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+Project Gutenberg's In Accordance with the Evidence, by Oliver Onions
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: In Accordance with the Evidence
+
+Author: Oliver Onions
+
+Release Date: November 4, 2011 [EBook #37919]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EVIDENCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Quentin Johnson, Suzanne Shell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    IN ACCORDANCE
+    WITH THE EVIDENCE
+
+    OLIVER ONIONS
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    IN ACCORDANCE
+    WITH THE EVIDENCE
+
+    BY
+
+    OLIVER ONIONS
+
+    Author of "The Exception," etc.
+
+    GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+    NEW YORK
+    _Publishers in America for Hodder & Stoughton_
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    Copyright, 1913
+
+    BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+
+    TO
+    WILLIAM ARTHUR
+    LEWIS BETTANY
+
+
+
+
+    CONTENTS
+
+
+    PART I                      PAGE
+
+              HOLBORN            11
+
+    PART II
+
+              WOBURN PLACE      113
+
+    PART III
+
+              THE GARRET        191
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+HOLBORN
+
+
+
+
+
+IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EVIDENCE
+
+
+I
+
+It seems strangely like old times to me to be making these jottings in
+Pitman's shorthand. I was surprised to find I remembered as much of it
+as I do, for I dropped it suddenly when Archie Merridew died, and
+Archie's clear, high-pitched voice was the last that ever dictated to me
+for speed, while I myself have not dictated since Archie took down his
+last message from my reading. That will be--say a dozen years or more
+ago next August. It may be a little more, or a little less. Nor, since I
+do not keep it as an anniversary, does the day of the month matter.
+
+Either in my rooms or his, we had a good deal of this sort of practise
+together about that time, young Archie and I--reading aloud, taking down
+and transcribing. I am wrong in speaking of my "rooms" though; I had
+only one, a third-floor bedroom near the very noisiest corner of King's
+Cross. It was just opposite one of these running electric advertisements
+that changed from green to red and from red to green three times every
+minute; you know them; there are plenty of them now, but they were new
+then. The street was narrow; this horrible thing was at a rounded corner
+not more than five and twenty yards away; and even when my lamp was
+lighted it still tinged my ceiling and the upper part of the wall above
+my bed, red and green, red and green--for I had only a little muslin
+half-curtain and no blind, and if I wanted to read in bed I had either
+to turn my lamp out until I had undressed or else to undress in a corner
+by the window side of the room, because of being overlooked from across
+the way. I don't think there were any other lodgers in the house. It was
+a "pub," the "Coburg," but I could get on to the staircase without going
+through the bars on the ground floor, and always did so. The rather sour
+smell of these lower parts of my abode reached me up my three flights of
+stairs, but I had got used to that. It was the noise that was the worst
+(except, of course, that red and green fiend of an advertisement)--the
+noise that greeted me when I woke of a morning, awaited me when I came
+back from Rixon Tebb & Masters' at night, and often became maddening
+when, at half-past twelve, they clashed to the iron gates of the
+public-house and turned the topers out into the street, to fraternise or
+quarrel for half-an-hour or more beneath my window.
+
+But we worked more in Archie Merridew's rooms than in mine. "Rooms" is
+correct here. He had the whole top floor of a house near the Foundling
+Hospital, a pretty house with a fan-lighted ivy-green door, early
+Georgian, a brightly twinkling brass knocker and bellpulls, and a
+white-washed area inside the railings to make the basement lighter. His
+folks lived at Guildford; his father paid his rent for him, thirty-eight
+pounds a year; and his pleasant quarters under the roof had everything
+that mine hadn't--he could sit outside on the coped leads when the
+weather was hot, draw up cosily to a fireplace shaped something like a
+Queen Anne teapot when it was cold, and the ceiling, truncated along one
+side, didn't begin to turn red and green the moment the twilight came.
+
+It gives me a shiver to think how atrociously poor I was in those days.
+More and more of that too comes back with the half-forgotten shorthand.
+I don't mean that I've ever forgotten that I used to be poor; it's the
+depth and degradation I mean and that--this will seem odd to you
+presently, as it seems suddenly odd to me as I write it--that memory is
+still more horrible to me than anything else I have ever known. My
+having got rich since doesn't wipe it out. If I were to become as rich
+as Rockefeller I should never forget the rages of envy, black and deep
+and bitter, that used sometimes to take me when I thought of Archie
+Merridew's circumstances and my own.
+
+I have got riches as I have got everything else--_everything_--I ever
+wanted, by attention to detail. You'll probably agree with me by-and-by
+that by "attention to detail" I mean rather more than most men do when
+they give this advice to young men about to start in life. I remember
+they used to give us, as it were, the empty form and shell of this maxim
+at the Business College, the place in Holborn Archie and I attended; but
+you've got to have been down into the pit and come back again before you
+realise the terrible force there is in these truisms. And no less in
+doing things than undoing them afterwards (when that has been necessary)
+have I planned to the very last _minutiae_. If I have never seemed a
+particularly busy man, that has been because I have always disliked
+being seen in the act of doing a thing. And where I have passed my trail
+is obliterated.
+
+Archie Merridew and I were only half contemporaries. He was younger than
+I by a good seven years--was, as a matter of fact, only twenty-three
+when he died. And in nearly everything else we were as sharply
+contrasted as we were in our fortunes. Indeed, we were much more so, for
+while I miserably coveted that thirty-eight pound upper floor of his
+near the Foundling Hospital, my faith in myself and my ambition would
+have helped me over that. Physically, we were as different as we could
+be. My almost gigantic size made me, in my cramped red and green lighted
+apartment, an enormously overgrown squirrel in the smallest of cages;
+but to Archie's rather dandified little dapperness his series of roof
+chambers was spacious as a palace. Mentally we diverged even more. I was
+taciturn, he lively as one of the crickets that used to chirp behind his
+little Queen Anne teapot of a fireplace. And as for luck--well, if luck
+ever so much as nodded to me in those days, it seemed to change its mind
+and to pass by on the other side, while he seemed to pull things off the
+more easily the more recklessly he blundered.
+
+And he had his people at Guildford, while I had never a soul in the
+world.
+
+I don't know how we contrived to hit it off as well as, on the whole, we
+did. Perhaps that too was part of his lucky disposition--he could get
+along even with me. He always spread some sort of a weak charm about
+him, and this charm always disarmed me even, when to all intents and
+purposes he was merely rubbing in my horrible poverty. He would tell me,
+as if I wasn't already eating my heart out about it, that it was about
+time I made an effort--that _he_ wasn't going to remain in those stuffy
+diggings of his all _his_ days--and that if he had only half my brains
+he'd be up somewhere pretty high in a very short time (as he probably
+would had he lived)--all this, you understand, for my good, the
+cigarette gummed to his prettily shaped upper lip wagging as he talked,
+and with the best intentions in the world. He was quite devoted to me;
+would tell me how he had told other people about those extraordinary
+brains of mine; and he never dreamed (though it was not long before I
+began to) that our respective ages were even then making of our
+companionship a hopeless thing. A lad of seventeen may attach himself
+for a time to a man whose years number twenty-four of bitterness and
+exclusion, but they will part company again before the one is
+twenty-three and the other thirty.
+
+I was only an evening student at the Business College, while Archie
+spent his days there. Often enough he did not turn up in the evening at
+all; indeed, he only began to do so with unfailing regularity some time
+after Evie Soames had put her name down for the social evening course of
+lectures on Business Method. Evie Soames was a day student too, though
+only on three days in the week, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; and
+the lectures on Method were given in the evening because they were
+specially addressed to those who, like myself, were employed during the
+day, and deemed to be ripe for the more advanced instruction. I don't
+think Archie was very much wiser for Weston's (our lecturer) efforts,
+but he was genuinely grateful to me for my explanations of them
+afterwards, and would pat me on the shoulder affectionately, and tell me
+he couldn't understand why everybody else didn't see what a rare good
+sort I was. That was his backhanded idea of a compliment.
+
+I think, in those early days of mine, I hated pretty well everything and
+everybody; and I cannot better show you how little I found to love than
+by giving you, before I go on with my tale, an account of my day at that
+period of my life--any day taken at random will do.
+
+I had to be at Rixon Tebb & Masters' by nine, why, I don't know, since
+nobody else of any account whatever turned up much before half-past ten.
+But eight of us had to be there by nine o'clock, and I will tell you how
+our eight had been got together.
+
+You know--or don't you know?--that there are firms that contract for the
+supply of "office labour" of all grades, from the messenger boy to the
+beginning of the confidential clerks; holusbolus, in the lump, as much
+of it or as little as you please. You pay, if you are an employer, a
+certain number of hundreds a year, and the agency does the rest. One
+down, t'other up; sack one man, and telephone for another. The agency's
+supply, at the maximum of a pound a week, is practically unlimited, and
+the firm escapes all personal responsibility in regard to its staff.
+
+I was one of these consignments of labour--or rather an eighth of one. I
+don't know now what I did. I know that I addressed envelopes and checked
+columns of figures and lists of names, quite devoid of meaning to me,
+and got eighteen shillings a week for it. There was no chance that I
+should ever get more than eighteen shillings. Ask for nineteen and the
+telephone rang, the agency was informed of your request, and ... well,
+three times I had seen that happen.
+
+One chance of escape, indeed, we had; the firm was clever enough to
+allow us that. It was by way of what I may call the permanent junior
+clerkship. The permanent junior clerk was, as it were, breveted with the
+rank of the real clerks in the inner office; and so was hope dangled
+over the heads of eight of us. There was the junior clerkship amongst
+the eight of us. That or nothing.
+
+I need hardly say that jealousy, espionage, and scheming besmirched our
+souls.
+
+Well (to continue my account of my day), I addressed envelopes or read
+aloud from interminable lists until one o'clock, and then I lunched.
+This we were not allowed to do in the office, so that usually I ate from
+a paper bag in one of the quieter streets, or else had a scone and milk
+at an A.B.C. shop round the corner in Cheapside. I was alone. My
+fellow-stuff from the agency, always on the lookout for a pretext of
+mistrust, found one in my (I admit) uncommon face. I put in the time
+until two, when I was not smothering up annoyance at those who would
+turn round to stare at a man who had been made half a head taller than
+the rest of the world, in wondering whether those about me were as rich
+or worse off than I, and whether they were able to procure a bath as
+cheaply and easily; and then I returned to Rixon Tebb & Masters' again.
+At six-thirty I proceeded home, washed, and went out to dinner. I dined
+at one of the establishments near the corner of Pentonville Road; you
+have seen them, there is an arrangement of gas-jets behind a steamy
+window, and, in galvanised iron trays, sausages and onions and saveloys
+fry. The proprietor of the "pull-up" fetched my dinner out of the window
+on the prongs of a toasting fork, and I ate it in a small matchboard
+compartment, or, when these _cabinets particuliers_ happened to be all
+pre-occupied, at an oilcloth-covered table that ran down the middle of
+the shop. During and after my meal I read the whole of _The Echo_--I was
+allowed as a habitue to retain my seat longer than the casual diner. But
+on the nights on which I took a bath (did I say I sponged on Archie
+Merridew for this convenience, carrying my clean shirt in a paper that
+also served for the wrapping-up of the one I had removed?), I added to
+my obligation by supping with him also, and then we walked on to the
+Business College together. My clothes I bought in Lamb's Conduit Street,
+my boots in Red Lion Passage. I had always the greatest difficulty in
+getting a fit in either. At one time I had the misfortune to make myself
+very unpopular among the proprietors of a row of barrows not far from
+Southampton Row. This was over the purchase of a collar, and the cub
+under the naphtha lamp had made some joke or other about the uncommon
+size I required, saying that the horse collars were to be had in St
+Martin's Lane. The blow under the ear I gave him was heavier than I
+intended; I am afraid I broke his jaw, and I avoided the street for a
+long time.
+
+After the class, I either continued my studies, as I have said, with
+young Merridew, or else took a walk. In this again I was always alone. I
+went far afield. If I went west, I usually turned along Great Russell
+and Guildford Streets, but the moths, English and foreign, of the half
+light of this last thoroughfare caused me at one time to take the way of
+Holborn and Gray's Inn Road. The nickname they gave me, they also gave,
+I don't doubt, to fifty men besides myself, but it seemed somehow to
+attach itself more conspicuously to me because of my general
+conspicuousness. It was that of the mysterious and ubiquitous author of
+a series of unelucidated crimes as to the nature of which I need not be
+specific.
+
+Then, when I had walked my fill, I returned to my cage opposite the red
+and green electric advertisement.
+
+This is a fair sample of my days at that time.
+
+
+II
+
+There is a showy boot shop now where the Business College used to be;
+the new place is in Kingsway. There, in Kingsway, I am told they have
+methods and appliances undreamed of in my time--mechanical calculators,
+wonderful filing systems, elaborate duplicators, and lectures on
+Commercial and Political Economy and Mercantile Law--but the old Holborn
+curriculum included shorthand, typewriting, book-keeping, and lectures
+on method and not very much besides. When I left, I remember, they were
+just beginning, as a high novelty, advertisement-writing. Later, I
+myself took this class, though only for a few weeks.
+
+Even then, I think, the Holborn place was condemned to come down. A
+second-hand book shop occupied the ground floor; and above the book shop
+window three columns, each of three bow windows, one for each floor,
+formed the frontage. The three bow windows of the top floor were ours.
+Inside, the place was small and inconvenient in the extreme. It had been
+a dwelling-house once, and the old fixtures still remained--dark
+cauliflower wallpapers, heavy ornamental gas-brackets, and little
+porcelain fittings by the fireplaces that still rang, in the second of
+the two rooms that had been knocked into one to form a lecture-room, a
+row of bells that resembled a series of interrogation marks.
+
+Only four women attended the classes. The business woman was,
+comparatively speaking, a rarity then, nor can I quite make up my mind
+as to how much things have changed in this respect and how much they
+remain exactly as they were. They have certainly changed if it is all on
+account of her certificate that a young woman can now walk into an
+office and be promptly asked at what hour it will be convenient for her
+to begin her duties on the morrow; and, lacking certificates, three of
+our four students could hardly have fallen back on any natural diploma
+of personal charms. I mean, in a word, that Miss Windus, Miss Causton
+and Miss Levey were, to say the least, not remarkably pretty, though
+Miss Causton was beautiful as far as her figure and movements went.
+
+But Evie Soames was very different. She was, in actual years, twenty;
+but she seemed still to stand among the debris of her teens as an
+opening tree stands over its sprinkling of delicate fallen sheaths in
+the spring. Both graces and awkwardnesses of an earlier time still
+clung, as it were, to her stem. She had, as I later learned, been at one
+school until she was seventeen, at a second school until she was
+nineteen, and now, after a year of indetermination and arrested
+development at home, was still further delaying her maturity by
+beginning again not very differently from the way in which she had begun
+at fourteen. She had, of course, picked up a number of unimportant
+acquirements by the way, but had never, in those days when I first knew
+her, given it a thought that Evie Soames was a person Evie Soames might
+well have some natural curiosity about. She moved, neither woman nor
+schoolgirl, among the charts and files and dusty ledgers of the Business
+College, slender, dark, necked like a birch, and with eyes than which,
+when she looked suddenly round, the flash of a negro's teeth was not
+whiter.
+
+I have told you how my days were passed, but not yet said anything about
+my dreams. As I cannot speak of Evie Soames apart from these I will do
+so as briefly as I can.
+
+Whatever else in my life I may have been, I have not, even in my dreams,
+been a sensualist. It might in some respects have been better for me if
+I had. But so far was I from that that I have even been charged (though
+the charge is really as wide of the mark as it could well be) with a
+certain inhumanity; by which I mean, not cruelty, but--how shall I
+express it?--a certain inaccessibility to the ordinary human relation.
+And I do not believe the woman lives who, given her choice of these two
+interpretations of the word, would not prefer the former. Only in the
+latter does she foresee her final defeat.
+
+Therefore, when at midday in Cheapside, or in Guildford Street as I
+returned from my lonely rambles, or in Holborn or Oxford Street at the
+hour when shops and offices turned out their human contents, male and
+female, after the day's work, I watched the pattering feet on the
+pavements, I was not stirred as the fleshly stockbrocker or
+conscienceless "blood" is stirred. (You must allow me this
+generalisation; you know what I mean.) My eyes did not meet other eyes
+as seeking acquaintance. I never, in train or tram or 'bus, set off my
+vacation of my seat for a woman against the bow or thanks I might
+receive. I never, even at my loneliest, held a waitress or attendant in
+talk for any satisfaction I had in her nearness. Whatever I have learned
+from crowds, crowds have had nothing of mine. Nor, my heavy and immobile
+appearance notwithstanding, was I (I affirm this) a solitary because I
+was refused acquaintanceship. I was a solitary because I refused it.
+
+But what I refused in the streets by day, I could not sleep for seeking
+when I lay down at night. What I sought I did not and do not know; I was
+only conscious of a hunger within myself that, not being satisfiable by
+the eye-profferings and other partial prettinesses of the crowd, were
+never offered that sustenance. I have heard this hunger described as a
+Divine Discontent, but that is to beg a question of some magnitude. It
+might be a very different thing from that. It might just conceivably be
+an Infernal Discontent. Or it might, in the case of a man who regarded
+neither God nor devil--But I wander. This, I say, was my dream, and I
+shared it with no sensualist.
+
+Of course you have already guessed why I say all this ... guessed what
+happened. Between the commonnesses under the street lamps which I
+spurned, and those dreams that were ever unseizably beyond my most
+ardent reaching forth, I fell in love with Evie Soames.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are, I know, men in whom a grim and uncompromising aspect is so
+richly compensated for by other gifts that, like John Wilkes, they may
+fairly brag that with fifteen minutes' start they would out-distance in
+a woman's favours the most regular-featured buck in London. Therefore
+(if I may use a "therefore" without egregiousness) it troubled me little
+that Miss Windus, not to speak of her two companions, Miss Causton and
+Miss Levey, found me unattractive. In that coin I could have repaid her,
+had I wished, with interest. Since I did not wish, my attitude was one
+of fully-armed reserve. All three of these women seemed to me to be for
+ever proclaiming, if not in words, yet in everything but words, that
+men, _as_ men, have worldly opportunities given them by a sort of
+favouritism, and as a kind of present for their circumspection in
+getting themselves born men--as if in this world either men or women
+ever got anything they were not quick enough or strong enough or callous
+enough to seize for themselves. Miss Windus in especial, a
+sharp-featured woman of twenty-eight, with apertures like little scalene
+triangles out of which her eyes peered with an expression quizzical and
+weak and yet perky and self-confident at the same time (as if she was
+saying perpetually to herself, "We may as well hear what _this_ one has
+to say for himself!") struck me as being the final word in
+self-importance and inefficiency.
+
+The top-heavy little Jewess, Miss Levey, was a very broker for gossip
+and tattle, and the remarks she occasionally made about others to me
+were quite enough to warn me that she would make equally free with
+myself to others. Both she and Miss Windus seemed to shout aloud the
+very sex-difference the existence of which they seemed at the same time
+to be denying. They "could not think of giving trouble" when one or
+other of the forty men placed a chair or adjusted a light or carried a
+Remington for them; but they would have known how to show their sense
+of the absence of such attentions all the same.
+
+I do not know that Miss Causton pleased me very much more, but she at
+any rate moved with a wonderful physical harmonious grace and flow. If
+one might judge from her hands and wrists (a business certificate on
+which she ever bestowed the most sedulous care) she did not come from
+quite the same social level as the other two--was, perhaps, the daughter
+of a doctor who had married his house-keeper, or of a decent governess
+whose decency had not prevented her from running off with a groom; but I
+made no attempt to unravel either this riddle or any other that her
+rather contemptuous grey eyes might contain. The attitudes she took in
+reaching down a book from a shelf or passing her arm about the waist of
+one of the other girls when they assembled for gossip were all I wanted
+of her, and those began and remained a purely aesthetic satisfaction.
+
+Therefore there could hardly have been a more complete contrast than
+there was between these apparently a-sexual yet in reality excessively
+sex-conscious women and my delicate unawakened Evie Soames. She made no
+more difficulty about giving me a "Good-evening," or "Good-night" than
+she did with the rest of the world; and though for a long time our
+speech stopped at that, it was yet as much as I had with any other
+woman whomsoever. That I should get even thus much of what everybody
+else in the world seemed to get as a matter of course came so gently and
+softly over me that I did not dream of a worse misery that might lurk
+hidden within it, and in those early days of my love a mother would not
+have fought more wildly for her babe than I would have turned on any who
+had offered to come between me and even this sparse sweetness that had
+come for the first time into my life.
+
+
+III
+
+The events I am now about to relate occurred during those early days,
+while I was still content to possess my dreams, as if as long as I
+closed my eyes the world would stand still about me.
+
+One November night, as the series of lectures on Method was drawing to a
+close, I returned with Archie Merridew to his rooms, silent, but
+exceedingly happy. The cause of my happiness will not greatly excite
+you, it had been no more than Evie's "Good-night, Mr Jeffries," given me
+as I had waited on the stairs of the college for young Merridew, who had
+lingered behind to ask Weston something or other.
+
+I had heard them coming down from the landing above, and, looking up,
+had seen the trail of Miss Causton's long grey coat and Miss Windus's
+blue and green plaid skirt and her gloved hand on the shaky old rail. I
+ought to say that the western-most of the three pillars of bow windows I
+have mentioned as forming the Holborn frontage of the college was the
+one that lighted the various floors of the staircase, and if parties had
+ever been given in that old house before it had got quite so old, it is
+odds that the embrasure in which I had just then been standing, that of
+the first floor, had held a few palms in pots and a couple of figures on
+its low window-seat many a time. But that night it had only held myself,
+waiting in the shadow shaped like a coffin-shoulder that the globeless
+gas of the landing cast.
+
+I had heard Miss Windus's little smothered exclamation. "_Oh!..._ That
+man!" but instantly she had gone on talking in a higher voice. Certainly
+she had had reasonable colour for the pretence that she had not seen
+me--had I not happened to hear her exclamation.
+
+And if I had heard it, so, of course, had Evie.
+
+"Good-night, Mr Jeffries," Evie had said as she had passed me, and Miss
+Windus also, as if suddenly discovering me, had given me quite a bright
+"Good-night!" Miss Causton also had given me a languid, almost insolent
+smile.
+
+I was happy. I should probably have taken myself and my happiness off
+somewhere had it not been that that evening I had made use of Archie's
+bath, and had left in his place, besides that paper parcel I have
+mentioned, a notebook of which I had need. So I had returned with
+Archie, and, not intending to stay, had yet sat down, overcoated as I
+was, before his fire.
+
+"Better take your coat off for a bit," Archie said. "I'd like a squint
+at your notes too, if you're not in a hurry."
+
+The notes were part of our preparation for the examination in Method
+which was to be held shortly before Christmas. I threw apart, but still
+did not remove my coat, and Archie took up my notebook and read as he
+stood. Presently, feeling for a chair with his foot, he sat down, still
+reading the notes.
+
+He looked up from time to time, but the questions he put barely
+interrupted my reverie. I stared at the fire in the pretty old-fashioned
+grate. He had no gas up there; his cardboard lamp-shade, green outside
+and a little heat-browned inside, stood on a chenille-clothed table; and
+he had given the shade a tilt for his convenience in reading. Thus the
+fireplace end of the room lay in a sort of irregular parabola of
+illumination. There were bright circles on the ceiling above the chimney
+of the lamp; then came spaces of cosy gloom; and below, in the pleasant
+light, were his arm-chairs, his small book-shelf, and, the rail of it
+catching the firelight, his high perforated brass fender. In the middle
+of a great cam of light that lay over the dimity-papered wall between
+his sitting and bed rooms, his dressing-gown, hanging from a hook in the
+bedroom door, made a grotesquely human-shaped shadow.
+
+By-and-by, with the book on his knee and his eyes still fixed on it,
+Archie began mechanically to unlace his boots. I looked up as he
+reached for his slippers, and then resumed my reverie.
+
+I was glad that Kitty Windus, whether she realised it or not, had been
+made the subject of an innocently awkward little snub. I couldn't stand
+the woman. I couldn't stand it that, ignoring my existence when she
+could, she spoke to me, when she did speak, with a false vivacity that
+only enhanced the effect of her passing over at other times. And lest
+you should think I was wasting my detestation on a rather insignificant
+object, I must ask you again to remember what my days were. The whole
+Scheme of Things seemed to be against me; but there is not much relief
+to be had from taking a blind fling at the Scheme of Things. A man with
+a grudge against the world will be very likely indeed to take that
+grudge out of the nearest person. I was not prosperous enough to have
+much time to waste on human charities. So, in my resentful hours, I took
+it mercilessly out of one against whom, in my calmer moments, I had no
+grudge except that she was not a thousand miles away. And if she had
+been a thousand miles away, I should have vented my bitterness on
+somebody else. I had to get rid of it somehow.
+
+But if my thoughts gave Miss Windus more of this than she fairly
+deserved, perhaps Evie Soames got more in another sort than she deserved
+either. There was not one of the few stray graces and sweetnesses I had
+ever known that did not accrete to and abide about the thought of her.
+No generous emotion, no human impulse I had ever experienced, but came
+with adoration and rich gifts with which to exalt her. In my heart I
+lighted tapers about her image. I did not ask myself whether she had
+supplanted my dreams, existed side by side with them, or was indeed my
+dreaming made truth. I did not wonder what she might have been in
+another man's dreaming, nor whether, apart from the dreaming of some
+man, she existed spiritually at all. I only knew that the fire inside
+Archie Merridew's fender was not warmer than that central warmth that
+seemed to steal (as if there also some bud-sheath had yielded) about my
+heart as I pictured again her sapling-straight figure, the flash of her
+turning eyes on the landing, and the tone in which she had bidden me
+good-night three quarters of an hour before. I leaned back as it were in
+some longed-for luxurious resting-place of the heart. I do not know the
+origin of the tears that gathered in my eyes.
+
+Suddenly Archie threw the book on to the table and stretched himself. He
+gave a yawn and put his feet on the fender.
+
+"Oh, I'm sick of work for to-day!" he said. "When are you going to start
+smoking?" he added as he drew out a cigarette-case.
+
+I answered something or other--it didn't matter what, since my lovely
+moment had gone with the breaking in of his voice.
+
+"Oh, well!..." he laughed, lighting up. Then, glancing at the blowing
+end before throwing his match into the fender, he said: "I say--what a
+jolly sort of girl that Miss Soames seems to be!"
+
+As the cold of a spring night freezes the newly mounting sap of a tree,
+so I felt some sweet and vigorous change suddenly arrested in my heart.
+
+"Wh-who?" I said. I had to make two attempts at it.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Oh, of course--I forgot, girls don't interest you. Like your not
+smoking, I suppose. Hadn't noticed there were any girls at the
+college--only see text-books and Remingtons.... Well, not to spring it on
+you too suddenly, there _are_ four girls there, three of 'em rather
+sticks, but the fourth a ripper. What a rum chap you are!" he concluded
+with another laugh.
+
+He had drawn his chair still closer to the fire, and now sat with his
+feet, not on the fender, but half-way up one of the pilasters that
+supported the chimneypiece. As he kicked off one slipper and began to
+warm one small foot on the iron-work just inside the pilaster, his
+profile was turned to me; but I didn't at first risk stealing a look at
+it for fear of meeting his eyes. Stealthily, however, and moving my head
+as little as possible, I did so. It was a pretty profile--fair curly
+hair thick on the crown, his head rather high at the back and of a long
+shape to the chin, good nose, pleasantly curved mouth--the head of a
+decent enough but quite unremarkable youngster of twenty-two. He was
+neatly dressed in a grey stripe, and wore a black-bound red waistcoat
+with brass buttons. I say he was decent enough, and so he was: I knew he
+knew the taste of whiskey, but don't think he drank it very often. "Good
+wholesome beer," he used to say with an air of experience, "was more his
+mark"; but even then I think the experience was more that of his
+companions than his own. You wouldn't have said there was much harm in
+him, and he would probably have to spend his allowance unwisely once or
+twice before he learned to spend it wisely.
+
+I made the moving of my chair an excuse for getting him better under
+observation.
+
+"Oh yes, awfully jolly," he repeated, blowing a plume of smoke through
+which the firelight shone rustily. "Fun ... no end of fun ...
+rather!..."
+
+Then he smiled, and the smile came and went and came again as he smoked.
+
+I don't know why, up to that moment, I had never thought of it--never
+thought of how it might already be or might presently become. I suppose
+the reason was that a man cannot hold the commerce I held with dreams
+without to some extent losing his touch of actuality. But now, at last,
+I was awake enough.... As if the room had turned colder I pulled my coat
+a little more closely about me.
+
+It was not then that that heart of mine, which I have likened to a bud
+suddenly arrested in the moment of its unfolding, became more likenable
+to a grenade with its fuse waiting exposed for the spark that should
+bring destruction....
+
+But I was quite calm. For the matter of that, I am never anything else
+when it comes to the point. My angers have served their purpose when
+they have brought me to the point. I _use_ anger.... Therefore, though I
+knew already that three careless words of his had opened an immeasurable
+abyss between us, I was able to speak to him without a tremor, from my
+chair at one side of his hearth to him in his own at the other.
+
+"You mean Miss----What's her name?"
+
+"Soames," he informed me. "You know--that young girl--you must have seen
+her.... Yes, full of fun.... I laughed.... I did laugh!"
+
+From the way in which he still laughed there must have been a specific
+occasion for his mirth. I knew of none such. I wished to know, however,
+and I also wished to know what he meant by "fun." Young men mean so many
+things by "fun," and it--But I stifled something within my breast almost
+before it was born there. When I spoke, my voice was as steady as it has
+ever been in my life; but the devil, watching a soul that hesitates on
+the point of sin, does not watch more closely than I watched that fair
+boy with the cigarette dangling from his upper lip.
+
+"Ah, yes, I've seen her.... _Pretty, too_," I hinted.
+
+But he put, if he heard, her prettiness aside. He chuckled again.
+
+"I went last Sunday to the Zoo, you know," he said. "They were spending
+the week-end in town--my folks. And I saw her there. Or rather, I didn't
+see her at first, it was Mumsie who saw her. 'I think there's somebody
+you know,' she says to me, and I looked, and there she was, bowing to
+me. Then up came pater--he'd dropped behind somewhere--and blest if he
+didn't know her aunt--she lives with her aunt--they have rooms in Woburn
+Place. So we all went round together.... I started the fun by saying how
+like old Weston the secretary bird was; so we went round looking for
+likenesses--raked up everybody we knew----" He stopped, suddenly.
+
+He wouldn't, had he been a year or two older, have pulled himself up
+quite so sharply. It is true he didn't go so far as to colour, stammer,
+or bite his lip; but his meaning, or his inadvertence, or whatever you
+like to call it, could hardly have been plainer had he done all these
+things. An anecdote was related to me not so very long ago by an agent I
+employ to advise me in my picture-buying. It was of the most sardonic of
+our caricaturists, and this merciless artist had (so the story ran)
+refused to caricature a certain person, giving as his reason that, while
+a vain or over-praised or too consciously handsome face was fair game
+for his ironic pencil, a face already heavily visited by nature went
+free. But for Archie Merridew's sudden embarrassed check I might have
+imagined that _my_ own visage might have gone free also. It is, after
+all, not repellent. I bear quite a strong resemblance to at least one
+public man whose photographs appear in the illustrated papers--a
+distinguished scientist. My stature is the most striking thing about me,
+and if your humour takes that turn you can find remote suggestions of
+any number of people at the Zoo.
+
+I made, however, no sign, and he, judging his clumsiness to have passed
+unnoticed, went on:
+
+"Funny the pater knowing her aunt like that, wasn't it? Rather fun
+though. Mumsie said she must come down to Guildford for a few days and
+stay with us; if she does I shall go home that week-end--you bet!"
+
+My answer gave me no pain. It came, I think, out of just such an
+automatic reflex as causes an "opening" in conversation to call forth
+its own obvious reply. It would have been more marked not to say it than
+to say it, and as I am telling you, in my state of still tension it
+didn't hurt.
+
+"Oh!" I said. "And when does one congratulate you?"
+
+"What d'you mean?" he asked.
+
+"Why, on your engagement."
+
+Instantly I knew I had said the right thing. There was nothing either
+false or forced about the little exclamation he made, half scoff, half
+laugh. His face was clear as crystal. By "fun" he meant, simply, mere
+physiological laughter, the bubbling-up of the high spirits of his
+years. Human resemblances at the Zoo are quite enough to call up this
+purely functional giggling. She was "fun" (the odds were a thousand to
+one) as his sister might have been fun; with a certain freshness and
+sense of discovery perhaps, but otherwise not very differently. In spite
+of the sequel, I still think I am right in making this statement.
+
+"Don't be an idiot!" he said.... "I say, Jeff, I couldn't quite make out
+that about indexing and cross-references to-night. Did he mean that the
+cross-references are a sort of double entry for when the subjects
+overlap, or what?"
+
+But there was still something I wished to verify.
+
+"Who?" I asked. "The--secretary bird?"
+
+This time I think he did colour faintly, but as he had swung his legs
+down from the fireplace and was reaching for my notebook again I could
+not be quite sure.
+
+"Pass me the book," I said.
+
+For the next quarter of an hour I gave him as collected and lucid an
+explanation of his difficulties as if I had had no other care in the
+world. Then I lifted myself up. I buttoned my coat, put the notebook
+into my pocket, and briefly recapitulated what I had told him.
+
+"Thanks, awfully," he said gratefully, when I had finished. "You are a
+brick. _You_ ought to give the lectures instead of old Weston. I'm sure
+if I pass this exam it will be all you. Must you go?"
+
+"Must."
+
+"Well--so long--I think I'll make a few notes myself before I forget
+again."
+
+And, still master of myself, I left him arranging papers and feeling in
+his inkstand for a pen.
+
+
+IV
+
+I do not know but what I might still have retained control of myself
+when I got out into the street again; I do not know, because I didn't
+try. Instead, no sooner had I got away from him than I went temporarily
+all to pieces. I remember I passed up Charlotte Street and turned into
+Mecklenburgh Square; and there I leaned against the railings of the
+garden that occupies the middle of the Square. I stood with my shoulder
+against them, looking stupidly down at my feet. There was a thin and
+melancholy mist; the lights of the boarding-houses and nursing-homes of
+the east side of the Square struggled through it with difficulty, and
+presently I found that my foot was playing absently with a few sodden
+plane-tree leaves that had drifted against the kerb.
+
+Slowly, as I stood there, my stupidity gave place to a dull anger. I
+don't think it was anger against anybody in particular; it was as
+objectless as it was useless and exhausting. But if you have had that
+gall in your mouth that makes all the world taste bitter, you will
+understand my miserable rage. This changed presently to a shivering,
+weeping rage The wide portalled door of a house opposite opened, and a
+servant-girl came down the shallow steps to post a letter; I daresay she
+supposed I was unwell or a drunkard; and a passer-by might have
+concluded that I had an assignation with her, or had just had a quarrel.
+
+Then, when I had had a little ease of my anger, I pulled myself together
+and banished it again. Now that I had come, tardily enough, out of my
+fool's paradise of the past weeks, I had other things than purposeless
+anger to think of. I moved away from the railings; the maid, returning
+from the posting of her letter, quickened her steps to avoid me; and I
+walked slowly northeastward through the Square.
+
+Quickly I became calmer still. Soon I was calm enough to recognise that
+I needed this. "What," I said ironically to myself, thunder-struck at a
+thing so very surprising! "Did you think that because your head was in
+the clouds ... come, come, you'd better look at the thing; you mayn't
+have any too much time, you know; if I were you I'd take a walk and
+think it out."
+
+I turned into Grays Inn Road, and began to take my own advice.
+
+While I had no reason to suppose that she had fallen in love with him, I
+knew almost for a certainty that he had not with her. He was not at
+that stage yet. Already he was nibbling at other pleasures, and with a
+youngster of his kind one or two nibbles mean three or four. They may
+even mean ten or twelve. So far so good. I was still in time. I was, in
+fact, so far beforehand that, of the three of us, I was probably the
+only one who knew, not what had happened (which was nothing) but what
+might happen--which was everything. That I took for the starting-point
+of my consideration.
