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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 865 ***
+
+
+
+
+PASSING OF THE THIRD FLOOR BACK
+
+By Jerome K. Jerome
+
+
+Author of “Paul Kelver,” “Three Men in a Boat,” etc., etc.
+
+New York
+
+Dodd, Mead & Company
+
+1909
+
+
+Copyright, 1904, By Jerome K. Jerome
+
+Copyright, 1908, By Dodd, Mead & Company
+
+Published, September, 1908
+
+
+
+
+The neighbourhood of Bloomsbury Square towards four o’clock of a
+November afternoon is not so crowded as to secure to the stranger, of
+appearance anything out of the common, immunity from observation. Tibb’s
+boy, screaming at the top of his voice that _she_ was his honey, stopped
+suddenly, stepped backwards on to the toes of a voluble young lady
+wheeling a perambulator, and remained deaf, apparently, to the somewhat
+personal remarks of the voluble young lady. Not until he had reached
+the next corner--and then more as a soliloquy than as information to the
+street--did Tibb’s boy recover sufficient interest in his own affairs to
+remark that _he_ was her bee. The voluble young lady herself, following
+some half-a-dozen yards behind, forgot her wrongs in contemplation
+of the stranger’s back. There was this that was peculiar about the
+stranger’s back: that instead of being flat it presented a decided
+curve. “It ain’t a ‘ump, and it don’t look like kervitcher of the
+spine,” observed the voluble young lady to herself. “Blimy if I don’t
+believe ‘e’s taking ‘ome ‘is washing up his back.”
+
+The constable at the corner, trying to seem busy doing nothing, noticed
+the stranger’s approach with gathering interest. “That’s an odd sort of
+a walk of yours, young man,” thought the constable. “You take care you
+don’t fall down and tumble over yourself.”
+
+“Thought he was a young man,” murmured the constable, the stranger
+having passed him. “He had a young face right enough.”
+
+The daylight was fading. The stranger, finding it impossible to read the
+name of the street upon the corner house, turned back.
+
+“Why, ‘tis a young man,” the constable told himself; “a mere boy.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said the stranger; “but would you mind telling me
+my way to Bloomsbury Square.”
+
+“This is Bloomsbury Square,” explained the constable; “leastways round
+the corner is. What number might you be wanting?”
+
+The stranger took from the ticket pocket of his tightly buttoned
+overcoat a piece of paper, unfolded it and read it out: “Mrs.
+Pennycherry. Number Forty-eight.”
+
+“Round to the left,” instructed him the constable; “fourth house. Been
+recommended there?”
+
+“By--by a friend,” replied the stranger. “Thank you very much.”
+
+“Ah,” muttered the constable to himself; “guess you won’t be calling him
+that by the end of the week, young--”
+
+“Funny,” added the constable, gazing after the retreating figure of the
+stranger. “Seen plenty of the other sex as looked young behind and old
+in front. This cove looks young in front and old behind. Guess he’ll
+look old all round if he stops long at mother Pennycherry’s: stingy old
+cat.”
+
+Constables whose beat included Bloomsbury Square had their reasons for
+not liking Mrs. Pennycherry. Indeed it might have been difficult to
+discover any human being with reasons for liking that sharp-featured
+lady. Maybe the keeping of second-rate boarding houses in the
+neighbourhood of Bloomsbury does not tend to develop the virtues of
+generosity and amiability.
+
+Meanwhile the stranger, proceeding upon his way, had rung the bell of
+Number Forty-eight. Mrs. Pennycherry, peeping from the area and catching
+a glimpse, above the railings, of a handsome if somewhat effeminate
+masculine face, hastened to readjust her widow’s cap before the
+looking-glass while directing Mary Jane to show the stranger, should he
+prove a problematical boarder, into the dining-room, and to light the
+gas.
+
+“And don’t stop gossiping, and don’t you take it upon yourself to answer
+questions. Say I’ll be up in a minute,” were Mrs. Pennycherry’s further
+instructions, “and mind you hide your hands as much as you can.”
+
+***
+
+“What are you grinning at?” demanded Mrs. Pennycherry, a couple of
+minutes later, of the dingy Mary Jane.
+
+“Wasn’t grinning,” explained the meek Mary Jane, “was only smiling to
+myself.”
+
+“What at?”
+
+“Dunno,” admitted Mary Jane. But still she went on smiling.
+
+“What’s he like then?” demanded Mrs. Pennycherry.
+
+“‘E ain’t the usual sort,” was Mary Jane’s opinion.
+
+“Thank God for that,” ejaculated Mrs. Pennycherry piously.
+
+“Says ‘e’s been recommended, by a friend.”
+
+“By whom?”
+
+“By a friend. ‘E didn’t say no name.”
+
+Mrs. Pennycherry pondered. “He’s not the funny sort, is he?”
+
+Not that sort at all. Mary Jane was sure of it.
