The ITORLD of 
 WONDERFUL REALITY
 
 Books By E. Temple Thurston 
 
 The City of Beautiful Nonsense 
 
 The World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 Enchantment 
 
 The Five-Barred Gate 
 
 The Passionate Crime 
 
 Achievement 
 
 Richard Furlong 
 
 The Antagonists 
 
 The Open Window 
 
 The Apple of Eden 
 
 Traffic 
 
 The Realist 
 
 The Evolution of Katherine 
 
 Mirage 
 
 Sally Bishop 
 
 The Greatest Wish in the World 
 
 The Patchwork Papers 
 
 The Garden of Resurrection 
 
 The Flower of Gloster 
 
 Thirteen 
 
 l80-D
 
 Th ^WORLD of 
 WONDERFUL 
 REALITY 
 
 BY 
 
 It ^ 
 
 !' turn 
 
 \l 
 
 E. TEMPLE THURSTON 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "THE CITY or BEAUTIFUL NONSENSE" 
 
 I 1 
 
 D.APPLETONAND COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 1919
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 FEINTED IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 To 
 
 MY WIFE 
 
 2227312
 
 MY DEAR, 
 
 Ten years have raced and lingered since first I began in my 
 small room over the tobacconist's shop to write "The City of 
 Beautiful Nonsense." We have seen many sized rooms since 
 then and doubtless have learnt much of each other in many 
 dwelling places. If I have learnt anything it might be phrased 
 something like this it is the occupancy that makes the room 
 the company that makes the road. So let me thank you here 
 for every single year of that ten. 
 
 Yours always, 
 
 E. T. T. 
 
 Vll
 
 Whatever company I take, 
 
 Whatever highway I am shown* 
 
 By night-time or at morning-break 
 It is my charge to walk alone. 
 
 Whatever friend stretch out his hand, 
 Whatever love the bolt unbars, 
 
 I wander in a foreign land 
 
 Between the furrow and the stars. 
 
 Whatever hands shall make my bed, 
 Whatever beck'ning voices cry, 
 
 The more let me hold up my head 
 When I go out alone to die. 
 
 viii
 
 AUTHOR'S NOTE 
 
 It is now more than ten years ago that "The City 
 of Beautiful Nonsense" was written, and much water 
 has flowed under the bridges since then. Many 
 times in the last six of those ten years I have been 
 urged to write a sequel to that story. There was an 
 inconclusiveness about its ending I was told, which, 
 while it may have completed the color in its texture 
 of romance, still left threads for raveling which I 
 had not attempted to secure. Jill Dealtry in the 
 emotion that came to her at the death-bed of Thomas 
 Grey, had given her heart and her life to John. Love, 
 there on the Venice lagoon, had made its conquest 
 over expediency. She had put aside all thought of 
 the marriage of convenience with her father's friend. 
 In that atmosphere of Romance, love and all the 
 glamour of life were triumphant. 
 
 Perhaps that was the secret of the book's success 
 with the public. It must be true of people in gen- 
 eral that they love to dream a moment in a sleepless 
 world they need at times to get away from the in- 
 somnia of facts. I feel confident that the majority 
 of people reading "The City of Beautiful Nonsense" 
 had little desire when the book was finished to know 
 how John Grey in his two rooms in Fetter Lane and 
 living, as the poor do, by the grace of mercy of the 
 pawn-shop was going to keep a wife. I am sure they 
 did not worry their heads about it. They read it as 
 
 iz
 
 x Author s Note 
 
 a dream, and they accepted it as a dream, and as a 
 dream it was worth while to just so many as it 
 brought the consolation of sleep. 
 
 There must as well have been a great many people 
 who disliked "The City of Beautiful Nonsense." To 
 many, from the first page to the last, it had not the 
 faintest conception of reality, and indeed has earned 
 for me the classification of sentimentalist. I have no 
 more reason to complain of that than would another 
 have, if with persistent indiscrimination, he were 
 always called a realist. 
 
 A great friend of mine an author whose work I 
 admire more than that of any other writer to-day 
 has expressed much the same opinion about "The 
 City of Beautiful Nonsense" to me. He has no 
 sympathy with the book. The absence of reality in 
 its conception offends the deepest purpose in his soul, 
 but being no hand myself at explanation by word of 
 mouth, he remains in ignorance of the deepest pur- 
 pose in mine. 
 
 I realize now then that what I am writing is 
 neither more nor less than that explanation I have 
 withheld. Being a real friend, he can tell me he dis- 
 likes the book, and, being sure of his honesty, I can 
 be sincerely glad of a genuine opinion. For I realize 
 that the same opinion is in the minds of a good many 
 people who have not the advantages of friendship 
 to give it words. 
 
 To begin with, then, "The City of Beautiful Non- 
 sense" was never meant to touch reality in the sense 
 of such things as happen in a work-a-day world. 
 John Grey, however real he may be in his peregrina-
 
 Author s Note xi 
 
 tions between Kensington Gardens, the pawn-shop 
 and Fetter Lane, is intended to symbolize in the 
 attitude of his mind those dreams and visions whose 
 substance is much of that which is to be found in a 
 prayer. 
 
 I believe that all people pray, whether it be while 
 they are having a hot bath in the morning, or when 
 they stand in the midst of the barbaric solemnity of 
 the duomo of Venice. Prayer is inevitable, and with 
 prayer go all those dreams and visions by whose 
 agency we see the world just a little better than in a 
 distressing moment it happens to appear to be. 
 
 That whole story of John Grey's love affair with 
 Jill Dealtry is intentionally a symbol of the power 
 of vision, the susceptibility to dreams, which carries 
 so many with a look of youth in the eyes through to 
 the ultimate deliverance. 
 
 This is the meaning, as I purposed it, of "The 
 City of Beautiful Nonsense." This is why it seems 
 to me many have cared for the book. This is why 
 many more have objected to it, because they found 
 themselves sufficiently confident in their world to dis- 
 pense with the efficacy of prayer, the magic of 
 dreams or the virtue of visions. 
 
 To write a sequel, then, to a story with that inten- 
 tion was something like purposing to go to sleep in 
 the hope of repeating a dream that once had come to 
 you with a sense of joy. I felt it was impossible to 
 do it, and for three or four years resisted all sug- 
 gestions that I should make the attempt. The War, 
 however, has brought us different points of view, 
 different ranges of perspective. In the last two years
 
 xii Author's Note 
 
 I have felt, not only that it could be done, but that 
 I wanted to do it in order to achieve a sense of com- 
 pletion. 
 
 Dreams, in their intangible way, are real things. 
 They have a meaning in our lives, however elusive 
 that meaning may be. I had always felt that and 
 had wished to leave the dream of "The City of 
 Beautiful Nonsense" where it was, untouched and 
 undisturbed. And then, some one day or another, 
 I found the realization in my mind that the meaning 
 of a dream is never apparent till one wakes up. Once 
 I had thought that, the purpose of a sequel became 
 a tangible business. Could I wake up my John Grey 
 and still keep a sense of beauty in the meaning of 
 his dream? Could I wake him up to reality with- 
 out shattering the substance of his vision? Could I 
 break his heart beneath the weight of things that 
 happen without destroying his belief in prayer? 
 
 I felt if I could do that, then I could write a sequel, 
 and so I began, with what result is to be found in 
 the pages that follow. 
 
 Without prejudice, I think I can say there is no 
 difference in the atmosphere or treatment of the two 
 stories. All that differs is the purpose, which in this 
 volume is to give to a dream its link with reality. 
 
 An author's vision of his work is necessarily 
 strained, somewhat shortsighted and a prey to his 
 emotions about it. I have not the faintest idea 
 whether I have succeeded or failed in my purpose. 
 All I am certain of is the intention which I have set 
 out in these pages. 
 
 THE AUTHOR.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE WORLD OF WONDERFUL REALITY . . . I 
 
 II. THE CIRCUS RING 8 
 
 III. LE PAUVRE MONSIEUR 16 
 
 IV. TOURNEDOS AND OMELETTE 24 
 
 V. OLD TIMES 32 
 
 VL WHERE TO Go FOR A HONEYMOON .... 37 
 
 VII. PIED PIPER AND VAGABOND 45 
 
 VIII. THE ANSWER TO A PRAYER 52 
 
 IX. A CLEAN BREAST OF IT 60 
 
 X. HAVING A DREAM 68 
 
 XL THE BIRD IN THE NET 74 
 
 XII. THE Zoo 83 
 
 XIII. THE WINDOW THAT Is CLOSED 92 
 
 XIV. ASSESSING THE INCOME OF AN AUTHOR . ' . . 100 
 XV. THE HUMAN ANIMAL 109 
 
 XVI. A BY-PRODUCT OF ADVICE 116 
 
 XVII. A CONFESSION 125 
 
 XVIII. SHOWERS AND BLOWERS 132 
 
 XIX. AN ENGAGEMENT TO EAT A HAT 138 
 
 XX. A PRELUDE TO A FAMILY 147 
 
 XXI. THE BLOTTING-PAPER PROCESS 159 
 
 XXII. A PASSING MEMORY OF THE LAWYER'S CLERK . 164 
 
 XXIIL A YOUNG JOHN 165 
 
 XXIV. MRS. ROWSE REPORTS A CASE BEFORE THE . 
 
 MAGISTRATE 169 
 
 XXV. A MERE COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION .... 178 
 
 XXVI. PEEPING TOM 184
 
 xiv Contents 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XXVII. THE RELEASE 191 
 
 XXVIII. A MATTER OF HONESTY 198 
 
 XXIX. BIRTHS, DEATHS AND MARRIAGES .... 202 
 
 XXX. SELECTING A WITNESS 206 
 
 XXXI. A CHAPTER FOR THOSE WHO LOITER . . . 214 
 XXXII. INTRODUCING A PHILOSOPHER 216 
 
 XXXIII. LIFE'S LITTLE AWKWARDNESSES .... 220 
 
 XXXIV. A REVELATION IN ATMOSPHERE .... 225 
 XXXV. BEING A MILLIONAIRE 235 
 
 XXXVI. A FITTING FOR A RING 245 
 
 XXXVII. PRELUDE TO A REHEARSAL 248 
 
 XXXVIII. COSTUMES FOR THE PART 251 
 
 XXXIX. THE WARDROBE 253 
 
 XL. DRESS REHEARSAL . . . . . . . . 260 
 
 XLI. LUNCH AT WRIGGLESWORTH'S 264 
 
 XLII. A CONSULTATION WITH MARGARET . . .271 
 
 XLIII. THE PRIMITIVE INSTINCT 276 
 
 XLIV. CHARLES HENRY QUIRK & Co 289 
 
 XLV. GOLDSMITH'S GRAVE 296 
 
 XLVI. AN EXERCISE IN MENTAL OCCUPATION . . 305 
 XLVII. JACK OF CLUBS AND QUEEN OF HEARTS . .310 
 
 XLVIII. THE SOUND OF PENNIES 31? 
 
 XLIX. THE REST HOUSE 331
 
 The WORLD of 
 WONDERFUL REALITY
 
 Chapter I: The World of Wonderful 
 Reality 
 
 IN a work-a-day world, you must contrive your 
 City of Beautiful Nonsense out of just that 
 material which is indigenous to the soil of your 
 environment. Where in Venice they built in marble 
 and burnished it all gold with the liquid glory of 
 the Italian sun, in London we build in brick and 
 stone and blacken it with all the falling soots of 
 heaven. 
 
 Of such matters of necessity, there is only this to 
 be said that gold of Venice may sometimes seem 
 a tawdry gilt while all the blackened stones and 
 bricks of London can steal a glow of pearl out of 
 the misty sky; can wear a bloom of azure gray that 
 makes it seem in dingy streets as if the feet of 
 God were walking only distant by a web of smoke. 
 
 It all lies in the eyes that forever must look up 
 and down, up and down, until they need and earn 
 their sleep. 
 
 And last of all for like the clergyman with his 
 sermon, no less than the woman with her postscript, 
 there is always some matter of importance to be 
 divulged as soon as ever the last word be given 
 last of all it must be explained that the City of 
 Beautiful Nonsense is no other than that native town, 
 wherein is kept the registration of your birthright.
 
 2 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 You move your dwelling place. Again and again 
 you move. But still after years and years, in one 
 amongst a row of volumes on the shelf in the vestry 
 of your parish church, there is inscribed the record 
 of your birthright, wherein is sealed your claim to 
 all the beauties of earth and sky. 
 
 You, born in all your nakedness, with perhaps 
 one width of your mother's flannel petticoat for 
 your swaddling clothes, a leaking roof in the slummy 
 outskirts of the town to shelter your head, the 
 parish pump at which to wash your face, have yet 
 that right to all the beauties of the sun at morn- 
 ing as it comes above the world, of the sun no less 
 at evening when it falls below the earth. 
 
 You are as rich in your heart as the heir to 
 kingdoms is rich in pocket. For while, as it may 
 be said, you are born to sorrow as the sparks fly 
 upwards, it is that sorrow of forgetting your native 
 town, forgetting that birthright of your riches which 
 is written in the dusty book. It is the sorrow of 
 that tendency of man to close the gates of his birth- 
 place as he sets forth into the, world and to lock 
 himself out forever. 
 
 I know a man who, hearing the sound of cow- 
 bells in the Swiss valleys, bought some for himself 
 and brought them home that he might tinkle them 
 on dreary days and think of the sunrise warm on 
 the mountain snow, of the valleys green with their 
 luscious grass. 
 
 It occurred to him after a while how poor a 
 substitute for the sound it was to shake them in 
 his hand himself, wherefore he conceived the idea
 
 World of Wonderful Reality 3 
 
 of having a cow of his own and attaching the bell 
 to her neck. Though he had four acres of paddock 
 land with his little cottage in the country, this idea 
 had never appealed to him before. It was the bells 
 that had suggested it. The next Saturday, in the 
 nearest market place, he bought a Guernsey cow. 
 
 On summer evenings he would lie in bed, those 
 moments before sleep when all the quiet thoughts 
 come to you like John the Baptists in the wilder- 
 ness of your mind, the forerunners of your dreams. 
 So he would lie listening to the sound of the tinkling 
 bell, as only a beast can tinkle it, such time when 
 she moves from one sweet tuft of grass to another, 
 grazing after the heat of the day. 
 
 That Guernsey cow gave beautiful milk, abundant 
 in cream. It was more than he needed for himself. 
 Why did he not make his own butter they asked 
 him. Why, indeed? 
 
 He bought a churn and pans to separate the 
 milk. He bought a wooden stamp, concaved with 
 the figure of a majestic swan. He bought Scotch 
 hands as well. 
 
 It became apparent then that the Guernsey cow 
 did not yield enough for butter and milk as well, 
 moreover her produce diminished as the weeks went 
 by. He must buy another cow and he bought an- 
 other. Then there was more than enough for his 
 needs. He had butter to sell and he sold it, and 
 the first time he received payment for his pounds 
 of butter was like finding a piece of silver in a field 
 of meadow grass. So much was it like finding it, 
 that the desire became imperative to find more.
 
 4 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 He took a small farm eighty acres, no more 
 eighty acres of pasture land that were all his own, 
 when he discovered that the law of trespass for 
 which he had always had contempt when he read 
 the forbidding notice on those boards across the 
 countryside, became a real law, protecting him and 
 something that was his. He used to feel that the 
 boards were like policemen, holding up their hands 
 before the eager traffic of his soul, whereas now, he 
 knew them to be the power of the law safeguarding 
 his property from marauding hands. 
 
 One summer afternoon, walking through one of 
 his meadows put down for hay, when the glittering 
 dust of the buttercups was splashed like gold-foil 
 over his boots, he found two little children. They 
 were picking daisies and that shivering grass which 
 hangs up little bells of seed on almost invisible wires 
 and tinkles them to the first whisper of a breeze. 
 
 "Who gave you permission to come into this 
 field?" he asked. 
 
 They stood up, clutching their bunches of daisies 
 and looking from one to the other for, from the 
 dread sound in his voice, they dared not look at 
 him. 
 
 Evidently no one had given them permission. 
 Indeed, who could have done so but he? Yet there 
 is that judicial instinct in most of us, which urges 
 us to assume the offender's innocence before their 
 guilt is proven. This was the first question he was 
 bound to ask, to which, receiving no answer, he 
 continued :
 
 World of Wonderful Reality 5 
 
 "Did you know that this meadow was put down 
 for hay and that you've been trampling it down, 
 depreciating the value of it with every step you 
 take? Look at the path you've made!" 
 
 They found a trembling interest in the corners 
 of their pinafores, bringing him thereby to exaspera- 
 tion; for there they were, culprits caught in the act, 
 refusing him even the satisfaction of answering him 
 back. 
 
 "Where did you get in?" he asked them. 
 
 They pointed to a gap in the hedge and the next 
 day to preserve his meadow hay, he had a sign- 
 board put up in that place where, to all who passed, 
 it read "Trespassers will be prosecuted." 
 
 He watched his man putting it up, standing back 
 in some sense of pleasure and satisfaction to regard 
 it when it was fixed. 
 
 "Those children think the whole world belongs 
 to 'em," he said. 
 
 "That's only because they're young, sir," pleaded 
 his man in their defense. "They won't think that 
 long. They'll grow out of it." 
 
 He was just lighting a pipe, but at the sound 
 of those words they'll grow out of it he let the 
 match burn out in his fingers. 
 
 In three years' time, he had a herd of twenty 
 milking cows and one night, when the worries of 
 sheep at lambing time had robbed him of his sleep 
 for a week or more, he lay tired out on his pillows 
 trying to get his rest. Every few moments, just 
 as he was dozing off, a sound, through the darkness 
 of the night, jarred on his ears and his eyes opened.
 
 6 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 For a long while he bore with it in silence, but then 
 at last sat up in bed, when, out of the fullness 
 of despair in his heart, he shouted out: 
 u Oh damn those bells!" 
 
 It is this evil habit of acquisitiveness, this fatal 
 passion to accumulate rather than simplify, by which 
 a man locks the gates upon his native town and, in 
 all that burning impulse to possess, he flings away 
 the key. 
 
 Indeed, this is an idolatrous age. It is not 
 enough to feel beauty. We must possess it. It is 
 not sufficient for it to be in our hearts; we must 
 have it on our mantelshelves. And the moment we 
 place it there, it becomes an idol, when, having thus 
 given ourselves over to false gods, the true instinct 
 of worship has gone like a cloud on the wind out 
 of our hearts. 
 
 This, could we but realize it, this fetish of ap- 
 pearances, this is the false religion of the whole 
 world. Beauty and truth, these are the true Gods. 
 There is no need for their images, once they are 
 in our hearts. But with the hearts that are empty 
 and who shall say how many our civilization has 
 so despoiled there, before our eyes, are raised the 
 graven images of virtue, where all who worship may 
 be seen and honored by those who pass by. 
 
 Every one of us, we buy those cow-bells and bring 
 them home, as though, putting them on our mantle- 
 piece, we had captured for ourselves the green 
 valleys and the mountain snow. Everyone buys 
 them until, creating a market, they are made by the
 
 World of Wonderful Reality 7 
 
 thousands in Birmingham, when all the beauty of 
 sound we once heard tinkling on those grassy 
 slopes, is reduced to the ugly cries of a clamoring 
 Commerce. 
 
 For this in the end is what our modern civiliza- 
 tion has brought us to, a cry of Commerce, far 
 into the night when, with my friend, we sit up in 
 our beds and, in all the bloodiness of anger, we 
 shout out: 
 
 "Oh damn those bells I" 
 
 One night, out of the City of Venice, there came 
 Jill Dealtry creeping back to London with all so 
 much beauty in her heart as ever a woman has had 
 with which to face the world. 
 
 Two days later, after the burial of the little old 
 white-haired lady by the side of his father, John 
 Grey followed Jill. Before forty-eight hours were 
 passed, he walked through Mrs. Meakin's shop, 
 climbing the uncarpeted stairs to his rooms in 
 Fetter Lane.
 
 Chapter II : The Circus Ring 
 
 EFE, in moments, has an uncomfortable habit, 
 to put it colloquially, of getting up and look- 
 ing at you. There is no avoiding its gaze. 
 You may have thought you had tamed and trained 
 it to a definite course of reliable behavior. Like a 
 man with the dog he has brought up from a puppy, 
 you believed your will was the deciding factor. If 
 it stole the milk you have put out for you every 
 evening and the best-trained dog might do that 
 you could give it a thrashing or appropriate one of 
 its dog biscuits for yourself. I knew a man who 
 always selected the latter punishment. 
 
 Well, you have probably thought Life was much 
 the same as this. You have not been such a fool 
 possessing as you do the world's wisdom to believe 
 it incapable of misbehavior, but there has been a 
 confident assurance in your bones that if anything 
 went wrong, you had inherited the power of will to 
 put it right. The clergyman of your parish and the 
 deep, religious convictions of your parents have 
 fostered this belief in you. 
 
 "God," they have told you, "may put temptation 
 in your path; He may make Life very hard at times, 
 but you always have free will to exercise for your 
 own salvation." 
 
 8
 
 The Circus Ring 9 
 
 Telling you this, has been like putting a whip in 
 your hand which you have felt inclined to use upon 
 the first recalcitrant object that comes your way. 
 You feel like the master in the circus ring, having 
 only to crack your whip to be obeyed. 
 
 The swagger of mind which accompanies this sen- 
 sation of opulent volition, deters you from a delicate 
 calculation as to who puts up the tent where your 
 brief performance is to take place. It likewise dis- 
 inclines you from any examination of the circum- 
 stances by which in your polished silk hat, your white 
 breeches and your Hessian boots, you happen to be 
 there at all. 
 
 You just take everything for granted whip, top- 
 boots and all. And then one day, the door which 
 kept the East African Lion in his cage breaks down 
 to his impetuous assault upon it and of a sudden that 
 jolly circus ring becomes a tropical jungle of un- 
 comfortable possibilities, while the whip you have 
 been cracking so effectively in your hand feels like a 
 thread of worsted tied on to the end of a slate 
 pencil. 
 
 If that colloquialism can be excused, this might be 
 described in the manner already shown, as one of 
 those moments when life gets up and looks at you. 
 
 It was precisely in just such a condition of affairs 
 that John Grey found himself that evening on his 
 return from Venice to Fetter Lane. Mrs. Rowse 
 had left the room tidy in preparation for his arrival. 
 The brass was polished. The old bits of china in 
 the cupboard had been washed. The waste-paper 
 basket was standing indifferently right on top of the
 
 IO World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 stain on the carpet where the bottle of ink had been 
 dropped. It even assumed an air of being there by 
 accident. 
 
 At any other time, John would have stood at the 
 door he had often done so upon former returns 
 from his travels he would have stood at the door, 
 saying: 
 
 "Not a bad little place, you know jolly cozy 
 when the fire's lit and a few candles are burning. 
 Pull the curtains and shut the door and get to a bit 
 of work and, Good Lord, I don't want anything 
 better I" 
 
 This is the proper, the natural instinct of one re- 
 turning to his own home after leagues of travel in 
 even the most beautiful corners of the world. I 
 should be accused of such gross sentiment were I to 
 write of the beauties of home, the corner in which 
 one is wont to sit, the faces of the books one is 
 wont to see, the wink in the eye of the brass candle- 
 stick to which one has been wont to wink in return; 
 of such gross sentiment should I be accused that I 
 dare not attempt it. 
 
 All such beauties, John would have seen at any 
 other time than this. But Life at that moment 
 was getting up and looking at him. The waste- 
 paper basket had lost all its cuteness of deception. 
 It stood there magnanimously over the ink-stain, 
 but no longer concealed it. It was all very well to 
 think of the fire lit and the candles burning, but he 
 knew there were no coals in the cupboard on the 
 landing outside. The candlesticks were candleless. 
 And had he thought of a meal which after that
 
 The Circus Ring II 
 
 long journey on an empty stomach was precisely of 
 what he was thinking then he knew the oak cor- 
 ner cupboard was empty. 
 
 At any other time, as has been said, John would 
 have stood alone at the door, thinking how splendid 
 everything was. But he was alone no longer. Jill 
 and he were to be married. Jill was there by the 
 side of him then and with him was peering into 
 the room which was to be the parlor of her married 
 life. 
 
 It was she who saw the ink-stain under the waste- 
 paper basket. It was she who guessed the coal 
 cupboard was empty; she who divined there was not 
 a crumb of food in the house. 
 
 She it was, indeed, who had made all the un- 
 comfortable discoveries about that home of his from 
 the very first moment he had entered Mrs. Meakin's 
 shop. There was no real necessity for her to go 
 that way. The private door at the side was for 
 the use of Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Morrell and 
 though there was no linoleum up his stairs, John 
 Grey had an electric bell which went far to making 
 a real gentleman of him. He had, however, chosen 
 to take her this way, and the moment he had done 
 so, had known that she had observed the rabbit 
 skins Mrs. Meakin always kept in the background 
 of her fruiterer's shop. They were only a side line, 
 something to make good when things were bad in 
 Covent Garden. She had seen them all the same 
 in their dark corner. The stain of red merging into 
 the pallid blue had caught her eye. He had hurried 
 her past into the passage.
 
 12 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 The worst was over, he thought. But no. Those 
 friendly cats he remembered only by their scuffling 
 frolics on the stairs, were revealed to this spirit 
 of Jill by a penetrating odor it would have been 
 affectation to ignore. He watched the wraith of 
 her face there beside him all the way up the stairs, 
 and were it by the faint tightening of her nostrils 
 alone, he knew that she had noticed it. The word 
 noticed occurred to him involuntarily. Had it 
 been himself^ he would have exclaimed: 
 
 "God! What a stink!" 
 
 And with the mere ejaculation, he would have 
 blown it away. It is only when you notice a smell, 
 that it lingers. 
 
 Then last of all the empty cupboards, the ink- 
 stained carpet and the cheerless grate. This Jill he 
 had brought with him, the Jill to whom he was to 
 be married, the Jill who was now inseparably a 
 part of himself, made observation of all these things 
 and the worst of it was, he did not know for certain 
 whether she had turned and looked at him with 
 reproach or not. 
 
 He was to be married. No doubt had entered 
 his mind as to that. When, therefore, he stood for 
 those few moments at the door looking into the 
 room, Life preceded him in a leisurely manner to 
 get up and look at him look at him square in the 
 face. 
 
 Never had Life behaved in this disconcerting way 
 before. There had, for example, been no responsi- 
 bility in finding a meal for himself or in replenishing 
 the sack of coals in the cupboard outside when it
 
 The Circus Ring 13 
 
 happened to be cold on a winter's night. There 
 arose no sensation of pledges broken or any dis- 
 tressful suggestion of honor lost if he had to go 
 hungry for his dinner or sit blowing on his fingers 
 to give him the feeling of his pen. 
 
 These were just casual circumstances to be met 
 by a tightening of that buckle at the back of the 
 waistcoat, by burning the whole collection of last 
 week's newspapers and sheets of wasted manuscript, 
 until there was nothing in the grate but layers and 
 layers of feathery black ashes. And even after that, 
 he could go to bed. 
 
 This was the cracking of the whip in the circus- 
 ring an operation which had always appeared so 
 successful in every other contingency. 
 
 "Hi! Ho!" you shouted and the lash snapped 
 like a pistol shot, when the old piebald horse of 
 revolving circumstance, which had for the moment 
 seemed indisposed to carry out his advertised gyra- 
 tions, made on again with that ambling trot of his 
 around the arena. There was always free will. 
 Always you were master in that circus-ring with the 
 canvas of God's solicitude over your head and the 
 flares of a divine providence lighting your sawdust 
 stage. 
 
 But as John stood there alone that evening, look- 
 ing at his rooms in Fetter Lane, he knew it was 
 near the impossible to take a lady from a fashion- 
 able house in Kensington to a home where, when 
 a meal was wanting you just asked her to tighten 
 the laces of her stays. In any case, if such a con- 
 tingency arose she would prefer you to call them
 
 14 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 corsets. It would be no less impossible on one of 
 those chill winter evenings to say to her: 
 
 "There's no coal in the place, my dear we'd 
 better go to bed." 
 
 It might only be six o'clock, yet just as cold as 
 if it were midnight. 
 
 It was in considerations such as these that Life 
 was getting up and looking John in the face. Here 
 was the East African lion well out of this cage and 
 roaring about the arena in a way that would make 
 any ring-master with the toughest whip in the world 
 wonder what the devil he was going to do next. 
 
 Riding that night together in their gondola on 
 the Lagoon, with the silver sickle of a moon reap- 
 ing its passage through a field of stars, with the 
 tinkling sounds of music across the Grand Canal 
 and the vibrations of a man's voice muted by the 
 rippling water as he sang, John had never thought 
 of these things then. 
 
 But now, back once more in Fetter Lane and, 
 but for that wraith of Jill, alone with the spitting 
 noise of that eternally dripping tap on the landing 
 outside, with Mrs. Morrell singing as she washed 
 her husband's shirts and Mrs. Brown walking their 
 sitting-room up above while she nursed her baby to 
 its reluctant sleep, it was enough to make any man 
 question that power of will with which God had so 
 generously endowed him. 
 
 "What do you say to a lady," he asked aloud, 
 "when there's nothing in the cupboard, when your 
 pockets are empty and you sit shivering as you look 
 at each other, trying to pretend you don't hear each
 
 The Circus Ring 15 
 
 other rumbling with hunger what do you say to 
 a lady, then?" 
 
 To all whom it may concern, there is no answer. 
 If you come to such a state of catechism as this and 
 carry your sense of humor with you deep in your 
 breast pocket or even worn upon your sleeve, you 
 do much as John did. You whistle a tune as you 
 count out the limitations of your worldly posses- 
 sions; you shut the door again letting the room and 
 everything that is in it take care of itself and you 
 set off for that little restaurant where, if you do 
 eat more than your fortune's worth, the little 
 waitress will make good your deficit till you come 
 again.
 
 Chapter III : L,e Pauvre Monsieur 
 
 WHERE John dined was largely a matter 
 of circumstance. He knew men in the 
 Martyrs' Club with which it was a mat- 
 ter of choice. 
 
 Broadly speaking, there were three places of 
 which in a mild sense he might have been called a 
 habitue. In order of merit to connoisseurs of 
 food for these people are always glad to hear of 
 a new place they were as follows : First, the 
 Alcazar Restaurant. You could pay your bill there 
 in gold if you liked and nothing short of brute 
 courage would nerve you to look for change. Din- 
 ing there once in days of the possession of the fur 
 coat, John had mistaken the price of a full bottle 
 of champagne for a pint. It had been the first 
 time he had ever bought champagne in a restaurant 
 and the mistake which seems incredible was really 
 not so much to be wondered at. 
 
 If you have a vague, though more or less ac- 
 curate, impression that champagne in a wine mer- 
 chants costs anything from twelve to fourteen 
 shillings a bottle, you will, as like as not, think that 
 twenty-five shillings refers to a magnum on the wine 
 list of a restaurant. There are people with simple 
 
 16
 
 Le Pauvre Monsieur 17 
 
 minds like this. They have an implicit faith in 
 human nature. 
 
 John had been dining a rising young actor who 
 at any time in the career that was waiting for him 
 might have taken a play of John's. John never had 
 written a play; but once you get a pen in your hand 
 you never quite know what is going to happen. 
 
 However it might be, John had regarded that din- 
 ner with a certain degree of the honest wisdom of the 
 world. That is not to suggest that he did not enjoy 
 it as well. The Alcazar Restaurant is a notable 
 place and the rising young actor was recognized by 
 many who had seen him on the stage. He had a 
 great disdain of being recognized and, terrifically, 
 John admired the supreme unconsciousness with 
 which he passed through the lounge where one head 
 after another was turned to see him go by. 
 
 He could look at a group of people so naturally 
 and with such superb unconcern that you would 
 never believe he had heard their sibilant whisper- 
 ings, mentioning his name. It was only when people 
 did not recognize him that he seemed to lose his 
 head and become forced and unnatural. Then he 
 would laugh and gesticulate and raise his voice when 
 he talked. And really in those moments only they 
 were so seldom he was most entertaining of all. 
 
 It was a vastly pre-occupying business, this busi- 
 ness of being supremely unconcerned. It takes the 
 deuce of a witty fellow to be entertaining when once 
 he is absorbed with it. 
 
 However, this rising young actor was somebody 
 to be giving a dinner to. There was no doubt about
 
 1 8 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 that and John had ordered his bottle of number 
 thirty-eight, as though it were a carafe of water, 
 or, at most, nothing more than a lemon squash. 
 
 And then in the lounge, when they were listening 
 to the orchestra after dinner, there came the bill 
 folded in half to preserve the secret of his extrava- 
 gance. As John glanced at it his heart turned to 
 sickness and beat with a dull throbbing in ten differ- 
 ent places at once. 
 
 It was two shillings more than he had in his 
 pocket and he had calculated it so carefully, allow- 
 ing fourteen shillings for the champagne, to admit 
 of tips with a margin of half-a-crown in case of 
 emergencies. And the waiter stood there imper- 
 turbably amongst all those people, like a recording 
 angel on the day of judgment. It seemed as though 
 any moment he might lift up his voice and cry 
 through the vaults of heaven to the very throne of 
 God: "Here is one who cannot pay his bill!" 
 
 John leant closer to his guest who was gazing 
 with the eyes of oblivion at a party of people nudging 
 each other to look at him. With a rush of instinct 
 he realized his position. The sound of John's voice 
 as he asked for the loan of five shillings was suffi- 
 cient to reveal to him the awful truth. High on his 
 forehead the blood rushed hot and red. He was 
 dining with a man who could not afford to pay his 
 bill and it seemed at the best as if people must at 
 least be sorry for him. 
 
 "Lord, yes! Take what you want!" said he with 
 an open voice and he fetched out of his pocket 
 a handful of money that jingled in John's ears like
 
 Le Pauvre Monsieur 19 
 
 the keys of heaven. There are moments when, if 
 you are a really first-class actor, you must, so to 
 speak, take the situation in both hands and carry 
 it in full view of the audience. Like the actor who 
 was given an onion to eat instead of an apple, and 
 he munched it with such relish it might have been 
 a Cox's Orange pippin. 
 
 But once the waiter had departed, the young actor 
 muttered in John's ear: "Why on earth didn't you 
 get them to give you a blank check." 
 
 John had not thought of that. Indeed it needs 
 an account at a bank for the idea to occur to one 
 with any degree of promptitude. 
 
 This was the place which John visited only on 
 the rarest of occasions. If a man wanted to ap- 
 preciate the fact that you were giving him some- 
 thing to eat, you took him to the Alcazar Restaurant. 
 Fortunately for him, the most of John's acquaint- 
 ances were those who were satisfied with a cut from 
 the joint. 
 
 And it was at Wrigglesworth's, with its saw- 
 dust floor and its parrot in the cage, you could 
 get the best dinner in London. For half a crown, 
 you could have twenty cuts from the tenderest joint 
 in the world, it being assumed that by the time 
 you had had two, together with liberal helpings of 
 potato and cabbage, you were not thinking of the 
 third with the same optimism as when you sat down 
 to your meal. 
 
 A d lib, when it refers opulently to the amount you 
 can eat, are necromantic words. There is no end
 
 2O World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 of sorcery about them. They conjure up visions 
 which not even a wager could make true. 
 
 Yet whenever John had so much as half a crown 
 to spend upon a meal and usually there was an 
 appetite to go with it, those two words succeeded 
 in tricking him every time. Ad lib! Well, with 
 that assurance before you, you can at least eat a 
 meal in peace. At the Alcazar, even the seven and 
 sixpenny dinner prix fixe came out at twelve shillings 
 a head by the time you had said grace and looked 
 twice round the room. 
 
 Here, then, the first two places are easily dis- 
 posed of. But I could write a whole chapter about 
 the third. 
 
 Le Pauvre Monsieur was no place for connois- 
 seurs. Monsieur and Madame Defautin would 
 have been distressed, to say the least of it, had 
 anyone appeared at the door of their dining-room 
 in the immaculate evening dress of the connoisseur. 
 They had not called their little eating-room The 
 Poor Gentleman for nothing. 
 
 If you want to know, they had called it The Poor 
 Gentleman for the very best reason in the world 
 and there was no more typical an example of their 
 good reason than John himself. Thus they had 
 named it because the poor are everywhere, in every 
 street, in every quarter and wherever they are, there 
 is not one amongst them who would not be thought 
 a gentleman if he could. 
 
 Imagine their clientele! Le Pauvre Monsieur 
 was never without its customers. For one of the 
 unwritten principles of the establishment was, that
 
 L,e Pauvre Monsieur 21 
 
 when once you became a recognized visitor, it was 
 always possible to leave your bill unpaid. To put 
 it vulgarly, you need never go for long on an empty 
 stomach if you were one who frequented Le Pauvre 
 Monsieur. 
 
 The name of the place and your presence there 
 were Monsieur Defautin's guarantee. You were 
 poor? Well, what more probable than that you 
 could not pay your bill! But you were a gentle- 
 man. Then what more certain than that you would 
 come back one day and discharge it when you could. 
 
 They always watched your departure on those 
 occasions when your bill was undischarged, smiling 
 and nodding their heads and saying how welcome 
 you would be when you honored them with another 
 visit. But the moment the door closed, I have seen 
 Monsieur turn to Madame, shaking his head and 
 with a certain note of despondency saying to her: 
 "I hope he won't be very hungry before he can afford 
 to come back." 
 
 By reason of his being a gentleman, John had 
 sometimes been kept away from their company for 
 weeks together times when the loaf of bread and 
 an occasional egg from the tallow chandler's shop 
 had had to be enough. But it was like the return 
 of the Prodigal Son when he appeared in the De- 
 fautin's establishment again. 
 
 The moment his face showed inside the door, 
 Madame was down between the tables like a fat piper 
 doing a sword-dance, and shaking him by the hand. 
 They were mother and father to the greatly poor 
 or the little rich whichever you like to call them
 
 22 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 were this Monsieur and Madame Defautin. All 
 those who came there to their stuffy restaurant at 
 the back of Dean Street, were their sons and 
 daughters. And whenever they could not pay their 
 bill, these sons and daughters of theirs; whenever 
 they began with the same old excuses of not having 
 brought enough out with them, leaving the premises 
 with that incriminating slip of paper bearing its 
 record against them, it was like a child going out 
 into the world when you are never wholly certain 
 of its return or whether it will not have lost some 
 of its love for you, together with some of its illu- 
 sions about you if ever it sets foot on the threshold 
 of home again. 
 
 I shall say nothing about the cooking at The Poor 
 Gentleman. If you have ever been hungry, you 
 know the full value of the faintest sound of such 
 words as: Omelette aux fines herbes or tournedos 
 or filet de bceuf. The mere appearance of them, 
 scribbled in a spidery French handwriting across 
 the menu is sufficient to make your mouth water. 
 
 Unfolding the paper serviette as you sit down, 
 you say: "Omelette aux fines herbes and filet," and 
 while you sit waiting for it, you are eating the best 
 omelette and the most succulent filet you have ever 
 tasted in your life. If the omelette is not so won- 
 derfully made after all when actually it is put before 
 you, the appetite you have by that time has ceased 
 to be particular. 
 
 That evening on his return from Venice, John 
 made off to these parents of his inner man. There 
 was not even so much as a glass of coffee against
 
 L,e Pauvre Monsieur 23 
 
 his good name as a poor gentleman. He entered 
 the room, receiving the exclamatory greetings of 
 Monsieur and Madame Defautin with not a twinge 
 of his conscience. Whatever it might happen to be, 
 he could pay for his dinner that night and when 
 you are a poor gentleman you have little need to 
 look further than this. 
 
 When once he had shaken them by the hands, 
 when once he had explained the meaning of the 
 band of crepe on his arm and they had expressed 
 as much genuine grief for his bereavement as a 
 north countryman would get into a lifetime of 
 mourning, Madame Defautin stood back and looked 
 at him. 
 
 "You come alone?" she said. "You have no 
 lady as table companion? You eat by yourself?" 
 
 He nodded his head. 
 
 "Then you shut your eyes, now, quick 1 Tight I 
 And I show you." 
 
 She took him by the elbows and turned him 
 round. 
 
 "Now look!" said she. 
 
 And he looked. 
 
 And there at a table, reading a penny magazine 
 and smoking her American cigarettes between the 
 omelette and the tournedos, was Amber. 
 
 "You have not brought her here this three 
 months. Always she comes alone. Bad Man I" 
 
 She took him by the arm and whether he were 
 willing or no, led him across the room until he 
 stood before the table. Then Amber looked up.
 
 Chapter IV: Tournedos and Omelettes 
 
 THE last time they had met was when, in the 
 belief that he was to see no more of Jill, 
 John had gone, a child with the promise of 
 life a broken toy in his hands, asking her to return 
 to him. 
 
 "I wonder does the man exist who can bear dis- 
 appointment without becoming like that," she had 
 said when he had told her everything and with that 
 speculation as she had meant to do had sent him 
 back to Fetter Lane alone. 
 
 He had not seen her afterwards, sitting on that 
 mattress bed of hers on the drawing-room floor, 
 crying out: "Oh, you fool! you fool!" and beating 
 her hands on her knees, yet glad to be able to be 
 so great a fool for his sake. 
 
 For the quality of sacrifice in a woman, once she 
 comes by an understanding of love, is something 
 that is past analysis or calculation. Amber had let 
 him go at the very moment when she had realized 
 she needed him most and would herself have been 
 least able to explain the anomaly of her action. 
 
 Love, perhaps, when really it comes to you, has 
 little to do with possession. It is a sense of true 
 worship, and once it listens to the voices of desire, 
 becomes tainted with idolatry. In this manner go 
 love and religion, hand in hand down the same 
 
 24
 
 Tournedos and Omelettes 25 
 
 path; to which statement if you are one of those 
 pessimists of life, you will add world without end 
 Amen, and settle yourself down to the comfort 
 of your shortcomings. 
 
 Whether it is because women's desires are of 
 a more passive nature as men would have us sup- 
 pose and women are only too ready to deny, when 
 the talk turns upon comparative morality or 
 whether it is that, touching Nature so closely, their 
 hands have grasped the fringe of the garments of 
 God, it would seem they are the more liable to 
 the instincts of true worship when they come to 
 the altar of love. They would have their man a 
 creature of such nobility as none could assail and 
 half the time they are tempting him to frailty, they 
 are hugging the hope he will not succumb. 
 
 Amber had sent John off to Venice. Out of some 
 undreamt-of fund in her possession, she had slipped 
 a sovereign into his hand to make up the deficit 
 for his journey. She had known he would not 
 accept. But the mere sight and touch of it, coming 
 from her with all her nagging debts at Barkers and 
 Deny and Toms, she knew would make a talisman 
 of it, in which he would find courage and strength 
 to go. 
 
 And when once the hall-door had banged and she 
 knew he was gone out into the street, away down 
 the Earls Court Road, straight to Venice, she had 
 seated herself on the floor, crying out: "Oh, you 
 fool!" Had he come back then, she could never 
 have believed in him, in life or in love so passion- 
 ately again.
 
 26 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 It was here she stood as in some one moment 
 in life we all stand at the gates of the temple of 
 idolatry and God knows what hazard it is that 
 flings them open to so many, while it keeps them 
 locked and bolted to those few who sometimes most 
 eagerly desire to pass within. 
 
 But John had not come back. She had seen no 
 more of him. As Madame Defautin had truly 
 said, for three months she had dined alone on those 
 occasions when she came to Le Pauvre Monsieur. 
 Apparently then she had seen no one until that 
 moment when she looked up from her penny maga- 
 zine and found John standing before her. 
 
 "Good-night!" she exclaimed and shut her maga- 
 zine and pressed out the burning end of her 
 cigarette because, in the habit of her memory, she 
 knew he did not like smoking at meals between 
 courses and assumed at least that they were going 
 to dine together. 
 
 Madame Defautin left them then with such 
 chuckles of satisfaction as if she and she alone had 
 accomplished the most romantic reunion in the 
 world. 
 
 For a while Amber could only sit and look at 
 John and John at her as though an absence of 
 three months must have left indelible traces too 
 astonishing to be observed all at once. Then sud- 
 denly and simultaneously they became absurdly shy. 
 John got the plait in his spine first. She followed 
 at once with the plait in hers, till it felt to both 
 of them as if their sensations were so raveled and 
 knotted there was no untying them at all.
 
 Tournedos and Omelettes 27 
 
 There was no fact to catch hold of. All they 
 had between them, spread out on the table as it 
 were, was a bundle of memories days they had 
 spent in the country together at odd, inexpensive 
 little wayside inns, wherever they had happened to 
 be walking along the road; nights when she had 
 left him at Fetter Lane to walk back in the pouring 
 rain to Earls Court because the last 'bus had been 
 gone for hours and the Tube was no more than 
 a tube through the bowels of the earth these 
 memories, like scraps of paper, lay on the table 
 between them. And it was as if the door were 
 open with the wind blowing through and all they 
 could do was to keep on clapping a hand down 
 on the table to prevent the pieces of paper being 
 blown about over the floor where everyone could 
 read them. Yet again, it was as if some had 
 escaped them, had been blown away, were seen and 
 read by other occupants of that room of Monsieur 
 Defautin; and then, their secret being known, the 
 blood ran up, hot into their cheeks, when they 
 could only just look at each other once and then 
 look away. 
 
 At last she, too, caught sight of the band of 
 crepe on his arm and there was a fact to lay hold 
 of. She leant forward and touched it gently with 
 her hand. That was all the question she needed 
 to ask. 
 
 In two moments the plait was untied. He was 
 telling her of the death of his father and mother 
 in Venice. Then came her tournedos and his 
 omelette and the effect super-imposed by that three
 
 28 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 months' absence had all disappeared. They might 
 have been going back to Fetter Lane together as 
 soon as their glasses of black coffee were empty. 
 
 "Didn't you feel it terribly?" she asked. 
 
 He looked up quickly from his plate with that 
 odd expression of impulse in his eyes she had seen 
 so many times, most clearly of all when first he 
 had told her about Jill and his ideal. 
 