+
+And I saw that that, at the outset, was an enormous advantage to me. Not
+only could I watch events, but I could watch them to infinitely better
+purpose that I knew what to look for. They, when it came--the "it" I had
+in my mind--(I ought rather to say did I suffer it to come) would not,
+in the bewildering wonder of it, know what had overtaken them; while I,
+by a timely use of care and skill, might even turn to advantage those
+disadvantages of mine which, huge as a church, might have been deemed to
+outweigh everything else. No more perfect cover for hidden motion could
+have been devised than I already possessed. Who suspects, of anything,
+one whom to suspect would on the face of it be absurd? I could, did I
+find this necessary, use practically the whole of my conspicuous life
+and narrow circumstances as a screen.
+
+I reached the top of Gray's Inn Road, crossed to St Pancras Station,
+and, following the line of coal merchants' offices on the left side of
+the road, plunged into the shadows of the Somers Town arches. It was
+there that I thought of another thing that I must interrupt my
+meditation to acquaint you with.
+
+You may have wondered why, if all young Merridew said about my brains
+was true, I had still, after some years as an agency clerk at Rixon Tebb
+& Masters', not been able to get away from the place. Well, the answer
+to that is involved in a hundred other things that have ended, after
+fifteen years, in my now being able to write this chapter of my personal
+history at a great square mahogany and leather writing-table, with two
+softly-shaded electric standards upon it, and, containing it, a lofty
+panelled study, rich and quiet, with a carpet soft as thymy turf and my
+pictures and carvings and cabinets mirrored in floor-borders, brown and
+deep as the pools of my Irish trout stream. You do not want the whole of
+that long story. I will tell you as much as is necessary here. The rest
+I may tell at some other time.
+
+The truth was that I _had_ left Rixon Tebb & Masters'--had left the
+place, and had achieved the seeming miracle of being permitted to
+return. Such a marvel was without precedent, and I cannot say that it
+had been accomplished altogether by my own contrivance. I said a little
+while ago that there were eight of us, had over in a lump from the
+agency; I also said that only by way of the junior clerkship was any
+advancement possible from that slavery of addressing envelopes that
+might have been for company circularisation or might have been sent over
+in shiploads to the Flushing and Middleburg book-makers for all we knew;
+and I had had the signal luck--I forgot this when I said that luck had
+always passed me by on the other side--to present myself for
+reappointment, without any hope whatever of getting it, at the very
+moment when Polwhele had succeeded to this post.
+
+How Polwhele had chanced to be occupied as he had been occupied when I
+had presented myself I understand only too well. Sneaking, prying,
+slandering, peaching--you didn't become Rixon Tebb & Masters' junior
+clerk without having been through the mill of all this and more. Poor
+worm, he had got so used to it that he couldn't help it. Having attained
+to the junior clerkship, he was going to work up through the seniors by
+the same means, I suppose, and the means he had been making use of, at
+the moment of my coming upon him, had been the furtive rummaging of a
+waste-paper basket that had come--I knew this by the pattern of it--from
+Mr Masters' private office.
+
+It had been, of course, the perfect opportunity for me, who was subdued
+to sneaking and peaching also. I had leaned my elbow on the brass rail
+of a tall desk and stood looking down on him--such a long way down it
+seemed--he was on his knees.
+
+"Hallo, Polwhele!" I had suddenly said. "Going to put Samson Evitt out
+of business?" And then I waited to see how he took it.
+
+I don't suppose you've ever heard of Samson Evitt. He has been a
+solicitor; at that time he described himself as a waste-paper dealer;
+and what he really did, and for all I know does still, was to buy up,
+through a hundred miserable agents, and on the chance of coming upon
+some private letter or secret draft, the contents of such receptacles as
+Polwhele's fingers had been deep in at that moment.
+
+"Going to start in Samson's line, are you, Polwhele?"
+
+The colour of his face had changed as swiftly as that of the electric
+advertisement opposite my bedroom at King's Cross. He had gone as white
+as chalk. I had known perfectly well that he wasn't going to sell
+anything to Samson Evitt, but was merely playing his own hand with the
+firm; but he'd had no business at all with Mr Masters' waste-paper
+basket, and knew it. It had been rather horrible, but I had known I was
+as good as reinstated already.
+
+"I'm coming back, Polwhele," I had said.
+
+He had not spoken--only looked at me with eyes full of terror.
+
+"You're going to see that I come back, Polwhele," I had informed him.
+
+"My God, Jeffries, you wouldn't have the heart."
+
+"Oh no--not as long as I come back."
+
+Then swiftly he had seen his years of shifts and meannesses all wasted
+unless....
+
+"Oh my God! How can I do it?" he had groaned.
+
+"I don't know, Polwhele."
+
+I did not know, nor do I know now how he did it. Men do impossible
+things when they've got to. That had been on a Friday evening, at a
+quarter to seven (the zeal of a new junior clerk always kept him after
+the others had gone). I had given him Monday in which to see to it. On
+the Tuesday morning, at nine o'clock, I had been back at my envelope
+addressing again. These things have to be done sometimes. And I need
+hardly add that now Polwhele would have turned up at my funeral with a
+smile on his lips and a nosegay in his buttonhole.
+
+Of the period between my leaving Rixon Tebb & Masters' and my return
+thither I will not speak. You may guess at the nature of its experiences
+from the fact that I was thankful to get back to my lists and addresses
+again.
+
+It would have surprised my fellow-clerks, who saw in me one as listless
+as themselves, to learn with what unresting energy I had worked since
+then. I had resolved that my next leap from that frying-pan should not
+be into the fire, and the means by which I was making sure of this was
+the Business College in Holborn. I knew my great natural gifts and the
+power that smouldered within me, but I had also learned, and in a school
+where the lessons were well driven home, that power and natural gifts
+were, for a man in my position, practically worthless unless they were
+supplemented and guaranteed. I had got to get myself certificated.
+
+I don't know what certificates have come to mean nowadays, sometimes, I
+fear, very little. They seem to me to have lowered the standard with the
+utmost recklessness. I would not, in my own business, give a pound a
+dozen for some of these artificially achieved successes that are offered
+to me almost every day in the week, and it causes me no surprise
+whatever when I see the highly certificated also unemployed.... But it
+was rather different then. Once more I have forgotten my luck and railed
+at the goddess. It was my luck to be certificated while certificates
+still had a value, and for a year and a half I had drifted through my
+occupation by day but worked with an almost demoniac energy by night in
+order that I might not miss a single one of these tickets of
+authenticity that it was possible for me to obtain. A First Honours in
+Method would now complete my equipment.
+
+And, looking back now, I wonder how much superstition there was in it
+that I wanted all the changes I was planning to come at once. For I
+meant that the break, when it did come, should be clean and final. As
+long as I remained with Rixon Tebb & Masters' my wretched single room at
+King's Cross was quite good enough for an agency clerk; when I left
+Rixon Tebb & Masters' I would leave those quarters also. Until then, I
+don't think you could have dragged me out, so strongly had I this
+feeling. Superstition or what you like, it had, for me, the force of a
+large and wise, if not yet fully worked out strategy. They tried, of
+course, at the Business College in Holborn, just as they are now trying
+at the new place in Kingsway, to teach us this larger generalship of
+waiting, withholding, massing, concentration, and then the swift
+development and advance; but I don't think it was much good. You don't
+get these things in return for so many guineas a year in fees. But I
+felt their stirrings then.... I hope I have made it plain that neither
+at the place in Kingsway, nor in my sordid lodgings over the
+public-house, nor under the arches of Somers Town that night, was I
+wasting my time.
+
+And now, like a match to all that I had prepared and was preparing, had
+come the kindling thought of Evie Soames.
+
+I remember I walked to Hampstead that night, revolving it all. Walking
+always steadies me, and by the time I had reached the Lower Heath the
+mechanical calculators at the new place in Kingsway do not work more
+coldly and mathematically than my brain had begun to work. The
+advantages I possessed, which had been the first thing to rush into my
+head, I allowed for the present to take care of themselves; I now
+envisaged my disadvantages.
+
+You may imagine that these were terrifying.... I counted them, and was
+unable to check my groans when, thinking I had come to the end of them,
+yet another sprang up, stabbing me as it were from behind. They might
+almost have been veritable assassins, springing out from behind the dark
+bushes and copses near the Vale of Health among which I wandered....
+Think of them! Think of them!
+
+They, he and she, were of an age, or nearly; I seven years the senior of
+the elder of them. They met on three days a week at the college, met
+doubtless to snigger together over their "fun," only on three evenings
+could I see her. Her people apparently knew his; she would go down to
+Guildford, and my fancy might picture them, together there, taking
+walks, telling stories over the fire, laughing at chance resemblances at
+the Zoo. And all this time I should not cease for a moment to labour at
+that garden of my ambition above the brown mould of which not a green
+shoot yet showed. How (you must remember I was desperately facing the
+worst that could happen and not the best)--how could they help but fall
+in love? What would it be possible for me to do but to discover the
+thing after it had happened? And when it had happened, what was there
+then to be done?
+
+But I need not force all this upon you. You will see for yourself. Look
+at it, then, and tell me where you would have conceived the odds to
+lie--with my possibly large-planning but certainly slow-executing brain,
+or with them and their opportunities and luck and gifts of circumstance
+and nature, demolishable singly perhaps, but well-nigh invincible in the
+sum of them?
+
+I weighed it as I strayed and stubbled about the benighted Heath.
+
+I returned from Hampstead at three o'clock in the morning. My horror of
+red and green had long since been switched off, and I got into bed
+during the only quiet interval that noisy and populous corner ever knew.
+I had now balanced advantages and disadvantages together, and was
+recapitulating the whole. Examining, setting aside, bringing forward
+again to re-examine in other aspects, setting aside again, checking,
+dismissing, estimating--my brain worked like a ticking instrument.
+Clocks struck, but still I pondered; and I was as free from anger now
+as if it had been another, not I, who had sought the support of the
+railings in Mecklenburgh Square.
+
+And there dominated all my machination the single thought, that by no
+slip or carelessness or overlooked detail must they be made aware that
+I was watching them as a masked thief watches the uneasy sleeper upon
+the bed.
+
+
+V
+
+It was at Rixon Tebb & Masters' that I first began to know jealousy, or
+at least the image of it. I find I must say a little more about this
+place in which I spent my days at that time.
+
+I have said that Polwhele hated me; but nobody loved anybody else at
+Rixon Tebb & Masters'. I have worked in offices that have been not bad
+fun at all; offices where the fellows formed a sort of family, as they
+did afterwards at the Freight & Ballast Company, with something not
+unlike the family bond, the family jokes, and an interchange each
+morning of the adventures of the night before not unlike the exchange of
+items of news from letters about a family breakfast-table; but there was
+nothing like that at Rixon Tebb & Masters'. There, one of us could
+scarcely glance up over the little brass rail at his desk-head without
+seeing, across the spaces where the green porcelain cones of the
+incandescents hung, another furtive pair of eyes meeting his own and
+looking almost guiltily away again. If the partners despised us for our
+cringing before them they were right; we were a despicable set. I don't
+think a friendship was ever struck up in the place. We hated, if for no
+other reason, than because each of us knew his neighbour to be as
+contemptible as he knew himself to be.
+
+It was in this atmosphere that I wrapped myself about with the thought
+of Evie Soames. My routine work taxed my attention little; I could do it
+as well as it needed to be done and live a whole free inner life at the
+same time; and I was sometimes actually startled when, looking up after
+some lapse and interim in which I had seen nothing but the shape of
+Evie's birch-like neck and the brilliant motion of her eyes, I saw the
+crafty gaze of a fellow-clerk on my face. Once I met Sutt's eyes in this
+way; I knew his thought, namely, that he surmised the nature of mine;
+and he smiled, a mean sort of smile. He didn't smile twice, though,
+while I was there. I don't mean that I said or did anything, but I think
+he knew what my look meant.... All the same there got about the
+office--or rather about the corners and lavatories and behind screens,
+for it never came nearer to me than that--the only joke I remember ever
+to have been born there--the joke that Jeffries had all the appearance
+of a man in love. I took the hint. Thenceforward, as far as I might, I
+did not allow the faintest flicker of an emotion to cross my face. And
+more than ever was I on my guard lest I should do so in a place where it
+would have mattered more than it did at Rixon Tebb & Masters'.
+
+Then, long before I knew of any valid grounds for them, and before a
+brain less prospectively active than mine would as much as dreamed of
+them, came these jealousies. Perhaps, like my occasional angers and like
+that secret fragrant flame of my love, they were emotions at large,
+unattached to any person but bound sooner or later to become so
+attached, and already seeking a quarter in which to alight.
+
+They wrung my heart. Hot flushes and rages sometimes came upon me with
+no warning whatever. Sometimes in the middle of a column of figures or a
+twelve-inch-high stack of addresses, a devil would slyly lift its
+head--the thought that while I sat there polishing my trousers on a tall
+stool and the wrist of my sleeve on my desk, he and my Evie
+were--where?... I have in a remarkable degree that most precious and
+most hideous of gifts, the gift of mental visualisation, at these times
+it would have its way with me. I would see them in those moments where I
+would and engaged how I would. Well nigh as clearly as I see the page
+before me, I would see him, long boyish head and fair curly hair, red
+waistcoat and cigarette, and turned-up trousers and all, now making
+pretexts that something was wrong with her typewriter, now carrying a
+specimen ledger for her, now choosing for himself a place from which he
+could watch her, or even passing on to her the explanations of knots
+and difficulties he had had the previous evening from myself. My fancy
+(my reason at these times its helpless slave) would dog them--past the
+general room into the lecture-room--thence to the back room where the
+charts and apparatus were kept--thence back again through the lecture
+room into the shorthand and typewriting and senior class rooms, and so
+throughout every corner behind our three Holborn bow windows. There were
+times when I used all my powers of concentration to see one of them
+without the other, and failed.... And then the fit would pass and my
+steady reason would reassert itself. I would tell myself I was a fool to
+thrust knives into myself thus. She was merely that touchingly opening
+fair young tree; and as for him, if his young male swaggerings in the
+pride of his twenty-two years included any knowledge of girls at all,
+they were probably girls of a very different class from hers.
+
+Then would come the other damnable series again, and the sweat would
+stand on my brow.
+
+No wonder Sutt looked.
+
+Yet I am not sure that, for the sake of certain purely heavenly hours, I
+would not go through it all again. Would you suppose that in that
+five-shilling room of mine, where I had to flatten myself against the
+wall before I could take my clothes off unseen--or as I dined on
+sausage and mashed at my reeking "pull-up"--or as I roamed the pavements
+in search of the physical exhaustion that should bring sleep--would you
+suppose that in these places and living this life I could have heavenly
+hours? Ah, but I could, and had!... I don't want you to think I am
+sentimentalising about it. The public-house downstairs had knocked a
+good many ideas about the sanctity of our common humanity out of my
+head. I never, in my fourpenny dining-place, looked at the drayman or
+porter at the next table and wondered whether he also knew the heights
+and abysses I knew. Doubtless he had or had had his own, but all is
+_not_ comparative. There _are_ grades in heaven and hell. I knew I stood
+out, exceptional, destined, marked for signal honour or for signal
+dishonour. I had no desire to persuade anybody else of this. These
+things are beyond proof. Attempt to prove them and you but prove their
+opposites.
+
+And so literally was this slender dark creature "my life," that often at
+the college itself my resolution all but failed me. More (but not much
+more) woman than child, she seemed at these times--what shall I
+say?--not a wonder shrunk, but a receptacle strangely slight and tender
+for the mighty things preparing for her. At such moments I found myself
+looking years ahead--seeing many things over and behind us, and myself,
+perhaps, turning my power elsewhere. And that moved me more than all
+the rest. For my strength was ever being used for her. Service of her
+was the law of it, as I now knew it had been its origin. I sometimes had
+ado not to sob, when watching her young head bent over the page of a
+text-book, images of great and brooding protection of enfolding and
+strong and jealous wakefulness, filled my breast as I looked. I felt in
+those moments that for every hair of her head I could have killed a man
+and felt no compunction afterwards.
+
+Evie caused me far more anxiety than Archie did. At all times Archie's
+vanities, quite as amusing to watch as those of any young girl, would
+blind him to much that lay an inch or two beyond the end of his nose. He
+was, moreover, deep in his examination work, and I had no doubt that,
+once the examinations were over, he would indulge himself in a mild
+little "burst" and flatter his seraphic self he was rather a devil in
+his way. But she was more difficult. For one thing, hers was a richer
+nature. She had, or would presently have, far more to give; and already
+I saw that, as surely as Miss Windus was one of Life's takers, Evie
+Soames was one of Life's givers.
+
+I watched--how I watched!--for the slightest of her unconscious
+betrayals; and, of course, by dint of watching I was able to find a
+thousand that presently vanished again. I drew trifling tremendous
+conclusions from the merest nothings. She could not make a gawky,
+captivating little movement but I would found something upon it, not a
+pretty coltish gesture but I had my inference to draw. The smile,
+perhaps, where lately the laugh would have been--the little check of
+recollection, even as she was perching herself with a tomboyish swing on
+the edge of a table, that she "was grown-up now"--slight little
+ceremoniousnesses, stilted little phrases and momentary forgettings
+again--I missed not one of these. My lovely, lovely flapper! Did you
+know that you were twenty different creatures in a week, each beyond
+words adorable until another swelling nodule yielded and allowed a peep
+of a yet inner tender and rosy heart?
+
+Of course I see now that I was far too clever in all this. I had, in
+fact, taken the course that was least of all likely to tell me what I
+wanted to know. For, as a face seen daily shows no change and yet grows
+relentlessly older, so, because of my watching, she changed under my
+eyes and my eyes did not tell me she had changed. I have had in my time
+various things to say about "woman's intuition." I, like the rest of us,
+have set half of it down as guessing and the other half (the half that
+events falsify) as a convenient forgetfulness. Well, I hope I make
+amends when I admit now that in all this I owed my final enlightenment
+to a woman, and to the woman to whom I would least of all have been
+indebted--to Miss Windus.
+
+It was on a Friday evening that this enlightenment came to me. Fridays
+were ever a pain to me, because of the three whole days that must
+elapse--five if she failed to appear on the Monday evening--before I
+could see Evie again. Believe me, the last minutes of those Friday
+evenings always cost me dearly in emotion; and in order that I might
+make the most of them I had some time before discontinued a former habit
+of mine--that of working in the senior students' classroom. By so doing
+I had forestalled any remarks on the fact that I was frequently to be
+found in the same room as Evie. And even then I knew I was lucky to
+escape Miss Levey's Hebrew intensiveness.
+
+But on that Friday night I was restless. An absurd trifle had unsettled
+me (but I have told you how much such trifles meant to me)--nothing more
+than an alteration in Evie's way of arranging her hair. Until then it
+had been drawn back and massed in a thick little clump on her nape,
+showing beautifully the small round of her head; but now she had parted
+it (I did not think altogether more becomingly) in the middle, and had
+evidently been making desperate attempts to "wave" it. Certainly the
+change gave her at once a more adult air, which I supposed I should get
+used to, unless, as was likely, she changed it again in the following
+week. Her blouse also was new. It had a high lace collar up to her ears,
+and I didn't like it in the least. It was mere concealment, without
+concealment's charm.
+
+I was restless. I had begun the evening by working, for once, in the
+senior classroom again; but presently, not happy where I was and not
+wishing to go straightway into the lecture-room where Evie sat, I had
+compromised by packing up my things and going into the room adjoining
+hers--the general room. The reference books were kept in the general
+room, and, presently, having need of one of these, I had crossed to the
+shelf and taken it down.
+
+I ought to explain that these books were kept in three projecting bays,
+such as one sees in libraries, that stood out at right angles from the
+wall. Thus the books of each projecting wing faced both ways and between
+the bays there was just room enough for the short library ladder of
+three or four steps with the vertical staff to steady yourself by as you
+stood on it. As I could easily reach any book there without the ladder,
+I had passed the bay that contained it, and had taken up my place on the
+farther side of the wing nearest the window, where I stood with the open
+book in my hand. I forget what the book was.
+
+As I stood I heard Miss Windus and Miss Causton come into the adjoining
+compartment.
+
+I had no great interest in either of these women--I may say none, since
+I could not see Miss Causton's fluent hand; so, merely noting their
+arrival, I was continuing my reading when suddenly I heard the name of
+Evie Soames. It was Miss Windus who was speaking.
+
+"... Oh, I suppose so; in her way, of course--if that's all men want!"
+she was saying. "Don't you think?" This with a little acidulous rising
+inflection.
+
+Then I heard Miss Causton's indolent voice in reply. From the way in
+which she spoke I fancied she was eating sweets. It had lately struck me
+that she ate more sweets than both the other girls together, and if it
+wasn't sweets it was something else.
+
+"Don't ask _me_, my dear," she drawled. "_I_ don't know what the
+creatures want."
+
+"Of course not. They do seem to want such--odd--things. The way I'm
+looked at sometimes--I declare it makes me feel perfectly ashamed!" said
+Miss Windus. Why she said it I don't know. It was the purest hypocrisy,
+and it was not likely to impose on Miss Causton, who had a nonchalant,
+still humour of her own.... But on second thoughts I don't know. I was
+not always sure, afterwards, when I got to know Miss Windus better, that
+she didn't really labour under some such delusion as this.
+
+"Do they?" Miss Causton asked lazily. "They don't worry me much. So long
+ago since I've seen one that I've nearly forgotten."
+
+There was a short pause, then:
+
+"Really, they stare so," Miss Windus continued, "look one so out of
+countenance--one really doesn't know which way to turn!"
+
+"No?" came Miss Causton's ironical dawdle. "Oh ... with a chance, my
+dear ... _I_ should!" ... I suppose she smiled as she said it. While
+appearing to lay herself perfectly open she had far more to hide than
+Miss Windus had.
+
+Miss Windus was shocked.
+
+"You _dreadful_ girl!... But really Louie, you must have noticed it.
+Why, you can see it the moment she comes into the room!"
+
+"Really?" came the other detached voice. "How quaint!... Who do you
+think she's after? Not the Baboon?..."
+
+I imagined the chuckle I didn't hear. I took it that the Baboon was
+myself.
+
+"Mandrill, my dear," Miss Windus corrected. "You really must take a
+memory powder!..."
+
+"Oh, I call it baboon," Miss Causton remarked with indifference. Then
+she laughed.... "How ridiculous you are! He's as big as a man ought to
+be anyway----"
+
+"Oh, quite!"
+
+"----and I declare you can look at him till he's quite good-looking!"
+
+"Oh!..." (I could almost see Miss Windus' quizzical eyes.)
+
+"Really, you are absurd!..."
+
+There was another short silence.
+
+"And by the way," Miss Windus next said, "_he's_ been rather--different
+somehow--lately, don't you think?"
+
+Sweets crunched for a moment, then:
+
+"Different?... Do you mean _he's_ been looking at you in
+that--ahem!--dreadful way?"
+
+"What, _that_ creature!..."
+
+"Beg yours, dear----"
+
+"_I_ should think so!... But I fancied he'd been somehow--not quite the
+same----"
+
+"Well, anything for a change, as the song says. Myself, if I found I
+couldn't get along without 'em, I should prefer----"
+
+But a "Sssh!" interrupted Miss Causton. Somebody had come into the
+farther bay, and the rest for a time was whispering.
+
+When next the conversation became audible its tenor did not seem to have
+changed.
+
+"Scented soap in a little celluloid box, too!" Miss Windus admired.
+
+"One must keep oneself clean," Miss Causton threw off. "Have some of
+this, dear. I simply had to have some chocolate nougat to-night!..."
+
+There was a rustling of tissue paper.
+
+"Well, it's a sign, and so's her hair-waving and polishing her nails and
+that lace yoke," Miss Windus resumed.
+
+"Oh yes, the pneumonia blouse----"
+
+"_And_ her heels--_and_ a scent-sachet!..."
+
+You see that I was quite deliberately listening. I am not putting on any
+airs about it. I might have been Polwhele. I wanted to know, so I
+listened. I did more than listen too. I watched. I knew that the shelves
+were only half full on the other side; only a screen of stout wire
+separated the books facing one way from those facing the other; and by
+pulling out a book or two on my side I should probably find a
+peephole.... Very softly I pulled three or four out, found my opening
+and looked. Miss Causton appeared to be standing with her back towards
+me; I couldn't see her; but I could see Miss Windus, sitting on the
+library ladder holding its short staff, with her plaid skirt pulled
+tightly about one carrot-shaped thigh.
+
+They began to talk again.
+
+"And another thing that makes me _quite_ sure, dear! She's going to
+young Merridew's next week-end!"
+
+"Oh!..."
+
+"Don't be absurd. You know what I mean. To his parents', of course; they
+live in Guildford.... Not that _she_ told me, oh no! Not her ladyship!"
+
+"Who did, then?"
+
+"Not her, though I gave her _every_ chance! Six months ago she'd have
+told me like a shot, but we're getting so blessed artful these days!...
+He told me."
+
+"Then it doesn't look as if it _was_ the Baboon?"
+
+"Oh, I daresay she'll leave you your Baboon if you want him."
+
+"Thanks. I think I should know which way to turn in _that_ case," Miss
+Causton replied evenly. "Coming?"
+
+And they left the bay together.
+
+It was by this admirable piece of Rixon Tebb & Masters' work that I
+learned what, it appeared, I had been watching too closely to see.
+
+
+VI
+
+I had intended in any case to spend the remainder of that evening with
+Archie Merridew. Mingled with my restlessness there had been a tremulous
+sensitiveness that had culminated half-an-hour before in a fit of
+satanic pride. Lately (I had decided) it had come to be taken rather too
+much as a matter of course that our frequent adjournments after the
+evening class should be always to his quarters and never, or hardly
+ever, to mine. I had quite enough to bear without further gratuitous
+rubs of that kind, and I had resolved that I would make myself his host
+that evening though he had lived in a mansion and I in a sty.
+
+But after what I had so altogether discreditably overheard now I had
+fifty other reasons for wishing him to come along with me. Almost every
+sentence that had been spoken on the other side of that bay of books had
+contained a reason. But I realised that before I could trust myself to
+face him I must swallow the anger that crowded thickly into my throat.
+There was nothing to gain and everything to lose by letting him see my
+rage. So I walked back into the empty senior classroom, there to remain
+until I should have got the worst of it over.
+
+By half-past nine I had got myself in hand. I gathered my work together.
+Students were coming to the row of washbowls in the small compartment at
+the end of the senior classroom to wash their hands, and Evie gave me
+the smile that was to be my nourishment for three whole days as she
+passed with her towel and the cake of soap in the new celluloid box.
+Archie had been working all the evening in the typewriting-room; now was
+my chance, before he could make (supposing him to want to make) any
+appointment with her, to secure this myself, and I hurried for my hat
+and coat and sought him.
+
+"Ready?" I said.
+
+"Right-oh; just a minute," he replied. "I told 'em to keep my fire
+in--I'm going to swot like blazes to-night."
+
+"Oh no--you're coming along with me this time," I laughed. "I shall be
+ashamed to show my face at your place much oftener ... unless," I added
+lest he should shake me off, "you love me merely for what I have----"
+
+He laughed too. He was at the young and squab-like stage that takes a
+pride in scorning appearances, and even finds the heart more rather than
+less honest when the waistcoat over it is shabby. He accepted with quite
+a good grace, got his hat and coat, and we went out together, I giving
+Miss Windus an unimpeachable "Good-night" as I passed her, hardly a
+yard from the spot where I had peeped on her less than an hour before.
+
+The electrograph opposite my abode was an advertisement of "_Sarcey's
+Fluid_," some sort of a disinfectant; and as we approached it Archie
+looked up.
+
+"Phew!... Needs it rather, to-night, doesn't it?" he laughed.
+
+It did not seem to me to "need it" quite so badly that evening as it had
+on some other evenings--warm summer evenings, for example--I had known.
+December had come in rawly, and the chestnut stoves and baked-potato
+engine were out. The poorer streets have no pleasanter smell than that
+of baked potatoes, broken up, sprinkled with salt from the big tin
+caster, and closed together again like a South Sea face with a mealy
+smiling mouth, and I had slipped a couple of these into my pocket for
+our supper. I suppose Archie meant the fried fish papers in the gutters
+and (as we entered by my side door) the acrid smell of the public-house;
+but it was part of my fiendish pride to rub those things in a little
+that evening, and I made light of them as we mounted the stairs.
+
+"Oh, you're pampered, Master Archie," said I. "I had thought of asking
+you round to supper next Saturday evening--not to-morrow, a week
+to-morrow--but I think I shall save my hospitality."
+
+You see what I was already angling for. Well, I caught my fish. Of
+course he couldn't take Evie down to his folks at Guildford without my
+knowing of it, but I wanted to see the fashion in which he would make
+his avowal. We had left the carpeted corner of the stairs that the great
+ornamental public-house lamp illuminated brightly and were standing on
+the bare landing outside my room. He answered without an instant's
+hesitation.
+
+"Afraid you'll have to, Jeff--twice over," he replied. "I've got to go
+down home that week-end; beastly nuisance! I was going with some fellows
+over to Richmond--stag-party; but the mater writes that she's asked Miss
+Soames, so I suppose I shall have to be there to help out--confound it!"
+
+I opened my door and let him into the red and green.
+
+"Oh?" I remarked casually. "Nice change for you. You'll be all the
+fitter for the exams. Don't tell _me_ about your stag-parties though. I
+know 'em; you'd take jolly good care not to pick the place with the
+plainest waitresses for tea, what? _I_ know you!... But if I were you
+I'd go steady for a week or two, my boy, that Method paper'll be harder
+than you think, I warn you!"
+
+"I'm watching it!" he replied cheerfully. "By Jove! Jeff, I'd forgotten
+what a noisy pitch this of yours is! What on earth makes you stay
+here?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," I replied carelessly, applying a match to the wick
+of my lamp and replacing the chimney. "As I say, you're pampered. The
+place is all right. I don't do much except sleep here. It's a bit cold,
+though. I'd keep my coat on if I were you----"
+
+"Wouldn't be much sleep for me here," he remarked, sitting on the edge
+of my bed. "I should want a good stiff drink before I slept much in this
+racket!"
+
+As I placed the lamp globe on its brass ring I glanced covertly at him.
+It was a green interval, and his face looked as if he stood by a
+chemist's window near the big pear-shaped green globe, while his
+waistcoat was turned to a black purple, with one brass button gleaming
+green as a cat's eye. Then the red came again, and the lamp flame crept
+up. I went to the little cupboard where I kept my few cups and saucers
+and plates. I filled my kettle at the tap on the landing, put it on the
+half-crown oil-stove, and began to prepare our feast.
+
+In a quarter of an hour it was ready--tea, the baked potatoes, and a
+wedge of butter apiece. We ate it, he sitting on my bed, I in my sagging
+and string-mended old wicker chair. I saw quite plainly that already he
+wanted to be off, and would stay no longer than the barest decency
+demanded; but he had got to eat that pauper's meal before I let him go,
+and there were my forty-nine other reasons for having got him up there.
+
+One of these other reasons had, during the last hour, taken complete
+shape in my mind. Its consequences would have been impossible to
+foresee, but as far as it yet went, I thought it crafty enough. I
+filched another look at him; he was burning the roof of his mouth with
+hot potato as he lolled against my bed foot; and I judged it time to put
+my plan into execution.
+
+I pushed my own plate away and sank back into my lifeless old wicker
+chair. He had turned his coat collar up by this time. My plan kept me
+warm.
+
+"You're a lucky beggar, you know, Archie," I sighed heavily.
+
+He had moved, to set down his cup of untasted tea on the floor. He
+looked up.
+
+"How?" he asked.
+
+I settled myself farther back.
+
+"How!" I repeated almost vindictively. "Don't you call it lucky having a
+house and people and so on?"
+
+"Oh! Everybody has----" he began, but corrected himself. "I mean, I
+thought you meant some special luck!"
+
+"Oh no--just that," I murmured. "Having a place to ask people down to
+when you want--that's all."
+
+He seemed surprised. "Do you mean Miss Soames?" he said.
+
+"Miss----?" I shook my head absently. "Oh no, I wasn't thinking of Miss
+Soames--I was thinking of something quite different."
+
+He meditated for a moment.
+
+"You _have_ seemed a bit different lately.... What's up?" he demanded,
+looking squarely at me.
+
+My plan, to which his last words gave a new and unexpected fillip, was
+briefly this:
+
+When, over the case of reference books, I had heard Miss Windus make the
+very remark he also had just made--namely, that I had been
+"different"--I had had a swift access of alarm. In what particular I had
+betrayed myself I didn't know, but I realised very clearly, and doubly
+clearly now that the same remark had dropped from Archie himself, that
+love and a light cannot be hid, and that if my extreme former care had
+not secured me from remark no care I was likely to be able to take for
+the future would do so. I had laid myself open, and should do so again.
+How was I to cover myself?
+
+I thought I saw my way. I invite you to consider that way.
+
+Were I to give it out to Archie--or rather, not so much to give it out
+as allow a surmise to dawn on him--that my heart was already pre-engaged
+in some carefully unspecified quarter or other, not only would this
+"difference," both he and Miss Windus had remarked on, be admitted and
+accounted for, but I should at one stroke set myself free from a hundred
+other trammels of gossip, past, present and to come. After that avowal
+nothing I did would be unaccountable. I should have a definite place in
+the general sex-understanding. I should be classed, out of the running,
+filed and docketed, totally uninteresting to either Miss Windus or Miss
+Causton and rid of the attentions of Miss Levey.
+
+And I should also--my heart had thrilled suddenly and poignantly as I
+thought of this--I should also be admitted at once to privileges. I
+should have my share in such freedoms and exemptions as the married man
+knows fully and the attached bachelor at least to a probationary extent.
+This state of things does by tacit acknowledgment exist. The man who can
+say all to one woman can say more than other men to all women. And the
+shining immunity I now saw before me would even include what so far I
+had had to deny myself--conversation, thus safeguarded, with Evie
+herself.
+
+"By heaven!" my heart now cried within me, "I will do it!"
+
+And instantly a perfect seething of the cautions and reserves with which
+I must do it sprang up in my brain.
+
+But here was Archie patiently waiting for me to speak.
+
+"What's up? What the dickens are you talking about?" he asked once more.
+
+I let my head drop, as a man might who discovers he has said too much.
+"Oh, nothing," I replied.
+
+Archie was just as sharp as--neither more nor less than--I wished him to
+be.
+
+"A lot of fuss about nothing--if it's really nothing," he said
+suspiciously.
+
+The next moment he had looked hard into my face, taken a long breath,
+and, suddenly bringing his hand down on his thigh, broken into loud
+laughter.
+
+"By Jove! Jeff--I really believe--let's have a look at you--by Jove! I
+really do--_I believe you're in love_! What a----How ripping, I mean!
+Best congratulations, old chap--my turn this time--ha ha ha ha!"
+
+I drew myself heavily up. The kind of thing I was doing has to be done
+rather carefully. "Look here, Archie--" I began, trembling between the
+wrath I felt and the not-too-much wrath I must appear to display; but he
+interrupted me:
+
+"Well, that's a knock-out! Who'd have dreamed----"
+
+"Why not?" I demanded sharply.
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean that!" he made such haste to say that it was plain as
+a pikestaff that he had meant precisely "that."
+
+"I only meant, how surprising--how unexpected. I mean----"
+
+I frowned. "_Should_ you find it so--if it _were_ so?"
+
+"Should!" he said, puzzled. "... Isn't it so, Jeff?"
+
+"No," I replied; but a "No" that so exquisitely contradicted itself that
+I gave myself nothing less than admiration for the performance.
+
+"No?" he echoed. "You're lying, Jeff--you _are_!" he broke out
+triumphantly. "I can tell by the way you say it! So _that's_ it! Dashed
+if I didn't think there was something!... Who is she, Jeff?"