+
+Mrs. Pennycherry ascended the stairs still pondering. As she entered the
+room the stranger rose and bowed. Nothing could have been simpler than
+the stranger’s bow, yet there came with it to Mrs. Pennycherry a rush of
+old sensations long forgotten. For one brief moment Mrs. Pennycherry saw
+herself an amiable well-bred lady, widow of a solicitor: a visitor
+had called to see her. It was but a momentary fancy. The next instant
+Reality reasserted itself. Mrs. Pennycherry, a lodging-house keeper,
+existing precariously upon a daily round of petty meannesses, was
+prepared for contest with a possible new boarder, who fortunately looked
+an inexperienced young gentleman.
+
+“Someone has recommended me to you,” began Mrs. Pennycherry; “may I ask
+who?”
+
+But the stranger waved the question aside as immaterial.
+
+“You might not remember--him,” he smiled. “He thought that I should do
+well to pass the few months I am given--that I have to be in London,
+here. You can take me in?”
+
+Mrs. Pennycherry thought that she would be able to take the stranger in.
+
+“A room to sleep in,” explained the stranger, “--any room will do--with
+food and drink sufficient for a man, is all that I require.”
+
+“For breakfast,” began Mrs. Pennycherry, “I always give--”
+
+“What is right and proper, I am convinced,” interrupted the stranger.
+“Pray do not trouble to go into detail, Mrs. Pennycherry. With whatever
+it is I shall be content.”
+
+Mrs. Pennycherry, puzzled, shot a quick glance at the stranger, but his
+face, though the gentle eyes were smiling, was frank and serious.
+
+“At all events you will see the room,” suggested Mrs. Pennycherry,
+“before we discuss terms.”
+
+“Certainly,” agreed the stranger. “I am a little tired and shall be glad
+to rest there.”
+
+Mrs. Pennycherry led the way upward; on the landing of the third floor,
+paused a moment undecided, then opened the door of the back bedroom.
+
+“It is very comfortable,” commented the stranger.
+
+“For this room,” stated Mrs. Pennycherry, “together with full board,
+consisting of--”
+
+“Of everything needful. It goes without saying,” again interrupted the
+stranger with his quiet grave smile.
+
+“I have generally asked,” continued Mrs. Pennycherry, “four pounds a
+week. To you--” Mrs. Pennycherry’s voice, unknown to her, took to itself
+the note of aggressive generosity--“seeing you have been recommended
+here, say three pounds ten.”
+
+“Dear lady,” said the stranger, “that is kind of you. As you have
+divined, I am not a rich man. If it be not imposing upon you I accept
+your reduction with gratitude.”
+
+Again Mrs. Pennycherry, familiar with the satirical method, shot a
+suspicious glance upon the stranger, but not a line was there, upon
+that smooth fair face, to which a sneer could for a moment have clung.
+Clearly he was as simple as he looked.
+
+“Gas, of course, extra.”
+
+“Of course,” agreed the Stranger.
+
+“Coals--”
+
+“We shall not quarrel,” for a third time the stranger interrupted. “You
+have been very considerate to me as it is. I feel, Mrs. Pennycherry, I
+can leave myself entirely in your hands.”
+
+The stranger appeared anxious to be alone. Mrs. Pennycherry, having put
+a match to the stranger’s fire, turned to depart. And at this point it
+was that Mrs. Pennycherry, the holder hitherto of an unbroken record
+for sanity, behaved in a manner she herself, five minutes earlier in her
+career, would have deemed impossible--that no living soul who had ever
+known her would have believed, even had Mrs. Pennycherry gone down upon
+her knees and sworn it to them.
+
+“Did I say three pound ten?” demanded Mrs. Pennycherry of the stranger,
+her hand upon the door. She spoke crossly. She was feeling cross, with
+the stranger, with herself--particularly with herself.
+
+“You were kind enough to reduce it to that amount,” replied the
+stranger; “but if upon reflection you find yourself unable--”
+
+“I was making a mistake,” said Mrs. Pennycherry, “it should have been
+two pound ten.”
+
+“I cannot--I will not accept such sacrifice,” exclaimed the stranger;
+“the three pound ten I can well afford.”
+
+“Two pound ten are my terms,” snapped Mrs. Pennycherry. “If you are bent
+on paying more, you can go elsewhere. You’ll find plenty to oblige you.”
+
+Her vehemence must have impressed the stranger. “We will not contend
+further,” he smiled. “I was merely afraid that in the goodness of your
+heart--”
+
+“Oh, it isn’t as good as all that,” growled Mrs. Pennycherry.
+
+“I am not so sure,” returned the stranger. “I am somewhat suspicious of
+you. But wilful woman must, I suppose, have her way.”
+
+The stranger held out his hand, and to Mrs. Pennycherry, at that moment,
+it seemed the most natural thing in the world to take it as if it had
+been the hand of an old friend and to end the interview with a pleasant
+laugh--though laughing was an exercise not often indulged in by Mrs.
+Pennycherry.
+
+Mary Jane was standing by the window, her hands folded in front of her,
+when Mrs. Pennycherry re-entered the kitchen. By standing close to
+the window one caught a glimpse of the trees in Bloomsbury Square and
+through their bare branches of the sky beyond.
+
+“There’s nothing much to do for the next half hour, till Cook comes
+back. I’ll see to the door if you’d like a run out?” suggested Mrs.
