Part 24 (1/2)

”Well--you never know,” said he, looking up again. ”I'm stayin' here, aren't I? They said you was a writer--that you wrote books. Well, have you never seen a person who wrote books, like me? Why there was a woman I 'ad to get the rent from once--a journalist, she called herself.

She'd got a bit of a beard and a fair tidy moustache--and by gum, she dressed queerer than anything my old woman would ever put on. I felt quite ashamed to be stoppin' with her.”

John laughed again; laughed uproariously. Mr. Chesterton was so amused at the remembrance of it, that he laughed as well. Suddenly their laughter snapped, as you break a slate pencil. There came a gentle, a timid knock on the door.

”This is she,” whispered John. ”The door below was open. She's come upstairs. What the devil am I going to do?”

At last the little man believed him. He really was going to see the lady this time, the lady who would never understand the likes of him, and he began to feel quite nervous. He began to feel ashamed of being a bailiff.

”Introduce me as a friend,” he whispered--”It'll be all right--introduce me as a friend.”

”Sit down there, then--on that settle.”

Then John opened the door and Jill stepped hesitatingly into the room.

Mr. Chesterton rose awkwardly to his feet.

This was the lady, materialised at last. From long habit of summing up in a glance the people with whom he had to deal, he made his estimation of Jill in a moment. The quietness of her voice as she said--”I was rather afraid to knock, for fear I had made a mistake”--that gentleness in the depth of the eyes which admits of no sudden understanding, yet as gently asks for it--the firm repose of the lips already moulded for the strength which comes with maturity, and all set in a face whose whole expression was that innocence of a mind which knows and has put aside until such moment when life shall demand contemplation. This--there was no doubt of it--was the lady who would not understand the likes of him.

John shook hands with her. Mr. Chesterton took it all in with his little solemn eyes. He was in the way. Never had he been so much in the way before. As their hands touched, he felt that John was telling her just how much in the way he was.

”May I introduce you,” said John, turning, when that touching of the hands was done with. ”This is my friend--Mr. Chesterton. Miss----” he paused. It seemed sacrilege to give her name to a bailiff, and the little man felt sensitively, in his boots every moment of that pause.

His red socks were burning him. He could see the colour of his tie in every reflection. It was even creeping up into his cheeks.

”Miss Dealtry.”

He was going to come forward and shake hands, but she bowed. Then, when she saw his confusion, out, generously, came her hand.

”Are you a writer, too?” she asked.

John was about to interpose; but the little man wanted to stand well with her. He felt that his socks and his tie and his corn-coloured suit ought all to be explained, and what more lucid or more natural explanation than this.

”Oh, yes, I'm a writer,” he said quickly. ”Books, you know--and a little journalism--just to--to keep me goin'--to amuse myself like.

Journalism's a change, you know--what you might call a rest, when your always writin' books----” Then he remembered a quotation, but where from, he could not say, ”Of the writin' of books, you know--at least, so they say--there's no end.” And he smiled with pleasure to think how colloquially he had delivered the phrase.

”Why, of course, I know your work,” said Jill--”Aren't you _the_ Mr.

Chesterton?”

The little man's face beamed. That was just what they all called him--_the_ Mr. Chesterton.

”That's right,” said he delightedly, ”the one and only.” And under the mantle of genius and celebrity his quaintnesses became witticisms, his merest phrase a paradox.

CHAPTER XX

WHY JILL PRAYED TO ST. JOSEPH

Little as you might have imagined it, there was a heart beneath that corn-coloured waistcoat of Mr. Chesterton's. His old woman, as he called her, would have vouched for that.

”He may have to do some dirty tricks in his job,” she had said of him.