+
+But that, as you may suppose, it was no part of my plan to tell.
+
+Neither was it part of that plan to enjoin either secrecy or the other
+thing upon him. That, I thought grimly, might quite safely be left to
+take care of itself. "Mandrill, my dear; you really must take a memory
+powder!..." I seemed to hear Miss Windus' voice again over the
+bookshelves. Oh yes, if he would give currency to that Zoo nonsense he
+could be trusted not to keep the richer joke, of Jeffries in love, to
+himself!
+
+For that he and not Evie had been responsible for this pleasantry at
+the expense of my appearance I had concluded by a much sounder
+process of observation and reasoning than that my love-lorn state
+predisposed me entirely in her favour. My watching, a failure in
+other respects, had at least succeeded in this respect. And that I
+had found had not been without its barb for me. You may remember my
+former pathetic gratitude that, while others singled me out for
+marked treatment, she alone had not, in the trifling forms and
+observances that are the gracious outside of intercourse as distinct
+from its inner truth, differentiated me from the rest of the world.
+Well, I had made a guess at the reason for that. It was, in a word,
+her upbringing. The aunt with whom she lived in Woburn Place had
+taught her to "behave nicely," and so on. I could see that education.
+Such maxims as that one must not "judge by appearances," that
+"handsome is that handsome does," and, generally speaking, the
+unexceptional tradition that the "less fortunately circumstanced"
+have special claims on superior gentleness and pity, form almost the
+whole of it. I, it appeared, was one of these "less fortunately
+circumstanced".... Of course nobody was to blame. By-and-by the
+amiable aunt would probably go a little further, and teach her that
+it is not enough that these unimpeachable precepts should be merely
+observed, but that the thought behind them must be concealed as well.
+When you treat a poor devil just as if he was anybody else you must
+not let it be seen that you do so from perception that he is not....
+Anyway, there it was, and it rather took the shine out of that
+"good-night, Mr Jeffries" that had sent me off happy to Archie's
+rooms on the evening when I had been so startlingly shaken out of my
+fool's paradise.
+
+Thus I was persuaded, and as it turned out quite rightly, that it had
+been young Merridew, and not she, who had allowed his tongue this
+licence both on Weston's physical characteristics and my own.
+
+His cup of tea was still on the floor, and by this time was cold. He
+hadn't tasted it, and, his renewed congratulations on what he supposed
+to be my blissful state of mind over, was once more fidgeting to be off.
+But it was quite at my own pleasure whether I released him or not; I had
+the hateful advantage of my baked potatoes and my poverty; and though he
+was getting colder moment by moment, being less accustomed to the lack
+of a fire than I, I did not spare him.
+
+"Yes," I remarked musingly by-and-by, as if I had been thinking over a
+former remark, "I'd take that Method paper quite seriously if I were
+you. Save up your little fling till that's over. Stag-parties and work
+don't go together, my son."
+
+He had a little gleam of perspicacity. "What little fling?" he asked.
+"Who said I was going to have one?"
+
+("Carefully, Jeffries," I cautioned myself.) Aloud I said cheerfully,
+"My mistake, Archie--I'm out of the running in these things--I'm rather
+a Puritan by necessity, you see. Perhaps I was taking it rather for
+granted----"
+
+He chuckled. "A Puritan by necessity! A Puritan by Miss
+Whatever-her-name-is, more like! Do at least tell us if it's anybody we
+know, Jeff!"
+
+But I ignored the latter part of his remark. "Well done, Archie," I
+applauded. "I'm glad you see that when a man's got one woman he's no
+need for all the others. Stick to that and you're all right."
+
+And that clinched it. "Well, you've got the pull over me there," he
+said.
+
+I made no reply.
+
+You need not conclude, unless you wish, that I wanted to start him
+straight away to the devil. I couldn't have ensured his arrival at that
+destination if I had. But I was prepared to go half way with him if by
+so doing I could keep him from getting into paradise by the means I had
+reserved for myself. I was doing him no conspicuous harm. He would have
+to rub shoulders with the world before long--was already doing so; and I
+said no more to him--nay, I said far less--than he would have picked up
+for himself in almost any gathering of young men of his own age that he
+was likely to find himself among.... So presently, when after (how
+shall I put it?)--after having tapped it home that there _was_ the one
+woman and also the others, I returned to the examination in Method
+again, I was talking as easily as if, his betrayals to Miss Windus
+notwithstanding, we had been the best friends in the world.
+
+"By the way, that's another thing you're lucky in, my boy," I said. "The
+exam's in the daytime. I suppose that doesn't convey anything to you."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"Well, it means something to me. I shall have to get a day off."
+
+"Well?" he inquired.
+
+"Well--it doesn't by any means follow that I shall get it."
+
+He stared. "You don't mean to say they'd be such skunks as not to let
+you off for a day!" he exclaimed.
+
+I laughed. "Perhaps they won't be such skunks," I remarked.
+
+"Oh!" he cried, outraged. "They _couldn't_!"
+
+He was as ignorant about Rixon Tebb & Masters as he was about everything
+else in life.
+
+Presently, with a "Brrr!" and a shiver, he got off my bed.
+
+"Well, I'm off," he said. "I didn't intend to come round, and I'm going
+back to swot."
+
+I heaved myself up from my chair. "Must you? Well, wait a moment--I'll
+come down with you----"
+
+Before I turned down my lamp, filling the room with the red and green
+again, I noticed his untouched cup of tea on the floor. I made no remark
+on it, but as I preceded him down the narrow stairs I found myself
+suddenly filled with a curiosity as to whether I guessed rightly what
+was passing in his mind. I had made my shot, and was as interested to
+know whether it was a true one as if I had had a bet on it.
+
+Where the great public-house lamp shone brightly through the landing
+window the stairs branched, one flight descending to the side door by
+which we had entered and the other leading to the back bar of the
+public-house. It was as we reached this bifurcation that I found I had
+guessed rightly.
+
+"I say," he said, "I'm beastly cold! Come this way and have a drink!"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"Not here," I said. "Not on my own premises, so to speak. If you don't
+mind my having something thin I'll come over the way with you."
+
+"Anywhere," he said, with another shiver.
+
+There was another public-house just beyond the _Sarcey's Fluid_
+advertisement. We crossed and entered it.
+
+"Rum--hot!" he called familiarly, peering under the frame of pivoted
+glass panes and flipping on the counter with a florin to attract the
+barmaid's attention. "Come along, Flossie--hurry up!... What's your
+poison, Jeff?"
+
+He had his rum hot; but I drank nothing stronger than peppermint.
+
+
+VII
+
+His incredible gaucheries apart, I had no reason for hating him. One
+does not hate a youngster seven years one's junior merely because he is
+a mass of inexperience and self-sufficiency. Once again my hate was
+really a hatred of the whole dreary circumstances of my life, and, when
+I saw this concentrating stormily over young Merridew's head, I made
+attempt after attempt to divert it. I swear to you I made these
+attempts. I made them first of all to save him from a contest so unequal
+as one with my wrath must be; and if I made them later so that I myself
+should not be merely the slave of that wrath, I still made them. And all
+the time, as I say, so long as he did not stand in my way, it was a
+matter of indifference to me whether he took the upward path or that
+which led downhill to perdition.
+
+Unfortunately I was in love, and no man in love can stand by the rules
+that he knows ought to govern his conduct. Those jealousies I have
+spoken of as torturing me at Rixon Tebb & Masters' shook me in spite of
+myself. When I felt their approach I took care to give young Merridew a
+wide berth; and I confess that in sometimes letting these fits have
+their way with me I found an abominable ease. Away from him, my heart
+was filled with rage and revilings; but these very outbreaks enabled me
+at other times to meet him with a smile on my lips and a welcome in my
+eyes. Once I had got rid of the over-plus of my rage I could almost have
+persuaded myself of my affection for him.
+
+So I alternated, as the red and green of my apartment alternated; and
+perhaps the red seemed redder and the green greener by the mere force of
+the contrast. I continued to walk home frequently with him after the
+class, to share his supper frequently, and to be obliged to him for my
+necessary bath.
+
+I very soon learned that in the matter of my reputed being in love he
+had done exactly what I had intended he should do--had whispered the
+news about the college. It required no further eavesdropping to tell me
+that; I felt it in the altered air. I saw the knowledge peering through
+the little scalene triangles of Miss Windus' eyes, saw it in the looks
+of sleepy and amused curiosity with which Miss Causton favoured me. The
+latter lady, indeed, sometimes positively alarmed me, for the glances I
+suffered when I chanced to enter a room in which she was at work held
+incalculable things, and I no longer dared to look at her own amused and
+supercilious eyes, her fascinating hands, or that foot beneath the hem
+of her dress, fine and slender as a violin. And with the least
+encouragement Miss Windus would, I knew, have sought my company, and,
+lacking an admirer of her own, would have eased her breast to somebody
+else's of all the things about love at large that she ached to say to
+somebody. I wondered, seeing them both, whether there was no middle way
+with women. The whole sex seemed to be divided into creatures (or rather
+a creature, for I set Evie apart) to be enskied by men, and the other
+kind, that a man might fly as he would fly a wild animal. And I am not
+sure even now that when these two things are found in one and the same
+woman they ever really shake down together. They seem to go on existing,
+independently, unreconciled, side by side.
+
+But Miss Levey was far worse. She always seemed to me to crave
+information, useful or useless, from a mere acquisitiveness; and I may
+say now that it was she who, later, first roused in me the uneasy
+suspicion that unless I was exceedingly careful I should find that I had
+undertaken more than I could well manage. She began all at once to show
+quite a liking for my company. She mislaid books in the room where I
+sat, got into difficulties with copying presses when I was about, and
+glanced up at open or closed windows too high for her reach, as if she
+felt a draught or the lack of air, it didn't matter which, and must
+suffer until somebody came to her help. All this had its rise in the
+idlest curiosity, unless, as I sometimes suspected, she had made a bet
+that she would get out of me who this imaginary _fiancee_ of mine was,
+and was determined to win it. One day as I saw her struggling with the
+blind cords in one of the window bays, and advanced to her assistance,
+she relinquished the cords, and then, as if to apologise for the trouble
+she was causing me, said, "Oh, thank you so much--you see I'm going to a
+dance to-night, and have a slight cold already.... You don't go to
+dances, do you, Mr Jeffries?" I answered that I did not, whereupon she
+said gaily, "Oh, you must learn! I'm sure you could find _some_body who
+would teach you! Then you and your partner could join our set--such
+fun!"
+
+And another time she actually came to me with tickets for one of her
+"hops," and pointed out to me that I should be saving a shilling by
+taking both a pink ticket as well as a blue one.
+
+But while these were the results of my whispered false intelligence on
+Miss Windus and Miss Causton and Miss Levey, the results on Evie Soames
+were both foreseen and unforeseen. I had foreseen that it would give me
+a new liberty with her; but I had not foreseen that she, and not I,
+would be the first to take advantage of that liberty. It came to me
+entirely as a surprise that she should see no reason why, if my heart
+was engaged, she should not speak of it as a matter of course to
+myself.
+
+This, to my great confusion, she did.
+
+It was in the small back room that we called the library, among the
+book-shelves and glass-cases of mimeographs and gelatine copiers and
+patent tills, that she did so. I had seen her talking to Weston in the
+empty lecture-room as I had passed through to restore a book to its
+place--a new translation of "Schmoller on the Mercantile System," I
+remember it was--and she had turned as I had passed. I think she had
+been a little nervous about the pretty little exhibition she intended.
+It wouldn't surprise me in the least to learn that she had actually
+practised the words she was going to use, and I am quite sure she meant
+to go through it creditably. My lady was even then looking forward to
+the time when, on a small scale or a large one, she would have to do
+these things. So she followed me into the library, and, with one slender
+hand on the iron ball-arm of the copying press under the gas said her
+little piece.
+
+"Oh, Mr Jeffries!... I hear I have to congratulate you!"
+
+For a moment I did not take her meaning. Then it dawned on me, and I
+felt a quick constriction of my heart that was both bliss and pain.
+
+"Oh?... On--on what?" I asked. I couldn't help stammering a little over
+it.
+
+She wore a brown cloth tailor-made costume and a thick knitted cap of
+white wool; and the shadow of this cap over her large eyes was not so
+deep but that I saw the almost reproachful look in them. It was almost
+as if she echoed: "'On what?' Can such a wonderful thing have happened
+to you and you ask 'On what?'"
+
+"On this we hear of your engagement," she replied, looking down at her
+toes. "It's--it's true, isn't it?"
+
+For the second time I felt my facile invention sitting somewhat less
+easily on me. I stammered again, while she, I am quite sure,
+misattributed my embarrassment.
+
+"Who told you that?"
+
+At that she was sweetly arch.
+
+"Oh, a little bird, Mr Jeffries! Don't tell me it isn't true--it would
+be almost--almost like bad luck----"
+
+"Bad luck?" I repeated foolishly.
+
+"I mean, like wearing your wedding dress before the day, or something
+like that--congratulating you too soon, I mean----"
+
+By this time I had collected my thoughts. "It isn't true," I said.
+
+Instantly her face fell adorably. In its expression I fancied I detected
+both indignation against her misinformant and mortification that her
+dear little attempt at social competence had failed.
+
+"Oh!... I'm _so_ sorry!" she murmured, all dejection and shame and rich
+colour. "Please forgive me!"
+
+"It isn't true," I said, "that--that I am actually engaged to be
+married."
+
+Like a flash she was all eagerness again. She had a book in her hand,
+not a college text-book but a novelette; and probably the whole of the
+novelette was in her glad change of tone. I was not exactly engaged to
+be married, but I _was_ in love, and I daresay her brain was already a
+jumble of surmises about obstinate parents, secret wills, _marriages de
+convenance_, and true and severed young hearts.
+
+"Oh!" she said again. "I'm so--I mean I hope I shall soon be able to--I
+mean I hope I'm not rude if I----" She floundered, already out of her
+depth.
+
+"Not at all," I said gravely. "I only said I was not formally engaged.
+There are--other reasons for congratulation after all----"
+
+"Oh, then I _do_!" she cried impulsively, with a grateful look that I
+had helped her out. "I'm _so_ glad!"
+
+Then, her ordeal over, she glanced towards the door.
+
+But a daring impulse seized me. This was on a Friday night, and I knew
+that on the morrow she was going to Guildford.
+
+"I see you're just leaving," I said. "Would it annoy you if I were to
+walk a little way with you?"
+
+Again the code of her upbringing banished her momentary hesitation.
+
+"Unless," I said, "you have already----"
+
+"Oh no!" she said, with quick frankness. "I only meant that I nearly
+always go alone, or else with Miss Windus."
+
+"I'm sure Miss Windus can spare you for once. One doesn't get
+congratulated like this every day," I pressed.
+
+She laughed merrily. "Some of us don't get it at all," she said. "With
+pleasure, Mr Jeffries."
+
+I slapped Schmoller back into his place on the shelf, and went off,
+drunk with bliss, to get my hat and coat.
+
+That night I walked with Evie for the first time to Woburn Place. Never
+had the Bloomsbury streets seemed so short, never the east side of the
+British Museum so few paces in length. I remember very little of what we
+talked about, I know she spoke of her visit to Guildford. The
+invitation, she gave me to understand, was really to her aunt, and it
+was to the subject of her aunt that she quickly returned when I
+insinuated a mention of Archie's name. I insinuated it again a minute
+later, but after that, noticing the way in which she came back to the
+aunt again, I forbore.
+
+"But I'm afraid we can't ask the Merridews back, as we ought," she said,
+once more socially prescient. "We only have rooms in Woburn Place, you
+see, and you can't very well ask people all that way just to rooms, can
+you?"
+
+"No," I replied briefly. I was thinking of my own late hospitality to
+Archie.
+
+"We used to have a house, of course, before uncle died, and you know how
+poky rooms seem after that."
+
+"Yes," I replied, compressing my lips.
+
+And so we chatted. I forget what our other subjects were. I left her,
+with our first hand-shake, at her door.
+
+What that week-end was to me I will not attempt to tell you. I did not
+belong to this earth at all. The fact that actually, in her person, she
+was enjoying herself in Archie's company at Guildford was nothing to me;
+the fact that every fibre of me was rapturously tremulous at the thought
+of her was everything. I triumphed as if I already had her yielding in
+my arms. Archie?... In my possession I laughed. I even felt kindly to
+Archie--felt towards him that it would give me pleasure to have him,
+by-and-by, a quite frequent visitor at my house--our house.... I spread
+the mantle of my exaltation over the draymen and porters of the place
+where I dined. Their heavens were not mine, but if a man is full he is
+full, and I allowed them sanctities of their own. My heart was soft and
+generous to them. For the first time in my life I knew what folk mean
+when they say they love all the world.
+
+The sweet influence had not quite left me when on Monday night I went to
+the college to see her again.
+
+She did not appear that night. Neither did he.
+
+It was Wednesday before I saw her again.
+
+I do not know what damnable difference in me that absence of the pair of
+them for a single evening made. It came over me so suddenly that I was
+in its clutches before I was aware. It was a significant transformation.
+Let me relate it.
+
+I knocked at the brass knocker of Archie's ivy-green door an hour before
+the class on the Tuesday night, and found that he intended to work at
+home that evening. (I only learned this, however, some minutes later.) I
+had had a double reason for calling on him at that hour, and the blood
+comes hot again in my cheeks as I recall my second reason. I had
+recently bought a new suit of clothes, not in Lamb's Conduit Street, but
+made, though cheaply enough, to measure; and though it was only the
+beginning of the week one of the payments for this suit had already
+depleted my pocket almost to the last penny. Since breakfast that day I
+had not eaten. But I knew the hour at which Archie dined.
+
+So nicely had I hit the moment for my self-invitation that I actually
+followed his hot dinner half-way up the stairs. It was only on the first
+landing that the servant stood aside with the tray to allow me to
+precede her. I knocked at his door and entered, leaving the door open
+for the dinner of which I intended to partake to follow.
+
+He had brought a fowl back with him from Guildford, with one or two
+other motherly gifts, and I smelt the white sauce even before Jane put
+the tray down on a side table. Archie was in his brown dressing-gown,
+standing before his fire. He had taken the green shade from his lamp,
+and his low-ceilinged roof-chamber looked exceedingly ruddy and
+comfortable and home-like.
+
+"Hallo! Good man!" he cried. "You're just in time--I was just funking
+carving--you'd better be getting your hand in for when you're a family
+man!... Bring another plate, Jane.... Well, how's things?"
+
+It was then that the thing happened that still has power to bring the
+blood to my cheeks. It was exquisitely cruel in the moment of its
+coming.
+
+"Oh, so-so," I replied carelessly.... "But I've just this minute
+swallowed my dinner, thanks. You go ahead. I'll watch you."
+
+"Oh, rubbish!" he replied, in a tone that hardened me. "I'll lay you
+haven't had so much but you can pick a bit of Surrey fowl."
+
+I damned the thickness of his hide, but swallowed my choler.
+
+"Really, thanks," I said, turning away to look at a print on the wall
+that I had seen a hundred times before.
+
+Jane hesitated. It was a long way up from the kitchen, and the old
+bell-pull of red rope by his fireplace didn't always ring. "Shall I
+bring the other plate, Mr Merridew?" she asked.
+
+"Yes--bring it--he'll change his mind!"
+
+But in my hellish pride I had now no intention whatever of changing my
+mind. Twice again he pressed me, and twice I declined, the second time
+curtly; and he fell to himself, while I sat in a chair and watched him.
+
+"Oh, by the way," he said suddenly, with his mouth full of food, "I'm
+going to work here to-night.... Sure you won't have some pudding?"
+
+I rose. "Oh, well, if you're not coming I'll sheer off; why didn't you
+say so? Enjoy your week-end?"
+
+"Oh, first rate. But, dash it all, don't be in such a hurry--you're far
+too early yet."
+
+"Oh, I've just remembered something," I said, "See you again soon."
+
+And I waved my hand and left.
+
+I did not go to the class either that night. I was raging again, and
+trying to protect that young fool from the injury of my savage thoughts.
+I failed completely. Not even the thought that my passionate resentment
+was a force to be confined as it were in a boiler, and only to be
+allowed to escape by the way that would prove effective, restrained me
+from clenching my fists and gritting my teeth as I recalled the image of
+his pretty and ignorant and conceited face; and I am afraid I "let go"
+utterly. I walked by way of Chancery Lane and Bouverie Street to the
+Embankment; I crossed Blackfriars Bridge, and after that I don't quite
+know where I went, trying to forget my hunger, and trying to shake off
+my hideous grudge against the world that threatened to crash over the
+head of the egotistical whipper-snapper I had left.
+
+I have related this at some length because it was the first time, but
+not the last, that that devil of sensitiveness took me in quite that
+way.
+
+
+VIII
+
+I had not exaggerated when I told Archie Merridew that I might find some
+difficulty in obtaining from Rixon Tebb & Masters' leave of absence for
+the day of the Method examination. That examination was fixed for a
+Friday, a fortnight and some days after my refusal to set fork into that
+fragrantly steaming Surrey fowl of Archie Merridew's, and this falling
+on a Friday added to my difficulties.
+
+Or rather I should say that it added to Polwhele's difficulties, for it
+was to Polwhele I looked once more to find a way out for me. For Friday
+was a wage-day, and since I must have my eighteen shillings in order to
+live, a mere covering of my absence would not suffice. The cashier would
+have to be taken into the arrangement.
+
+But Polwhele had by now to some extent got over his dread, if not over
+his hatred, of me. When I put the matter to him he refused. This was in
+the street, during the luncheon hour. The louse refused to help me, and
+turned away.
+
+Exactly fifteen minutes later I had bearded the cashier himself,
+catching him at the door as he was returning from his meal.
+
+At first he looked at me as much as to say, "Did _I_ speak to _you"_?
+Then, finding it impossible to pretend he didn't know who I was, he
+said, "What is it?"
+
+I told him what I wanted, concealing only my reason for wanting it; and,
+after his first astonishment that I had taken the absolutely
+unprecedented course of addressing a request otherwise than through the
+usual channel, I found him not unmanageable. As a matter of fact, things
+were slack, and there was only one kind of labour that Rixon Tebb &
+Masters' would have preferred to that it had from the agency at eighteen
+shillings a week--namely, a "floating margin" waiting on the pavement to
+be taken on for an hour or two as it might be required. Gayns saw a
+chance of saving a day.
+
+"You don't expect to be paid for that day, do you?" he said.
+
+"No," I replied.
+
+He thought for a moment. "All right," he said. "You can come for your
+fifteen shillings on Thursday night."
+
+And Polwhele set another mark against me, that I had approached a
+superior over his head.
+
+As I entered the Business College at half-past ten on the morning of the
+examination it suddenly struck me that I had never been inside the
+place in the daytime before. By gaslight it was, as I have said, dingy
+enough, but by daylight it was shabby in the extreme. I walked round the
+rooms, noticing for the first time that the shorthand and typewriting
+rooms, which looked on the side street to the east of the block, were by
+far the lightest rooms on our top floor, and that the library in which I
+had received Evie's congratulations was little more than a thick
+twilight, which the cleaning of the single grimy back window that looked
+out over yards and chimney-pots would probably not greatly have
+improved. The room adjoining that, the old ledger-room, was not, except
+for the small high square of glass that gave on the head of the stairs,
+lighted at all.
+
+They had made, too, quite extensive arrangements for the occasion
+itself. We had been warned that we should not be allowed to leave the
+premises until the examination was over, and as far as possible
+separate spaces had been provided for each of the twenty-five
+candidates--compartments of screens hired for the day from some
+furnisher or shop-fitter, and open at the ends to the gaze of the
+half-dozen perambulating guardians of the probity of examinations who
+looked as if they too had been had in for the day on the same terms
+as the screens. The contrast between the new fittings and the old
+wallpapers and chandeliers struck me. And I remembered that even
+now, when I had been debited my three shillings to be present, I did
+not see the place in its normal daytime aspect at all.
+
+The papers were to be distributed at eleven, and at a few minutes before
+that hour we were all assembled. A man called Mackie and myself were the
+only two candidates for the Honours paper, and he and I were kept well
+apart--I told off to a seat in the middle of the lecture-room, he
+isolated in the typewriting-room. Evie, timorous about her Elementary,
+was separated from Archie Merridew (who occupied the box between Miss
+Windus and a pale student, Richardson) by the whole length of the
+general room. We took our places; in all the rooms at once voices were
+heard reading some cautionary form or other (my policeman gave me the
+most mistrustful of glances as he pronounced the words "expelled from
+the examination-room and your paper cancelled"); the papers were
+distributed on the stroke of eleven, and the examination began.
+
+I need not trouble you with what it was all about. The importance of
+that day to me was quite unconnected with the paper on Method. I ought,
+however, to say that the paper was in reality two papers, the first in
+Theory and the second in Practice, with the interval for lunch dividing
+the two. I mention this only to explain how it was we came to be all
+talking together when, a little after half-past one, our first papers
+had been collected and we were free to unsnap our satchels or untie our
+parcels of lunch.
+
+Despite my reduced income that week I had provided myself with a
+sumptuous lunch--two kinds of sausage from a _delicatessen_ shop in
+Shaftesbury Avenue, a paper of potato salad, a roll, butter, some sort
+of chocolate _baba_ or _moka_, and a bottle of Schweppes' dry ginger
+ale. That lunch had cost me nearly three shillings--but I intended to
+eat only a third of it. The rest was to be my chief sustenance during
+the two following days. I was not among my porters and drivers now--oh
+no! I was cutting quite a dash. Archie, passing with Miss Windus as I
+opened my black satchel, did not forbear to remark, "By Jove! doesn't
+Jeffries do himself well, what?" and it had been in order that I might
+be assumed to "do" myself equally well every day of my life that I had
+made my little display. I ate my exact third in the same compartment I
+had written my examination paper in, and then, closing my bag on the
+precious remainder, put it under the seat and mingled with the others.
+
+By a sort of natural selection, I presently found myself in the middle
+bow window, discussing the questions he had just answered with my only
+fellow-candidate in Honours, Mackie. Mackie, both at the college and
+elsewhere, was one of these blatantly popular chaps, and I myself
+didn't like him. In some respects he was rather of Archie's kind, but he
+was older, more knowing, and had gone further. He was a singer of comic
+songs at "smokers," and a frequent looker-in at the shilling dances at
+the Holburn Town Hall after class. He was jubilant over the ease of the
+Theory paper, and was already so confident of his pass that he was
+cracking jokes right and left, as if a weight had been taken off his
+mind.
+
+"It's going to be like money from home if it's no harder than that!" he
+exulted (almost prophetically, if what I said about the standard of
+modern examinations is true). "Kitty Windus says she'll eat her
+mackintosh, with the accent on the 'tosh,' if she isn't all right for
+the Advanced, and the Elementaries are as safe as your hand in your
+pocket! What ho! Come out on the stairs and have a Flor de Cabbagos."
+
+I didn't want the Flor de Cabbagos, but I went out on the top landing
+with him. One or two others were smoking on the floor below, which was
+as far as we were allowed to stray. A few steps down Miss Windus and
+Miss Causton were sitting on the stairs, as if they were sitting out a
+dance, and Miss Causton moved lower down still as the fragrance of
+Mackie's "Flor" reached her, and then a little way back again as she
+caught the whiff that came up the well. Mackie was talking of the paper
+again.
+
+"All that mugging for a job you could do on your head!" he said, with
+regret for the time he had lost. "I wouldn't have dropped out of the
+billiard handicap if I'd known! Play billiards, Jeffries? I'm a regular
+John Roberts--in my dreams. Give you fifty in a hundred at the Napier
+when teacher says we can go."
+
+And he ran on, with dull facetiousness.
+
+But suddenly he stopped his rapid flow. He made a slight movement with
+his finger, and stood listening. I heard nothing except the voices lower
+down the stairs and the general hum in the room we had just left. But
+Mackie did.
+
+"Hear that?" he said.
+
+"What?" I asked.
+
+"Sssh!..."
+
+I told you how the wooden partition at the head of the stairs, that with
+the small window high up, separated the landing on which we stood from
+the old ledger-room. The window was worked with cords on a horizontal
+pivot, and was swung partly open. Whether Mackie heard whatever he did
+hear through this window or through the boards themselves I do not know,
+but a smile came over his face.
+
+"It's that young devil," he whispered.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Why, young Merridew. He's in there with somebody...."
+
+I invite you to notice that I was improving. I was not eavesdropping
+this time--I was merely letting Mackie do my eavesdropping for me. He
+glanced round to see whether the women below were watching, and then set
+his ear against the partition.
+
+"Yes, it's Merridew," he chuckled. "Nice father's hope and mother's joy
+_that_ young man's getting! I don't suppose he's gone in there to talk
+to the secretary bird!..."
+
+I found myself suddenly reminded of what I had noticed for the first
+time only an hour or two before--that the room beyond the partition was
+practically unlighted.
+
+Then Mackie dropped again into the "bright" style affected by the
+singers of comic songs at smoking concerts.
+
+"Ahem--good-hevening, ladies and gen'lmen! How am I? Very well, thank
+me! Ahem! I will now, with your kind permission, endeavour to entertain
+you with a few of my well-known impersonations on a subject that will
+appeal to all of you, no matter what your age, sex, condition,
+vaccination marks or the number of your dog licence--_London's Lovers_."
+
+"Oh, Mr Mackie's going to recite for us!" I heard Miss Windus' cry of
+juvenile delight from down the stairs. "Please be quick, Mr Mackie--we
+shall have to go in in ten minutes!"
+
+And those below pressed up the stairs to hear Mackie.
+
+But I did not stay to hear the "impersonation." I walked back into the
+general room, and, with a violently throbbing heart, sought the seat
+where I had written my examination paper.
+
+Do you realise what I had just seen? Do you see what had set my heart so
+thumping? If Mackie was right, and he had really got the cue for his
+"impersonation" from something that was going on in the ledger-room,
+young Merridew and Evie were alone in there together.
+
+All that I had hitherto known of apprehension and despair and jealousy
+of Archie's luck and chances and juniority was eclipsed by the emotion
+that now flowed over me like a wave. The revelation swept me entirely
+off my balance. It seemed to me that once more I awoke as if out of a
+dream. I seemed to be standing as it were a little way off from my own
+baseless hopes and illusions of the past weeks and coldly contemplating
+my own egregiousness. I actually gave out loud a low laugh that harrowed
+myself. What! To suppose that all, all I could do, would prevent youth
+from coming together at the last!
+
+So I made myself a spectacle of ridicule for myself.
+
+Then, as the minutes passed, that which at first had seemed a pure and
+perfect whole of hopelessness changed subtly and began to separate into
+parts. And that brought such a change in me that I trembled to recognise
+it. The shock of those first moments had stunned me, but I was now
+coming out of my stupor. My first swift conclusion had been wrong. These
+were _not_ young lovers whom mountains could not sunder. She, my
+sleeping beauty, who had but now opened her eyes, no doubt thought I was
+that; her soul was over-brimming; and I remembered her look of wonder
+and reproach when, after she had congratulated me on that love-rise that
+is the most wondrous of earthly dawnings I had given a puzzled "on
+what?" When hearts can no longer contain that with which they ache to
+bursting, lucky is the one who stands nearest to hand. His it is to
+have, for the lifting of his finger, what else would spill. He may not
+be athirst for the draught; a muddier liquor might quench his fire as
+well; but this dew and ichor is his, though another parch for it.
+
+For I needed no pointers from Mackie to know young Archie now. This was
+his ignored and heaven-high luck, and he did not even want it. If their
+being together in that unlighted room--their being together even as I
+sat with my head between my hands staring blankly at the yellow deal
+screen--if this meant anything at all it meant one thing and one thing
+only, that she must give because it was her nature to give, and the cub
+was philandering with her.
+
+At that thought my despair gave place to something else. It was eaten up
+in the white flame of wrath that flashed like a brand in my brain.
+
+"Oh!" I thought. "So _that's_ it, my Archie?..."
+
+I need not tell you again how I always have made my angers serviceable
+to me. Five minutes later--though my will was well-nigh deracinated in
+the process--I was its master again. It still struggled like a beast in
+my hold, nor did I know whence the help could come without which it
+would presently have me in its power again, but I still retained my
+throttling hold on it. One last wild struggle the beast made; this was
+when beyond the end of my screen-enclosed compartment, I saw them issue,
+with an interval of half-a-minute between their coming out of the
+library doorway. He was pink and triumphant; at her I forbore to look. A
+minute later Mackie passed and gave an infinitesimally small jerk of his
+head and a wink; but by that time I was holding my savage beast down
+again.
+
+Then a bell rang; there was a buzz and movement the candidates were
+making ready again. Once more attendants read the caution, and then the
+second paper was distributed. Mechanically I turned over the
+gelatine-copied leaves that had been handed to me.
+
+But I pushed them away again. A man who is engaged as I still was--a
+luckless hunter who has missed his shot and is struggling desperately
+body to body with his intended prey--has little time for anything but
+the business in hand. True, I did draw the paper to me again and tick
+off the questions that would be productive of the highest marks, but it
+was long before I got any further. There would come between me and my
+page Archie Merridew's pink and boastful face as I had seen him issue
+from the library door.
+
+I do not know how long I sat thus.
+
+Draggingly at last I settled to work. But it was well-nigh hopeless. I
+came to myself after a long interval to find that I was staring blankly
+before me and muttering softly to myself. I had not written more than
+half-a-page. Wearily I tried again.
+
+The next external thing that I was fully awake to was that from the
+typewriting-room there came the single "Ting" of the small clock on the
+mantelpiece. I started. That single "Ting" always meant one of two
+things--one o'clock or a half-hour. I had no watch.
+
+I tried for a moment to persuade myself that the clock had just struck
+half-past two.
+
+Then I heard the attendant's voice: "You have one hour left."
+
+"Good heavens!" I groaned.
+
+I drew my paper to me again.
+
+For a time I was not conscious of anything but the questions that must
+be answered by half-past four. Indeed, so feverishly did I work that I
+did not hear the attendants announce that we had only half-an-hour
+longer. The next announcement I heard was that fifteen minutes only
+remained.
+
+Swiftly and flurriedly I turned over what I had written. I was just
+half-way through the paper.
+
+Wildly alarmed, I broke into rapid shorthand--the shorthand in which I
+am writing this now. I did not know whether the shorthand would be
+accepted; I only knew that in its larger aspect the object of the
+examination was to determine whether I was master of my subject. I was
+master of my subject. Those already diluted tests of capacity, the
+questions, dictated their own replies: I put on top speed.
+
+"You have five minutes more," sounded the relentless voice.
+
+But I could have sworn that not one minute elapsed before, much louder
+and more peremptory, came the final call:
+
+"You must now cease writing!"
+
+As I mingled with my fellow-candidates again I heard Mackie crying
+joyously, "Oh, we got medals for this in Paris!" But I passed him by
+without a glance. Nor had I any desire to linger about those premises my
+first sight of which in the daytime had cost me three shillings in cash,
+and a murderous rage that might indeed have closed the gates of heaven
+in my face. I went quickly for my hat and coat, almost colliding with
+Miss Causton as I turned a corner and muttering I know not what as she
+shrank back and gave me a look that I could hardly reconcile with her
+usually ironical and ruminating eyes. I merely wanted to get out of the
+place....
+
+But I did not escape so quickly but that I saw Archie and Evie following
+me down the stairs. No doubt they were going together to her aunt's to
+tea.
+
+A week later I learned that I had passed with distinction in the Theory
+part of the paper, but had failed in the Practice portion. The examiners
+made a joke about "Paper Number Two," saying they had decided to hold it
+over for next year's shorthand examination. Everybody knew whose paper
+Number Two was....
+
+Mackie had passed in both portions.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+WOBURN PLACE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Some time or other during the period of my engagement to Miss Windus (an
+episode of my history I am now approaching), I happened to remark on the
+pleasant arrangement that had removed many of the temptations of London
+from Archie Merridew's path by giving him a "home from home"--the
+wholesome influence of the Soames' house in Woburn Place. My charmer
+agreed with me that no arrangement could have been happier. It is of
+that arrangement that I must now speak. But first I must tell you as
+much as I can recollect of the party with which the Christmas term
+closed.