+Pennycherry.
+
+“It would be nice,” agreed the girl so soon as she had recovered power
+of speech; “it’s just the time of day I like.”
+
+“Don’t be longer than the half hour,” added Mrs. Pennycherry.
+
+Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square, assembled after dinner in the
+drawing-room, discussed the stranger with that freedom and frankness
+characteristic of Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square, towards the absent.
+
+“Not what I call a smart young man,” was the opinion of Augustus
+Longcord, who was something in the City.
+
+“Thpeaking for mythelf,” commented his partner Isidore, “hav’n’th any
+uthe for the thmart young man. Too many of him, ath it ith.”
+
+“Must be pretty smart if he’s one too many for you,” laughed his
+partner.
+
+There was this to be said for the repartee of Forty-eight Bloomsbury
+Square: it was simple of construction and easy of comprehension.
+
+“Well it made me feel good just looking at him,” declared Miss Kite, the
+highly coloured. “It was his clothes, I suppose--made me think of Noah
+and the ark--all that sort of thing.”
+
+“It would be clothes that would make you think--if anything,” drawled
+the languid Miss Devine. She was a tall, handsome girl, engaged at the
+moment in futile efforts to recline with elegance and comfort combined
+upon a horsehair sofa. Miss Kite, by reason of having secured the only
+easy-chair, was unpopular that evening; so that Miss Devine’s remark
+received from the rest of the company more approbation than perhaps it
+merited.
+
+“Is that intended to be clever, dear, or only rude?” Miss Kite requested
+to be informed.
+
+“Both,” claimed Miss Devine.
+
+“Myself? I must confess,” shouted the tall young lady’s father, commonly
+called the Colonel, “I found him a fool.”
+
+“I noticed you seemed to be getting on very well together,” purred his
+wife, a plump, smiling little lady.
+
+“Possibly we were,” retorted the Colonel. “Fate has accustomed me to the
+society of fools.”
+
+“Isn’t it a pity to start quarrelling immediately after dinner, you
+two,” suggested their thoughtful daughter from the sofa, “you’ll have
+nothing left to amuse you for the rest of the evening.”
+
+“He didn’t strike me as a conversationalist,” said the lady who was
+cousin to a baronet; “but he did pass the vegetables before he helped
+himself. A little thing like that shows breeding.”
+
+“Or that he didn’t know you and thought maybe you’d leave him half a
+spoonful,” laughed Augustus the wit.
+
+“What I can’t make out about him--” shouted the Colonel.
+
+The stranger entered the room.
+
+The Colonel, securing the evening paper, retired into a corner. The
+highly coloured Kite, reaching down from the mantelpiece a paper fan,
+held it coyly before her face. Miss Devine sat upright on the horse-hair
+sofa, and rearranged her skirts.
+
+“Know anything?” demanded Augustus of the stranger, breaking the
+somewhat remarkable silence.
+
+The stranger evidently did not understand. It was necessary for
+Augustus, the witty, to advance further into that odd silence.
+
+“What’s going to pull off the Lincoln handicap? Tell me, and I’ll go out
+straight and put my shirt upon it.”
+
+“I think you would act unwisely,” smiled the stranger; “I am not an
+authority upon the subject.”
+
+“Not! Why they told me you were Captain Spy of the _Sporting Life_--in
+disguise.”
+
+It would have been difficult for a joke to fall more flat. Nobody
+laughed, though why Mr. Augustus Longcord could not understand, and
+maybe none of his audience could have told him, for at Forty-eight
+Bloomsbury Square Mr. Augustus Longcord passed as a humorist. The
+stranger himself appeared unaware that he was being made fun of.
+
+“You have been misinformed,” assured him the stranger.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Augustus Longcord.
+
+“It is nothing,” replied the stranger in his sweet low voice, and passed
+on.
+
+“Well what about this theatre,” demanded Mr. Longcord of his friend
+and partner; “do you want to go or don’t you?” Mr. Longcord was feeling
+irritable.
+
+“Goth the ticketh--may ath well,” thought Isidore.
+
+“Damn stupid piece, I’m told.”
+
+“Motht of them thupid, more or leth. Pity to wathte the ticketh,” argued
+Isidore, and the pair went out.
+
+“Are you staying long in London?” asked Miss Kite, raising her practised
+eyes towards the stranger.
+
+“Not long,” answered the stranger. “At least I do not know. It depends.”
+
+An unusual quiet had invaded the drawing-room of Forty-eight Bloomsbury
+Square, generally noisy with strident voices about this hour. The
+Colonel remained engrossed in his paper. Mrs. Devine sat with her plump
+white hands folded on her lap, whether asleep or not it was impossible
+to say. The lady who was cousin to a baronet had shifted her chair
+beneath the gasolier, her eyes bent on her everlasting crochet work. The
+languid Miss Devine had crossed to the piano, where she sat fingering
+softly the tuneless keys, her back to the cold barely-furnished room.
