. "He became a leading man in Paris, after all."

So he did, madam. But not quite so felicitously as you may think. Picq, dizzied by the sudden transformation, was promoted to be the hero--a gallant, dashing boy--in a revival on a Paris stage, one winter when he was subject to lumbago, and fifty-eight years old. You see, most of the actors of military age that still lived were either in the line or the hospitals, while many of the popular actresses were nursing. A manager who had the temerity to cast a play now was in no position to be fastidious, and playgoers were indulgent. They accepted the elderly man as the gallant boy. He was applauded. And while he declaimed bombast across the footlights--those turgid love appeals to which he had aspired, behind the counter, forty years ago--it was with a heart torn with anxiety for his own boy, who was in the trenches.

When Jean had slept as a baby, the utility actor and the chambermaid had sat by the cradle and talked in low tones of the fine things he was to do when he grew up. Not on the stage--both had outlived its glamour; he was to be an advocate. "It is so refined, dearest," said the chambermaid. "And there is money in it, my love," agreed the father. And for half a lifetime unflinchingly they had scraped and hoarded, to realise that ambition for him. Their salaries were not vast, and there were numerous vacations in which there was no salary at all; often the sum that they had garnered during one tour would melt before the next; but every hundred francs that they could stick to looked a milestone on the journey. Only one annual extravagance did they allow themselves. On Jean's birthday it was Picq's custom to take home a bottle of cheap champagne. The dinner might be meagre, the vacation might be long, but on Jean's birthday they must be joyous. And in a shabby lodging-house bedroom--a parlour was beyond the means of poor players who pinched to make their son an advocate--the pair would festively clink glasses to his future.

"We have not been unhappy together all these years, Nanette, my little wife, though you did throw yourself away in marrying me, hein?" Picq would say tenderly, embracing her. And Nanette, who still looked almost as young sometimes as she had looked at the wedding breakfast--at any rate, Picq thought so--would answer, with a catch in her voice: "Sweetheart, I have thanked the good God on my knees every night for that 'throwing myself away.'"

"All the same, it is possible that, without me, you would have got on far better--even have made a name."

"Silly! It is more likely _I_ who have held _you_ back; perhaps alone you would have gone to the top. Ah, no, I cannot bear to think it; I cannot bear to think I have been a hindrance to you!"

Then Picq, denying it vigorously, would cry: "But a fig for the stage! Ma foi, have we not each other, and our Jean? It is wealth enough. I tell you he is going to be a famous man one day, our Jean--he has the brow."

By rare good fortune, when he was old enough to have ideas of his own on the subject of a career, Jean had not opposed their plan; he did not, as night easily have been the case, inherit a craving to be the hero. He had long been a student in Paris, and they were playing in a rural district remote from him on the day of the mobilisation. Never while life lasted would they forget that day--that beating on a tocsin, and the glare of a blue sky that turned suddenly black to them; the deathly silence that spread; and then the shrill voice of a child, the first to speak--"_C'est la guerre_!" The shaking of their limbs held the father and mother apart; only their gaze rushed to each other. "Jean!" she had moaned.