+
+Little as things of that kind appeal to me, I had been to that
+breaking-up party. Why I had deliberately sought this misery I find it
+difficult to say. It had been Miss Levey who, the very evening before
+the result of the Method examination had been announced, had broached
+the matter to me, and that of itself would doubtless have decided me had
+it not been for Miss Causton, who had come up just as I was refusing.
+
+"Mr Jeffries says he won't come!" Miss Levey had said, turning to Miss
+Causton, "but we want a few of the seniors as guests--you and Mr Mackie
+and Mr Weston--you're the lights of the college, you know."
+
+I had been quite unaware that my mental comment on her "we" had shown in
+my face (she was quite twenty-five), but apparently it had, for she had
+added, with a laugh that had struck me as contemptuous even of herself,
+"Oh, I call myself a junior too!" and had turned away.
+
+Of course I ought not to have gone, and, after I had learned of my
+failure in Method, I had been on the point of renewing my refusal. But
+then there had seized me an almost mad desire to see how much I really
+could endure with a smile (Evie and Archie, of course, had been among
+the first to accept). So the very thing that ought to have kept me away
+had driven me there. Of this extreme of perversity I am afraid I must
+ask you to find what explanation you can. I am merely setting down the
+thing as it occurred.
+
+So I had gone, though, to Miss Levey's disappointment, _sans_ "lady,"
+and had had, moreover, the pleasure, such as it was, of also
+disappointing those who had expected that my failure in Method would
+plunge me into gloom. I was far beyond gloom. Mere gloom would not have
+expressed my feelings; it would have lacked the ecstasy of my misery.
+So I daresay I had appeared, not less, but more cheerful than my
+ordinary, and perhaps that was even set down as courage that was merely
+the numbing of sensibility.
+
+A most extraordinary experience to me that party had been. On the
+occasion of the Method examination screens and tables had had to be
+imported, but this time the opposite had been done, and all day
+half-a-dozen of the students had been busy, stacking desks and tables
+away in the old ledger-room and clearing the lecture-room for dancing.
+The senior classroom had been turned into a refreshment-room, and an
+upright piano had been got in and lifted upon Weston's lecturing dais.
+Blackboards indicated the way to the ladies' cloak-room (the library)
+and that of the men (the room with the washbowls), and by the time I had
+arrived, at half-past eight, everybody had assembled. Nine had been
+fixed as the hour when dancing was to begin.
+
+Sisters and friends had brought up the number of women to perhaps a
+dozen, and Miss Levey had not failed to remark on my coming alone. Her
+short legs had started to bring her to me almost before I had looked
+about me.
+
+"Oh, Mr Jeffries--then you _haven't_ brought a lady friend!" she had
+reproached me. "I hope you understood that the invite was for two!" At
+this, setting my face into a rocky smile that had remained on it thence
+forward, I had looked at her over her fan.
+
+"Oh?" I had said. "Then it was my 'lady friend,' not me, you wanted to
+see?"
+
+But she had been equal to me. "Oh no--but there are three times as many
+gentlemen as ladies, you know. Come and let me introduce you----"
+
+But I had evaded this, preferring, in the words of Mackie, who had
+passed just then, to "paper the wall."
+
+From my station by the thrown-back folding-doors of the lecture-room,
+with that carved smile on my face for all the world as if my heart had
+been temporarily atrophied, I had been able to look even on Evie almost
+unmoved. The whole scene had been a haggard but quite painless nightmare
+to me. When, at nine o'clock, the piano had begun to play, I had watched
+the men in their black sparrow-tails and white gloves, stooping,
+posturing, offering arms, revolving, as if the picture had been a flat
+representation, lacking a dimension, the blackboard behind the pianist
+and the old bells like interrogation-marks above his head quite as
+important as the moving figures. And I had smiled and smiled. After all,
+one might as well smile as not. Once you had got the smile into its
+place it was just as easy. Really it would have been the taking of it
+off again that would have required the mental effort.
+
+It was as I had stood there that Miss Causton had come up to me and
+asked me if I did not dance. Her voice, as she had done so, had hardly
+detached itself in my mind from the noise about us, and even her figure,
+lending as it were its own life to her dress of oyster-grey, had seemed
+no less flat and diagrammatic than the rest of the scene. "No," I had
+said, and "No," she had repeated, with a nod, "getting the piano up and
+down would be more your style, for it nearly killed those boys this
+afternoon.... But won't you let me teach you?"
+
+"I've no gloves."
+
+"Gloves!" she had said softly.
+
+And so, since besides smiling one may as well dance as not, I had taken
+a dancing lesson from Miss Causton. But we had only gone twice round the
+room--for which, considering my weight, I could hardly have blamed her,
+and then, panting a little, she had proposed a rest. And in the very bay
+from which I had once overheard her conversation with Miss Windus I had
+talked civilities to her, still smiling. I had asked whether she was
+coming back after Christmas and had been told "Yes," and when,
+by-and-by, as being less trouble than thinking of a new one, I had put
+the same question to Miss Levey, I had got a "Yes" from her also. After
+that I had worked that question really hard, putting it at least once
+more to Miss Levey, and once to somebody who was not at the college at
+all, after which I had found a new one, I forget what, making two quite
+useful social accomplishments. Once again Miss Causton had come up to
+me. "----since you don't come to me," I remember her saying; "I should
+like some coffee." But she had barely tasted the coffee I fetched her--I
+remember wondering whether I ought to take her to the coffee or fetch
+the coffee to her--and then, just in the middle of my third brilliant
+conversational find, she had suddenly got up and left me.
+
+And so on. The last had been similarly phantasmagoric. I had smiled when
+Evie had come up and said reproachfully: "You can dance with Louie!" and
+again when she had said: "I should like something to drink--no, you
+mustn't fetch it--when you're asked for those things in the middle of a
+dance it means that somebody wants to sit out with you--but, oh dear! I
+forgotten that this was Archie's, and here he is!..." It hadn't hurt
+much but I had had enough. The last person I distinctly remember
+speaking to was Miss Levey, who had said that I really must bring
+"somebody" to the next social. They had still been dancing when I left.
+
+Now that the disaster of my failure had befallen me, a year must elapse
+before I could make a second attempt; and so it became quite unnecessary
+that I should return to the college after the Christmas vacation of a
+month. The faraway autumn would be early enough for that. The fees,
+small as they were, came fearfully heavy on me, and I could study in the
+Patent Office Library for nothing.
+
+But I wished to return in January. My many reasons for this are clear to
+you. To the more obvious of them I will only add, that I seemed now to
+be doomed to remain at Rixon Tebb & Masters' for another year, and, now
+that that strange and rather frightening calm of that night of the
+breaking-up party had passed, I simply could not face the time ahead
+without the alleviation, or at least the change of pain, that the
+prospect of seeing Evie afforded.
+
+So I decided to continue my course.
+
+The days until the college should reopen on the 21st of February were--I
+almost said purgatory to me, but in truth they purged me little. It was
+the rainiest and muddiest of Christmas weeks; nobody was out of doors
+who had a fire to sit by and leisure to sit by it, and the streets were
+a bobbing of umbrellas and a squirting of mud about the turned-up
+trousers of men and the skirts of women lifted to their wearers cared
+not where. I tried to make the use of dubbin take the place of the
+resoling of my boots, and in my chamber, which was warmed only by my
+oil-stove, my garments never dried. It was a short week at Rixon Tebb &
+Masters', we were paid short too, and I shall never forget my Christmas
+dinner of that year. For a fit of desperation and impotent rebellion
+took me. I went for a change to another "pull-up" than my usual one, and
+there paid tenpence for a wholly insufficient dinner. I rebelled, I say.
+I brought my fist down on the table, and out of sheer recklessness
+ordered the whole lot over again. This proved too much for me. I
+couldn't eat half of it, but I didn't care. How I was going to recoup
+myself for the double cost afterwards I didn't know. If I had to have
+more money, I knew I should have to get it somehow, that was all.
+
+That was a villainous Christmas for me!
+
+And I was alone--Archie at Guildford, Evie and her aunt I didn't know
+where, perhaps at Guildford too, everybody with homes to go to and faces
+to talk to over a fire. Archie's absence, too, cost me several
+sixpences--the price of the hot baths I could not very well ask for at
+his quarters while he was away. I spent my evenings in the Patent Office
+Library, where it was warm.
+
+I was glad when Christmas was over. I felt somehow that I was not
+missing quite so much.
+
+Then those who had been away for a holiday came back; the second and
+third weeks of January passed; and on the twenty-first, a Monday, I went
+to the college again, as piteously joyful as if I had been an outcast
+returning to open and welcoming arms again.
+
+There were changes at the college. New students had come, several of the
+old ones had left, among them Mackie, whose course was finished, and we
+had a new "professor," who, it was said, was to start an
+advertisement-writing class. But the biggest gap seemed to be left by
+Miss Levey and Miss Causton, neither of whom, in spite of their answers
+to my question at the breaking-up party, had returned. Miss Levey,
+indeed was not returning; she had got a job; and I do not conceal that
+this was a small relief to me. It put an end to the hints and guessings
+and pertinacities that might still further have embarrassed my not very
+clearly explained situation. But Miss Causton, I gathered, had merely
+not come back yet. As it turned out later, she did not come back. But
+nobody knew yet. So, until she should do so, Evie and Miss Windus
+remained our only two woman students.
+
+It is plain that I had had to think out a plausible reason for my own
+return. I neither wished, nor would it have been credible of me, to be
+regarded as one of those high-and-dry relics (every college and school
+has them) who wear on to middle age seeing whole generations of juniors
+out, and become pathetic "institutions" merely because they had not
+initiative to stop doing what they have once begun. So I had hit on an
+explanation of my reappearance that, as it subsequently turned out, cut
+two ways. In one of these ways it proved magnificently sufficient for
+me; in the other it proved inadequate with an inadequacy that I only
+partly rectified when I became engaged to Miss Windus. In a word, I had
+had an idea.
+
+My idea was this:
+
+Starting from the old "Method" course (which, despite my failure, I knew
+back and forth and inside out), I had begun to evolve for myself a whole
+new course of private study. Much of this, I anticipated, I should be
+able to pursue at the college; for the rest the British Museum and the
+Patent Office Library would serve. The germ of my notion lay (or at
+least began) in certain questions that bore on the consolidation of
+Commercial Distribution; and I fancied, rightly as it turned out, that
+my idea was in harmony with the broader developments of the day. More
+than that I need not say. All that concerns this story is that my new
+inspiration landed me straightway in a dilemma. On the one hand, the
+newness of the idea proved to be the foundation of my fortune, on the
+other, because of its very newness, and because it surpassed the terms
+of the then known, it appeared to those who wanted to know "what
+Jeffries was about," a subterfuge and a blind for something else. In a
+small sense, as you are aware, it was that; in a larger one it
+emphatically was not.
+
+It is odd what difference a New Year makes in such colleges as ours. The
+influx of new students always drives the older ones more closely
+together, so that a person with whom the previous term you had little
+more than a nodding acquaintance becomes, when you meet again, almost an
+old friend. You have memories and associations in common that the
+new-comers know nothing about, and quasi-amicable rearrangements are
+made. I may say at once that it was not this that finally drove me into
+Miss Windus's arms, but it helped in the early stages by breaking down
+other resistances, and so made our extraordinary subsequent relation
+possible.
+
+Evie had told me, on the night when I had first walked home with her to
+Woburn Place, that she usually went home either alone or else with Miss
+Windus, who lived in Percy Street, Tottenham Court Road; and while I, of
+course, had gone no farther than the gate, Miss Windus, I knew, had on
+more than one occasion gone in to supper. In the new order of things
+(which included Archie's "home from home") the three of them not
+infrequently went to Woburn Place together, and I began to see his light
+near the Foundling Hospital more and more rarely as I passed. Of course
+it didn't at all follow that because he was not in his own quarters he
+was at Woburn Place; I knew for a fact that very often he was not; and I
+learned from Mackie, whom I ran into one evening as I was returning from
+Rixon Tebb & Masters', and to whom I forced myself to talk, that on at
+least one recent occasion Master Archie had been seen flying a
+none-too-steadily-balanced kite in the neighbourhood of Leicester
+Square. The "home from home" was a capital one from the point of view of
+Mrs. Merridew, no doubt; but from that of Miss Soames the aunt, into
+whose house, whether she knew it or not, some whiff at least of another
+atmosphere was being brought, the thing seemed very open indeed to
+question.
+
+Evie, I could see now, was lost in love of him; and I sometimes wondered
+whether I was not becoming hopelessly one-idea-ridden to suppose that it
+could all possibly end in any but the plain and obvious way--by her
+marriage to him. Changes that I shall speak of presently were taking
+place quickly in myself, and perhaps it was the first sign of them that
+sometimes, when I found myself utterly spent and broken, melodramatic
+magnanimities rose in my brain. In these moments I was tempted to throw
+up the struggle, to take myself off somewhere, and to leave them to
+arrange matters as they would. I wonder--I wonder!--whether I should
+have had the strength to do it!
+
+And I wonder too whether, had I done it, it would have been "strength"
+at all! I hardly think it would. I will not generalise about slack young
+men and blind and innocent girls; I am not concerned with collective
+morals; but I was concerned with the given case, and already saw how
+things would almost inevitably turn out. Archie, after the manner of his
+kind, would sandwich in his visits to Woburn Place with more suspect
+pleasures; presently there would come some accident of detection, or
+there would not; if there did he would make a more or less (probably
+less) clean breast of it, and if there did not it would become a
+question of how far he would go with Evie. At that also I could make a
+guess. A "home from home," is not quite what it seems when the home
+contains a young creature who follows the befriended young man about
+with soft and adoring eyes; parents and aunts notice these things; one
+day something would happen; and Archie, who never took any other line,
+would take the line of least resistance and, seeing that it was expected
+of him, become formally engaged to her.
+
+And then what? Ah, I foresaw that too!
+
+She would be, as the expression goes, "no worse" for him. For that also
+he lacked the courage. He would sloven himself and her into a love that
+would soon prove irksome to him, a bitterness to her, and pure only on a
+technicality. I knew his breed; To the best of them Woburn Place is
+Woburn Place, and Leicester Square Leicester Square; and to the worst of
+them these two things quickly interpenetrate and weld. And what would
+that mean for her? I looked at my love; I looked about me at other sad
+and disillusioned women who have survived their fair dreams as examples
+of the way in which this love-slovening actually works out; and I
+shuddered.
+
+No, a magnanimous removal of myself would not have been "strength" at
+all.
+
+Yet if you think I became engaged to Miss Windus merely that I might
+have a pair of eyes frequently in Woburn Place, there you are wrong
+again. I became engaged to her because I had no choice. The contributory
+causes were several. Among the earlier of them had been a conversation I
+had had with Archie Merridew a week before the examination in Method.
+
+After I had been at pains to give out the information that I was engaged
+as it were at large and without further particularity, I had begun, as
+you have already guessed, to be the victim of my own ingenuity. Our
+committances have this way of taking matters into their own hands. I had
+quickly found it impossible to be thus unspecifically betrothed. Too
+many questions had instantly sprung up, and Archie, if not Miss Levey,
+had known too much about the circumstances of my life.
+
+At first I had tried to fob him off by speaking of "some girl in the
+City," but that had been useless. If that was so, he had wanted to know
+(probably having gossipped it all over with Miss Levey), why did I never
+see her in the evenings, and why was I so often at liberty on Saturday
+afternoons and Sundays? I had protested, I had made jokes. How, I had
+demanded, did _he_ know where I passed my spare time?... Well, he knew
+(he had retorted) where I spent five evenings out of the seven!
+
+Miss Levey, you see, had started him, and it amused him to go on.
+
+And so his intrusiveness had begun to narrow me down to the college
+itself.
+
+This had given me the choice of just two _inamorata_--Miss Causton and
+Miss Windus (for I still supposed that Miss Causton might walk into the
+college as usual any evening). To the latter lady I was at that time
+exceedingly averse; and on the night of this conversation of which I
+speak, after Archie had been almost beyond endurance jestingly
+importunate, I had all but declared myself point blank for the absent
+Miss Causton. (The conversation had taken place in his rooms.)
+
+"The question is, Archie," I said gravely, looking at him with sharp
+doubt in my eyes, "can I trust you? I suspect you've already set
+something going, you know."
+
+He had coloured a little. A mere honourable understanding was never in
+the least binding on him, and I was never quite sure to what extent the
+exaction of a definite promise would be so.
+
+"Oh, dash it all, Jeff!" he had scoffed rather awkwardly, "anybody'd
+think you were ashamed of it! All I said was quite harmless--really----"
+
+"I know," I had commented, "_meaning_ no harm. Nine-tenths of the harm
+in the world's done that way. I don't know that I don't prefer the man
+who means harm; at least he knows what he's doing.... But why are you so
+curious about it all?"
+
+His curiosity, I knew, was nothing more or less than a slack indulgence
+of his desire to hear a secret. He had too Miss Levey's racial gift of
+turning these things to account. But he had put it rather differently.
+
+"Oh, just friendly interest," he had replied, slapping his jacket
+pocket. "Where did I put my cigarette case?... We _are_ friends, aren't
+we?"
+
+"Rather less so when you go chattering about me."
+
+"Sorry, old man," he had replied contritely, though his contrition had
+been less for his blabbing than that I apparently had taken it amiss. "I
+didn't think--you didn't tell me not--it slipped out----"
+
+"Well, well--no great harm's done. But if I were you--" if I had
+hesitated it was merely for a private and subtle relish "--I'd take a
+memory powder, to use an expression of Miss Windus's."
+
+(You will remember how I had come to overhear that expression, and you
+may see, by turning back, the precise context of the allusion.)
+
+Archie had been sitting in his favourite attitude, with his stockinged
+feet against the pilaster of the fireplace. He had twinkled again.
+
+"I don't think it _can_ be Miss Windus," he had chuckled again. "Anybody
+can see you can't stand her."
+
+"Oh? Sorry I've allowed that to appear."
+
+"And the college isn't exactly swarming with girls," he had continued.
+
+I had told him that he was dragging the college in entirely on his own
+responsibility.
+
+"Oh no!" he had said promptly, with a far too cunning glance at me. "You
+don't put me off like that, old boy! I've got you down to that, and I'm
+going to hold you to it! Serve you right for your dashed secretiveness!
+So if it isn't Miss Windus, and it isn't Miss Soames----"
+
+At that I had been able quite calmly to jest. I had fetched up a laugh.
+
+"Steady a minute," I had said. "If you're really bent on going into the
+Sherlock Holmes business you'll have to do it properly, you know--give
+reasons for your eliminations. Accuracy's everything. Let's have your
+reason for ruling Miss Soames out."
+
+"Good old Jeff," he had remarked, laughing; "accurate even in his jokes!
+Well, say Evie's a young twenty, and you're a damned experienced old
+thirty--how will _that_ do?"
+
+I believe, taken with all the rest, that it had seemed to him perfectly
+conclusive.
+
+"That's better," I had approved. "I only meant that if you're going to
+be methodical you must _be_ methodical, that's all. Good mental training
+for you, my boy."
+
+"So it is," he had agreed, with the forthcoming examination in his mind.
+"I say--we'll have a shorthand speed-test presently--but first I'm going
+to drag this out of you...."
+
+And by-and-by I had all but made the confession that it was Miss Causton
+whom I adored from a distance and hesitated to approach.
+
+Another contributory source to this oddest freak of my life was the
+terms on which I had returned to the college. That wide and unexpected
+development of my new studies was no explanation to anybody but myself;
+I had confessed myself, through Archie, to be in love; and the more
+closely I applied myself to my mysterious work the less mysterious did
+my whole conduct appear. Yet on the whole, even if Miss Causton had
+returned at once, I might at the last have feared the hazard with one at
+once so suspiciously open and problematically deep as she; and there was
+no allowing matters to remain as they were. There was only Miss Windus
+for it.
+
+You see the mess I had landed myself in.
+
+Yet my unhappiness in all this was only a part of a general change that
+was quickly leavening me throughout. It was a change altogether for the
+better. I was sick, sick of shifts and tricks and meannesses. I was no
+less sick of them in myself than I was when I encountered them in the
+Sutts and Polwheles among whom my life was passed. I panted for a
+clearer air and a more spacious prospect; I panted for these things
+because Evie had loosened the band that had confined the wings of my own
+spirit. And with my own spirit thus freed, I would find a way to escape
+from the cage of my circumstances. Once I had done with that old life I
+would have done with it for ever. And, strange as it may seem, it was
+because hope was at last greyly and tardily dawning for me that I
+entered into my last despicable tortuousness with Kitty Windus.
+
+
+II
+
+For as I got deeper into my studies I began to see in it nothing less
+than the finger of Providence that I had failed in the second part of
+the examination in Method. That frustration altered the whole course of
+my life. I am, of course, speaking in the light of subsequent events,
+but I see now what a mere pass would have meant--a sort of success no
+doubt--but a success in a narrow and short-reaching attempt.
+
+Up to that time my plan had been to qualify myself by means of
+certificates, to find a billet elsewhere, and then, with Rixon Tebb &
+Masters' recommendation of steadiness and sobriety, really to begin in
+some firm where promotion was possible otherwise than by our bottle-neck
+of a junior clerkship. I had actually had the choice of no less than
+two such firms, and had been already wondering what I should do with my
+extra twelve shillings a week--for I should have begun at thirty
+shillings.
+
+And then I had failed.
+
+Well, heaven be thanked for it. In that failure I sounded, for the last
+time--but no; for the last time but one--the bass-string of my poverty.
+
+For now, as I saw my new work gradually unfolding, it sometimes so
+excited me that I could hear my own heart thumping in my breast. Do you
+know that feeling--that in your brain there is already born, and growing
+apace, an idea that you do not believe to be guessed at by any creature
+in the world except yourself? As a matter of fact I now know that my
+idea was being simultaneously worked upon elsewhere. Sir Julius (then
+"Judy") Pepper was pegging away at it in his back room in Endsleigh
+Gardens, hardly a mile from where I brooded over it myself; and if you
+have never heard of the association of Jeffries and Pepper you know very
+little about these things. Still, all was in darkness then save for that
+single ray far ahead that seemed to indicate a way out; and even now I
+have only just begun my life's work--the keying up to concert pitch of
+certain branches of commercial distribution that, by the time I and my
+successors have finished, will make men wonder how such a phenomenon as,
+say, the railway strike of last year could ever have been possible.
+
+Nor was this deepest peace that the man of action knows--his certainty
+about what his task in the world must be--the whole of my spirit's
+unexpected re-birth. This held out the promise of material--and shall I
+say "ethical?"--well-being; and my eyes were now opened to more than
+that. I hesitate to call this new thing "religion." I would rather
+define it as the clear and immutable knowledge that all things _do_ work
+together to an end, good, bad or morally unconnoted. It was a perception
+of powers and forces, not at variance, but working in harmony towards
+some cosmic consummation. I don't think that is religion. I don't think
+it would save a soul. But it not only saved, but made altogether its
+own, my reason. I believed in the power and divinity of a thing, if not
+in those of a Being. And I believe that I should have got further even
+than that.
+
+And if it be true that we treat the world as we are treated by it, this
+changed my attitude to all with whom I came into contact. I am not
+thinking now of Kitty Windus, for she, poor soul, was but an episode,
+though one I have found is hard enough to make away with. I am thinking
+of Sutt, of Polwhele, of the proprietor of my public-house, of the
+drivers and porters of my restaurant, of the men and women, seen and to
+be seen no more, who passed me in the streets. And I am thinking of Evie
+Soames.
+
+For it was side by side with her sweetness that I conceived all this
+authority and strength and vision to exist. It was all, I knew not how,
+hers--hers and mine. I could not successfully resolve a problem nor work
+out an equation but something within me cried, "That is ours, my
+love!--something seized from the limbo of things-not-known-yet, for
+you, dear, and for me!" I could now even bear to work away from her, in
+another room of the college, among the files of the Patent Office, at my
+own place. When her face rose, as it ever did, between me and my paper
+or page, I knew peace now, not jealousy. Had I put into words the
+thoughts that then filled me those words would have been, "Yes, my
+own--you see what I'm doing--it is for us, and it won't be long--go
+away, sweetheart, but not very far." And so I dreamed harder and worked
+harder than I have ever done in my life, and both came easily to me,
+because I had at last clearly seen my goal.
+
+Yet you are not to suppose that I was not unwinkingly wakeful too. This
+was my inner life, and it informed, but did not abate, the vigilance of
+my outer one. I think that three times out of four I knew (at first at
+any rate) when Archie had been to Woburn Place, and perhaps twice out of
+four when he had sought a lower pleasure elsewhere. It would take too
+long to tell you how I ascertained all this. I did so under a mask of
+casualness that practice and my new-born hope had now made quite easy.
+
+And so I come to my acceptance by Kitty Windus.
+
+Espionage upon Woburn Place was only a part, and by far the lesser part,
+of it. I had my impossible position to explain. And not only had I to
+explain it, but my original lie had left me only one other way of
+explaining it--the giving up of Evie once for all. That I could have
+more easily done months back than I could now that hope had brought her
+so (I speak comparatively) tantalisingly near. I admit that the chance
+that I might be introduced at Woburn Place as Miss Windus's _fiancee_
+did weigh, and horribly. I no longer hated her. I pitied her. I do not
+mean that this pity was in the least degree akin to love in that word's
+sense as between man and woman; but by salving a little my self-content
+it did, practically, help me to carry the thing out. But I swear,
+however much I may appear to put myself upon the defensive in doing so,
+that of itself the prospect of Woburn Place would not have swayed me.
+
+I have not the heart to remember the earlier stages of my duplicity. Too
+many crawling things lie beneath that stone of my life for me to wish to
+turn it over. Let me summarise by saying that, by a slow and nicely
+calculated relaxing of my stiffness, and a gradual and lingering and
+gratuitous prolongation ever and again of certain opportunities of
+intercourse, I had, by the beginning of March, so counterbalanced my
+former aversion that, in a word, anything might happen, and at any
+moment.
+
+Poor, lonely, starved spinster heart! I have far more ruth for what I
+did to you than for what I did to another!
+
+But let me, before I go on, see whether there was anything during the
+months of January and February that I may not omit.... No, I think there
+is little. Miss Causton still remained away; I pursued my new
+investigations; that segregation of newness of the first-year students
+relaxed a little, but without affecting that slight unconscious coming
+together of the older ones that it had brought about; and I think Archie
+Merridew divided his time between Woburn Place and Leicester Square
+pretty equally. I think that is all. I pass on.
+
+It was in Lincoln's Inn Fields that I entered into a pledge with Kitty
+Windus that I had no intention of ever redeeming. I had not thought when
+I had left the college that night that it would come so quickly. I had
+planned a long walk, and, passing through Great Turnstile, had come upon
+Miss Windus looking into the window of an antique shop. I had stopped
+and gazed with her, and then, presently moving away, we had passed
+together into the square.
+
+She told me afterwards that she had been merely aimlessly wandering,
+having been to Woburn Place the evening before and fearing to weary her
+welcome there by going again the next night; but I did not know this
+then. Therefore, when presently she stopped at the corner where the
+street leading to Kingsway now is and said, "Well, I think I'll go
+back," I was a little surprised. Then I understood and laughed.
+
+"I'm so sorry," I said, "I thought this was your way. I don't know that
+it's particularly mine--I was only taking a stroll--so if you don't mind
+I'll walk back with you."
+
+Thereupon we turned back into the Fields.
+
+It was this mutually made discovery that neither of us was pressed for
+time that brought simultaneously into our minds some slight
+self-consciousness that for the first time in our lives we should be
+thus killing an hour in one another's company. Her own embarrassment
+presently gave expression to this.
+
+"How nice," she said, after we had walked half the length of the central
+garden railings in silence, "to feel sometimes that you haven't got to
+talk if you don't want to!"
+
+The remark, commonplace as it was, gave me a new glimpse of her. I knew
+that she read a better class of novel than my Evie, and with the results
+you might suppose. I don't seriously believe that Evie's "scions of
+noble blood" and the rest of her novelette paraphernalia had any point
+of contact with real life for her, but Miss Windus carried over the
+triteness she got from her reading into her thought and speech.
+Therefore, since I myself, though no eloquent speaker, believe that
+tongues were made to talk with, I again laughed a little.
+
+"Yes," I replied, "provided always that you aren't silent merely because
+you've nothing to say."
+
+I think this penetration, such as it was, struck her with quite
+remarkable force; and, as the novels provided no reply to it, she was
+again silent for a time. We were approaching the corner of Great
+Turnstile again, but I don't think she noticed it. We turned down by
+Stone Buildings and began to complete the circuit of the Fields.
+
+"Mr Merridew said you were very clever," she remarked at last. "What
+_do_ you study all by yourself in the senior classroom, Mr Jeffries?"
+she asked, the quizzical little triangles of her eyes turned up to mine
+in the light of a lamp that hung like a beacon over the garden railings.
+She wore a plaid Inverness cape and a boat-shaped hat that night, I
+remember, and would doubtless have worn rubber heels had those articles
+been invented. Never woman made a slighter physical appeal to man than
+she.
+
+"I'm not quite sure myself yet," I replied, as truthfully as made no
+matter. "Part of it at any rate is human nature in business."
+
+"I love human nature," she said.
+
+I knew I had only to speak. In the light of the wrong I was about to do
+her I freely forgave her all her past pretences towards myself. All
+grapes had been sour to poor Kitty, and I didn't doubt she had made
+brave attempts, and still braver concealments of failure. Baboon or
+anybody else, there she was at his pleasure so her reproach be but taken
+away. For already I had decided that it might as well be now as later.
+
+"Yes," I answered, as if absently, and we walked on.
+
+The night was slightly frosty, and over the houses to the north of the
+Fields the glare of Holborn shone rustily. There were few people about.
+As we walked, by this time almost used to the strangeness of one
+another's company, I wished that the central garden of the square had
+not been closed; at least she would have had the association of a tree
+and a plot of grass to go with her plighting. But I knew that such
+weaknesses as this were not safe, and shut peremptorily down on them.
+She seemed so pathetically small and skimpy by my side, and had I
+yielded even a little I could almost have persuaded myself of a
+tenderness for her. This I refused to do. I would do nothing to make
+easy for myself what would by-and-by prove cruel enough for her.
+
+We were half way round the Fields on our second circuit before I spoke
+again. I moistened my lips and steeled myself.
+
+"Miss Windus," I said.
+
+I think a tremor took her instantly with my change of tone. She looked
+up, but I did not hear whether she said anything.
+
+Nor did I say anything. Our hands, as we walked, were close together. I
+took hers.
+
+She made no attempt to draw it away, and we walked so. Presently I took
+the hand in my other one, and this brought it across my breast. I
+daresay she felt the beating of my heart.
+
+"Kitty," I whispered.
+
+She pressed against me a little.
+
+I don't think it ever entered her head that I intended anything but just
+that we should walk, for that one night, round Lincoln's Inn Fields like
+this. I don't believe she thought of anything. With even that heel and
+paring of love she was content--just to walk so, to-morrow if it was to
+be, if not then at any rate to-night, with her hand in a man's and her
+shoulder pressing lightly against a man's shoulder.
+
+Well, she had it.
+
+"Kitty," I whispered again. This was in a dark shadow on the south side
+of the Fields. Without prearrangement we had ceased to walk, and were
+standing together, she with her face turned downwards and away, quite
+ready to give me all she supposed I wanted of her.
+
+She couldn't murmur my name in return. She didn't know it. It was, for
+her, merely "Man." But instead she gave me that for which I stooped over
+her. She gave it with a heartrending impulsiveness throwing back her
+head suddenly and leaning her bosom on mine. I felt a pair of dry,
+slightly cracked lips on my own and was conscious of an odour of
+clothes.... Then we separated again.
+
+"Oh," she said, with a shaky little exhalation of her breath, "I ... I
+didn't think you'd ever look at me--Jeff!"
+
+This last was a quick invention, to cover her ignorance of my Christian
+name.
+
+She meant that she hadn't thought that anybody would ever look at her.
+Every shred of the old pretence of the pertinacities and annoyances of
+strangers had fallen from her. She lifted up her face again--and
+again--as if by present gluttony to forestall insatiable hungers of the
+morrow and the morrow after that.
+
+For a minute I was well-nigh resolved out of sheer compassion to keep my
+word and marry her.
+
+And even then--think of it!--she had no idea that I contemplated what
+was, indeed, my sole reason for action--an acknowledged engagement. She
+never dreamed I meant to marry her. It was I who spoke of this,
+half-an-hour later. By that time we had been to the bottom of Chancery
+Lane and back, and were in the Fields again, once more in that same
+shadow where I had kissed her first. She looked at me.
+
+I can hardly write it. There was first a gleam of fear in her eyes, and
+then a leaping.
+
+"_Jeff!_" she cried in a loud voice that cracked.
+
+I had to catch her as she began slowly to sink at the knees.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So I became engaged. At the college it was a nine days' wonder, but I
+let them wonder. So did Kitty Windus, merely pretending that the thing
+had been for long a secret understanding. Archie, I remember, smirked
+through some form of congratulation when I told him: "What, _not_ Louie
+after all!" but it was only when Evie Soames flung her arms about Kitty
+Windus' neck and well-nigh about mine also that I began really to wonder
+what could possibly come of it all.
+
+
+III
+
+During those little pauses and lapses of study in which men scribble
+abstractedly on the margins of paper, idly forming letters or
+noughts-and-crosses or inexpert attempts at portraiture, I myself had a
+way of filling my blanks at that time that may serve to explain the
+change that had more and more come over me. I used to rub with a pencil,
+as evenly as possible, two little squares of grey, and then to put into
+the middle of the first of them a spot as black as my pencil could make
+it, leaving in the second a similar spot, but one of clean white. Unless
+you have tried it you may not believe the difference in effect. The
+black spot of the first seems to make denser and darker the whole
+square; but the white one lightens and relieves it as the sun does when
+it struggles through a mist. By what law of optics this is to be
+explained I cannot tell; I can only say that if Kitty Windus, wondering
+what I studied all by myself in the senior classroom, had come upon me
+at these times, she would have found me pondering over these marginal
+trifles as in some way a symbol of my own life.
+
+For had it not been for this gloomy blot of my betrothal to her I would
+not now have exchanged my life for that of any man I knew. So did hope
+now irradiate it. I was still an eighteen-shilling Agency clerk; I still
+lived in a red and green loft over a public-house; but I now believed in
+myself, longed to be able to respect myself, and had already grimly
+resolved that others should respect me.
+
+I was in this state of mind when I first set eyes on Angela Soames.
+
+I was taken there, of course--to Woburn Place, I mean--by Kitty Windus.
+It was within a week of our engagement, so that I had not to wait long
+for these first-fruits of my extraordinary position. That night was the
+second time I walked with Evie to her abode, for Archie followed a few
+yards behind with Kitty Windus. We had dropped into this arrangement on
+leaving the college, as men tacitly pay each other's partners the
+courtesy of their attentions.
+
+When I have said that Evie's home was in Woburn Place I have gone a long
+way towards describing it. She lived in one of those large apartment
+houses that are full of Japanese, Americans, and Indian law students,
+with a half-pay officer here and there. She and her aunt had rooms of
+their own upstairs, but they dined in the large common dining-room
+downstairs, at a table that would almost have resembled that of a public
+dinner had it not been for the gaps left by the absent boarders,
+several of whom were always dining elsewhere. I never saw that table
+full. I have tried to carry on a conversation with my neighbour across
+two intervening empty chairs. I have had to accept the highly polished
+civilities of Indians and Japanese, who have refused to disturb me when
+I have removed a rolled napkin in a numbered ring and put a flat and
+freshly ironed one in its place. One met niggers and gouty subjects and
+antiquated old ladies in the hall and on the stairs; and I was quite
+prepared to find Miss Soames the aunt one of these last.