+
+“Sit down!” commanded saucily Miss Kite, indicating with her fan the
+vacant seat beside her. “Tell me about yourself. You interest me.” Miss
+Kite adopted a pretty authoritative air towards all youthful-looking
+members of the opposite sex. It harmonised with the peach complexion and
+the golden hair, and fitted her about as well.
+
+“I am glad of that,” answered the stranger, taking the chair suggested.
+“I so wish to interest you.”
+
+“You’re a very bold boy.” Miss Kite lowered her fan, for the purpose of
+glancing archly over the edge of it, and for the first time encountered
+the eyes of the stranger looking into hers. And then it was that Miss
+Kite experienced precisely the same curious sensation that an hour or so
+ago had troubled Mrs. Pennycherry when the stranger had first bowed to
+her. It seemed to Miss Kite that she was no longer the Miss Kite that,
+had she risen and looked into it, the fly-blown mirror over the marble
+mantelpiece would, she knew, have presented to her view; but quite
+another Miss Kite--a cheerful, bright-eyed lady verging on middle age,
+yet still good-looking in spite of her faded complexion and somewhat
+thin brown locks. Miss Kite felt a pang of jealousy shoot through her;
+this middle-aged Miss Kite seemed, on the whole, a more attractive
+lady. There was a wholesomeness, a broadmindedness about her that
+instinctively drew one towards her. Not hampered, as Miss Kite herself
+was, by the necessity of appearing to be somewhere between eighteen and
+twenty-two, this other Miss Kite could talk sensibly, even brilliantly:
+one felt it. A thoroughly “nice” woman this other Miss Kite; the real
+Miss Kite, though envious, was bound to admit it. Miss Kite wished to
+goodness she had never seen the woman. The glimpse of her had rendered
+Miss Kite dissatisfied with herself.
+
+“I am not a boy,” explained the stranger; “and I had no intention of
+being bold.”
+
+“I know,” replied Miss Kite. “It was a silly remark. Whatever induced me
+to make it, I can’t think. Getting foolish in my old age, I suppose.”
+
+The stranger laughed. “Surely you are not old.”
+
+“I’m thirty-nine,” snapped out Miss Kite. “You don’t call it young?”
+
+“I think it a beautiful age,” insisted the stranger; “young enough not
+to have lost the joy of youth, old enough to have learnt sympathy.”
+
+“Oh, I daresay,” returned Miss Kite, “any age you’d think beautiful.
+I’m going to bed.” Miss Kite rose. The paper fan had somehow got itself
+broken. She threw the fragments into the fire.
+
+“It is early yet,” pleaded the stranger, “I was looking forward to a
+talk with you.”
+
+“Well, you’ll be able to look forward to it,” retorted Miss Kite.
+“Good-night.”
+
+The truth was, Miss Kite was impatient to have a look at herself in the
+glass, in her own room with the door shut. The vision of that other Miss
+Kite--the clean-looking lady of the pale face and the brown hair had
+been so vivid, Miss Kite wondered whether temporary forgetfulness might
+not have fallen upon her while dressing for dinner that evening.
+
+The stranger, left to his own devices, strolled towards the loo table,
+seeking something to read.
+
+“You seem to have frightened away Miss Kite,” remarked the lady who was
+cousin to a baronet.
+
+“It seems so,” admitted the stranger.
+
+“My cousin, Sir William Bosster,” observed the crocheting lady, “who
+married old Lord Egham’s niece--you never met the Eghams?”
+
+“Hitherto,” replied the stranger, “I have not had that pleasure.”
+
+“A charming family. Cannot understand--my cousin Sir William, I mean,
+cannot understand my remaining here. ‘My dear Emily’--he says the same
+thing every time he sees me: ‘My dear Emily, how can you exist among the
+sort of people one meets with in a boarding-house.’ But they amuse me.”
+
+A sense of humour, agreed the stranger, was always of advantage.
+
+“Our family on my mother’s side,” continued Sir William’s cousin in her
+placid monotone, “was connected with the Tatton-Joneses, who when King
+George the Fourth--” Sir William’s cousin, needing another reel of
+cotton, glanced up, and met the stranger’s gaze.
+
+“I’m sure I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” said Sir William’s
+cousin in an irritable tone. “It can’t possibly interest you.”
+
+“Everything connected with you interests me,” gravely the stranger
+assured her.
+
+“It is very kind of you to say so,” sighed Sir William’s cousin, but
+without conviction; “I am afraid sometimes I bore people.”
+
+The polite stranger refrained from contradiction.
+
+“You see,” continued the poor lady, “I really am of good family.”
+
+“Dear lady,” said the stranger, “your gentle face, your gentle voice,
+your gentle bearing, all proclaim it.”
+
+She looked without flinching into the stranger’s eyes, and gradually a
+smile banished the reigning dulness of her features.
+
+“How foolish of me.” She spoke rather to herself than to the stranger.
+“Why, of course, people--people whose opinion is worth troubling
+about--judge of you by what you are, not by what you go about saying you
+are.”
+
+The stranger remained silent.
+
+“I am the widow of a provincial doctor, with an income of just two
+hundred and thirty pounds per annum,” she argued. “The sensible thing
+for me to do is to make the best of it, and to worry myself about these
+high and mighty relations of mine as little as they have ever worried
+themselves about me.”