 "No, I didn't feel it like that," he said em- 
 phatically. " 'Never hamper youth,' that's what 
 my father used to say. 'Cut away the old wood, 
 not the new.' And that's just what it seemed 
 like. I'd never seen death before and I'd thought 
 it would be horrible to look at. It isn't. Not with 
 old people anyhow. Have you ever pruned a rose 
 tree one of those mornings in March when the 
 sun strikes hot for the first day in the year and it 
 feels as if Summer had somehow slipped its leash 
 and was rushing out to meet you before its time? 
 Have you ever gone out into the garden and pruned 
 rose trees then?" 
 
 "Have you ever seen our garden in Earls 
 Court?" she asked him. "Can you imagine the 
 Summer rushing out to meet you in those gardens 
 in Hogarth Road? It 'ud trip up over a clothes 
 line long before it to got to you and then can't 
 you see the state it 'ud be in?" 
 
 He laughed because she could laugh when he 
 knew what gardens really meant to her. 
 
 "Anyhow, death's just like pruning," he went on. 
 "You cut off a bit of old wood, but you cut it off 
 just above a bud and instead of seeming like muti-
 
 Tournedos and Omelettes 29 
 
 lation, it's like setting something free. I suppose 
 if I had the pruning scissors to do a job with in 
 Life, I should be exactly like a woman pruning rose 
 trees. I should be so damned sentimental about 
 the old wood that had borne its blossoms, I couldn't 
 have the heart to cut it away. But when you see 
 a gardener who knows his job, just snipping it off 
 above the bud so clean that you know there can't 
 be any pain about it, you realize how pruning is 
 only a necessary process and it's the tree that 
 matters, not the branch. It's the tree that lives 
 and all the gardener cares about is that. If it 
 weren't pruned, it 'ud turn to briar and dead wood 
 and what a dearth of blooms there'd be in the 
 market place then. I only hope the gardener who 
 knows his job will have the pruning of me when 
 my season's over. I don't want to be left to the 
 tender mercy of some old maid who hasn't the heart 
 to part with me and just prunes me to the senile 
 paralysis of a linger death. If there's going to 
 be a flower on my branch I want it to be a bloom 
 worth having and then the sharper the knife the 
 better, and in the proper place just above the bud." 
 It was odd for her to hear him talking again 
 like that. For a while she could scarcely believe 
 her senses. No one else ever talked to her that 
 way. They might speak of serious matters, but if 
 they did, they spoke direct. Never with pictures. 
 If of death, then of something that appeared in 
 a hearse drawn by black horses, savoring of drawn 
 blinds and musty odors. John talked of death and 
 she saw it no less plainly, but it was something in
 
 3O World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 a garden and it was clean, as clean as the shoot 
 of a sapling ash and if there were any odor about 
 it at all it was a perfume of clean winds across 
 open places. Yet with all that sentiment and 
 symbolism, he gave her a better comprehension of 
 death than ever she received from others. 
 
 Most people, talking about death, wore the 
 mental garb of an undertaker. They followed a 
 hearse instead of an idea; their words were shovel- 
 fuls of earth lifted wearily out of a grave. Or 
 they talked like doctors cutting their sentences with 
 a scalpel and disinfecting all traces of sentiment 
 with an atmosphere of iodoform. All were ex- 
 tremely literal. None were intensely true. 
 
 But with John it seemed he came at life and 
 no less convincingly, by paths through the open 
 ways of Nature, when life and even death tasted 
 sweet, for which, feeling an unaccountable grati- 
 tude, and not thinking what she did, she suddenly 
 leaned forward touching his hand as it lay there 
 on the table. It was only when she felt in his 
 fingers the half-expressed inclination to draw his 
 hand away that she realized what she had done 
 and knew all that must have happened in those long 
 three months while he had been away. 
 
 "I'm sorry," she said. "I just forgot." 
 
 "Forgot what?" he asked her. 
 
 "Forgot that you were going to be married." 
 
 "How did you know I was going to be married?" 
 
 Well how did she know? She did. And so, 
 never having heard that cry of hers "You fool!" 
 he started off like his summer from the leash
 
 Tournedos and Omelettes 31 
 
 and told her all the wonderful things that were 
 going to happen to him. It might indeed have 
 been summer escaped from the leash to him. It 
 was the month of March to her.
 
 Chapter V: Old Times 
 
 SHE listened with rapt interest in her eyes, with 
 sympathetic noddings of her head to the 
 whole story; the parting, because Jill had 
 believed it her duty to marry her Mr. Skipwith; 
 the first meeting again in Venice when his mother 
 had tacitly set her heart upon their marriage; then 
 that brief story of deception when in a series of 
 letters he had described their wedding and the little 
 red house in Harefield where they had settled down. 
 
 "Why Harefield?" asked Amber. 
 
 "Well, don't you remember," said he, "that day 
 you and I walked to Jordan's and stayed at the 
 Rest House and they said we ought to be Friends 
 and I didn't understand and said we weren't any- 
 thing else and then they asked us to go?" 
 
 They had been serious all through dinner till 
 that moment, but with the memory of this amusing 
 incident, they both leant back in their chairs and 
 shouted with laughter. Everyone in the room 
 turned and looked at them till Madame Defautin, 
 passing behind the back of John's chair, patted his 
 head and leaning over the table, said: 
 
 "Old times old times to hear you laughing, 
 you two." 
 
 And that stopped their laughter with a snap. 
 32
 
 Old Times 33 
 
 She might have thrown a bucket of cold water into 
 their faces with less effect. 
 
 "But what had Harefield to do with it?" in- 
 quired Amber. 
 
 "Well do you remember that little inn we 
 stopped at for lunch and had bread and cheese and 
 shandy-gaff and the woman had a dribbly nose and 
 kept sniffling and saying: 'I know I shall sniff 
 too late one of these days.' Don't you remember? 
 Well that was Harefield." 
 
 She looked at John with a quick glance of her 
 eyes and then she said: 
 
 "But why did you tell her Harefield? That was 
 our place." 
 
 She could not help it. There was no time to 
 stop herself. The words had sneaked out of her 
 lips, just when the door of her mind was ajar. 
 And she had meant to keep it locked so tight. 
 
 They were not fair words to say. She knew 
 that. For as John had described themselves at 
 Jordan's Rest House, so they were merely 
 friends. They had never said they loved each 
 other. Frankly she had admitted that the day 
 in Fetter Lane when first he had told her about 
 
 Jin. 
 
 "You don't love me?" he had asked her. 
 
 And after the instant's pause, she had said 
 "No." 
 
 "And I've never told you that I loved you?" he 
 had continued. 
 
 And to that, without pause at all, she had re- 
 replied: "No never," in honesty adding later on:
 
 34 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 "If it doesn't last, then nobody's hurt by it; if it 
 does, then let it last as long as it can. I don't 
 want it to end to-day I might to-morrow. I might 
 see someone I liked better." 
 
 This, right or wrong, had been their honest re- 
 lationship. This, so far as he knew or she meant 
 him to know, had been all that there was between 
 them. When he had talked to her of the person 
 with whom one knew it could last, always, down 
 avenues of time that had no ending, then, what 
 she had seen in a sudden vision had perforce been 
 her own affair. She had waited till the hall door 
 banged, on that occasion when he had come back 
 like a child to her lap, she had waited till the hall 
 door banged, before she had let that cry riot in the 
 stampede of her emotions from her lips. He had 
 never heard that. Yet now, finding in a careless 
 moment, finding the door ajar, these words had 
 slipped out and she was quick to be after them, 
 to catch them none too gently by the arm and drag 
 them back. 
 
 John looked over the table at her as though she 
 had struck her hand across his face. 
 
 "Have I been unfair have I been rotten to 
 you?" he asked. 
 
 With the tone of his voice and that look in his 
 eyes, she had to slam the door then and swiftly 
 turn the key in the lock. 
 
 "Good Lord! No!" she exclaimed. "You? 
 Rotten to me? I didn't mean anything when I said 
 that. Pulling your leg that's all." 
 
 He did look at her then; a quick and he believed
 
 Old Times 35 
 
 a shrewd scrutiny of her eyes that had simply 
 laughed back into his own. 
 
 "Go on," she said. "All those letters. And your 
 mother believed every word of it. Go on." 
 
 So he went on with his tale, much as one, think- 
 ing he has heard footsteps on a lonely road, stops 
 for an instant, looks round, and then starts on 
 afresh. 
 
 The wish not to give her pain may have been 
 part of his belief that he had not. In that state 
 of mind when a man is performing conjuring tricks 
 before an audience every one of which knows how 
 the trick is done, there is no one more capable than 
 a woman of convincing him that he is a damned 
 clever fellow. 
 
 Amber convinced him that it mattered little to 
 her whether he had written of Harefield or had 
 chosen the domicile of their married life to have 
 been in her own house in Hogarth Road. And if 
 any man says he was a fool, let him think back 
 to the moments in his own life when, in the desire 
 to be deceived, he has listened to a woman telling 
 him black was white and replying: 
 
 "Well, now you come to point it out, I suppose 
 it must be so. Funny! I'd never realized it be- 
 fore." 
 
 In the eager desire to tell anyone of the wonder 
 of life that had come to him, it was sheer opulence 
 of good fortune to have found one who could ap- 
 preciate to the finest degree of an angle the queer 
 perspective of his vision. She knew it would have 
 been a bitter spoiling of that pleasure had she let
 
 36 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 him see for one instant that every angle had its 
 point thrust deep in her heart. 
 
 "I was only pulling your legl" she laughed, and 
 on he went in happy ignorance, telling the wonder 
 of his tale. 
 
 And when it was all finished, there was this new 
 realization to confide in her; this new discovery 
 he had made as he stood at the door of his rooms 
 in Fetter Lane and wondered what the devil you 
 can say to a lady when there is no food in the 
 house and the coal cupboard on the landing is 
 empty. 
 
 Besides all of which, there were the immediate 
 expenses of getting married and to a lady who 
 might reasonably expect a ceremony at the Bromp- 
 ton Oratory if they weren't too busy at Farm 
 Street. 
 
 "What's it cost just to get married?" he asked. 
 
 Of a sudden Amber was laughing; laughing out 
 of the very secret of her heart, and I wager there 
 is not one single woman reading this chronicle who 
 will pause for an instant to wonder why. 
 
 "Get a piece of paper," said she. "Come on 
 get a piece of paper and let's make a list." 
 
 Any woman who really understands a man and 
 surprising him in a financial embarrassment will 
 find her way into some corner of his heart, the 
 moment she brings out a piece of paper and pro- 
 ceeds to make a list.
 
 Chapter VI : Where to Go for a Honey- 
 moon 
 
 A RING will cost a guinea," said John and 
 called Madame Defautin to give him one 
 of those incriminating slips of paper on 
 which in figures it was put on record that you were 
 a gentleman, however poor. 
 
 One pound, one shilling, he wrote at the top of 
 the list and then looked up at Amber. 
 
 "Don't you think she'd like a better one than 
 that?" she inquired. 
 
 John set out to tell her how Mrs. Rowse had 
 informed him on one occasion that her own wed- 
 ding ring had cost a guinea and in a tone of voice 
 which implied it was by no means the cheapest you 
 could get. 
 
 'Twas eighteen carats," said John, and it seemed 
 to him when you had said that about a gold ring, 
 there was not much left to talk about in its favor. 
 
 "Anyhow," said he, "it's the first item. Better 
 keep it down. We can see what we've got to spare 
 as we go along." 
 
 "Yes, but how much have you got altogether?" 
 she asked. 
 
 He had made this calculation already. He had 
 made this calculation in the train up from Dover, 
 
 37
 
 38 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 after a boy had come round with tea baskets when, 
 counting the silver in his pocket, he had thought 
 it better to go without. 
 
 "Without pawning anything at all," said he, 
 which amounted to saying that the sum he was about 
 to declare was a clear net possession, "I've got 
 three pounds, two and sevenpence." 
 
 Of course it sounded the devil of a lot. Amber 
 drew a deep breath when she heard it. Measured 
 in one and sixpenny dinners at Monsieur Defautin's, 
 figure to yourself the weeks it would last! 
 
 "All right," said she, "go on. You'll have to 
 get a better ring than that." 
 
 With a superior fund of common sense when it 
 came to the making of lists, John was not so sure 
 of that. 
 
 "It's an unfortunate fact," said he, "that while it 
 is a sin in the eyes of the church for men and 
 women to dispense with the Sacrament of Matri- 
 mony, they nevertheless are mulcted of some con- 
 siderable sum before its observance." 
 
 She asked him what "mulcted" meant. 
 
 "It's making you pay your bill," said he, "with- 
 out sending you details of cost. You probably have 
 to pay the priest a guinea and it's no good saying: 
 'I'd prefer a ceremony for ten and six.' The price 
 is fixed, irrespective of cost. You've no choice. 
 You're mulcted. I can't explain it better than that. 
 It's a charitable word that covers the sins of all 
 iniquitous charges." 
 
 Amber wrote down a guinea without any more 
 dispute about it and when he saw those figures
 
 Where to Go for a Honeymoon 39 
 
 down in their nakedness on the piece of paper, it 
 did not seem so iniquitous after all. For to charge 
 one guinea when you married the woman you 
 loved which surely was the most tremendous 
 thing in the life of any man seemed ridiculous be- 
 side the fact that a box at the opera cost three. 
 Could the world be said to know what it wanted 
 when it had such a preposterous idea of values as 
 all that? 
 
 "The cost to the nation of an Admiral of the 
 Fleet," said John who, when once a thing struck 
 him as odd, left all else to pursue it, "is round 
 about two thousand pounds a year and the public 
 are willing to pay a popular cinema actor as much 
 by the week. I wonder if we know what we want. 
 It 'ud be a damned good thing if this country were 
 ever invaded.' 
 
 "It never will be," said Amber. "The Admirals 
 don't look at it that way. Come on, get on with 
 the list." 
 
 Well, there was the wedding breakfast, which 
 in their case would amount to lunch. 
 
 "Not here," said she. 
 
 "No. I'd thought the Alcazar Restaurant, but 
 its all costing more than I thought, so it'll probably 
 be Wrigglesworth's. Even at Wrigglesworth's, it 
 wouldn't be a penny less than ten and six." 
 
 She put down ten and six. 
 
 "Then I must buy Jill some flowers, if it's only 
 a bunch of violets. And if the occasion's to be 
 treated with any respect, I shall want a new hat." 
 
 They looked at the object under threat of con-
 
 4O World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 demnation, hanging on the peg above their heads. 
 Inclining her head first one way and then another, 
 Amber finally wetted her pencil and wrote down 
 the sum of eight and six. 
 
 Out of the corner of his eye, John saw that sum 
 added to the list. 
 
 "But can you buy respect?" said he solemnly. 
 "Other people's possibly not your own. And even 
 were it to be bought, could a new hat be considered 
 to be the best expression of it?" 
 
 He looked at her for a sympathetic answer. She 
 looked back at the hat, and said not a word. 
 
 "Cross out the hat," said he, "and put down a 
 shilling for violets." 
 
 Following this, there were incidental expenses; 
 expenses which defined themselves not so much in 
 detail as in a nameless fear of being found that day 
 confronted with a situation when he had no money 
 in his pocket and this more for Jill's sake than 
 his own. 
 
 They put down incidental expenses at seven and 
 six. 
 
 "You might as well have got a new hat," said 
 Amber who, feeling like a mother as well as all the 
 other things in the world a woman does feel, wanted 
 him at least to look his best. Having more experi- 
 ence of the world than she, however, he preferred 
 the seven and six in his pocket than reposing on 
 his head. 
 
 Then, after all these incidental expenses were 
 accounted for, there was still the cost of the honey- 
 moon to be taken into consideration.
 
 Where to Go for a Honeymoon 41 
 
 "To be married without a honeymoon," he de- 
 clared, u is worse than baptism without a christening 
 mug. I've known people get on reasonably well 
 in the world without a christening mug, but I don't 
 think she'd like the idea of marriage without a 
 honeymoon." 
 
 By a honeymoon, he understood a sort of con- 
 vention of going away. People had to go away so 
 that people who knew should not see them. They 
 would know, for example, in Fetter Lane that he 
 was going to be married. Mrs. Rowse, of course, 
 would give the secret away. Nothing in human 
 nature could prevent her from doing that. She was 
 a woman and women would peep out of heaven to 
 see a wedding go by. And how utterly impossible 
 it would be for him to return to his rooms with 
 Jill, after they had left the church, to find Mrs. 
 Morrell and Mrs. Brown peeping at them over 
 the bannisters. No, there must be a honeymoon. 
 
 "But where?" asked Amber, holding her breath 
 in the fear that he might choose the Rest House at 
 Jordans where, being more than friends, they would 
 find a warmer welcome than when he was with her. 
 
 There were recognized places, John informed 
 her, where honeymoons should be taken: Paris, 
 the Riviera, Como, Lugano, often Venice. Geo- 
 graphically, it seemed these places had been created 
 for that purpose. Hotels, there, had their honey- 
 moon suites. Waiters knew and took things for 
 granted, which, when you had got over the first 
 shock of their knowledge, was so much better than 
 suspicion.
 
 42 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 To have a honeymoon in England, at Brighton 
 or Eastbourne, even to go up into the Lakes was 
 very much in the nature of participating in a de- 
 tective drama. You felt you were pursued. John 
 Buchan's "Thirty-nine Steps," might just as well 
 has been written about a honeymoon couple in 
 civilized England, as about a secret service agent 
 whose every moment was significant of the business 
 he had in hand. 
 
 They did not understand honeymoons in Eng- 
 land, mainly because they did not understand love. 
 There is something disgraceful about love in these 
 Islands, consequently there is something verging on 
 immorality about a honeymoon. You have escaped 
 the police, and that is about all that can be said for 
 you. Otherwise it is incumbent upon you, for 
 decency's sake to let as few people as possible know 
 what you are up to. This is certain, you cannot 
 indulge in love on your honeymoon in England. 
 What you get you must steal and God help you if 
 you are found out. Wherefore you sit about on 
 verandas or try and escape into the countryside until 
 the night comes when you can creep out of your 
 disguise like a burglar bent upon nefarious purpose. 
 
 But the nights on Como and Lugano for example, 
 they are made for lovers on their honeymoon. The 
 darkness falls over those still waters, not so much 
 because God has divided the twenty-four hours be- 
 tween day and night, as to serve the passionate pur- 
 pose of two beating hearts. And when at morning, 
 the rising sun spreads its silken rose across the
 
 Where to Go for a Honeymoon 43 
 
 mountains when the snow flushes with pink, as 
 though the sun had surprised it in all its virgin 
 innocence, it is for the purposes of lovers still. 
 
 In that glow of light they wander through the 
 valleys and up the mountainsides. The very wind- 
 flowers grow for them. The day is their very own 
 and follows the night for no better reason than 
 that even love must have its rest; must bathe in 
 the cold, clear water of the stream, must run and 
 leap in all the exhaustless energy of youth. 
 
 Como! Lugano! These were places for a 
 honeymoon ! But as John looked at the list, mount- 
 ing up towards that three pounds two and seven- 
 pence, he wondered if they would be able to get 
 much further than Turnham Green. 
 
 "How much does it come to now?" he asked. 
 
 With all her ten fingers, Amber made it out to 
 be three pounds and sixpence. 
 
 "That leaves two shillings and a penny," said she, 
 with scarce an effort of calculation. 
 
 Turnham Green, then, was not so far out. It 
 was possible to conceive it as no further than Shep- 
 herd's Bush. But though there might be a whole 
 world of difference between the Lake of Como and 
 Shepherd's Bush and judging by all accounts there 
 was there would be no difference in their minds. 
 John believed that. They were lovers on the 
 threshold and whether the door opened upon the 
 whole vista of the Italian Alps or merely into 
 Ravenscourt Park, made only this difference, that 
 they saw before them the whole glory of the world,
 
 44 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 or they shut their eyes to the dirty pieces of paper 
 and all the sprawling children on the grass they 
 shut their ^yes and were content to look within. 
 
 However, it was not really so bad as all that. 
 The three pounds two and sevenpence, as has been 
 said before, was a net possession. There still re- 
 mained the whole gamut of things to be pawned. 
 
 John paid the bills and stood up from the table. 
 
 "Come on," he said, "let's go back. I'll put out 
 all the things I can sell and I bet you we'll have 
 enough to pay for a cockade for the coachman."
 
 Chapter VII: Pled Piper and Vagabond 
 
 WHILE they had been laughing and talking 
 and making their calculations, it had all 
 grown in Amber's mind to seem as though 
 no barrier had ever been raised between them. 
 John had this quality, not so much a quality of 
 destroying the realities of life as of eliminating the 
 obvious. To be with him, to talk to him was to 
 come into a world where conventions disappeared 
 like rabbits out of a conjuror's hat. You might 
 suppose they were there, but it was an indisputable 
 fact that you lost sight of them. 
 
 As many and many a time before, Amber left 
 Le Pawvre Monsieur that evening to the sound of 
 Monsieur's and Madame's blessing no more sin- 
 cere because the bill was paid and there existed no 
 obstacles to their speedy return. It was not until 
 they came outside into the street and turned the 
 old familiar way towards Fetter Lane, when the 
 chill air blew on her cheeks and wakened her from 
 her dreaming; to be exact, not until she had just 
 slipped her fingers into the bend of John's arm and 
 an old tune had risen unconsciously in her mind to 
 the measure of their steps did she realize what she 
 was doing. 
 
 Like a kind of will-o'-the-wisp, he had led her 
 into this fatal morass of her dreams. Like a Pied 
 
 45
 
 46 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 Piper, he had played tunes in her ears, not to decoy 
 or deceive, but simply because it was in the tips of 
 his fingers to play a tune wherever he went. It was 
 not music for everyone's ears. Only the few there 
 were who heard it, only the few to follow where 
 it led. But it seemed to her then, with the sound 
 of his happy tunes still dancing in her ears, that 
 they who heard must follow and to the furthest ends 
 of the world. 
 
 So, she realized in those moments as they walked 
 back to Fetter Lane, so must Jill have listened; so, 
 too, she must have followed, even from the straight 
 path which Duty had set out before her. 
 
 That night with John in Venice, coming this way, 
 going that, across the Lagoon, Amber knew well 
 what tunes he must have made for Jill with his 
 playing. But she had been wise enough to throw 
 all the troubles of Life away and follow the Piper 
 then and there. She had known the quality of his 
 music while Amber had let him go by, ignorant of 
 what she had lost until she heard its echoes in the 
 deep cloisters of her heart. 
 
 Well, the fruit to those who picked it! If her 
 heart was empty of music, there still were tunes 
 left to whistle on the lips. He might call for her 
 again to help him make his lists and though it 
 might be in the nature of helping the bride to dress 
 for the bridegroom who has your heart in the hol- 
 low of his hands, she yet would be ready if he 
 needed her. And half the tenderness of his music 
 was that it had the note of his wanting in every 
 stave.
 
 Pied Piper and Vagabond 47 
 
 She had taken her fingers on the instant from 
 his arm and, all the way back to Fetter Lane, had 
 run her mind up and down these minor scales of 
 thought until they stood before the door in the 
 shadow of Mrs. Meakin's shop. Almost for granted 
 she had taken it that there they must separate; that 
 upon the inside of that door stood Jill with the 
 rights she had won for herself; that so far, to the 
 portal she might come, but no further. Here was 
 her mind making and accepting conventions which 
 it seemed to her must be apparent even to him. 
 
 But they were not. Just as though the world 
 had not altered one whit for either of them, he 
 pulled the key out of his pocket and slipped it into 
 the door. 
 
 "I haven't got a bit of coal in the cupboard," 
 said he, "but there's an old packing case. We can 
 break that up. It isn't really so cold as that the 
 look of something burning won't warm things up 
 a bit." And he held open the door for her to pass 
 through. 
 
 She stood where she was, out there on the pave- 
 ment and she shook her head. 
 
 "I'm not coming up," she said, and tried her 
 best to say it as though on the whole it were too 
 much trouble to mount that flight of stairs. 
 
 "Why not?" he asked in genuine surprise; gen- 
 uinely at a loss to understand what should make 
 her refuse when they had been such good company 
 over the tournedos and the omelette and she had 
 shown so much sympathy with his financial difficul- 
 ties as actually to get a piece of paper and make
 
 48 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 a list. "Why not?" he repeated, for never had 
 they been more than friends and in that chance 
 meeting at Le Pauvre Monsieur it had seemed to 
 him what a jolly place a world was, where you 
 could fall in with a friend, a close, a dear friend, 
 and go on for a mile or two down the road, talking 
 and laughing as though the essence of life were con- 
 stancy and nothing could really change. 
 
 Then, suddenly, here she was stopping abruptly 
 no sooner had their feet fallen in step. She would 
 moreover vouchsafe no answer to his question, 
 wherefore again and for the third time, he asked : 
 "Why not?" 
 
 Then she shrugged her shoulders and laughed, 
 the little odd laugh a woman drops like a pebble 
 into the deep well of your heart; a little laugh that 
 is weighted with tears but which, still like the pebble, 
 is polished and shines in your eyes as it falls, shines 
 with her purpose of not letting you see one of the 
 tears it contains. 
 
 "Oh, I don't know," said she. "P'raps I don't 
 want to. P'raps I'd rather go back to Earls Court." 
 
 Had John not been so amazed with a sudden 
 revelation of life, he might not so obediently have 
 taken the hand she held out to him. As it was, in a 
 strange bewilderment, he just shook it and let it 
 fall as she went. 
 
 "Bless you," she said abruptly, and turning 
 quickly, without once looking back, walked with 
 determined steps down the Lane towards Fleet 
 Street. 
 
 He stood there, watching her, somehow aware
 
 Pied Piper and Vagabond 49 
 
 that her looking back would be a symbol, a sign 
 that Life had not really changed after all. 
 
 "It's just an idea she's got," he kept on telling 
 himself. "Just an idea. She thinks something has 
 come between our being friends. The circum- 
 stances have changed, but not the friendship. She 
 doesn't realize that. Circumstances are always 
 changing. Life isn't. Life's always the same. 
 When she gets far enough away, she'll realize how 
 silly it is. Then she'll turn. Then she'll come back. 
 Then she'll come back. Then she'll come 
 back " 
 
 She had gone. The darkness of the narrow lane 
 had swallowed her up. In the perspective of dis- 
 tance, exaggerated in the gloom, the houses had 
 leant together and hidden her from sight. She had 
 gone and John, still like a child, was taking into 
 his heart, his first lesson of Life. 
 
 It was in more than circumstance that there was 
 to be found the element of change. Amber had 
 changed. He scarcely dared to think how deep that 
 change had been. But whatever it was, he was no 
 longer blind to it now. She had not looked back. 
 In the old order of things, had they ever been 
 heated in dispute and parted in anger, she would 
 have looked round before a dozen steps had sepa- 
 rated them. On the fly-leaf of one of the books 
 on her bookshelves, there was to be found the in- 
 scription : 
 
 AMBER 
 
 The night of terrible row at La Pauire Monsieur 
 
 from John.
 
 50 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 It was a copy of Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," 
 and had been quite sufficient in a cheap leather 
 binding to terminate the most violent quarrel they 
 had ever had. 
 
 Now, she had gone, saying, "Bless you," and she 
 had not looked back at all. 
 
 Amber then had changed and for one sudden 
 moment in his heart, leaped the thought that he 
 would run after her, insist upon her return and 
 try in some way to make amends. But even so 
 soon as this, the lesson he had learnt forced itself 
 into practice. He knew that would be nothing but 
 folly. That, he knew now, would be playing with 
 Life. 
 
 Then he had changed as well; for at other times 
 the thought would have needed no more than to 
 stir in his mind and, before it had reached his heart, 
 he would have acted on it. 
 
 He had changed then had Jill changed, too? 
 
 Of a sudden it came to him that the whole of 
 his world had altered. He had left the City of his 
 birthright. He had closed the gates and set forth. 
 His dwelling place no longer was in the City of 
 Beautiful Nonsense. 
 
 It remained to be seen whether he would ever 
 forget that birthright of his riches of which there 
 was testimony in the records of his parish church. 
 It remained to be seen whether he had locked the 
 City gates, no less than whether, as he went upon 
 his journeys he would tire at last of its burden and 
 fling away the key. 
 
 For now he had become a traveler through coun-
 
 Pied Piper and Vagabond 51 
 
 tries where, at every turn of the road, the vista 
 spread before him in all the variety of change. 
 Amber had shown him this. He had become a 
 traveler, that was the truth of it a vagabond in 
 the world of Wonderful Reality.
 
 Chapter VIII: The Answer to a Prayer 
 
 IT had been understood before they left Venice, 
 that JiH was to make a clean breast of it and, 
 meeting John oa the morning after his return, 
 was to report the result to him in Kensington 
 Gardens. 
 
 There are places ia Kensington Gardens where 
 the most secret of meetings can take place with com- 
 parative safety. No woman knows where they are, 
 but she can always take you there by chance. When 
 Jill told him they would be quite safe in the 
 Gardens, she did not mean that she knew of such 
 places. It was merely a woman's implicit faith in 
 that God of Fortune who watches over all such 
 matters as these. 
 
 Their meeting, doubtless, was a simple affair. It 
 is an easy matter to deceive your parents when the 
 greater part of their every day is already spent in 
 deceiving themselves. It was the resolution to make 
 a clean breast of it which, when once she had it 
 face to face, was fraught with all the terrors and 
 sensations of an earthquake in Prince of Wales's 
 Terrace. 
 
 The 'heart of her courage had been high that 
 night o* the Lagoon, when John had touch of her 
 hand. As well as that, Venice is some distance 
 from Kensington High Street and though you can 
 
 52
 
 The Answer to a Prayer 53 
 
 be transported there in the space of thirty-six hours, 
 it is a city of dreams you are exchanging for a 
 crowded world of facts. She thought of the 
 Lagoon, with the light on its opal water and she 
 looked out into the muddy streets of London. She 
 listened for the long-drawn cry of the Gondolier's 
 "Oho," and heard the motor horns and strident 
 cab whistles. She felt John's kisses hot on her lips 
 and had found her mother leaning a cold nose 
 against her cheek to greet her upon her return. 
 
 Besides all of which it was always so much easier 
 for Jill to tell lies to her people. Doubtless, they 
 asked and fervently for the truth, but it was only 
 a lie they would properly have understood. And 
 somehow one always finds it easier to talk to people 
 about things they understand. Understanding is 
 a sweet gift and in Prince of Wales's Terrace 
 was as rare and brittle as the rarest of old china. 
 What there was of it was locked in a cupboard of 
 her mother's heart and if it were ever taken out for 
 service was sure to be broken at the first touch. 
 It might, indeed, be supposed that as the years 
 passed by, in their struggle for appearances, Mrs. 
 Dealtry had long ago put away the key. There 
 were moments when Jill caught glimpses of that 
 rare gift behind the beveled-glass of conventionality, 
 but the cupboard door was never opened. Her 
 fingers had never touched the treasures it contained. 
 
 So that resolution, which had been easy enough 
 to make in Venice, took upon itself the suggestion 
 of breaking open cupboard doors and smashing 
 priceless china when once she had come home. In
 
 54 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 Venice it had seemed the only thing to be done, 
 to make a clean breast of it; to declare that this 
 overwhelming consciousness of love which had come 
 to her with the dying words of Thomas Grey was 
 greater than duty or, if in the light of duty they 
 alone could see things in Prince of Wales's Ter- 
 race, then, the greatest duty of all. 
 
 "Make your lives out of love as I have made 
 mine make your children out of love, as I have 
 made mine make your work out of love, as I have 
 made mine." 
 
 It sounded no less wonderful in Kensington than 
 it had done in Venice. Indeed, it was rather that 
 it sounded more wonderful, so much more wonder- 
 ful in that gray atmosphere of duty, as to be almost 
 untrue. 
 
 No one sets a jewel on a dust-heap and, when 
 by chance you find one lying in the cinders, it has 
 all the appearance of being unreal. A piece of 
 common glass reflecting the sun might easily glitter 
 as bright. 
 
 Jill knew in terms of duty that it was the greatest 
 duty of all; but in the long contemplation of that 
 marriage of convenience which had awaited her, this 
 communion of love seemed too much of idealism 
 in a world of ordinary possibities. Life did not 
 arrange itself like that in Prince of Wales's Ter- 
 race. Appearances flanked you on either side. It 
 was what things looked like, not what they were. 
 Everywhere it was the glitter of the common glass; 
 for the sun, shining as it does upon the just and the 
 unjust, in its full glory upon the Venetian canals
 
 The Answer to a Prayer 55 
 
 and in oblique and narrow shafts for one hour of 
 the day into the houses of Prince of Wales's Ter- 
 race, a piece of common glass is as good any time 
 as the rarest jewel on the dust-heap which most of 
 us make of our lives. 
 
 Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Dealtry's conception of 
 duty was anything like this, which in a sudden vision 
 had come to Jill. There was her brother to be 
 sent to Eton, not so much because you learnt more 
 at Eton than at a common Grammar school, but 
 because it caught a glitter from the sun on the edu- 
 cational dust-heap, dazzling the eyes of all and 
 sundry who passed by. 
 
 In addition, there were a thousand and one little 
 things in the home which a marriage with her 
 father's friend would make the easier. Jill knew 
 well enough the consternation which the announce- 
 ment of her penniless marriage would make. They 
 did not even know John ; had never met him. They 
 had not heard the terrible secret of that neighbor- 
 hood in which he lived and to which he proposed 
 to take her. 
 
 All they knew was that, without introduction 
 other than that of St. Joseph who may be canon- 
 ized in Rome, but is a social nonentity in Kensing- 
 ton she had made his acquaintance at Benediction 
 in Sardinia Street chapel, that later, they two had 
 met in Kensington Gardens, in possession of which 
 knowledge, they had firmly forbidden her to see him 
 again. 
 
 All that had occurred since then was no easy 
 confession to make. Her duty, however, it was to
 
 56 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 make it. She fully recognized that. Through no 
 direct persuasion of John's had it been, but in a 
 sudden glimpse of her own vision that she had 
 realized the higher sense of duty in the words of 
 Thomas Grey's benediction. She must explain it 
 all to these two people who, by some strange chance 
 which she could not understand, happened to be her 
 parents. But how it was to be accomplished, how 
 even begun, was more than she could imagine. 
 Sitting on the edge of her bed that first night after 
 her return from Venice, she stared at the pattern 
 of the carpet until its wreaths and its lines and 
 its circles all became symbolic of the confusion of 
 her thoughts. 
 
 Two days were left her before John returned, a 
 night as well before that hour of eleven when they 
 were to meet in the Gardens. It was time enough. 
 One sentence could begin it all and, once begun, ques- 
 tions would be so swift that in half an hour at 
 most, they would know the full substance of the 
 truth. 
 
 "I am not going to marry Mr. Skipwith." 
 
 She could begin it with such an unadorned state- 
 ment as that. There was no mistaking what it 
 meant. It was to the point and would save a host 
 of questions which * less definite beginning would 
 be sure to aggravate. She tried it aloud to her- 
 self: 
 
 "I'm not going to marry Mr. Skipwith," and 
 said it emphatically as though both her mother and 
 father were there in the room to hear it, immedi- 
 ately after which came that hot rush of blood with
 
 The Answer to a Prayer 57 
 
 the fear that someone might have been listening. 
 She crept to the door and looked out. There was 
 no one to be seen. 
 
 It had grown no easier next morning at day- 
 break at which hour she was awake and lay turning 
 it over in her mind. All the troubles and problems 
 of her life were associated with that crack in the 
 plaster of the ceiling which had drawn itself out 
 into the grotesque line of an old man's face. He 
 looked that morning as though he were laughing 
 behind his beard; as though he knew far better thr.n 
 she did what would be the end of it all. She hated 
 men with beards. He reminded her that morning 
 of a friend of her father's on the Stock Exchange. 
 There, in that caricature on the ceiling, he seemed 
 to be saying just the very things her father's friend 
 would say about the prospects of such a match. 
 
 And after all, perhaps that opening sentence was 
 a little startling. She ought to break it more gently 
 than that. In one blow it was crushing all their 
 hopes and destroying Ronald's chance of Eton. 
 
 St. Joseph might help her poor St. Joseph. She 
 went to the Carmelite church after breakfast and 
 for an hour, with her face buried in her hands, she 
 prayed before his altar. 
 
 Prayer is an odd thing. There is something of 
 necromancy in it. You can pray standing up in 
 the street; you can pray sitting down in a 'bus. The 
 church prefers you to kneel, and whenever possible, 
 before an altar. But until you realize that it would 
 be acceptable to offer up a prayer on a merry-go- 
 round, it is a waste of time to kneel at altar steps.
 
 58 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 Jill prayed all the way along Kensington High 
 Street and up Church Street to the very door. By 
 the time she found herself kneeling at the foot of 
 St. Joseph's altar, she realized there was nothing 
 more to be said. She had finished her prayers. 
 They were lifting up above the house-tops with the 
 clatter of 'buses, carts and hooting motors, coming 
 to the ears of God with the throb of life in them, 
 having none of that sanctity of appearance with 
 which the Church takes half the human nature out 
 of a prayer. She had said them all. Nothing re- 
 mained but to wait for their answering. 
 
 Half the people you see with faces buried in 
 their hands in church have said their prayers when 
 they were in their bath, or while eating their bacon 
 at breakfast. They are kneeling there in the silent 
 church waiting for an answer. 
 
 The only answer St. Joseph gave to Jill that 
 morning in the Carmelite Church was this: "Go 
 back home and say the first thing that comes on to 
 the tip of your tongue. It has got to be said. Say 
 what comes." 
 
 This may sound colloquial for any canonized 
 saint of the Holy Church. Nevertheless, it is the 
 sort of friendly way a saint will answer your 
 prayer if it so happens you are splashing about in 
 your bath or are not oppressed by the appearance 
 of sanctity when you offer it. It may be well, in- 
 deed, to say one's prayers in the Latin tongue or 
 in the beautiful if pedantic English of the Jacobean 
 age, but you must expect the answer to be pitched 
 in similar fashion when you receive it.
 
 The Answer to a Prayer 59 
 
 And this answer of St. Joseph's, if you follow 
 it closely, was really only what Jill was saying to 
 herself. But then that is the answer to a prayer. 
 You want a certain thing very well, you pray for 
 it. You want a certain reply very well, you answer 
 it. The strange thing that has happened which you 
 do not realize is this: By the submission of your 
 desire in that attitude of mind, you have found 
 courage. 
 
 Prayer is a breath a breath before you leap. 
 If you do not find courage, you find no answer to 
 your prayer and for the simple reason that you have 
 neither the pluck nor the faith to answer it for 
 yourself. 
 
 On that morning, Jill had found courage. In the 
 evening after dinner, when they were sipping their 
 coffee and Ronald had been persuaded without con- 
 viction that bed was the only place for a boy of 
 his age, she said suddenly: 
 
 "Mother, I'm not going to marry Mr. Skipwith." 
 
 Now St. Joseph had never put those words into 
 her head. They had been there all the time. All 
 she had found at the foot of his altar had been the 
 courage to say them.
 
 Chapter IX : A Clean Breast of It 
 
 MRS. ROWSE had an expression alluding to 
 a feather and commenting in various ways 
 upon its power of knocking her down. 
 
 "If she'd taken a feather," she once said to John, 
 recounting to him an intimate little story of a 
 neighbor in Peabody Buildings. "If she'd taken a 
 feather and knocked me over the 'ead with it, she 
 couldn't 'ave done me more damage than if she'd 
 'it me with a pair o' tongs." 
 
 You need nothing more graphic to describe a 
 state of surprise than that and it requires an ex- 
 pression with something of this nature about it to 
 give an idea of the effect of Jill's statement upon 
 her father and mother that evening. 
 
 In the act of raising his cup of coffee to his lips, 
 Mr. Dealtry stopped. Every action of his muscles, 
 facial and otherwise, were arrested, until remember- 
 ing, even in so extreme a moment as this, that his 
 drink was getting cold, he emptied the cup, but never 
 moving his eyes from his daughter's face till the 
 dregs of the coffee were in his mouth. Then he 
 put down his cup with a grimace. 
 
 To a woman, however, in a crisis bodily com- 
 forts mean little or nothing at all. Even personal 
 
 60
 
 A Clean Breast of It 61 
 
 appearances may go to the wall. Mrs. Dealtry 
 pushed cup and saucer away from her and stared 
 for moments that seemed to Jill eternal, at this un- 
 natural daughter of hers. 
 
 "You're not going to marry Mr. Skipwith?" she 
 repeated. 
 
 "No," said Jill. 
 
 "Then who are you going to marry, please?" she 
 inquired. 
 
 And that was as much like a woman as a brass 
 farthing is like a piece of brass. For this was an 
 assumption which no man would have arrived at 
 and certainly not in that space of time. There was 
 no logical or inevitable sequence about it. Pure 
 reason could not alone have brought you to such 
 a conclusion. The practical deduction was that 
 marriage and more particularly marriage with Mr. 
 Skipwith did not appeal to her. Indeed, to Mr. 
 Dealtry this was nothing less than a putting of fool- 
 ish ideas into his daughter's head. 
 
 "Why do you suggest it's conceivable she should 
 want to marry anybody else?" he ejaculated. 
 "There's not another girl she knows has the chance 
 of a match like this." 
 
 He flung himself to his feet and stamped to the 
 fireplace. It was inconceivable. As a statement of 
 fact, he refused to accept it. No one, in or out 
 of their senses, refused participation what is more 
 the participation of a wife in an income of six 
 or seven thousand a year. For the participation of 
 a wife, as he understood it, was not a somnolent 
 partnership and, as has been suggested before, in
 
 62 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 this case not only Jill herself, but the whole family 
 would profit by the alliance. 
 
 After all, one had to live. He remarked this 
 fact as though it might have escaped their notice. 
 He elaborated upon it. One had to live, he said, 
 as became one's social status. If Prince of Wales's 
 Terrace was, so to speak, the mise-en-scene, or if 
 they liked it better which inferred that he was 
 by no means spluttering for a choice of words 
 if Prince of Wales's Terrace was the social at- 
 mosphere natural for them to breathe, it was their 
 duty to the common laws of existence to keep them- 
 selves in that atmosphere at all costs. 
 
 "The survival of the fittest," he exclaimed and, 
 with a gesture, took a hand out of his pocket, hold- 
 ing it before him as though he had the commodity 
 there in his fingers. 
 
 "I said we must keep ourselves there at all costs," 
 he went on, believing in the absence of opposition 
 that not only was he being listened to, but that his 
 words were carrying a weight which, if his wife 
 only allowed him to go on long enough, would bear 
 down every obstacle in Jill's mind. 
 
 "But when," he proclaimed, "when the means to 
 be employed are as straightforward, as honest and 
 legitimate as these, it's not merely flying in the face 
 of Providence, it's flouting flouting the laws, the 
 laws that have made us what we are; the laws that 
 have made England the greatest and the richest 
 nation in the world. It isn't so much the money 
 I'm thinking about. Six or seven thousand a year, 
 of course, is not an income to be ignored; but I'm
 
 A Clean Breast of It 63 
 
 not thinking about the money. We owe a duty to 
 ourselves, we owe a duty to society. It's incumbent 
 on everyone to keep up their standard. For even 
 one individual to lower his standard" he looked 
 at the glass of liquor brandy standing untouched 
 beside his empty coffee cup u is insensibly to lower 
 the standards of all about him." 
 
 He leant forward and picked up the glass, drain- 
 ing its contents at one draught. As the liquid ran 
 warm down his throat, he was convinced that he was 
 right. This was their standard. They must keep 
 it up. 
 
 "If you'd studied sociological problems, Jill," 
 he began again, but by this time, having closely 
 studied the expression on her daughter's face, Mrs. 
 Dealtry had no further need for the scientific side 
 of the question. There was one thing she wanted 
 to know before the matter could properly be dealt 
 with and no answer but that to the question she had 
 put already would satisfy her. 
 
 "If you're not going to marry Mr. Skipworth, Jill," 
 she repeated, "then who are you going to marry?" 
 
 Mr. Dealtry dived his hands into his pockets and 
 chucked back his head in despair. This was blunt- 
 ing the point of every single thing he had said. 
 Women with all their impulses and their intuitions 
 were fools at times. The girl was just shying at 
 marriage with a man, not thirty but certainly nearly 
 thirty years older than herself. All girls shied at 
 marriage, unless its conditions were so wrapped up 
 and concealed in the vapors of Romance that they 
 had no means of seeing the semblance of the state
 
 64 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 upon which they were entering. And it was up to 
 parents who had any of the sense of duty owing to 
 their children, to make them understand what that 
 state was. It was fairly obvious to him that Ro- 
 mance had nothing to do with it. There was no 
 Romance in marriage. His own wife would be the 
 first to agree to that and so would every other 
 sensible married couple he had ever met. 
 
 Love played a part. He was not so wanting in 
 imagination as to deny that. He loved his wife. 
 They had been together for twenty-three years and 
 it would be conspicuously foolish of him if he did 
 not. The habit of close companionship over a 
 period of time like that was bound to promote affec- 
 tion. It would be something of a tragedy if it did 
 not and in their social atmosphere and with their 
 standards, tragedies were things to be avoided. 
 Tragedies were emotional and of all things, God 
 forbid, that any Englishman should be that! 
 
 What his feeling had been when first he had 
 married had little or nothing to do with the argu- 
 ment. Every man felt the same. It was perhaps 
 fortunate on the whole that the women they mar- 
 ried did not. He had married when he was thirty- 
 three and knew then by experience the ephemeral 
 value of whatever it was he may have felt. To be 
 perfectly candid, after all these years, he had well- 
 nigh forgotten what it was. To hark back to and 
 act upon past sensations might be amusing to a 
 foreigner, but then he had always thanked God 
 he was an Englishman. 
 
