Part 18 (2/2)

Someone had come out of nowhere to keep him company. A few personalities rushed to his mind. It might be the man who sometimes ill.u.s.trated his stories, an untidy individual who had a single phrase that he always introduced into every conversation--it was, ”Lend me half-a-crown till to-morrow, will you?” It would be splendid if it were him. They could lunch together on the half-crown. It might be the traveller from the wholesale tailor's--a man whom he had found begging in the street, and told to come round to Number 39 whenever he was at his wit's end for a meal. That would be better still; he was a man full of experiences, full of stories from the various sleeping-houses where he spent his nights.

Supposing it were Jill! A foolish, a hopeless thought to enter the mind. She did not know where he lived. She might, though, by some freak of

CHAPTER XVII

THE FLY IN THE AMBER

The sleet had driven honestly into snow by the time John had finished his lunch and, there being but two old original members in the Martyrs'

Club, who were congratulating each other upon having put on their fur coats, stayed in town and not gone to the country, he left as soon as his meal was over.

The hall-porter stood reluctantly to his feet as he pa.s.sed out,--so reluctantly that John felt as though he should apologise for the etiquette of the club. In the street, he turned up the collar of his coat and set off with determination, intended to show the hall-porter that he had a definite destination and but little time in which to reach it.

Round the corner and out of sight, he began counting to himself the people he might go and see. Each name, as he reviewed it in his mind, presented some difficulty either of approval or of place. At last, he found himself wandering in the direction of Holborn. In a side street of that neighbourhood lived his little typewriter, who had promised to finish two short stories over Easter. She would be as glad of company as he. She would willingly cease from pounding the symphony of the one monotonous note on those lifeless keys. They would talk together of wonderful works yet to be typed. He would strum on her hired piano.

The minutes would slip by and she would get tea, would boil the kettle on that miniature gas-stove, situated in her bedroom, where he had often imagined her saying her prayers in the morning while a piece of bacon was frying in the pan by her side--prayers, the Amen of which would be hastened and emphasised by the boiling over of the milk. Those are the prayers that reach Heaven. They are so human. And a burnt sacrifice of burnt milk accompanying them, they are consistent with all the ritual of the Old Testament.

To the little typewriter's, then, he decided to go. It did not matter so very much if his stories were not finished over Easter. They could wait.

He rang the bell, wondering if her heart was leaping as his had done but an hour or so before. His ears were alert for the scurrying of feet on her uncarpeted, wooden stairs. He bent his head sideways to the door.

There was no sound. He rang again. Then he heard the creaking of the stairs. She was coming--oh, but so slowly! Annoyed, perhaps, by the disturbance, just as she was getting into work.

The door was opened. His heart dropped. He saw an old woman with red-rimmed eyes which peered at him suspiciously from the half-opened s.p.a.ce.

”Is Miss Gerrard in?” he asked.

”Gone to the country--won't be back till Tuesday,” was the reply.

Gone to the country! And his work would never be finished over Easter!

Oh, it was not quite fair!

”Any message?” said the old housekeeper.

”No,” said John; ”nothing,” and he walked away.

Circ.u.mstance was conspiring that he should work--circ.u.mstance was driving him back to Fetter Lane. Yet the loneliness of it all was intolerable. It was, moreover, a loneliness that he could not explain.

There had been other Easter Sundays; there had been other days of snow and sleet and rain, but he had never felt this description of loneliness before. It was not depression. Depression sat there, certainly, as it were upon the doorstep, ready to enter at the faintest sound of invitation. But as yet, she was on the doorstep only, and this--this leaden weight at the heart, this chain upon all the energies--was loneliness that he was entertaining, a condition of loneliness that he had never known before.

Why had he gone to see the little typewriter? Why had he not chosen the man who ill.u.s.trated his stories, or many of the other men whom he knew would be in town that day and any day--men who never went into the country from one year's end to the other?

It had been the company of a woman he had wanted. Why was that? Why that, suddenly, rather than the company he knew he could find? What was there in the companions.h.i.+p of a woman that he had so unexpectedly discovered the need of it? Why had he envied Mr. Brown who had Mrs.

Morrell to talk to, or Mr. Morrell who could unburden himself to Mrs.

Brown? Why had he been glad when Mrs. Rowse came and unutterably lonely when she left? Why had he suggested going to the country with her, pleased at the thought that Lizzie would sing, ”Love Me and the World Is Mine,” and that Maud would be counting and packing cigarettes in her mind?

The questions poured into his thoughts, rus.h.i.+ng by, not waiting for an answer, until they all culminated in one overwhelming realisation. It was Jill.

Morning after morning, for a whole week, they had met in secret, not in Kensington Gardens alone, but in the most extraordinary of places--once even at Wrigglesworth's, the obscure eating-house in Fetter Lane, she little knowing how near they were to where he lived. He had read her his stories; he had given her copies of the two books that bore his name upon their covers. They had discussed them together. She had said she was sure he was going to be a great man, and that is always so consoling, because its utter impossibility prevents you from questioning it for a moment.

Then it was Jill. And all the disappointment, all the loneliness of this Easter Sunday had been leading up to this.

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