+
+But she was not in the least so. There was not very much more difference
+between her age and my own than there was between mine and
+Evie's--though of course what difference there was was all on the wrong
+side. She was, I should say, forty-three or four, and I wondered the
+moment I saw her how she had got through these forty odd years and
+remained Miss Angela. Let me say at once that she had no secret sorrow
+(though Kitty always vowed she had). When, later, she told me, with the
+greatest self-pluming in the world, that she "could have been married"
+more than once or twice, she told me nothing I should not have guessed;
+but merely to have had these opportunities seemed entirely to content
+her detached and unruffled and rather aimless soul. She had had the
+refusal of them--and she coquetted with that. She had avoided the pains
+of marriage--and remained the white-haired _ingenue_. It later became
+one of Kitty's irritating tricks to "wish she had hair like that"--a
+beautiful tower of it dressed _a la Marquise_; but in nothing else could
+Kitty ever have resembled Angela Soames.... But perhaps I may be wrong
+in my estimate after all. Perhaps no man can really understand that kind
+of woman, who cannot lose all herself even when she marries and loses
+not very much less when she does not. Evie, I concluded, probably had
+her passion for abandonment from her mother.
+
+I was introduced to the elder Miss Soames in her sitting-room. This
+apartment, like herself, seemed to trail even into Woburn Place hems and
+fringes of past prosperity. The room itself was not much more than a
+cold-blue-papered, corniceless box--but, as the first of a number of odd
+little contrasts, a shield-shaped embroidered firescreen hung on a
+slender stem near the fire. The door was painted yellow and grained--but
+a pair of handsome silver candlesticks stood on the mantelpiece. There
+was a threadbare lodging-house carpet--and a black bear-skin hearthrug,
+the head of the animal worn bald by Miss Angela's paste-buckled slipper.
+And so on. On the round table stood a rosy-shaded lamp (that did _not_
+change to a corresponding shade of green as you looked). Miss Angela
+herself wore a soft old grey with a thin Indian silk shawl cast over
+her shoulders, and I remembered, as I looked at her, certain former
+angry conclusions I had come to about her. I took them all back.
+Charmingly unsure of herself in everything, from her love affairs
+downwards, she might be, but she did not parrot precepts about the "less
+fortunately circumstanced." We shook hands, and I was told that I might
+smoke. Archie had come in smoking.
+
+I did not talk very much during this my first call. Indeed, Miss Angela
+murmured, as if to herself, some half-mischievous, half-tactful remark
+about an "ordeal"; and my slight nervousness passed as part of Kitty's
+"showing off" of me. But the others made up for me, and I listened,
+smiling, but silent except when I was directly addressed.
+
+This I presently was by Miss Angela, and on a point no less interesting
+than the way in which Archie spent his evenings. It had already appeared
+that he was to celebrate a birthday two days thence, and Miss Angela had
+asked him to spend the evening with them.
+
+"You've given us a very cold shoulder lately," she said; "why, your
+mother's been remarking on it!" She pulled a faded tapestry hassock
+towards her with her foot, the fire being too hot to allow her to make
+use of the bear's head, and reached for a paper fan with which to keep
+the heat from her face. "I hope it's not _you_ who take up all his
+time, Mr Jeffries?"
+
+I answered that it was not, and Evie, who had removed her hat and coat
+and was now tidying her hair before the mantelpiece mirror, laughed.
+
+"Mr Jeffries' time is spoken for now--isn't it, Kitty?" she said.
+
+I saw her look at Archie as she said it. He was astride the hearthrug,
+allowing the smoke of his cigarette to stream up his nostrils, and she,
+as she arranged her hair, had to look at herself almost over his
+shoulder. Her occupation left the whole of her young bosom quite
+defenceless had there been a pair of arms to pass about it, and the soft
+look she gave him was a double provocation. But he did not return the
+look. He moved a little aside, also finding the fire hot, and flipped
+his cigarette ash into the fender.
+
+"I don't think an engaged girl ought to come between a man and all his
+old friends," Kitty pronounced. Her look at me was a promise that she
+would never come between me and Archie.
+
+Miss Angela gave a contented little laugh.
+
+"Ah, you all say that at first! Well...." She glanced past Evie at me,
+and took me into her confidence with a private smile. It was as if we
+two older ones understood that there was something in process that must
+not be disturbed. "But if you don't come, Archie," she added, "I shall
+write straight to your mother! You'll come too, Miss Windus?"
+
+Kitty glanced at me.
+
+"Oh, of course I mean Mr Jeffries too!" said Miss Angela archly.
+
+"Oh, of course him too!" quoth Archie, from the hearthrug, loosening his
+scorching trousers. "Two hearts that beat as one--you bet--twopence into
+a penny show _now_, Jeff!"
+
+And again Miss Angela, with a look this time past him, seemed to invite
+my attention to something.
+
+You may guess that my attention needed little inviting. So far, my
+surmise, that she adored him while she took the admiration a little
+impatiently, seemed to be pretty near the mark; and I was confirmed in
+this when she presently sat down on the companion hassock beyond the end
+of the fender, and, with her face a little averted, sank into
+moroseness. It was merely because her glance as she stood before the
+mirror had not been returned, but I myself had known too well what it
+was to be uplifted and cast down again by these nothings not to
+understand.
+
+And Archie too understood, if the jocular and would-be easy manner in
+which he tried to drag her into the conversation again meant anything. I
+suspected that this was not the first incident of the kind that had
+occurred between them. Presently he had twice addressed her directly
+without getting more than the shortest of replies; and the third time
+he did so (he, Kitty and Miss Angela had been talking about some
+indifferent matter) he added the words, "that is, when Evie's found her
+tongue again."
+
+My darling had a temper of her own. "I didn't know I'd lost it," she
+said, with a little perverse snap.
+
+Then she dropped into her sulks again.
+
+"These lovers' quarrels!" Miss Angela's private smile to me seemed to
+say; but this time I evaded the discreet invitation to participate.
+
+"Well," Archie said presently, looking at his watch, "I must be off;
+I've a chap to meet. Thanks, Aunt Angela (beg pardon; I know you don't
+like being called that). I'll come on Thursday, then."
+
+But Miss Angela exclaimed: "A man to meet! At this hour!"
+
+Archie took his hat from a chair. "Yes. About a dog. Why not? Fox
+terrier," he added facetiously; "must make sure they've got over the
+distemper, you know. Thursday then. You two are staying a bit, I
+suppose?" he invited us.
+
+He made his adieux; but almost before the door had closed behind him
+Evie had risen from her hassock.
+
+"You'll excuse me, won't you?" she said quickly. "I've got a headache. I
+shall go straight to bed. Good-night."
+
+And she followed him out--whether straight to bed or not I don't know.
+Kitty and I followed shortly afterwards.
+
+And now that I've got to this Woburn Place portion of my story I may as
+well, while I am about it, skip the two intervening days and come to the
+evening of Archie Merridew's birthday.
+
+Thursday was not in any case one of Evie's class evenings, and on that
+Thursday she must have been very busy indeed. We were to go to supper at
+eight; and as the routine of the boarding house did not provide for
+private entertainments the aunt and niece had had all to do themselves.
+The supper was therefore of necessity cold, with the exception of some
+hot soup, which I suspect to have been heated over a bedroom fire; and
+for the furnishing of the round table with the pink-shaded lamp Miss
+Angela had rummaged in drawers and trunks and bundles, with notable
+results. White heavy plates with the name of the boarding house
+contained within an oval garter were set between common knives and
+delicate and worn old silver forks and spoons, really beautiful glass
+finger-bowls stood on straw mats with a circular hole in the middle; and
+a long slender-handled punch-ladle stuck up out of the cheap earthenware
+jug full of home-made lemonade.
+
+I suspect, too, that Evie had changed her mind a dozen times about the
+height of her dress at the neck; and probably her aunt's guidance had
+led her finally, since she had no special dress for the evening, to
+reject the compromise of altering her blouse to an intermediate =V=. Her
+dark hair had been newly washed. A softer lace than Kitty Windus' came
+quite up to her ears, and Miss Angela had lent her a pearl ring, which
+seemed to be mutely asking to be transferred to the finger next to the
+one on which she wore it. She was in white, with a longer skirt than
+usual; Miss Angela wore the old grey and Indian silk shawl she always
+wore; and Kitty looked prettier than I have ever seen her in a spotted
+blue foulard (I think I have that right) with wonderfully crimped
+sleeves and a cameo brooch at her rather wiry throat.
+
+She and I arrived before Archie, who, indeed, was a full quarter of an
+hour late. When he did turn up, there mingled with his apologies the
+bumptious assumption of ease with which he sought to make a joke of his
+negligence. He came in noisily, as if he intended to make the party a
+success out of hand; and before he had been in the room half-a-minute a
+whiff told me what I had instantly surmised from the brightness of his
+eyes--that he had been drinking sherry and bitters already.
+
+"Thanks, Aunt Angela--but that's not all, I hope!" he cried, as Miss
+Angela wished him many happy returns of the day.
+
+And he skipped to her, passed his arm about her waist, and kissed her.
+
+"Hope you won't mind for once, Jeff," he went on, dancing to Kitty
+Windus. Kitty both stiffened rigidly and flushed with excitement as he
+kissed her also on the cheek-bone.
+
+"Here--I'm going all round now--where's Evie?" he demanded.
+
+But Evie had slipped out of the room.
+
+We sat down to supper.
+
+I found Archie insufferable. He made the whole running with an ignorant
+egotism that caused my fingers to itch to box his ears. More than once
+he contradicted Miss Angela flatly, instantly trying to redeem the
+grossness by laughing loudly and crying, "Excuse my frankness--no
+offence--only Archie's way!" He made so familiar both with Kitty and
+myself that, out of mere hostility to him, I came very near to an
+alliance with her. Evie, I saw, was miserable. How much she knew about
+his habits I could only guess; I think that already she knew more than a
+little; but his had been the fortune to reveal her to herself, and I am
+not sure whether that ever wholly dies. I think it has since died as
+much as ever it can.
+
+"But," Miss Angela said by-and-by, seeking to quieten him, "I've
+forgotten to ask you how your father is. Better, I hope?"
+
+"The pater? Oh, he's all right; it's only a bilious attack. Afraid he
+got poisoned with some _foie gras_ he ate--jolly good tack _I_ call
+it--I'll have some more, please. And what's that you've got to drink
+there, Evie?"
+
+Evie poured him out some lemonade. He looked at it, but made no remark
+on it.
+
+"Here's your _foie gras_--have some cress with it," said Miss Angela.
+
+And so we feted his lordship.
+
+After supper there were nuts and almonds, which we ate sitting round the
+fire. I say "we," but Archie had what was left afterwards. With a
+"Half-a-mo," he had gone out, and I myself thought our party much
+pleasanter without him.
+
+But as he remained away, Miss Angela had no choice but to say presently:
+"What _can_ have become of our young man? I wonder if you'd mind
+fetching him, Mr Jeffries!"
+
+I went, and found him.
+
+He had picked up, on the stairs or in the hall, a Japanese with whom he
+had contracted some sort of acquaintance, and I heard his call as I
+passed the half-open door of the dining-room.
+
+"Here--Jeff!" he called. "Hold on--I sha'n't be a minute--come and let
+me introduce you to Mr Shoto--Mr Shoto, Mr Jeffries."
+
+I distrust that too affable little race from the other side of the
+world, and I gave Mr Shoto the most perfunctory of nods. Archie was
+having a very golden whisky and soda with him.
+
+"Come along--you oughtn't to clear off like this," I said curtly. "Miss
+Soames is asking for you."
+
+"All right--good old Angela--just a minute till I finish this. We were
+talking about Japan, or rather Mr Shoto was. Tell him that about the
+Yoshiwara, Shoto."
+
+But that cunning little alien had evidently summed me up already, and
+had a different choice of subject for me.
+
+I haled Archie back. I wondered, as he sat down by Evie, whether he
+would have another man about another dog to see presently, but he
+hadn't. Magnanimously he gave us the whole of the rest of the evening.
+This he did in spite of the cold encouragement he got from Evie. Twice,
+I was certain, while his face did not cease to be animated with the talk
+he gave the rest of us, his hand sought hers behind the arm of his
+chair; but she drew away. Nevertheless she drew away discreetly. By
+doing so openly she could have shown him up, but evidently she did not
+wish to show him up. There was no irreconcilable difference between
+them. She was angry, but not to the point of refusing to make it up
+afterwards. And I knew she was not far from unhappy tears.
+
+Kitty and I were the first to leave. This was at half-past eleven, and
+I had no desire to outsit Archie. He would either leave in another
+half-hour, which would leave him time for another golden whisky and
+soda, or, setting the smoothing over of Evie's ruffled temper before the
+attractions of the public-house, would linger till after closing-time,
+when there would be no hurry. To see which alternative he would take
+didn't on the whole seem to be worth waiting for.
+
+So Kitty and I took our leave; and as I walked with her to Percy
+Street--where she had two rooms over a modiste's--I--and she too--had to
+suffer as best we might the kind of thing I will relate in the next
+chapter.
+
+
+IV
+
+From the beginning she wanted one thing, I another. She was prepared to
+"love" me (as if it had been a matter of will, to which, nevertheless, I
+am quite certain she would faithfully have adhered) on the condition
+that that heart of hers should be no longer a parched pod; but I wanted
+no more of her than that my name should be linked with hers as that of
+her suitor. To me the appearance was the indispensable thing; she wanted
+the substance. And she was already plaguing me for it.
+
+God knows I gave her what I could give. Afterwards, when all was over,
+she still had the memory of it. I hope she found comfort in it.
+
+For of course it was precisely over that which was Evie's, and which I
+was resolved to keep for Evie, that we were locked in a grapple. She
+lisped and besought and cajoled. Before I began sometimes utterly to
+forget that we were betrothed at all I could often have groaned aloud at
+her inexpert playfulness; and I doubt whether the wit of man could have
+devised a more acute torture than that which I now began to undergo at
+her unsuspecting hands.
+
+For Archie's birthday was early in March, and already the crocuses were
+out, and the barrows in the streets were so aflame with daffodils that
+the flowers almost illuminated the faces of the sellers of them. It was
+still cold and backward, but the days were long past the turn, and while
+single twigs were still of a wintry iron hue, in the mass they took a
+softness, and the vistas of the parks had perceptibly changed. In the
+streets of the wealthy in which I walked the house-painters were at
+work, painting doors and railings and window-boxes; and even at my
+King's Cross corner the railway companies' announcements told of the
+coming summer. Spring was breaking in London--spring, the merry time of
+the year--spring, when lovers cannot keep asunder--and when Kitty and
+myself could not, yet must, keep asunder.
+
+In the streets I knew I was fairly safe. Her hand on my sleeve filled me
+with no repugnance. Let me, for example, tell you of our walk back to
+Percy Street on that night of Archie's birthday-party.
+
+As we crossed Tottenham Court Road she slipped her hand into my overcoat
+pocket, and my own encountered it there. It held it. It retained it
+along dark Percy Street, and still retained it when we stopped together
+at the side door next the window with the two fly-blown hats on
+pedestals that formed the whole of the modiste's display. There I would
+have left her; but "Don't go just yet, Jeff," she begged; "just eentie
+walk?"
+
+"Well, a short one," I said.
+
+We turned up Fitzroy Street into the Marylebone Road, but I was wary of
+the dark empty spaces about Regent's Park. The streets and the crowds
+for me. Indeed I may say that during this period of our "walking out" no
+couple in London sought solitude as I sought to avoid it; and I
+resolutely suppressed the thought of what was going to happen when the
+warm days should come and she should ask me to take her to Richmond or
+Epping or Kew. It was no good meeting that horror half way.
+
+Therefore. "Well," I said, as we approached Portland Road Station again,
+"hadn't we better be turning? It's getting late."
+
+"I suppose so," she sighed reluctantly, with a pressure of my arm.
+"Let's go this way."
+
+She indicated one of the darker side streets. We took it.
+
+By-and-by we stood by the modiste's window again. That is not a very
+reputable neighbourhood, and as she stood there, lingering out our talk
+to the thinnest of excuses, I guessed what was in her mind. But the
+general environment of laxity only produced a primness in her. In being
+all that she should be, she was sometimes a good deal more. Still,
+there was no harm in dallying with a secret thought.
+
+But under all circumstances she ever displayed a sort of tempted
+prudishness.
+
+"You and Evie and Miss Soames must come in one Sunday and have tea with
+me," she said resignedly at last, allowing the thought that some day I
+might go up with her to recede.
+
+"That will be charming," I replied.
+
+Then she sighed. "It has been so lovely tonight!"
+
+"In what way?" I asked, forcing a smile.
+
+"Archie was horrid, and you, Jeff----"
+
+Yes, I remembered that hostility to Archie certainly had resulted in a
+_rapprochement_ between ourselves.
+
+"Well," she said at last, lifting her face, "good-night, dearest--I know
+who _I_ shall dream of!"
+
+I kissed her, heard the sound of her key in the lock, and, turning, saw
+her little face still looking through the half-closed door after me. I
+returned to King's Cross by way of Woburn Place, but there was only a
+glimmer of light within the fanlight of Evie's dwelling as I passed.
+Perhaps Archie had chosen the whisky and soda after all.
+
+I soon saw that only by means of a studied unemotionalness should I be
+able for long to head her off from the things she sought; and I set
+about the creation of this atmosphere without loss of time. In this I
+found my far-reaching ambition useful to me; I had simply to be
+preoccupied with business to be spared much. I had not to play this
+part. I actually was a ferment of new plans. That my absorbing ambition
+was all for her sake was allowed to pass as understood. And when she
+began to make touching attempts to be interested in my affairs, I, lest
+a worse thing should befall me, encouraged her. I talked fully and
+freely, knowing that I ran no more risk of betrayal than Napoleon did
+when he laid before a Russian peasant woman unacquainted with French the
+plan of campaign he feared to trust to his own staff. This I did as the
+almonds pushed forth their pink, and the plane-trees budded, and the
+building birds sang loudly. Once she called me her building bird.
+
+I had had to tell her, vaguely, about my employment; and I was also
+vague about where I lived. Here her own tempted timorousness helped me.
+It was not difficult for me to be stern about the proprieties, and
+indeed, as she saw this, and began to feel perfectly safe with me, she
+even affected a liberality of thought. "Why not?" she would sometimes
+ask almost defiantly; "why not see one another in our own places--if
+there was nothing horrid?"
+
+And for that I usually found a surprised stare answer enough.
+
+But the hunger was on her, and I had to give her morsels. That was a
+haggard horror. It was the more horrible that her vanities always turned
+on the things of which she had the least reason to be vain. As an
+affectionate and devoted and dull spinster my heart was often soft to
+her; but her coquetries would have made an angel groan. For example: her
+hands were not remarkably pretty; her fingers had almost the pinkness,
+and a little of the shape, of the smaller claws of a freshly boiled
+crab; but she gave them no rest from display. I was sometimes commanded,
+with a vapid imperiousness, to make much of them. And once, on a seat on
+the Embankment, she yielded to a temptation never far removed from her.
+It was at night; unnoticed, a portion of her hair had shaken loose; and,
+suddenly becoming aware of this, and doubtless with some idea of
+maddening me with the thought of something prohibited, she put up her
+hands, shook down the short mass on her shoulders, and grimaced at me.
+The next day she begged, with a shamed face, that I would try to forget
+this sin in her--for apparently she had intended it as sin; but I had
+nothing to forget. All that I remembered was the contrast, as she had
+put the hair up again, between the bosom under her uplifted arms and
+that other bosom from which Archie Merridew had turned away as Evie had
+stood before the mantelpiece mirror in Woburn Place.
+
+Her dwelling, which I first visited with Evie and her aunt, was on the
+first floor of the modiste's at the back. Her sleeping apartment I never
+saw; and of her sitting-room I have no very clear memory now. There was
+a penny-in-the-slot gas-meter on the landing, I remember, and the floor
+of the room into which one walked was covered with a greenish jute "art
+square," with the wide spaces of bare boarding about it stained with
+Condy's Fluid. The previous occupant had left on the walls a "French
+boudoir" paper with a pattern of thin vertical lines and tiny garlands
+of pink rosebuds (Kitty had cleaned it with dough on taking possession).
+The furniture was scanty, with a good deal of muslin about it, and a
+sewing-machine stood in the back window, which looked over a restaurant
+yard. When she had more than two visitors at once she had to fetch an
+extra chair from her bedroom, and from the sound her heels made at these
+times I gathered that that room was uncarpeted.
+
+As by quickening degrees she began to accept her unlooked-for situation
+more as a matter of course, her thoughts naturally turned to the future
+and that I found to involve her whole attitude to Life. The things we
+were to do "when we were married" were dictated by the narrowness of her
+outlook. She had about a pound a week of her own money, I don't know
+exactly where from, but I think from some tramways Edgbaston way, and
+this sum, together with whatever she might be able to earn for herself,
+was practically the limit of her conception of any income she was ever
+likely to have. From the stories she told me of her earlier years I
+gathered that she came from a social stratum in which the men are lords
+indeed, sometimes "in work," sometimes "out," and apparently content
+during these last vicissitudes to be dependent on their wives or sisters
+or mothers. It seemed to me such a pitiful little world, of milliners,
+lodging-house keepers, music-mistresses, fancy needlewomen and daughters
+in offices; and I was given the corresponding male standing. As with the
+men her cousins (her nearest relatives) had married, if I should ever
+happen to earn money, well and good; if not, so much the worse. She
+reckoned only on her weekly pound and her own efforts. And as I learned
+that Cousin Alf and Cousin Frank were boundlessly optimistic, and looked
+forward to a future no less bright than that of which I felt the
+certitude within me, I soon discovered that I was merely indulged in
+what in her heart she set down as vapourings. It was the woman who, in
+her experience, "kept the home together," and she was prepared to keep
+me.
+
+"Well," I laughed, "I daresay I shall learn to pare the potatoes as well
+as Cousin Alf in time."
+
+But she smiled a sad, wise little smile. I might joke, but she knew.
+
+"And it's just possible that some time or other I may make a pound or
+two," I said, smiling back.
+
+"There'll be your clothes and pocket-money," she replied.
+
+So I was to be kept--kept by virtue of my masculinity, as one keeps a
+dog to bark. I was to be kept, I divined, somewhere in a suburb, in a
+house the smallness of the rent of which would be exactly balanced by
+the increased cost of the season ticket that would take me daily to my
+work, when I was "in." Even when I was "out" I was to be treated with a
+nice consideration, for she "never had liked to see Frank washing up--it
+looked so unmanly," but as she said nothing about cleaning boots or
+fetching coals, these things apparently were not unmanly. And I wondered
+whether the Alfs and Franks were more numerous than I had thought, or
+were becoming so. Small wonder their women treated them with almost
+contemptuous tolerance, blazing out once in a while into a row. And I
+now see that in this sense I wronged Kitty when I said she was one of
+Life's takers. There are always two sides to a thing, and on this side
+she wanted nothing but to give.
+
+But, willing as she was to do all this in the future, I soon discovered
+that she wanted her small solatium in the present. In the matter of
+little treats and outings I did not compare very favourably even with
+her Franks and Alfs. As you know, I simply had not the necessary
+shillings. And so I began (I knew) to appear "near" and "close" to her.
+One Friday evening, as we left the college together, she allowed as much
+to be seen.
+
+"Jeff," she said suddenly, as we approached the corner by the Oxford
+together, "do you know, you've never taken me to a theatre yet!"
+
+Personally I have never greatly cared for the theatre; but it happened
+that I had spoken to her once or twice rather off-handedly that evening,
+and was not unwilling to make amends. Besides, the theatre might save a
+walk in Hyde Park. I pumped up a vivacity.
+
+"No more I have," I replied. "Good idea. It's too late to go to-night,
+but we might have a walk round and see what's on."
+
+She fell in with the suggestion gleefully, and we walked down Charing
+Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue, looking at theatre announcements as
+we went. At the Circus we turned along Coventry Street, and presently
+found ourselves opposite the Prince of Wales'. I think it was _La
+Poupee_ that was running there; if it wasn't it was some other piece
+that seemed light; and as I like, when I do go to the theatre, to be
+amused rather than instructed, I plumped for _La Poupee_ as against
+Kitty's suggestion--some stern and ennobling tragedy. I had drawn my
+week's money that evening. It would be a sorry business if, with all
+those years of Alfing and Franking before me, I could not once in a
+while spare five shillings out of my eighteen; and so we elected for _La
+Poupee_ for the following evening.
+
+We went. We waited for perhaps two hours outside the pit door, but, as
+Kitty said when at last we did get inside, our places were worth it.
+When we were married, she said, we ought to be able to afford at least
+one theatre a month--she didn't in the least mind going to the
+gallery--and it would be something to think about for the next month.
+She didn't intend, when we were married, to get rusty. We were going to
+have our little outings like other married people, and if I continued,
+when we were married, to like light things and she serious pieces, we
+would choose in turn. And so on. I only half heard. I was spreading my
+remaining ten shillings over the week to come--ten shillings, mark you,
+not thirteen, for I had had to buy Kitty a ring, for which I was paying
+at the rate of three shillings a week.
+
+Nothing happened at that performance of _La Poupee_. I am merely telling
+you this in order that you may see exactly how we stood, not at the
+crisis of our lives, but during the intervening stretches. I added to
+the problem of the coming week by giving a shilling for a box of
+chocolates, and no extravagance I have ever committed brought me a
+richer return than Kitty's look of pleasure. I suppose that really this
+was all that was demanded of Alf and Frank--a trifling, unexpected
+superfluity once in a while. Lucky fellows! I, however, was neither a
+Frank nor an Alf, my dreams were not the mere beguilings of an idleness;
+and neither during my courtship (my real one, I mean) nor thereafter was
+I going, in any woman's heart, to lord it on so little.
+
+
+V
+
+I remember the Sunday on which Evie, Miss Angela and I first took tea
+with Kitty Windus for two reasons. The first was that Miss Angela, who
+at first had begged to be excused, had come after all (knocking on the
+head my plan of walking back with Evie alone). And the second was
+Kitty's asking me to remain behind after the others had taken their
+departure.
+
+We had gone at four o'clock; and even as the three of us had walked
+towards Percy Street together (I had picked the others up on my way) I
+had wondered what had suddenly come over Evie. She had seemed pale and
+jumpy and morose, and had scarcely spoken a word during the whole of our
+walk. Nor had she said very much more as we had eaten the hot muffins
+and drunk the tea Kitty had provided. Indeed, the greater part of the
+talk had been between Miss Angela and myself, and even that had
+languished.
+
+Then suddenly Miss Angela had said something that had, I thought,
+explained matters. Archie's father, whose illness Miss Angela had asked
+about on the evening of the birthday-party, had taken a sudden turn for
+the worse, and Archie had been summoned to Guildford the day before.
+
+"Well, we must hope for the best," Miss Angela had concluded. "There's
+no need to begin moping yet, child----"
+
+Miss Angela also had jumped at my own explanation of Evie's
+moodiness--that now that Archie was in trouble his misdoings were
+forgotten.
+
+I was to learn my error half-an-hour later, when Evie and her aunt rose
+to depart.
+
+I, of course, had intended to leave with them; but as I held the door
+open for them to pass out Kitty said: "You stay for a few minutes, Jeff;
+I've something to tell you.... Good-bye, Evie dear. I do hope your cold
+will soon be well, Miss Soames----"
+
+And she waved her hand to them as they passed down the stairs.
+
+I swore under my breath, but there was no help for it. I followed Kitty
+back into her sitting-room. She crossed to the fireplace and sank into a
+canvas deck-chair with her back to the sewing-machine. I remained
+standing, with my hat in my hand, at the other corner of the
+mantelpiece.
+
+She had allowed her head to fall back against the sagging canvas, and
+had closed her eyes.
+
+"Sit down," she said, without opening her eyes, and, wondering what was
+wrong, I reached for her bedroom chair and sat down.
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked, a little alarmed already, though I knew
+not why. I wondered if anything had been discovered about myself. There
+were, as you know, plenty of such things to discover.
+
+Her eyes still remained closed, but her head fell a little on one side.
+It was not until I had asked her again what was the matter that she
+spoke.
+
+"It's--it's dreadful!" she moaned. "I--I can see you haven't heard----"
+
+"What is? Come, come!" I said, with some concern but more impatience.
+"No, I've not heard anything to take on like this about--unless you mean
+something about Archie's father?..."
+
+"No, it's nothing to do with Archie's father. Oh, I can't possibly tell
+you, Jeff----"
+
+It was on the tip of my tongue to say that in that case it was of little
+use my remaining; but she went on.
+
+"Just a minute," she said. "You haven't heard ... about Louie Causton?"
+
+I was certainly surprised. You will remember that I had not set eyes on
+Miss Causton since the evening of the breaking-up party, when she had
+danced twice round the room with me, sought me out again subsequently,
+and told me what the result had since falsified--that she was returning
+to the college in the new term.
+
+"No," I said abruptly. "What about her? Nothing wrong, I hope?"
+
+But she only sobbed, "Oh, Jeff!" and with her eyes still closed put out
+a helpless hand.
+
+I had to approach and take the hand before I learned what the mystery
+was. I don't know whether you have already guessed it. I hadn't, but for
+all that my surprise, great as it was, passed even in the moment of
+Kitty's broken whispering in my ear. I had known Louie Causton for a
+deep, still pool; I don't think any revelation whatever could have added
+to my respect for her powers of irony and nonchalance; and yet when I
+say that my surprise passed it passed only to return. Good gracious!...
+I seemed to hear her carefully lackadaisical voice again as she had
+munched nougat: "So long since I've seen a man, my dear" ... and other
+circumstances, unmarked at the time, flashed on me now.
+
+A child!
+
+"Good gracious!" I breathed again in consternation.
+
+My next thought was of Evie.
+
+I was kneeling by Kitty's chair, holding her hand. I asked quickly:
+
+"Does Evie know of this?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And does she know you're telling me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And of course Miss Soames does not know?"
+
+"No."
+
+"She thinks as I thought, that it's about Archie's father Evie's so
+upset?"
+
+"Yes; but perhaps she is about that too a little. I'm horribly upset,
+Jeff."
+
+This last I took as a hint that the effect of this very startling
+intelligence on Evie was not the first thing to be considered.
+
+"Yes, yes.... I see...." I murmured.
+
+We were silent, and I felt Kitty's fingers move within my grasp. They
+pressed mine more closely.
+
+"Don't leave me just yet, Jeff," she begged faintly. She was genuinely
+prostrated.
+
+"No, no," I said. "Let me think for a minute...."
+
+The next moment my brain was buzzing with thought.
+
+I knew that only some such contact with plain raw actuality as this had
+been lacking in order to make Evie's transition from girlhood to
+womanhood complete. No longer now was she the fair young tree standing
+over its sprinkling of delicate discarded sheaths; this puff of Life's
+east wind had carried away the last of them. She had heard of these
+things, and so in a sense knew of them; but that somebody she knew ...
+that it should have come so near ... yes, poor shocked heart, that
+finished it. Archie's insupportable vanities had begun her
+enlightenment; the menace of his father's condition had touched her with
+the fringe of its shadow; and now this revelation had come upon her.
+
+Mr Merridew's illness, moreover, had a plainly seen peril for me. I knew
+that if anything happened Archie would immediately have enough money to
+marry on, and my own labours--all that I had planned and done from the
+first moment of my loving her to this present hour when I sat in Kitty
+Windus' back room holding Kitty's hand--would go for nothing. They, Evie
+and Archie, would probably marry, and I--I knew this in that moment for
+a certainty--I, from sheer yielding, should find myself married to Kitty
+Windus the moment I could scrape the money together.
+
+I gave a soft groan. I don't know whether Kitty supposed my groan the
+commiseration for Louie Causton.
+
+Yet what else, if I had chosen a different line, could I have done?
+Nothing! My shrinking heart cried, Nothing! What was I to have spoken to
+a young girl of marriage? An Agency clerk--with dazzling hopes! A
+dweller over a sordid publi-house--and a dreamer of visions! The
+possessor of a single suit of presentable clothes, the knees of which I
+was even now deteriorating past remedy--and of a heart tapestried with
+purple and gold, filled with an almost insensate ambition!
+
+And I saw Evie only at all on the well-nigh insupportable footing that I
+was the betrothed of Kitty Windus!
+
+Oh, if I had but had two suits of clothes, and thirty-six shillings a
+week instead of eighteen shillings, I think I would have cut the knot
+there and then and have sought Evie out that very night and asked her to
+marry me!
+
+Then after a time I became more practical. Things, even the
+heart-breaking small things of my life, were after all slowly changing.
+One of these things was that my slavery at Rixon Tebb & Masters' was
+already promising to draw to a close. I have not yet spoken of this. Let
+me do so, briefly, now.
+
+Once more I had been looking for a billet elsewhere, and this time I had
+excellent hopes of success. The post for which I had applied would not
+be vacant for six weeks yet, but I had forced a personal interview with
+one of my prospective employers, and had done what I had intended to
+do--impressed him strongly with a sense of my mental capacity. He had
+promised me his interest, and, unless he forgot it again (which, of
+course, was not impossible), I might have at least enough for one to
+live on before long. And once more my wider hopes were, I knew in my
+soul, not illusions. Soon there would remain only the bond that tied me
+to Kitty, and, with that broken, I would no longer envy even Archie
+Merridew that luck and weak charm of his that in the past had so often
+seemed more valuable than all I possessed.
+
+But Kitty, lying back in her deck-chair, had opened her eyes again. They
+were full of softness and fright. She spoke.
+
+"I wonder, Jeff--whether----" she said timidly and stopped.
+
+"You wonder what, Kitty?" I asked gently.
+
+"I know how strict you are--and if you say no I won't--but if I might go
+and see her----"
+
+"Miss Causton?"
+
+"Not if you don't wish it, Jeff----"
+
+I considered.
+
+"Has she asked you to go?"
+
+"No--but if you wouldn't mind--very much----"
+
+It mattered little to me, but I had to pretend to ponder deeply.
+
+I really don't know whether I felt sorrow for Miss Causton or not. She
+was altogether beyond my comprehension. For all I knew my sorrow might
+be an impertinence. So I must seem to ponder.
+
+"Where is she?" I asked.
+
+"She's taken rooms in Putney."
+
+"Alone?" I asked, with a quick glance at Kitty.
+
+"Oh yes!... Until June or July, that is----"
+
+"It is then that she expects----"
+
+"Yes.... And I thought, Jeff, that perhaps next Saturday--we shall be
+out that way----"
+
+We had arranged a little excursion for the following Saturday, the four
+of us--Evie and Archie, and Kitty and myself. We were to wander on
+Wimbledon Common.
+
+"I never really knew her well, Jeff, understood her, I mean," she went
+on, "but after all I did see a good deal of her. It's horrible, when I
+remember the things she used to say.... And--and--you've made such a
+difference to me, darling--I wasn't going--to be married--before.... I
+should like to go, Jeff--just once," she begged.
+
+"You wouldn't commit yourself to anything?"
+
+"Oh no!"
+
+"Does Evie want to go too?" I asked.
+
+"No. She says she couldn't bear it. She cried half last night as it is."
+
+"Then you'd call on your way next Saturday, and meet the three of us
+later?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very well," I concluded. "You'd better go."
+
+She threw her arms impulsively about my neck.
+
+Then a change came over her. I think the change began with the failure
+of the supply of gas from the penny-in-the-slot meter. She had arranged
+for her little party a pink tissue-paper shade about her milky globe, an
+idea she had borrowed from Woburn Place; and slowly its colour faded. I
+had several pennies in my pocket. Quickly I felt for them.
+
+But she moved closer to me. I was still on my knees by her deck-chair.
+
+"Don't bother about it--just for once, Jeff," she murmured.
+
+She could do it with impunity now. After what had passed our situation
+could hardly be commonplace, and our nearness was as little compromising
+as nearness ever can be. She luxuriated in her little perilous
+letting-go--could toy with, and yet be immune from, a danger.