 They had got through with it anyhow and with-
 
 A Clean Breast of It 65 
 
 out any great disturbance to her notions of life. 
 She was young when they married and doubtless 
 it had all been a little frightening to her. He sup- 
 posed it was to most women. But they got over 
 it quickly enough and settled down. The sense of 
 Romance which most of them cherished in their 
 youth in vague dreams and fond imaginings had 
 perhaps been parted with in some reluctance. He 
 was of the confident opinion, however, that his wife 
 would not change her circumstances now, other than 
 to improve them wherever possible. 
 
 It was preposterous then, this suggestion that Jill 
 wanted to marry someone else, since it inferred she 
 was being obedient to those romantic notions which 
 he knew young girls did entertain but which were 
 not paying guests in any sense of the word. 
 
 "I can't imagine why you want to suggest " 
 
 he began hotly. 
 
 "Let her answer," said Mrs. Dealtry, who had 
 never taken her eyes from Jill's face. "If she doesn't 
 want to marry anyone else, she can say so. Who 
 do you want to marry, Jill?" she asked for the third 
 time. 
 
 "John Grey," Jill replied, and felt as though John, 
 rather than she, had said it. 
 
 Somehow or other it had not been her own 
 courage. As the sound of the words permeated 
 through the silence that was all about her, she 
 marveled more and more that they had ever been 
 spoken. Still, there it was. She had said it. Yet 
 what was most strange in her mind was the sensa- 
 tion that this was not the end, but the beginning.
 
 66 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 Praying to St. Joseph at his altar, she believed 
 she had only to fulfill her promise and make a clean 
 breast of it and once that was done except for 
 inevitable wranglings and arguments the whole 
 business was as good as accomplished. 
 
 She had not said she merely wanted to marry 
 John Grey. She had meant she was going to marry 
 him. But having said it, instead of its seeming 
 now to be more likely of accomplishment, she felt 
 further away than when it had all been secret. 
 
 Along in that high-ceilinged dining room of the 
 house in Prince of Wales's Terrace, with the light 
 of the red-shaded electrolier falling sharply on the 
 empty coffee cups, with her mother sitting there in 
 silence in the leather-covered, club armchair and her 
 father taking deep breaths as he moved from one 
 foot to another on the hearth-rug, she felt as though 
 she had made confession of some almost nameless 
 sin in their presence a sin which proclaimed her 
 unfit to be one of them in that place which seemed 
 to have a prior claim over everything because it was 
 her home. 
 
 She thought of Ronald upstairs in his room as 
 he undressed, the text on the wall over his bed and 
 the linoleum on the floor because, at his age, it was 
 considered unnatural to have cold feet, and she felt 
 as though even he would look at her with different 
 eyes in the morning. 
 
 Mr. Dealtry was the first to speak. In the 
 shadows where he stood, Jill heard him take one 
 breath deeper than the rest. 
 
 "Going to marry that pauper scribbler!" he ex-
 
 A Clean Breast of It 67 
 
 claimed, and the effort to pronounce these last two 
 words with effect, gathered little bubbles at the 
 corners of his mouth. 
 
 Mrs. Dealtry broke into laughter a peal of it. 
 
 In that phrase a peal of laughter there must, 
 of course, be some allusion to a peal of bells. One 
 has heard laughter like that. It calls the heart to 
 some sort of worship. But so far as there was 
 anything in the nature of that simile in Jill's mind 
 as she heard her mother's voice, it would have been 
 a peal of bells from a thousand churches all at once, 
 none in harmony, all mutilating the joy of sound. 
 
 For the next few moments, she sat in silence 
 listening to what they had to say. They were talk- 
 ing in chipped and broken, swift and tumbling sen- 
 tences. Money, position, comfort, these were the 
 words that weighed heaviest and were all jumbled 
 together in the burden of their talk. She heard each 
 word. Not a sentence escaped her. In the end, it 
 seemed they must bear her down with the pressure 
 of their arguments and feverishly in the back of 
 her mind, like a squirrel revolving and revolving 
 in a cage, she clung to a thought to breast against 
 the flood of their reason.
 
 Chapter X : Having a Dream 
 
 SOMETHING that John had said to Jill as the 
 gondola had borne them that night across 
 the pearl black water of the Lagoon, became 
 the squirrel revolving in its cage at the back of 
 her mind as she listened. 
 
 A few moments before, she had been telling him 
 what Thomas Grey's words had meant to her. 
 Then, when for some long while she had been lying, 
 all silent in his arms, he had said: 
 
 "I should never have spoken of this before, be- 
 cause, as I saw things, you had your idea of duty 
 and I did not see it to be mine to alter that idea 
 to serve my ends. I don't mind what I say now." 
 
 With no more than the taking of her breath, she 
 had asked him what it was he was going to say. 
 
 "Well, there's something inside everybody," he 
 began, "that makes life worth living. It's not in 
 having things, or being things or doing things. I 
 mean it's not a sense of possession, or pride, or 
 power. It's a feeling like I get when I'm working 
 and pick up a clean sheet of paper; a feeling that 
 makes me hesitate before I touch the pen on it, 
 because I know that when it is covered with words, 
 they won't have expressed one iota of all the things 
 that are in my heart, but only things that have 
 struggled up like bubbles into my brain. I feel 
 
 68
 
 Having a Dream 69 
 
 sometimes I'd like to keep a sheet of paper always 
 clean a sheet of paper I've often put on my lap 
 and pulled out my pen to write on, but have never 
 defaced with a single word." 
 
 He had stopped suddenly, watching her hand as 
 she turned and turned a locket chain about her 
 fingers and neither did he see what she did, nor 
 did she know what she was doing. As suddenly, 
 he had continued. 
 
 "There's something like that inside everybody," 
 he went on, "that clean sheet of paper and it's 
 worth all the sensations of life put together. Of 
 course I'm trying to explain it my own way, using 
 my own similes like we all do, catching hold of 
 words from the things we are doing every day. 
 Some people call it keeping the heart of a child, but 
 there's more than just that in it to me. Keeping 
 the heart of a child is keeping a definite thing, the 
 beauty of which you know. But you never quite 
 know the beauty of the all that's never written on 
 that sheet of paper. It's not the beauty of the 
 best of you, for it's just a little bit better even than 
 that. More or less you can imagine what your 
 best would be. You can never quite imagine this. 
 All this may mean nothing to you. I can only grope 
 with words. To get the right word is like catching 
 a star out of the sky." 
 
 On an impulse, he had seized hold of her hand; 
 her hand twirling the locket chain. 
 
 "Do you know at all what I mean?" he had ex- 
 claimed, and gently, but none too certain, she had 
 nodded her head.
 
 70 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 "Well, anyhow," he went on, "this is what I 
 should never have said before because of what you 
 had described to be your sense of duty. I can say 
 it now. Everybody has that one clean sheet of 
 paper, and half of them more than half! deface 
 its possibilities with the certainty of words. Oh I 
 the sheet of paper's no good! I know you don't 
 understand. How could you! You don't write 
 anything. It can't mean to you what I really want 
 it to mean." 
 
 There was almost a petulant note in his voice 
 which had made her smile and feel so much older 
 than he as she watched him. 
 
 "Oh, it's just leaving something inside you, clean, 
 that the world can never touch! That's all. Hav- 
 ing a dream in all this sleeplessness of materialism. 
 Keeping something inside yourself which no one can 
 ever take away something which, in the great 
 hour of love, or in the great moment of sacrifice 
 becomes the greater for giving with both hands. 
 Words weren't made for it. Thoughts come near 
 to it some days, often in sunshine, when you lie 
 on your back in long summer grass and stare into 
 the sky that is fathoms deep and blue; when, as 
 you lie there, a breath of wind and it really seems 
 the breath of someone breathing whispers the 
 leaves in some poplar trees; when a bee hums by 
 like a man singing bass in an anthem and a lark 
 gets up out of the meadows, mounting a ladder of 
 light with a song on every rung, then a thought gets 
 somewhere near it."
 
 Having a Dream 71 
 
 He paused. It must almost have been for breath, 
 he had been speaking so fast and she never thought 
 for one moment how sublimely young he was. To 
 her, he was a man, speaking all the wisdom of the 
 ages. 
 
 "It's not been a thought," he went on quickly to 
 explain. "It's not been a thought you've thought 
 with words; not a thought that has reached the 
 communicating function of your brain. You get no 
 idea from it; only a sensation that somewhere in 
 the world there is an intense essence of beauty 
 a great ultimate purpose of which in that moment 
 you are wholly conscious but of which, so far as 
 words are concerned, you are as overwhelmingly 
 ignorant. No, not even thoughts really touch it. 
 It's a revelation that's all. It's a dream in all 
 this sleeplessness of facts." 
 
 Even then, he had not said what he had meant 
 to say. She had waited with patience through his 
 next silence letting all the words he had already 
 poured into her ears saturate through and through 
 her mind. Presently he said what he had intended; 
 the message he had to give her in which words were 
 competent. 
 
 "If you'd married that man," he said, "married 
 him without love, for the advantage the marriage 
 brought you and even unselfishly for the advantage 
 it brought others, I think you'd have lost all touch 
 with those moments in which one sees and feels the 
 intense essence of beauty in the ultimate purpose. 
 Your dream would have gone. All your life you 

 
 72 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 would have been awake with facts, staring at them, 
 as one lies and stares into the darkness through a 
 sleepless night." 
 
 She had known, not particularly that what he 
 said, but what he meant, was right. Yet she asked 
 him one question. It came out of her training, out 
 of what her father called that social atmosphere 
 of Prince of Wales's Terrace. She could not fly 
 with him all at once. 
 
 "Do you think then," she had asked, "that the 
 whole of life is a dream? That we've got to sleep 
 through it all?" 
 
 He had sat for a while thinking, then suddenly 
 had taken her arm, pointing to an orange light that 
 glittered in a far window on the Island of Murano 
 across the Lagoon. 
 
 "In that room," he replied, "someone's slipping 
 off their clothes and going to bed." 
 
 As though to prove the vision of his words, the 
 light had suddenly gone out. It was swallowed up 
 in the blue darkness as if it had dropped like a 
 match into the water and left no trace behind. 
 
 "They've gone to bed," he whispered. "All the 
 tiring, physical facts, they've put away from them. 
 They've thrown them aside from all contact with 
 their body just their clothes, flung onto the chair. 
 When the sun rises to-morrow morning away there 
 over the Adriatic, they'll wake again and begin 
 another day. Steal that man's sleep, set him to 
 work with his hands all night and his body will 
 die of it. Well minds die. Without sleep, with- 
 out dreams, your soul dies. A materialist is a man
 
 Having a Dream 73 
 
 who never dreams, because he never sleeps. It is 
 always day with him. You'd have been a mate- 
 rialist if you'd married like that. That fact would 
 have kept you awake all your life through. It 
 would have become the insomnia of your soul." 
 
 This was the squirrel revolving ceaselessly in the 
 cage of her mind as they talked to her. Of a sudden 
 then she opened the door of its cage and let the 
 squirrel out.
 
 Chapter XI : The Bird in the Net 
 
 "li JW ARRIAGE is only a bargain to you then," 
 
 I Y I said Jill quietly. 
 
 Mr. Dealtry observed with emphasis 
 that all contracts of exchange were in the nature 
 of a bargain. He quoted instances. 
 
 "If marriages were only made in heaven," he 
 added, "the obtaining witnesses in case of litigation 
 might prove awkward." 
 
 That amused him. It was far from his intention 
 to treat the matter lightly, but while bringing home 
 the importance of the civil aspect of matrimony, it 
 was at the same time delicately humorous. It was 
 not his custom to laugh at his own jests, but he 
 laughed at this. It never was his custom to laugh 
 at any joke he made, but there were always excep- 
 tions. When he found his humor was not appre- 
 ciated, he assumed that solemnity of expression 
 which he considered becoming in anyone who could 
 lay claim to a witty remark. 
 
 Neither Mrs. Dealtry nor Jill were aware that 
 he had made a joke at all, for this was not the kind 
 of 'answer her question had needed. In the tone 
 of her daughter's voice some distant memory had 
 been stirred in Mrs. Dealtry's mind; not stirred so 
 much as to revive an old consciousness, but just 
 
 74
 
 The Bird in the Net 75 
 
 sufficient to make her sense the whole world of 
 meaning behind those words. She was conscious 
 of this much, that her husband's remarks had been 
 futile and no answer at all to what Jill had said. 
 
 That distant memory in Mrs. Dealtry's mind was 
 doubly recalled by the fact that only that morning 
 she had picked up a volume of Browning's poetry 
 a copy that had been given her when she was nine- 
 teen. It had not been opened for twenty years. 
 She had opened it then and found passage after 
 passage underlined in pencil. 
 
 At first sight of those silent proofs of youthful 
 sentimentality, she had muttered a laugh to herself. 
 She had forgotten how ridiculous she had been. 
 Some couplets were scored, not with one line only, 
 but often two or three, the pencil still showing its 
 emotional indentation on the page: 
 
 Round the cape of a sudden came the sea, 
 
 snm 
 
 And the sun looked over the mountain* 
 And straight was a path of gold for him, 
 And the need of a world of men for me. 
 
 Well, anybody would have marked that. It was 
 something you quoted whenever Browning's name 
 was mentioned to show that your education had 
 not been neglected; that, though you lived in a 
 prosaic world and did your shopping at Barker's in 
 the High Street, you still had a soul for poetry. 
 
 But the last line had been scored the whole way 
 underneath : 
 
 And the need of a world of men for me.
 
 76 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 Involuntarily her mind had struggled with its 
 memories of what that had meant to her when she 
 had made that mark of her pencil so deeply in- 
 dented on the page. Could it be possible there 
 had ever been the need of a world of men for her? 
 In any case, what exactly did it mean? A world 
 of men? She could read it scarcely more than 
 literally now. A world of men! One was ample. 
 She supposed it meant just sex, crying to sex but 
 surely she could not have marked it at that age 
 because it had meant that to her then? Sex it 
 was a hateful word, a word to shudder at. What 
 she had learnt of sex since she had been married, 
 was something of which she had never made com- 
 plete confession, even to herself. Whenever she 
 did think of it, she turned the thought swiftly aside 
 with the remembrance of her children. 
 
 But none of these considerations had solved the 
 mystery of why she had scored that line with its 
 deep pencil mark: 
 
 And the need of a world of men for me. 
 
 Had there been some consciousness of sex in her 
 at that age? And whatever it was, had it conveyed 
 a sense of beauty, strong enough in emotion to in- 
 duce her in this manner to make a fool of herself? 
 Her cheeks were hot now at the dim remembrance 
 of it. For she did remember something some 
 affair which returned to her mind an incident she 
 would now describe as a foolish flirtation. If that 
 were not the proper description of it, then she felt
 
 The Bird in the Net 77 
 
 shame to think what it might have been in her mind; 
 thoughts she could only describe as unholy now. 
 Had it been that? She tried to think she had for- 
 gotten. But irresistibly there came into her memory 
 a night at a dance in the country somewhere. There 
 was an old garden about the house with high box 
 edges round the paths and the night was blue in 
 its darkness blue and silver, with the spread of 
 glittering stars. And she had walked down those 
 paths with yes she could remember his name. 
 Heaven only knew what had become of him since. 
 
 Had she thought she was in love with him ? She 
 supposed she must. Or and this was a terrible 
 thought had she only been in love with love. No I 
 It could not have been so unholy as that. She must 
 have thought she was in love with him, for as the 
 memory returned with the hypnotic concentration of 
 her gaze upon those pencil lines, she remembered 
 vaguely the hot swift rush of burning words he 
 had poured into her ears, the vows of eternal adora- 
 tion he had made, the kisses he had squandered on 
 her cheeks and neck, the trembling hand she had 
 let find its way to hold her beating breast. 
 
 As that vision came back, she had shut the book, 
 trembling herself and all afire with the shame of 
 her memories. "The need of a world of men!" 
 She thanked God that need had swfftly found Its 
 quiet in the duties of married life and the care of 
 her children. They should have the best that she 
 could give them and that evening, hearing her hus- 
 band's fatuous remarks about the civil contract of 
 marriage, she knew it was the best of her advice,
 
 78 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 based on her experience of married life, which she 
 could give to Jill. 
 
 It would not be expedient, however, to give that 
 advice direct. Telling her she must give up this 
 pauper marriage, urging her to see the disadvan- 
 tages it would entail, this was not the policy to 
 pursue. She must sympathize and with understand- 
 ing, if it were only that understanding arising out 
 of memories which had no meaning to her now. 
 
 She enjoined her husband not to be a fool. 
 
 "Jill doesn't mean anything like that," she said. 
 "What's the matter with her is that she's romantic 
 like I was at her age. She doesn't realize yet 
 that Romance only carries you to the doors of the 
 church and then leaves you in the ditch." 
 
 John's words were burning in her mind, or Jill 
 could never have said what she did. 
 
 "Isn't it that you leave Romance," she declared, 
 "and prefer to get into the ditch yourself?" 
 
 She was fighting with the courage of her despair, 
 for the odds were all against her. All the twenty 
 years of obedience to their wishes were on their 
 side and they had not made one demand of her yet. 
 Would she obey when they did? 
 
 "Honor thy father and mother that the days may 
 be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth 
 thee." But the very length of those days, were she 
 to humor their wishes by marrying Mr. Skipwith, 
 might be the essence of the ugliness of life. She 
 might pray that her days might be short in the 
 land and that most fervently she did, but so in- 
 grained was this creed of her home life that she
 
 The Bird in the Net 79 
 
 feared for her courage when the test of their 
 authority came. 
 
 In the few moments of his wife's silence, follow- 
 ing the unexpected candor of Jill's retort, Mr. 
 Dealtry, seizing an opportunity too rare to be 
 missed, demanded what she and her pauper scribbler 
 were going to live on. He spoke of bread and 
 cheese and kisses without a smile. The humor of 
 putting it that way was not his own. 
 
 "Is Ronald to give up his chances in life?" he 
 asked her. "Am I to take to hard work again at 
 my age? Is your mother to give up her comfort- 
 able home with a respectable address and go to a 
 house in Earl's Court?" 
 
 To all of which, comprehensively to them, though 
 to herself as though she were speaking in a dream, 
 Jill replied: "I suppose so." 
 
 They both looked at her in amazement. 
 
 "So it's for this I've spent the best years of my 
 life, to bring you up!" exclaimed Mr. Dealtry. 
 "And while we are suffering all the discomforts of 
 Earl's Court," he added, "may I ask where you're 
 going to live?" 
 
 "In Fetter Lane," said she. 
 
 Then, in one voice together, they declared she 
 was more than romantic. She was mad ! And such 
 is the power of training and environment, that Jill 
 thought she must be mad as well. For though 
 there were many things she wanted to say in her 
 defense, in justification of all this wonder of love, 
 yet there, in the Prince of Wales's Terrace, they 
 did not even seem worth the while.
 
 8o World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 Indeed in that atmosphere, there were moments 
 when tremblingly, she mistrusted herself; moments 
 while she listened to the speciousness of their argu- 
 ments when she thought it must have been some 
 other than herself who had made those promises 
 to John. Venice, the Lagoon, the death-bed of 
 Thomas Grey, the tender wistfulness and belief of 
 the little old white-haired lady, they began to ap- 
 pear to her in all the nature of a vision she could 
 but dimly reach in the focus of her mind. Gradu- 
 ally, as they talked with their countless instances, 
 she became awake again with facts. This and she 
 knew it was the sleeplessness of Life; the insomnia 
 her soul had been accustomed to. And every mo- 
 ment she was losing power to close her eyes and 
 find the restfuiness of that dreaming John had 
 brought her. 
 
 Over and over again she repeated in her brain 
 the last benediction of Thomas Grey, as one, with 
 aching eyes in the darkness, counts sheep going 
 through a gate. Passionately she yearned for that 
 contented view of life, John had whispered to her 
 as the gondola broke the water into ripples on the 
 Lagoon. 
 
 It was out of love indeed that he would make 
 his life, his children and his work. Why was it 
 such a degradation to be poor? Not everyone who 
 did their best was paid for it. And wasn't it loving 
 the best and doing it that, through all the gray days 
 and the blue days, made life worth living? 
 
 Some would always be well paid. Some would 
 always make money. But did that make money a
 
 The Bird in the Net 81 
 
 thing in itself, more worth having than the joy of 
 the work which brought it? For a man to love 
 his work, for a woman to love her man, weren't 
 these the essentials with which to set out on the 
 journey? For them both to love each other, as 
 John loved her and she, him was not that the 
 essence of the best that life could afford? 
 
 She thought these things, violently, passionately 
 but each thought was like the beating of a bird's 
 wings as it struggled in a net. The power of flight 
 was in each thought as it fluttered in her brain, 
 but the net was there about her, imprisoning every 
 effort of escape. She knew once uttered they would 
 sound the note of madness in that room. 
 
 There about the walls were some hundreds of 
 pounds worth of old furniture, bought in more 
 palmy days. Was that to be sold when they went 
 into the purgatory of Earl's Court? There was her 
 father's glass of liquor brandy at eighteen shillings 
 a bottle. Was that to be empty when he took his- 
 cup of coffee after dinner? There was the motor 
 car he was intending to buy. It had not occurred 
 to her to be strange that he had already selected 
 the make and the horsepower, indeed had had a 
 trial spin in it, when the purchase was ultimately 
 to be made with someone else's money. A motor 
 car was too ripping a possession to bother overmuch 
 about who paid for it. There were all the things 
 of comfort and luxury that had become the habit 
 of their lives under the roof of that house in Prince 
 of Wales's Terrace. Were they all to be given up 
 for her want of determination to put a gold ring
 
 82 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 on her finger and, as many another girl had done 
 before her, make herself comfortable for life with 
 a man for whom she had only an appreciable amount 
 of respect? 
 
 Somehow, there in that room, it seemed madness 
 to protest. It was her mother, watching her in all 
 those moments, who saw that struggle between love 
 and duty in which she swung. 
 
 "George," she said to her husband, "I was just 
 thinking of the quickest way we could drop our 
 friends, because, I don't think it's conceit to say, 
 we do know some of the best people." 
 
 "A cheerful thought," said he. 
 
 "If we go to Earl's Court," she replied, "that'll 
 be quite enough." 
 
 "But I'm damned if we're going to Earl's 
 Court!" he retorted. 
 
 "I think we've got to consult Jill about that," said 
 she. "She knows her own happiness best."
 
 Chapter XII : The Zoo 
 
 JILL came to their meeting in Kensington 
 Gardens two mornings later, dragging her 
 steps as though it were to the scaffold of 
 their parting. 
 
 They had triumphed in Prince of Wales's Ter- 
 race. It was not for a moment that she admitted 
 it. It was scarcely even that she realized. All that 
 had happened in her consciousness was the gradual 
 dripping away of her courage until she knew her 
 heart, which had been full and brimming over, was 
 now as empty as a leaking pitcher. 
 
 Not one sign of admission of their victory had 
 Jill given at the end of that encounter. In face 
 of her father's authority, peremptorily command- 
 ing her to see no more of John, she had given no 
 word of obedience. 
 
 Nothing had she done, of which she was con- 
 scious, to convey to either of them her knowledge 
 of defeat before the odds which they had arrayed 
 against her. Yet during the two days that followed, 
 in her mother's voice, in the little propitiating things 
 she did, the very way she came into her room and 
 kissed her when once the light was out and no one 
 could see the tears staining her cheeks, in all these 
 subtle attentions, Jill felt the hand of the victor 
 
 83
 
 84 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 stretched out to soften, to approve of her sur- 
 render. 
 
 How had she known? Had she found the tears 
 wet on her cheeks and guessed from them? No 
 it could not be that. The knowledge had been there 
 already or she would never have come to her room. 
 Only with a certainty of Jill's submission would she 
 have betrayed this spirit of magnanimity. Had she 
 believed Jill's mind was made up to marry her 
 pauper scribbler, there would have been an unmelt- 
 ing coldness in her eyes, a note like the vibration 
 of a steel wire in her voice. Had she really be- 
 lieved her daughter was going to make such folly 
 of her life, she would have fought for her sanity 
 with every weapon that could bring her pain. 
 
 With this chilling knowledge of her mother, 
 there oozed the last drop of her courage away. 
 Something inevitable there appeared to be in the 
 pointing finger of her fate. She had been meant 
 to see love on the dim horizon of her vision a 
 figure in the far distance, high on the crest of the 
 hills, a figure, silhouetted, she could just discern as 
 she walked the broad highway through the valley 
 below. She had been meant to see him, to hear 
 even in that distance the faint music of his pipes. 
 But that was all. 
 
 There, on the crest of those hills, the winding 
 pathway was no more than a shepherd's track, lead- 
 ing to the wild places where those who follow must 
 "be content to find the earth a pillow often for their 
 head. Her road, she knew it, was the open high- 
 way, pressing on with those to reach the lighted
 
 The Zoo 85 
 
 townland, where there was down to rest one's tired 
 limbs upon and the laughter of a feast to cheer up 
 an empty heart. 
 
 So she came to Kensington Gardens that morning, 
 as one, wearily dragging their steps out of the 
 already toilsome way, knowing it is a fruitless dis- 
 cursion; counting each football in certainty of the 
 labor of their return. 
 
 John, coming to meet his Jill, was in other mood 
 than this. By careful calculation, with all the things 
 that he could pawn, making no material difference 
 to the domestic arrangements of the house, there 
 was a sum amounting to nigh on twenty pounds to 
 defray the cost of the wedding and the subsequent 
 honeymoon. 
 
 His imagination took flights like the swallows 
 when he began thinking of all they could do with 
 twenty pounds. He skimmed the possibilities even 
 of going abroad and as swiftly left touch of them 
 when a sudden fear came to his mind of their finding 
 themselves prisoners, unable to get back. 
 
 For now, in the new world he had entered, he 
 realized his mind was full of fears; always because 
 of Jill; such fears would have been ludicrous for 
 himself. Added to which, the more he thought 
 about her and the life to which she was accustomed, 
 the more he pictured the house in Prince of Wales's 
 Terrace as a kind of mansion, with men servants 
 and maid servants, a comprehensive inventory of 
 all it was intended your imagination should read 
 into the tenth commandment. 
 
 Yet these fears had no firm hold on him for
 
 86 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 long. He could shake them from him with a laugh 
 in the belief that she loved as he loved. A sense 
 of power pervaded everything and drove difficulties 
 before it by the sheer magic of its will. The East 
 African lion, if it had got out of its cage, had done 
 no more than push its head through the gates of 
 the circus ring. It was not long before the beast 
 was safely back again behind the bars. 
 
 John was cracking his whip once more with all 
 the old confidence of the ringmaster the old pie- 
 bald horse of happy circumstance was ambling 
 round the circus track with the same obedience as 
 of old. Will, and free-will at that, could order 
 everything. 
 
 One thing only there was of all he had learnt 
 in these first days of his new revelations, one thing 
 hanging heavily about his heart which, however 
 often he might put it away, returned with a clinging 
 persistence. With the cracking of his whip, he 
 might drive it helter-skelter out of the ring, but 
 again and again with the pathetic insistence of the 
 dog that plays the clown, it would come back to 
 his feet. 
 
 He believed that Amber was suffering. Why, he 
 had not vanity enough properly to understand. Yet 
 still there were certain things that had happened 
 which he could only read one way. No other in- 
 terpretation seemed possible. For three months, so 
 Madame Defautin had told him, she had dined alone 
 at Le Pauvre Monsieur. Again that sound in her 
 voice when she had questioned his use of Harefield 
 in his make-believe.
 
 The Zoo 87 
 
 "But Harefield belonged to us,*' she had said. 
 
 Had she cared what belonged to them then? 
 Had he known till then that anything did belong 
 to them in their relationship? 
 
 And lastly, her turning away at the door in Fetter 
 Lane, her turning away and her never looking back. 
 
 He did not want to believe she was really suffer- 
 ing, but the knowledge would never leave him alone 
 for long. Often he found himself wondering what 
 would she be like when she suffered? How deep 
 would that suffering be? Would she sit at home on 
 that drawing-room floor in Hogarth Road with the 
 tears tumbling down her cheeks? Never! Not 
 she I It would be a dumb suffering like an animal's 
 a turning hither and thither, a running up this 
 street, down that, like a dog that is lost a being 
 very busy over nothing, taking a vivid interest in 
 things her hands touched but her mind was oblivious 
 of and singing, perhaps singing all the time. 
 
 Now that once he had sensed the truth, he could 
 in his imagination picture all the twitchings of her 
 pain. Yet what could he do? Had the fault been 
 his? He was in a new world a world where things 
 hurt a world of reality, needing all belief and all 
 courage and faith to see the wonder it contained. 
 He supposed her suffering was part of it, but as yet 
 failed signally to reconcile it with his beliefs and 
 the faith he had in his heart. 
 
 For what had made her suffer? He had had 
 her assurance she had not cared before. Had that 
 assurance been false? He caught for the moment 
 suspicion of a woman's pride and as swiftly put
 
 88 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 it away from him. What could she care for in 
 him? He had given her nothing of himself as he 
 was giving now with both hands to Jill. Indeed, 
 had he ever realized how wonderful it was to give, 
 until he had met her and she first had given him 
 her interest as he read his story to her that day in 
 Kensington Gardens? 
 
 But argue it as he might, the knowledge was ir- 
 revocably there. She was hurt. She was suffering. 
 The consciousness of it came back again and again 
 and at moments, most heavily, when his heart was 
 lightest. 
 
 It came back to him that morning as he turned 
 to the top of the Flower Walk from the Albert 
 Memorial. For an instant it darkened all the 
 glorious prospects of their meeting. With an effort 
 he thrust it away from him. 
 
 "One must shut one's eyes going through the 
 world!" he exclaimed and he shut his eyes, but like 
 a blind man could still feel the presence of her 
 pain in the tips of his fingers. 
 
 But the sight of Jill, coming up the walk to meet 
 him, drove every other thought beside it out of his 
 head. She was so wonderfully dressed. She looked 
 far too beautiful for it to be believable that she 
 loved him. He thought an instant of his hat and 
 wished for her sake he had bought a new one. The 
 next moment thoughts like that were gone like 
 bubbles. Her hand was in his. Her eyes were 
 searching his face and though they looked sad, he 
 knew he could soon bring their laughter back. 
 
 To know how wonderful a place the world was,
 
 The Zoo 89 
 
 it was only necessary to realize that they were soon 
 to be married. He never doubted that, even with 
 the sad look in her eyes. Her eyes were often sad. 
 With all the riches of her fur coat and that house 
 in Prince of Wales's Terrace, he frequently caught 
 an expression in her eyes as though she were looking 
 out into the world from a very little window, deep 
 set within the wall. 
 
 "We can't stay here," said she the first words 
 that were spoken. 
 
 He looked at her in surprise. 
 
 "Why not?" he asked. 
 
 She gave him the only reason she had the reason 
 predominant above all others in her mind: "Be- 
 cause," said she, "we can't." 
 
 "Where can we go then?" he questioned her. 
 
 She had hoped he would tell her that. With their 
 freedom in the world, men knew of all sorts of odd 
 places. 
 
 He suggested Fetter Lane. She shook her head. 
 With what she had to tell him, she feared to trust 
 herself there alone with him as once before when 
 he told her the story of Beautiful Nonsense. For 
 the last two days in Prince of Wales's Terrace, it 
 had been as though they had beaten gongs in her 
 ears. She was deaf to everything inside herself but 
 the sound of that metallic clanging of facts. By 
 now, she was afraid of the stillness should it follow, 
 and follow it surely would in those rooms in Fetter 
 Lane. 
 
 "I want somewhere where we can talk," said she, 
 "but where there are lots and crowds of people."
 
 90 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 "The Zoo," suggested John to please her fancy; 
 for what did it matter where they went when, not 
 long time to come, the days together would be their 
 very own. 
 
 "The Zoo to-day's Bank Holiday there'll be 
 crowds there all right. Awful fun, the Zoo, on a 
 Bank Holiday." 
 
 She pressed his arm tenderly when he talked of 
 fun, for she knew how much she was going to hurt 
 him. And it really was wonderful of him to think 
 of the Zoo. That was the very kind of place she 
 wanted a place where there were so many people 
 you could not know quite all the pain that was in 
 your heart; where, even if your lips quivered, some- 
 one might see it, so that every outward and visible 
 sign of your suffering would have to be concealed. 
 
 He could not plead with her there; not as he 
 might if they were alone where none could see. He 
 could not touch her hand. He could not walk up and 
 down or beat his hands together, or do any of those 
 things she could quite believe a man might do who 
 must listen to the confession of a woman's want 
 of courage such as hers. 
 
 There they might sit together perhaps, but any- 
 thing they might say would be certain to be over- 
 heard, so that a sense of dignity must keep them 
 circumspect and she would never have the fullest 
 knowledge of how much she had hurt him. Poor 
 consolation for one who ached to think she must 
 hurt him at all. Even so, she had hope that the 
 pain of it need not wholly be administered by her. 
 It was not that she wished definitely to tell him
 
 The Zoo 91 
 
 they could not be married, as that when she had 
 said all, had told him of the duties oppressing her 
 on every side, that then he, of his own accord, would 
 say how impossible their marriage had become. 
 
 "That'll be splendid," she said with enthusiasm, 
 and forced a tender smile that deceived him. Then 
 they walked down into Knightsbridge and John 
 called a hansom. 
 
 "The Zoo!" said he, and from the tone of his 
 voice it might have been the Bank of England.
 
 Chapter XIII : The Window that is Closed 
 
 INDEED, it was crowded enough. An all-per- 
 vading odor of orange peel met them the 
 moment they entered the gates. One forgets 
 that children are being born every hour of the day 
 and all the year round, until one passes through 
 the toll-gates of the Zoological Gardens on a Bank 
 Holiday. One forgets that paper bags can be 
 manufactured at the rate of a hundred a minute, or 
 that the supply of oranges, lemonade and ginger- 
 bread are trades which make for some men their 
 fortunes while all the time they are making many 
 children sick. 
 
 These facts you learn quickly in the Zoo on a 
 Bank Holiday. They are facts indeed from which 
 you cannot get away; not even if you go into the 
 Cat House which is calculated to disagree with a 
 glass of milk and soda and a bun. 
 
 Wherever they went that morning, the crowds 
 were unavoidable. John thought of the Cat House,, 
 prompted by reasons unnecessary to repeat, but with 
 no success. These children had seen cats all their 
 lives, had pulled their tails and tweaked their 
 whiskers. But they had never before seen them 
 behind the bars of a cage and that made all the 
 difference. 
 
 The Cat House was crowded. Putting his nose 
 92
 
 The Window that is Closed 93 
 
 round the corner of the door, John was glad, rather 
 than sorry for that. As for the Monkey House, 
 the monkeys were reveling in the freedom of their 
 prisons, while the public was perspiring in one 
 dense and uncomfortable mass around the bars. 
 
 "It's all a matter of which way you look at 
 things," said John. And that was the first time 
 that morning Jill had laughed. 
 
 They tried the Lion House. Any fool might have 
 known it would be no better. It was then an hour 
 before feeding time and men and women as well 
 as children, with solemn faces were standing there, 
 who had been waiting for hours, nibbling little buns 
 while they waited to see one animal dispose in five 
 minutes of twenty pounds of good, red horseflesh 
 bones and all. 
 
 It was only by that vast open aviary where the 
 British birds fly in and out of the branches all day 
 long, that they found any room to move. 
 
 "British birds," said John, "are not interesting 
 to British people. How can they be? They keep 
 them in little cages themselves." 
 
 The voice of a fat woman in purple, with three 
 children apparently all the same age, had decided 
 him. 
 
 Seeing the notice, "To the British Birds," she 
 had said: 
 
 "Blowed if I paid my sixpence to see a lot of 
 sparrers!" 
 
 "Come on!" said John, and they had at least 
 found room to stand and press their noses up 
 against the meshes of the wire.
 
 94 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 Here he pointed out to her the birds he knew 
 as they flew by. And it seemed he knew them 
 all. But not only did he know them all; he had 
 his stories about them, like the stories you tell 
 children. Such stories he had already told her of 
 the parrot in Fetter Lane; of the statue of St. 
 Joseph they painted with a gray beard in Ardmore 
 to make a patron Saint of him. 
 
 She listened gently at first, then willingly. In 
 time it became eagerly, little realizing, as little he 
 realized too, of the subtle influence these stories 
 were having in her mind. Without knowing it, 
 either of them, he was putting her to sleep. Gradu- 
 ally there was creeping back into the breast of her, 
 the heart of a child. In some odd fashion of his 
 own, he could touch the essence of beauty as he 
 talked. He carried the Romance of Life about with 
 him, like a master key in his pocket. 
 
 She had come there with ideas of money, com- 
 fort, position, all filling her thoughts; echoes that 
 were never still, but continually beating from one 
 side to the other of her brain. Those echoes had 
 been keeping her awake and now, gradually and 
 imperceptibly, they were fading into silence. With 
 the sound of his stories, more than the actual story 
 they told, he was stealing her soul out of city 
 streets. Step by step it crept out of the lighted 
 townland in the valley. Step by step it mounted 
 the hills to the crest where Love was. Then it was 
 only a shepherd's track where they walked, but it 
 led through the scented gorse and the tinkling 
 heather, where there was no such thing as a next-
 
 The Window that is Closed 95 
 
 door neighbor, or the chance of meeting a friend 
 whom circumstance had compelled you to drop. 
 
 Money did not seem to matter so much there. 
 Indeed the blossoms of the gorse were all the gold 
 they needed; the ripples of the hill streams, silver 
 enough to fill their purse. 
 
 John could give you the impression that you could 
 live like a squirrel upon nuts and disperse with all 
 the oranges, the lemonade and ginger-bread, indeed, 
 with all the feasts of plenty in the world. 
 
 As he talked, she could almost believe such things 
 were possible; yet there, had she known it, there 
 was he scraping his few possessions together and 
 exchanging them for money over the pawnbroker's 
 counter, in order to defray the expenses of a honey- 
 moon. 
 
 "See that little bird!" he had exclaimed one 
 moment and beyond the straight, eager line of his 
 finger, she had made out a tiny thing with a black 
 head and soft gray breast, hopping from one branch 
 to another. 
 
 "What is it?" she asked. 
 
 "A blackcap." 
 
 "And what's he do?" 
 
 According to him they all did strange, odd 
 things; things that human beings might do, if only 
 they had such freedom, or such a joy in life. And 
 there already was her eagerness to know. 
 
 "What's he do?" she had asked. 
 
 The blackcap, he told her, was a ballad-monger 
 in the streets of the world where birds lived a 
 ballad-monger who, every early springtime hired a
 
 96 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 top attic in a quick-set hedge wherein to practice 
 his latest song, until he knew it off by heart. 
 
 "Why a top attic?" she asked. 
 
 "Well, because it's an absolutely original song, 
 and he has to be very careful that no one sneaks the 
 idea. There are lots of birds that go about stealing 
 ideas for songs just at that time of the year when 
 there's nothing but music in the air, so he has to 
 be careful. He has to take a top attic anything 
 on the ground floor would be fatal. Why, the 
 passer-by in the street would hear him at it." 
 
 Here was his Nonsense which, like the shoes on 
 his feet or the satchel on his back, he must bring 
 with him to make a sense of Wonder in his new 
 world of Reality. 
 
 There are John Greys in every street. You have 
 only to look at their unfashionable shoes, or the 
 shapeless leather satchel on their backs to recognize 
 them. And to the men whose brains are tired of 
 being wise, they are fools. And to the fools whose 
 hearts beat a sound pulse beneath their waistcoats, 
 they are the best company on the road. 
 
 "It's just in the end of April," he went on, wheni 
 once he knew her heart was intrigued with the folly 
 of his tale, "as soon as there come those soft, 
 warm winds when you can feel everything in the 
 lanes and woods is leaning out to catch the first 
 sight of Summer, it's just then he goes out in the 
 streets, up and down, singing the song he's invented. 
 And no one has got quite the little trills and turns 
 that he has; moreover it's too late for them to 
 try and steal them from him then. You see the
 
 The Window that is Closed 97 
 
 end of April's copyright day. The song a bird sings 
 from the first of May is his very own. It's too late 
 to be a plagiarist then." 
 
 "But why's it too late? I should have thought 
 it became common property once he sings it in the 
 streets. What's to prevent anyone picking it up?" 
 
 "The mere expediency of time," said John, and 
 turning his nose in the hole of the wire-netting 
 through which it was still pushed, he looked 
 straightly in her eyes. "The expediency of time 
 the call of Youth. Once the Spring has set well in, 
 there's no time even in Youth to learn another 
 fellow's song. You've got to sing your own. All 
 the windows in the streets are open. Summer's 
 cumen in. The ladies are up there in the second 
 and third-floor branches, throwing down pennies to 
 him as he sings. You can't pick up another fel- 
 low's penny. That's not tip and run." 
 
 "Why do you say tip and run?" 
 
 "Because that's the game they play like we play 
 cricket." 
 
 "But does he sing for pennies?" 
 
 "No. I wondered if you'd ask that. No. It 
 isn't for pennies he sings; though most times it's 
 nothing but pennies he gets." 
 
 "What does he sing for then?" 
 
 Behind all this nonsense of his, she felt all the 
 functioning of his thought, the constant steady drift 
 of his mind, the message he was giving her with 
 perhaps never a thought of such a thing as a mes- 
 sage in his heart. A long pause she had made be- 
 fore she asked that question, because she was even
 
 98 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 then, half afraid to hear the answer she knew he 
 would give. As it was, the words had come to her 
 lips before her mind was quite ready to have them 
 said. 
 
 "He sings," said John presently, "he sings just 
 for the joy of singing, and until he finds someone 
 who can share the joy that it is. There are no 
 pennies in this transaction. There are some who 
 think it's a matter of chance. But I don't. I don't 
 think it's chance if the song's all right." 
 
 "Why, what happens?" 
 
 "Well, up and down the street he goes one 
 day and the next, and the days after. And there 
 are plenty of heads looking out of the windows, but 
 it's a voice he wants to hear. And he always hears 
 it in the end, or at least he thinks he does." 
 
 "What voice?" 
 
 "A voice singing little snatches of his song. A 
 heart that has picked up a stave of his music and, 
 perhaps all unconsciously, is singing it to itself. 
 He's standing at a corner of a street where the 
 quick-set villas turn into a row of mansions of lilac; 
 his head's well thrown back and he's singing forv 
 all he's worth and then, suddenly he hears a voice 
 catching up one of the tuney bits and singing it with 
 him and he stops. And there, upstairs in one of 
 those houses, with those cobweb lace curtains they 
 have over some of the windows in the lilac man- 
 sions, he locates the voice, because, though he has 
 stopped, it still goes on not quite so sure of itself 
 but it goes on. And then he knows." 
 
 "Knows what?"
 
 The Window that Is Closed 99 
 
 "That he's found his mate." 
 
 "But how can he be sure?" 
 
 "Because love's too timid to throw windows open 
 for it, or fling pennies into the street. Heaps of 
 people think they can love like that, with everyone 
 hearing the clink and the rattle of the pennies as 
 they clatter on to the pavements. But love has the 
 smallest voice in the world. It's only passion that 
 cries out loud. Love has the smallest voice and 
 only a very few can hear it. But when they do, 
 they can hear it from the other end of the world." 
 
 She leant against the mesh of the wire netting, 
 listening, at last in silence, to the ending of his tale. 
 
 The blackcap had long since vanished into the 
 forest of branches; but she had forgotten the 
 blackcap by then. They might have been anywhere 
 for all that she realized of her immediate surround- 
 ings. All she could see was the opening of those 
 windows on Prince of Wales's Terrace and the 
 shower of pennies on the pavement that day 
 when she would be married to Mr. Skipwith. 
 
 But all she could hear was the sound of the 
 smallest voice which, with its penetrating stillness, 
 lifted above the clamorous cries of the expediency 
 and came to her, unbroken, across the whole turmoil 
 of the metallic sounds of life.
 
 Chapter XIV: Assessing the Income of 
 an Author 
 
 HERE is the spirit of youth in love, a thing 
 as impossible to capture with words as 
 would be the hope to arrest its sweetest 
 note in the throat of a bird. 
 
 After that story of the Springtime ballad-monger, 
 Jill gave herself up to a world of dreams and 
 wandered with him as though in the wildest solitude 
 through all those holiday-making crowds in the 
 Zoological Gardens. No one seeing them there in 
 the midst of that jostling turmoil of children, upon 
 that carpet of paper bags and in that odor of 
 oranges, could have believed how much alone they 
 were. 
 
 For this is what it amounts to, and in the end 
 is all a matter of philosophy, that you make your 
 world with whatever materials there may happen 
 to your hand; while most of us, like bad workmen, 
 complain of our tools. But nearly any tool is good 
 enough, as the old workmen would have told you, 
 who did some of the most beautiful carving and 
 executed some of the most wonderful masonry before 
 ever there was a machine to make a chisel, or a 
 lathe to turn an instrument to their liking. 
 
 100
 
 Assessing the Income of an Author 101 
 
 The Zoological Gardens on a Bank Holiday are 
 poor material for a pair of lovers with which to 
 make their solitude. But a cunning craftsman, one 
 in the tips of whose fingers is the love of his work, 
 he can do it. Before that tale of his was finished, 
 John had converted that pandemonium of London 
 holiday-makers into the stillness you find in a coun- 
 try lane, where the long trailers of the brambles, 
 lifting and curling up above the hedge-tops, are the 
 only things with the impulse of motion to the winds 
 that blow across on their way to the fields beyond. 
 
 It was in the essence of John Grey to make his 
 world for himself and just as he went along. It 
 was in the essence of those who dwelt in Prince of 
 Wales's Terrace to submit to its being a persistent 
 revelation through the facts of life with which they 
 were brought in contact. Poverty, for example, if 
 it came their way, made a poor thing of the whole 
 world. Wealth enriched it by just so much as riches 
 could buy. 
 
 With this philosophy, possessions, pride and 
 power, all are essentials to a reasonable world. 
 Deprived of these, life has every aspect of being a 
 dismal failure. Yet life, as a matter of fact, is 
 exactly the same. There is an intrinsic quality in 
 it as also in all its elements which, when once you 
 have discovered it, can be made out of any circum- 
 stance whatsover. 
 