+
+The stranger appeared unable to think of anything worth saying.
+
+“I have other connections,” remembered Sir William’s cousin; “those of
+my poor husband, to whom instead of being the ‘poor relation’ I could
+be the fairy god-mama. They are my people--or would be,” added Sir
+William’s cousin tartly, “if I wasn’t a vulgar snob.”
+
+She flushed the instant she had said the words and, rising, commenced
+preparations for a hurried departure.
+
+“Now it seems I am driving you away,” sighed the stranger.
+
+“Having been called a ‘vulgar snob,’” retorted the lady with some heat,
+“I think it about time I went.”
+
+“The words were your own,” the stranger reminded her.
+
+“Whatever I may have thought,” remarked the indignant dame, “no
+lady--least of all in the presence of a total stranger--would have
+called herself--” The poor dame paused, bewildered. “There is something
+very curious the matter with me this evening, that I cannot understand,”
+ she explained, “I seem quite unable to avoid insulting myself.”
+
+Still surrounded by bewilderment, she wished the stranger good-night,
+hoping that when next they met she would be more herself. The stranger,
+hoping so also, opened the door and closed it again behind her.
+
+“Tell me,” laughed Miss Devine, who by sheer force of talent was
+contriving to wring harmony from the reluctant piano, “how did you
+manage to do it? I should like to know.”
+
+“How did I do what?” inquired the stranger.
+
+“Contrive to get rid so quickly of those two old frumps?”
+
+“How well you play!” observed the stranger. “I knew you had genius for
+music the moment I saw you.”
+
+“How could you tell?”
+
+“It is written so clearly in your face.”
+
+The girl laughed, well pleased. “You seem to have lost no time in
+studying my face.”
+
+“It is a beautiful and interesting face,” observed the stranger.
+
+She swung round sharply on the stool and their eyes met.
+
+“You can read faces?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Tell me, what else do you read in mine?”
+
+“Frankness, courage--”
+
+“Ah, yes, all the virtues. Perhaps. We will take them for granted.” It
+was odd how serious the girl had suddenly become. “Tell me the reverse
+side.”
+
+“I see no reverse side,” replied the stranger. “I see but a fair girl,
+bursting into noble womanhood.”
+
+“And nothing else? You read no trace of greed, of vanity, of sordidness,
+of--” An angry laugh escaped her lips. “And you are a reader of faces!”
+
+“A reader of faces.” The stranger smiled. “Do you know what is written
+upon yours at this very moment? A love of truth that is almost fierce,
+scorn of lies, scorn of hypocrisy, the desire for all things pure,
+contempt of all things that are contemptible--especially of such things
+as are contemptible in woman. Tell me, do I not read aright?”
+
+I wonder, thought the girl, is that why those two others both hurried
+from the room? Does everyone feel ashamed of the littleness that is in
+them when looked at by those clear, believing eyes of yours?
+
+The idea occurred to her: “Papa seemed to have a good deal to say to you
+during dinner. Tell me, what were you talking about?”
+
+“The military looking gentleman upon my left? We talked about your
+mother principally.”
+
+“I am sorry,” returned the girl, wishful now she had not asked the
+question. “I was hoping he might have chosen another topic for the first
+evening!”
+
+“He did try one or two,” admitted the stranger; “but I have been about
+the world so little, I was glad when he talked to me about himself. I
+feel we shall be friends. He spoke so nicely, too, about Mrs. Devine.”
+
+“Indeed,” commented the girl.
+
+“He told me he had been married for twenty years and had never regretted
+it but once!”
+
+Her black eyes flashed upon him, but meeting his, the suspicion died
+from them. She turned aside to hide her smile.
+
+“So he regretted it--once.”
+
+“Only once,” explained the stranger, “in a passing irritable mood. It
+was so frank of him to admit it. He told me--I think he has taken a
+liking to me. Indeed he hinted as much. He said he did not often get an
+opportunity of talking to a man like myself--he told me that he and your
+mother, when they travel together, are always mistaken for a honeymoon
+couple. Some of the experiences he related to me were really quite
+amusing.” The stranger laughed at recollection of them--“that even here,
+in this place, they are generally referred to as ‘Darby and Joan.’”
+
+“Yes,” said the girl, “that is true. Mr. Longcord gave them that name,
+the second evening after our arrival. It was considered clever--but
+rather obvious I thought myself.”
+
+“Nothing--so it seems to me,” said the stranger, “is more beautiful
+than the love that has weathered the storms of life. The sweet, tender
+blossom that flowers in the heart of the young--in hearts such as
+yours--that, too, is beautiful. The love of the young for the young,
+that is the beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that
+is the beginning of--of things longer.”
+
+“You seem to find all things beautiful,” the girl grumbled.
+
+“But are not all things beautiful?” demanded the stranger.
+
+The Colonel had finished his paper. “You two are engaged in a very
+absorbing conversation,” observed the Colonel, approaching them.
+
+“We were discussing Darbies and Joans,” explained his daughter. “How
+beautiful is the love that has weathered the storms of life!”