+
+Slowly the gas expired, and the firelight glowed on the blue and white
+check tablecloth and the disarray of tea-things upon it. On the back
+wall of the restaurant yard was a square of orange light which the
+shadow of a waiter's head crossed from time to time. I don't know that
+with some men--Mackie, for instance--her position would have been all
+she supposed it to be, but, poor heart, she had had little enough
+experience from which to surmise that. And I myself could hardly be said
+to be there at all. She lay in my arms; and in whatever false sweet
+fancies she lay endrowsed she was not alone. I had my torturing vision
+too. It was neither of her nor of Louie Causton, that vision. I was
+trying to persuade myself that she was another than Kitty Windus.
+
+
+VI
+
+Of our visit to Wimbledon on the following Saturday I intend to say as
+little as may be. When you have read it you will not, I know, ask my
+reason.
+
+Archie did not appear. This time he had cause enough. The wire which was
+handed to me at Rixon Tebb & Masters' a little before Saturday midday
+(Polwhele brought it to me with a look that said plainly, "What next?")
+announced that his father had died during the night, and he had
+despatched it from Victoria Station on his way down to Guildford.
+Instantly my heart leaped.
+
+Kitty was going to see Miss Causton. If, this new tidings
+notwithstanding, Evie would still keep to the engagement, I should have
+an hour with her alone.
+
+I persuaded Evie to come. At first she obstinately refused, but I had
+the support of Miss Angela, to whom I privately whispered the
+desirability of "taking her mind off it." We left Woburn Place, the two
+of us, called for Kitty, and sought the Putney 'bus. Kitty left us at
+the corner of a street off the New King's Road, and Evie and I passed on
+to the bridge.
+
+That was about four o'clock, and Kitty was to rejoin us near the
+Windmill at an hour that would depend upon the length of her stay with
+Miss Causton. She expected to be at the Windmill by five.
+
+But at five there was no sign of her, nor had she appeared by half-past
+five. At a little before six I said to Evie, "She'll know we've gone on
+to the nearest place to tea, and will follow us. Let's go----"
+
+Not far from the Windmill, on the Wimbledon side, there is a sort of
+small hamlet, with cottages and alleys and split-oak palings, and a
+refreshment house at the end of a garden. There Evie and I had tea, and
+there we sat after tea, waiting for Kitty. I talked of this and that,
+all very much away from the two subjects uppermost in her heart, and by
+half-past six I had given Kitty up.
+
+"She's missed us," I said. "We may happen to run across her, but it's no
+good waiting here. Shall we take a turn before we go back?"
+
+We left the refreshment-room, and walked among the gorse and birches in
+the direction of Queen's Mere.
+
+It was a green and amber evening, with the shadows already deepening
+over Coombe Woods and the calling of homing rooks in the air. Here and
+there in the glades family parties still continued to play games with a
+ball that was quickly becoming difficult to see, and lovers appeared
+among the coppices. The blackthorn was over, and the may hung in sprays
+of delicate drooping buds; and in the south-west hung the pale sickle of
+the new moon. Evie and I, saying little, dropped down a steep over-grown
+alley that led to the mere, and it was in a sandy bottom at the foot of
+the alley that I heard a distant rasping call. Another call followed it,
+and then a throaty thrilling, and then another short series of acrid and
+moving calls.
+
+It was a nightingale.
+
+By the time we had reached the motionless amber-green water it had
+broken into full song.
+
+I cannot tell--hitherto I have not attempted to tell--the mystery of
+that eve and of the song with which it rang. I cannot speak--nor would I
+if I could--of the responses that eve and that song called up in my
+heart. It was, I think, for both of us as if that bird's voice cried
+aloud all that we had left unuttered during the past few hours. Even
+Louie Causton, even Archie's father, had their part in it. It was as if
+that voice spoke of the feeble and infinitely moving wonder of birth--of
+the impinging of that relentless shadow that closes all--and of the
+griefs and joys and smarts and healings again of the brief passage from
+that unknowing to this forgetting again. All this crowded upon me in
+that exquisite agony of notes. And more came, until I could hardly
+endure it. There was no poignancy, no utter melting and surrender, that
+those importunate wellings did not give to the falling night. The
+unattainable greatness of Life and our own puny reachings forth for that
+greatness--Life's glory and the indignities of the miserable livers of
+it--Life's majesty and the nosings and burrowings of the fallen heirs to
+that majesty--all these shortcomings were reconciled in the song; and
+what man would be, that for an hour he was. I fail in expressing this;
+Evie, I am sure, did not seek to express it; but in that loud and lost
+and anguished outpouring, raptures and torments were folded together as
+in an Amen.... For one moment only I shuddered; I had remembered that
+but for an accident I might have stood by that water, listening to that
+song, with Kitty Windus, but the physical convulsion passed, and the
+bird sang on.
+
+I had not looked at Evie. I do not think she knew she had drawn a little
+closer to me. Other listeners had been attracted by the melody, but we
+stood in a shadow, near a rill that fell into the mere. The water was
+nacre; the moon's sickle in it was a thin blade of amethyst; and I
+thrilled unspeakably as the bird's song changed without warning to long,
+low, caressing notes that drew the heart out of me as the nectar-bag of
+a floret is drawn from a flower. I heard Evie's slow sob.
+
+Oh, might I but have crushed out that other nectar, to transmute into
+honey of our own!
+
+Suddenly Evie flung herself on my breast, sobbing and strangling. Her
+fingers worked at the lapel of my collar; by bending my head I could
+have touched her small white knuckles with my lips. I was conscious that
+in my efforts not to do this I bared my teeth like a dog, but I
+remembered in time that to snatch was to lose. It was not my bosom
+against which her bosom heaved--it was the nearest sentient
+resting-place on which she could lay it. Her unhappiness and her
+happiness, her dream and her disillusion, her knowledge and her already
+failing hopes, rushed together in her sobs. Her love of a wastrel and
+her love for all he was a wastrel, and that hidden and sacred nook from
+which Louie Causton had ruthlessly ripped the curtain--for the pure
+strangeness of these things her tears gushed forth. I felt the long
+heave of her body.
+
+"Come, come, my dear!" I said, with an infinitude of tender
+encouragement, close to her ear.
+
+"Oh--oh--oh!" she sobbed.
+
+"Dear, dear girl!" I murmured, passing my arm about her to support her.
+
+But at that moment I could no more have said or done more than this than
+I could have sued for a favour by the bier of a scarce-cold lover.
+
+"Hush, poor child!" I whispered, patting her shoulder. "Come, let's go.
+Let's leave that dreadful bird."
+
+"Just a--mi--mi--minute----" she quavered. "I--I--love it--and I can't
+bear it----"
+
+Even so did I love, and yet could scarce bear to hold the tender form in
+my arms.
+
+Presently we left the mere, mounted the dark lane, and began to cross
+the common. Her hand was now on my sleeve, and it did not leave it
+again. Once her fingers made an impulsive little pressure on it, which,
+I cried sternly to my heart, I must not regard. But God knows the war
+there was between the sweetness of it and my fortitude.
+
+"Jeff," she said more quietly by-and-by, using that name for the first
+time. "I--I couldn't have borne it if it hadn't been for you. It was
+too--too----"
+
+"Never mind, dear," I soothed her. "Let's walk a little more
+quickly--your aunt will be wondering what's become of you----"
+
+She laughed tremulously. "Kitty will be wondering what's become of
+_you_," she said. Then she added timidly, "She's a lucky girl!"
+
+"Oh? Why?" I asked.
+
+"You're so--so----"
+
+But she did not say what.
+
+We turned down Putney Hill.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I said I should say little of this, and I shall say no more. I took her
+home, but did not go in with her, neither, though I ought to have done
+so, did I seek Kitty. I went home, but all that I knew of my getting
+there was that I found myself sitting, with my hat and coat still on, on
+the edge of the bed in my red-and-green-lighted apartment.
+
+They were turning out from the public-house below when at last I rose
+sluggishly and began to prepare for bed.
+
+For half the following week I was outside and beyond myself.
+
+But exactly a week, less a day, from that Saturday on which I had held
+Evie in my arms there dropped a thunderbolt into my life. On that Friday
+evening I had gone as usual to the cashier for my wages, and he had paid
+me; but as I had turned away again with my eighteen shillings he had
+said, as if giving utterance to an afterthought, "Oh--Jeffries--we find
+we shall not require your services after this week. You can have your
+notice in writing if you would prefer it."
+
+And he had turned to pay Sutt, the next man in the queue.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+THE GARRET
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Poor, fussy, well-meaning Kitty had done it--had done it all
+unwittingly. In telling her vaguely where I lived I had left the number
+of my house unspecified, and when a letter had come for me to the
+Business College on an evening when I had announced my intention of
+being away, she, inspired by the urgency of my affairs, had got a
+directory and readdressed the letter to me at Rixon Tebb & Masters'. It
+was a letter from the firm into whose service I hoped soon to enter, and
+I examined the flap of the envelope carefully when finally it did come
+into my hands. Polwhele (I have little doubt it was he) had steamed it
+open, read it and closed it again.
+
+This time all I could get out of Gayns, whom I once more approached, was
+that Rixon Tebb & Masters' had no use for an employee whose mind was
+already elsewhere.
+
+It was true that the sack from Rixon Tebb & Masters' was not now a
+matter of the first importance. That was not the thunderbolt. Scanty as
+my wages were I had still saved up nearly three pounds out of them;
+and, as the letter that Polwhele had tampered with contained the news
+that I might hold myself in readiness to begin my new work a month from
+that date, the sum was enough to tide me over. But the letter had a
+postscript. This was a merely formal intimation that it was assumed that
+I could produce the usual references of steadiness, reliability and so
+forth. I myself never dreamed that I should be denied them.
+
+I was denied them, however, by Polwhele.
+
+"But--but," I stammered, aghast.
+
+Polwhele referred me to my real employers, the Agency. I gave him a long
+and gradually lowering stare.
+
+"Do you mean----" I began slowly.
+
+"I mean what I say," he snapped; and as he turned away he added in a
+lower voice, "You ain't surprised, are you?"
+
+And, remembering how I had seen him with his fingers in Mr Masters'
+waste-paper basket, I could not say I was.
+
+Again I sought Gayns. This time the cashier flew into a passion.
+
+"Confound you!" he cried. "You're more trouble than all the rest of them
+put together! What is it now? A character? Oh yes, you can have a
+character! I'd advise you not to show it to anybody, though! First
+leaving us--then coming back--then days off--then dickering with other
+firms! Go to Polwhele--go to the Agency--go to hell!"
+
+I left Rixon Tebb & Masters' without references.
+
+Without references my new firm refused to have anything whatever to do
+with me.
+
+I come now to the deepest slough of my poverty.
+
+It was early in the month of June that I was thrown out of work, with
+thirty-five shillings in my pocket. The drizzling winter had given place
+to a glorious early summer, and the days increased in heat until they
+became torrid. Men walked Piccadilly at night in evening dress, with
+their light dust-coats thrown over their arms; and ragged urchins hailed
+the appearance of watercarts with whoops of joy and danced barelegged in
+the refreshing puddles behind them. Horses wore straw bonnets, out of
+which their ears stuck ludicrously up; in whole districts the water
+supply began to be cut off at certain hours of the day; the pitiless sun
+gave every street the appearance of a hard, hot snapshot; and, as the
+heat got on people's nerves, the cries of children at play became
+intolerably strident.
+
+My corner at King's Cross was well-nigh insupportable. Why the quantity
+of torn paper in the gutters should redouble the moment the sun begins
+to glare on London I do not know, unless it be that the fried fish and
+ready-cooked provision businesses suddenly boom; and certainly the
+refuse in which I frequently walked ankle-deep was mostly heavy with
+grease. Even had I been able to afford it, my "pull-up" had now become
+such a stove that I do not think I could have entered it. I dined, or
+rather supped, late at night, at one of the coffee-stalls where the
+electric trams now sweep round from Gray's Inn Road to St Pancras
+Station; and I breakfasted (my only other meal) on bread and the water I
+drew from my tap on the landing before it was cut off. The council
+didn't save much in my case by cutting the supply off. I filled every
+vessel I could lay my hands on early in the morning. As Miss Causton had
+once said, one must be clean, and Archie, whose bath I could now have
+passed my days in, was seldom to be found in his rooms near the
+Foundling Hospital now.
+
+For three weeks I trudged the streets looking for work; and then a bit
+of luck befell me. The new "professor" at the college broke down under
+the heat; it was not desired to give up the Friday evening
+advertisement-writing class; and I daresay my anomalous standing at the
+place, something between student and pathetic high-and-dry
+"institution," was the cause of its being offered to me. I got five
+shillings for the evening, and that five shillings kept me for five
+days. I discovered that I need not pay my rent. The first week I missed
+doing this I made a shamefaced apology to my landlord, the publican,
+and discovered that he was not a bad sort. It was too hot to worry about
+trifles, he said, and so set himself a precedent that cost him pretty
+dearly until, long afterwards, I saw to it that he was not the loser for
+having harboured me during that time.
+
+Wherever I sought work my inability to produce a character damned me;
+and on the other hand I was not a Discharged Prisoner. Two or three
+times I was taken on casually, once as a packer at a large furniture
+emporium, once at a stocktaking for bankruptcy purposes, and once (I
+forget how I tumbled into this) I spent a whole day locked in an upper
+room of a town hall, counting the voting-papers in some borough or
+vestry election--a lucrative ten-shilling job. This was before I got,
+and retained for some weeks (until I had the Corps of Commissionaires
+down on me), the post of hall porter at the offices of a sporting paper.
+I will tell you about that presently. You will see that I am making all
+the haste I can to have done with this horrible time.
+
+Among other things, the general deterioration in my appearance had
+forced me to tell Kitty Windus that I was out of work. But I had made
+light of it, saying that, on the whole, it was rather a good thing, as I
+needed some sort of a spur; but I daresay Alf and Frank had said the
+same thing many a time. Presently my former boastings, about the great
+things I was shortly going to do, had committed me to the lie that I
+had at last found employment. It was my week's stocktaking that I told
+this particular lie about, and Kitty never knew when that temporary job
+came to an end. Nor, poor girl, did I tell her what she had done when
+she had forwarded that letter to Rixon Tebb & Masters'. It would become
+me ill to say that she stuck to me because it was myself or nothing for
+her; already I had begun to dread that it would be no easy matter to get
+rid of her when I might find it necessary to do so: and many a time, as
+my despair grew upon me, sweeping all personal reluctances and physical
+repugnances aside, I threw pride to the winds, and ate, in her
+sitting-room in Percy Street, the only food I had tasted during the
+day--becoming an Alf or a Frank in very fact.
+
+For--perhaps this was partly the effect of the unrelenting heat--her
+insipid coquetries had begun to exasperate me more and more. I became
+increasingly petulant when I was commanded to "tiss eentie finger" and
+to look into the little scalene triangles of her eyes and say that I
+loved her. Presently, I am afraid, I began to cause her many tears. We
+wrangled frequently. I was "near," I was "close," I did not treat her as
+other engaged girls were treated, I never took her anywhere except for a
+bus ride, or to a cheap theatre once in a blue moon.
+
+Then one day, without warning, she brought it up against me that I had
+"given her the slip" that afternoon on Wimbledon Common.
+
+Of this I was technically so innocent, but morally so entirely guilty,
+that I broke out into anger, and there was a scene.
+
+"I know some girls are younger and prettier than I am," she broke out,
+with unbridled temper, "but you _did_ ask me to marry you after all."
+
+"So I did," I admitted, in a tone that made her flame.
+
+"Yes," she cried shrilly. "And not only that--I've seen you looking at
+Louie Causton too."
+
+"Oh?" I said, noting with relief that her jealousy was not specially of
+Evie. "Well, there are one or two pleasing points about her."
+
+"And she was the only one you danced with at the party."
+
+"Before I asked you to marry me?"
+
+"And me--you've never _once_ taken me to a dance, though I've _seen_
+Rachel Levey offer you tickets."
+
+"Perhaps you've seen me look at Miss Levey too?"
+
+"And you never spoke to me, and sat behind the books with Louie."
+
+"Well, there only remains one other suggestion for you to make."
+
+And so on. It was degrading in the extreme. But I was sufficiently
+punished for it later, when she lay with her head on my breast, sobbing
+out phrases of contrition for her vindictive temper and supplication for
+pardon.
+
+All, all gone now was the hour of exaltation in which I had heard the
+nightingale sing and had felt my glowing girl's breast heaving against
+my own. I was a hungry, desperate man, living a life against which I
+knew I should not be able to bear up indefinitely, and already glancing
+into the public-house as I entered by my side door and beginning to
+wonder whether they were not wiser than I who made use of the anodyne of
+drink. Why not drink, and forget for at least an hour? And one night,
+meeting Mackie again, and having eaten little, I did succumb, and for
+the first time in my life got drunk. I got drunk at his expense. He had
+heard the news of Louie Causton, and wanted to talk about it. I, like a
+cur, let him.... I broke away from him at last, but not until my
+loosened tongue had said I know not what.
+
+My relation with Evie during this time is difficult to define. She never
+quite put me back again into the place I had occupied before that
+Saturday when we had heard the nightingale together, but newer
+preoccupations overlay this relation. Archie now had money (I never knew
+quite how much) at his command; but he still showed no sign of putting
+it to the use Miss Angela, if not I, had expected--that of entering
+into a formal engagement with Evie. Miss Angela found excuses for this
+out of her own imagination--that his father had only lately died, and so
+on; but I could have set her right even then. I knew how things were
+drifting. From the little I remembered of my talk with Mackie, Archie
+had found in his coming into money quite another opportunity. What might
+have facilitated his marriage with Evie actually delayed it. He was
+getting rid of his money in Leicester Square again.
+
+So Evie's name was associated with his, and yet there was no plighting
+between them, and Evie swayed, now happy but with a fear, now
+despairing, but not hopelessly so. There was no trouble she could have
+brought openly to me even had she wished, but nevertheless she often
+turned to me significantly full of silence. She, Kitty and I often
+walked homewards together through the sweltering streets, and when Evie
+had left us Kitty would speak her mind freely about Archie Merridew.
+
+"He's one of the Jewness Dorey now!" she exclaimed one evening, taking
+the phrase, I don't doubt, from one of her "better class" novels. "And
+it's no good saying it's got nothing to do with us! I think _you_ ought
+to give him a talking-to!"
+
+This was in the typewriting-room of the college, within ten minutes of
+the close of an advertisement-writing evening.
+
+"What can I say to him?" I asked. "It's no business of mine." She little
+knew how much I had made it my business.
+
+"Oh, that's just like a man!" she said impatiently, all aglow with the
+_esprit de sexe_. "The poor child's moping and fretting, and you say
+it's no business of yours! Of course it's the business of _all_ her
+friends!"
+
+"Of all her women friends, maybe," I answered. "Well, if that's so, why
+don't you and Miss Angela have a talk about it?"
+
+"As if we hadn't--twenty!" she cried. "You and your bright ideas. It
+isn't fair--it _isn't_ fair to Evie!"
+
+"But what is it you hope for?" I asked.
+
+She stared. "Why, that he'll marry her, of course!"
+
+"Quite so. But I don't mean that. I mean, do you and Miss Angela think
+you can bring any pressure to bear?"
+
+"Yes, I do--young idiot!" she broke out. "He ought to be ashamed of
+himself!"
+
+And I didn't doubt that a certain amount of pressure might be brought to
+bear. If it was made less trouble for Archie to marry than not to marry,
+he would probably marry. He had not manhood enough, if it was clearly
+shown that marriage was expected of him, to hold out. And I knew how
+those marriages turned out.... I meditated.
+
+"But," I objected, "why meddle? You know what a marriage of that kind
+would be! You see what he is anyway!"
+
+But here I had touched Kitty's limitation. For her, as for her novels,
+marriage was the end of the story. If joybells closed it nothing after
+that mattered, and the look she gave me was a personal confirmation.
+
+"But," she went on presently, "you could help, Jeff. We women can't talk
+to him--though he's not getting very many smiles from _me_ just now!"
+
+I smiled. "You're an unscrupulous crew," I remarked.
+
+"Will you see him?"
+
+"Well--I won't say I won't."
+
+"But _will_ you?"
+
+"Perhaps--if I see a fitting opportunity."
+
+"A fitting. Look!" Her voice dropped. Evie had just come into the
+typewriting-room on her way to wash her hands before leaving. "I'll tell
+you what," Kitty said quickly; "you go along with her now. See if it
+isn't as I say. Then tell me whether you won't give that little idiot a
+dressing-down at once."
+
+She had quite forgotten that twinge of jealousy that had been the cause
+of our recent scene. If she hadn't, the more honour to her sense of sex
+comradeship. It was about this time that I was beginning quite
+frequently to forget that our relation was that of lovers, and as long
+as I could forget that, she had pathetic little magnanimities that I
+even admired.
+
+"All right, if you wish it," I said.
+
+So for once Evie's society was absolutely thrust upon me.
+
+That night she was all that Kitty had said--plunged in despondency. She
+was, of course, "in love with" Archie, but that after all is only a
+generic expression. Even love comes down to cases, and I think that in
+her case, even then, she was wondering whether, had things happened a
+little differently, she might not have been equally "in love" with
+somebody else. Of that I myself had never a doubt. With Archie's money,
+or even a decent job, I would have flouted the whole world in my
+triumphant security that I could make her mine. And I should do so yet.
+Though for the present my power might go a-begging, I vowed that it
+should yet be taken and richly paid for. The dark and solid houses were
+less solid than that something I knew to be within myself, that makes
+and unmakes houses and streets and towns and lands.... But gently,
+gently; I was not out of the mire yet; by-and-by would be time enough
+for these boastings; things must go on as they were for a little while
+longer.
+
+So though I did not speak a word to her that night that bore directly on
+the case as Kitty understood it, I did more. I did--I know this
+now--make her feel that, glooms and delights apart, she had in me an
+affectionate friend to whom she would not come with troubles in vain. I
+have been told, and am inclined to believe it, that I have this power
+with women.
+
+And her eyes were soft with friendship as I left her.
+
+"Good night, Jeff," she said fondly, as I took her hand. "I do like
+being with you sometimes."
+
+And that night, as I lay half suffocated in the room I did not even pay
+rent for, the words rang like a chime in my head until the morning
+noises marked the beginning of another torrid day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The commissionaire's job I spoke of I got in an odd way. I got it
+through the combination of my unusual size with unusual strength. I was
+walking along Fleet Street that day when a horse fell, and I, with
+others, helped to raise it again. When we had finished, a man at my
+elbow spoke both casually and penetratingly.
+
+"That was as good as anything I've seen for weeks," he said. "Have you
+had much practice in holding a whole horse up while the others fasten
+the buckles?"
+
+I laughed. I had certainly had the heavy end of the job, but "Not quite
+that," I said.
+
+He gave me a scrutinising look. "Out o' work?" it seemed to say; but he
+did not speak the words.
+
+"Here, come and have a drink," he said.
+
+His name was Pettinger. He was a sporting journalist, and so a judge of
+"form" and "condition." I was not in the best of either, but I must have
+struck him as having "the makings" of I don't quite know what. He gave
+me a drink, which I didn't want, and a plate of sandwiches, which I did
+want rather badly; and he also gave me, as I say, this commissionaire's
+job. Pettinger is a friend of mine to this day; and since he is a simple
+and lovable animal of a fellow (he fully concurs in this description of
+himself) he is the only man I can bear to speak much to about that time
+when, clad in a sky-blue uniform, I kept the door of his newspaper
+office, touching my cap to proprietors, and being jocularly prodded by
+sportsmen and journalists, as if I had been an ox at Smithfield Show.
+
+
+II
+
+It was about this time that Archie Merridew's light was once more
+beginning to show regularly, evening after evening, over the leads of
+his top floor near the Foundling Hospital. This was after a period of
+months during which his abode had been in complete darkness. But as his
+visits to the college had become infrequent, and as I did not know what
+he might be up to, I had kept away.
+
+When, some little after my commission from Kitty, I did look him up
+again, it was by no means that I might deliver Kitty's message. I went,
+rather, as a matter of attention to detail. There were certain things I
+could not afford not to know, and, more important, there were certain
+appearances I could not afford not to keep up. Nevertheless I did not
+dream with what consequences my visit of that evening would presently be
+fraught.
+
+I was in a state of great nervous irritability before I went. The
+weather still continued almost insupportably hot, and to my other
+discomforts had been added a new perturbation that worked on me none the
+less that in all probability it was quite groundless. The evening papers
+had started a scare about "low-flash oil"; my red and green room was
+little cooler than a furnace; and I had lately begun to glance at my
+cheap lamp from time to time as if it had been a bomb. I mention this
+merely as an indication of the state to which I was becoming reduced. I
+thought of that lamp, I remember, as I walked from the college to
+Archie's rooms that night and half hoped in my peevishness that the
+thing had exploded in my absence.
+
+It was only ten o'clock, but Archie was already in bed. He wore blue
+silk pyjamas and on a small table by the side of his bed stood a
+medicine bottle and a siphon; but when I asked him whether he was ill
+that he had need of these last he made light of them. It was this
+beastly weather, he said, and perhaps the beastly weather also accounted
+for his drinking the milk that Jane presently brought up in a sealed
+bottle. When Jane had gone, Archie, with an attempt at his old disarming
+impertinence, turned to me and said, "Well--how's the blue uniform,
+Jeff?"
+
+Ah! He knew of that!
+
+"Didn't think I'd heard, did you?" he grinned. "Well, I only did hear
+yesterday. Nothing to be ashamed of, old chap. I know one of your
+fellows, you know----"
+
+I too knew the sub-editor whose name he mentioned. He was something of a
+bird of the night too. Already the fact that Archie knew of my
+occupation had set me swiftly revolving the new dispositions I should
+certainly have to make in my relation to Kitty and Evie.
+
+"Ah, yes," I said. "I shouldn't attempt to drink with the sub-editor of
+a sporting paper if I were you. You've been trying, I expect," I added,
+looking suspiciously at him. He seemed drawn and ill. He never had any
+stamina.
+
+"Sha'n't tell tales out of school," he replied, with another weak
+attempt at his old facetiousness. "Well, how's the fair Kitty?"
+
+Ill as he was, I could have boxed his ears for the tone of it, but I
+answered his question, and he grinned again.
+
+"Rare good sort," he said appreciatively. "Give us a splash of that
+soda, and pass those cigarettes, Jeff...." Then, lighting a cigarette,
+"Look here, you old scoundrel," he said, "I've got a crow to pluck with
+you! Guess what it is?"
+
+I could not.
+
+"Well," he leered. "I saw Mackie the other night."
+
+You will remember what had happened the last time I myself had seen
+Mackie.
+
+"So there!" he triumphed, after some recital or other that had for its
+point my single fit of intoxication. "_Now_ what about it, you old
+humbug?" he demanded.
+
+I knew I must keep my face and smile. I did not know why I must do these
+things, but I did them, looking at him and noticing again how sallow and
+changed he was. Then I looked about the room, mentally commenting on the
+evidences of the patrimony that had done him so little good--his new
+dressing-gown, his silver-topped bottles, and a new travelling-case,
+these things thrown anyhow among his older belongings. One of the newer
+objects I held in my hand; it was the gold cigarette case I had passed
+him; and I gazed smiling at it as he went on.
+
+"Yes," he told me, with humorous accusation; "Mackie told me all about
+it--ha ha ha! What price the old puritan Jeff now? Eh? Sad dog, sad
+dog!"
+
+I replied, quite calmly, that the dissipations of commissionaires were
+limited by their circumstances.
+
+"And what the devil are you doing being a commissionaire?" he demanded.
+"I'll tell you what it was, Jeff," he continued familiarly, "that
+failure in Method seems to me to have broken you all up. What the
+dickens made you fail?"
+
+I was conscious of an interior stirring of hate. What, indeed, had made
+me fail!
+
+"Oh, over-confidence, I suppose," I answered lightly.
+
+And he continued to talk.
+
+At last I rose and said good-night. He raised himself on one elbow in
+order to shake hands.
+
+"Come in again and see a chap soon," he said. "It's hellish slow up here
+all alone."
+
+I was already at the door, but I turned abruptly.
+
+"What do you mean?" I said. "Do you mean you're laid up? You said you
+weren't."
+
+But he only gave a confused little laugh. "Eh? Laid up? Of course not!
+Can't a chap turn in early once in a while?"
+
+"'Once in a while'?... But you said----"
+
+"That you might come in and see me? Well, do. No harm in that, is there?
+Say I'm going slow for a bit, that's all," he added.
+
+I agreed with him that to "go slow" for a bit was a course he might with
+advantage have adopted some time ago, and, though considerably puzzled,
+I turned slowly away.
+
+My lamp, I discovered when I reached my dwelling again, had not exploded
+in my absence; but I did not light it. This was not, of course, through
+any actual fear; it was merely part of my general nervous condition. I
+remember, as still further explaining that condition, that I had passed
+a Board School that day as the children had poured out for their morning
+recess of a quarter of an hour; I have said how more than commonly
+strident the heat seemed to make all noises; and at the sudden outburst
+of the children I had broken into a copious flood of perspiration. I was
+not much steadier now. Pushing the lamp aside I flung up my window as
+high as it would go, drew out my old string-mended chair, and, sitting
+down, began to stare at the "_Sarcey's Fluid_" advertisement across the
+way.
+
+The rippling of its incandescents had a trick that always fascinated and
+irritated me intensely. Before the last letter of the first word was an
+apostrophe, but its single bright spot always appeared out of its proper
+order. S--A--R--, and so on, the thing ran, but the whole legend was
+complete before that apostrophe started into its place. I used sometimes
+to watch as if I hoped the whole mechanism might suddenly alter, but, of
+course, it never did. I began to watch it again that night, while my
+ceiling and the wall above my bed became red and green, red and green,
+red and green....
+
+I am afraid that what I am now about to say I shall have to ask you to
+take on trust. I have no evidence to offer of a phenomenon that, I am
+told, is shared by madness and genius alike. Nor will I trouble you
+either with any talk of prevision or of inner certitude, nor with the
+gradually deepening brooding that led up to this phenomenon--the
+brooding over the countless slights and slurs and rubs I had suffered
+from Archie Merridew's reckless and ignorant tongue ever since I have
+known him--my appearance, my private affairs, the side-splitting joke of
+Jeffries being in love. I will pass straight to the sudden and complete
+illumination that, as I sat there, so irradiated my intelligence that I
+wondered why it had come to me now, an hour later, and not then, the
+moment I had seen him lying at that extraordinarily early hour in bed.
+
+It came, this flash of illumination, in exactly the same manner as the
+changing of the electrograph before my eyes--and, as you will see in a
+moment, with the same bloody apostrophe. And with its coming my room was
+not more suffused with the crimson glare than my mind suddenly was with
+the same morbid and flaming and dangerous hue.
+
+_I had suddenly realised what was really the matter with Archie._
+
+Let me now tell you the kind of man I have sometimes, though possibly
+mistakenly, supposed myself to be.
+
+He has aspired, that man, I have sometimes supposed myself to be, to the
+stars; but his feet have also known the burning bottom of the pit. His
+heart has been lifted up until sometimes, through eyes drowned with
+tears, he has had his poor and fragmentary glimpse of a larger
+Fatherhood than earth knows; but he has also exchanged intelligence
+with the devil. His heart has flowered with loves and charities; but
+that same heart has also been a rock with a toad in it. He was born in
+heaven, but has lodged in hell. So in him, according as he has been
+used, have opposites met.
+
+And yet, as I say, I may be wrong in supposing that I am this man.
+
+Yet the man who, in my red and green room that night, leaped up from his
+chair, and with a bursting, ringing cry shook his hand on high, was not
+the James Herbert Jeffries who now writes this feverish shorthand. He
+who writes the shorthand was not the same James Herbert Jeffries who
+stood, with those violent dyes flooding his face, vowing that if that
+sick young buyer of infected merchandise dreamed for one instant of
+doing that which it was sought to make him do, and which apparently he
+was ready to do, he should pay for it with the last thing he had to
+give. That James Herbert Jeffries was plunged in that hour into a place
+of stench and infernal brightness that God forbid was ever his destined
+abode.
+
+I cried aloud, shaking my fist up at my cracked and blackened ceiling:
+
+"_Though Christ died for man in vain ... let him but think of it ... let
+him ... let him ... and I...._"
+
+After that I passed into a curious state of mind. You have heard how I
+make, when I can, anger serviceable to me, but here was an anger past my
+bringing into control. Yet, as ordinarily I plan calmly, so was I calm
+up to a certain point now. The result of these two things was that my
+brain worked like a worn and cranky machine, sometimes doing more than
+it ought, sometimes less; sometimes jerking startlingly ahead, sometimes
+refusing to work at all. And as there was thus no continuity in my
+thought, and as my recollections are curiously associated with that
+changing red and green that now for the first time seems to me to have
+run through my story like a fateful burden of jealousy and blood, I will
+set down such isolated reflections as rise of themselves out of the
+jumble of my mind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Crime_ (I realise that the word leaps with some suddenness into these
+pages) has suffered more at the hands of criminals than it has at the
+hands of justice. There are few perfect crimes. Most of them are
+accidental, the mere explosion of momentary passion. And that is well,
+for the world wants few masterpieces in that sort. I have not read De
+Quincey's essay on the subject, nor ever shall now; but if crime is to
+be considered as an artistic medium, it is the only medium in which
+bungling is better worth to the world than competence. Other arts one
+prefers to see superlatively practised or not at all; but it is only of
+the bungled crime that man can endure to think.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The ordinary criminal begins at the wrong end. Dull fellow that he is he
+does not recognise that his first task must be the creation of an
+attitude of mind. Or if a glimmering of this does cross his inflamed
+consciousness, he thinks that it is the attitude of his own mind that is
+of the first consequence. That is why he suffers either the retribution
+of justice or the visitings of his own conscience. In either of these
+cases his act is unsuccessfully committed. He pays in common with his
+victim.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is not the injured man who knows the full quality of hate. It is the
+one who injures. The injurer has no refuge from his own transgression;
+he has him whom he has injured constantly upon his mind--perhaps upon
+his soul. Another is the lord of his peace of mind. Thus it is
+peculiarly the wronged man's part to pardon, but when the wronged man
+would not pardon, but would avenge for another's sake?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Could Archie be given a mind more sensitive than a stone? Could his weak
+and spongy nature be hardened to a point of view? Could such an
+attitude be created in him that what otherwise would have been an
+assault would take on the stern justice of a punishment? Can any dull or
+egotistical mind be either punished or rewarded? Ultimately, can the God
+who created it do anything save quench it again? Wickedness may be
+vanquished at the last, but Ignorance----? And Conceit----?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But bah! Probably he was not even thinking of it. Perhaps he was even
+now seeking a way out. Well, I would help him. Ten words to him in
+private.... Faugh!
+
+So _that_ was it.... And the world allows it! Could he be proved to be
+merely insane at the time of his marriage the world would not allow it;
+a mental insufficiency beyond his control would be a bar; but this
+other, that he had deliberately sought, would be allowed. And Evie....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That bloody apostrophe again!...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The criminal forgets too much in the moment of action. It is a sort of
+stage fright. Rehearsed perfectly, however.... Not that the thing is not
+admittedly difficult. A button, a fingerprint, a drop of blood, the
+resources of the laboratory, the microscope, the spectroscope--oh yes,
+it cannot be said that there is not a deal to watch. And a memory, a
+chance association years afterwards, an attack of debility rendering the
+eyes subject to deceits--any one of these things may at any moment throw
+him into the hands of the law as a fate more merciful than that which he
+has not been clever enough to forestall within himself. Yes, there is
+much to consider; but then, as all the world knows, masterpieces of
+crime or what not, are difficult of accomplishment.
+
+Ten words, then, on the morrow, and he would never dare....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But bah! I was not even sure! He _could_ not be contemplating it, and I
+was vile to think it.... Still, prudence. I must make sure. Till then,
+nothing--not even these thoughts that ticked as if out of a tape-machine
+from my brain. To-morrow....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet, ah! I was sure for all that!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This red and green, this red and green!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These are such fragments of it all as I can remember. I don't know how
+long they occupied me. I had begun to trace with my fingers little
+patterns on the deal top of my table, patterns that sometimes had a
+meaning for me, sometimes not, but that always had a meaning for Archie
+Merridew if he thought ... if he as much as thought....