 The gold which the grave-digger claims as a 
 perquisite out of the mouth of the corpse may be 
 made into a pin with which you bind the scarf about 
 your baby's neck. It is no less a joy to the grave-
 
 102 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 digger who sells that gold to buy a few pots of 
 beer, than it is to you who, in happy ignorance of 
 the last state in which it existed, buy it to adorn 
 your baby's clothing. In one case it may be senti- 
 ment and a joy to the sentimentalist; in the other 
 there is something of gross materialism about it 
 and a joy to the realist. 
 
 Yet it is the same gold. Nothing has happened, 
 except the form of its presentation, to change that 
 first intrinsic quality of kingship amongst metals it 
 possessed when it lay in the earth of the miner's 
 claim. Only its appearance has altered and if ap- 
 pearances are your standard in the world, then, by 
 the time it reaches your baby's neck, you have long 
 since lost all appreciation of the thing it really is. 
 
 John Grey found that the intrinsic quality of life 
 was beauty, wherefore he kept his recognition of it 
 in anything and everything that came to his hand. 
 
 In pursuit of this inherent purpose, he certainly 
 was presented with many difficulties, of which this 
 marriage with all its responsibilities was by no 
 means the least. But he had belief, which, in an 
 uncertain world, is better than any knowledge. He 
 did not know how to provide against those moments 
 when there would be no coal in the box outside the 
 door, or the cupboard would be empty of supplies, 
 but implicitly he believed that he would. With no 
 little amount of courage, he told Jill of these pos- 
 sible contingencies, at the same time assuring her 
 she need have no fear. 
 
 "It doesn't happen often," said he, and for-
 
 Assessing the Income of an Author 103 
 
 tunately did not see the instant's expression of the 
 old fear in her eyes. 
 
 "But when you're looking after things," he went 
 on with enthusiasm, "of course it won't happen at 
 all. I buy things sometimes I don't want and 
 that runs away with money in a rotten way. You 
 see money comes in lumps that's the worst of it. 
 And when you get ten pounds one day, you go about 
 feeling that you're making ten pounds a week and 
 live at the rate of five hundred a year till the next 
 morning. It's all wrong, I know. But you won't 
 let me do that. I know you won't. Of course, I 
 can get odd little bits for poems a guinea a time 
 almost whenever I like. But poems don't pay and 
 yet I'd sooner write poems than anything else. 
 Stories have to be invented, but a poem's just there; 
 all you have to do is pick it up, like a colored 
 pebble that catches your eye on the sea-shore. You 
 just pick it up and start polishing it and sometimes 
 it comes out like an onyx and sometimes it's only 
 just a Scotch pebble and sometimes it's nothing but 
 a dull bit of clay that won't take a polish at all. 
 I've written one since I came back. Shall I read 
 it to you?" 
 
 His eyes were lighted up like a child's expectant 
 of a reward for good conduct. It would have 
 needed the hardest of hearts to refuse him the in- 
 terest he asked. 
 
 "Go on read it," she said, smiling, and in a sec- 
 ond he had it whipped out of his pocket and was 
 reading it to her there in the midst of those Bank 
 Holiday crowds in the Zoological Gardens.
 
 104 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 London, like the fierce sun in summer heavens 
 
 Burns itself out with life and endless passings to and fro, 
 
 But you and I will find earth's quiet places 
 Make Life a woodland freshet where the mosses grow. 
 
 Let them beat up and down their weary pavements! 
 
 They needs must drink the wine who tread the unrelenting press. 
 We shall lie down and plunge our wind-scorched faces 
 
 In that white water singing through our wilderness. 
 
 Give them the music of their clanging cymbals 
 Who best can make of Life a pageant passing by; 
 
 We'll have the blackbird's flute in sudden, eager phrases 
 The lark's diapason in the cathedreled sky. 
 
 Is Life the finer, hammered on an anvil? 
 
 Flung in the furnace? Hastened to shape within the mold? 
 Let's take it, you and I, in lingering fingers 
 
 And turn it to beauty out of the virgin gold. 
 
 Nor ever let us grieve if it remain unfinished, 
 
 A thing despised of commerce in the noiseful market place 
 
 It is not all to sell more joy's in making. 
 
 "I haven't finished the last verse," said he. "It's 
 rough there. I want a new polishing rag." 
 
 "Are you going to give that to me?" she asked. 
 
 "What to keep it, do you mean? For your- 
 self?" 
 
 "Yes to keep it always for myself." 
 
 "Do you really mean you like it as much as all 
 that?" 
 
 She could not help laughing at the ingenuousness 
 of delight in his surprise. 
 
 "Of course I do. Did you think I wouldn't?" 
 
 "I didn't know." 
 
 It was more just merely than that she liked it.
 
 Assessing the Income of an Author 105 
 
 Even with the dream he had brought her that morn- 
 ing, her battle, she knew, was still for fighting in 
 Prince of Wales's Terrace. And here was a ban- 
 ner, or a battle-cry something to give her courage 
 when she was faint of heart. 
 
 He held out the paper on which it was written. 
 She took it and read it all through again, while he 
 watched her eyes, guessing the lines she came to 
 and feeling pins and needles all through his veins 
 once that he knew she cared for what he had done. 
 
 He had been about to say that he felt he ought 
 to give up writing Poetry, because, as he had in- 
 formed her and as all the world knows, Poetry 
 did not pay. But this, of course, made quite another 
 matter of it and when, folding up the piece of paper 
 and just before she slipped it inside her dress, she 
 put it to her lips and he felt on his own the kiss she 
 gave it, then he knew there were a thousand poems 
 to be written and every single one of them for her. 
 
 "Anyhow," said he, when he had informed her 
 of this, "it's not going to prevent me from doing 
 other work that pays better. Poems can be written 
 anywhere, any time. I've written one with burnt 
 match-sticks on an old envelope, when I hadn't got 
 a pencil. Besides you see, if I wrote a thousand 
 and sold them all at a guinea apiece, that 'ud 
 be " 
 
 He could not quite bring himself to say it would 
 be a thousand and fifty pounds. That was stretch- 
 ing imagination just a bit too far. Possibly he 
 could not write so many as that, or if he did, then 
 they would not all be sold. But it was in the bounds
 
 106 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 of conception for him to allow fifty pounds a year 
 if he had any luck at all. 
 
 "Let's make a list," he said suddenly, "and see 
 what I can make," whereupon they seized the op- 
 portunity of an empty seat and sat down. 
 
 When the sum of his possible earnings was 
 totaled, by Jill ostensibly with fingers drumming on 
 her knee, by John secretly, with unseen fingers 
 drumming in his mind, it amounted to a hundred 
 and seventy-three pounds. 
 
 "You see, I can make money," said he. "It 
 isn't as if we were absolutely poor. That's three 
 pounds ten a week, if it weren't in lumps. That's 
 practically ten shillings a day well my good- 
 ness!" At that moment there was a shilling in his 
 pocket. He turned it over and over in his fingers. 
 "A good many people get along comfortably on 
 less than that. And mind you," he added, "I'm 
 only at the beginning. I shall make more than that. 
 There's one author I know makes seven hundred a 
 year and, of course, the big poets make thousands, 
 but they call it work then and they do it every morn- 
 ing in a study with the door shut. I wrote that poem 
 in a public house." 
 
 "Why in a public house?" she asked. 
 
 "Because I could get a pen and a pot of ink and 
 a table to write on and it only cost me a pint of 
 beer. But I shall make more than a hundred and 
 seventy you see if I don't and it'll never be ham- 
 mered on an anvil if I can help it. We'll make it 
 together you and I " 
 
 "Out of the virgin gold," said she; and when
 
 Assessing the Income of an Author 107 
 
 she said that, there came a lump rushing up into his 
 throat and the effort to swallow it made his eyes 
 all hot. 
 
 Notwithstanding that here is a world where 
 chartered accountants thrive at every corner, such 
 talk as this carries more conviction with it to some 
 than all the carefully reasoned calculations of com- 
 mon-sense. With common-sense you say: "We must 
 allow for unforeseen contingencies. There are 
 always miscellaneous and unexpected expenses. 
 There are possible doctor's bills. There's the rainy 
 day." There are, indeed, some of us who live just 
 like the Irish gardener, waiting with his watering 
 can, and you know what he did that for. 
 
 With common-sense, we reduce life to the quality 
 of a funeral procession on the assumption that it is 
 more pleasurable to be surprised at finding it a 
 journey in a four-wheeled cab. 
 
 To Jill, as she listened to it, there seemed for the 
 moment more truth in John's list and plans, set out 
 there on the back o a well-thumbed piece of paper, 
 than in all the reason and facts to which she had 
 been submitted for two whole days in Prince of 
 Wales's Terrace. The one had chilled her with the 
 fear of life and all its responsibilities into a re- 
 luctant submission. This talk of John's had won 
 her, just as a bird wins its mate, by the sheer, thrill- 
 ing magic of its song. 
 
 He was such a child! Always she had known 
 that. Something, while she was there beside him, 
 gave her the longing to hoard and guard for him 
 that money that came in in lumps. He had the
 
 108 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 faculty for making her see him bringing it to her, 
 like a child bringing the absurd things children find 
 and hoard. He had the faculty of making her see 
 herself storing it in some hidden chest until it as- 
 sumed gigantic proportions. 
 
 "Did you ever buy a money box?" she asked him. 
 
 He had bought three. Ones you cannot open 
 till they are filled up to the top. 
 
 "Not a bit of good," he complained. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Oh, it's all rot. They do open. It's a bit of 
 a job. You have to get a hammer and an iron 
 chisel. Then you can't use the box any more." 
 
 "Why didn't you wait till they were filled up?" 
 
 He looked at her quickly. She was quite serious. 
 He felt the milled edge of the shilling in his pocket 
 to make quite sure it was not a half-penny. Shillings 
 play that trick if you do not keep a constant eye 
 on them. Then he guffawed: "Bless your heart!" 
 And in the tone of one who has more wisdom of 
 the world than ever to be unable to love a woman 
 because of her inimitable ignorance.
 
 Chapter XV : The Human Animal 
 
 THERE came a bunch of children who sat on 
 the seat beside them, sucking Edinburgh 
 Rock. You know the noise. 
 
 They had suffered lemonade, oranges and ginger- 
 bread. Suffered is not the word. They had been 
 oblivious. But even lovers cannot be oblivious to 
 five children all sucking Edinburgh Rock. It is also 
 an unhandy size for small mouths. Five children 
 sucking it are as good as any one boy sucking a 
 lemon in front of a German band. They utterly 
 incapacitate a Pied Piper from playing his tunes. 
 
 John looked wildly about him and his eye fell on 
 a row of cages where special foreign birds were 
 kept. A keeper was standing by one of the doors. 
 
 It was the discovery of the milled edge on the 
 coin in his pocket which decided him. He took hold 
 of Jill's arm and led her over to the cages. 
 
 "Could we just have a look at the birds inside?" 
 he asked. 
 
 There was chance here for such actual seclusion 
 as they had not experienced yet. John even saw 
 the possibility of moments, when the keeper was 
 not looking, of holding Jill's hand, of conveying 
 to it that pressure which, in public places, means 
 everything to the utmost limits of your imagination. 
 
 109
 
 no World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 Each cage was divided into an inner and outer 
 compartment, the latter, certainly in full view of 
 the public outside. It was those inner compart- 
 ments John had had his eyes on. There was a 
 door opening from each cage into the next. Op- 
 portunity was here as they say in the advertise- 
 ments good opportunity for a smart youth. Al- 
 ready John was patting himself on the back. 
 
 With that eagerness to display his knowledge and 
 earn his tip, which completely obsesses all those in 
 office, the keeper took them from one cage to 
 another, talking like a showman all the while, and 
 most conspicuously in those compartments where 
 the general public could share the advantage of 
 hearing what he said. 
 
 " 'Ere," said he, " 'ere's a strange bird. Queer 
 lookin' beggar, ain't *e?" He disturbed a sleepy- 
 looking creature from its enclosure, when it flew 
 round and round the cage about their heads. 
 
 "This bird," he began with a deep breath, "is a 
 native of East Africa. When Major Rawlinson 
 went out on his expedition to Central East Africa in 
 
 1903 " 
 
 There was an awjful note in his voice. It was 
 the note of an alarm clock that has been wound up 
 to its fullest pitch and you know will take an in- 
 terminable time to run down. The deep breath 
 that had been the last turn of the key. He had, 
 no doubt, been more or less wound up all day and 
 was only waiting for this splendid moment to set 
 himself in clockwork motions. 
 
 And not only that, but it was attracting people
 
 The Human Animal ill 
 
 about the cage. Children indeed those same five 
 with the Edinburgh Rock still sticking out of 
 their mouths were climbing up to peer through 
 the bars. Women with hats a little bit on one side 
 and men with hats entirely on one side were crowd- 
 ing behind them. They all stared open-mouthed. 
 The sight and sound of a man raising his voice in 
 a public place is sufficient in England in every 
 other country too, I suppose to draw a crowd of 
 just so many as can hear him. Often many more 
 than that. And this keeper's voice was just the 
 voice that attracts. It never stopped for want 
 of a word. It never hesitated in deference to the 
 sense of what he was saying. 
 
 They had come into that cage to escape the in- 
 creasing discomfort of the pressure of the crowd. 
 Certainly that had been achieved. But a worse 
 terror had been added to them. Suddenly, and 
 without any warning or preparation, they discov- 
 ered themselves on show. Jill felt like the fat 
 woman, John, like the boneless man, exposed for 
 exhibition in a menagerie. 
 
 For all that he talked of the East African bird, 
 the keeper might have been pointing out their 
 peculiarities to the crowd. It was upon them 
 that every eye was fixed. Nobody in all that con- 
 course cared, it seems permissible in these circum- 
 stances to say a damn about the bird. Yet in 
 both of them too tender-hearted for contingencies 
 of this nature there was that sensitive inability to 
 be so rude as to leave him to his talk. 
 
 You cannot be inconsiderate to a man who drops
 
 112 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 his aitches. He might pick them up again at your 
 expense. 
 
 So there they were, trapped, caged and to all 
 appearances the most popular exhibit in the Zoo. 
 If Jill had tried to escape observation in the crowds, 
 most signally and most utterly she had failed. 
 
 There is some instinct, low down in human nature 
 of which the showman of the menagerie of freaks 
 takes good account disclosing a morbid fascina- 
 tion for the sight of a fellow-being behind iron 
 bars. It is the more morbid because it admits of 
 no realization of the fact that there are two sides, 
 even to an iron bar. Those without look much the 
 same to those within. 
 
 "Can't we get out of this?" whispered Jill in 
 almost tearful desperation. "It feels as if the 
 whole of London were looking at us." 
 
 But knowing little of her fear of discovery and 
 that deeper training in the school of appearances, 
 John only laughed. He had not seen the look of 
 despair in her eyes. 
 
 Those noses pressed against the bars, that 
 heterogeneous collection of staring eyes and gaping 
 mouths, were almost as funny a picture of human 
 nature as he could well conceive. For there was 
 man-kind, seeing itself in a cage in the Zoological 
 Gardens and flocking and staring as it had never 
 flocked or stared before. 
 
 Here was humor for anyone who had the wit 
 to see it. John was beginning to laugh. The 
 realization was being thrust upon him that the 
 human being after all is an extraordinary animal,
 
 The Human Animal 113 
 
 far more extraordinary than the mandrill, or the 
 okapi, or even the better known hippopotamus. 
 You have only to put it in a cage behind iron bars, 
 when all its movement become as stilted and ridicu- 
 lous as those of any other caged beast out of the 
 freedom of its natural evironment. 
 
 As the idea grew upon him, side by side with 
 laughter, John put it to the test. He buttoned up 
 his coat and a man in the crowd pushed another 
 aside to get a better look at him. He blew his 
 nose and two girls nudged each other in the ribs. 
 He scratched the side of his head and one old 
 woman burst out laughing. 
 
 Monkeys are not such odd little creatures after 
 all. 
 
 "It was when Major Rawlinson, that intrepid 
 traveler was two 'undred miles inland from Somoli- 
 land," continued the keeper, "that 'e 'appened to 
 come across this extraordinary feathered beast." 
 And for all the world and for the way the crowd 
 stared outside, he might have been talking of them. 
 
 John was laughing till the tears were beginning 
 to swell and overflow in his eyes, when suddenly 
 he caught sight of Jill's face. She was staring, full 
 of apprehension across the crowd. 
 
 "What is it?" he asked. 
 
 "Mr. Skipwith," she whispered, "that man in a 
 bowler hat coming down the path. I'd forgotten 
 he often comes to the Zoo." 
 
 She turned her back on the crowd while John 
 watched his approach. Was that the man she 
 would have married? Doubtless you cannot see
 
 114 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 a man's heart at any distance, but you know, when 
 he has a stubby gray beard that ill-conceal a pair 
 of thick red lips, that he is no expression of 
 Romance for a girl of twenty-two. Was that the 
 man she would have married! John wished to God 
 he had never seen him. 
 
 Of course, the crowd attracted him the sight of 
 the human exhibits no less. He stood like the rest 
 staring blankly at first, then catching a glimpse of 
 Jill's side face with recognition. 
 
 One swift look passed between John and him, and 
 to John it was as a sudden revelation; such a 
 revelation as when for the first time you meet the 
 mother of the girl you love. 
 
 That, if she only knew it, is the most trying 
 moment in the lifetime of a girl's Romance. Like 
 mother, like daughter. In that mother's face, a 
 man sees the whole stretches of the years before 
 him; he learns something which love and passion 
 and youth have hidden from him securely until that 
 -moment. 
 
 "In a paper 'e read before the Zoological So- 
 ciety," the keeper went on, now raising his voice 
 a little, the better to reach the increasing propor- 
 tions of his audience, "Major Rawlinson declared 
 Vd made quite a pet of the bird before 'e come 
 'ome." 
 
 John slipped the shilling hastily into his hand. 
 It was like throwing a boot at an alarm clock, but 
 nothing like hitting it. They turned and crept 
 away, while in the distance, they could hear the 
 keeper still addressing the crowd:
 
 The Human Animal 115 
 
 "It would sit on the Major's shoulder while 'e 
 
 was a-eatin' of his food -" they heard him say 
 
 and they fled into the comparative silence of the 
 parrot-house.
 
 Chapter XVI : A By-Product of "Advice 
 
 EFORE they parted that day, everything had 
 been arranged. If in the first encounter 
 they had secured a tactical victory in Prince 
 of Wales's Terrace, they would appear to have lost 
 every advantage they had gained the moment John 
 appeared upon the field. 
 
 They were to be married secretly. No other 
 measure was possible. At home already, Jill knew 
 she was being watched by the vigilance of her father 
 who, like all Englishmen, conversant with the works 
 of Conan Doyle, believed himself an expert de- 
 tective. Now, having been seen by Mr. Skipwith 
 on exhibition in the Zoological Gardens, it was sure 
 to reach their ears, when observation of her move- 
 ments would be stricter than ever. 
 
 They must be married secretly. 
 
 But how when it is the first time in your life 
 you have done such a thing and are feeling as if 
 the whole world were looking on, with one hand 
 full of confetti and the other clutching at an old 
 boot how can such a maneuver be accomplished? 
 
 In matters of this kind where the legal conduct 
 of life was concerned and being one's own lawyer 
 was worth more than twenty-six and eight pence, 
 
 116
 
 A By-Product of Advice 117 
 
 or say nineteen, John always appealed to Mrs. 
 Rowse. 
 
 Without committing herself to any admission on 
 the subject, the knowledge Mrs. Rowse had of the 
 law, argued a delicate intimacy with Police Court 
 procedure. She said she gathered it, time to time, 
 from her husband. 
 
 When under an anesthetic a lady gives way to 
 language that makes one look up Burke's Landed 
 Gentry to see who she was before she married, 
 there is always this excuse to be made for her. 
 
 Had she been asked, Mrs. Rowse would prob- 
 ably not have known where a single London Police 
 Court was to be found. It was undeniable, however, 
 that she knew a lot about the Law and the very 
 next morning, John appealed to her. 
 
 "Mrs. Rowse," he said, "if you wanted to be 
 married in a terrific hurry married quietly, you 
 know how would you set about it?" 
 
 She was dusting the mantlepiece, wondering all 
 the time how she could keep her husband from 
 remembering that this was the day he had breast 
 of mutton, because she had already spent the 
 money on having his boots soled. At the sound of 
 John's question, she started. There w*as an ex- 
 clamation on her lips before she could stop it. Into 
 the bargain, she nearly dropped the old brass 
 candlestick she was polishing. 
 
 "Oh, my good goodness, Mr. Grey!" said she. 
 "I never thought you was one to get into that sort 
 of trouble."
 
 n8 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 He declared he was in no such trouble at all. 
 It was only that he wanted the information for a 
 story he was writing. 
 
 That eased ker rakid externally, but insensibly she 
 lost interest withiM. 
 
 "Thought it was you was going to get married," 
 she said, with all those palpable signs of relief which 
 are such exquisite expressions of regret. 
 
 So emphatically did he exclaim "Not at all!" 
 that she regained an instinctive interest and was at 
 once prepared to tell him all she knew. It was no 
 little. Lizzie, her daughter the one who stuck 
 labels on the jam jars at Cross and Blackwells for 
 a salary they are prepared to inform you is adequate 
 in every way Lizzie, since that Sunday when they 
 went to Denham, had been married. 
 
 All that Mrs. Rowse had been through to get 
 Lizzie married, and married quickly, she affirmed, 
 was enough to give anyone an idea about it. 
 
 "She'd been walkin* out with this young fella 
 for some time," said Mrs. Rowse, who, in prepa- 
 ration for all she had to say was already leaning 
 for support on to the back of a chair, "and in 
 Peabody Buildin's, it's 'ard to keep yer eye on a 
 girl, everybody steppin' up and down them stairs 
 like they do. I'd done me best. I'd warned 'er. 
 'Keep *im at arm's length,' I said to 'er. But the 
 lengthi of a girl's arm stuck out straight in front 
 of 'er don't seem to be much when she gets 'erself 
 took proper with a chap. I dare say it's long 
 enough other ways to go three times round 'is neck. 
 Any'ow, she comes one day to me and she says,
 
 A By-Product of Advice 119 
 
 'Mother, we're goin' to get married.' I took at 'er 
 quite straight and I said : 'My girl,' I said " 
 
 In the midst of this sentence, Mrs. Rowse wiped 
 her face all over with the corner of her apron, 
 dropped the cloth with which she had been dusting 
 the mantelpiece and, stooping to pick it up, broke 
 into a fit of coughing. 
 
 Between one thing and another, John gathered 
 she had told her daughter, without any choice of 
 words, that she was going to have a baby. This 
 opinion, indeed, was confirmed in Lizzie's reply, for 
 Lizzie had sworn she was not and apparently had 
 got so hot in the face over it, that Mrs. Rowse did 
 not mind the lie, so long as she was quite certain, 
 of the truth. 
 
 Her answer appeared to have been: 
 
 "The proof of the puddin's in the eatin\" which 
 was a way of putting it that would not have oc- 
 curred to everybody. 
 
 Anyhow she had gone straight to the priest the 
 priest who had recommended her to John the 
 priest at Sardinia Street Chapel. 
 
 "But 'e wouldn't 'ave nothin' to do with it," de- 
 clared Mrs. Rowse, "when 'e 'card the fella come 
 from Australia, an' 'e didn't know nothm* about 
 'im, 'e said: 'No, I won't 'ave nothin' to do with 
 it, not till I know the sort o' man 'e is and Vs been 
 proved in the Parish.' So when he'd finished with 
 'is 'ummin' and 'arrin', I went off to the Registry 
 Office." 
 
 It seems at the Registry Office they had treated 
 her very little better. Papers had had to be signed.
 
 120 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 Statements had to be sworn to. All this had been 
 very annoying because, according to Mrs. Rowse, it 
 was a very different matter to swear a thing than 
 just to have to say it. For instance, she had been 
 compelled to swear the boy was over twenty-one. 
 
 U I wouldn't 'ave minded just sayin' it," said she, 
 "and I wouldn't 'ave let anyone call me a liar, not 
 twice I wouldn't. But it made me go 'ot all over 
 'avin' to swear on me oath." 
 
 There wasn't, she declared, so much fuss about 
 getting married when she was a girl. And having 
 been in the same sort of hurry herself, it had come 
 all the more annoying when they put these absurd 
 difficulties in the way of her daughter. She did 
 not know what the world was coming to. It was 
 getting hard enough to be honest on any account, 
 but from what she could see of it, they didn't want 
 people even to try nowadays; much less did they 
 want them to succeed. 
 
 However, the upshot of it was that Lizzie was 
 married, and in six months' time everyone in Pea- 
 body Buildings was consulting their memory as to 
 the date of that day when she returned in style 
 from the Registry Office. It would seem as if there 
 were a brain cell, specially set apart for the in- 
 delible record of these events, for quite a lot 
 remembered. These were they who, full of sym- 
 pathetic interest, remarked to Mrs. Rowse how 
 fortunate it was her daughter had not had to wait 
 for a family so long as some they knew. 
 
 "I know a few in this building," Mrs. Rowse had 
 replied, and in relating the incident she reproduced
 
 A By-Pro duct of Advice 121 
 
 exactly her tone of voice together with all the 
 gestures of her hands. "I know a few 'oo 'adn't 
 the decency to wait at all." 
 
 The sum of this conversation, while it gave John 
 but little insight into the way out of the difficulties 
 of getting married, yet brought him to regard a 
 condition of matrimony he had scarcely thought of 
 before. There would be children. He sat and 
 stared at his breakfast until it grew cold on the 
 plate. 
 
 For some reason or other he had not thought of 
 this. He was just in love. He supposed he ought 
 to have analyzed his feelings more closely, but he 
 had not gone so far even as to discuss the matter 
 with Jill. He would hardly have known how to 
 begin had he tried. Indeed, frankly, had he been 
 asked whether he wanted to be a father, he would 
 have said: "Not all at once," or some such phrase 
 that would not have pledged him to the definite 
 negative. As for discussing the matter with her, 
 it would have seemed like picking rosebuds to pieces 
 to see how they were made. 
 
 Here then again, he was coming round a sharp 
 turning upon this new world of reality once more. 
 With a snatching of his mind, he seized the ring- 
 master's whip and cracked it. Surely it was not 
 necessary to have children unless you wanted them. 
 As equally certain it was quite foolish to want them 
 if you could not afford them. 
 
 He was in love that was all. It was like hav- 
 ing found the complete fullness of beauty in the 
 midst of, what to many, doubtless, was a dingy
 
 122 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 world. It had no purpose except in first being what 
 it was. The fact that it lifted some purpose in him 
 as moisture is sucked up into the furnace of the 
 sun, argued to him no purpose in the thing itself. 
 Indeed it was its very unconsciousness of purpose 
 that gave it the full essence of beauty. To make 
 it utilitarian was at once to commercialize it. To 
 commercialize it was to give it a marked value which 
 would immediately enable anyone to capture it and 
 put it on their mantlepiece, when idolatry would 
 follow and the true sense of worship be gone. 
 
 There was a picture on one of John's walls an 
 old oil painting he had picked up for the mere 
 whistling of a tune in the Caledonian Market. A 
 man, writing occasionally about art for the news- 
 papers, saw it one day and advised John to have 
 it valued. 
 
 Notwithstanding that at the time he was in that 
 chronic state of the need for ready money, John 
 had shaken his head. 
 
 ''Don't think I will," said he. "I don't really 
 know whether it's an old master, but it's very beauti- 
 ful to me." 
 
 "I quite agree with you," said his friend. "It 
 is beautiful. That's what makes me think it's a 
 genuine old master. You never get that sense of 
 beauty in copies and of course you don't get it in 
 the inferior artists. It is beautiful. Take it to 
 Christie's just for your own satisfaction just to 
 know what it's worth. It might be worth fifty 
 pounds might be worth infinitely more."
 
 A By-Product of Advice 123 
 
 Fifty pounds! More! John looked at the pic- 
 ture again and already in that sudden moment, some 
 of the simplicity of its beauty had gone. Though 
 it might only be in his friend's imagination, yet a 
 price had been put upon its worth. As he looked 
 at it then he saw fifty pounds in bank notes or golden 
 sovereigns and insensibly some of the quiet spirit 
 of beauty it had given him had vanished. 
 
 "Good God!" he had exclaimed in a sudden 
 paroxysm of anger. "Get out of the room! Isn't 
 there one thing left in the world one can appreciate 
 and value without thinking of it in terms of pounds, 
 shillings and pence. If I had that picture valued at 
 Christie's and they said it 'ud fetch a hundred 
 pounds a hundred pounds and all that inevitably 
 means to my pocket it 'ud lose all the worth it 
 ever had to me. For God's sake get out of the 
 room and take your commerce into Fleet Street. I 
 hate a man with a mind like yours." 
 
 Assuming John to be mad, the friend had gone, 
 when for a whole week following that incident, John 
 had turned the picture with its face to the wall until 
 he so longed to see the beauty of it again that that 
 commercial valuation had been purged out of his 
 mind. 
 
 And to think in terms of utility was no less to 
 commercialize the value of love. In those moments 
 of his importunate Youth he wanted Love, just for 
 Love's sake, for the odor of its blossom. There was 
 time enough to pick the fruit when the petals had 
 fallen and the tree was yielding.
 
 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 V 
 
 However, the only result of staring for twenty 
 minutes at the wall-paper was a realization to John 
 that the bacon was cold and not fit to eat. Coming 
 to this conclusion, he put on his hat and went with- 
 out another consideration to Sardinia Street Chapel.
 
 Chapter XVII : A Confession 
 
 THERE is as much difference between an Eng- 
 lish Roman Catholic priest and an Irishman 
 of the same calling as there is between a 
 Presbyterian minister and a hunting Parson. 
 
 In those days which in this story have always 
 been a dubious matter and certainly date back before 
 the construction of Kingsway the priest at the old 
 Sardinia Street Chapel was English to the edges 
 of his well-trimmed nails and the polish of his boot- 
 heels. 
 
 John rang the bell of the Presbytery in Lincoln's 
 Inn and waited with none too steady a beating of 
 his heart. Nevertheless, he believed nothing that 
 Mrs. Rowse had told him of Father Peake's re- 
 fusal to marry her daughter Lizzie. Going often 
 and like a child to pray at the altar of the Virgin 
 or the shrine of St. Joseph, he yet was no student 
 of his religion. There was, he felt sure, something 
 at the back of Mrs. Rowse's story which called for 
 explanation. In bare fact it may have been true 
 enough, but between the fact and the essence, there 
 was room and to spare in all Mrs. Rowse's stories 
 for the whole foundation of truth completely to be 
 lost sight of. Probably Father Peake did refuse 
 
 125
 
 126 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 to marry them and it was just as likely he had never 
 had better cause for refusal in his life. 
 
 There was no reason, however, which John could 
 see for the likelihood of Father Peake's refusal to 
 marry him. He was in love. The whole world 
 was radiated by it. That tremor which comes in 
 the air over the sea and over the meadows, over 
 the surface of the river, and over a field of 
 corn, a tremor, when the sun is heating the very 
 heart of the earth as though the air were a shim- 
 mering veil, trembling like a dragon fly's wings 
 as it hovers over the stream, this was what he saw, 
 everywhere he looked. The faces of the people he 
 passed in the street were all illuminated by it. It 
 appeared to turn the sourest expression into a smile. 
 Indeed it played all kinds of tricks he could not 
 have accounted for had he tried. He did not even 
 try. 
 
 For example, it made grass grow up between the 
 paving stones in Fetter Lane. It grew in tufts at 
 first, tufts for which he arranged his steps so that 
 he trod on it as he walked. It all began by his trying 
 to walk on the lines where the paving stones joined, 
 varying his steps to achieve his object. Then the 
 tufts of grass began to grow in the crevices. 
 
 At last it was all grass. He was walking in a 
 meadow. He was out in the country. Before he 
 had come halfway down the Lane, he felt he could, 
 in fact, be anywhere he pleased; the world itself 
 had become immaterial; whatever substance there 
 was to anything, was in his mind. It was as though 
 he had on his finger a wishing ring and had merely
 
 A Confession 127 
 
 to twist it round to the first vague prompting of 
 inclination. The only reason he could see why he 
 did not make full use of it, why he did not go 
 straightway to Persia or saunter down the streets 
 of Bagdad, was because Jill was not there to ac- 
 company him. There was almost a tangible thought 
 in his mind that he ought to be quite content to be 
 walking on the grass in Fetter Lane. 
 
 All these sensations mere balderdash to the 
 modern day materialist were accompaniment to the 
 consciousness of being in love. He came down 
 to the Presbytery in Lincoln's Inn Fields like the 
 Prince in a fairy tale on a visit to the wisest man 
 in his father's kingdom. The fact that the bottom 
 of his trousers were frayed, that there were no 
 cuff-links in his shirt sleeves, destroyed none of these 
 illusions. He was quite unconscious of them. As 
 for his hat well, he knew that he wanted a new 
 one. But if a new one could not buy respect, then 
 certainly an old one could not keep a man out of 
 the country of his dreams. 
 
 The noise of the eighteenth century bell, jangling 
 in the far distance of the eighteenth century cor- 
 ridors, became his first link with reality. At the 
 sound of it, not only did his heart begin a loud 
 assurance of its pulses, but he grew suddenly aware 
 of the frayed edges of his trousers, of the loose 
 cuffs of his shirt. He made ready to take off his 
 hat directly he was admitted within. 
 
 Father Peake saw him in that bare cold room 
 on the right as you entered the door. Beyond the 
 occasions of confession in the chapel, this was their
 
 128 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 first meeting. The recommendation of Mrs. Rowse 
 had been by letter. 
 
 "And what can I do for you, Mr. Grey?" he 
 said, rather with tight lips, rather as though things 
 could be done by machinery and done promptly, if 
 only people would be sufficiently precise in their de- 
 mands. 
 
 Instead therefore of coming to it gradually, of 
 warming to it through all the gently increasing 
 temperatures of conversation as he had felt he 
 would do, John found himself declaring straight- 
 away that he was going to be married. 
 
 Father Peake nodded his head, saying: "Oh, 
 yes," as though it were a commodity they always 
 kept in stock by reason of the common frequency 
 with which it was required. 
 
 It was disconcerting. For when you can walk 
 through meadows in Fetter Lane and it is a mere 
 matter of choice that you are not sauntering down 
 the streets of Bagdad; when it seems you are enter- 
 ing life through a golden gate and a flare of silver 
 trumpets might be the least you could expect to 
 greet you, it is a disheartening affair to have the 
 announcement of your romance made in such cold 
 and calculating terms as these, as though on a 
 ballad-monger's cornet with the tin showing through 
 the coating of brass. 
 
 Here was the first person to whom John had told 
 his absorbing secret. Apart from the possible diffi- 
 culties that might arise, he had been looking for- 
 ward to this moment. In no small measure, that 
 pleasurable anticipation had contributed to the ex-
 
 A Concession 129 
 
 traordinary growth of grass in Fetter Lane. He 
 had imagined a warm and comfortable talk, tem- 
 pered by fatherly and good advice which would not 
 materially interfere with the realization of his 
 purpose. This was like going into a shop and ask- 
 ing for sixpenny-worth of eggs; not even stipulating 
 moreover that they should be fresh. 
 
 Father Peake listened with eyes that opened and 
 closed like a procession of numbers indicating items 
 of a large order on a self-recording balance. When 
 John had told him all and was beginning to believe 
 every single word Mrs. Rowse had said, Father 
 Peake replied: 
 
 "Yes, and of course you're very young?" 
 
 "I'm twenty-six," said John, feeling not the 
 faintest necessity to be dishonest about it. 
 
 "Quite so and the lady?" 
 
 No names had been mentioned but John's. 
 
 "She's twenty-two." 
 
 "Very young," said Father Peake. "Danger- 
 ously young," he added and then, possibly catching 
 a look in John's eyes, he concluded: "Attractively 
 young I've no doubt." 
 
 John felt a sudden heat in his blood and thanked 
 heaven this was not the man to whom he had made 
 his confessions concerning Amber. 
 
 To unburden his soul of that, he had gone one 
 rainy day into the depths of West Kensington. 
 Anyone with any sense would call it Hammer- 
 smith, suffering the loss of address to gain the 
 dignity of the truth. There in the dim light of the 
 musty confessional, he had emptied out his heart
 
 130 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 to a priest who had an Irish brogue as rich as the 
 notes of an organ and it had rolled between his lips 
 like a song. 
 
 This confession had been made soon after he had 
 first met Jill; indeed, immediately after that Easter 
 Sunday when he had told Amber he was in love. 
 
 "Isn't ut the way ye were fond of the girrl at 
 all?" the priest had asked him. 
 
 "Yes of course I was very fond." 
 
 "Then how was ut ye didn't marry her?" 
 
 "Well, we we didn't love each other. She didn't 
 love me. I I didn't love her. We were just very 
 fond of each other." 
 
 The priest blew his nose and it had been like the 
 sounds of thunder in the cramped vibrations of that 
 confessional box. 
 
 "An' what's the difference?" he had asked. 
 
 Such confessions he heard every day and all with 
 the plaintive admission of weakness to overwhelm- 
 ing temptation. No such thing would ever have 
 happened, they said, had they stopped to think. And 
 the absence of capacity for thought, or it might be 
 merely the inability of arrest was overwhelming in 
 its preponderance. He polished them all off with 
 such variety of penance as they deserved. 
 
 There was human nature as it had been since the 
 fall of Adam. He had learnt something of it in 
 thirty years. The thousands of years since there 
 was a serpent in Eden had made but little differ- 
 ence. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil 
 was still growing in the human heart; still yielding 
 in its everlasting seasons the forbidden fruit. Still,
 
 A Confession 131 
 
 
 
 too, it was forever being picked and the cry of 
 vindication remained the same. The temptation 
 was stronger than could be borne. There was not 
 one amongst them who had the honesty to admit 
 that the desire to taste had been so great that noth- 
 ing short of the blight of God amongst the branches 
 could have snatched the fruit from their hands. 
 
 He had often wondered when human nature 
 would tire of the threadbare excuse, as he was tired 
 of hearing it. And now at last, here was a young 
 man calmly making definite distinctions between 
 natural inclinations and the sacred impulse of love. 
 
 As has been said, he blew his nose, which he al- 
 ways did to gain time for thought when he was 
 taken by surprise and then, receiving no answer to 
 his question, he had asked again: 
 
 "What's the difference between being fond of a 
 woman and being in love with her?" 
 
 "What's the difference," asked John boldly in 
 return, "what's the difference between God and 
 Nature?" 
 
 "Shure, Nature's a law," said the priest, "and 
 God's a spirit," and wondered why on earth he had 
 allowed himself to be decoyed into answering a 
 question of that nature in the confessional. 
 
 "Well, that's the difference between being fond 
 of a woman and being in love with her," replied 
 John, whereupon he received as heavy a penance 
 as he could well be given for his audacity.
 
 Chapter XVIII : Showers and Blowers 
 
 NO such confession as that had ever been made 
 by John to Father Peake. 
 
 Concerning Roman Catholics, this is a 
 secret and should not by right be divulged. But, 
 just heavens! If there is none of the blood of 
 human nature to be found in the observance of 
 even the strictest dogmas of a religion, it can have 
 but little hope of standing the wear and tear of 
 Time. 
 
 Had you a particularly intimate little sin, you 
 would not care to go and unburden yourself of it 
 to one with whom, like as not, you might be hob- 
 nobbing next day over a cup of tea in your neigh- 
 bor's drawing room. You would never be able to 
 hob-nob with any degree of comfort so long as he 
 was in the room. 
 
 That is why London is such a first-rate place for 
 Roman Catholics. There are so many hidden 
 corners. You can wrap up your ugliest of sins in 
 an unsuspicious-looking parcel and leave it down 
 some out-of-the-way, hole-and-corner side street, 
 when no one in your parish will be one wit the 
 wiser for your having committed it. 
 
 In the old days, when it was fashionable for ladies 
 to wear their handkerchiefs in some ornamental way 
 
 132
 
 Showers and Blowers 133 
 
 arranged in the bosom of their gowns, it was the 
 custom to carry two; one, so-called the shower and 
 the other, the blower. Where this latter was car- 
 ried, I have no pretensions to knowledge. It was 
 not as you might say worn. 
 
 Now if you are a Roman Catholic and it is not 
 for me to say the loss is yours if you are not 
 you classify your sins much as ladies once regarded 
 their handkerchiefs. Some are for show. These 
 you reveal in the breast of your spiritual garments 
 for your parish priest, who knows you well, to take 
 account of. It may be you even sprinkle upon them 
 some invisible drops of the subtle perfume of 
 Romance. Ladies will know I speak more par- 
 ticularly of them. Whatever it is you do to them, 
 there is a delicate odor you leave behind you in the 
 musty air of that confessional as you go out. Your 
 parish priest looks into the darkness after you have 
 gone, thinking that is a sweet woman. God 
 knows, perhaps he may even draw the slow deep 
 breath which goes with a regret too subtle to find 
 its way into words. Certain it is he realizes there 
 is something beautiful, however human, in your 
 nature. 
 
 Of this type of sin are those delicate confessions 
 of inclination and impulse when the heart has 
 warmed the blood before the reason has had time 
 to take account of it. You never really gratified 
 those impulses, for contemplation by no means is 
 fulfillment. Sometimes, perhaps, you may even have 
 played with them for a passing hour. 
 
 They are those inclinations, sins of the mind,
 
 134 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 which really you believe you were courageous with, 
 but which often, if you looked deeply into the matter, 
 you would find were affairs where opportunity held 
 aloof and saved you much in the pricking of your 
 conscience. Actually it was, that by the time the 
 impulse had fully come, the object of it had van- 
 ished, swept away in those odd streams of life 
 which bring things before on no less swiftly than 
 they carry them away. 
 
 For example: you are not a lady who has ever 
 stooped so far as to speak to a stranger in the 
 ^treet. God forbid! Kensington Gardens anyhow 
 are not to be considered in such light of publicity 
 as the open street; and in a train well, it is the 
 everlasting pity that English people are so ob- 
 stinately averse to whiling away an hour in con- 
 versation with a stranger in a train. It is not to 
 be held against you if you eschew the national 
 characteristics of your race. You may have made 
 acquaintances that way. Why not? But in the 
 street ! 
 
 And yet, perchance there has passed you by, 
 only occasionally, ones with whom acquaintance 
 would have been at least amusing. What can you 
 do? Life would be a dull affair without these im- 
 pulses. Have you looked over your shoulder when 
 he has gone by? God knows 1 Perhaps you have. 
 Have you hesitated and gone into a shop, because 
 to continue walking in your direction will not only 
 increase the distance between you, but is likely to 
 give him quite a wrong impression of what is pass- 
 ing in your mind.
 
 Showers and Blowers 135 
 
 Who, however, in their senses would classify a 
 shop and the open street in the same breath? 
 
 Anyhow, it binds you to nothing. If a moment 
 later, he also enters the shop, you are in no way 
 pledged. You had wanted to buy something that 
 morning when you set out. You can tell the girl 
 so over the counter and in his hearing. 
 
 If, on the other hand, Fate is determined to pre- 
 serve you from temptation and he does not enter 
 the shop well, of course, some men are fools. 
 
 It is little sins like this you wear for your parish 
 priest. Cunningly you tuck them into the breast of 
 your spiritual garment, just where they conceal the 
 sweet attractions of human frailty. Little sins like 
 these they are which leave the delicate perfume of 
 Romance in that dark and musty confessional when, 
 with your adequate penance, you set out absolved 
 of all pricks of conscience into the world of little 
 unavoidable adventures once again. 
 
 I am not suggesting that this is a sin peculiar 
 to any lady. Heaven bears me witness when I swear 
 that no lady I have ever known has been so tempted; 
 and, without compunction, I subpoena Heaven again 
 to give evidence, that no lady I have ever known 
 has so succumbed. It is not a lady-like thing to 
 do and to my dying day I will carry this illusion 
 close against my heart, that all women are ladies. 
 
 It is only the men who retrace their steps, it is 
 only the men who are not gentlemen. 
 
 Now of the sins you confess in the hole-and- 
 corner chapel, far away in a remote district of 
 London, it is hard to know what can be said of
 
 136 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 them. There is but little of the perfume of 
 Romance in their commission. Much more are they 
 in common use. Still making use of that simile of 
 the handkerchief, of some people it might even be 
 declared that, in the matter of these sins, they suf- 
 fered often from a cold in the head. 
 
 Heaven knows they are hard enough to admit, 
 even to a man whose voice you may never hear 
 again for the rest of your mortal life. For there 
 are many holes and many corners and you do not 
 of necessity go to the same place twice. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is no avoiding their confes- 
 sion. They weigh on the soul like clouds on the 
 mountain peaks. The sky is not clear in your heart 
 till they are told. Wherefore, in some out-of-the- 
 way spots in London, there are priests who know 
 but, thank heavens, would never recognize you 
 for a shameful woman who, short of murder, would 
 stop at nothing. 
 
 Perhaps the less that is said of these sins, the 
 better. They arise out of the nature of your 
 origin, wherefore the only consolation you have is 
 that your ancestors into the remotest of the ages are 
 more to blame than you. Like the handkerchiefs 
 in the days when there were no reticule bags, they 
 are carried; but certainly they are not worn. There 
 is not a woman would let you know she had such 
 a thing about her. 
 
 This is a secret that should never by rights have 
 been divulged. 
 
 Now, when you see a lady wrapped in furs, or 
 in any manner exquisitely dressed, who steps out of
 
 Showers and Blowers 137 
 
 her carriage and hurries into that chapel in the 
 dingy side street, you will know her for one who 
 is not incapable of mortal sin. Seeing, moreover, 
 that you carry about with you, no less, all those 
 human qualities which the more appreciate scandal 
 the worse it is, you are bound to exaggerate her 
 guilt. She may have done no more than speak the 
 truth about her neighbor; but you will see her in 
 your imagination breaking the whole ten command- 
 ments like a packet of slate pencils. 
 