+
+“Ah!” smiled the Colonel, “that is hardly fair. My friend has been
+repeating to cynical youth the confessions of an amorous husband’s
+affection for his middle-aged and somewhat--” The Colonel in playful
+mood laid his hand upon the stranger’s shoulder, an action that
+necessitated his looking straight into the stranger’s eyes. The Colonel
+drew himself up stiffly and turned scarlet.
+
+Somebody was calling the Colonel a cad. Not only that, but was
+explaining quite clearly, so that the Colonel could see it for himself,
+why he was a cad.
+
+“That you and your wife lead a cat and dog existence is a disgrace to
+both of you. At least you might have the decency to try and hide it from
+the world--not make a jest of your shame to every passing stranger. You
+are a cad, sir, a cad!”
+
+Who was daring to say these things? Not the stranger, his lips had not
+moved. Besides, it was not his voice. Indeed it sounded much more like
+the voice of the Colonel himself. The Colonel looked from the stranger
+to his daughter, from his daughter back to the stranger. Clearly they
+had not heard the voice--a mere hallucination. The Colonel breathed
+again.
+
+Yet the impression remaining was not to be shaken off. Undoubtedly it
+was bad taste to have joked to the stranger upon such a subject. No
+gentleman would have done so.
+
+But then no gentleman would have permitted such a jest to be possible.
+No gentleman would be forever wrangling with his wife--certainly
+never in public. However irritating the woman, a gentleman would have
+exercised self-control.
+
+Mrs. Devine had risen, was coming slowly across the room. Fear laid
+hold of the Colonel. She was going to address some aggravating remark
+to him--he could see it in her eye--which would irritate him into savage
+retort.
+
+Even this prize idiot of a stranger would understand why boarding-house
+wits had dubbed them “Darby and Joan,” would grasp the fact that the
+gallant Colonel had thought it amusing, in conversation with a table
+acquaintance, to hold his own wife up to ridicule.
+
+“My dear,” cried the Colonel, hurrying to speak first, “does not this
+room strike you as cold? Let me fetch you a shawl.”
+
+It was useless: the Colonel felt it. It had been too long the custom of
+both of them to preface with politeness their deadliest insults to each
+other. She came on, thinking of a suitable reply: suitable from her
+point of view, that is. In another moment the truth would be out. A
+wild, fantastic possibility flashed through the Colonel’s brain: If to
+him, why not to her?
+
+“Letitia,” cried the Colonel, and the tone of his voice surprised her
+into silence, “I want you to look closely at our friend. Does he not
+remind you of someone?”
+
+Mrs. Devine, so urged, looked at the stranger long and hard. “Yes,” she
+murmured, turning to her husband, “he does, who is it?”
+
+“I cannot fix it,” replied the Colonel; “I thought that maybe you would
+remember.”
+
+“It will come to me,” mused Mrs. Devine. “It is someone--years ago,
+when I was a girl--in Devonshire. Thank you, if it isn’t troubling you,
+Harry. I left it in the dining-room.”
+
+It was, as Mr. Augustus Longcord explained to his partner Isidore,
+the colossal foolishness of the stranger that was the cause of all the
+trouble. “Give me a man, who can take care of himself--or thinks he
+can,” declared Augustus Longcord, “and I am prepared to give a good
+account of myself. But when a helpless baby refuses even to look at what
+you call your figures, tells you that your mere word is sufficient for
+him, and hands you over his cheque-book to fill up for yourself--well,
+it isn’t playing the game.”
+
+“Auguthuth,” was the curt comment of his partner, “you’re a fool.”
+
+“All right, my boy, you try,” suggested Augustus.
+
+“Jutht what I mean to do,” asserted his partner.
+
+“Well,” demanded Augustus one evening later, meeting Isidore ascending
+the stairs after a long talk with the stranger in the dining-room with
+the door shut.
+
+“Oh, don’t arth me,” retorted Isidore, “thilly ath, thath what he ith.”
+
+“What did he say?”
+
+“What did he thay! talked about the Jewth: what a grand rathe they
+were--how people mithjudged them: all that thort of rot.
+
+“Thaid thome of the motht honorable men he had ever met had been Jewth.
+Thought I wath one of ‘em!”
+
+“Well, did you get anything out of him?”
+
+“Get anything out of him. Of courthe not. Couldn’t very well thell the
+whole rathe, ath it were, for a couple of hundred poundth, after that.
+Didn’t theem worth it.”
+
+There were many things Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square came gradually
+to the conclusion were not worth the doing:--Snatching at the gravy;
+pouncing out of one’s turn upon the vegetables and helping oneself to
+more than one’s fair share; manoeuvering for the easy-chair; sitting on
+the evening paper while pretending not to have seen it--all such-like
+tiresome bits of business. For the little one made out of it, really
+it was not worth the bother. Grumbling everlastingly at one’s food;
+grumbling everlastingly at most things; abusing Pennycherry behind her
+back; abusing, for a change, one’s fellow-boarders; squabbling with
+one’s fellow-boarders about nothing in particular; sneering at one’s
+fellow-boarders; talking scandal of one’s fellow-boarders; making
+senseless jokes about one’s fellow-boarders; talking big about oneself,
+nobody believing one--all such-like vulgarities. Other boarding-houses
+might indulge in them: Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square had its dignity to
+consider.