+
+Then the red and green advertisement was switched off suddenly. Only a
+rhomb of dim gaslight on my ceiling remained....
+
+But I still sat in the darkness, my brain taking those backward and
+forward jerks, and my lips muttering, though without sound, that if he
+dreamed ... if he as much as dreamed....
+
+
+III
+
+It was a "record" even for myself to get the sack twice in one week, but
+that now befell me. They gave me no notice at the newspaper office, but
+they were decent, and I had a fortnight's wages in lieu of it. Pettinger
+especially showed himself my friend.
+
+"It's rough on you," he said, "but I really don't see that anybody's to
+blame.... Look here, I'll tell you what we'll do. Go down to my place at
+Bedford; I'll telephone them you're coming; and you can do what there is
+to do in my garden for a week or two until something turns up. You won't
+mind working under the old chap I've got there? Right. Off you go.
+You've got your money, haven't you?"
+
+"I shall have to come up for Friday evening; I've a class," I said.
+
+"Well, have a change till then. You look as if you need it. Catch the
+twelve-fifty, and I'll telephone them now."
+
+So I took off my sky-blue uniform and wondered, as I folded it neatly
+and laid it aside, where they were going to find the next man it would
+fit.
+
+This was at half-past ten in the morning, so that I had some hours to
+spare. Ten minutes, if I could catch him, would suffice for all I had to
+say to Archie Merridew, and, as he was not an early riser, and had told
+me that he was not spending his days in bed, I hoped to find him before
+he went out. But as the Business College lay on the way I determined to
+call there first. I walked up Chancery Lane into Holborn.
+
+But he had not arrived at the college when I got there, and I did not
+wait for him. I had walked home with him often enough to know his
+unvarying route, and I set off for his place half expecting to meet him
+on the way. But I did not meet him, so I knocked at the brass knocker of
+his ivy-green door.
+
+Jane told me he had only that moment gone out.
+
+"To the college?" I asked.
+
+Jane thought so, but was not sure.
+
+"If I don't see him I'll call again," I said. "Tell him, will you?"
+
+I returned to the Business College, and there waited, talking to Kitty,
+who had just arrived.
+
+Kitty seemed extremely embarrassed that morning, and of course I guessed
+the reason. She had heard of the sky-blue uniform, doubtless through
+Archie. (For two nights I had not seen her.) I was none the less sure of
+this that she did not mention the circumstance directly; nor did she
+comment on my being at liberty at that unusual hour of the morning.
+Presently she said:
+
+"I don't think he'll come this morning now. He may this afternoon."
+
+"I can't wait till the afternoon," I said, glancing at the little clock
+on the mantelpiece of the type-writing-room--the little clock that had
+given the "Ting" that had startled me so on the day of the examination
+in Method.
+
+"Is it anything I can tell him?"
+
+That, of course, was quite out of the question. "I'll see if he's back
+home yet," I replied.
+
+Then Kitty's uneasiness and curiosity got the better of her delicacy
+about the sky-blue uniform. She looked fixedly at her thin wrists and
+her fingers gave little touches to the lace about them as she spoke.
+
+"Jeff," she said timorously, "I don't know whether you know what--what
+they're saying about you--I'm sure it's a hideous lie, but--but it's
+upset me frightfully----" She stopped abruptly, and seemed even then to
+wish she had not spoken.
+
+"You seem very easily upset nowadays," I said shortly, quite ready to
+quarrel if needs be.
+
+But she ignored my tone. "You know they're saying--everybody's
+saying--all the people here, I mean."
+
+"What?" I demanded.
+
+But her courage failed her. She stopped the fiddling at her wrists,
+and, giving me a long look said, "You know I love you, Jeff, whatever
+happens----"
+
+It was what I had begun to fear--that there would be no shaking her off.
+She was far, far too faithful.
+
+"I see," I said slowly. "I know what you mean.... Well, it was quite
+true. I _was_ a commissionaire--until an hour ago. They've sacked me....
+I suppose Archie told you?"
+
+"Girl-faced little wretch! But, Jeff----"
+
+I took her up. "Well, it's that that I want to see him about. But as
+regards you and me--if you want it to make a difference----"
+
+It was a plain offer to release her, but I don't think she understood it
+as that. Indeed, her manner puzzled me entirely. It was eager,
+shrinking, wistful and apprehensive all at once, and she appeared to be
+trying to shake off something--something preposterous. Well, that
+sky-blue uniform had been preposterous enough.
+
+"It shall make a difference--if you wish," I offered again proudly.
+
+"No," she murmured, apparently understanding this time, and busy with
+her lace again.
+
+Then I entered into I know not what fantastic explanation of the curious
+fact that a man with the world in his grasp should have chosen to touch
+his cap to editors and proprietors. She tried to look as if she
+believed me, but it was plain that she didn't in the least. Once or
+twice she tried to interrupt me, but my patience was quickly running
+out.
+
+"So you see how it was," I said at last, dropping my voice as Weston,
+the secretary-bird passed. "It was no business of his, and I want to
+know what he's got to say about it. You can tell him so if you like."
+
+Again that inexplicable look of timorousness came into her small eyes.
+
+"You _mean_ the commissionaire's job, of course?" she said.
+
+"I mean the commissionaire's job," I replied.
+
+That, I thought with satisfaction, would cover my real reason for
+wishing to see Archie as well as anything else.
+
+Weston passed again, and gave me a look. That look struck me. It was
+just such a look as a policeman might give a loiterer whom he suspects,
+yet against whom he has no charge; and I felt my colour mount a little.
+That tattling little animal! Little he cared, as long as he had his
+joke, that my five shillings was put in jeopardy. For a business college
+that styles itself advertisement writer "professor" naturally doesn't
+want commissionaires on its staff, and I saw my second dismissal looming
+ahead.
+
+Then, with a new and cautious idea in my head, I turned to Kitty again.
+
+"On second thoughts," I said, "_don't_ say anything to Archie about my
+wanting an explanation. I'll settle with him. After all, it was bound to
+come sooner or later. It doesn't much matter. I'll see to it.... Well,
+I'm off. Good-bye, dear. I don't think I shall be able to see you again
+till Friday."
+
+And I left her, nodded to Weston, and passed out.
+
+I daresay you guess what my new and cautious idea was. I had something
+of the last privacy to say to Archie; it was just as well that I should
+have the cloak of comparatively trivial personal remonstrance to cover
+it; but this was only part of it. The truth was that my brain had
+suddenly taken another of those startling leaps forward. In some
+conceivable last event (I was not planning one, you understand; it was
+merely that my mind was working somewhere ahead, independently and
+beyond my control) it might be necessary that I should have _no_
+personal quarrel with him. In such an event none must suppose that our
+relation had been other than amicable. Yet I should be overdoing this
+(purely anticipatory) prudence to pass over the episode of the sky-blue
+uniform entirely. The thing was, or might become, a matter of nicely
+measured proportions. Already I was making the slight private affront
+serve my turn; presently I might want to make the pardon of that affront
+serve my turn also. This kind of thing is what I mean by the creation
+of an attitude of mind and "attention to detail."
+
+I made one more attempt to find Archie as I walked to St Pancras, but he
+was still not at home. Then I had to run for my train.
+
+I worked in Pettinger's garden that week, carrying water, wheeling
+barrows, and filling baskets with fruit as I passed between the canes.
+Pettinger was away for two nights, but on the third evening he came up
+to me as I was pushing a heavy roller over the lawn and began to talk. I
+think he began for the sake of a pleasant word or two, but something I
+said seemed to engage his interest, an hour or more passed, and then, as
+the phlox and canterbury bells began to glimmer in the twilight, he
+suddenly said, "Leave this and come inside--we can talk comfortably
+there."
+
+We went in. I shall never forget that night. It was made memorable by
+the fact that master and gardener talked till two o'clock in the
+morning.
+
+"Well, Jeffries," he said at last, with a sleepy yawn, "you're an
+extraordinary chap. I'm afraid you've made rather a lot of work for me
+this last hour or two."
+
+"How so?" I asked.
+
+"Well, I was going to try to get you a job something like your last, but
+you're a difficult man to find a job for. I won't ask you whether you
+know you're extraordinary; of course you know you are; and I'm going,
+if I can, to give you a chance--a real chance--not like that
+other--those cut-throats--what's their name."
+
+I had told him about Rixon Tebb & Masters' and the rest of it.
+
+"I've a bit of a pull here and there," he went on sleepily. "There's the
+'Freight and Ballast Company'--I know a couple of their men--but we'll
+talk about that in the morning. I'm off to bed. Hope they've made you
+comfortable?"
+
+It does not come within the scope of my present tale to speak of my
+later rapid rise; but I may say now that I owed my chance to Pettinger
+and to the berth he got me, with the coming of winter, in the offices of
+the "F. B. C."
+
+I remained in his house all that week; then, on the Friday evening, I
+took a return ticket to town in order to attend my class.
+
+I had not been half-an-hour in the college that evening before I was
+aware that something had happened. Archie Merridew was not there, but
+Evie was, and so was Kitty Windus. I went through my work as usual, and
+then, at half-past nine, sought Kitty. It was she who told me the news.
+
+"You've not heard, have you?" she asked, with a glance towards the
+senior students' room, through which Evie had just passed. Again she
+was, in some manner I could not understand, eager, reserved,
+apprehensive and fidgety all at once.
+
+"Heard what?" I asked.
+
+"About Evie. It's come off. She and Archie are properly engaged."
+
+From that moment dated a division of me into two separate men, of which
+I shall have more to say presently.
+
+"Oh?" I replied, with complete calm. "That's good news indeed! Wait here
+a minute--I'll speak to her--don't go, for I want to see you."
+
+I met Evie returning with her towel and celluloid box of soap. She too
+was excited, so excited that she would have passed me, but I thought I
+understood that. I stopped her.
+
+"Well, Evie?" I said, smiling.
+
+She waited, painfully full, I couldn't help thinking, of emotion.
+
+"It was you who congratulated me before," I said. "It's my turn now, I
+hear."
+
+She looked at me and away again, and again at me and away.
+
+"Thank you, Mr Jeffries," she said, beginning to make little pointings
+of her foot this way and that on the floor.
+
+I spoke very gently. "Jeff--or Mr Jeffries if you prefer it--wishes you
+nothing but happiness, Evie," I said.
+
+"Oh, thank you," she said, with increasing perturbation, "thank you
+very much indeed--thank you really--Jeff."
+
+It was odd in the extreme. She gave me the reluctant "Jeff," and somehow
+I wished she hadn't, it came with such difficulty. Something, I was
+convinced, lay behind it. I did not expect her in the circumstances to
+be quite collected, but her manner was--I don't know how else to
+describe it--almost that of a child who has pleaded with authority for
+permission to bestow one final charity on an undesirable associate....
+What! I thought, she also ashamed to know a commissionaire!
+
+"When are you going to be married?" I asked, after an awkward pause.
+
+"Quite soon," she replied, equally awkward. "As soon as I can get my
+things ready." She stopped.
+
+"I suppose Archie's coming here for you--to-night, I mean?"
+
+"No--he's got a man to see--a friend--in Store Street, I think."
+
+"Then may I walk along with you?"
+
+She seemed to have feared the question. "Oh," she said quickly, "if you
+don't mind--I've something awfully private to say to Kitty--she and I
+have arranged to go on together."
+
+("Not wanted," I said to myself.) Aloud, "Well, I hope you'll be happy,
+Evie," I added.
+
+"Thank you," she said again, lifting curiously appealing eyes for a
+moment.
+
+I turned abruptly from her, and sought Kitty, who was still waiting. I
+had picked up a sudden suspicion, and wished to confirm it.
+
+"Ready?" I said, in a tone as matter of fact as I could assume.
+
+Again she began to flutter. I couldn't understand what had come over the
+whole college.
+
+"I'm sorry, Jeff," she began, with rapid effusiveness. "If I'd only
+known you wanted--but I've got to go somewhere."
+
+I knew that, Evie had just told me.
+
+"Woburn Place, you mean?"
+
+"No, dear--somewhere else--quite different."
+
+"Really?" I said, incredulously smiling and frowning both at once.
+
+"Of course! How funny you are!"
+
+I looked searchingly down into her eyes.
+
+"I think _you're_ funny," I said slowly.
+
+"You really must excuse me, Jeff--if you'd only let me know."
+
+But I had had enough of this. Gently but irresistibly I took her arm.
+
+"Come along, Kitty," I said quietly. "I particularly want to talk to
+you."
+
+She quailed, but still hung back.
+
+"Very well," I said. "Will you tell me where you're going?"
+
+She was obstinately silent.
+
+"You're going with Evie, of course?"
+
+I knew by the little rush with which she spoke that she was telling the
+truth and was relieved to be able to do so. "Oh no!" she said. "I'm
+going quite alone, quite alone--honour, Jeff!"
+
+"Evie's not going with you--to Store Street or wherever it is?"
+
+She stiffened. "I don't know what you mean by Store Street, and I think
+you've got Evie on the brain," she said.
+
+What the devil ailed them all?
+
+And why had Evie said she was going with Kitty?
+
+As abruptly as I turned away from the one I now turned away from the
+other.
+
+The next moment: "Er--'Jeffries!" I Heard.
+
+It was Weston with my five shillings. I turned.
+
+"Oh, Jeffries! I'm sorry to say--glad in one sense of course--that
+Professor Hitchcock will be taking the class again next Friday. The
+college wishes--wishes to thank you for stopping the gap as you have
+done. It's been most obliging of you."
+
+I said something--I was glad Hitchcock was better, I said.
+
+"Yes--er--he's quite well again now--quite on his feet again," said the
+secretary-bird. "And--er--Jeffries--I'm exceedingly sorry, but I've a
+rather unpleasant duty to perform."
+
+I was utterly mystified. "What is it now?" I demanded almost roughly.
+
+"It's that the Board is of opinion--has come to the conclusion--that
+consisting as we do of younger students than yourself--it would be of
+advantage--perhaps of advantage to you too if--if----"
+
+I helped him out. "If I don't come again?"
+
+"I wished to break it gently to you--but that _is_ the substance of it,"
+he stammered.
+
+Curious....
+
+"Thank you, Weston," I said. "I quite understand. Will you please tell
+them that I didn't ask for any explanation?"
+
+Exceedingly curious....
+
+"Yes, yes, yes," he murmured sympathetically.
+
+"Now," I said to myself some minutes later, as I descended the stairs,
+"it only requires Miss Angela to turn me down."
+
+I walked to Woburn Place, and there asked a Swiss boy if I might see
+Miss Angela. Archie's friend Mr Shoto passed me as I waited in the hall,
+but I did not speak to him. After some minutes the Swiss boy returned.
+His answer was what I expected. Miss Soames had a nervous headache, and
+asked to be excused from seeing me.
+
+And all, I thought with amazement as I turned away, because for a week
+or two I had worn a sky-blue uniform!
+
+
+IV
+
+That division of me into two men that I have said dated from the time
+when Kitty told me of Evie's engagement to Archie Merridew was, in a
+sense, no new thing. I had felt it in some measure before, when I had
+deliberately avoided Archie that I might give my anger its head and had
+smiled in his face again when the fit had worked itself out. I had
+striven, too, to stand between him and the black rages he and my general
+circumstances had provoked.
+
+But no sooner had the words, that Evie was now definitely engaged, come
+from Kitty's lips than I knew this division to be complete and
+irrevocable. Even did he withdraw in time he had still contemplated it;
+and in my soul I did not now believe he would withdraw. "The Devil was
+sick, the Devil a Saint would be." And I knew at last who his friend in
+Store Street was. A name, seen on a medicine bottle in his room, had
+leaped into my memory. His "friend" was some obscure practitioner of a
+doctor.
+
+So I now became as the Giant in the story, who was so exquisitely cloven
+from head to middle by the magic blade that he did not feel the wound
+that was his death. "Cut, then!" he laughed. "Shake yourself," he was
+told. And he fell in twain.
+
+A shake, and I too should fall in twain.
+
+I will now tell you how I got that shake.
+
+Thinking over my sudden ostracism in Pettinger's house that night I only
+became more and more mystified. That the Business College should no
+longer require me I could understand--for snobbery plays a terrible part
+in business. That Kitty had reproached me for my lack of trust in her
+about my commissionaire's post was also easily to be accounted for. Miss
+Angela might in truth have had a headache and have begged to be excused
+from receiving me. But that Evie should turn against me was
+inexplicable. It contradicted every tradition of her upbringing. My
+being forced into a humble, but not ignoble, occupation could never have
+made this difference in her. If anything in the whole business could be
+taken as a certainty, that could. And so the more I thought about it the
+more sure I became that, though I myself might conceal my real reason
+for wishing to see Archie Merridew by giving out that I merely wanted to
+remonstrate with him about his chattering, others were using that very
+giving-out as a screen for something I was in total ignorance of.
+Kitty's timorousness returned to me; I believed now that she had
+actually been trying to tell me something else, whatever it was; and so
+I tossed and turned on my pillow, vainly racking my brain.
+
+I finally decided to have it out with both Kitty and Archie on the
+morrow.
+
+I went up to town the next morning, and walked straight to the Business
+College. I did not wish, after what I had been told the night before, to
+go up, so I found an office boy on one of the lower floors and sent him
+up with word that somebody would like to see Miss Windus. Then I waited,
+just inside the Holburn entrance.
+
+In a few minutes she came down, hatted and gloved. Her face looked old;
+her eyes were dull, and almost closed--with weeping, I was instantly
+sure; and she touched my sleeve almost as if she feared I might shake
+her hand off again.
+
+"I thought it would be you," she said, in a dull voice. "Let's have a
+walk. I've something to say."
+
+We walked without speaking along Holborn, and presently turned into the
+little courtyard of Staple's Inn. We sat down on the bench that
+surrounds the tree in the middle.
+
+She had broken into speech almost before we sat down. It was as if she
+feared that if she did not get it out at once she would not speak at
+all. She was intensely agitated.
+
+"Jeff," she said, "I've wronged you--cruelly and basely."
+
+I did not smile at the melodramatic little phrase. I had not the ghost
+of an idea what she meant, but that something was impending I was
+already aware.
+
+"I saw you didn't know last night," she went on. "This morning?"
+
+It was a question. "I'm no wiser this morning," I said.
+
+"You asked me where I was going last night."
+
+"I did."
+
+"Can you guess why when--when I tell you it was to Louie Causton's?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"Even then I cannot guess."
+
+Then she began to tremble. She grasped the edge of the seat with her
+hand so that I should not see how she shook.
+
+"Jeff," she said, in a low voice, "if you never want to see me again--I
+can't blame you if you don't--not after this."
+
+I waited.
+
+"Not that I shouldn't always, always love you. It will be my
+punishment--I shall have to bear it."
+
+Still I waited.
+
+"Yesterday it was you who offered it--now it's me--it will serve me
+right."
+
+I thought she would never go on. "You mean our engagement, of course?" I
+said.
+
+"Yes," she gulped.
+
+"Why?" I asked suddenly.
+
+"Because--because of what I've been beast enough to believe of you,
+Jeff."
+
+"And that is----"
+
+As I again waited for her to speak I looked round the courtyard. A clerk
+was at work in a first-floor window, and he caught my eye and looked
+away again. In another window an office boy stood with a pen in his
+mouth, turning the pages of a ledger. Then, after a while, and very
+disjointedly, Kitty went on:
+
+"They said you said it yourself, and I--at first I didn't--but then I
+believed it. I know I was beastly about it once before--then we
+quarrelled--but I didn't mean what I said then--believe me, I didn't....
+And," she went on, "I didn't know who--who--it was.... She never told
+me--you know what I mean.... I hate myself--now. I suppose I'm
+jealous--the green-eyed monster, Jeff--but they did say it--said you'd
+as much as said so yourself--and----"
+
+I was beginning to get impatient with her rambling.
+
+I said "And what?" but I don't think she heard me.
+
+"So that's why I went to Louie herself--to ask her--right out----"
+
+All at once I felt it coming.
+
+"Well?"
+
+But suddenly she buried her face in her hands, and her thin shoulders
+shook. Again I saw the clerk watching....
+
+"Oh!" she moaned. "Can you ever, _ever_ forgive me?"
+
+"For----"
+
+"For ever thinking that you and Louie--that you and Louie----"
+
+She lifted her piteous eyes to mine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think it was then that the Giant shook himself and fell in twain. He
+has been more or less roughly cobbled together since, and the halves rub
+on somehow side by side, but to this day the one man in me faints for
+the great sweet things of Life, while the other has the devil ever at
+his elbow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The whole courtyard had swung round; I actually seemed, with my physical
+eye, to see it for some moments out of the vertical. Then it righted
+again, and the whole mystery of the previous evening dissolved in light.
+
+"You and Louie--you and Louie----"
+
+Yet again the courtyard seemed to lean and slide sideways for a moment;
+then I flung a blazing searchlight back across my memory.
+
+Louie Causton's super-subtle mask. "So long since I saw a man, my
+dear--the Baboon?--oh, I should know which way to turn _then_!"
+
+My half-admissions to Archie when he had tried with such persistency to
+get out of me who it was I was in love with.
+
+Her failure to return to the college, that alone had thrown me into
+Kitty's arms rather than into her own.
+
+That something, God knows what, that I might have said to Mackie when,
+after having eaten nothing, I had drunk with him.
+
+Kitty's own desperate possessiveness and jealousy.
+
+All these things fell into place as the coloured granules fall when the
+kaleidoscope is given a turn. I had been accused of being Miss Causton's
+lover!
+
+As I remain that divided Giant henceforward until the end of my tale, I
+will divide my name also, and tell you of a colloquy that began within
+me between these two men--the honest, human, enraged Jeffries, and that
+other, whom I will call James Herbert, at whose elbow stood the devil.
+
+"Ah!" choked Jeffries, flaming red.
+
+"Quietly, quietly!" whispered his interlocutor.
+
+"That's Merridew again!" choked the other.
+
+"Quietly--keep your face--there's a clerk in that window watching you!"
+
+"The whole world may see me--let me go and find him!" It was as if this
+Jeffries struggled to break away there and then.
+
+"No, no--sit still--leave it to me, and keep your face before this
+weeping woman--_I_ was born where they understand these things!"
+
+And after a hellish minute--the voice of that one prevailed.
+
+I turned to Kitty.
+
+"Good gracious!" I remember I said, with an air almost of amused
+incredulity. "Why, who on earth told you that ridiculous tale?"
+
+The one who came from the place where they understand these things was
+right. Kitty looked up. At first she seemed unable to believe her
+ears--unable to believe that I could treat the monstrous thing with
+amused disdain. Then, as she slowly realised, her face shone. She gave a
+quick glad cry.
+
+"Jeff!"
+
+"What, dear?" I said, smiling.
+
+She choked. "Oh ... my good, big man!"
+
+("Laugh now," the wicked one prompted; and I laughed.)
+
+"Good heavens, what a tale!... Who told you? Archie? Just you see if I
+don't tweak that young man's ears!"
+
+In her infinite relief the poor woman broke down utterly. She shook with
+the mingled gratitude and humiliation of my pardon.
+
+"Louie Causton!" I scoffed. "You actually asked her that? Why, how she
+must have laughed!"
+
+"Oh--you're wonderful, Jeff!" Kitty adored me.
+
+"Oh," I replied, quickly recollecting myself, "don't think I'm not
+angry! I'll give that young man a jacket-dusting! He shall have a
+wedding present from me he'll remember, I promise you! Why, of all the
+mean tricks!..."
+
+I went on. Presently Kitty had found me so wonderful that once more she
+could even toy a little with a peril.
+
+"Louie wouldn't tell me ... who ... she said she'd die first...." she
+half sobbed by-and-by.
+
+I looked into her little puffed eyes. "Then," I said, smiling, "you've
+only the word of a not very trustworthy woman for it that after all ...
+eh?"
+
+A saint could hardly have cheapened the worshipping look she gave me.
+
+"So," I resumed presently, "that was what ailed you all last night, when
+I was thinking all the time it was my uniform?"
+
+"Yes--I tried hard to tell you, Jeff----"
+
+"And does Archie really believe this tale himself, or is it just one of
+his little pleasantries?"
+
+She didn't know.
+
+"Is he at the college this morning?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Good. Will you send him down to me if I walk back with you? I think we
+won't lose any time over this."
+
+"And you'll give him a really severe talking-to?" she asked eagerly.
+
+"I will," I promised. "Come----"
+
+Twenty minutes later I was again in the doorway of the Business College,
+waiting for Archie to descend.
+
+And as I waited I reflected how well-nigh irrevocably I had tied myself
+up with Kitty now. I think that up to then she would have stuck to me
+even had this of Miss Causton been true; but now she would never, never
+let me go. Perhaps I may here mention the plan I had at first had for
+getting rid of her when I should require her no longer. I had based that
+plan on the fascination the "compromising situation" of her favourite
+novels always had for her. I never knew anyone so self-conscious about
+her defencelessness, and I had worked it out that I had only to propose
+my own chamber for an assignation and she would conceive herself to be
+looking into the bright face of danger indeed. All peril and all romance
+would lie for her in her setting foot on the lowest of my stairs....
+And doubtless one glance at that naked room of mine (I had pawned even
+my oil-stove) would, I had estimated, drive her away in instant and
+horrified fright.... I had not been above planning this.
+
+But now she would never, never leave her big, wonderful man.
+
+Yes. I had fettered myself fairly completely.
+
+Holborn was noisy that morning, and between the sound of passing
+vehicles and Archie's own light tread I was not aware of his presence
+until he spoke. Instantly I saw that he thought he knew why I had come
+and had resolved to take one bull at least by the horns.
+
+"I say, Jeff," he began at once, with embarrassed sincerity--a sincere
+desire, that is, to be out of the mess he had landed himself in,
+"Kitty's just told me. I know--I know you must be beastly angry with
+me--quite right too--I'm awfully sorry and--and ashamed. It was caddish.
+But I really didn't mean anything, and--and--and I thought you as much
+as said it yourself, you know----"
+
+I judged it best not to speak just yet. I stood looking at him.
+
+"You're an awfully good sort," he went on, conciliatingly, "but--but--I
+really thought you _were_ a bit sweet on her (that was all I
+meant)--that time--you know--before I knew it was really Kitty. I
+simply said to Mackie--he watched you too at the party--I admit I was
+'on' a bit, and never thought it would end like this----"
+
+Then I spoke. "You mean you didn't think it would end in my getting the
+sack and being cut by everybody I know except yourself and Mackie? How
+did you think it would end, then?"
+
+He jumped eagerly at a chance, ready to promise anything.
+
+"I'll see that's all right, old boy--and Hitchcock _was_ coming back
+anyway, you know--you only had the job while he was away----"
+
+"Oh!" I said, with a nasty laugh. "And in your opinion that's all?...
+What about my character?" I demanded suddenly. "Eh?"
+
+"I know," he said, with hanging head. "It was rotten of me--but I was
+'on'--I really was. And your character's all right, Jeff, with anybody
+who knows you--they know what a first-rate sort you are----"
+
+"Thank you," I said stiffly. "And what about--the partner in my guilt?"
+
+"Oh, _her_!" the little animal said, as if _she_ could be left quite out
+of the question. Then apparently he felt the stirring of returning
+rectitude. "Well, Jeff, I have apologised.... I don't see what more I
+can do, except of course to see you all right...."
+
+I noted the birth of the attitude I wished to create. I began to appear
+to let him down by gradual degrees.
+
+Exactly how much of it was appearance you see. I abhorred the little
+wretch. And his renewed apologies, promises, explanations!... He had
+been "on" he had "simply said" to Mackie; I "should have lost my job
+soon in any case"; and "he'd see I was all right!" ... That was all his
+sense of a hideous slander! And his almost rebellious "Well, I have
+apologised." Good heavens, he would be putting _me_ in the wrong
+presently!... Every muscle in my body was straining to be at him.
+
+But that, I knew, would never, never do.
+
+Presently I turned once more to him. All this, after all, was not in the
+least what I had come to talk to him about. It was only a screen.
+
+"Very, well," I said at last. "What's done's done. We'll leave that for
+the present. Now there's something else I want to say to you. Do you
+know what it is?"
+
+"How should I know?" he said, relieved that the subject was turned.
+
+"Think...."
+
+When Kitty had come down to see me an hour before she had done so in her
+hat and coat. She had had her confession to make, and had, I fancied,
+done me even in her attire the courtesy of hinting humbly that she was
+entirely at my disposal. But Archie evidently thought that our
+difference could be arranged in a five minutes' talk sandwiched in
+between two lessons. He had not even put his hat on. He stood, a small
+fair figure, red-waistcoated, brass-buttoned, hands in his pockets,
+leaning against the name-board of the tenants of the various floors of
+the building, while I, with one hand against the board, hung over him
+like a huge angel of good and evil, bidding him think.
+
+"Think," I said again.
+
+He suddenly realised what I meant. I could no more hold his eyes than I
+could have held those of a chidden dog. They cringed, evaded, even dared
+short defiances.
+
+"Think," I said once more.
+
+All at once he said, "I don't know what you mean."
+
+"Then," I said, "I shall have to tell you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"So," I concluded some minutes later, "do you think you are--doing
+right--to marry?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We still stood, he with his back to the name-board, I with my hand
+against it, almost enveloping him with my physical presence. And now, no
+detail of my arraignment spared, I had at last caught his eye. Even
+before he spoke my heart gave a savage leap. Already his soft and spongy
+nature had begun to be hardened to that attitude I needed.
+
+"Oh!" he said.... Then, proudly, "But this is interference."
+
+"You think," I repeated slowly, "that you have the right to get
+married?"
+
+His very admission was a defiance of me. "I know I've been rather a
+rotter," he blustered.
+
+Once more I repeated monotonously:
+
+"You still think, after what I've just said, that you have the
+right----"
+
+"I think," he broke out, "that if you looked after your own girl and
+left me to look after mine it would be better. I'm frightfully sorry
+about the other thing, of course, but--dash it all!----"
+
+Our long exchange of looks said the rest, and it was not my fault if he
+didn't understand what his refusal to heed me would involve. Some people
+never understand, and cry afterwards, "You never told me that!" as if
+one man had the right to demand of another that he should speak the
+uttermost word. I cannot see that there is any such right. For such as
+these there is no uttermost word. Elias and the Prophets cannot make
+them understand. Though one rose from the dead to tell them they would
+not believe. The God who made them as they are cannot make Himself known
+to them--He can only destroy them again. They go out into the night in
+their ignorance, and for them there is no resurrection in knowledge....
+Therefore if the uttermost word will not enlighten them, why speak it?
+Weakness lies in that word. Because it is weak. Art leaves it unspoken,
+and the Seer, having spoken it, comes down from Sinai no more. Only by a
+withholding from it does man achieve. Making three parts greater than
+the whole, he does not put forth to the last. He will not return
+bankrupt to heaven. The unuttered utterance is his credential, to be
+restored to the Bestower of it.
+
+Therefore I did not, at that time, tell Archie Merridew that if he
+married I should slay him. But all, all else was in my eyes for his
+taking.
+
+Then our gaze severed.
+
+As I dropped my hand from the wall the devil frisked in me again. I had
+warned him, and had my own safety to consider now. Without attention to
+detail you can accomplish nothing in this world, and a thing is
+bunglingly done when you yourself suffer the consequences of it.
+Whatever I might do, I intended to suffer no consequences.
+
+"Well, Archie," I said, as a man speaks who washes his hands of
+something, "I've told you what I think about it. There's no doubt it is,
+as you say, an interference, but I think it's justified, and so I'll say
+no more.... And now, about that other: I need hardly say that I expect
+you to make things all right for me again."
+
+"I will--I really will, Jeff," he promised at once.
+
+"You see," I amplified, while the devil in me frisked, "leaving my
+reputation out of the question, it's beastly inconvenient. For instance,
+I'm badly in need of some shorthand practice, and I certainly don't
+intend to go up these stairs again until I'm rehabilitated."
+
+He leaped at the chance of a reparation that would cost him little. "Oh,
+that's easy," he said. "Of course your own place--I mean, why not use
+mine, as you used to?"
+
+"Oh," I objected, "I can't very well use your place when you're not
+there."
+
+"I'm going to be there most of the time now," he replied. "Perhaps you
+think I'm off on the skite again, but I'm not." ("The Devil was sick,"
+thought I again.) "I'm dead off all that now--straight. I do wish you'd
+come!"
+
+"But," I said (while that imp in me positively capered), "you'll be
+awfully busy--with other things. I hear you're to be married at
+once----"
+
+"Not too busy for that, old man," he assured me. "Do come!"
+
+"Well, I'll see," I promised.
+
+Half-an-hour later I was sitting in the British Museum reading-room with
+a stock of books on Medical Jurisprudence before me. Those two spirits
+within me were whispering again--plotting, machinating, discussing
+common ground of action. I had not yet resolved to take any action; but
+I had resolved, and firmly, that if action was to be taken I myself was
+not going to be caught unawares.
+
+
+V
+
+It was true that Archie was busy. His "skite" had cost him a good deal
+of money, and he intended to make good some of the loss by economising
+on his marriage. With this end in view he had determined that his
+honeymoon and his summer holiday should be run into one, and had fixed,
+or Evie had fixed for him, a day towards the end of August for his
+wedding. He was going to Jersey, for the sake of the breath of the sea
+(I fancy that in this he was following Store Street advice); and he
+intended on his return to go into rooms until he should have had time to
+look round for a house.
+
+His personal preparations were extensive. Ten porters and carmen a day
+called at the house near the Foundling Hospital, delivering purchases,
+and his upper floor was heaped up with bags, boxes, drawers taken from
+their cases and laid upon the floor, brown paper, cardboard boxes, new
+clothing. And one day--I won't set down the date--he lost his latchkey
+in the muddle. He did not know that he lost it as a result of my own
+close studies in the reading-room of the British Museum.
+
+"Can't find the blessed thing anywhere!" he grumbled. "I took it off
+the bunch to slip into the pocket of my evening waistcoat--you can't
+carry a bunch of keys about in your evening clothes--and I can't think
+where the devil I put it!... Well, I shall have to ask Jane for
+another."
+
+It was also a consequence of my deeply private studies that about the
+same time I had an accident with the hook of his bedroom door. The night
+being sultry, I had removed my coat, and hung it on his hook, over one
+of his, and, somehow, in going through the pockets of the undermost coat
+in search of the key, he had several times twisted the collar-tab by
+which my own garment hung. In taking my coat down again a little later I
+used some force; I used so much force that I fetched the whole hook
+down, leaving a small piece out of the wood of the door, and, Archie,
+busy emptying a drawer, remarked that to put it up again would be
+something for the next tenant to do.
+
+"Oh no--better leave the place as you found it," I said. "You go
+on--I'll attend to it."
+
+"Well, I don't know where you're going to find the screw-drivers--with
+my latchkey, I suppose," he remarked.
+
+But I knew where the screw-driver was. I found it, and put the hook up
+securely again, a couple of inches below its old place.
+
+I also carried constantly in my pocket, ready for use at any moment, a
+written page of notepaper, the compilation of which had cost me a good
+deal of thought in the reading-room.
+
+Yet I must make perfectly clear to you that these and twenty other
+things that had the appearance of preparations committed me to nothing.
+They were merely part of the prudent course of making ready, not for the
+best that might happen, but for the worst; and that the worst might be
+avoided I plotted at the same time with almost extravagant care. For all
+this last, however, the effective human mind works as it were in
+separate compartments of the job to be done, and there was no denying
+that this was or might become a job. I treated it as a job. And as a job
+it cost me no more qualms and tremors than the cool preparation for an
+examination in Method might have done. I did not turn pale when I read
+in a book of forensic medicine that when one man slays another he
+commonly uses far too much violence; I merely noted the fact, and
+reminded myself of it from time to time, to be perfect in my (I still
+hoped superfluous) lesson. I did not blench when I learned that,
+judicial executions apart, ninety-nine per cent. of hangings were
+suicidal, so that, certain other precautions being observed, a
+presumption could be made preponderatingly probable. I merely turned my
+attention to the qualifying precautions. And as for that sheet of paper
+I carried--well, young men have killed themselves for less reason, and
+seldom for greater. Indeed, to die by his own hand might be the final
+virtuous act in which he took his farewell of the world. I would--still
+in the last event, you understand--allow him that empty semblance of
+virtue. Whether he needed it in heaven or not, I needed it on earth.