 Undoubtedly the secret should never have been 
 betrayed. It has little or nothing to do with our 
 history and therefore there is no excuse for it but 
 this: it was introduced into this wandering tale to 
 show why John had confessed himself of the story 
 of Amber to a priest in West Kensington, when 
 his parish was that of Lincoln's Inn. 
 
 I almost wish I had never explained the matter 
 at all. It is really no business of mine and perhaps 
 it were as well for any who have been at some 
 pains to read this chapter that they should be at 
 still further pains to put it right out of their heads.
 
 Chapter XIX : An Engagement to Eat a 
 Hat 
 
 FATHER PEAKE had his point of view 
 which he wished it to be understood was 
 not his alone, but that of all the churches 
 in Christendom. It was when he had learnt all 
 about John's circumstances and had reduced that 
 three pounds ten a week to its component parts of 
 likely and unlikely possibility, that he voiced it and 
 believed he was talking God's truth, accompanied 
 by the soundest of common sense. 
 
 There is not the faintest doubt that his observa- 
 tions were compound of common sense, but whether 
 the deductions he drew from them were the truth 
 of God, it would seem to need the wisdom of God 
 to say. 
 
 "If you take my advice, Mr. Grey," he said, 
 "you won't think of marriage yet awhile." 
 
 John asked why. It was like falling through a 
 hole in the ice into black water, when but a moment 
 before he had been traveling on the surface with 
 the speed of flight through the sharp, exhilarating 
 air, warm with a winter's sun. The sudden arrest 
 of all his hopes was as absolute, as catastrophic as 
 this. 
 
 138
 
 An Engagement to Eat a Hat 139 
 
 "Why?" he said. "But why?" and could say no 
 more. 
 
 Father Peake spread out his hands. That it was 
 not plain as the daylight convinced him how young 
 this young man must be. 
 
 "A doubtful three pounds, ten shillings a week, 
 may be enough for you," he explained. "It is 
 scarcely enough for yourself and a lady who is ac- 
 customed to the luxuries of a comfortable home. It 
 is certainly not enough with which to bring up 
 children. If you belonged to the working classes 
 very good very well. But you you have ideas of 
 comfort." His eyes fell on the frayed edges of 
 John's trousers. "To have ideas argues the am- 
 bition sooner or later to materialize them. She has 
 actual experience. In a year's time you would both 
 find life intolerable. It is jeopardizing the sanctity 
 of married life. You are risking the happiness of 
 both your future and hers." 
 
 These were his observations. They were full 
 enough of common sense to be a vulgar helping. 
 So vulgar indeed that from that moment John was 
 surfeited. 
 
 "But I'm not marrying to have children," he ex- 
 claimed. "I don't want any children yet. I want 
 her." 
 
 If the matter had to be dealt with over a counter, 
 then he presumed he had a right to make some 
 selection in his purchase. It was not as if he had 
 broken a pane of glass in the shop window and 
 must take what came first to his hand without time 
 to pick or choose. This was his choice. He said it
 
 140 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 as simply as he would have done to a salesman who 
 was trying to impose upon him a different class of 
 article from that for which he had asked. 
 
 Father Peake reached out his hand for his biretta. 
 
 "I don't think, Mr. Grey," said he, "that you 
 conceive the first simple conception of the Sacra- 
 ment of Matrimony." 
 
 John assured him that he believed he did. 
 
 "It's just a sin if you don't marry," he replied 
 with absolute simplicity, "and it's all right if you 
 do. I don't mean that that's the Legal, but the 
 Sacramental point of view." 
 
 Father Peake laid down his biretta on the table. 
 Evidently he had something to teach this young 
 man. 
 
 "A sacrament," he replied, "is a blessing. You 
 seem to be confounding it with a license. Marriage 
 is blessed by the Church for the procreation of 
 children. That first that first of all. Whatever 
 pleasure there may be for those who participate in 
 it, is the gift, the generous gift of God." 
 
 When John had been brought up as a little boy 
 in England, before his parents went to Venice, they 
 had lived for a great part of every summer in a 
 town on the South coast. A strict, stubborn and 
 unimaginative spinster with flat feet had combined 
 the services of nurse and governess to him between 
 the tender ages of seven and nine. Every day she 
 took him for a long walk. Invariably she chose 
 the Downs. In the scorching sun they would walk, 
 what seemed miles to him, across those wide, arid 
 stretches of the unsheltered hills.
 
 An Engagement to Eat a Hat 141 
 
 At last they would turn towards home, when she 
 would say in a voice that was like a hot wind blow- 
 ing over a desert of sand: 
 
 "Master John, you can eat this cracknell biscuit 
 and then we'll go home. You won't get anything 
 till lunch time." 
 
 There and then, with an unslakable thirst, he 
 would eat his cracknell biscuit. 
 
 A swift remembrance of this oft-repeated episode 
 flung itself across John's mind at that moment. 
 The whole incident, so far as it had gone, had been 
 much like one of those parching walks across the 
 South Downs. In all his remarks and his concep- 
 tion of God, it seemed to John, Father Peake had 
 been as characteristically British as that flat-footed 
 spinster. And now this commercial point of view, 
 summed up in those materialistic phrases the pro- 
 creation of children and the generous gift of God 
 had all the taste of an arid cracknell biscuit in his 
 mouth. 
 
 "Well, I can't afford to have children," said he. 
 "Not yet anyhow. I shall be better off one day, 
 when my books begin to sell. I don't say that I 
 don't want children. I do. I should be miserable 
 if I never had a child. So would she. I'm sure 
 she would. But I don't want any for the first year 
 or two, unless I made a sudden success and she 
 she was unhappy without one. But you seem to 
 think I've no idea of having one." 
 
 "I take it," the priest interrupted, and when in 
 argument a man takes anything, there is no getting 
 it back again, "I take it that scarcely any man is
 
 142 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 so wanting in self-respect or a sense of his responsi- 
 bilities as that. No, Mr. Grey, this talk is not 
 new to me. I have heard it often before and the 
 more I hear it, the more I am convinced of the 
 selfish ignorance which, strange to say, education 
 has brought into the world. I make no accusation 
 of willfulness when I suggest that your attitude is 
 one of selfish ignorance. You regard marriage 
 merely as an opportunity." 
 
 "Well, isn't that better?" cried John. "Isn't that 
 better than finding it a commercial undertaking? I 
 don't want to enter into partnership in a trade for 
 bringing children into the world. I want to make 
 my children out of love, not out of calculation. I'm 
 in love! Don't you understand what that means? 
 I want to be always with the woman I'm in love 
 with always night and day. She's part of me. 
 I'm incomplete without her. I don't feel selfish 
 about it. I just feel selfless without her. That's 
 all. I know now that, until I met her, I was, some- 
 where inside me, an unfinished being. I didn't 
 completely exist. I was like something half-awake. 
 Am I to be condemned to a state of half-expression 
 because I happen to be making no more than three 
 pounds ten a week? Is she to spin out the best 
 years of a woman's life, waiting until I make a 
 yearly income approved of by standards of the 
 Church and if I fail, then either to waste her life 
 or marry a man who can lay no claim to hold her 
 heart? Is love nothing to the God we're told is 
 love itself?" 
 
 "All this I've heard before," said Father Peake.
 
 An Engagement to Eat a Hat 143 
 
 "Well, and what do you say to it?" 
 
 "Oh, it's an old argument, as old as free educa- 
 tion, cheap printing and the modern pernicious form 
 of literature." 
 
 "And what's the matter with the literature of 
 to-day?" asked John. 
 
 "Well, in the popular form in which it is given 
 broad-cast to the public, it spreads the new-fangled 
 ideas about love and marriage. It popularizes 
 divorce by treating it with levity. It is largely 
 responsible for these very ideas about the Sacrament 
 of Marriage which you have just been voicing your- 
 self." 
 
 "Has it ever occurred to you," said John, "that 
 what the modern literature may do is to revive the 
 sound of the voice of God which has grown dumb 
 in the churches?" 
 
 "Most emphatically I would deny that!" ex- 
 claimed Father Peake. "The voice of God in all 
 the ages has never encouraged licentiousness. All 
 these sensations you talk about this desire to be 
 with a woman day and night all these the Church 
 urges you to keep under control. They are perhaps 
 the natural inclinations of sex, but a man must not 
 allow them to master him until he can appreciate 
 and is prepared to accept the full significance of 
 marriage. Every man cries out that he is tempted 
 but no man, by the grace and mercy of God, is 
 tempted more than he can bear." 
 
 John seized his hat and the next second threw 
 it down again. 
 
 "Temptation 1" he shouted. "I'm not tempted!
 
 144 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 I mean to be with her! I intend to be with her! 
 I'm not haggling about it with God on one side and 
 the Devil on the other, wrangling for my soul. I'm 
 not pulled this way about it and then that. I've 
 not come here to whine to you that I'm tempted. 
 I mean to be with her, now and always." 
 
 He walked across the room and back again and, 
 talking on the flood of his emotions now, he was 
 bringing up out of the well of his mind truths no 
 reason could have stirred in him. 
 
 "Do you think," he went on wildly, "that a man 
 when he's in love, marries for the righteous op- 
 portunity it affords? If there were a million ob- 
 stacles to the advantages of marriage, you couldn't 
 keep a man and a woman apart once they were 
 absolutely in love. We aren't machines. Our souls 
 aren't turned out on a lathe to a common pattern. 
 Every man and every woman are beings to them- 
 selves, however much they must subscribe to a 
 universal plan. You can't tell us to resist the in- 
 clinations of Nature and expect us to be slaves to 
 its functions at the same time. There's no logic 
 in it. A plan like that isn't universal. You 
 wouldn't get a fool to subscribe to that." 
 
 "There's only one universal plan," said Father 
 Peake, and wondered why he was wasting his time 
 with this young man, "and that is the law of God 
 ordained for the salvation of the soul. The body 
 is mere dust and ashes." 
 
 "That's a very comprehensive' thing to say," re- 
 plied John, "but do you think you know the differ- 
 ence between a body and a soul? When you think
 
 An Engagement to Eat a Hat 145 
 
 you're talking of one, you're in reality talking of 
 the other. I'm not asking for the permission of 
 the Church to take something that's bad for my 
 soul. I'm asking for something that's good for me 
 that's a part of me that I don't properly exist 
 without. You say that this isn't your attitude alone, 
 but that of every church in Christendom well, 
 then, the Church of Christ doesn't know what love 
 is. It's lost it in a midst of dogma and losing it, 
 has lost its only touch with God. Love's not a sin 
 that can be overlooked with a Sacrament; that can 
 be made tolerable to God by a device of the Church. 
 It's not a vice that can be condoned with in return 
 for an undertaking to provide new members for 
 that Church which grants its qualified consent. It's 
 not a disease to poultice and heal with a few 
 prayers. It's something you can go down on your 
 knees and thank God for it. You can't bargain 
 with it. You can't turn it to account. It is the 
 highest account a man can give of himself to be 
 able to say he is in love. Is that why you refused 
 to marry Mrs. Rowse's daughter?" 
 
 "Mrs. Rowse? Mrs. Rowse? Oh, yes, Mrs. 
 Rowse!" Father Peake was glad of any concrete 
 fact in the whirlwind of these abstractions. "I 
 refused to marry her daughter, Mr. Grey, because 
 I was not perfectly satisfied with the young man. 
 If I remember he was an Australian and they would 
 not consent to wait even a few months to prove his 
 good faith." 
 
 "That's it," said John. "Well, they were mar-
 
 146 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 ried at a Registry Office and she had a child six 
 months after." 
 
 Father Peake raised his eyes. 
 
 "I was afraid it might be something like that," 
 said he. 
 
 John seized his hat and this time kept it in his 
 hand as he strode to the door. 
 
 "Afraid!" he exclaimed. "Afraid? But hadn't 
 they done the very thing you demand of them and 
 without wasting any time about it? Afraid! Well 
 it beats me!" 
 
 And he was gone. 
 
 He went straight from the Presbytery into the 
 chapel and put a penny in the box of candles before 
 the altar of St. Joseph. When he had lit the candle 
 and placed it in the sconce, he knelt down on the 
 stone steps. 
 
 "I met her here this very spot," he said, just 
 as though he were talking to a man at the corner 
 of the street. "And if there's anything beastly in 
 the most wonderful thing in the world, I'll eat my 
 hat." 
 
 That is a prayer; a prayer in such a humor as 
 goes out of the heart like a bullet out of a gun. 
 For whatever service it may have been to St. Joseph 
 that John should his eat his hat unless it increased 
 the necessity for him to get a new one it would be 
 hard to say. However, it was at least a definite 
 engagement and acted like a charge of powder to 
 the velocity of his prayer.
 
 Chapter XX : A Prelude to a Family 
 
 ONE thing was obvious to the most inconse- 
 quent intelligence after that interview with 
 Father Peake. John would have to tell 
 Jill all about it. If that were the mind of the 
 Church on the matter, they would have to be mar- 
 ried in a Registry Office as Lizzie Rowse had been, 
 and marriage in a Registry Office cannct be ex- 
 plained in a casual, offhand sort of way. 
 
 You cannot, for example, say to a woman: "Come 
 on, let's get married in the Registry Office, it's 
 nearer." She will not listen to that sort of talk. 
 There comes at once a look into the corner of her 
 eye. Doubtless it is with her that marriage is so 
 eventful a business as to require celebration in a 
 place where all the world can well observe it. The 
 faintest suggestion of anything hole-and-corner 
 about it and she becomes as wary as a rabbit on a 
 windy day. 
 
 Notwithstanding all her love for him, John was 
 suspicious of the need for care with Jill. For in 
 those days after their return from Venice, it was 
 seldom they had opportunity to meet. She had told 
 him so much that day in the Zoo as gave him at 
 least to understand that all their meetings must be 
 clandestine. For the greater part of her time, 
 
 147
 
 148 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 therefore, she was close to an influence he suspected 
 had only contempt for the things of his world. 
 Never would he feel absolutely safe until she was 
 his, all the hours of the day and night. There were 
 moments when, with a chill sensation in the blood, 
 he wondered would she be safe from that influence 
 even then. 
 
 And now this Father Peake had flung an obstacle 
 in their way. They would have to be married in a 
 Registry Office. He must tell her and he won- 
 dered how she would take it. What was more, in 
 his conscience, he knew he must tell her why. 
 
 He kicked things that morning as he walked 
 home. The grass had disappeared between the 
 paving stone in Fetter Lane. Even the smell of the 
 earth from the potatoes in Mrs. Meakin's shop had 
 not that same savor of cleanliness. He saw Mrs. 
 Meakin herself, polishing her apples with the 
 corner of her apron and when, looking up at him, 
 she winked, saying: "They think they taste better 
 with a shine on 'em," he railed in his soul against 
 that false service at the altar of appearances. 
 
 Circumstance, it seemed just then, was pressing 
 about him, conscripting him for the ranks of that 
 vast army of materialists. There was, he felt, a 
 mighty organization at work in constant motion, 
 forcing one after another to discard the garments 
 of their ideals and don the uniform, take up the 
 weapons of the conquering forces of materialism and 
 expediency. 
 
 Recruiting sergeants were conspicuous at every 
 street corner. They came, sometime with the gay
 
 'A Prelude to a Family 149 
 
 rosettes of colored ribbons in their caps, telling you 
 what a jolly life, that life of expediency could be. 
 Or they came, like the devil at your back, turning 
 and twisting a tempting shilling in their fingers. 
 Or yet again they came with threats of the invading 
 foe, the foe of want and all life's so-called discom- 
 forts. 
 
 Foremost amongst them all in those moments, 
 appeared the face of Father Peake, and behind him 
 a row of Anglican Churchmen, long-faced Presby- 
 terians and seedy Dissenters. But they had no 
 power of persuasion with him then. 
 
 "You think it hypocrisy now," they told him, "to 
 conform to the conventions but all life you'll find, 
 as you get older, is a compromise. The whole basis 
 of society demands a certain amount of the giving 
 up of ideals for the exchange of its benefits and 
 necessities. This is a matter-of-fact world. The 
 only definite realities about it, so far as you're con- 
 cerned, are the conditions it imposes upon those who 
 want to get the best out of it. Obviously it is folly 
 not to get the best out of it while you can. You're 
 not long in it. Join the ranks, submit yourself to 
 the discipline of facts and you'll find when you've 
 swallowed your pride, it's not such a bad place to 
 live in after all." 
 
 "Facts!" shouted John as he opened his door 
 and then, taking off his hat, he flung it to the other 
 end of the room. 
 
 It struck the blue and white milk jug he had 
 bought at Payne and Welcome's the day he had 
 entertained Jill and Mr. Chesterton to tea. It fell
 
 150 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 with a fatal, ominous sound to the floor. The next 
 moment he had forgotten all about the Churches 
 and their materialism while he picked up the pieces 
 and, with the sound of voices laughing at his elbow, 
 tenderly fitted them together. 
 
 But Jill had to be told the truth. He felt that 
 in his bones. It would be like stealing something 
 from her if he did not tell her the truth. She 
 must hear the advice Father Peake had given him, 
 no less than the reasons of his objection to marry- 
 ing them. Then she must judge for herself. And 
 if, as he feared for some reason or other which 
 he could not explain, she felt that marriage in this 
 undignified secrecy was impossible, then, he had 
 loved and could still love, while there was always 
 his work to be done, which no one in the world 
 could prevent her from reading once it was in the 
 publicity of print. 
 
 They met again; this time in the gardens of 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields that are like an oasis of silence 
 in the bewildering desert of London noise. 
 
 The gardens of Lincoln's Inn Fields have an 
 atmosphere about them that is all their own. That 
 is true of every one of the open spaces in the heart 
 of London, where Nature is given her plots of 
 ground in which to plant a tree or weave a carpet 
 of grass. Kensington Gardens, Charing Cross 
 Gardens, the gardens in the fields of Lincoln's Inn 
 and the many others too numerous to name, they all 
 strike their note when, if you do but go there in 
 the right spirit, you will hear it playing in the fancy 
 of your mind.
 
 A Prelude to a Family 151 
 
 If in Kensington Gardens you will find Romance, 
 then in the fields of Lincoln's Inn is all that pro- 
 found essence of logical common sense. In the 
 gardens of Lincoln's Inn Fields, you can spread out 
 the portions of your life, like documents on a 
 leather-topped table. You can tie them up with 
 the red tape of which there are miles and miles 
 in all the houses that stand around the square 
 and, before you go, deposit them in the deed box 
 of unapproachable resolution. 
 
 Who has the key of that box is a matter upon 
 which largely depends the maintenance of the order 
 in which you have arranged them. If she has it, 
 you may be sure she will unlock it a thousand times, 
 just to see how tidily those documents have been 
 put away. And every time she shuts it up again, 
 they will be a little less in order than they were 
 before. 
 
 If, however, you have the key yourself and, as 
 must be supposed, are one of those strong-minded 
 individuals who, short of the compulsion of the law, 
 will keep an iron will when once you have made up 
 your mind, then you never look inside the box again. 
 One day, however, when the orderliness of your life 
 has become past endurance, you take the whole bag 
 of tricks, lock, stock and barrel and fling it out of 
 the window, exclaiming, as you do so: 
 
 "Well thank God, I kept my word I never 
 looked inside I never disarranged the order of the 
 blooming things once." 
 
 So you stand before your conscience, strong- 
 minded to the last.
 
 152 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 It is not only the houses of the Law, standing 
 around that silent square, which give tone to this 
 atmosphere of systematic rectitude; it is, as well, 
 the people you see there in the gardens, seated on 
 the benches, or pacing its asphalt paths. In that 
 midst of the rush of London, down Kingsway on 
 one side and Chancery Lane on the other, it is the 
 very spirit of quietness, the very essence of repose. 
 
 Only a stray lawyer's clerk, or a little typist late 
 to her work are to be seen hurrying there. Only 
 these break the silence under the plane trees. And 
 you can avoid her if you like, for you can always 
 tell the hour she will appear. She is as punctual 
 in her lateness as the Law Court's Clock. 
 
 Between the long whiles of her passing, you may 
 see a well-to-do barrister, sneaking an appetite for 
 his lunch on the pretext that he has a heavy case 
 to deal with and likes to stretch his legs to think. 
 There is always the lawyer's old clerk, sitting on 
 one of the benches, gazing through the plane trees 
 towards that office from which he is drawing his 
 pension. 
 
 He was the mainstay of his firm was that old 
 clerk. He will tell you, at the first formal invita- 
 tions to his confidence, that he knew more law than 
 all the four partners put together. He was their 
 right-hand man. They called him in for consulta- 
 tion whenever they were in any difficulty. Beckon- 
 ing to you with his finger to come nearer, he will 
 inform you in an undertone they were always in 
 difficulty. They asked him his opinion in a casual
 
 A Prelude to a Family 153 
 
 sort of voice, but when he had given it to them, 
 they always said: 
 
 "That's what we thought. That's just what we 
 thought. We're glad you confirm our opinion." 
 
 It was like sleight of hand. 
 
 He sits there the whole of a warm morning, think- 
 ing of the excellent opinions he gave and gazing 
 across to those windows, wondering what the devil 
 the four partners are doing without him. 
 
 Kensington Gardens, they say, belongs to Sir J. 
 M. Barrie. If they have misinformed you on this 
 matter, then it is because they have not heard that 
 they belong to Peter Pan. 
 
 All these gardens belong to someone. For some 
 reason or other, notwithstanding the thunder of the 
 trains over Hungerford Bridge and the rush of 
 the trams along the Embankment sounds foreign 
 enough surely to his ears Charing Cross Gardens 
 belong to Bobbie Burns. He has the air of pro- 
 prietorship in his eye. Why he presides over that 
 bandstand with its County Council music, I have 
 never been able to discover. I only know he does 
 preside. 
 
 And these gardens of Lincoln's Inn Fields, they 
 belong without question to Margaret. I never feel 
 the inclination to give her her surname, I seem to 
 know her so well. Yet there it is, in graven letters, 
 for all they like the little typewriter that run 
 may read. "Margaret Macdonald, who gave up her 
 life to the service of helping others," and there she 
 kneels, with her arms about all the others in the 
 world. I am not going to explain what I mean by
 
 154 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 others. If you don't know; if you have never seen 
 Margaret, then you must go to the Gardens of 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields and find out for yourself. 
 
 To this rendezvous, early in May, came John, 
 wearing the hat he had not seen fit to eat as yet. 
 There came Jill to meet him, having gone ostensibly 
 into Kensington Gardens and then slipped out, 
 creeping into the first 'bus that was making its way 
 towards Holborn. 
 
 When he saw her coming towards him down the 
 asphalt path, he realized of a sudden the full awk- 
 wardness of the situation with which he was faced. 
 He had to talk about babies. Well that is easy 
 enough when they are someone else's. But when 
 they are your own, moreover ones you have not yet 
 got, you need the callous, man-of-the-world air 
 about you to carry the business through with any 
 degree of comfort. 
 
 Now if there were ever a man in the world, less 
 of the world than another, it was John Grey. He 
 had described his whole family as a household of 
 children, and at twenty-six, the years had fallen on 
 his mind with no greater result than water on a 
 duck's back. To talk to her of babies then, when 
 his own ideas of them would probably have thrown 
 an obstetric physician into a fit, was disconcerting, 
 to say the least of it. 
 
 For notwithstanding Amber, and the intimacy 
 with which they had lived together, he had retained 
 about all women, herself included, a kind of knight- 
 errant's belief that they were like flowers for a 
 man to pick, if he could but win his way into the
 
 A Prelude to a Family 155 
 
 garden where they grew. Not only did he retain 
 a belief that women were like that, but that as such 
 in their hearts they wished to be treated. 
 
 Knowing there were women who confessed to 
 the thrill of violence; who asked that the man who 
 rode into their lives should be booted and spurred, 
 making a rape of love and carrying them off, 
 wrenched in passion from their quietude; knowing 
 there were such women, he still kept his belief they 
 did not make confession from their hearts. They 
 spoke out of a quality of reason and intelligence men 
 had encouraged in them. They affected a Pagan- 
 ism of the brain, which was no more than the 
 sensualism they had learnt from their men-folk. 
 John felt it to be affectation and no more. 
 
 So it was in a more every-day sense, he declared 
 all women were ladies, with a reservation concern- 
 ing those who swore or spat on the ground. When- 
 ever Mrs. Rowse or Mrs. Meakin met him in the 
 street and bobbed, so that they hid the hem of their 
 red flannel petticoats, he took off his hat. 
 
 In a work-a-day world which are the first words 
 at the beginning of this history and cannot be in- 
 sisted upon too often lest it should be thought one 
 had forgotten that it was in a work-a-day world, 
 there are men who think of women like this. It is 
 to be admitted they most times keep their thoughts 
 to themselves, for no man likes to be called a fool 
 and in public will laugh at the woman who lets her 
 hair fall down in pursuit of her intentions. There 
 is no laughter about him when she lets it fall down 
 for him alone.
 
 156 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 But whether it were folly, or whether it were 
 not, this was the regard in which John held Jill, 
 and if any man likes to go back to his first love 
 affair when the sound of footsteps beat up the pulses 
 in his heart to the noise of hammers in a forge, he 
 will find he thought much the same. 
 
 It was no easy matter therefore, as may be sup- 
 posed, to talk to her of babies. Every step of her 
 approach down that asphalt path brought him 
 nearer to the consciousness of confusion. Directly 
 he saw her, he came at once electrically to his feet 
 and by the time they met, it might have been one 
 of those odd adventures in the street, when the 
 desire to talk, let alone the necessity of it, is so great 
 that it overcomes all power of speech. Whatever 
 it was, the whole place became a perambulation of 
 babies. He fell over them as he murmured his 
 words of greeting. 
 
 At this rendezvous he was to tell her what ar- 
 rangements he had made for their secret marriage. 
 As soon as she knew this and that it could be an 
 accomplished fact, she was to announce once more 
 at home her intention of marrying John, definitely 
 breaking off her engagement with Mr. Skipwith. If 
 still they withheld their consent as was only to be 
 supposed they would then all the machinery was 
 ready for that secret marriage if it were necessary. 
 
 Therefore she was full of potential apprehen- 
 sions, alive with curiosity and as excited as a filly 
 in a forty-acre field. But not for one moment did 
 she show it to John. 
 
 Women are amazingly demure and never more
 
 A Prelude to a Family 157 
 
 so than when there is a pulse throbbing in that vein 
 in the neck, another beating in the temple, while 
 unseen knuckles are rapping on their hearts with 
 all the impatience of a postman who has wasted five 
 minutes of his round talking to the girl at the last 
 house but one. 
 
 She sat there in the silence of those first few 
 moments, doing no more than perform those odd 
 tricks with her parasol. They were invisible signs 
 now she was making on the unimpressionable sur- 
 face of those asphalt paths. 
 
 It is hard enough to know what a woman would 
 be saying when, like Euclid in the susceptive dust, 
 she can draw out the most elaborate diagram of 
 her thoughts. And when she has no other medium 
 than that of impassive stone, it would need some- 
 thing of a magician or an Egyptologist to decipher 
 her hieroglyphics. 
 
 At last she could bear his want of comprehension 
 no longer. 
 
 "Aren't you going to tell me?" she whispered. 
 
 He looked at her for an instant, as though he 
 knew he was behaving like the most despicable cad 
 in the world and then he said: 
 
 "We shall have to be married in a Registry 
 office." 
 
 The lawyer's clerk, moving just like a dog from 
 his seat which the sun had left to another on which 
 the sun was beating down, heard him as he passed: 
 
 "We shall have to be married in a Registry 
 office." 
 
 He knew the words well, had often heard them 

 
 158 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 in that room whose windows could just be seen 
 through the plane trees. He heard the pitiable 
 accent of self-reproach in which they were spoken 
 and all the calculations of his pension, if supposing 
 he were to live to eighty-seven which was to be 
 hoped went out like a rocket from the mathe- 
 matical functions of his brain.
 
 Chapter XXI : The Blotting-Paper, 
 Process 
 
 HOW her face fell I She came down from the 
 heights of the zenith in which she had been 
 soaring, as a lark, with its song of a sudden 
 ended, that drops like a stone to earth. 
 
 For whereas it may be one thing to marry in 
 secret from one's parents, which in its way is a 
 species of adventure and savors of the best tradi- 
 tions of Romance, it would appear to be another 
 thing in the heart of a woman to hide that secret 
 from the world. Some of the finest Romances in 
 the world have set out with the adventure of a 
 run-away wedding; horses galloping post-haste 
 through the night, breathless parents, generally fat 
 and always perspiring, following in pursuit, changes 
 of steeds at wayside inns, then on again into the 
 darkness, but always at the end of the journey a 
 priest with the blessing of the church; something at 
 least, when all was accomplished, for the world to 
 hear of. 
 
 But a registrar of births, deaths and marriages 
 for priest and a varnished deal table in a dingy 
 office for an altar! It had all the suggestion of 
 a shoddy business to Jill, wherein there was no color
 
 160 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 of Romance but rather all the sordid appurtenances 
 of a doubtful intrigue. 
 
 In those first few moments she dared not speak. 
 She could not have told him how squalid the whole 
 vista of life had become with just the mere mention 
 of those words Registry Office. 
 
 For here was part of the spirit of her illusion, 
 that she needed her property of appearances to 
 carry the matter through. So closely was John 
 associated in all he did and said and thought with 
 the doubtful advantages of Fetter Lane that in the 
 surface consciousness of her mind, she had ac- 
 cepted it as a home in exchange for that good ad- 
 dress which would have been plainly printed on the 
 top of her notepaper in the establishment Mr. 
 Skipwith would have provided for her. 
 
 Here was a courage which was only the less great 
 by measure of the consciousness she had of it. 
 There was not a girl of her acquaintance would 
 have such daring of spirit. She knew that. She 
 knew full well she was making a great sacrifice for 
 love. 
 
 Only once, it is true, had she seen Fetter Lane 
 and those rooms she was one day to occupy over 
 Mrs. Meakin's shop, but the impression of them 
 had been stamped indelibly on her memory. She 
 was certain she would never let John know that 
 she had made any sacrifice; but there it was, no girl 
 in all the circle of her acquaintance would have done 
 so much for love as she. 
 
 But this information of John's, sweeping out her 
 picture of Romance, seemed more in the first mo-
 
 The Blotting-Paper Process 161 
 
 merits of that silence than her courage could bear. 
 A Registry Office! It was a place, she fancied it, 
 in a dingy street where women who were divorced 
 from their husbands were married to the co-re- 
 spondent. There was nothing above-board about it. 
 It was the last resource the State offered to keep 
 people from shame. 
 
 Had he asked her to be married in a second-hand 
 wedding dress, procured from a Jew clothiers in 
 the Whitechapel Road, he could not have put greater 
 strain upon her love. 
 
 And all this time, he knew it. There he was, 
 sitting beside her with their silence, learning his 
 lesson of how great a cad a man can be to a woman 
 when love and passion and all the impulses of life 
 are riding through his heart, driving all else before 
 them. 
 
 Another moment of that silence and he would have 
 leapt of a sudden to his feet, setting her free, giving 
 her back to her world of less shoddy appearances 
 and carrying his love away with him a thing of 
 patches but at least his very own. 
 
 Another moment the story of John and Jill would 
 have been ended. The tears were filling in her eyes, 
 mounting to the very brim. Had she suddenly 
 turned her head, they would assuredly have tumbled 
 out. Without looking, John knew the pools that 
 were gathering. He had let her fight it out in 
 silence; in silence but not alone. He had taken her 
 hand in his own as it lay in her lap. But never 
 once had the touch of her fingers responded. 
 
 Observing this action of John's from the next
 
 1 62 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 seat, the old lawyer's clerk picked up those financial 
 calculations where they had fallen and put them 
 away in the tail pocket of his mind. 
 
 Everybody's mind wears the garments associated 
 with their worldly habiliments. A woman hides her 
 thoughts in just those secret places you might expect, 
 as often as not threading them with a piece of 
 colored silk ribband which serves no purpose a man 
 could ever see. And when it is an actor, wearing 
 silken tights, he has no room to store a thought 
 anywhere. 
 
 In those tragic moments, however, neither of 
 them were aware of the existence of the lawyer's 
 clerk. That absence of response in Jill's fingers was 
 accusing John with its silent reproach until he could 
 endure it no longer. All that was in her mind he 
 knew. He felt no resentment. Accused himself of 
 a want of nobility, not her, and with every moment 
 became increasingly conscious of the frayed ends 
 of his trousers. 
 
 She felt the relaxation of his hand on hers as 
 he was about to get of a sudden to his feet and 
 whether she guessed its meaning or not would re- 
 quire more than the calculation of a scientific psy- 
 chologist to determine. Whatever it was, she came 
 to some mastery over her emotion of disappoint- 
 ment when she asked him why they must be married 
 in a Registry Office. 
 
 Then it was possible to sneak a handkerchief out 
 of her little bag and merely, be it understood, to 
 blow her nose. No woman who is really brave ever 
 cries unless the situation demands it of her. She
 
 The Blotting-Paper Process 163 
 
 will make funny grimaces, or she will take violent 
 interests, sometimes she will even give you the big- 
 gest of her smiles. But tears are things no brave 
 or sensible woman ever wastes. They are her only 
 real economy. 
 
 Jill's lip had trembled. Her forehead had 
 puckered. She had pulled at a thread of cotton 
 sticking out of the thumb of her glove as though 
 she had wished to discover whether it were of 
 Coutts's manufacture or a more inferior class of 
 article. She had resorted to all those tricks a woman 
 has need of when she is doing her best. Then, 
 putting her question, she had blown her nose, after 
 which there was every excuse in the world for any 
 woman to begin that peculiar process of fishing for 
 moisture out of the corner of the eye. It is like 
 picking up a blot of ink with a piece of blotting 
 paper.
 
 Chapter XXII : A Passing Memory of the 
 Lawyer's Clerk 
 
 A,L these pre-occupations, the lawyer's clerk 
 witnessed from his seat further down the 
 path. They set his memory in motion. He 
 remembered the advice he had once given to the 
 senior partner who was dealing with a tearful client, 
 absorbed in the description of her husband's in- 
 fidelities. 
 
 In despair the senior partner had come to the 
 offices downstairs asking what the deuce he was 
 to do. 
 
 "Let her cry," said the clerk. "Go out of the 
 room and leave her alone. Let her cry." 
 
 "But I can't step out of the room all that time," 
 declared the senior partner. "She's in my office. 
 She's been weeping already for half an hour. I 
 should never get any work done." 
 
 "Two minutes'll be enough if you shut the door," 
 said the clerk. 
 
 This was the story as told in a moment of do- 
 mestic tribulation by the lawyer's clerk to his wife. 
 
 And the wife of the lawyer's clerk had forthwith 
 dried her eyes. 
 
 164
 
 Chapter XXIII : *A Young John 
 
 WHEN the blotting-paper process was done 
 with and Jill, with her fight for courage, 
 had asked him why they must be married 
 in a Registry Office, John seized both her hands 
 with the gratitude he felt. 
 
 "Why can't we be married in a church?" she 
 said. 
 
 He began then in the most delicate way he knew, 
 to tell her why and his conception of delicacy in 
 these matters, consisted in going round and round, 
 like a child in a maze, searching for a way out. 
 She could offer him none. In her ignorance of the 
 world of wonderful reality in which they found them- 
 selves, she had none to offer. From all that she 
 could gather out of the rigmarole he gave her, the 
 priest had no actual power to refuse. 
 
 "It's only," said John in despair, "that he makes 
 a fuss about it." 
 
 "But what's there to make a fuss about?" she 
 asked. 
 
 Well, then he had to tell her. But it would be 
 scarcely fair to say how he managed it. 
 
 There they were, a pair of children, just standing 
 on the door-step of a wonderful world and waiting 
 for the door to open. Life was on the other side 
 
 165
 
 166 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 of the threshold and what it is and what they thought 
 it might be, may well be two very different things. 
 To put it into words would be like looking up the 
 meaning of the Holy Eucharist in a Nuttall's Dic- 
 tionary. 
 
 They talked about babies, as it was foreseen at 
 the beginning of this situation that they must. There 
 may be those who have wondered how the deuce 
 they were going to do it. God knows how they did. 
 
 Had the lawyer's clerk been able from his seat 
 to catch an odd phrase here or there which is not 
 to say he did not try his best he might have 
 thought they were talking about a litter of puppies 
 or a nest full of wrens. Creatures was the word 
 in most common use. To call them just children 
 and talk about a family would have been to use 
 words, stripped of all their clothes. Some words 
 are naked and in their conversation, all wrapped 
 in the garments of timid suggestion, the word 
 children and family would have stood out naked 
 and unashamed. 
 
 Doubtless their talk would have made a doctor 
 hold his sides with laughter. Free education had 
 not taught them much. Again and again the blushes 
 ran their nimblest out into the daylight of her 
 cheeks. He coughed and hummed and hawed and 
 found himself inextricably mixed up in sentences 
 where the inevitable naked word would loom up out 
 of the distance. In such moments he would drop 
 the sentence wildly where it was and run like a hare 
 into the silence. 
 
 These were terrible moments, all hot and sticky
 
 A Young John 167 
 
 and close. And what a relief it was when they had 
 passed! But terrible as they may have been, there 
 was yet the thrill of something wonderful behind 
 every instant of them. Somehow the sunshine man- 
 aged to beat into those awkward silences. They 
 were neither chill nor dark. 
 
 There he was sitting out in a garden in the heart 
 of London, talking about his children to their 
 mother, when he had not as yet so much as got a 
 wife. This is the quality of make-believe, having 
 more of the truth for company than all the facts 
 in the world. 
 
 Thus, even in so prosaic a place as this, with the 
 houses all about them where the facts of life are 
 forever being tied up with red tape, sorted, stamped 
 at great expense and put away in japanned tin 
 deed boxes, with the name of the owner of the 
 fact painted thereon in bold gilt letters, even in 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields, the make-believe of John Grey 
 seemed at length more real to Jill than all the prac- 
 tical considerations they had of life in Prince of 
 Wales's Terrace. 
 
 And when she understood that they must wait, 
 just for those first few years or so, what more 
 natural than that the time of waiting should all go 
 by as they sat there on their seat under the plane 
 trees. Two years! Three years! You have only 
 to snap your fingers and it does not even matter 
 if you cannot make a noise with them, when the 
 talk is on wings that beat the air as strong as these. 
 
 "It'll be a boy," said John. 
 
 "Why do men always want a boy?" she asked.
 
 168 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 "What do you want?" he inquired. 
 
 "A boy," said she. 
 
 And half she shut her eyes, looking out across 
 the rays and the spaces of sunshine that thrust their 
 way through the plane trees and lit with gold those 
 patches on the trunks where every winter the bark 
 strips off to show you that it's limbs are really clean. 
 
 You can guess what she saw. 
 
 A young John to make an old world new. A 
 thing of breeches, torn and frayed, tramping to- 
 wards life with all their beliefs, their faiths and 
 hopes, polished and shining in his eyes. A young 
 John, all sudden and unexpected, leaping out of a 
 moment of love, like a bird, flinging out into free- 
 dom from its cage. A young John, shouting out 
 the secret of their passion to the whole world, and 
 caring, not the curse of a tinker who heard his 
 voice. A young John, young enough to bear the 
 treasures they had gathered in their minds, on into 
 a distance where all those who travel can never hope 
 to reach, but where the mere sense of traveling on 
 and on and on is joy enough to keep their hearts in 
 tune. 
 
 Under the falling soots from heaven that dark- 
 ened the clingy houses and lay on the asphalt paths, 
 there was no essence of fact about one of the things 
 they saw, but it sent Jill back to Prince of Wales's 
 Terrace with a tune in her heart and for the rest 
 of that day, the two coppers John jingled in his 
 pocket had all the music in theme of a thousand 
 golden sovereigns of the realm.
 
 Chapter XXIV: Mrs. Rowse Reports a 
 Case before the Magistrate 
 
 BRINGING his cup of tea to John one morning 
 after a complete and unexpected absence on 
 the previous day, Mrs. Rowse revealed all 
 the unmistakable signs of a black eye. 
 
 It was an accident, she said, while she and her 
 husband had been talking. 
 
 The need for an explanation of this statement had 
 apparently made itself obvious to others besides 
 John. Mrs. Rowse had had to appear before recog- 
 nized authorities who made it their business to 
 interfere and inquire into these matters. 
 
 "No affair of theirs !" she declared with emphasis. 
 "I don't want to deny my 'usband was a bit ex- 
 cited. 'E was talkin' and he thumps the table with 
 'is fist so 'e does often and there was a glass 
 a-standin' on the edge of the table and it fell off. 
 If I 'adn't a been quick that glass 'ud a been broken. 
 But I stretched out quick an' I caught it that glass 
 cost threepence an' doin' it I bumped my forehead 
 'gainst the corner of the table. Enough to give 
 anybody a black eye." 
 
 John declared he was under the impression that 
 in similar circumstances he would have sustained a 
 black eye himself. 
 
 169
 
 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 "What they wants, 'avin' 'im up an' bindin' 'im 
 to keep the peace beats me. Puttin' it all on the 
 rates, as my 'usband says, as if people didn't 'ave 
 to pay enough for bein' in the world as it is, without 
 makin' it an expense for a man an' wife to 'ave 
 a little argument about things that concern no one 
 but themselves." 
 
 "So it was really the talking that did it?" said 
 John. 
 
 From the leaning attitude which she always 
 adopted when she had something of interest to her- 
 self to relate, Mrs. Rowse stood up to work again 
 and began dusting and putting to rights as though 
 she were suddenly conscious of wasting precious 
 time. She did not answer his question. 
 
 "And I suppose you defended him through thick 
 and thin?" John remarked presently as he sipped 
 his tea and smoked his first cigarette. 
 
 It is as old as the hills, but always a subject 
 of interest, that strange fidelity of the wife to the 
 husband who beats her. Of course there is the 
 wage-earning argument to account for it in many 
 cases. It probably does account for the substance 
 of her fidelity, but not the spirit of it. To John, 
 with his ideas about women, it was the sin against 
 the Holy Ghost, the inconceivable beastliness of 
 human nature which impelled any man to lay his 
 hands on a woman to beat her. And for the woman 
 who submitted to it unless for the wage-earning 
 reason and the need to keep the children in bread 
 he had nothing but contempt. It was a desecration 
 to love to conceive that it could be beaten like a
 
 Mrs. Rowse Reports a Case 171 
 
 dog; for while the love of a dog was a beautiful 
 thing it was the love of a beast for its master. But 
 little of the beast was to be found in woman; but 
 little of the master to be found in man. 
 
 The condition of beastliness was to be traced in 
 women here and there, but that was a very different 
 thing. The condition of mastery you might dis- 
 cover in many men. But to John, as he realized 
 the sex, it was the spiritual beauty in the minds of 
 women that would save the world from the ugliness 
 of the physical violence of men. 
 
 Any woman then who submitted to the brutality 
 of her husband and defended him against the law 
 was traitor to the ideals of her sex in the eyes of 
 John. He had no pity for her. He had no pity 
 for Mrs. Rowse. 
 
 There he lay in his bed as she dusted his room, 
 while a dispassionate mood settled upon his mind. 
 He would sooner a man murdered a woman than 
 beat her. There might be passion in murder. 
 There could be nothing but the profane insult of 
 disrespect when he struck her in the face with his 
 fist or laid a stick about her body. 
 
 The more he thought of it and round it and 
 about it, the more he imagined himself in the 
 critical temper of the magistrate trying the case. 
 He began plying her with questions, shrewd and 
 cunning that made her slip in her statements and 
 come at last to a worse state of confusion than she 
 had been in the court. 
 
 There was no denying it at last. Her husband 
 had beaten her. There had been the hell of a row.
 
 172 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 The whole neighborhood of Peabody Buildings had 
 been out to watch them. 
 
 He had come home drunk. Well, not so drunk 
 leastways not sober. 
 
 "Some men get the drink out of 'em with a 
 stick," said she, "an' if I cries out Vs 'urtin' me 
 which I wouldn't do, not for nothin' it seems to 
 satisfy 'im sooner. 'E doesn't want to do no 
 'arm to me. So I cries, but not because it 'urts. 
 I wouldn't give 'im that satisfaction if it didn't 'elp 
 'im out of his rage. Only this night 'e went on 
 longer than usual." 
 
 She laid her hand on her breast. 
 
 "If you saw the bruise I got there," said she. 
 
 John sat up, a blaze of emotion and anger, in 
 his bed. There can be little doubt about it, that 
 what he lost in the dignity of his appearance with 
 his hair at sixes and sevens at that time in the 
 morning, he must have made up for by the passion 
 in all he said. 
 
 It was her lying her hand on her breast; it was 
 the picture of that bruise she had brought to his 
 mind which had done it. He felt this an insult to 
 the sex for which he had nothing but reverence and 
 worship, an insult too deep to be borne. 
 
 For if there were any one thing to him more 
 sacred about a woman than another, it was that 
 fount at which her child must take its first long 
 draught of life. In the filthy savagery of war he 
 knew it was the wont of an infuriate soldiery to cut 
 off the breasts of women in an enemy's land. He 
 knew that all through the history of humanity's
 
 Mrs. Rowse Reports a Case 173 
 
 struggle through the swelter and ugliness of life, 
 such deeds had been done in the name of all the 
 highest ideals, even to that of Christianity. 
 
 But there, in his rooms though it were only that 
 Mrs. Rowse who, when a man is lonely, God sends 
 to clear away the breakfast things to see her lay 
 her hand on her breast, to hear her say: "If you 
 saw the bruise I've got there," it was more than 
 his emotion could endure in silence. 
 
 He sat up in his bed, pouring forth a torrent 
 of abuse upon her head that she should defend such 
 a man as would thus insult and ill-treat her. 
 