+
+The truth is, Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square was coming to a very good
+opinion of itself: for the which not Bloomsbury Square so much as
+the stranger must be blamed. The stranger had arrived at Forty-eight
+Bloomsbury Square with the preconceived idea--where obtained from
+Heaven knows--that its seemingly commonplace, mean-minded, coarse-fibred
+occupants were in reality ladies and gentlemen of the first water; and
+time and observation had apparently only strengthened this absurd idea.
+The natural result was, Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square was coming round
+to the stranger’s opinion of itself.
+
+Mrs. Pennycherry, the stranger would persist in regarding as a lady born
+and bred, compelled by circumstances over which she had no control to
+fill an arduous but honorable position of middle-class society--a sort
+of foster-mother, to whom were due the thanks and gratitude of her
+promiscuous family; and this view of herself Mrs. Pennycherry now clung
+to with obstinate conviction. There were disadvantages attaching, but
+these Mrs. Pennycherry appeared prepared to suffer cheerfully. A lady
+born and bred cannot charge other ladies and gentlemen for coals and
+candles they have never burnt; a foster-mother cannot palm off upon her
+children New Zealand mutton for Southdown. A mere lodging-house-keeper
+can play these tricks, and pocket the profits. But a lady feels she
+cannot: Mrs. Pennycherry felt she no longer could.
+
+To the stranger Miss Kite was a witty and delightful conversationalist
+of most attractive personality. Miss Kite had one failing: it was lack
+of vanity. She was unaware of her own delicate and refined beauty. If
+Miss Kite could only see herself with his, the stranger’s eyes, the
+modesty that rendered her distrustful of her natural charms would fall
+from her. The stranger was so sure of it Miss Kite determined to put
+it to the test. One evening, an hour before dinner, there entered the
+drawing-room, when the stranger only was there and before the gas
+was lighted, a pleasant, good-looking lady, somewhat pale, with
+neatly-arranged brown hair, who demanded of the stranger if he knew her.
+All her body was trembling, and her voice seemed inclined to run away
+from her and become a sob. But when the stranger, looking straight into
+her eyes, told her that from the likeness he thought she must be Miss
+Kite’s younger sister, but much prettier, it became a laugh instead: and
+that evening the golden-haired Miss Kite disappeared never to show her
+high-coloured face again; and what perhaps, more than all else, might
+have impressed some former habitue of Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square
+with awe, it was that no one in the house made even a passing inquiry
+concerning her.
+
+Sir William’s cousin the stranger thought an acquisition to any
+boarding-house. A lady of high-class family! There was nothing outward
+or visible perhaps to tell you that she was of high-class family. She
+herself, naturally, would not mention the fact, yet somehow you felt
+it. Unconsciously she set a high-class tone, diffused an atmosphere of
+gentle manners. Not that the stranger had said this in so many words;
+Sir William’s cousin gathered that he thought it, and felt herself in
+agreement with him.
+
+For Mr. Longcord and his partner, as representatives of the best type
+of business men, the stranger had a great respect. With what unfortunate
+results to themselves has been noted. The curious thing is that the Firm
+appeared content with the price they had paid for the stranger’s good
+opinion--had even, it was rumoured, acquired a taste for honest men’s
+respect--that in the long run was likely to cost them dear. But we all
+have our pet extravagance.
+
+The Colonel and Mrs. Devine both suffered a good deal at first from
+the necessity imposed upon them of learning, somewhat late in life, new
+tricks. In the privacy of their own apartment they condoled with one
+another.
+
+“Tomfool nonsense,” grumbled the Colonel, “you and I starting billing
+and cooing at our age!”
+
+“What I object to,” said Mrs. Devine, “is the feeling that somehow I am
+being made to do it.”
+
+“The idea that a man and his wife cannot have their little joke together
+for fear of what some impertinent jackanapes may think of them! it’s
+damn ridiculous,” the Colonel exploded.
+
+“Even when he isn’t there,” said Mrs. Devine, “I seem to see him looking
+at me with those vexing eyes of his. Really the man quite haunts me.”
+
+“I have met him somewhere,” mused the Colonel, “I’ll swear I’ve met him
+somewhere. I wish to goodness he would go.”
+
+A hundred things a day the Colonel wanted to say to Mrs. Devine, a
+hundred things a day Mrs. Devine would have liked to observe to the
+Colonel. But by the time the opportunity occurred--when nobody else was
+by to hear--all interest in saying them was gone.
+
+“Women will be women,” was the sentiment with which the Colonel consoled
+himself. “A man must bear with them--must never forget that he is a
+gentleman.”
+
+“Oh, well, I suppose they’re all alike,” laughed Mrs. Devine to herself,
+having arrived at that stage of despair when one seeks refuge in
+cheerfulness. “What’s the use of putting oneself out--it does no good,
+and only upsets one.” There is a certain satisfaction in feeling you
+are bearing with heroic resignation the irritating follies of
+others. Colonel and Mrs. Devine came to enjoy the luxury of much
+self-approbation.