+
+And (I am still talking purely hypothetically) I now recognise that I
+had prepared our respective mental attitudes with instinctive skill.
+That clever fiend within me had seen to that before I had become awake
+to that fiend's existence. By about the--till say a fortnight before the
+day fixed for his wedding--none could have told that I had the shadow of
+a grudge against him. He had made, for his slander of myself, a sort of
+semi-public apology--that is to say, he had mumbled a few words in the
+presence of Weston and the Principal of the College; but by that time
+the question of slander had been already so far from me that I had
+hardly had to affect an equanimity of manner. Without any effort
+whatever I had hit the necessary degree of magnanimity to a nicety, and
+there had been an end of that. I was free to return to the college
+again. This now mattered little since we were within a few days of the
+end of the summer term, and it was proposed to have, not a breaking-up
+party on the premises, but a boating-picnic at Richmond.
+
+That I was in love with Evie Soames none knew. Did they? Could they? She
+was engaged to Archie, I to Kitty Windus; but I examined it again, to
+make sure.... No, no suspicion of jealousy could attach to me; none
+would think of a _crime passionel_.... And was it jealousy? Was it a
+_crime passionel_? I do not think you can say it was. True, I intended
+in the teeth of all the world to marry Evie Soames, just as I intended
+one day to be rich and to make my inherent power felt; but there would
+have been other ways than murder of accomplishing that. I should have
+found a way.... No; he had the best reason in the world for what I was
+so carefully planning for him. To me none whatever could be attributed.
+My preparations (for the worst, of course) would be complete when I had
+made use of that paper I carried in my pocket.
+
+It was one evening less than a week before the day of his wedding that I
+chose for the completion of these preparations, and I had walked with
+him as far as his home. There, with a good-night, I was artfully passing
+on when he himself detained me.
+
+"Aren't you coming up for a bit?" he said. He had been monstrously
+hospitable since I had taken him to task about the slander. I had
+reckoned on this.
+
+"No," I replied, "I must get some shorthand practice--I'm off home."
+
+"Oh, come in," he urged, taking my arm. "I sha'n't get much either this
+few weeks--come in, and we'll have an hour together at speed. Come
+on--I've got some books you may as well have--I sha'n't want two sets."
+
+He meant he wouldn't want Evie's text-books as well as his own. I had
+not been able to afford books for my studies, and so had had to make use
+of those belonging to the college. This was the nearest he had come
+since my accusation to speaking about Evie and himself together.
+
+I went up to his rooms for a speed practice in Pitman's Shorthand.
+
+"Here are the books," he said, when he got in. "Better put 'em where
+you'll have your hand on 'em--once you lose sight of a thing in this
+mess you can say good-bye to it. That blessed latchkey of mine hasn't
+turned up yet. Well, shall we get work over first and then talk a bit?"
+
+He swept aside with his arm a heap of new shirts and collars and
+tissue-paper, took a writing-pad from the drawer of his table, and then
+looked round for something from which to read aloud. I produced from my
+pocket a newspaper, which I tossed over to him. I also had cleared a
+portion of the table for myself and was sharpening a pencil. My pad lay
+before me. He was taking his watch from the guard.
+
+"Do I read first?" he asked, opening the newspaper. "Right-oh. Say when
+you're ready."
+
+I drew up my chair. "Right," I said.
+
+And in his rapid, clear, high-pitched voice he began to read.
+
+It was the speech of some politician or other he read, and my pencil
+flew over the paper, swiftly taking down. Page after page I wrote, and I
+had almost forgotten that I was engaged on anything more than an
+ordinary exercise when suddenly he called "Time!" I stopped, and took a
+long breath.
+
+"Now transcribe," he said. "You'll find paper under those gloves."
+
+"No," I said. "You take down now. Saves time. Transcribing's the slow
+part, and we can both be doing that together."
+
+"All right," he said, passing over the paper and making ready.
+
+"Right? Go," I said.
+
+And I began in my turn to read.
+
+He had given me a continuous speech, but I gave him the Police Column.
+"Big Blaze in Bermondsey: Suspected Arson," I gave him. ("That chap'll
+get a couple of years for that," he interdicted). And then I passed to
+"Alleged Bucket-shop Frauds." I had already got my paper from my
+breast-pocket, that paper I had compiled in the reading-room of the
+British Museum....
+
+"--bail being granted in two sums of L500," I concluded the bucket-shop
+paragraph and went on without pause:--
+
+
+                       "PATHETIC CONFESSION"
+
+     "At Marlborough Street yesterday Rose Baxter, 24, seamstress,
+     living in Osnaburgh Street, was charged before Mr Siddeley with
+     a determined attempt to commit suicide by hanging herself in a
+     shed adjoining her dwelling, the property of Messrs Wright,
+     Knapton & Co. The beginning of the case was reported in _The
+     Argus_ of 24th June. Inspector Woodhead read aloud a letter
+     purporting to be in the prisoner's handwriting, from which we
+     take the following."
+
+("Cheerful subjects you choose, I must say," commented Archie, _sotto
+voce_.)
+
+     "'Dearest mother, I cannot face the disgrace. I hope you will
+     forgive me for the trouble I am bringing on you. I have put it
+     off as long as possible, hoping things would get better, but
+     there is only one end to it."
+
+("Kid, eh?" murmured Archie, writing.)
+
+     "'I trust God will forgive me. I am not afraid to die, I am
+     afraid to live and face it. I cannot do E. this wrong. Please,
+     dear mother, think of me as I used to be. I have tried and
+     tried, but it is all no good, and I am better out of the world.
+     Give my love to everybody, and try, dear mother, to forgive
+     me.'"
+
+"Time!"
+
+Archie leaned back in his chair.
+
+"Phew! Was that five minutes? Seemed short," he said. "Just a breather
+before we transcribe." He lighted a cigarette. "I say, Jeff: do you know
+any dealer who gives a decent price for second-hand clothes? I've heaps
+here I sha'n't want any more."
+
+I had small use for such a dealer. "You might try Lamb's Conduit
+Street," I said. "I've bought clothes there."
+
+"Silly ass----I didn't mean that!" He was now monstrously careful of my
+feelings.
+
+"Say when you're ready to transcribe," I said, pushing across a wad of
+paper.
+
+"All right, let's get it over. I'll race you! Ready?"
+
+We plunged into our longhand transcription.
+
+"Ah!" I said, twenty minutes later. "Beat you, Archie!"
+
+He was racing through his last paragraph. "Not by much, you haven't," he
+said, and then, following our practice with exercises at the college,
+"No you haven't--you haven't signed--hooray!" he cried, dashing in his
+signature and looking at his watch. "Thirty-two minutes--pretty smart,
+what?"
+
+An hour later I left, with his exercise as well as my own slipped
+between the leaves of Smillie's "Balance of Trade"--one of the
+text-books he had given me.
+
+My hypothetical case was now completely prepared.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now I spared no effort to save him. When it is yours to slay or to
+spare, you have in a sense slain even in sparing, for a life has been
+yours, even as Archie Merridew's life lay in the folds of that signed
+sheet of paper.
+
+I carried that signed paper in my breast pocket on the day of the
+breaking-up party to Richmond. It had not been my intention to go to
+this picnic, for the sufficient reason that I was penniless _pas le
+sou_--but once more Kitty, to whom I had told some tale or other about
+pressing work, had broken out upon me.
+
+"Oh yes--of course--I might have known!" she had cried, doubtless
+knowing that "pressure of work" tale of old from Frank and Alf. "Oh
+yes--it was quite enough that I should set my heart on it and I might
+have known you'd be busy or something! Busy!"
+
+Her scornful little laugh had set me tingling: I--busy! But I had
+already seen that I should have to go. It had only remained for me to
+climb down to the level of Frank and Alf in the easiest possible way.
+
+"Don't carry on like that, Kitty," I had said shortly. "It isn't so much
+the work; the fact is I'd like to go; but I can't very well ask them to
+pay me for the work before it's done, and the fact is I've rather
+miscalculated this week. It will be all right next week, of course."
+
+"Oh, if that's it," she had said, her hand going as naturally to her
+pocket as if she had inherited the gesture as she had inherited her
+features or her name.
+
+So I had accepted her purse, having accepted only meals before, and Alf
+and Frank and I were of a marrow.
+
+The paper was in my breast pocket as we walked down to the stages to
+hire our boats. We were a largish party, but except for those in the
+boat in which I presently found myself--Evie, Kitty and Archie
+Merridew--I have no very clear recollection of who was there. I took one
+oar, Evie the other, Archie was not exercising himself physically; and
+he lay back in the steering seat with Kitty. It was hot; I should have
+liked to remove my coat; but I dreaded to part myself even by a yard
+from that paper. As it was my movements caused it to work up a little in
+my inside pocket; I saw a corner of it at the opening of the coat; it
+had the appearance of wishing to take a peep at Archie; and by-and-by
+Archie asked me why I didn't take my coat off.
+
+"Not clean shirt day, eh, Jeff?" he laughed, with the recollection of
+numerous brown-paper parcels in his eyes.
+
+He himself was taking extreme care of a pair of spotless flannels, and
+at one stage of the afternoon, I forget when, that suddenly struck me as
+almost funny enough to shriek aloud at--his care for his flannel bags
+and carelessness about everything else. It struck me as--I use the words
+quite literally--devilishly funny. It fascinated me, so that I could not
+keep from watching him. My eyes wandered from time to time to the other
+boats of our party and of other parties, moving on the shining river,
+but they always returned in less than a minute to him, irresistibly
+drawn. This _galgenhumor_ almost mastered me as the paper again crept up
+to take another peep at him as he lolled, this time with Evie by his
+side, for Kitty had taken the other oar. It needed so little, so little
+imagination to look forward and see, strung out into the future, the
+results of that irrefutable Evidence in my pocket--the inquest at which
+I should not even be called as a witness--the funeral I need attend only
+as a mourner--the shock--the hushing up--and the certainty of everybody
+that they knew all about it! It was all horribly, horribly perfect....
+
+A picnic? Oh yes, this was a picnic....
+
+"_Do_ take your coat off, Jeff--you'll be so much more comfortable--why,
+you're streaming!" This came from Kitty, who had the air of publicly
+possessing me, though only partly by reason of having paid for me, I
+think.
+
+"Oh, I'm quite all right--really quite comfortable," I replied.
+
+And then I thought of Evie, and that horrible humour rolled away from
+me. Evie. What about her? She spoke even then.
+
+"Jeff's doing _all_ the work," she said. "I'm sure Kitty and I could
+manage the boat quite well."
+
+"Better stay as we are," I replied. "Archie and I wouldn't trim."
+
+Yes, what about Evie?
+
+Well, for her it was only a choice of sacrifices. The choice was not of
+my determining; I put that responsibility on him. There was still time;
+I would save him if I could; that was settled; but further than that I
+would not go. Should she fail to survive the shock it would be he, not I
+who had killed her. Better that, however....
+
+If you can see what else I could have done, tell me. I am willing to
+learn.
+
+And so we went up the river, and drew in under a bank for tea, and then
+went ashore for a walk, I with Kitty, he with Evie, and so back to the
+boat again. I do not remember quite how the time went. I know that the
+sun went down in a flush of rose, and that Japanese lanterns appeared on
+the water and in the water in long smooth reflections, and that parties
+were singing and playing banjos in the twilight. I could not have sat by
+Evie--it really would have put the boat out of trim--and so I had not to
+sit by Kitty either. She and I pulled again; Archie and Evie in the
+stern seat were hardly distinguishable; and Archie, who had been
+singing, was quiet again.
+
+And I must have succeeded in keeping that dreadful mirth of mine to
+myself, for Kitty had noticed nothing. She stood by my side in the
+crowded station afterwards, murmuring to me how lovely it had been.
+
+That is all I remember about that picnic.
+
+Nor have I any reason for not telling you the truth about this. I am
+concealing neither the man nor the devil in me. For many years I have
+been almost entirely untroubled by it all, and I make even this slight
+qualification only because during the last month I have had feelings,
+not of remorse, but of something that is better described as a sort of
+backward curiosity. Perhaps it is a little more even than that, for a
+certain measure of admiration is not entirely absent from it. Don't
+misunderstand me, however. That tincture of admiration is not so strong
+that I cannot rest unless somebody admires my cleverness with me.
+Nothing irresistibly urges me to give myself away. But I have felt a
+little that backward pull of a man's own acts. I do not know, though
+practically it has not come near me, why men revisit places. I do not
+revisit that house near the Foundling Hospital--yet I do write this
+shorthand carefully locking my door before I begin and committing it to
+the most private recess of my cabinet as I complete each instalment....
+Yet other compunction, if this be compunction, have I none. I am rich, I
+am serving my age by a more arduous grappling with its economic problems
+than any of my contemporaries, I could have had Pepper's knighthood had
+I wished for it, and I have been married this long time to Evie
+Soames.... No, on the whole I do not believe in melodramatic
+retributions. No shadowy shape of a fair-haired and red-waistcoated
+figure glides at my elbow or steps with me into my brougham, and when I
+close my eyes at night I do not see as on a painted curtain that
+dimity-papered, lamp-lighted upper chamber of his. I do not start at
+sudden sounds, nor fear to be left alone in my library when it grows
+late. I play with my clean-born children. Evie is happy with me. And I
+even have Miss Angela in a cleft stick--for, when things go well, she is
+my gentle and much-loved maiden aunt by marriage, but when they go
+across she is my mother-in-law, who would stare incredulously at any who
+might hint that my brain could plot a horror and my two hands execute
+it.
+
+And yet I write this, and sometimes waste an hour in wondering why, all
+of a sudden, Kitty Windus threw me over without giving a reason, and,
+when I went for one, had left her rooms in Percy Street and gone
+goodness knows where.
+
+But bah! They are wrong who say that for every crime somebody has to
+pay. They speak from hearsay. I do not speak from hearsay. To my own
+knowledge one crime has been committed for which nobody has paid and
+nobody ever will.
+
+Well, things are as they are ... and so I will make an end.
+
+My desperate struggles to save Archie Merridew included an interview
+that I had positively to force from Miss Angela. I had to force it for
+the reason that, though I was now theoretically exculpated from the
+charge under which I had lain, slander always sticks, and some of it
+still stuck with Miss Soames in spite of her efforts to forget it. That,
+I think, was the reason why she saw me in the dining-room at Woburn
+Place instead of in her own sitting-room, where, I knew, Evie was.
+There, among the empty chairs, toying with Mr. Shoto's napkin-ring and
+putting it down again as I remembered whose it was, and then
+unconsciously taking it up again, I told her in such terms as I could
+find how matters stood. She nodded from time to time.
+
+Again it was not my fault if she failed to understand. She did, I now
+know, fail, and failed the more hopelessly that she thought she did
+understand. Many, many thick wrappings lie between placid Aunt Angela
+and the stark realities of Life.
+
+"I see perfectly," she said, when I had made that statement that would
+have appalled any but herself. "It was exactly the same with George. (I
+was once--engaged--to a man called George.) George put a precisely
+similar case quite plainly before me. _He_ was consumptive, or rather
+his poor father was, and they do say it skips a generation--poor
+George!"
+
+I shook my head, but she only sighed with gentle content. She did not
+really miss George.
+
+"But," she went on, while my eyes wandered to the corner by the
+sideboard where Archie had had his conversation with Mr Shoto about the
+Yoshiwara, "I shouldn't have refused him for that. (I did refuse him,
+and I heard afterwards that for weeks he ate scarcely anything at all.)
+It was something quite different that came between us--I've never told
+even Evie what the real reason was."
+
+I interrupted her. "Are you sure, Miss Soames, that you've quite
+understood my real reason?" (More plainly I dared not speak, lest later
+there should be a chink in my own armour.)
+
+"Oh yes!" she purred lightly. "Old woman as I am, I _quite_ understand!
+As you say ... 'the children.' ..." Then, forgetting her attitude for a
+moment, she became playfully roguish. "Of course, it isn't as if you
+weren't in love with Miss Windus, and so in a sense feel it more nearly.
+You know how _you_ would feel about it. I only say this that you may see
+that I _quite_ understand these things do make a difference--eh?"
+
+"But when I solemnly assure you that that has nothing whatever to do
+with it."
+
+She adjusted the Indian shawl coquettishly about her shoulders.
+
+"Ah, that's what you think! Come, Mr Jeffries you're positively
+ungallant! As if I was so old that I'd forgotten! And not only George
+either! I hope you won't be offended, Mr Jeffries, if I tell you that I
+suspect--I suspect--that in this I know you better than you know
+yourself!"
+
+Against that phrase there is no argument. Some people do not and cannot
+see. And again I did not think Miss Angela had the right to extract from
+me the uttermost word. I was aware that the very possession of that
+awful weapon of mine was dangerous; merely to have it might be to use
+it; but the question is one of your resolve, and I was fully resolved.
+My job had to be done, or (as I still dared in certain moments to hope)
+not to be done; but if it was to be done, it was going to be done
+thoroughly. My neck was not going into a noose because of other people's
+blindness. It was of no use talking to Miss Angela.
+
+And that being so, I abandoned my attempt with her. I smiled.
+
+"Well, perhaps you're right," I said. "When one is in love oneself, and
+looking forward--well, perhaps it does bring it home to one. Perhaps it
+makes one a little of a busybody. So," I concluded, "I hope you won't
+exaggerate what I've been saying."
+
+And a few minutes' further talk of things she had actually seen for
+herself in Archie--such things as his slight intemperance on the night
+of the birthday-party--made me quite safe with Miss Angela also.
+
+To Kitty I was able to say even less than this. Indeed, she now detested
+Archie so thoroughly that I was scarcely able to say anything at all.
+And, looking back with all the care I am master of, I cannot see that
+anything I did say could have been the cause of that extraordinary
+breaking off with me without a word.
+
+To Evie I said nothing at all.
+
+There remained one more attempt with himself.
+
+The time I chose for this was fixed by the exigencies of all the
+circumstances. I would have wrestled with him for the whole of the two
+days that remained before his wedding, but his own absence for a day
+precluded this. And as during that day I sought him in vain, I thought,
+very wearily, that he must now take his chance. Therefore, when it came
+to the very last day, the day before his wedding, I recognised that that
+also gave a perfect touch to the Evidence. The _very_ eve of his
+wedding.
+
+_Several_ evenings before would somehow have been less plausible.
+
+As I walked to his rooms that night I carried with me three things.
+Under my arm was my old brown-paper parcel--for to make a final use of
+his bath had seemed to me the most natural excuse for my calling on him.
+In my breast pocket I carried that piece of paper that was to be the
+Evidence to the world. And in another pocket I had his latch-key, for
+which I foresaw a use later in the evening.
+
+I knocked at his door a little after eight, and Jane admitted me. She
+gave a familiar look at the parcel that contained my shirt, and also
+said something about a box Mr Merridew was leaving behind for the care
+of which he wanted me to be responsible. I passed this box on the first
+landing. It was locked, but only half addressed--Archie had not yet
+secured the rooms to which he would return with Evie. But he had not yet
+said anything about the box to me.
+
+I found him walking about his rooms, taking last peeps into empty
+drawers to see whether there was anything he had forgotten. His packing
+was finished, and he kept stopping in his prowl to throw another handful
+of old letters on to the smouldering heap in his old Queen Anne teapot
+of a grate. A little pile of these condemned letters still remained by
+the side of his perforated brass fender.
+
+"Hallo!" he cried as I entered. "Just give a squint round, will you, and
+tell me if there's anything so big I can't see it. And I say: I've left
+a box downstairs; I wonder if you'd look after it for me? I've told
+Jane."
+
+"Right!" I said. "Bath ready?"
+
+"All ready. By Jove! how letters do accumulate! You go and scrub
+yourself, while I polish this lot off."
+
+I went into his bathroom.
+
+But I did not make use of his bath. Somehow I could not bring myself to
+it. I only wanted the bath to be known as my motive for calling. So I
+filled it, stood by it for a number of minutes, and then ran the water
+off again. I took the same brown-paper parcel with me into his
+sitting-room that I had brought out.
+
+I did not stay long after that. I was coming back. At nine I rose.
+
+"What, are you off?" he said. "I must say you take what you want and
+clear off pretty quick! Supper'll be up presently."
+
+"A last stag-party?" I said. "I'm afraid you'll have to have it without
+me. I've got to get to Bedford yet. So," I added, "I shall have to wish
+you--you know--get it over now."
+
+"Oh, don't put on so much blessed ceremony!" he said. "It isn't as if
+you weren't going to see me again!"
+
+It wasn't.
+
+"Oh, about that box," I said. "Better call Jane, and tell me in her
+presence."
+
+"Well, if you _will_ leave me to eat my last bachelor supper alone. But
+I should have had to clear out myself just after. Got to have a word
+with Aunt Angela--she let's me call her that now."
+
+He moved towards the door.
+
+"Where are you going?" I asked.
+
+"To call Jane," he replied. "Bell's busted now--time I cleared out of
+here--whole place is coming to pieces.... Jane! Ja--ne!" he shouted down
+the well of the stairs.
+
+Then as Jane didn't hear he descended to the floor below.
+
+His old red woollen bell-rope lay in a heap on the floor. That also had
+happened as a result of my studies in the British Museum. I busied
+myself with it.... By the time he had returned I had made it quite ready
+and was gazing thoughtfully into his fireplace.
+
+I went downstairs with Jane, who herself closed the door behind me. I
+gave her a very express good-night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The remainder of that evening I can divide into four distinct stages,
+and I will adopt that course, taking them numerically.
+
+The first stage was one of an almost overwhelming lassitude. I had an
+hour and a half and more to kill, and this lassitude came upon me
+suddenly as I walked slowly in the direction of Cheapside. I was in its
+power before I recognised its dangers. The man of action had suddenly
+sunk into abeyance with me, and, now that all was ready, all interest
+in my job had departed from me. The drudgery of actual performance was
+all at once beyond my powers. I could have gone on planning--I wished
+there had been more to plan--but now to carry out....
+
+I collapsed suddenly.
+
+Why (I asked myself wearily) trouble after all! Why trouble about
+anything? Life was short, yet already too long; its activities
+overlauded, its glories contemptibly little; why waste it in
+striving--nay, why live it all? Thirty years of it had brought me
+nothing; whatever another thirty years might bring me I should have to
+leave, and what would it matter after that whether I left much or
+little? Nay, were there really an Infinite Mercy to be "squared," it was
+perhaps better to cast myself before it helpless, naked, and without
+profit of my life. Why not end it all now? Why not kill, not Archie, but
+myself?
+
+I turned with bowed head down the Minories, and something within
+me--I think it was that honest and beaten and bloody-minded
+Jeffries--whispered "The River!"
+
+Presently I stood not far from the Tower, looking over a parapet into
+the dark water.
+
+Yes, the river would settle it, that was the real way out. No more
+Agency clerkships and red-and-green-lighted apartments and sham
+betrothals on the other side of that parapet. And no more heartrending
+strivings to be free of the circumstances into which the world
+malignantly thrust me back the moment I raised my head. Striving? I
+realised all my striving in the past--Rixon Tebb & Masters', the Method
+examination, my commissionaireship, the wanton slander, my late
+perfected plan--and the thought that the years to come might be but
+repetitions of all this hit me like a hammer. I could not face it.
+
+Then a detached sentence from one of the books I had read in the museum
+sprang up in my mind, and I started a little. The sentence was to the
+effect that a man who leaps into water always removes his hat before
+doing so. I did not remember that I had taken my own hat off, but there
+it lay, on the parapet, at my elbow.
+
+Then, "Well, it will do to cover some other poor devil's head," murmured
+that tired Jeffries, "Get it over, and send that conscienceless young
+scamp to hell with _your_ blood on his head. Somebody always pays, you
+know."
+
+I removed my coat.
+
+But that tired Jeffries never spoke unanswered, and these words were
+answerable. To make a hole in the water from sheer weariness was one
+thing, but to destroy myself to compass another's damnation was quite a
+different one. The other Jeffries spoke.
+
+"Why should you kill yourself for his sin? Each man must bear his own.
+Nay, it is not committed yet and will not be if you are strong and play
+the man. Are you going to fold your hands and allow Evie...."
+
+And at the thought of Evie I felt my sluggish blood creep again.
+
+"You live in a practical world--be practical," continued that satanic
+James Herbert. "Prevention is better than cure. Even could he be
+punished afterwards, how much better off would _she_ be ... _then_? What
+right have you to bring this horror on her? He's selfish, ignorant,
+cruel--it would be dreadful at the best; but ... oh, think, man! Think
+of her now ... and to-morrow!"
+
+"You only want her yourself," growled the other.
+
+"You do--but that's not your motive!" cried the first. "You've
+overlooked all he's done to you--but this isn't to you! Coward--if you
+allow it! You won't allow it--to kill him would be better than to allow
+it.... Come; what time is it? She'll be preparing for bed by the time
+you get there."
+
+I put on my hat and coat again.
+
+This was my first stage.
+
+The second began with my approach to Woburn Place.
+
+The sitting-room with the pink-shaded lamp lay at the front of the
+house, but Evie and her aunt slept at the back. The sitting-room was in
+darkness as I passed. I took a side street, and then a back cartway used
+by tradesmen. A high wall was in front of me, but by stepping back I
+could see the hinder part of the row--landing windows, bathroom windows,
+tiny conservatories, bedrooms--various oblongs at different levels, some
+blinded, some with lamps, many in darkness. Behind me was a mews, with
+horses that moved their feet in their litter and dragged at chains from
+time to time.
+
+The tradesmen's entrances were unnumbered, and I do not know whether I
+hit on the right house; but that did not matter. I have mentioned my
+uncommon powers of mental visualisation, and these sufficed me. I fixed
+my eyes on a window; it might or might not have been Evie's; but to all
+intents and purposes it was. Somebody was retiring there, and the blind
+was lowered.
+
+I saw no hand, no shadow on the blind. Only the light went out suddenly,
+and from the sound the blind made as it went up I judged it to be a
+spring blind. A piano had begun to play somewhere, but save for that
+all was silent.
+
+It was the last of her single days.
+
+To-morrow.
+
+My heart was hideously alive again. What! Fold my hands--drown--and Evie
+as she still was up there.
+
+Soft and terrible ejaculations began to break from my lips.
+
+"Ah, would he? Would he? He would, would he?"
+
+A clock struck half-past eleven.
+
+This was my second stage.
+
+I will begin the third at the moment when I pushed gently at the gate
+over the whitewashed area near the Foundling Hospital.
+
+His light still showed over the leads, but the basement was in darkness.
+Evidently Jane had gone to bed. I felt in my pocket for his latchkey,
+mounted the three steps, and with infinite softness put the key into the
+lock and turned it. The door opened noiselessly, and I prevented the
+click as I closed it again by letting the little brass knob gently back
+with my thumb. Then silently I began to mount his stairs, passing on the
+way the locked box that had been put into my charge. I reached the top.
+The first sound I had made since entering the house was my tap at
+Archie's door.
+
+"Come in!" his tenor voice called from behind the door.
+
+I entered.
+
+At first he did not seem more than ordinarily surprised to see me; it
+was only after a moment that the oddness struck him.
+
+"Hallo!" he began, in natural though not altogether cordial tones....
+Then, "Hallo! I thought you were in Bedford by this time."
+
+"Missed my train," I said.
+
+He stared mistrustfully....
+
+He had been preparing for bed. He had removed his collar and tie, and
+his red waistcoat was unbuttoned. Through the chink of his bedroom door
+I saw the light of his second lamp.
+
+In his surprise at seeing me back again, he had half risen from his
+arm-chair. He remained, his hands on the arms of it, neither sitting nor
+standing, as he asked suddenly, "Who let you in?"
+
+"Myself," I answered, in an even tone. "A little unceremonious, perhaps,
+but I knew Jane had gone to bed and didn't want to fetch you down. The
+fact is, I've found your latchkey."
+
+"You've found my latchkey!"
+
+"In my coat pocket. Don't ask me how it got there. Our two coats were
+hanging together one night, but even then I don't quite see.... Here it
+is anyway."
+
+I put it on the table.
+
+"That's a rum 'un," he said, slowly sitting down in his chair again,
+but keeping his eyes on mine. "So you came back to give it me?"
+
+"I came back to give it you. Besides," my eyes were on his slender bare
+neck, "since I was coming back--I thought I'd like another word with you
+before----" I paused.
+
+For a moment I could not understand the readiness with which he took up
+the thing I had not said. His lips had compressed a little.
+
+"Ah! Again?" he said, with a little kindling in his eyes.
+
+"'Again'?" Then I saw. He had seen Miss Angela during the last hour, and
+she had doubtless spoken of my own call on her. "Yes, again," I
+answered.
+
+That third stage had a curious close. That close was nothing less than
+the reunification of those two halves of the Giant to the fabulous
+splitting into two of whom I have likened my mental state. They came
+together again, these two halves, as the two forces come together that
+make the thunder clap ... but of this in a moment.
+
+After several moments of increasingly rapid talk, we were both standing,
+he defiantly with one hand on the edge of the mantelpiece, I at the
+other end of the hearth. He had risen a moment before at certain words
+of mine, as if to inform me that our interview was over. Once I had seen
+his eyes move towards the place where the bell-rope should have been,
+but that lay, a red woollen heap, on the floor behind me, and he would
+have had to pass me in order to get into his bedroom. He had found an
+appearance of forcefulness in the use of violent words.
+
+"Why, damn your impudence!" he blustered. "Look here, my good man! If
+you suppose I'm going to be talked to like this by you or anybody
+else----"
+
+"Then deny the fact," I said for the fifth time.
+
+"I'll not deny or anything else till I know what right----"
+
+"I know it comes late, but I've spoken of it before."
+
+"Yes--sneaking behind my back!" he said hotly, probably again
+remembering his recent conversation with Miss Angela.
+
+"To your face."
+
+"Yes--and if it hadn't been for something else I should have told you
+then what an interfering devil you were!"
+
+"Merridew," I said slowly, "it's the last time."
+
+He sneered.
+
+"I'm glad of that--and confound you for a meddler!" he cried. "If that's
+all you came for, get out, and I'll get somebody else to look after my
+trunk!"
+
+We were silent for a space, and in that space I heard the voice of that
+human Jeffries, almost pitifully seeking still to save him. "Give him
+every chance," sobbed that Jeffries, "he's only a weakling--you could
+crush him mentally as you could physically--it would be little better
+than infanticide--try him again--show him that red thing on the
+floor--and that carved thing on the door."
+
+But now Archie in his turn seemed to have become divided. He had
+suddenly turned white. But an habitual pertness still persisted in his
+tongue. I don't think this had any relation whatever to the physical
+peril he seemed at last to have realised he was in. I stood over him
+huge and black as Fate.... "Spare him if you can," that generous
+bloodthirsty devil in me muttered quickly.
+
+"Merridew," I said heavily, "you'll disappear to-morrow morning ...
+_or_----"
+
+"Shall I?" he bragged falteringly....
+
+"And you won't come back. I shall stay here to-night and put you into
+the train myself."
+
+"Then you'll have to sleep in the bath--and you should know by this time
+how small that is," came from his lips.
+
+And yet it came only from his lips. His terrified heart had no part in
+it. His only chance now was to have screamed aloud.
+
+But he did not scream. Instead, he stooped swiftly, caught up the
+poker, and struck at my head with it.
+
+It was then that the thunder-clap came, and that I was James Herbert
+Jeffries, whole, and a murderer. Swiftly as Archie and I came together
+the halves of that Giant came together. Instinctively I had guarded my
+head, perhaps realising--I cannot say--that a single drop of blood might
+mean for me precisely what I intended to do to him; but it mattered
+little whether blood blinded my eyes or not. Another redness gorged me,
+and then, my mind became whitely blind. As colours are lost on a disc
+that revolves, so all my plans and preparations spun and mingled. All
+was there, yet nothing was there. For an instant my visual memories of
+that pleasant, dimity-papered apartment stood separate; my own old
+experiences and new divinations also stood separate; I saw ahead, three
+or four minutes ahead, his struggles in my great arms, my left arm about
+his ankles, my right hand over his mouth, the red of the woollen
+bell-rope against his white neck ... and then all wheeled hideously
+together....
+
+I was upon him, smothering him with my bulk, and wondering even as I
+bore him backwards to the door whether I myself was bleeding....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fourth stage was characterised throughout by an extraordinary
+quietness. There was the light sound of the turning of paper in it, for
+I had to search in a pile of old books and papers for his shorthand pad
+and to make sure I had the right one--I had to take from my breast
+pocket another sheet of paper and to glance at that also to make sure
+that it also was the right one--and then I had to approach the bedroom
+door and to drop this into his pocket....
+
+But before I did any of these things I tiptoed to the mirror over the
+mantelpiece in order to see whether I bled.
+
+I did not. My left eye was of a dull red, but not with blood, and I
+could deal with that. As a preparation for dealing with it I emptied at
+a draught the brandy flask he had prepared for his journey on the
+morrow.
+
+Softly as a cat I continued to move about.
+
+Then I had to remember which of his stairs creaked to the tread. They
+were the fourth and the tenth from the first landing; I knew that as
+well as I knew my own name; and yet for a time I really could not
+remember the numbers.
+
+The room was quiet as a grave as I gave a final glance round at the
+displayed Evidence....
+
+Then behind his Queen Anne grate a cricket began to sing.
+
+Nobody saw me leave the house. I had to bring his latchkey away.
+Without it the latch would have clicked as I closed the door from the
+outside.
+
+Then I crossed Mecklenburgh Square and walked towards King's Cross.
+
+A quarter of an hour later an apparently very drunken man of uncommon
+stature lurched heavily through the swing doors of my public-house and
+fell full length on the floor in the middle of a knot of drinkers. A
+barman dived quickly under the flap of the counter, with an "Outside!"
+rushed towards me. I was hauled to my feet. I had a hand over one eye.
+
+"_'E's_ copped the brewer all right!" a cheerful voice sounded in my
+ear. "Just smell 'im! Must ha' been drinking it straight out o' the
+cask."
+
+"'Ere--'old 'ard--ain't it your lodger?" somebody else said suddenly.
+
+"Is it? Lumme, so it is! Look at 'is eye!"
+
+"Ain't 'alf a mouse!"
+
+"'Ere, 'elp me up with 'im the back way, Jim--Lord! 'e weighs a ton!
+I've never known 'im 'ave a drink 'ere, but there, they get it at one
+place if they don't at another."
+
+Then somebody bawled to me:
+
+"Look out--don't blow your nose--you'll 'ave your eye up if you do!"
+
+But I wanted my eye "up." Up it came instantly, large as an egg, and
+there was a laugh.
+
+"Well, 'e won't brag much about where 'e got _that_!" somebody said.
+
+And they helped me up to my red-and-green-lighted room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They say somebody always pays. Well, this my story. It is a long time
+ago, and nobody has paid yet. Nor, as far as I can see, is it likely
+that anybody ever will. There is only one detail that I have not been
+able properly to attend to, and even that has attended to itself--for of
+course Kitty Windus fled because she realised that I was in love with
+Evie. I could hardly expect her to stay after that.
+
+No: nobody has paid. Nobody ever will.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+Notes for "In accordance with the evidence" by Oliver Onions
+
+Italic text is denoted by _underscore_ and bold text by =equal sign=.
+
+Page 32--a word was unreadable and was best guessed as (pretence).
+
+Inconsistant hyphenation and spelling are kept as in the original.
+
+Mr and Mr. were kept as in the original.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's In Accordance with the Evidence, by Oliver Onions
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