 "You're his master, not he yours," he shouted 
 at her. "If there's anything beautiful in life in 
 Peabody Buildings, you brought it there not him. 
 If there's any suffering that's been borne, it was not 
 him to bear it, but you, every time you brought your 
 children into the world. Your children I Not his. 
 You shaped and made them. You fed them. Half 
 his life he's been looking on. One day there'll come 
 a civilization when we shall organize life like the 
 bees. Your man and his like'll find the slaughterer's 
 knife at their throats then, Mrs. Rowse and God 
 knows p'raps you'll be a Queen." 
 
 She was crying by this p'raps at the thought 
 that her husband's throat might one day be slit, 
 perhaps at a vision of herself as a Queen a vision 
 resembling the figure of Britannia on top of the 
 highest circus car in the procession. It was anyhow 
 a sniveling business made up mainly of sentimental- 
 ity, for she had scarcely understood a word he had 
 said. 

 
 174 World' of W onderJuC Reality 
 
 "I'm sure, Mr. Grey," she whimpered, "I'm sure 
 you ought to 'ave been one o' them lawyer gentle- 
 men the way you can talk. You ought to 'ave been 
 in the Court yesterday mornin', sayin' somethin' for 
 that young girl I met 'ere once not that she seemed 
 to want any one say'm' anythin' for 'er." 
 
 John half sprang out of bed. 
 
 "What young girl?" he asked. 
 
 "That young girl 'ad to stop a night once; slep' 
 in your sittin' room on the floor, it was rainin' so 
 'ard the night before, she couldn't get 'ome. 
 Wouldn't 'ave your bed that's wot you told me. 
 Said she was used to sleepin' on the floor an' slep' 
 there." 
 
 Amber ! 
 
 In some unaccountable way John felt as though 
 a violent hand had seized his heart and shaken it. 
 The ideals of womanhood and the civilization of 
 bees went like a bolt out of his head. 
 
 "What was she doing in the courts?" he asked. 
 
 "Contempt. But there wasn't much contempt 
 about her as far as I could see. Laughin' she was 
 made the beak laugh once. But 'e was down 
 on her. Some money she owed one of them shops 
 in Kensington. Down on 'er like a nail 'e was. 
 'You young women,' 'e says, 'think you can go 
 about dressin' yeerselves up in this and that without 
 payin' for it. D'yer ever think,' 'e says, 'of the 
 fingers as 'ave tired theirselves out makin' the things 
 you put on yer backs and the little they gets paid 
 for it? It's a class of thievin',' 'e says, 'which 
 is too ' and then he used some word or other
 
 Mrs. Rowse Reports a Case 175 
 
 *in this country and girls of your class ought to be 
 made an example of. You've done this sort of 
 thin' before,' 'e goes on. 'I find you've owed bills 
 before an' it's most difficult to get money out of 
 you, so unless this sum is paid into Court by to- 
 morrow mornin' at 10 o'clock, I shall commit you 
 to prison for the full term of seven days.' ' 
 
 "What did she say to that?" 
 
 "She just shrug 'er shoulders," replied Mrs. 
 Rowse, "and she says, 'Can't I begin my seven days 
 now because there isn't a penny to pay it with. 
 I've spent all I've got.' Everybody laughed at that 
 beginning 'er seven days then! Well, I see the 
 sense of it myself. She knew she couldn't pay it 
 by 10 o'clock, so why shouldn't she start 'er seven 
 days without any 'angin' about?" 
 
 "What did the magistrate say then?" 
 
 "Oh, 'e got fair 'uffy. 'This ain't no laughin' 
 matter,' 'e says, sittin' up stiff, then 'e turned to 'er. 
 *If you've got no self-respec',' he says, 'the sooner 
 you learn what it is, the better.' ' 
 
 Mrs. Rowse began to laugh. 
 
 "What d'you think she said to that?" 
 
 John might have guessed. He asked to be told. 
 
 " 'There ain't no need for you to teach me self- 
 respec',' says she. 'You being there and I bein' 
 'ere doesn't give me no information about you, 
 though it lets you into knowin' that I owe six 
 pounds four and threepence,' that was the sum she 
 owed you see. 'But it don't do more than that,' says 
 she. 'It don't give you no idea what I feel or 
 what I think. But sendin' me to 'Olloway,' says
 
 176 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 she, 'won't do away with my ideas of self-respec',' 
 says she, 'much as it may be intended to.' All that 
 she says and 'e sits there listenin' to 'er, too dumb- 
 foundered to say a word. At last he thumps 'is 
 'and on the bench. 'Be quiet 1' 'e shouts out, and 
 she stopped. 'Do you mean to tell me 'ere, now, 
 in this court that you 'ave no intention of payin' 
 even a part of that money to-morrow mornin', 
 when you're earnin' sometimes as much as four 
 pounds a week as an artist's model?' I never knew 
 she was an artist's model, Mr. Grey." 
 
 John nodded his head. 
 
 "Go on," he said, "what did she say to that?" 
 
 " 'I might 'ave the best intentions in the world,' 
 says she, smilin' she was smilin' all the time, that's 
 what raddled 'im, 'but the bill's six pounds four 
 and three pence and there ain't no place I know 
 of '11 give me that much for a 'ole bag full of in- 
 tentions.' Meanin' yer see that she 'adn't got no 
 money what she'd told 'im v before." 
 
 "Well did he let her off then?" 
 
 It seemed to John, notwithstanding the way Mrs. 
 Rowse pointed the direction of purpose in her story, 
 that it must end all right. He could not believe 
 that Amber was in jail. 
 
 "Let 'er off?" exclaimed Mrs. Rowse. It was 
 evident John knew little of the dignity of the law and 
 of what that dignity is capable when it is affronted. 
 "Let 'er off?" she repeated. " 'E just ask her was 
 there anyone she know would pay the money for 
 'er. 'No,' she says, 'an' if I did I wouldn't ask 
 'em. It's my bill, not theirs and if I can't pay it
 
 Mrs. Rowse Reports a Case 177 
 
 one way, I shall 'ave to pay it another.' Well, 
 that was enough for the beak. 'E sent 'er off for 
 'er seven days without no more talk about it." 
 
 "She's gone to Holloway?" exclaimed John. 
 "She's in jail?" 
 
 " 'Olloway was what they said." 
 
 John leapt out of bed and ordered Mrs. Rowse 
 from the room. 
 
 "What d'yer want for yer breakfast?" she in- 
 quired as she went. 
 
 "Breakfast damn breakfast!" said he and was 
 stripped as God made him before she had so much 
 as closed the door.
 
 Chapter XXV: A 'Mere Commercial 
 Transaction 
 
 WITH the assignment to the chapel of Un- 
 redemption of watch and chain, cigarette 
 case and all those things on the fluctuating 
 inventory of John's possessions, something in the 
 neighborhood of twenty pounds had been accumu- 
 lated to defray the costs of wedding, honeymoon 
 and those miscellaneous expenses which are the very 
 deuce. 
 
 This sum of money he was keeping in a drawer 
 of his desk. There was no need to put this in 
 pawn for its safety; no fear that any temptation 
 would arise more inviting than the prospect for 
 which it was intended. At the same time, it was 
 something to look at. He counted it over every 
 day, not from any fear it would diminish or foolish 
 hope that it might increase. The very feeling of 
 it induced a sense of power. With the touch of 
 those twenty pieces of gold, he lost all those sen- 
 sations that he was behaving like a cad. With 
 twenty pounds, so long as they were not extravagant 
 over the length of their journey, he felt he could 
 afford to treat her like a queen. A couple of 
 pounds had often been the complete sum in his 
 pocket when he had set out with Amber into the
 
 A Mere Commercial Transaction 179 
 
 country, informing Mrs. Rowse in a casual voice 
 that it was quite impossible to say when he would 
 be back. 
 
 It was to that drawer in his desk he went, with- 
 out thought of breakfast, as soon as ever the clothes 
 were on his back. 
 
 Amber in jail! Punished at last for that casual 
 indifference which amounted to the wildest ignor- 
 ance of the value of money! Once before, as may 
 be remembered, he had saved her from this predica- 
 ment by the pawning of the heavy fur coat, just in 
 the middle of winter, just when there was some good 
 reason for its use. That it had not been redeemed 
 again till summertime is an old story and bears no 
 repetition. 
 
 But Amber in jail! He never stayed to analyze 
 the motives of his sensations. All he felt, an im- 
 petuous realization, was that the indignity of it was 
 unbearable for one single moment longer than was 
 necessary. 
 
 In some manner, too, which he put down to a 
 stupid egotism if he defined it at all, he felt that 
 he, no less than she, had been insulted. His cheeks 
 flamed and, from the graphic account Mrs. Rowse 
 had given of the proceedings in court, it seemed 
 likely they were flaming with greater heat than 
 Amber's. 
 
 Always, as he saw her and indeed as she presented 
 herself to everyone, she had been absurdly casual 
 about the whole of life. If things were to be, they 
 were to be. Such casualness in their own relation- 
 ship had been more of her attitude than of his.
 
 180 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 He recalled her words again then: 
 
 "If it doesn't last, then nobody's hurt by it; if 
 it does, let it last as long as it can." 
 
 And another time when she had declared she 
 would not fight for love if ever it came to her she 
 would not fight to keep it. 
 
 "My door's always on the latch," she had said, 
 with a laugh. "Love's as free to go out as to come 
 in. There's no good putting a bolt on the door 
 when love's in the house. It must go where it 
 likes." 
 
 And laughing then, in those days, before love 
 came to him, he had agreed that love was like a 
 cat coming into a strange house. It peered into 
 every room, examined every corner and if you did 
 not butter its paws and find a soft cushion for it, 
 like as not it would creep out of the window. 
 
 He had no such ideas about love now. Now he 
 knew it to be the spirit that enters the house of the 
 soul and open doors and open windows can never 
 give escape to the purpose that it brings. It was the 
 only thing in Nature that defied Nature; the only 
 part that was greater than the whole of life. 
 
 It was all this materialization of love, he believed 
 now, such as the Churches made of it, such as 
 Father Peake had advocated, which had given it 
 that similitude to a cat seeking comfort in the home 
 it found for itself. 
 
 These things his mind ran to as he seized seven 
 of the golden sovereigns out of the drawer of his 
 desk and set off for the court where Amber's offense 
 of contempt was placed upon the records.
 
 A Mere Commercial Transaction 181 
 
 The wrench that it was to despoil his little hoard 
 seemed nothing so great as for any other reason 
 he would have expected it to be. Amber was in 
 prison, a common offender against the law, yet he 
 knew so well what she had meant when, according 
 to Mrs. Rowse, she had spoken of self-respect. It 
 was that same self-respect in him, which, as it were, 
 had been slapped in the face by the fact that she 
 had been taken, like any common woman, to Hol- 
 loway. 
 
 He seemed to be learning in those moments as 
 he ran, with some kind of fear in his heels, to the 
 court-house, he seemed to be learning how there was 
 a nobility of character conveyed in all that verbose 
 report of Mrs. Rowse which he realized now he 
 had known of always, but never taken, as it were, 
 into account. 
 
 She might so easily have applied to him for 
 assistance. As a matter of fact, she actually knew 
 he had in his possession that twenty pounds. He 
 wondered, as he ran, how many women would have 
 chosen to go to jail, with all it meant in a world 
 of appearances, rather than relieve him of the sum 
 of six pounds four and three pence from his little 
 hoard. In such a predicament any woman might 
 have been excused the loss of balance, the inability 
 to face disgrace even at the cost of knocking a 
 hole in half a dozen people's honeymoons. 
 
 Yet all she had said when the magistrate had 
 asked her if she knew of anyone to help her, was: 
 
 "No, and if I did I wouldn't ask them. It's my 
 bill, not theirs."
 
 1 82 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 This was the nobility that kept her a steady flame, 
 whatever quality the purpose of her light might be. 
 
 He came into the office of the court-house and, 
 swallowing a lump in his throat which had come 
 there by ways he had no time for discovery, he 
 looked through one of the apertures in the glass 
 partition and said he vanted to pay a bill. 
 
 It took a deal of explaining and investigation, 
 but the object of that court, as the clerk explained 
 to him, being to recover money at any cost the law 
 allowed them dignity being the least of all he 
 was treated with due consideration. 
 
 "The woman's now serving seven days in Hol- 
 loway," said the clerk .with his finger on an entry 
 in a huge ledger. 
 
 He might just as well have spat in John's face. 
 
 "P'raps you'll speak of her as a lady," said John, 
 "when you get her six pounds four and three- 
 pence." 
 
 "Once I get that," said the clerk imperturbably, 
 and as though the money were due to him, "I don't 
 suppose I shall 'ave cause to speak of 'er at all." 
 
 That was a distinct score for the clerk. So clean 
 a score was it that John guffawed and came back to 
 a sense of humor. 
 
 For it was a funny business, this transaction over 
 a counter to buy Amber out of jail. As he counted 
 out the seven sovereigns and received his change, he 
 would scarcely have been surprised had she been 
 handed out to him, neatly wrapped up in a brown 
 paper parcel with a little leather carrier attached 
 to the string.
 
 A Mere Commercial Transaction 183 
 
 "Is she free now?" he asked eagerly. 
 
 "An order will be made out for her release, sent 
 through to the Governor of the prison," said the 
 clerk, "and she'll come out at once." 
 
 "Do you mind giving me time just to get down 
 there," said John. "I I want to meet her as she 
 comes out." 
 
 The clerk looked hard at John, just for one 
 moment, then he shut the ledger. 
 
 "The order has to be made out," said he, "then 
 it has to be sent down to the prison. The lady 
 will scarcely be ready by the time you arrive." 
 
 He might have been opening the door and bowing 
 John out of the shop.
 
 Chapter XXVI : Peeping Tom 
 
 JOHN stood outside the gates of Holloway 
 prison and laughed. 
 
 The castellated turrets, the gray stone 
 tower, the bastions, the ramparts, the massive high 
 walls, all combining to keep Amber incarcerated 
 because of an inability to pay the sum of six pounds 
 four and threepence, seemed pompous enough to be 
 incredibly funny. He stood at the entrance of the 
 approach to the mighty gates which appeared to be 
 shut against the whole world, and he laughed. 
 
 Suddenly he had sense of the humor of it all and 
 no longer were there flames in his cheeks as he 
 thought of the insult to her self-respect. 
 
 That so mighty a place should have been built 
 for the imprisonment of a few unfortunates who 
 could not pay their bills or who fell foul of the 
 jug of beer, impressed him with the ludicrousness 
 of life and all the hollow sham of appearances. It 
 was like the gilt and marble walls of the Alcazar 
 Restaurant or the silk and brocade of the modern 
 theater or the countless dazzling lights of the com- 
 mon gin palace. 
 
 The whole purpose of it was nothing more nor 
 less than a show a circus procession a combina- 
 tion of glitter and tinsel to catch the eye, not of the 
 
 184
 
 Peeping Tom 185 
 
 child in a man, but of that weariness which comes 
 to the spirit grown old in struggling for the things 
 of no account. 
 
 For the child, though often it may be given and 
 plays with the inexpensive toy which with its paints 
 and its trapping apes reality, yet infinitely pre- 
 fers the first inanimate object that comes to its hand 
 with which to build a world. 
 
 All such make-believe as this, the tired spirit of 
 most men and women have no energy to create. 
 They must have their world all ready-made for 
 them, wherefore there is gilt on the marble walls 
 of their restaurants to make them think they are 
 getting their money's worth in their meal, there is 
 silk and brocade in their theaters to make them 
 think they are comfortable when they are seeing a 
 foolish play, there are a thousand lights in their 
 common gin palaces to make them think the world 
 a jolly place. 
 
 And with that towering edifice in the Camden 
 Road, there are turrets and ramparts and bastions 
 to make them think that a respectful fear of the 
 law rather than an inward sense of honesty is the 
 best policy in the long run of life. 
 
 Having no conception of the time it would take 
 for an order of release to be made out and be de- 
 livered at the jail, John walked down the approach 
 between the Governor's house and the buildings 
 opposite, to the imposing door set in what might 
 have been a medieval portcullis tower. 
 
 The old horse bus by which he had come 
 an ambling pirate with no fixed schedule of price
 
 1 86 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 or time had seemed that morning the slowest 
 thing on earth. Every hansom that had passed 
 them, he imagined contained the messenger bearing 
 the order for her release. He wanted to make sure 
 he was not late. He knocked with the heavy knocker 
 on the postern door and would not have been so 
 much astonished, as mildly interested, had it been 
 opened by a man in a cuirass and a leather jerkin, 
 with good rich medieval oaths all ready to his lips. 
 
 The smaller door, inlet with a monastic-looking 
 grille, opened and he was faced by a warden or 
 gatemen in a black uniform who rang a bunch of 
 keys in his hand as though to make atmosphere and 
 create an unmistakable impression. He was a 
 bearded man, wearing that type of well-trimmed 
 beard that looks as though it were made of black 
 horse-hair and steel turnings. His expression was 
 still and cold. The look in his eyes told John he 
 was incapable of all response but such answers as 
 he no doubt had learnt by heart. 
 
 He was far worse than a man with medieval 
 oaths, with cuirass and leather jerkin. Such a one 
 might have beaten your body. This man could 
 torture your soul. 
 
 The sudden impression that John received as he 
 looked at him was that civilization had become more 
 cruel than ever it was in the days of the Thumb- 
 screw and the Scavenger's daughter. It had learnt 
 that man has a mind as well as a body to torture, 
 yet was still in ignorance that the torturing of the 
 mind was not so much more punishment as a poison- 
 ing of the soul.
 
 Peeping Tom 187 
 
 "I'm sorry to trouble you," he began, though 
 trouble would appear to have been the last emo-" 
 tional state of which he was capable, "but I'm wait- 
 ing for a lady. She's she's well, she's coming 
 out very shortly. They're sending an order to the 
 Governor. That's what they told me and well, I 
 didn't want to miss her. I thought perhaps you 
 could tell me if you'd seen her go by. She's rather 
 tall she's young well, about twenty-three and 
 and tall well, I said that with brown eyes. 
 They do come out this way, don't they?" 
 
 He looked at the great gates with their iron bars 
 which still further kept the way into the inner court- 
 yard beyond. To him, with his freedom, standing 
 there, it seemed like another world, a world of 
 caged souls, more silent than any grave. 
 
 The official waited in silence while John stam- 
 mered out his inquiries. His eye was like an im- 
 plement you might pick a lock with and he pierced 
 it into John's brain, not as John imagined, however, 
 to discover his relationship with Amber, but merely 
 in calculation as to whether there were a promise 
 of a tip. 
 
 "They do come out this way, don't they?" re- 
 peated John. 
 
 "They come out this way," he said with a strong, 
 rasping voice, "and they goes in." 
 
 "She she came in yesterday," said John, hoping 
 that might help. 
 
 "So did others," replied the official to the proper 
 accompaniment of his keys. 
 
 "It's only a debtor a debtor's case," John ex-
 
 1 88 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 plained quickly, giving him every assistance to jog 
 his memory. But apparently, behind that cold eye 
 with its penetrating glance as though it trusted no 
 man, there was no memory to distinguish between 
 ordinary debtors and common drunks. What is 
 more, there seemed to be a kind of pride that stiff- 
 ened the horse-hair beard with its steel turnings, 
 a kind of pride that, having served so long in his 
 Majesty's service, all memory about such matters 
 as these was scarcely worth while. He left it to 
 John to estimate what worth it had. 
 
 "Well, has anyone come out been released I 
 mean in the last hour or so?" he asked. 
 
 "There's always people coming out," replied the 
 official, "but it's not for me to know 'ave they 
 been released for debt or drink. If they've got 
 any pride about them, they walk as though they'd 
 come in by mistake and 'ad just found the right way 
 out. 'Oh,' they says when they sees the door open, 
 as though it was shut last time they came by and 
 they 'adn't noticed it." 
 
 John put his hand in his pocket and at that move- 
 ment all the penetrating look of the sharp implement 
 vanished out of the official's eye. He cast a glance 
 behind him and on through the iron gates. Then 
 he made a movement of suppressed swiftness to a 
 small room at the side, evidently his office. 
 
 "Would you like to come in 'ere for a moment, 
 sir, while you're talkin'?" 
 
 His voice no longer rasped. You could not have 
 filed through a ginger-beer wire with it. From 
 somewhere behind the waistcoat of that black uni-
 
 Peeping Tom 189 
 
 form, it had caught a human note, coming from 
 some inner man that hid, concealed, behind that 
 official exterior. 
 
 There in his little office, with its high desk and 
 its stool the only furniture around the whitened 
 walls there followed a transaction for which no 
 receipt but that of muttered gratitude was forth- 
 coming; a transaction which no officer in his 
 Majesty's Service would probably understand, since, 
 as in John's case, it produced nothing of any value. 
 
 "If you wait outside, sir," said the officer as they 
 came out again, "you'll most likely see the lady 
 comin' out. They all comes out this way." 
 
 Which he might have said in the first five min- 
 utes. It was only the tone of voice that had changed 
 by reason of that mysterious transaction in the little 
 room. Seeing, however, that he could have made 
 no greater concession short of stripping off his uni- 
 form and standing there as it might be in the service 
 of God rather than of the King, he felt he had 
 fulfilled his duty by the exchange. 
 
 Nevertheless, as John was there to purchase in- 
 formation and not manners, the outcome of the 
 affair might have been disagreeable had not Amber 
 at that moment, accompanied by a wardress, ap- 
 peared in the inner court on the other side of the 
 big iron gate. 
 
 With a sudden sensation that he was prying upon 
 something he should never have seen a feeling 
 that he was a Peeping Tom in the empty streets of 
 Coventry John pressed back against the wall as
 
 190 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 the officer hurried forward with his keys and un- 
 locked the iron gate. 
 
 The wardress handed him a paper. He looked 
 at it with his official eye. He stood aside and let 
 Amber pass through. Straight ahead of her she 
 looked, conscious that a figure was standing there, 
 but never for an instant letting her eyes dwell on 
 John. 
 
 Officially the keeper passed to the second gate, 
 with its smaller door which he unlocked and threw 
 open to the wide approach and the street beyond. 
 
 She made a little movement of surprise and, 
 "Oh," she said, just as though she had come that 
 way but a moment before and had never realized 
 there was that means of exit. 
 
 Still then, without looking to right or left of her, 
 she stepped out into the world again and the officer 
 swung the door to after her. 
 
 "That was a debt," said he to John. "Most of 
 'em goes out like that. 'Eard 'er say, 'Oh,' did 
 you? I suppose she wasn't the lady." 
 
 "I'll take your advice," said John. "I'll go out- 
 side and wait."
 
 Chapter XXVII : The Release 
 
 JOHN allowed Amber to keep her distance until 
 she had turned into the Camden Road; in 
 a few strides, then, he was at her shoulder. 
 Evidently the sensation that she was being followed 
 had conveyed itself to her through the sound of 
 his footsteps. He saw her body stiffen, her head 
 set in the rigid pose with which a woman prepares 
 to meet a disagreeable encounter. 
 
 In an illuminated instant, he realized what was 
 happening in her mind. She had just come out of 
 prison. Here, she thought, was one of the hawks 
 that hover over these situations in a woman's life, 
 the moments when she is without friend or counsel, 
 when she is susceptible to the offer of help from 
 the first who comes her way. 
 
 Seeing who it was, there was an unavoidably 
 comic side to the affair. It intrigued him to an 
 impulse of mischief. Had it been the most incon- 
 siderate of practical jokes, he could not have re- 
 sisted it then. But it was not inconsiderate. The 
 sooner she saw the humor of the whole situation, 
 debt, imprisonment, release and all, the better, 
 though it was doubtful in Amber if she could ever 
 lose her sense of humor for long. 
 
 191
 
 192 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 Increasing the length of his stride, John came 
 alongside of her. 
 
 "Excuse me," said he behind her shoulder. 
 
 She hurried on, looking straight ahead of her. 
 Even with the sharp glimpse of the profile he had, 
 he felt he could see her eyes flashing with an angry 
 determination. And then as she walked, with John 
 just behind her, she started humming a tune, 
 audibly so that he, whoever he might be, should 
 hear and learn thereby what little consciousness she 
 had of his presence. 
 
 That made the laughter rise in his throat. 
 
 "Amber," said he. He could persist with the 
 joke no longer. 
 
 With a little cry on her lips, she stopped and 
 turned. Then, as he knew she must, she saw the 
 comic ridiculousness of it all and just stood there 
 shaking with laughter. They both laughed to- 
 gether. Nothing, it seemed, could stop them, until 
 suddenly, and he could scarcely see when the change 
 had begun, her laughter turned and with a little snap 
 had broken. At one moment her lips were parted 
 in the animation of merriment and the next they 
 were trembling to tears. At one moment she was 
 looking the picture of mirth and the next that 
 queer grimace she made when she cried assumed 
 the place of it. Her eyes, her button of a nose that 
 always flung the fullest compliment of beauty aside 
 to keep a spirit of joy, the whole of her face all 
 crinkled up in a ludicrous expression of weeping. 
 The next instant she was hanging tightly on to his 
 arm and walking him on down the Camden Road,
 
 The Release 193 
 
 half-hiding her head in the bend of his elbow that 
 none of the passers-by might see what a fool she 
 was. 
 
 Following by instinct the precept of the lawyer's 
 clerk, he let her cry it out. There was nothing to 
 say, nothing to be done. Those tears had made 
 their appearance, synchronized with her full realiza- 
 tion that he had paid her debt; that he had set her 
 free; that he it was who had been waiting at the 
 prison gate for her; that he but beyond that, 
 nor daring to let her mind travel into the country 
 of dreams, she could not go. There arose an im- 
 passable barrier and at that barrier, the tears had 
 suddenly driven, a hot and blinding rain, in her eyes. 
 
 When those sounds and movements by which you 
 guess a woman is crying for you must not look 
 had subsided, she let go her holding of his arm. 
 
 "You should never have done it," said she, blow- 
 ing her nose the old process, the crumpled piece 
 of blotting paper screwed into the serviceable pad. 
 "You know you can't spare it. I didn't mind 
 once I was there. And what's seven days! Once 
 you get in a place like that, you feel as thougk seven 
 days were nothing. It's filled with the ghosts of 
 people whoVe spent years there and they keep on 
 whispering: *Seven days! Seven days I That's 
 only a week I Think of fifty-two weeks and then 
 multiply that By seven!' ' 
 
 "Rather rough on you," said John. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Well of course you couldn't do it."
 
 194 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 She stopped him short in the road and she pressed 
 her hand on his arm. 
 
 "Thank you for that," said she. 
 
 "For what?" 
 
 "For that. I was beginning to take it seriously." 
 After that they walked on. They were near the 
 Camden station before they spoke again. 
 
 "I'll pay it back as soon as I can," she said then. 
 "When do you want it? When are you going to 
 be married?" 
 
 He related to her all the difficulties that had 
 arisen because of Father Peake, since last he had 
 seen her at Le Pauvre Monsieur. Hearing his 
 account of the matter, she lost her temper with it 
 all. It was honest wrath. There was little of the 
 play-actress about her. There was no respect for 
 dogma or the precepts of the Church in the whole 
 gamut of her composition. She was Pagan to the 
 tips of her fingers, to the tilted button of her nose. 
 Respect for creeds with her had vanished the first 
 moment she had had to set out and face life on her 
 own, and that had been when she was little more 
 than fifteen. 
 
 What her philosophy was, it would have been 
 hard to say. It is doubtful whether she knew what 
 morality meant. She did what came to her heart 
 to do and all that came to her heart came with a 
 wild and odd sense of nobility. Coming or going, 
 she hesitated at nothing that fell her way and 
 would let the best slip out of her hand. 
 
 Life was a game to her, an adventure, a voyage 
 of discovery, an exploration in the jungle of Time.
 
 The Release 195 
 
 She met things as they came, with the look of that 
 broad space she had between the eyes. Pride ruled 
 and tenderness led her. She never could have told 
 you where she was between the two. Pride would 
 have bid her ride a horse to death rather than fail 
 in her enterprise, while tenderness would have bid 
 her give her life rather than break its heart. 
 
 Here she was in the Hampstead Road, flinging 
 out incoherent invectives against a Church that was 
 doing no more than interfere in a matter which was 
 like to make the deepest scar in her life. There 
 was no accounting for the nobility of it in her. It 
 came to her heart and she did it. That church with 
 its Father Peake and its gospel of expediency, might 
 have served her purpose well. With the barrier 
 once raised between John and Jill, he might well 
 return to her. With some quality more of heart than 
 understanding, she sensed the child in him. His 
 return to her that night in the Hogarth Road was 
 far more the return of a child to a lap that would 
 take its head to a breast that would hide its tears. 
 Far more was it that, than the return of a man to 
 his desires to drown the bitterness of his despair. 
 Nevertheless, she had sent him away and lost her 
 chance of giving him belief. 
 
 A laugh ever came to her lips though it did not 
 reach her eyes as she stood by, looking on, hearing 
 herself thus shouting odds against her chances. 
 
 "The Church makes me sick!" said she. "Good 
 Lord! Haven't you got to go through Life before 
 you get to Heaven. And surely, isn't life what's 
 given you, you never asked for it and isn't heaven
 
 196 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 what you make ! What a dismal place those people 
 must make of it who fill their hearts with the sour- 
 ness out of life. Not to take happiness in this 
 world, it seems to me, is to drive yourself to hate 
 the God that made it. Take happiness that's what 
 I should do take it all, all you can get, and then 
 your heart'll make a heaven worth striving for." 
 
 And there was she making a hell for herself yet 
 finding what heaven she could in the desire for his 
 attainment. 
 
 John looked at her with the slant of his eyes. 
 Suddenly he had acquired vision the vision that 
 had come to him that night when she left him in 
 Fetter Lane. He saw that laughter on her lips 
 and came to understanding of the absence of it in 
 her eyes. 
 
 The whole fretted maze of life closed in about 
 him then when he realized that whatever way you 
 turn, pain is the accompaniment of pleasure, sorrow 
 the complement of joy. It seemed he was driven 
 to his wits' end. He dared not look at her face 
 again. He loved nothing could shake that knowl- 
 edge, nothing lessen it, nothing alter the pulses of 
 his heart. Indeed the more he sensed the pain she 
 had with every word she spoke beside him, the more 
 he knew how deep his love had gone, while at the 
 same time the less he could bear the suffering he 
 brought. 
 
 Love had cleansed his eyes. It had spread his 
 vision. Now love was chastizing him with every 
 word she uttered and all the pain of every swing 
 of the lash was a thing that hurt and bit deep into
 
 The Release 197 
 
 his soul but which he would not have avoided for 
 all the ease and all the content the world could 
 offer him. 
 
 As they came down the Tottenham Court Road, 
 he pointed out a 'bus that would take her home. 
 She bent her head, well understanding all that little 
 service meant from him. 
 
 One instant then she raised her eyes and looked 
 directly in his face. 
 
 "You're going to be happy one day, John," she 
 said. "All these difficulties are going to be pushed 
 away. They'll come the long, quiet days I'm 
 sure love brings them I'm sure they'll come to 
 you. And supposing they never should well 7011 
 have loved, haven't you? Do you think I don't 
 know it was love of her that brought yoa out there 
 to me to-day?" 
 
 That she said the last words quicker tban the 
 first, as though she must speed their parting from 
 her lips before tears reached them. Witk a smile 
 and a wave of her hand then, she had jumped on 
 her 'bus and was gone. 
 
 John stood there on the pavement, watching ker 
 out of sight and over and over again as the carts 
 and 'buses crossed and hid her from his view, ke 
 kept saying to himself: 
 
 "How quickly life swallows you up."
 
 Chapter XXVIII: A Matter of Honesty 
 
 IN getting married at a Registry Office which 
 for all the world is like going into a second- 
 hand clothier's shop and purchasing a brand 
 new suit, for when you come out you scarcely know 
 yourself and expect every second person to stare 
 at you in the street in getting married at one of 
 these places, it is necessary to have witnesses. 
 
 You may call one of them the best man if you 
 like. You may call both of them the best man and 
 leave them to fight out afterwards their rights to 
 the grammatical comparison. It makes no differ- 
 ence. All they have to do is to sign their names. 
 
 Another matter to your advantage, saving time, 
 is that there is no giving away. In this, it is like 
 all other affairs of business in which you have ever 
 found yourself concerned. 
 
 When in church, for example, the priest says: 
 "With silver and gold I thee wed," there is always 
 that awkward moment when you fumble for the 
 half-sovereign which is the largest piece of gold 
 you can afford and for the crown which is the 
 largest piece of silver you can get, for there are 
 holes in the trouser pockets of even wedding gar- 
 ments. What is more, only one possessed of the 
 dignity of poverty can ever afford to ask for that 
 
 198
 
 A Matter of Honesty 199 
 
 money back again once he is outside the church, in 
 order to pay for the wedding breakfast. 
 
 In a Registry Office you are saved all such an- 
 noyances as these. It is a plain and straightforward 
 matter of business between the eager party longing 
 to buy and the indifferent party prepared to sell. 
 Once you have secured the witnesses to your trans- 
 actions, you cannot go wrong, unless you have lost 
 the ring, when it is not so much the law as the 
 woman who is particular about that. 
 
 From what quarter, however, wa$ John to secure 
 his witnesses without blazoning the fact of his 
 wedding to the four corners of Fetter Lane which, 
 if you know the locality, you will realize would 
 mean a climbing up to the house tops? 
 
 In this quandary, he was thinking of Jill and not 
 of himself at all. It would be a proud enough mo- 
 ment for him. But there was a sensation sometimes, 
 not so much in his bones as in the epigastrium, that 
 she would feel, and perhaps deeply, the contrast 
 between those rooms above Mrs. Meakin's shop 
 and that mansion of his imagination in Prince of 
 Wales's Terrace. 
 
 For what did he know of Jill ? Nothing but what 
 his mind had conjured out of the persistent sense 
 of beauty with which he lived. Of her encounter 
 with her parents, she had given him no relation but 
 their disapproval. From her own lips he had heard 
 no word of that realization of madness to which 
 she had come and which had held its way with her 
 until their meeting and the music of the pipes he 
 had played in the Zoological Gardens.
 
 2OO World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 One revelation only he had had of her the sight 
 of Mr. Skipwith as he passed through the crowd 
 to see the human exhibits in their cage. She had 
 once been prepared to marry that man in the bowler 
 hat with the stubbly gray beard. She had been pre- 
 pared to marry him after she had lain in John's 
 arms, had felt his kisses on her lips and known that 
 love was the truth of everything the world could 
 ever hold. 
 
 It might have been his arms, or those of any 
 other man's. It mattered not the curse of a tinker 
 whose kisses they had been. What had mattered, 
 was that it was love, the absorbing passion of it, 
 and for the sake of her duty to the god of appear- 
 ances, she had been ready to set it aside. 
 
 No doubt, as she had told him, she was to marry 
 a white man. His heart was in the right place. 
 She felt the deepest respect for him. But white- 
 ness or blackness, good or evil, these as you, if you 
 have cared, well know, have nothing to do with 
 lore. 
 
 Love makes its own good. The virtue to one 
 in another where there is no love, is like a plant 
 forced in a hot-house. There is something exotic 
 about it; something bloodless and unreal. The sun 
 is the well-spring of life and every flower that 
 blooms in its warmth has the scent of the sun in 
 its petals. Virtue without love is a flower out of 
 season, and scentless in the nostrils of God. 
 
 With this revelation in his mind, John had a fear 
 tn his heart no words could have given substance 
 to. In addition that sensation in his stomach
 
 A Matter of Honesty 201 
 
 and coming from that quarter never to be regarded 
 with real respect sometimes suggested to him he 
 was behaving like a cad. 
 
 Would it be the more honest thing, or merely 
 mock heroics, to give her up; to tell her that life, 
 with all the wonder it had for him in that en- 
 vironment was yet not good enough for her? 
 
 These were questions that assailed him out of 
 the reality of his new world. For there were 
 moments, as when the hawkers were coming down 
 from Covent Gardens in the early morning, or when 
 he had to say "Good-day" to Mrs. Morrell on the 
 stairs Mrs. Morrell who did spit on the ground 
 and therefore was not recognized in the street 
 such moments when he wondered whether he had 
 willfully deceived Jill as to the conditions of life 
 she would have to make her own.
 
 Chapter XXIX: Births, Deaths and 
 Marriages 
 
 TO save Jill from any discomfort she might 
 feel in the event of the neighborhood being 
 aware of their wedding, it was essential for 
 John to obtain witnesses who had no business with 
 the life of Fetter Lane. 
 
 For marriage in that part of the world is a con- 
 siderable affair. A birth is nothing. For sheer 
 interest, death surpasses it in all qualities of attrac- 
 tion. With death there is usually evidence of some 
 emotion, but with a birth none; unless it be the 
 disgust of the father upon the increase of his re- 
 sponsibilities. Seeing, however, that he cannot well 
 vent his anger upon his wife at a time like that, 
 a badly cooked dinner any day is better than a 
 birth, since it has some immediate chance of leading 
 to a row. 
 
 Again, a birth costs anything from half-a-crown 
 to ten and six, which is no great excitement in the 
 way of expenditures. For being, as it is, the civil- 
 ized equivalent of the expression of force, the 
 spending of money is no less exciting to those who 
 spend it than to those who look on. The sight of 
 a millionaire writing a check for five thousand 
 
 202
 
 Births, Deaths and Marriages 203 
 
 pounds is as thrilling now as was a pitched battle 
 in the age of stone. 
 
 A birth then, with its utmost capital outlay of 
 ten and six, is nothing. But a funeral, well, there 
 are vehicles actually stopping at the door. You can 
 look out of your own window, which costs you 
 nothing, and calculate how much they have spent 
 on the coffin and the hearse. 
 
 There may be flowers and you may know the 
 green-grocer's shop that supplied them. At some- 
 time or another in the proceedings, there is a feast. 
 Every mourner wears a garment for the occasion 
 which is almost as rich a food for speculation as 
 the washing you see hanging on the line in your 
 next-door-neighbor's yard. And all these things 
 cost money; they are all civilized expressions of the 
 expenditure of brute force and dynamic energy. 
 
 These are the attractions about a funeral which 
 you do not get down your street when yet another 
 child comes stumbling down the well-worn path on 
 to the dusty highway. 
 
 But a wedding! That beats them all. At a 
 wedding you can resort to an exhibition of brute 
 force yourself. You can throw things. The parties 
 concerned are in that state of mind when they will 
 submit to it. The youngest child in the neighbor- 
 hood can participate in a wedding. 
 
 What the bride wears, where she got the stuff 
 and how she made it up with the sewing machine 
 she borrowed, to you, looking out of your window, 
 there is something absorbing in all that. You may 
 have lent her the machine. You may have lent
 
 204 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 her the machine and she has not asked you to the 
 wedding. Consider the liberty that gives you to 
 be generous with a piece of your mind! 
 
 As well as all this, there is every bit of scandal, 
 every bit of gossip, every bit of romance that can 
 be discussed while they are squeezing six of them 
 under a shower of confetti into a four-wheeled cab. 
 
 There will be more than one in the street who 
 will know where the bridegroom hired his suit of 
 clothes for the occasion. There will be glimpses 
 of the bride's going and of her coming back; endless 
 speculations as to how she will like it now she has 
 got him; how hard she did try to get him, or how 
 hard he did try to get her; or yet again how quick 
 they went and did it and how it will all turn out. 
 
 There will be sighs from the girls who are not 
 married and doubtless giggles from the women who 
 are. But everybody will be laughing, which is one 
 advantage a wedding has over a funeral. 
 
 And last of all, there is that indefinable feeling 
 of curiosity in the breast of every woman who looks 
 on. It is mostly women who do it. Eve began it. 
 As the Great Mr. Chesterton said: "The apple 
 which Eve ate in the Garden of Eden was an orange 
 and the peel has been lying about ever since," 
 which, whatever the little bailiff may have thought 
 of it, was an undying truth. 
 
 And every time there is a wedding in your street, 
 you may be sure some man has slipped up somehow, 
 when, if you have no curiosity to look into the four- 
 wheeled cab and see why, a petticoat ill-becomes 
 you.
 
 Births, Deaths and Marriages 205 
 
 But perhaps down your street, they don't drive 
 to the church in a four-wheeled cab, in which case 
 these observations are entirely wasted upon you. 
 
 They were at least the thoughts passing through 
 John's mind when for Jill's sake he determined that 
 witnesses must be secured whom he could trust not 
 to give the secret away.
 
 Chapter XXX: Selecting a Witness 
 
 IT was well and easy enough to say there must 
 be witnesses who had no business with the 
 lire of Fetter Lane; but where were they to 
 be found? 
 
 The name of Mi.; Bealby, the tailor up the street, 
 was one of the first to present itself for suggestion. 
 John owed him three pounds, fourteen and seven- 
 pence. In respect of that and regarding future 
 custom for he always signed his letters "Solicit- 
 ing further favors. Yours obediently," he might be 
 persuaded to keep the secret. Suddenly then, John 
 remembered he was married. 
 
 Now a married man may have the best heart and 
 the finest intentions in the world. He has, more- 
 over, a conscience, but as has been written in respect 
 of him and the application might well be universal: 
 "What is a conscience to a wife?" 
 
 It is no good imparting a secret to a married 
 man and putting it to his conscience not to speak 
 of it to another soul. There is his wife to reckon 
 with and though he may tell her nothing, she will 
 manage nevertheless to get it out of him. 
 
 "You've got your own ideas of what you ought 
 to do," says she. "I don't want to influence you 
 one way or another. I wouldn't influence you for 
 
 206
 
 Selecting a Witness 207 
 
 the world, but I sha'n't speak to you again if you 
 don't tell me." 
 
 Where is the power of conscience to a force like 
 that? Unless it may happen her silence is to be 
 desired, in which case no woman in her senses would 
 make the threat. 
 
 John ruled out Mr. Bealby and, failing him, there 
 was not one in Fetter Lane in whom he believed 
 he could trust. Mrs. Morrell, Mrs. Brown, they 
 were not to be considered. Women, both of them 
 and neither of them possessing those essential 
 qualities of ladyship. 
 
 But Fate has a way of her own of coming to the 
 assistance of those in trouble. 
 
 Coming in from his bedroom one morning to 
 breakfast, he found two letters leaning up against 
 the toast-rack, the one Jill posted to him every 
 night by connivance with the maid at Prince of 
 Wales's Terrace the other in a writing that seemed 
 familiar. He tried to place it but with no success. 
 
 Whatever letters there were, Jill's remained to 
 the last, till that cigarette was lit with the last cup 
 of tea and the day could properly be said to be 
 begun. He opened the other as he sat down and 
 read: 
 
 DEAR MR. GREY: 
 
 It is not given to anyone to aver that he could not have done 
 better for if my efforts to rehabilitate myself have as yet been 
 abortive it was not through want of energy but rather through 
 lack of judgment. I have all along, as you know, nurtured 
 within me, if I may so express myself, a^spirit of optimism, to 
 buoy myself in a wretched existence all the more embittered by 
 success just without my grasp like Tantalus, for the want of a 
 few more links.
 
 208 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 What Tantalus might have done with a few more 
 links in his pool of water was not easily to be 
 understood. John ran his fingers through his hair, 
 but read on: 
 
 Your past kindness and the faith you seemed to repose in 
 me have I as yet justified? Nevertheless between me but 
 between him and what the context never divulged I have 
 good reasons for hoping, if I can but tide over my present 
 embarrassment. 
 
 Courage here in this paragraph seemed to have 
 forsaken him. In a moment of trepidation, he 
 shrank behind a full stop and had to begin a fresh 
 paragraph before he could come out again into the 
 open. This time it was the gist of his letter as 
 though further beating about the bush was for 
 cowards but not for him: 
 
 If you would send me to Kings Cross Rowton House the sum 
 of two and six, it would greatly help me. This is positively the 
 last time I trouble you. You will be glad to hear I have at last 
 a good violin. I shall be leaving Rowton House as soon as I 
 can get a new set of strings hence why the 2/6 would be of 
 great help to me. 
 
 With kind regards to your father and mother who, though I 
 have never met them, are known to me by your accounts of 
 them. 
 
 And wishing you and yours 
 all health 
 
 and prosperity 
 
 Believe me 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 MATTEO ALLIEVI. 
 
 If ever Fate had the appearance of playing into 
 a man's hand, it was when the postman brought 
 this letter to John that morning. For who better 
 than this itinerant violinist for a witness who, if
 
 Selecting a Witness 209 
 
 he were in Fetter Lane one day, was in Netting 
 Hill the next and the day after, as likely as not 
 might be in jail, which is a safe place for any 
 gossip. 
 
 At a party given in an artist's studio two years 
 before, John had met him. To the accompaniment 
 on a cottage piano, sadly out of tune, he had played 
 Chopin's Preludes from the triple clef on the 
 piano copy. Later on in the evening, with an odor 
 of garlic and in a corner, beneath his breath he 
 had talked to John about his soul. Still later, as 
 they walked home together, he had borrowed half- 
 a-crown. 
 
 That was the beginning of a long acquaintance, 
 punctuated with the loans of that invariable sum of 
 money. It was never more. It was never less. 
 
 After each loan, a period of time would elapse 
 a kind of healing interval when he calculated the 
 sore of parting with that half-a-crown would gradu- 
 ally have closed up and the scar it left be practically 
 forgotten. 
 
 During those intervals, Matteo Allievi would be 
 swallowed up in the affairs of a big world. After 
 each of the first few of these occasions, John 
 thought he had seen the last of him. But when two 
 months or so had gone by, back he would come 
 again, sometimes as now in the form of a letter; 
 at others in person himself. 
 
 When it was that he returned in person, the 
 half-a-crown last lent would never be mentioned nor, 
 for two days at least, was word uttered of the 
 half-crown to come.
 
 2io World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 For two whole days, he was the most enlivening 
 of companions, wanting nothing in the world so much 
 as to talk about his own soul. And it was such an 
 odd soul, with such queer moralities attached to it 
 like a woman with a chatelaine of trumpery 
 trinkets that John was vastly entertained in listen- 
 ing to him. 
 