+
+But the person seriously annoyed by the stranger’s bigoted belief in
+the innate goodness of everyone he came across was the languid,
+handsome Miss Devine. The stranger would have it that Miss Devine was a
+noble-souled, high-minded young woman, something midway between a Flora
+Macdonald and a Joan of Arc. Miss Devine, on the contrary, knew herself
+to be a sleek, luxury-loving animal, quite willing to sell herself to
+the bidder who could offer her the finest clothes, the richest foods,
+the most sumptuous surroundings. Such a bidder was to hand in the person
+of a retired bookmaker, a somewhat greasy old gentleman, but exceedingly
+rich and undoubtedly fond of her.
+
+Miss Devine, having made up her mind that the thing had got to be done,
+was anxious that it should be done quickly. And here it was that
+the stranger’s ridiculous opinion of her not only irritated but
+inconvenienced her. Under the very eyes of a person--however
+foolish--convinced that you are possessed of all the highest attributes
+of your sex, it is difficult to behave as though actuated by only the
+basest motives. A dozen times had Miss Devine determined to end the
+matter by formal acceptance of her elderly admirer’s large and flabby
+hand, and a dozen times--the vision intervening of the stranger’s grave,
+believing eyes--had Miss Devine refused decided answer. The stranger
+would one day depart. Indeed, he had told her himself, he was but a
+passing traveller. When he was gone it would be easier. So she thought
+at the time.
+
+One afternoon the stranger entered the room where she was standing
+by the window, looking out upon the bare branches of the trees in
+Bloomsbury Square. She remembered afterwards, it was just such another
+foggy afternoon as the afternoon of the stranger’s arrival three months
+before. No one else was in the room. The stranger closed the door, and
+came towards her with that curious, quick-leaping step of his. His long
+coat was tightly buttoned, and in his hands he carried his old felt hat
+and the massive knotted stick that was almost a staff.
+
+“I have come to say good-bye,” explained the stranger. “I am going.”
+
+“I shall not see you again?” asked the girl.
+
+“I cannot say,” replied the stranger. “But you will think of me?”
+
+“Yes,” she answered with a smile, “I can promise that.”
+
+“And I shall always remember you,” promised the stranger, “and I wish
+you every joy--the joy of love, the joy of a happy marriage.”
+
+The girl winced. “Love and marriage are not always the same thing,” she
+said.
+
+“Not always,” agreed the stranger, “but in your case they will be one.”
+
+She looked at him.
+
+“Do you think I have not noticed?” smiled the stranger, “a gallant,
+handsome lad, and clever. You love him and he loves you. I could not
+have gone away without knowing it was well with you.”
+
+Her gaze wandered towards the fading light.
+
+“Ah, yes, I love him,” she answered petulantly. “Your eyes can see
+clearly enough, when they want to. But one does not live on love, in our
+world. I will tell you the man I am going to marry if you care to know.”
+ She would not meet his eyes. She kept her gaze still fixed upon the
+dingy trees, the mist beyond, and spoke rapidly and vehemently: “The man
+who can give me all my soul’s desire--money and the things that money
+can buy. You think me a woman, I’m only a pig. He is moist, and breathes
+like a porpoise; with cunning in place of a brain, and the rest of him
+mere stomach. But he is good enough for me.”
+
+She hoped this would shock the stranger and that now, perhaps, he would
+go. It irritated her to hear him only laugh.
+
+“No,” he said, “you will not marry him.”
+
+“Who will stop me?” she cried angrily.
+
+“Your Better Self.”
+
+His voice had a strange ring of authority, compelling her to turn and
+look upon his face. Yes, it was true, the fancy that from the very
+first had haunted her. She had met him, talked to him--in silent country
+roads, in crowded city streets, where was it? And always in talking
+with him her spirit had been lifted up: she had been--what he had always
+thought her.
+
+“There are those,” continued the stranger (and for the first time she
+saw that he was of a noble presence, that his gentle, child-like eyes
+could also command), “whose Better Self lies slain by their own hand
+and troubles them no more. But yours, my child, you have let grow too
+strong; it will ever be your master. You must obey. Flee from it and it
+will follow you; you cannot escape it. Insult it and it will chastise
+you with burning shame, with stinging self-reproach from day to day.”
+ The sternness faded from the beautiful face, the tenderness crept back.
+He laid his hand upon the young girl’s shoulder. “You will marry your
+lover,” he smiled. “With him you will walk the way of sunlight and of
+shadow.”
+
+And the girl, looking up into the strong, calm face, knew that it would
+be so, that the power of resisting her Better Self had passed away from
+her for ever.
+
+“Now,” said the stranger, “come to the door with me. Leave-takings
+are but wasted sadness. Let me pass out quietly. Close the door softly
+behind me.”
+
+She thought that perhaps he would turn his face again, but she saw
+no more of him than the odd roundness of his back under the tightly
+buttoned coat, before he faded into the gathering fog.
+
+Then softly she closed the door.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 865 ***