Part 12 (1/2)
”I'm not going to bother any more about them, whoever they are,” said Paul, lighting a cigarette. ”When I was a kid I used to dream that they would find me and do everything for me. Now I'm a man with experience of life, I find that I've got to do everything for myself. And by George!”--he thumped the bar and smiled the radiant smile of the young Apollo--”I'm going to do it.”
Barney Bill took off his Luke's iron crown of a billyc.o.c.k hat and scratched his cropped and grizzled head. ”How old are you, sonny?”
”Nearly nineteen,” said Paul.
”By Gos.h.!.+” said Barney Bill.
He put on his hat at a comfortable but rakish angle. He looked like a music-hall humourist. A couple of the gorgeous ladies giggled.
”Yuss,” said he, ”you're a man with an experience of life--and n.o.body can do nothing for you but yerself. Poor old Barney Bill has been past helping you this many a year.”
”But I owe everything to you!” cried Paul, boyishly. ”If it hadn't been for you, I should still be working in that factory at Bludston.”
Bill winked and nodded acquiescence as he finished his tankard.
”I've often wondered--since I've grown up--what induced you to take me away. What was it?”
Bill c.o.c.ked his head on one side and regarded him queerly. ”Now you're arsking,” said he.
Paul persisted. ”You must have had some reason.”
”I suppose I was interested in them parents of yours,” said Barney Bill.
And that was all he would say on the subject.
The days went on. The piece had run through the summer and autumn, and Paul, a favourite with the management, was engaged for the next production. At rehearsal one day the author put in a couple of lines, of which he was given one to speak. He now was in very truth an actor.
Jane could no longer taunt him in her naughty moods (invariably followed by bitter repentance) with playing a dumb part like a trained dog. He had a real part, typewritten and done up in a brown-paper cover, which was handed to him, with lack of humour, by the a.s.sistant stage manager.
In view of his own instantaneous success he tried to persuade Jane to go on the stage; but Jane had no artistic ambitions, to say nothing of her disinclination to paint her face. She preferred the prosaic reality of stenography and typewriting. No sphere could be too dazzling for Paul; he was born to great things, the consciousness of his high destiny being at once her glory and her despair; but, as regards herself, her outlook on life was cool and sober. Paul was peac.o.c.k born; it was for him to strut about in iridescent plumage. She was a humble daw and knew her station. It must be said that Paul held out the stage as a career more on account of the social status that it would give to Jane than through a belief in her histrionic possibilities. He too, fond as he was of the girl with whom he had grown up, recognized the essential difference between them. She was as pretty, as sensible, as helpful a little daw as ever chattered; but the young peac.o.c.k never for an instant forgot her daw-dom.
Jane's profound common-sense reaped its reward the following spring when she found herself obliged to earn her livelihood. Her mother died, and the shop was sold, and an aunt in Cricklewood offered Jane a home, on condition that she paid for her keep. This she was soon able to do when she obtained a situation with a business firm in the city.
The work was hard and the salary small; but Jane had a brave heart and held her head high. In her simple philosophy life was work, and dreaming an occasional luxury. Her mother's death grieved her deeply, for she was a girl of strong affections, and the breaking up of her life with Paul seemed an irremediable catastrophe.
”It's just as well,” said her aunt, ”that there's an end of it, or you'd be making a fool of yourself over that young actor chap with his pretty face. I don't hold with any of them.”
But Jane was too proud to reply.
On their last night together in the Barn Street house they sat alone in the little back-parlour as they had done for the last six years--all their impressionable childish days. It was the only home that Paul had known, and he felt the tragedy of its dissolution. They sat on the old horsehair sofa, behind the table, very tearful, very close together in spirit, holding each other's hands. They talked as the young talk--and the old, for the matter of that. She trembled at his wants unministered to in his new lodgings. He waved away prospective discomfort: what did it matter? He was a man and could rough it. It was she herself whose loss would be irreparable. She sighed; he would soon forget her. He vowed undying remembrance by all his G.o.ds. Some beautiful creature of the theatre would carry him off. He laughed at such an absurdity. Jane would always be his confidante, his intimate. Even though they lived under different roofs, they would meet and have their long happy jaunts together. Jane said dolefully that it could only be on Sundays, as their respective working hours would never correspond--”And you haven't given me your Sundays for a year,” she added. Paul slid from the dark theme and, to comfort her, spoke glowingly of the future, when he should have achieved his greatness. He would give her a beautiful house with carriages and servants, and she would not have to work.
”But if you are not there, what's the good of anything?” she said.
”I'll come to see you, silly dear,” he replied ingenuously.
Before they parted for the night she threw her arms round his neck impulsively. ”Don't quite forget me, Paul. It would break my heart.
I've only you left now poor mother's gone.”
Paul kissed her and vowed again. He did not vow that he would be a mother to her, though to the girl's heart it seemed as if he did. The little girl was aching for a note in his voice that never came. Now, ninety-nine youths in a hundred who held, at such a sentimental moment, a comely and not uncared-for maiden in their arms, would have lost their heads (and their hearts) and vowed in the desired manner. But Paul was different, and Jane knew it, to her sorrow. He was by no means temperamentally cold; far from it. But, you see, he lived intensely in his dream, and only on its outer fringe had Jane her place. In the heart of it, hidden in amethystine mist, from which only flashed the diadem on her hair, dwelt the exquisite, the incomparable lady, the princess who should share his kingdom, while he knelt at her feet and wors.h.i.+pped her and kissed the rosy tips of her calm fingers. So, as it never entered his head to kiss the finger tips of poor Jane, it never entered his head to fancy himself in love with her. Therefore, when she threw herself into his arms, he hugged her in a very sincere and brotherly way, but kissed her with a pair of cast lips of Adonis. Of course he would never forget her. Jane went to bed and sobbed her heart out. Paul slept but little. The breaking up of the home meant the end of many precious and gentle things, and without them he knew that his life would be the poorer. And he vowed once more, to himself, that he would never prove disloyal to Jane.
While he remained in London he saw what he could of her, sacrificing many a Sunday's outing with the theatre folk. Jane, instinctively aware of this, and finding in his demeanour, after examining it with femininely jealous, microscopic eyes, nothing perfunctory, was duly grateful, and gave him of her girlish best. She developed very quickly after her entrance into the world of struggle. Very soon it was the woman and not the child who listened to the marvellous youth's story of the wonders that would be. She never again threw herself into his arms, and he never again called her a ”little silly.” She was dimly aware of change, though she knew that the world could hold no other man for her.
But Paul was not.