 But after those first two days of his constant com- 
 panionship, Matteo's manner of overwhelming self- 
 confidence would resolve itself into one of inter- 
 mittent awkwardness and much pre-occupation. He 
 seemed always to be awaiting an opportunity which, 
 when once John recognized the symptoms, was con- 
 spicuously slow to arise. It amounted to some- 
 thing in the nature of a game to John to see how 
 long he would ward off the inevitable allusion to 
 that half-crown. 
 
 Once he succeeded for a full twenty-four hours, 
 when the exasperated violinist was so driven to it 
 that he burst into tears. It needs a man with a 
 chatelaine of moralities attached to his soul, to speak 
 of half-a-crown in the same breath with salvation 
 and the only manner in which this can be done is 
 with a flood of tears to the eyes. 
 
 He always secured his half-crown in the end 
 always secured it, that is to say, when half-a-crown 
 was to be had. When there was not so much as 
 twopence in John's pocket Allievi's expression of 
 incredulity, mingled with the most tragic concern, 
 was so comical that John was reduced to a convul- 
 sion of laughter in the midst of his own poverty. 
 
 It was so palpable how Matteo regarded the
 
 Selecting a Witness 21 1 
 
 matter. There were two good days wasted. They 
 might have been better employed. For John was 
 not the only one in the world from whom a periodic 
 visit yielded this invariable sum of money. There 
 were a whole number of them, a regular clientele 
 it had no doubt taken years of careful labor to 
 establish. Sufficient, John strongly suspected, to 
 provide five shillings a week and all the year round. 
 
 This writing of a letter was generally to make 
 up for lost time when he had drawn a blank. While 
 he received one by post, he could be prospecting 
 in person at another source. 
 
 But this time, John determined Matteo should 
 earn his half-crown. For here, at least, was one 
 who would prove a secret and reliable witness in 
 any registry office. Before even opening Jill's 
 letter, he sat down and wrote to Rowton House, 
 Kings Cross, asking Matteo Allievi to come and 
 see him. 
 
 "Come and see me as soon as you receive this," 
 he wrote. "I want to discuss a little matter," 
 which, when you consider there was no enclosure 
 of half-a-crown, was enough to bring any man of 
 fertile imagination from the remotest Rowton House 
 in the Metropolis. 
 
 This was one witness as good as secured. Then, 
 by the time he had read Jill's letter and finished 
 his last cup of tea, Fate flung him another, and what 
 is more without one penny charge for her services. 
 
 It was Friday and the clarionet Player down the 
 street struck up with "Sally in our Alley." 
 
 John leapt to his feet.
 
 212 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 There is a quality of inspiration and impulse 
 which cannot be explained. You have it, or you 
 have it not. 
 
 Who, without inspiration, spurred by impulse, 
 would have thought of a pauper from Rowton 
 House and a ballad-monger out of the streets, as 
 witnesses for the most solemn undertaking to which 
 a man can attach his signature? 
 
 Common sense and the propriety of reason, there 
 is but small doubt of it, come between us and half 
 the things in this world. We sacrifice happiness to 
 get on in life, because it is superlatively unreason- 
 able not to get on if one can; whereas to continue 
 in a state of happiness would often necessitate our 
 flinging expediency to the winds. 
 
 There is more than one man or woman in the 
 world who would put off their wedding because 
 Lord Tom Noddy was unavoidably prevented from 
 being best man at the ceremony. 
 
 It is the cry of most of us to improve our posi- 
 tions, but seldom ourselves. Public opinion stands 
 sentry at the gates of expediency, crying: "Halt! 
 Who goes there?" "Friend," we say. "Advance 
 friend and give the countersign," is the reply, 
 whereupon we advance and whisper the words: "I 
 want to get on." 
 
 It is best to be whispered, that countersign. 
 During those moments in life and they are ever- 
 recurrent when we slip through the gates of ex- 
 pediency, there is no knowing who might be near 
 to hear our secret. So we creep past to where each 
 one in the crowd we see within, appears to be striv-
 
 Selecting a Witness 213 
 
 ing for the good of his own soul and the benefit 
 of the State. It is only when we find a world in 
 chaos that we realize how false that appearance 
 has been. 
 
 Thus it is but one, having true sense of the dig- 
 nity of poverty and more knowledge of the need in 
 his heart than the requirements of his position in 
 the world, who could think of securing a pauper 
 from Rowton House to be witness to his wedding, 
 or hail a ballad-monger from the street to keep him 
 company. 
 
 John leapt to his feet. In a moment he had flung 
 open the window and thrown a penny down into the 
 street below.
 
 Chapter XXXI: A Chapter for Those 
 Who Loiter 
 
 IN a free life, where you breathe the air of 
 liberty as you would take into your lungs the 
 first tingling warmth of a spring breeze, ad- 
 visability is not one of the considerations. 
 
 The need that is all the need is the voice in 
 you. 
 
 Wherefore, you ask a girl to marry you as you 
 would stop a runaway horse then and there be- 
 cause you must. There is no time to debate about 
 it. Think once and you will think twice, and twice- 
 thinking, you will as likely as not lose your best 
 chance of happiness in the world, nor will you ever 
 be the hero you thought you were. 
 
 For there is no mistaking a runaway horse when 
 you see him careering down the street. Just one 
 moment there is when you can stop him and the 
 next he is gone. It is no good debating whether it 
 is your job to stop him or that of the policeman 
 standing at the corner of the street. 
 
 If you want to feel a little better in your bones 
 than you did two minutes before; if you really want 
 to be that brave fellow so fondly and so often you 
 think you are, it is off the pavement like a flash 
 
 214
 
 A Chapter for Those Who Loiter 215 
 
 you must go and be damned to the chances of a split 
 skull or a broken limb. 
 
 And with the girl you want to marry, it is much 
 the same. There is as little mistaking her. She 
 comes down your street and into the vision of your 
 heart with the same mad riot of speed. 
 
 It is no good considering whether she will help 
 you to get on in life; whether her people are quite 
 to be desired as relations or what advantages Jie 
 will bring you with your marriage. You are only 
 certain of the conditions of one life and the emotion 
 you have about her in that wonderful moment is 
 the best of them all. Off you must go then, like 
 a flash and be damned to the chances of a residence 
 in Hyde Park Gate, or an income of four thousand 
 a year. 
 
 With such an impulse, John flung open the win- 
 dow; with such an impulse, he hurled his penny 
 down into the street below. 
 
 When the clarionet player looked up with his 
 gratitude from its recovery in the gutter, John sig- 
 naled to him to come up stairs.
 
 Chapter XXXII: Introducing a Philos- 
 opher 
 
 HE came timidly into the room, holding his 
 hat and his clarionet in one hand while 
 he pushed his hair off his forehead with 
 the other. 
 
 John closed the door after him. This was the 
 man who had made a fine distinction between the 
 playing of his ballads on his instrument and the 
 ceaseless performance of them in his head. The 
 incessant and endless occupation of the latter was 
 that labor by which he had said he earned his wage. 
 
 Common sense at least might be expected of one 
 with so comprehensive a grasp of a fine distinction. 
 John pushed out his best chair and asked him to 
 sit down. 
 
 "Look here," said he, "I've got a favor to ask 
 you," and he could see the horny fingers straying 
 over the keys of his instrument, pressing them down 
 in a variety of sequences representing "Sally in our 
 Alley," "Come Lassies and Lads," "The Saucy 
 Arethusa," whichever indeed he happened at the 
 moment to be playing in his mind. 
 
 "I'll do anything I can, sir," said he, implying 
 that with nothing more than a clarionet, there is 
 
 216
 
 Introducing a Philosopher 217 
 
 not much in the world a man can do which is of 
 real service to anyone. 
 
 "Well, then, first of all," began John, "have you 
 got a best suit of clothes?" 
 
 The question was so unexpected that for the 
 moment his fingers were arrested in their playing 
 on those silent keys. It might almost have been 
 supposed that for that instant John had knocked 
 every tune out of his head. 
 
 "I've got a pair of trousers, sir," he replied at 
 last. "I've got a pair of trousers I puts on when 
 my old woman's sewin' a patch in these. I wear 
 'em Sundays sometimes, with a black coat one o' 
 them lawyer gentlemen gave me to go up into Hoi- 
 born when I was playing in Lincoln's Inn Fields." 
 
 There was an ingenuous modesty about this that 
 would have given pleasure to the severest critic of 
 human nature. He had no false ideas about him- 
 self as a performer on the clarionet. 
 
 "Do you often get paid like that?" asked John. 
 
 "What with a coat or something like that, sir?" 
 
 "No no I mean paid to get out of hearing? 
 Paid, when you're in Lincoln's Inn to play in 
 Holborn?" 
 
 He leant forward with his elbows on his knees 
 and stared a moment at the carpet. It was plain 
 now that he was having a complete rest. 
 
 "Well I took count once, sir," he said presently, 
 and he spoke rather in the tone of one who would 
 betray the deepest secret of his heart, than as one 
 who would deceive another as to the truth of his 
 nature. "I took count once and I reckoned over
 
 218 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 a time of four weeks it was I reckoned that not 
 quite half the money I made was from those ladies 
 and gentlemen as had kind hearts and the other, 
 that's the larger amount if you notice, sir, from those 
 as wanted me to move on into the next street. 
 That was over four weeks, sir. And I expect it's 
 much the same all the year round. It's an inter- 
 estin' little calculation when you come to look at it 
 like that. I've often thought how interestin' it 
 
 was." 
 
 John agreed. It was intensely interesting. But 
 the calculation was more of the man himself than 
 ever it was of his earnings. 
 
 "Doesn't it hurt your feelings at all," John in- 
 quired, "when they ask you bribe you to go into 
 the next street?" 
 
 As swiftly as he had thought of the purpose the 
 ballad-monger might serve, so swiftly in this sud- 
 den interest of the man, it had gone clean out of 
 his head. 
 
 The unexpected presentation of a new point of 
 view in life is like finding a piece of money in the 
 street. Sixpence on the pavement has all the ap- 
 pearance of twenty times its value and a real thought 
 in a man's head would make John dart forward 
 like a street arab to be the first to pick it up. 
 
 "Doesn't it hurt your feelings a^t all?" John re- 
 peated. 
 
 "Well no, sir. I can't say that it does. If it 
 really hurt my feelings -as you put it I fancy I 
 shouldn't take the money. What you might call 
 pride, sir that 'ud come between me and the
 
 Introducing a Philosopher 219 
 
 newest pair of trousers in the world. I shouldn't 
 take 'em. I should just go away." 
 
 "But you do take 'em? You take the money, 
 too?" 
 
 "Yes I do, sir." 
 
 "Well why?" 
 
 He coughed behind his hand. The man had 
 manners, but by no means was he ostentatious about 
 them. He coughed behind his hand as if out of 
 respect for his surroundings. Having done this, 
 somewhat as one who felt he owed a species of 
 apology for talking about the affairs of the gutter 
 in a room where there was evidence of a sense of 
 taste beyond his comprehension, he proceeded to 
 expound his philosophy.
 
 Chapter XXXIII: Life's Little Awk- 
 wardnesses 
 
 WELL it's this way, sir," he began. "Our 
 next-door neighbor down at Walham 
 Green has a parrot. It's a beastly bird 
 that parrot is. It's got a whistle like a train in 
 a fog and a noise in its throat it makes like a sheep 
 with a 'acking cough comin' on lambin' time." 
 
 John frowned prodigiously from want of under- 
 Standing. What in the name of heaven had a parrot 
 got to do with it? But the ballad-monger, sure of 
 his point of view, continued without a sign of per- 
 turbation at the sight of John's frown. 
 
 "Then I have a sister, livin' down in Coventry," 
 he went on, "and next door to her I know, be- 
 cause me and the old woman paid her a visit last 
 Christmas next door to her there's a man what 
 has asthma. He's got it bad that poor chap and, 
 bein' run up one brick thick the houses I mean 
 like what my sister lives in you can hear every 
 noise he makes. Some nights it's somethin' chronic, 
 that chap with asthma. You can hear him going on 
 and on till he might throttle for all you care, yet 
 he's a decent enough chap in himself. That's an- 
 other case. Then there's my wife, sir. She snores 
 _ W ell " 
 
 22C
 
 Life's Little Awkwardnesses 221 
 
 He looked all round the room for simile. He 
 glanced at the ceiling. He cast his eyes down on 
 the floor. But neither the carpet nor the ceiling 
 were of any use to him; he had to resort to his own 
 powers of imagination. 
 
 "It's one of those snores," he continued, "that 
 begins with a little one, if I make my meaning clear. 
 A little one it begins with and after about six o' 
 them it gets louder and longer. You'd think she 
 was going to burst or swallow the bed-clothes when 
 she gets to her top note. Lions roarin' at feedin' 
 time ain't nothin' to it. Then, all of a sudden, 
 when you'd think flesh and blood couldn't do no 
 worse, there's a click in her throat, like a sort of 
 trap door goin' and it all falls through like the 
 demon in the pantomime. For two minutes she's 
 breathin' like a child o' six. Then it begins all over 
 again." 
 
 "But what the devil," exclaimed John at last. 
 "What the devil has this got to do with your play- 
 ing your clarionet in the next street?" 
 
 "I'm comin' to that," said the ballad-monger with 
 an assuring confidence in his voice. "I'm comin' to 
 that all right. I've just been tellin' you these things 
 because that's what life seems like in some ways to 
 me. Here we are, all bundled up together Tom 
 and Mary, Dick and Kate and it 'ud be a queer 
 thing if we all hit it off without one of us gettin' 
 his hair rubbed up the wrong way. The better off 
 you are of course the better you can afford to avoid 
 them little awkwardnesses. If you can afford it, 
 you can live in a house built two bricks thick. There
 
 222 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 are some as can afford to live semi-detached. There 
 are some in Park Lane has their houses standin' 
 by themselves where there ain't any side of them 
 you have to go to get away from the girl next door 
 practising the pianner. There are some in the 
 country oh, my lor'! The country! No hard 
 pavements! I'd lose six coppers in the grass for 
 every one I'd pick up easy in a London gutter! 
 There are some in the country as have houses with 
 gardens all round 'em! Not another house to be 
 seen, even wher. the leaves is off the trees!" 
 
 "Still?" persisted John. 
 
 "I'm comin' to it all right, sir. You'll see my 
 point in a jiffy. I've thought it all out, rnind you. 
 We all have somethin' to put up with, the worst 
 and the best of us. There are very few as can 
 avoid all the worries of life, and those as can have 
 to pay for it. I have to put up with that parrot 
 next door. I can't afford to go and live nowhere 
 else. My sister has to put up with the poor chap 
 as has got asthma. There's my wife well I 
 couldn't pay her to go into the next street not even 
 if I could afford it could I?" 
 
 There was a wistful note in his voice as he put 
 the question. You realized what a temptation it 
 would be to him to make the bargain if the money 
 were there in his pocket. 
 
 But by this time John had seen his point of view 
 and was walking round and round his room, chuck- 
 ling as he went. 
 
 "So you're one of the little awkwardnesses of 
 life," he chuckled and kept on chuckling as he
 
 Life's Little Awkwardnesses 223 
 
 thought of first one and then another of these in- 
 evitable penances that existed for him in Fetter 
 Lane. 
 
 "Well, sir," said the ballad-monger, "that's my 
 way of lookin' at it when they offer me sixpence to 
 go into the next street. I'm as necessary to them 
 as a as a " 
 
 "Corrective," suggested John. 
 
 "If you like to put it that way, sir. Anyhow I'm 
 as necessary to them as I am to the slavey washin' 
 the doorstep who starts hummin' 'Sally in our 
 Alley' to make her work seem lighter." 
 
 "And do you ply your trade consciously, pur- 
 posely as a corrective?" inquired John. 
 
 "Not every day, sir, I don't. There's Mondays, 
 Wednesdays and Fridays I go to places like Fetter 
 Lane where half the street is hummin' as I go along 
 and there's Tuesdays and Thursdays I go where 
 they send the servant out of the hall door and ask 
 me to go clean off and take me noise with me." 
 
 "Which is the most lucrative?" 
 
 "The most ? I beg your pardon, sir, but I'm 
 
 nearly deaf in this left ear." 
 
 "Which pays the best?" 
 
 "Ah yes I can hear so much better this side. 
 Tuesdays and Thursdays, sir. It's an odd thing, 
 but that's the truth. People'll pay more to get rid 
 of a nuisance than what they will to get a bit of 
 pleasure out of life." 
 
 "Then why don't you have three days of that?" 
 
 He shook his head. With a protective movement, 
 he picked up his clarionet.
 
 224 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 "I like my Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays," 
 he said. 
 
 Now with a man of such kidney, who has this 
 much claim to the true functions of Art that he will 
 prefer to set a whole street humming with his tunes, 
 rather than be well paid to hold his peace and do 
 nothing for a living, the mere whisper of romance 
 is sufficient to engage his sympathy. 
 
 When John told him at last of his wedding, he 
 became the most willing conspirator in the world. 
 
 "I'll get my wife," said he, "to give that coat a 
 rub with a damp cloth and just run an iron over it. 
 That's what I'll get her to do."
 
 Chapter XXXIV: A Revelation in 
 Atmosphere 
 
 IT was an invariable custom of John's to go 
 every Monday morning to the British Museum 
 and read in the library. Through all the 
 period of their friendship, Amber had never known 
 him to fail in this habit. 
 
 He called it his library. 
 
 "I've got that in my library," he would say to 
 one who had not the remotest idea where he lived. 
 "I'll look it up." And it might have been some- 
 thing contained in a volume of priceless value. 
 
 On two or three occasions, forgetting this custom, 
 Amber had called at his rooms in Fetter Lane to 
 find them empty. Invariably, then, she had dis- 
 covered him in his library, having his books brought 
 to him on trolleys by his library attendants. 
 
 There is no need to possess the world. With a 
 little imagination, you can appropriate it all, sav- 
 ing yourself much thereby in the expense of up-keep. 
 
 On the Monday morning following her release 
 from Holloway, she came down to Fetter Lane with 
 six pounds four and threepence in an envelope 
 gripped in her hand. 
 
 There is no point in inquiring where she got it. 
 225
 
 226 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 It would be impossible to say. There are pawn- 
 shops in the neighborhood of Hogarth Road as well 
 as in that of Fetter Lane. There are artists, need- 
 ing a model, who are well-enough off to pay a couple 
 of weeks' wages in advance. You need to find 
 them. There is, all the same, a vast superfluity of 
 money in the world lying in idleness. 
 
 The climate has a lot to do with it. In a country 
 where you see the sun by the grace of God rather 
 than by the habit of Nature, a rainy day is a tangible 
 reality. In other words, all joy in life comes from 
 the sun and without a sense of joy, the mind in- 
 stinctively sets itself out to provide for the worst of 
 contingencies. We are a people of the mist and so 
 long as Civilization depends upon the men with 
 many possessions, we shall be the most powerful 
 country in the world, because we are always "put- 
 ting a little bit away" as the song has it "for 
 a rainy day." 
 
 Somewhere out of all that superfluity of wealth, 
 Amber contrived to find her six pounds four and 
 threepence. The envelope she put it in was the 
 first receptacle that came to her hand. 
 
 From some place of concealment, she watched 
 John come out on the way to his library. There 
 was a set determination in her mind that he should 
 not be there when she came to pay him back. It 
 occurs to some, no doubt, that in such a case she 
 might have sent her money by post. It had oc- 
 curred to her. She had put it aside without hesita- 
 tion. Another purpose came first to be served. 
 
 Against every inclination, affronting every im-
 
 A Revelation in Atmosphere 227 
 
 pulse, she had refused that night of the dinner at 
 Le Pauvre Monsieur to come up to his rooms. 
 Ghosts have their acknowledged habitats. They 
 may choose their dwelling place with a fineness of 
 discretion, but once having chosen them, not the 
 sternest will or the most stoical determination can 
 cause them to be evicted. For years and years they 
 will linger in the places they have selected for their 
 abode and though you may visit those corners of 
 the world in the most prosaic of moods, it will not 
 be long before the ghosts come out of their hiding, 
 laying their cold fingers upon your eyes, sending that 
 shudder through all your body which no tension of 
 the nerves or muscles can restrain. 
 
 It is all very well to a stranger, saying: "Just a 
 ghost walking over my grave, that's all." To the 
 stranger it means little more or little less than 
 nothing. But to one who knows, to one with whom 
 those moments of your life were played, of which 
 that ghost is the undying spirit, it is such a con- 
 fession of weakness as if you have pride at all 
 you would not reveal for the ransom of a thousand 
 kings. 
 
 It was because she would not waken those ghosts 
 to life in his presence that Amber had refused that 
 night to come to John's rooms. 
 
 Yet to a woman, often the touch of those icy 
 fingers upon her eyes is a pain she would willingly 
 bear rather than be numb of the sensations of life. 
 It was so with Amber. 
 
 Calling herself a sentimental idiot, indeed all 
 those names and epithets by which you justify your-
 
 228 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 self in the performance of a deed which in others 
 would earn your relentless contempt, she had come 
 down to Fetter Lane that morning. When John 
 had passed up the street, she hurried into the side 
 door by Mrs. Meakin's shop. With her heart 
 beating in half-a-dozen places all at once, she ran 
 up the stairs to John's room. 
 
 Mrs. Rowse, she knew, would be there. By all 
 calculation, Mrs. Rowse would be in his bedroom 
 now he had gone out. She would be tidying up. 
 And that was precisely what she was doing. 
 
 In answer to Amber's knock, she opened the door 
 and stood there calculating the days Amber should 
 have been in prison, when, coming to the conclusion 
 that she had effected her escape, she was in two 
 minds as to what she ought to do. 
 
 "How did yer get out, Miss?" she asked. 
 
 When it was explained how Mrs. Rowse knew; 
 that it was not, as at first must have appeared, that 
 John had told her a thought more expressed in 
 a sudden beating of her heart, rather than by a 
 definite suspicion in her mind Amber proceeded, 
 not without pride, to explain how Mr. Grey had 
 paid the money at the court and come all the way 
 down to Holloway to meet her on her release. 
 
 She was proud of it. There was no doubt about 
 that. If Mrs. Rowse knew that she had been sent 
 to prison, she might as well know who had had 
 the chivalry, the generosity, and all the other fine 
 impulses she liked to imagine, to buy her out. She 
 might as well know, too, that Amber could pay the 
 money back, which she could assume was the pur-
 
 A Revelation in Atmosphere 229 
 
 pose of her visit. She might, indeed she should, 
 know all the facts of the case which Amber was at 
 liberty to tell her; and if from the information she 
 liked to draw conclusions that Amber had not 
 entirely been thrust upon one side, that she had not 
 absolutely been discarded, well, that was all up to 
 the quality of her intelligence and her ability to 
 perform the arithmetical feat of adding two and 
 two. 
 
 "I just want to leave this on his desk," said she, 
 when she had made an end and neatly rounded off 
 the impression so that you would never have guessed 
 it was intended to be given. "I just want to leave 
 this on his desk can I go in?" 
 
 "Certainly, my dear," said Mrs. Rowse, a trifle 
 familiar, as she would have felt with any erstwhile 
 inmate of Holloway; a trifle affectionate, too, be- 
 cause the impression had made its mark. 
 
 "Excuse me goin' on with the bedroom, won't 
 yer," Mrs. Rowse added. "I've the brass to clean 
 this mornin' so I've got no time to be diuckin' 
 about." 
 
 Willingly Amber let her go and herself walked 
 through the other door into that room where all 
 the ghosts of countless evenings, of nights and 
 mornings and all the happy days lay waiting to 
 touch her eyes with their icy fingers. 
 
 She closed the door behind her and stood there, 
 looking at the familiar furniture it seemed she had 
 not seen for a hundred years and yet had left but 
 the day before. There came the shudder through 
 all her body as well she knew there would. But
 
 230 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 in her eyes there was no hint of tears. It was not 
 that she would not cry. She could not. The icy 
 fingers do not press tears out of the eyes. It is 
 some mere nerve from the eye to the brain they 
 touch. It is thoughts not tears they disturb; but 
 thoughts in such confusion no mind can sift them 
 out. They lie on the heart with all their accumulated 
 weight and the heart aches a dull persistent ache 
 but that is all. 
 
 This then, was what she had lost, this warm 
 sense of companionship, this close spirit of under- 
 standing, this intimate admission to the very soul 
 of a man which -was so definitely contained in the 
 atmosphere held in the space between those four 
 walls. 
 
 Was it her fault? There came a sudden revela- 
 tion to her that it was. She had never reached the 
 center of his heart. All she had done was to make 
 his pulses beat the quicker and had been content 
 with that. 
 
 She knew then as she stood there, leaning back 
 against the door and looking round the room, that 
 there must be more in a man's life than his pulses; 
 a deeper emotion than that which rises thickly in 
 his throat, a more profound service than that which 
 ministers to his bodily comfort, even though it may 
 be with the faithfulness and servitude of a slave. 
 
 That was what she had given him servitude 
 and so freely given had it been, that she had never 
 appreciated it was no more. 
 
 She realized then as she looked about the room 
 with its mixture of physical austerity and mental
 
 A Revelation in Atmosphere 231 
 
 comfort, that it is only when a man is finished with 
 life, when the sap of impulse in him has run dry, 
 that he asks for servitude and, getting it, is well 
 content. But till that sap is dry, belief is a greater 
 gift than service and she had never given him that. 
 She had treated him just as an ordinary man in the 
 ordinary traffic of life; been ready to leave him if 
 the need called her, been ready to let him go if the 
 cry had come to him. And all the time willing 
 as he had been to take her servitude it was the 
 greater thing he wanted out of Life and only the 
 less had she proffered. 
 
 Some men, perhaps, could make the best out of 
 themselves, standing alone and needing the help of 
 no one. He was not one of these. He was one 
 of the children that never came to man's estate; one 
 of those children who walk, staring at the stars and, 
 not watching their feet, stumble so often and fall 
 into the mud. 
 
 Seeing his room after these months of absence, 
 not for the ghosts it contained, but in the spirit it 
 betrayed, she knew then what she had failed to 
 give him; what, stumbling on through his life, he 
 suddenly had come upon in Jill. 
 
 Without ever having seen Jill, herself, Amber's 
 imagination projected a vision of her out of the 
 atmosphere of that room. Seeing how gifted 
 women are in these occult practices, the vision was 
 strangely at fault. 
 
 She saw a girl with a beauty of her own. To a 
 woman this means perhaps the most clangerous 
 beauty of all. And so far as that went, the vision
 
 232 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 was sure enough. But it was the type of mind she 
 saw, beyond that personality of appearance in which, 
 had she known it, or John known it, she had so far 
 gone astray. 
 
 For what she saw was a mind tuned to the mea- 
 sure of truth and lit with the soft, clear light of 
 beauty. A mind, she saw, that would thrill to all 
 the inspirations of his own; a mind, receptive of 
 his thoughts before he so much as uttered them.; 
 receptive of those thoughts which never reached the 
 communicating function of his brain. 
 
 What indeed she saw for no picture that comes 
 in these moments of vision is without its truth 
 was a sudden revelation of John's own mind as it 
 was contained in the atmosphere of that room. Her 
 fault had only been that she thought it was Jill, and, 
 with that thought, it seemed she knew so surely then 
 why she had had to go. 
 
 Never in her life would she be able to give him 
 that quality of mind. It was not hers and trying 
 to give as indeed she might well have the will 
 would prove so dismal a failure as to be too pitiable 
 to think about. 
 
 So she stood, all those moments, with her back 
 to the door, looking about her and it was not John 
 she blamed; nor could she blame herself. There 
 came a wonder upon her, that was all, a wonder 
 why life throws people together with such apparent 
 poverty of discrimination. 
 
 Why had she ever met him? Why he, her? 
 Who was the gainer who was the loser? And 
 above all, in an amazing magnanimity of heart, the
 
 r A Revelation in Atmosphere 233 
 
 wonder if now he had met the right woman, no less 
 than a tender hope that he had. 
 
 With the arrival of her mind at that thought, 
 she said out loud, as was her invariable habit to 
 think when she was alone: "Bless his funny old 
 face," which must be supposed to have conveyed 
 more to her than it looks in the chill of print and 
 she moved over to the desk with her six pounds 
 four and threepence. 
 
 This she laid down in its envelope, conspicuously 
 on his blotter and was about to turn away when her 
 eye caught the manuscript a sheet of paper no 
 more of a poem he had been writing. 
 
 Possibly she was not within her right. But it 
 was his. One day it would appear in print. One 
 day anyone might read it. Why not she, then? 
 She picked it up : 
 
 Parting is nought 
 
 The quick sharp wrench of hands apart, 
 
 The swift, last look of aching eyes 
 
 The broken breath, the tears that start, 
 
 The dumb wonder and the mute surprise 
 
 That neither will, nor love, nor God have power 
 
 To add one moment to the parting hour. 
 
 Parting is nought 
 
 Each winter's filled with parting things. 
 
 The leaves that from the elm tree falls, 
 
 The chaffinch and her mate that no more sings, 
 
 The spread of Death that settles over all, 
 
 All this is parting but Life comes again 
 
 With just the fingers touch of April rain. 
 
 Parting is nought 
 
 But U the long, sad hours that draw
 
 234 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 Their weary feet down paths of endless days; 
 
 Knowing there is no meeting ever more, 
 
 No April rain, no song of Springtime praise. 
 
 Here is a pain that quivers at a touch 
 
 God gives to those who've loved not little but too much. 
 
 Why had he written that? There was a swell 
 of something in her throat and then a pulse of 
 something in her heart. Why had he written that? 
 It was the cry of a mind in deepest pain, yet there 
 he was on the very eve almost of his marriage. Why 
 had he written that : 
 
 No April rain no song of Springtime praise. 
 
 She felt a hope and a breaking in her heart at 
 the same moment. 
 
 An instant later, she was swiftly putting it back 
 as it lay on the blotter. There came the sound of 
 footsteps up his uncarpeted flight of stairs. They 
 approached the door. The handle was turned. The 
 door opened. 
 
 She looked round. There was John standing in 
 the entrance.
 
 Chapter XXXV: Being a Millionaire 
 
 THE movement of both of them was arrested 
 in some ridiculous way as though a photog- 
 rapher with his camera had suddenly put 
 up his hand, saying: "Now! Like that! Just one 
 moment, please!" 
 
 Then, not only because of its ridiculousness, not 
 merely because something was throbbing in her 
 heart, but as much because she would hide from 
 him the ghosts that would not leave her, Amber 
 laughed, a full, round laugh. It was like taking 
 the drapery of a generous cloak and wrapping its 
 folds about them while she caught them to her body 
 close. 
 
 "Of course, you would come back," said she, at 
 the edge of her laughter. "I thought you'd safely 
 got away when I saw you go up the street. But 
 I've never known you do anything one expected 
 you to." 
 
 John relaxed from the photographic attitude, and 
 came into the room, closing the door behind him. 
 
 "What on earth are you doing here?" he asked. 
 
 She made a bold front of it, confessing to being 
 caught out, with the faint suggestion that she knew 
 she had probably offended him. 
 
 "This," said she and, just picking up the envelope, 
 
 235
 
 236 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 she threw it down again on the desk where the 
 chink of the money it contained told him plainer 
 than words what she had been up to. 
 
 If he was mighty glad to get that money back, 
 even she, with all her instincts about him, would not 
 have guessed it. 
 
 He looked for one instant as though, however 
 much by accident it might have been, she had thrown 
 it back in his face. The next moment he was dis- 
 claiming all need of it. 
 
 "Do you think I've forgotten how hard it would 
 be for you to get hold of as much as that?" said 
 he. "Go on, you take every penny of it back, and 
 pay it if you like in instalments, a pound a month, 
 something like that till it's all paid off." 
 
 He strode across the room and picked up the 
 envelope. The feel of that money it contained was 
 tantalizing. With such a sum he had intended to 
 buy Jill her engagement ring. Without it 
 
 What is the good of pretending that he had all 
 the high qualities of a hero; that he was hurt at 
 her returning it and nothing more? What is the 
 good of suggesting that he wanted her to keep it 
 more than he needed it himself; that he had no 
 thought of the benefits it would mean to him? Not 
 a ha'p'orth of good in the world! He was no hero. 
 He wanted it damnably. 
 
 It was not, however, because she guessed that, 
 that she fought for it to stay where it was. He 
 thrust it finally in her hand. With no less finality 
 she pitched it away into a corner of the room. 
 
 "If you give it to me again," she said, "I'll take
 
 Being a Millionaire 237 
 
 it outside and I'll fling it through the window and 
 smash the window pane." 
 
 There comes a point in an argument of this 
 nature when one can persuade oneself with convic- 
 tion that surrender is all that remains. With an 
 honest reluctance, mingled with a no less genuine 
 sense of satisfaction, John picked up the envelope 
 from the floor and put it in his pocket. 
 
 "Now tell me what you're going to do with it!" 
 said she. 
 
 When he admitted he was going to buy Jill's en- 
 gagement ring with it, she knew, as she had known 
 before in her bones, that she had been right. 
 
 With a sudden affectionate gesture, that was a 
 genuine impulse, she caught hold of his arm telling 
 him to go out and buy it then and there and, what 
 is more, insisted that she was coming with him. 
 
 There was a game, which in the past days John 
 had sometimes played with her. It is the cheapest 
 game in the world, though it deals with hundreds 
 of pounds and may at times run into thousands. 
 If you play it in Bond Street, it can be in thousands 
 before you know where you are. 
 
 The purpose which brought them out that morn- 
 ing, suggested the game to John without even so 
 much as a word passing between them. They were 
 standing outside the window of Boissard Freres, 
 gazing at pearl necklaces and diamond pendants in 
 the same sort of awe with which a guttersnipe looks 
 through the window at a mountain of sweets marked 
 four ounces a penny. 
 
 Suddenly John took her arm and before she knew
 
 238 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 where she was, Amber was being led into that 
 spacious apartment where there are two or three 
 occasional tables standing upon expensive Persian 
 rugs, but nothing to suggest that anybody ever did 
 any business on the premises. There was none of 
 that disgusting atmosphere of buying and selling 
 in the place. If you happened to come across any 
 such things as the contents of the window outside 
 suggested you might, it would be invariably by ac- 
 cident. If you paid for it, then it would be an 
 insult on your part and if they accepted it, then, 
 a generous oversight on theirs. It was an atmos- 
 phere where anything might happen but where you 
 would always be bodily at your ease. 
 
 The moment John said he wanted to see some 
 diamond and emerald rings, Amber recognized that 
 game. It is called being a millionaire. 
 
 All sorts of people play it even millionaires. 
 But when a millionaire plays it, he calls it by a 
 different name. He calls it being a pauper. The 
 only distinction between the two is that when play- 
 ing being a pauper you finish the game differ- 
 ently. Voluntarily, you give the secret away. You 
 don't want them to think you a pauper all the time. 
 Playing being a millionaire the difficult part of 
 it is not to let the secret give itself away. Being a 
 millionaire is much the better game of the two, be- 
 cause it's such a tremendous joke if you win. It 
 gives you all sorts of feelings of satisfaction and 
 omnipotence. You walk out of the shop as though 
 you had made a bid for the theater in Drury Lane. 
 Whereas, in being a pauper, the thing is to lose and
 
 Being a Millionaire 239 
 
 if you can't lose, it makes you damnably cross that 
 people don't recognize you for what you really are. 
 
 That morning, in the premises of Boissard Freres, 
 John was playing the first game. He walked into 
 the shop as though he knew well enough where these 
 society jewelers keep the things they sell, and he 
 looked about him. 
 
 A gentleman seated at a table at the end of the 
 room a gentleman beautifully dressed, with patent 
 leather boots glistening under the table looked up 
 as John entered. In a single instant, with the prac- 
 ticed eye of one who has been playing the game all 
 his life, he summed the matter up and made his 
 first move. He called to a young attendant who 
 at once appeared. He directed him in French to 
 inquire what John wanted. 
 
 These were the first two moves. John had en- 
 tered the shop with a splendid and casual indiffer- 
 ence. The manager had taken stock of him and 
 met the maneuver by summoning a young assistant. 
 
 So far the Boissard Freres were winning easily. 
 
 The young attendant approached John. He was 
 just as wonderfully dressed as the manager, far 
 better dressed than John had ever been in his life, 
 but he was a young man. The meaning conveyed 
 by the manager in this need not be commented upon. 
 It was a distinct score. 
 
 "What can I do for you?" asked the young as- 
 sistant and in that tone of voice which subtly sug- 
 gested that, with the promotion for which he hoped, 
 he would one day be in a position to leave these 
 transactions to others.
 
 240 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 John spent a little time lighting a cigarette and 
 then asked to see some diamond and emerald rings. 
 
 "About what price?"' asked the young man. 
 
 This is a common catch move in the game, like 
 the fool's mate and other obvious gambits. No one 
 who knows how to play is ever taken in by it. 
 
 "Well I wanted to see some rings," said John. 
 "I wasn't thinking so much about the price. If I 
 see anything I like we can begin to talk about the 
 price. Don't sell it to me before I've seen it. I 
 don't ask more than that." 
 
 From the manner in which the young man turned 
 away to do as he was bid, the manager saw that 
 Boissard Freres had had a set back. He consulted 
 in an undertone with the young man and indicated 
 a drawer half-concealed in the decoration of the 
 room. 
 
 John turned and looked out of the glass door into 
 Bond Street and Amber squeezed his arm. 
 
 "I hope I'm not going to laugh," said she. 
 
 Most firmly he enjoined her not to. When play- 
 ing this as a four-cornered game as in this in- 
 stance of John and Amber against the manager and 
 the assistant it is one of the foremost rules that 
 your partner does not laugh. 
 
 In a few moments the young man returned with 
 a box containing the kind of ring mentioned by John, 
 but of obviously an inferior class to the specimens 
 they had seen in the window. 
 
 John looked at them dubiously, so dubiously that 
 at last the young man picked up the best in the case 
 and held it out so that it caught the light.
 
 Being a Millionaire 241 
 
 "This is a very nice ring," said he; "ninety- 
 five pounds," and his eyes were sharp on John's 
 face. John never moved a muscle. He never even 
 looked at the ring. His eye wandered casually over 
 the case and he said: 
 
 "You can show me better than these can't you?" 
 
 "Certainly, sir," said the young man and took the 
 case away. John looked at Amber with a solemn 
 face and slowly shut one eye. 
 
 The next case contained six rings. John picked 
 up the biggest of them. Size is a fair criterion in 
 these matters. 
 
 "What's the price of this?" he asked and, taking 
 Amber's hand, he held it out and put the ring on 
 her finger, regarding it critically. 
 
 "Three hundred and eighty-five pounds, that one, 
 sir." 
 
 John screwed up his face, then looked up at 
 Amber. 
 
 "What do you think about it?" he asked. 
 
 And Amber, who but a few days before had been 
 in Holloway Prison for a debt of six pounds, five 
 and threepence, said that of course it was very nice, 
 but that there was something in the color of the 
 emerald she somehow did not like. 
 
 The young man was inclined to be courteously 
 amused by this criticism and might easily, had he 
 been a first-class player, have scored heavily by 
 taking advantage of the general ignorance of the 
 public. 
 
 He lost his chance, utterly, when he said without 
 absolute conviction that he doubted whether a
 
 
 242 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 better colored stone could be found in London or 
 Paris. 
 
 "Do you mean to say," interposed John, "that 
 you haven't got a stone of a better color than that 
 yourselves here in the shop?" 
 
 The young man put the ring back in the case and 
 went again to the manager. After a moment's 
 muttered conversation, the manager rose from his 
 table and approached them. This is a moment as 
 when in Chess, you suddenly move your Queen out 
 of a crowd of pieces in a far corner and, sailing 
 down the whole length of the board, you say: 
 "Check." 
 
 It is a moment as thrilling as that. It is a moment 
 also when it is quite possible for you not to have 
 noticed that you are placing her in direct vulner- 
 ability to your opponent's knight. 
 
 "You want a better emerald, sir," said the man- 
 ager, "than the ones you have already seen?" 
 
 "I want the best stone I can get," replied John, 
 which was so undeniably true that he could say it 
 with the utmost conviction. 
 
 The manager unlocked a drawer and brought out 
 a small case, opening it in the light and displaying 
 a wonderful emerald, green as the depths of the 
 Atlantic. 
 
 "We could set this for you," said he, "as you 
 wished. We would submit designs." 
 
 John took the box in his hand. It was so won- 
 derful a stone as for a moment to keep them both 
 serious. At last he looked up. 
 
 "Wkat is the price of this?" he inquired.
 
 Being a Millionaire 243 
 
 "Four hundred and fifty pounds unset as it is." 
 
 Now this is the most difficult moment of all in 
 the game. Either, it seems, you must buy the thing 
 which is ridiculous or you must refuse it, in 
 which case all your splendid play which has carried 
 you thus far, goes dead against you. 
 
 John handed back the box and looked straight 
 into the manager's eye. 
 
 "Of course, I'm not an expert on these things," 
 said he, "but tell me candidly. What's the matter 
 with it?" 
 
 "What's the matter with it?" repeated the man- 
 ager. "There's nothing the matter with it." 
 
 John smiled. 
 
 "Oh, nonsense," said he. "A stone like that is 
 worth more than four hundred and fifty pounds. I 
 know that much. Yours isn't the first shop I've been 
 into. Of course, as I say, I'm not an expert. I 
 can't see what it is. To me it looks perfect. But 
 I know this much that if it were really perfect, you 
 could get and would ask more than that for it." 
 
 The manager laughed awkwardly. 
 
 "You can pay more, sir, if you like," said he, 
 "but it won't make the stone more perfect than 
 
 it is." 
 
 John buttoned up his coat. 
 
 "Well I'm sorry," said he genially, as though 
 he were sorry as much for the manager as anything 
 else. "You've rather destroyed my confidence in it. 
 I liked it immensely immensely didn't you, my 
 dear?" He turned his head towards Amber, but
 
 244 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 dared not look at her and not daring to look at 
 him, she replied that she did, too. 
 
 "But it's no good buying anything that you're not 
 absolutely sure about. After all, four hundred and 
 fifty pounds is a sum of money. I'm not so well 
 off that I can afford to disregard it. I'm very sorry. 
 It's only that well as I said you've destroyed 
 my confidence. I'm sorry to have given you all 
 this trouble. I'm much obliged to you. Good 
 morning." 
 
 There's no doubt about it, it's a first-class game.
 
 Chapter XXXVI: A Fitting for a Ring 
 
 ULTIMATELY the ring was bought in Hoi- 
 born and cost six pounds, ten. 
 
 The question of whether it was large or 
 small enough was settled, uninvited, by Amber, who 
 held out the third finger of her left hand. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, Miss," said the jeweler, "I 
 didn't understand it was intended for you," and the 
 smile on his face can be described no better than 
 by one word smirk of which I am sure no self- 
 respecting dictionary would ever give a definition. 
 
 There was one instant when both of them could 
 have denied it. With John it passed the more 
 swiftly of the two. If it hurt her feelings would 
 he not be a cad, since the fact was not altered by 
 the jeweler's mistake. 
 
 With Amber, that instant lingered. For the 
 moment she could not make up her mind. What 
 would he think if she did not deny it? Did it mat- 
 ter? They both knew it was not true. A spirit of 
 mischief then a spirit that comes to those with a 
 sense of humor when the heart cannot be more hurt 
 than it is lifted with a laugh into her eyes. There 
 was something just comical, just in accordance with 
 all the odd ways and situations of John' life that 
 
 245
 
 246 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 she should be standing there being fitted for Jill's 
 engagement ring. 
 
 And lastly, before the instant quite had gone, 
 there was the bitter satisfaction of being engaged 
 to him even for five minutes, even in the eyes of 
 a twopenny ha'penny little jeweler in High Holborn. 
 
 He tried the ring on her finger and she never 
 said a word. 
 
 It was too small. It would have been too small 
 for anyone. Arrangements were made that it 
 should be enlarged and sent to Fetter Lane as soon 
 as it was ready. 
 
 Leaving a deposit, as is customary in these shops 
 where you do nothing but business and playing at 
 being a millionaire would be a waste of time, and 
 they came out again into the street. 
 
 She was far more in a state of wonderment at 
 his silence than at her own. Her own, frankly, she 
 had not attempted to understand. Not one of those 
 thoughts, definitely recorded, had passed into the 
 conscious function of her mind. 
 
 But he must have known why he had said noth- 
 ing, why he had not offered to drive the smirk off 
 the jeweler's face with a simple explanation. 
 
 In a timid fashion, she laid a hand on his arm. 
 
 "Why didn't you say it was not for me?" she 
 asked. 
 
 He looked round at her, smiling. 
 
 "You dear old thing," said he, "what did it 
 matter? A stuffy little jeweler. It doesn't matter 
 what he thinks, does it?" 
 
 And that was punishment enough for her mis-
 
 A Fitting for a Ring 247 
 
 chief. Obviously he had kept silent in order not 
 to hurt her feelings. He could think of and for 
 her and let a little mistake like that go by. 
 
 Why? 
 
 Because he was so deeply in love that nothing 
 but the great things mattered. He was so deeply 
 in love as that his heart had grown big enough to 
 hold a tender thought of her. 
 
 It was this she knew she could never bring him. 
 In all the years they had been together she had 
 never succeeded in stirring him like this. He had 
 turned from her to the sound of a clarion call. He 
 had turned to make his life and his work out of 
 love and before him lay paths of gold as he had 
 read to her in Browning and the need of a world 
 of men for her. 
 
 They had lived in the light and the darkness to- 
 gether. Now it was morning and the sun had 
 beckoned him from over the mountain's rim.
 
 Chapter XXXVII: Prelude to a Rehearsal 
 
 ONCE having bought the engagement ring it 
 seemed to John affairs were going at such 
 a pace as that nothing short of an earth- 
 quake or the sound of trumpets announcing the last 
 day could stop them. 
 
 He put it on his mantlepiece in its leather jewel 
 box where Mrs. Rowse could well observe it. The 
 very next morning while dusting, it came under her 
 eye. Out of the corner of his own, he saw her 
 quick glance of suspicion. It is in the natural order 
 of things that a woman should be suspicious about 
 a jeweler's box, purporting to hold a ring. Jeweler's 
 shops would have to put up their shutters and men 
 could be sure of a balance at the bank if it were 
 not so. 
 
 But in Mrs. Rowse's suspicions there was more 
 than a woman's mere instinct for finery that is be- 
 yond her means. Her mind flew at once as he 
 guessed it would to John's pertinent questions 
 about marriage in a hurry. She performed in her 
 mind that mathematical calculation in which women 
 are as accurate as machines. She put two and two 
 together, and was by no means surprised to find 
 how palpably they made four. 
 
 248
 
 Prelude to a Rehearsal 249 
 
 "Do you want me to leave this 'ere, sir?" she 
 asked. 
 
 John said he saw no purpose in removing it. 
 
 "Valuable ring like that, sir," said Mrs. Rowse, 
 seeing through the lid of the leather box as though 
 it were made of glass, "might easy get knocked into 
 the fire." 
 
 "Not if you're careful, Mrs. Rowse. Besides it 
 won't be there for long. It'll be gone this morn- 
 ing." 
 
 Mrs. Rowse dusted it and laid it down as though 
 it were a baby she was putting to sleep when, seeing 
 that she had placed it with the hinges facing out- 
 wards, she carefully turned it round. 
 
 "I expect that cost a lot of money, sir," said she. 
 
 "What makes you think that, Mrs. Rowse?" 
 
 "Well, sir, ladies like expensive things now-a- 
 days, don't they? What I mean, they don't seem 
 to be satisfied with what they used to be. The 
 only bit of jewelry my mother 'ad was a Scotch 
 pebble in a brooch. Now my Lizzie when she got 
 married would 'ave 'er diamonds. They weren't 
 real of course not what they call water diamonds, 
 but those paste jewels shine like winking if you look 
 at 'em right." 
 
 John rose from his chair. She deserved her re- 
 ward. What is more he had been longing to show 
 it to her from the very first. And when she saw 
 Jill's engagement ring, she breathed so deep a sigh 
 that John shut the box and hurried into his bed- 
 room in apprehension of all questions that might 
 follow.
 
 250 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 It was getting so very close to the wedding. For 
 though this was only the stage of the engagement 
 ring, yet in their schedule of affairs, events were 
 to crowd one upon another in the swiftest succession. 
 
 That morning Jill was to meet at lunch the two 
 witnesses to the ceremony. It seemed necessary to 
 John they should be broken into some sort of ac- 
 quaintance first before the actual meeting in the 
 Registry Office. It made things easier. You can- 
 not properly worry about introductions when you 
 are about to step across the threshold into the magic 
 of life. None too confident about her reception of 
 them, John had decided she should meet them first 
 in the midst of the ordinary amenities of a work- 
 a-day world. 
 
 It would, moreover, be a rehearsal for them. He 
 wanted them to appear in their best light and with- 
 out actual experience he was none too certain what 
 sort of a light that was going to be. It might 
 appear like the light of a farthing dip stuck in the 
 neck of a beer bottle. 
 
 That day then, at lunch, was to be the experi- 
 ment of their rehearsal. He went into his bed- 
 room when he heard Mrs. Rowse's sigh he went 
 into his bedroom to change his clothes for the oc- 
 casion.
 
 Chapter XXXVIII: Costumes for the Part 
 
 THROUGHOUT life there is always the in- 
 stinct, and as often as not in the very best 
 of us, to dress the part. 
 
 A soldier puts on a red coat and struts up and 
 down, giving the impression that war is a bloody 
 business. Undoubtedly he is right. A priest arrays 
 himself in an apparently seamless garment of a 
 pattern such as they are supposed to have worn in 
 Palestine nearly two thousand years ago and if by 
 any chance there were a conspicuous slit in the back 
 of it, I doubt whether he would be able to perform 
 in true spirit the service of the Church. 
 
 To stitch a broad arrow on to his coat would 
 give to any man the features of a criminal and 
 again I question whether a man with a coat so 
 stitched could walk through the streets without 
 avoiding a sense of shame, let him be the most 
 honest fellow in the world. 
 
 Without these costumes, and were Necessity 
 neither the mother of Invention nor the mistress of 
 the wardrobe, life would have all that strenuous 
 reality, that exhausting earnestness which some 
 would endeavor to convince us is its purpose. As 
 it is, there is a certain, jolly, play-acting quality 
 about it all, failing which, we should know men and 
 
 251
 
 252 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 women just for what they are, instead of what a 
 humorous assortment of clothes can make of them. 
 
 One can conceive nothing more terrible than 
 knowing one's priest for what he is; for what he 
 is may well be the last thing he meant to be. You 
 can tell what he means to be, however, by what he 
 wears and the intentional purpose of life is far 
 more noble a thing than its common reality. 
 
 So you go on believing in a world where belief 
 is always better than knowledge. For knowledge 
 sets out on a journey with a compass and a whole 
 chart of arithmetical calculations while belief makes 
 its way under the beacon light of the stars of God.
 
 Chapter XXXIX: The Wardrobe 
 
 TO dress up then and play the part is all a 
 condition of the quality of belief. When 
 that morning John looked into his wardrobe 
 to find that the best costume he had would make 
 him look something like an Italian waiter, that in 
 fact there was no other garment in which he could 
 properly play the part of a lover about to drink his 
 mistress' health, he felt as unhappy as the priest 
 in the vestry who discovers a shameful tear in his 
 surplice. 
 
 I care little who chooses to say this is not a 
 tragic moment. You can tell me there are men 
 who don't mind what they wear. There is but one 
 answer to that. That is their role; and it takes 
 a man as long to make up for it as if he were pulling 
 on silken tights and offering himself to the world 
 as an Elizabethan Cavalier. 
 
 It was a tragic moment for John when he had 
 to put on a gray flannel suit and set out to Wriggles- 
 worth's to meet his witnesses. There would be a 
 moment in their repast when he would hold up his 
 glass and drink the health of Jill and he felt he 
 could have done it so much better in that tail coat 
 he once possessed in which he looked like a dentist 
 
 253
 
 254 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 but fek like the proprietor of half the theaters in 
 London, or a politician earning four hundred a 
 year. 
 
 But if John, as the principal actor, was not dressed 
 as correctly for the performance as Necessity, the 
 mistress of the wardrobe, might have wished, 
 Matteo Allievi and Charles Henry Quirk could 
 scarcely have come more into the picture than if 
 they had been made up by a theatrical costumer. 
 
 Play-acting, indeed, was the whole existence of 
 Matteo Allievi. He had learnt early in life that 
 you can only borrow half-crowns with sustained 
 success when you have all the appearance of being 
 able to pay them back again. He may have had 
 wrong ideas of what was really convincing in that 
 appearance, but it was the earnest intention of his 
 soul to pay them back. And our intentions are the 
 model for the character of which we dress the part. 
 
 The costume for this occasion, as he conceived 
 it, consisted of a pair of check trousers. A check 
 is always fashionable, so long as it is not large 
 enough to play parlor games upon. A check tricks 
 the eye. You cannot see the shine of wear on it. 
 A check is a gentleman's pattern. It contrives to 
 make a gentleman of you, when it does not insist 
 upon your being twice the cad that you are. 
 
 Allievi's trousers were check. 
 
 His coat and waistcoat were black. There was 
 the weak spot of conviction in the tout ensemble. 
 Black goes green. You may never have had it 
 long enough to know this about it, but it does. And 
 long before this the nap has worn off, the elbows
 
 The Wardrobe 255 
 
 shine and there is a suspicious glitter around the 
 edges of the cuff. 
 
 Very probably you are one of those who puts 
 away his coat on a hanger, has two pairs of trousers 
 to every suit and keeps them in a press, in which 
 case these remarks about clothes will have all the 
 appearance of exaggeration and you will not even 
 be stirred to interest when you hear there is a 
 remedy for these conditions of wear. But there is. 
 None of the tailors in little streets tailors like Mr. 
 Bealby will tell you what it is lest you kept your 
 black coat two years longer than ever it was your 
 wont to do. These tailors are quite firm about 
 this. You might burn them at the stake before they 
 would give the secret away. 
 
 The secret is blacking. 
 
 Just ordinary blacking will work wonders on a 
 black coat that is worn at the elbows and is begin- 
 ning to grow pallid in places with that tinge of 
 green. Allievi had discovered this secret many 
 years before. 
 
 "I have the secret, my boy," he had often said 
 to John whenever he put out his leg and looked 
 down the sharp line of his trousers, "I have the 
 secret of always being immaculate." 
 
 But he never told what the secret was. 
 
 The mere use of that word immaculate gave 
 you the impression he knew how to dress, though, 
 as a matter of fact, he had borrowed it from the 
 vocabulary of his Church and not from any tailor's 
 advertisement. 
 , Standing in front of his glass one morning, he
 
 256 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 had been reading the Mass from his prayer book, 
 because a little appointment of business had made 
 it inconvenient for him to attend the service in 
 church. 
 
 He had found that it was quite an impressive 
 ceremony even in an attic bedroom. The sound of 
 his voice, intoning the words, seemed full of real 
 religion to him. Then, as he read out the words 
 the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary 
 he had looked up and caught sight of his reflection 
 in the mirror on the deal chest of drawers. At that, 
 he stopped in the midst of his Mass, but in a voice 
 which still might have led the choir of St. Peter's, 
 he said aloud: 
 
 "That's what I am immaculate." 
 
 And it was largely due to boot-blacking. 
 
 The only disadvantage about it was that he could 
 not come too near to anyone. He was apt to leave 
 his mark. 
 
 Yet even that aloofness had its compensation. 
 You always received the impression from Allievi's 
 attitude in conversation that he was a man who 
 kept himself to himself. That alone was no little 
 help in borrowing half-a-crown. There was a dig- 
 nity about it, making more pitiable the circumstances 
 which had driven him to that predicament. 
 
 So you have an indistinct picture of Matteo 
 Allievi as he appeared that morning outside Wrig- 
 glesworth's in his black coat and waistcoat, his check 
 trousers, a very low collar, a bright green tie, a 
 red handkerchief just idly appearing out of the tail 
 pocket of his coat and a pair of brown boots that
 
 The Wardrobe 257 
 
 were the most priceless possession in his wardrobe. 
 These were quite new. He had stolen them. That 
 is to say, he had taken them out of a shop when 
 no one was looking and, seeing it was the shopman's 
 duty to keep an eye on all his goods, Allievi felt he 
 was not entirely to be blamed. 
 
 Frankly he had told John all about it. 
 
 "L' opportunite fait le larron" said he, and in 
 English had added with an unimpeachable sense of 
 inward conviction. "But if I were God, I should 
 blame the man who made the opportunity. There 
 was no necessity for him to leave the shop unpro- 
 tected, and it's beyond doubt, I badly wanted a pair 
 of boots." 
 
 It was beyond all doubt he wore them with a 
 black tail coat and pair of check trousers. 
 
 Charles Henry Quirk was very different from this. 
 He had not the Italian's vigor of style about him. 
 The black coat which the lawyer's man had given 
 him in Lincoln's Inn as an inducement to go up into 
 Holborn, made you suspect it was as much the gar- 
 ment he wanted to see the last of, as of Mr. Quirk 
 and his clarionet. Rubbing a damp cloth over it 
 and pressing it with a hot iron had made its out- 
 lines more definite and angular. You knew it was 
 a coat. But you were just as conscious that it did 
 not fit. 
 
 His bowler hat seemed somehow wrong with the 
 frock coat. His trousers were frayed at the bot- 
 toms though you would have had to be sharp to 
 notice it, for Mrs. Quirk had trimmed them to the 
 quick. Yet notwithstanding that his boots gave
 
 258 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 up all hope of competition with that stolen property 
 of Allievi's, John nevertheless preferred his appear- 
 ance of the two. 
 
 Allievi had overdressed the part. His garments 
 cried out in different places that there was a wed- 
 ding in the air. The voice of them came to a top 
 note with the gardenia in his button hole. He was 
 better than a best man. 
 
 When John introduced them to each other, the 
 one as Matteo Allievi, the violinist, the other as 
 Charles Henry Quirk, the clarionet player, they each 
 accepted the best possible view of the situation. 
 
 Looking at those splendid check trousers, the 
 bright yellow brown boots, the red silk handker- 
 chief lolling out of the tail coat pocket and that 
 white gardenia with only one petal missing, Charles 
 Henry Quirk said to himself: 
 
 "Well-dressed got money but can't be much 
 of a violinist." 
 
 And Matteo Allievi, knowing well the look of 
 frayed trousers however cunningly trimmed; cal- 
 culating to the incident, the circumstances under 
 which such a frock coat is acquired and regarding 
 with pity the thinness of the soles of those black 
 boots, he said to himself: 
 
 "Poor as a church mouse disgustingly poor 
 but probably an excellent clarionet player." 
 
 It is always up to yourself in this world to take 
 the best point of view. Pessimism is not merely a 
 disease of the liver. It is a pathological condition 
 of the soul. In any case it is no fit guest at a wed- 
 ding, or any party at all for the matter of that.
 
 The Wardrobe 259 
 
 There is no doubt the two of them were well 
 pleased with each other's acquaintance and when 
 Allievi began a story of how once he refused the 
 hand of an Italian countess in marriage, Charles 
 Henry Quirk listened with parted lips and approv- 
 ing nods of his head.
 
 Chapter XL: The Dress Rehearsal 
 
 HE was what you might say beastly with 
 money," declared Allievi. "Rolling in it." 
 He rolled his eyes as he said it, to give 
 some idea of the disgraceful state to which money 
 had reduced her. 
 
 With his eyes constantly searching down the 
 street for sight of Jill, John asked in an absent- 
 minded way how old she was. 
 
 Allievi conveyed into a shrug of his shoulders 
 all that which he could not put into the limitations 
 of his speech. 
 
 "I was teaching her daughter the violin," said 
 he. "Ah! But there was genius! She had learnt 
 nearly all I could give her. But when the contessa 
 fell in love with me what could I do? I am not 
 a man with the cold blood. I burn!" 
 
 He closed his eyes to convince them what pains 
 he could suffer in silence under the influence of 
 passionate despair. But this situation apparently 
 had been unable to be borne. He had loved the 
 daughter a beautiful girl of twenty-eight. 
 
 "But for that," said he, "I might now have been 
 driving in my carriage." 
 
 "But not your carriage really," Mr. Quirk sug- 
 gested with his own passion for exactitude. "Not 
 your carriage. Hers." 
 
 260
 
 The Dress Rehearsal 261 
 
 Allievi seized his hand. Here was an appre- 
 ciative soul, who, if indeed he were an excellent 
 performer on the clarionet, no doubt, at times had a 
 spare half-crown about him. 
 
 "You read character I" he exclaimed, "and so 
 quick! It was just that. Nothing else! Her car- 
 riage her money everything would be hers ! 
 Why should I borrow what I could never pay 
 back?" 
 
 He shuddered at the thought of it. 
 
 And all the time during the narration of Allievi's 
 romance, John's apprehensions were increasing in 
 force in his mind. This meeting it seemed this 
 ratification of the witnesses would be a final test 
 of her courage to go through with it all to the end. 
 If she accepted Matteo Allievi and Charles Henry 
 Quirk as signatories to the greatest event in her 
 life, then, it seemed to John, there was little left 
 to fear. It had come in his mind to be an ordeal, 
 if not by battle, at least by a lunch at Wriggles- 
 worth's, and now, every moment, the fear was com- 
 ing to him that she was not even going to make her 
 appearance in the lists. 
 
 There was always the danger, of course, that at 
 the last moment her secret had been discovered and 
 that they would not let her go. But the danger 
 he feared most, without realizing how deep that 
 fear had gone, was that she herself had changed 
 her mind. 
 
 He would never have blamed her. For much as 
 it appeared she understood, much as he felt she 
 loved him, there still was some spirit of hallucina-
 
 262 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 tion in it all. Without being aware that he had 
 cast the spell of it, without being certainly conscious 
 it existed at all, there was still something of a 
 conjuring trick to him in the whole business. For 
 long whiles together he would sit wondering if it 
 were true. 
 
 Now, at any moment, and all his apprehensions 
 were aware of it, he might learn how much of 
 a mirage it was. It was a new world he had come 
 into and as yet had scarce the time to look about 
 him. Now, here, as it were, he was on the crest 
 of a hill from which it was possible to gain some 
 little view of the sort of world it was. 
 
 Every skirt that swung round the corner of the 
 street took his heart and shook it till it beat twice 
 over beneath his waistcoat. Now and again he 
 left his companions and hurried to the corner, then 
 hurried back for fear she might by chance have 
 come the other way. 
 
 If she did not come, what would he do? He 
 began thinking it out and came to the conclusion 
 that Life was a hazardous adventure after all. In 
 the depths of his pocket, he turned a coin over and 
 over again, then pulled it out and looked at it. 
 
 Heads she was coming! Tails she was not! It 
 was heads. Had it been tails, he was in that state 
 of mind to believe. Being heads, he thought what 
 a futile business was this superstitious tossing of a 
 coin. 
 
 Then he argued it with Fate, giving himself no 
 unwarranted chances. Was it likely that Fate 
 would bring any man all the way in hope to that
 
 The Dress Rehearsal 263 
 
 very moment only to disappoint him at the last? 
 With the view he had gained from his high crest, 
 it seemed the most likely thing in the world. Then 
 why in the name of heaven should he be picked out 
 to be the sport of it? 
 
 A suspicion that suffering and disappointment are 
 the bitter certainties of life, crept into the argu- 
 ment. He knew then she was not coming. This 
 thought had been sent him to help him bear the 
 blow of it. She was not coming. He looked at 
 his watch. It was twenty minutes after the hour. 
 The whole sensation of his being rose, swelling in 
 a thickness in his throat. He turned away from the 
 two men, still calmly talking about their insignificant 
 affairs, at his side. 
 
 She was not coming. Why should she come, in- 
 deed, to a penniless poor devil like him? And why 
 in the name of heaven had he ever been fool enough 
 to think that she would or could. 
 
 A hansom whirled round the corner of the street. 
 At the sight of its occupant, involuntarily he seized 
 Allievi by the arm and laughed.
 
 Chapter XLI : Lunch at Wriggles worth's 
 
 A FTER these first trying moments of introduc- 
 
 /% tion, when Matteo bowed so elaborately as 
 
 to fling one back into the period of the 
 
 Cavaliers and Charles Henry was obviously so ill- 
 
 at-ease as to take off his hat and shake Jill's hand 
 
 with the hand that gripped it, the affair began to 
 
 turn the corner of appearances and held out all the 
 
 promise of success. 
 
 "Matteo Allievi, the violinist " 
 
 Well, the name and the occupation might be said 
 to justify that elaborate bow. For it was not 
 merely a violinist but the violinist and once 
 you have said of a man that he is the anything 
 so long as it is not a trade you provide an allow- 
 ance for his wildest eccentricities. 
 
 At the first moment of meeting, when the appear- 
 ance of the two witnesses had forced itself upon 
 her, John had seen a wavering look of doubt in 
 Jill's eyes. With the exception of Mr. Chesterton, 
 whom she had found entertaining, if not quite so 
 clever as his books, these were the first of John's 
 friends she had met. Having engaged them as 
 witnesses to the most solemn ceremony in their lives, 
 she assumed they were friends and had not thought 
 
 264
 
 Lunch at Wrigglesworth's 265 
 
 of confirming the assumption. And they were odd- 
 looking friends. She knew what her father would 
 have said of them. 
 
 Swiftly on the detection of that puzzled look in 
 her eyes, John had affected his introductions. 
 
 "Matteo Allievi the violinist " 
 
 Jill bowed solemnly to that grandiloquent sweep 
 of the hat and the self-effacement of the bending 
 figure of Allievi. Serious and concerned as he was 
 about it all, John had to distend his nostrils to keep 
 from laughter. 
 
 "Charles Henry Quirk the clarionetist." 
 After violinist, clarionet-player sounded beer of 
 small parts. Of the two, John would sooner have 
 given 'Charles Henry the best advantages of in- 
 troduction. Allievi could well look after himself. 
 But Charles Henry was shy pitiably so. His 
 hands were trembling. By the servant of such a 
 lady as this, he had often been sent with a shilling 
 into the next street. He had probably seen her 
 opening the window, as he went, to let in the peace 
 and silence he left behind him. He was abominably 
 nervous, wherefore John gave him clarionetist 
 at a venture, pretty well convinced that none of 
 them would know whether he was right or wrong. 
 Certainly he did not know himself and relied upon 
 the forgiveness of any real musician who might 
 have heard him. 
 
 Immediately following these introductions came 
 a warmer sense of security. The puzzled look went 
 out of Jill's eyes. As a violinist, that elaborate 
 bow, almost amounting to a genuflection, was all in
 
 266 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 accordance with the facts. So she saw him receiv- 
 ing the plaudits of his audience. John had strange 
 friends but she knew all artists were strange. She 
 had been to concerts at Queens Hall often enough 
 to discover that musicians were not ordinary people 
 and the more celebrated, the more extraordinary 
 they were. Really, she thought, this was an honor 
 to have a great violinist, witness to her wedding 
 ceremony. Probably he had played before Royalty, 
 which makes everyone elaborate in their gestures 
 or in the disporting of the tie-pin in their tie. If 
 her father or mother could know that John had 
 friends who had received presents at the hands of 
 Royalty, they might not think so discouragingly of 
 her marriage after all. 
 
 She located the pin in Allievi's tie a glittering 
 diamond for which he had paid the complete sum 
 of one of his half-a-crowns and she felt she was 
 right about Royalty. 
 
 Charles Henry was different. She suspected him, 
 as Matteo had done, of being poor. But clarion- 
 etist is an inspiring word. In all the awkward shy- 
 ness of his movements, the constant cough behind 
 the hand, she saw with these eyes of her ready 
 belief, a great musician to whom the more con- 
 spicuous success of Allievi had been denied. In- 
 stinctively she liked him best. Her heart went out 
 to him because of his failures and because, having 
 no appreciation for the clarionet herself, she as- 
 sumed his life was a lonely one. She had never 
 met anyone who liked the clarionet, and suspected 
 he had not met many himself, whereas everyone
 
 Lunch at Wrigglesworth's 267 
 
 loved the violin. Why did some men choose the 
 clarionet, the bassoon or the oboe, when there were 
 such instruments as the violin and the 'cello? That 
 thought, with the moment of sympathy for Mr. 
 Quirk hurried in the crowd of impressions across 
 her mind. John would tell her. She left it in con- 
 fidence at that as they went in to lunch. 
 
 It was always a good meal at Wrigglesworth's 
 and that day in the shortest space of time put them 
 all at their ease. Matteo, conscious that it was 
 costing half-a-crown a head, at least, set out from 
 the very beginning with the intention of doing it 
 justice, while Charles Henry, perceiving boiled 
 silverside with dumplings and roly-poly to follow on 
 the menu, tucked his serviette inside his collar to 
 preserve that coat his old woman had ironed and 
 sat himself squarely on his chair. 
 
 "I believe it isn't considered the proper thing to 
 talk about food," he said, "but I must confess I 
 like silverside and dumplin' with roly-poly to fol- 
 low. I can't play on a meal like that not directly 
 after, I can't. But the next day, somehow, I feel 
 it's put heart into me." 
 
 Receiving a glance from John, he subsided. 
 There was no knowing what Charles Henry might 
 say. He was an honest man, as has been seen, un- 
 ashamed of the occasional indignities of his pro- 
 fession. And if ever there were a situation in which 
 an honest man could not be trusted, it was that in 
 which they found themselves this critical morning 
 at Wrigglesworth's. 
 
 Matteo as they say in these days of jerry-build-
 
 268 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 ing was as safe as a house. There was no fear 
 of him. Unscrupulous to a degree, he could be 
 trusted to give the very best impression available. 
 While Charles Henry consumed his silverside and 
 his dumplings in silence, Allievi talked of the ro- 
 mances of his pupils. There was some romance, 
 he declared, with every one. He could not teach, 
 he could not live without it. 
 
 It all became a huge success, moreover full of 
 laughter to John who, in a capacity of his own, 
 could stand aside and look on at Charles Henry's 
 restraint over the food he was enjoying no less than 
 Matteo's bewildering conceit of his attractions. 
 
 And once those eccentricities of all artists were 
 accepted by Jill, she enjoyed herself as well as any 
 of them. This was a sense of liberty she had never 
 enjoyed in her life before, this meal with three men 
 in a little eating bouse where the very atmosphere 
 seemed to give you freedom to say what you liked 
 and being on your best behavior was not a thing 
 that even occurred to you. 
 
 There was a contact with life about it she never 
 experienced in Prince of Wales's Terrace. Every 
 moment of the conversation, she felt she was learn- 
 ing something fresh. The conversations at their 
 dinners at home never varied. It never seemed to 
 be what people said, but what you knew they were 
 repeating, that had a spark of interest in it. What 
 they thought of this play or that, this latest novel, 
 that last show at the Academy, these were all 
 opinions that had the essence of staleness in them 
 by reason of the fact that scarcely ever did you
 
 Lunch at Wrigglesworth's 269 
 
 seem to hear an opinion first hand. Every word 
 that was spoken, every idea expressed had the taste 
 of a substitute about it, was never fresh food stimu- 
 lating the mind to energy. 
 
 But here, in this eating house, her mother would 
 have shuddered at and her father condemned as 
 no fit place for any lady, here in the company of 
 two at least of the oddest of men, Jill felt she was 
 touching life at every point, was being admitted into 
 the inner places where people had lives of their 
 own and, when they spoke gave expression to that 
 which had entered their hearts and not been driven 
 in through their ears. 
 
 Matteo Allievi, the violinist, for all his conceits 
 and his boastings, was a real man. Obviously from 
 all he told them, he had met life and had his 
 struggle with it. And Charles Henry with his child- 
 like admission that he knew it was not the proper 
 thing to talk of food, yet ignoring propriety because 
 it was so good, he was as human as any of them. 
 
 Why should one not talk of good, honest food 
 any more than one talked of the price one had paid 
 for one's motor car? For this was what her father 
 did, and before he had actually purchased it with 
 someone else's money? 
 
 Why a whole host of things and then, suddenly, 
 tumbling back into her memory, why did some men 
 choose to play the bassoon or the oboe? 
 
 "Because," said John, "Life's a full orchestra 
 and must have every instrument it needs." 
 
 "Because," said Allievi, "the violin would not 
 produce the melody to advantage without the ac-
 
 270 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 companiment of those instruments and therefore 
 it is only natural." 
 
 "Because," said Charles Henry, swallowing his 
 piece of dumpling after he had bitten it thirty times 
 and without any knowledge of the precept of Mr. 
 Gladstone, "because some men have to be content 
 with what you might call the littleness of life; be- 
 cause some men are made to carry off the big things 
 they've got the air for it." He waved his hand 
 across the table to Matteo. "Like my friend here. 
 Some men are meant to play the solos for every- 
 one to hear, while others play a note here and there 
 like, but if they get the right person" he included 
 John and Jill in a romantic and comprehensive 
 glance "that person'll hear every note they play 
 and it'll sound grand grand! Little as it is, it'll 
 sound grand!" 
 
 It was all a most successful entertainment and the 
 witnesses were accepted without further question. 
 
 Jill drove away in her hansom with the three 
 of them standing on the curbstone lifting their hats 
 and it was only when she entered the door of the 
 house in Prince of Wales's Terrace that she began 
 to wonder whether or no the world were upside 
 down.
 
 Chapter XLII: T A Consultation with 
 Margaret 
 
 JOHN had never outgrown that sense of being 
 excited by the receipt of a letter which agitates 
 all young people. No doubt, he was suffi- 
 ciently accustomed to receiving them as to have 
 lost the sense of intrigue such as a schoolgirl has, 
 home for the holidays, when she receives a letter 
 from one of her school-friends. 
 
 That letter, so to speak, is taken into a corner, 
 opened while covert glances are cast in all direc- 
 tions, in order to make sure that nobody is looking, 
 but that everybody sees. It is read with puckered 
 brows and serious expressions and finally put away 
 in a writing case that has a key about the size of 
 a bent hair-pin. And the writing case is locked. 
 
 Doubtless John had lost these feelings about 
 letters. A couple of bills are enough to knock all 
 the romance of letter writing and receiving into a 
 cocked hat with most of us. However he, at least, 
 had never lost the romance. 
 
 A day without something by post was to him a 
 day ill-begun; it was a day without its message. 
 
 For that was what letters were to him messages 
 and sometimes of the most disagreeable nature. 
 Nevertheless they were messages with all the ad- 
 
 271
 
 272 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 venture of a journey about them. Most of us lose 
 that sense of wonder at a piece of paper traveling 
 unerringly from one hand to another across the 
 whole breadth of the world if need be. Most of us 
 lose the sense of wonder in everything when we 
 pay for its performance. Indeed we lose all the 
 wonder out of life, partly because it is not con- 
 sidered intelligent to be surprised at anything, partly 
 because an intellectual understanding is a line of 
 least resistance and so much easier than belief. 
 
 John kept his belief and it must be admitted he 
 had as yet experienced little to test it. He still 
 wondered when he received a check in payment for 
 his work. He still wondered at his own importance 
 when he received a letter. 
 
 His habit it always was to open his mail in what 
 he imagined to be the sequence of its interest. He 
 always cut the flap of the envelope with a knife as 
 an exercise in self-control. 
 
 On the morning after the lunch at Wriggles- 
 worth's, there were two letters on his plate at break- 
 fast. One from Jill. He put that on one side. The 
 other was addressed to him in an unknown hand- 
 writing. He looked at the postmark. It was Ken- 
 sington. Some instinct stirred and turned in his mind 
 like a sleeper awakening. He felt his fingers more 
 alive as he took it out of its envelope. He spread 
 it out and read its contents: 
 
 DEAR SIR, 
 
 I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance, but I know 
 there is a mutual interest between my daughter and yourself. 
 With regard to this interest I should be much obliged if you
 
 A Consultation with Margaret 273 
 
 could come and see me this morning at the above address at mid- 
 day if that is convenient to you. If it is not, perhaps you will 
 be good enough to make another appointment. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 J. M. DEALTRY. 
 
 There was a note in this letter which to John 
 was unmistakable, a combative note wh'ch told him 
 that in this new world of reality he had entered 
 there was conflict and stress. 
 
 That letter had in it the sound of a bugle, calling 
 him out to fight; and it was not that he was afraid, 
 but that he suddenly was conscious he had never 
 had to fight before. He felt ill-equipped, like a 
 soldier with nothing but his bare fists who must 
 go out and face all the murderous instruments of 
 war. And though his love of Jill was a band that 
 played him with its inspiring music into the battle, 
 he felt suddenly that when it came to the actual 
 fighting, the noise of the blows might be so loud 
 as to drown the music in his ears; that there were 
 things in this world that loomed, with a forced 
 perspective, bigger than love and, at the moment of 
 conflict swept Love out, not in reality but for the 
 time being in the hearts of them that fought. 
 
 It seemed to him that all that was in his heart 
 was not a weapon but only a purpose of his spirit, 
 and had no power against the highly efficient and 
 modern weapons of expediency. He believed in 
 some inner consciousness that he would be killed, 
 but that the purpose in him would not be beaten. 
 He knew, in the bugle call of that letter, that the 
 whole army of materialism had been called forth
 
 274 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 to meet him and that nothing but the miracle of 
 God would bring him out unscathed and victorious 
 from the fray. 
 
 In a daze of mind, he turned to Jill's letter and 
 read it. It was a hurried note, every word spelling 
 apprehension and warning him of this which had 
 become an accomplishjd fact. 
 
 "// he does send for you," her note ended, "don't 
 get angry or say anything that'll make it more diffi- 
 cult. Humor him and give in a bit here and there 
 it's the only way." 
 
 If Mr. Dealtry's letter had brought him to a 
 sudden and serious consideration of life, this, though 
 far it may have been from her intention, struck fear 
 deep down into the corners of his heart. 
 
 She was urging for compromise when it seemed 
 to him there was nothing but the bloodiest of en- 
 counters to achieve decision. It was as though she 
 had put into his hand at the last moment a weapon 
 he neither had the cunning nor the heart to wield; 
 a weapon he believed would buckle like a piece of 
 tin at the first straight blow that fell upon it. 
 
 With a sigh of despair, he put her letter away 
 and went out without touching his breakfast. 
 
 Some impulse he did not try to follow, brought 
 him to Margaret in Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
 
 The tender look in her face, the protection of 
 her arms about those others brought back some 
 of the courage he needed. 
 
 "Margaret," he said in a voice that was aloud 
 to him, "Margaret, I know something I didn't 
 know before. I know that I'm alone. I know
 
 A Consultation with Margaret 275 
 
 that even with all the gift of your life to help 
 others, your arms can't stretch round me." 
 
 He looked at her and always she gave that tender 
 smile to her others ; to her John and her Peter, as 
 he and Jill had christened two of them. 
 
 "Will she ever come," he went on, as though 
 Margaret were listening to every word he said. 
 "Will she ever come so close with her hand in mine 
 and her arms like yours, so that we can go together 
 heart and soul and body together or must it 
 always be alone? Is it best to be alone?" 
 
 But Margaret gave no answer, unless it were in 
 the seeming movement of a little further stretching 
 out her arms, of taking one of the others a heart's 
 beat nearer to her breast.
 
 Chapter XLIII : The Primitive Instinct 
 
 A~ the door was thrown open and John entered 
 the hall in the Prince of Wales's Terrace, 
 there was a swift brush of skirts from an 
 adjacent door and Jill was beside him. 
 
 "I don't expect he'll allow you to see me," she 
 whispered, "but I must I must! I know he'll say 
 horrible things horrible and cruel things but I 
 must see you ! I don't think any of the things he'll 
 say. Believe that. I know I don't think them." 
 
 She had a note in her voice convincing herself 
 as well as him, but it was all too confused for him 
 to catch it then. 
 
 "I'll come down to Fetter Lane to-morrow morn- 
 ing," said she, "then you can tell me everything. 
 To-morrow morning at 1 1 o'clock." 
 
 That was all. She had gone through the door- 
 way again and he was being led down the hall to 
 a far room which, with its very distance, increased 
 the apprehension of all that lay before him. But 
 he believed he was not alone. He had asked Mar- 
 garet and she had given him no answer. It was Jill 
 who, unasked, had replied to his question. It was 
 not best to be alone. She was with him. 
 
 The servant whom he assumed must have been 
 in Jill's confidence, since she did not hesitate to 
 
 276
 
 The Primitive Instinct 277 
 
 speak before her, ushered him into Mr. Dealtry's 
 study, announcing his name. 
 
 The door closed behind him. He heard it shut 
 him in. Then he became aware of two people, both 
 of whom rose to their feet. Mr. Dealtry came for- 
 ward and held out his hand in that manner as gave 
 John to understand that a public school and the 
 university had made it impossible for him to be 
 anything but a gentleman. 
 
 "Good morning, Mr. Grey," said he, and then: 
 "This is my wife." 
 
 Mrs. Dealtry bowed and sat down. A chair was 
 pulled out for John. They all sat down. 
 
 "I won't beat about the bush, Mr. Grey," Mr. 
 Dealtry began, using the phrase and adopting the 
 tone of voice which gives a guarantee that a man 
 knows his own mind while it does not absolutely 
 constitute a hall-mark. 
 
 "I won't beat about the bush. I said in my letter 
 that I knew there was a mutual interest between 
 my daughter and yourself. That is so isn't it?" 
 
 "It is," said John. 
 
 Mr. Dealtry picked up a paper from his desk. 
 John recognized it at once. 
 
 "May I ask," said he, showing it to John, "if 
 this fairly expresses the state and the what shall 
 I say?" ' 
 
 "Spirit," said Mrs. Dealtry. 
 
 "Yes the spirit of that interest which you 
 admit?" 
 
 John looked at it once. It was the poem he had 
 read and given her in the Zoo.
 
 278 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 " Let's take it you and I in lingering fingers 
 And turn it to beauty out of the virgin gold." 
 
 Just that couplet brought itself to his eye and 
 then he looked back at Mr. Dealtry. 
 
 "It does express the spirit," he replied, "of what 
 I feel about her." 
 
 Mr. Dealtry spread it out upon the table before 
 him and for a moment allowed his eye to wander 
 critically over the lines. There was a poignant 
 silence. It was in that silence John realized he was 
 stronger than either of them. He was not alone. 
 They thought they had him there at their mercy. 
 But they were wrong. They could not see inside 
 his heart and Jill was there. 
 
 Presently Mr. Dealtry looked up. 
 
 "I'm not a judge of poetry," said he, "but I am 
 sure in a world of pretty fancy and flowery imagina- 
 tion, this is quite quite pleasing to read. It it 
 has a swing about it." 
 
 "Not much swing," said John. "The meter's all 
 over the shop. It's not meant to sing you to sleep; 
 it's meant to give you a thought." 
 
 "Well I accept your technical criticism of it, 
 but naturally enough I haven't sent for you to learn 
 your verses or anything about them except in so 
 much as they affect my daughter. And you confirm 
 your previous admission that these verses embody 
 the spirit of what you feel about her. You say 
 they are intended to give thoughts. They were then 
 intended to make her think and think what they 
 conveyed was true." 
 
 "Certainly."
 
 The Primitive Instinct 279 
 
 "You think, then, it is a practical view of life 
 to make it a woodland freshet I suppose that's 
 a stream where the mosses grow?" 
 
 There was an instant when John would have left 
 the room without another word. He did not betray 
 the impulse. He sat there rigid in his silence for 
 a moment. 
 
 "Are you taking that literally?" asked John 
 presently, "or are you allowing for the freedom of 
 the picture intended to convey the thought?" 
 
 "I'm taking it as I read it," said Mr. Dealtry. 
 
 "Well, you see," said John, "that is liable to 
 confuse me, since I don't know either the quality 
 of your intelligence or your imagination." 
 
 "I hope both are quite normal," said Mr. Dealtry. 
 
 "I hope so," replied John. 
 
 Mr. Dealtry looked at him sharply, then across 
 at his wife. Mrs. Dealtry turned away as though 
 she had made up her mind that no good could come 
 of this interview. In those first few moments she 
 had summed up their visitor, had placed and 
 weighed him in her own scales. He was one of 
 those having no appreciation or value of the homely 
 virtue of common sense. He was an idealist, the 
 most dangerous of all people a young girl can meet. 
 Unless they were very careful, their Jill would not 
 steer through this dangerous passage of her life. 
 For here was a type of man with failure stamped 
 in every expression of his face. 
 
 She had met one or two successful novelists at 
 various At Homes and they none had that look 
 about them. They probably stood in queer attitudes
 
 280 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 and, when they talked, spoke as though they ex- 
 pected to be listened to. Often they said daring 
 and what sounded like clever things but they knew 
 the best people. 
 
 This young man, so she had appraised him, would 
 never be successful, unless by some amazing freak 
 of chance, and she did not count upon those in any 
 sane view of life. He would go through the world 
 like a pedlar, with holes in his shoes and a bundle 
 of ideals in his pack. He would only sell his work 
 to romantic and foolish folk. Never would he make 
 a trade in the open market where her England had 
 achieved its greatness. 
 
 Unless her husband spoke more to the point and 
 very soon, she felt she would be unable to keep 
 the dignity of her silence much longer. 
 
 "Well going on," continued Mr. Dealtry, when 
 he had satisfied himself that it was still to be his 
 innings, "going on past these people treading un- 
 relenting presses and a picture of you plunging your 
 face in the water I suppose you imply by that, just 
 drinking water and so on, not particularly refer- 
 ring to this listening to blackbirds in what you call 
 the cathedraled sky, we come to this verse: 
 
 Is life the finer hammered on an anvil? 
 
 Flung in the furnace? Hastened to shape within the mold? 
 Let's take it you and I in lingering fingers 
 
 And turn it to beauty out of the virgin gold. 
 
 "As a matter of curiosity, I should just like to 
 know where, if you don't want to do a bit of hard 
 work with a hammer, if you're so averse to being 
 hastened into shape, I should like to know where
 
 The Primitive Instinct 281 
 
 you're going to get your gold from? No man I 
 ever came across, made money without doing some 
 work for it. Where are you going to get your 
 gold?" 
 
 It sounded to him as he put the question, the 
 biggest crux of a question it was possible to put. 
 He had to do all he knew not to chuckle as he 
 said it. 
 
 John's reply was such a surprise to him that he 
 gave up his innings, and was very doubtful as to 
 whether he had succeeded in carrying his bat. 
 
 "I'm sure you didn't ask me here to criticise my 
 verses on their literary merit," said John. "In fact, 
 from all the bewildering things you have said, I am 
 quite certain that is the case. I'm convinced you're 
 aware of the fact that you don't know the differ- 
 ence between a line of verse and the directions on 
 a medicine bottle, so aren't we wasting time a bit 
 by talking of my poetry, because you make me 
 naturally quite incapable of discussing it. And if 
 there is to be a discussion about Jill, I'd like to keep 
 my wits and my temper somewhat about me." 
 
 Mr. Dealtry stared at John in a mute astonish- 
 ment. He could not speak. He did not even try 
 to. Was this intended to be an affront, he asked 
 himself, because if it were, then he ought to say 
 something in reply. But he had nothing to say. 
 He thought he had been making such remarkable 
 headway in a difficult situation and here was all 
 the wind taken out of his sails. He felt in just that 
 flabby condition as when the canvas droops against 
 the mast in a lull of the breeze.
 
 282 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 Further, to convince him what a failure he had 
 made of it, his wife took the matter completely out 
 of his hands. 
 
 "Mr. Grey's quite right," said she with austerity. 
 "We did not bring him here to discuss his poetry. 
 Whether it's good or bad doesn't make any differ- 
 ence. The principal fact is that it does not provide 
 a living so I understand from people who know 
 about these things and it has been brought to our 
 notice that Mr. Grey is proposing to marry Jill, 
 proposing to marry her when, judging by the place 
 in which he resides, he is scarcely able to provide 
 a living for himself. Would you mind telling us, 
 Mr. Grey, what your income is? I've no doubt to 
 you this sounds very matter-of-fact, but it is the 
 duty of parents to see that their children set out 
 in a difficult world with the best advantages. We 
 don't want to appear curious, but we should like to 
 hear what your income is." 
 
 "I'm making a hundred and seventy-five pounds 
 a year," said John. "And next year I shall make 
 more and the year after still more. With Jill to 
 help me and give me a purpose in life, I can't fail. 
 You're quite right. Poetry doesn't pay. But I don't 
 only write verse. I'm writing books and short 
 stories." 
 
 "A hundred and seventy-five pounds a year," re- 
 peated Mrs. Dealtry, as though every other word 
 John had said had escaped her. "Dear, oh, dear 
 I wouldn't have believed it possible for a man with 
 any sense of chivalry or honor to propose to take 
 a girl away from the comfort of her home to endure
 
 The Primitive Instinct 283 
 
 such poverty as that. I simply I couldn't have 
 believed it." 
 
 She was so convinced of what she said that all 
 those sensations of being a cad returned in over- 
 whelming force to John's mind. Here was the weak 
 spot in his armor and with the inspiration of a 
 mother's instinct, she had detected it. She loved 
 Jill and she was fighting for her, and what she, in 
 her generation, had found to be happiness, she was 
 determined that Jill, in her generation should have 
 as well. 
 
 What her intellect was utterly incapable of ap- 
 preciating was that happiness was no fixed or con- 
 crete thing, but that it changed with every genera- 
 tion and even then was not the same in any two 
 minds at once. 
 
 It was in reality her own conception of happiness 
 she was fighting for, as much as for Jill. She did 
 not know the things she believed in were rotten to 
 the core. She believed in them that was enough. 
 She had believed in them all her life. She was 
 the product of a material Civilization. It had given 
 her nationality in the wealthiest country in the world. 
 It had given her a home in the Prince of Wales's 
 Terrace. It had given her a circle of acquaintances 
 amongst the best people, many with titles. All 
 these things it had given her and, in the drought 
 of her heart, she had accepted them as tangible 
 symbols of happiness, as tangible as the comfort of 
 a hot bath. 
 
 She was proud to belong to that Civilization. 
 She was proud to be an Englishwoman and though
 
 284 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 she might assist her husband in his efforts to cheat 
 the Income tax, she certainly would not forfeit her 
 rights to real English happiness. 
 
 It was this happiness she was fighting for, on 
 Jill's behalf, and fighting with all the craft and cun- 
 ning of which her mother's heart was capable. Jill 
 must be happy and whether this young man was a 
 great poet or not, whether or no it were true that 
 Jill could help him in his work, she would hate him 
 and all he did if it added one iota to the strength 
 she needed for the conflict. 
 
 There had entered her heart, the moment she 
 heard him speak, the moment she saw his face, that 
 instinctive hatred of the mother for every creature 
 that threatens to deprive her of her young. She 
 knew she could take a keen pleasure in torturing 
 John's heart if, by the pain of it, he could be induced 
 to let go his hold on Jill. Nothing he suffered could 
 wring pity from her. She would have laughed and 
 jeered at his tears had he shed them. And the more 
 she felt this enmity an unreasoned, elemental in- 
 stinct in her the more she lost what little appre- 
 ciation she had of the thing that might be happiness 
 to Jill. 
 
 She had indeed reverted to a distant type. All 
 the higher and nobler qualities of understanding 
 were swept out of her mind with the passion of 
 this primitive emotion. Yet she spoke with a quiet- 
 ness that was remarkable in its distinction from the 
 blustering tones of her husband. 
 
 John might almost have thought she was sorry 
 for the struggle he had with life. She purred her
 
 The Primitive Instinct 285 
 
 words. She looked softly as she spoke. There was 
 a note of tender complaint in her voice. 
 
 When she added that last phrase: "I simply 
 couldn't have believed it," she glanced at him almost 
 with pity in her expression and, seeing the iron enter 
 his heart, was all the time rejoicing in her soul and 
 crying out to herself what a soft-hearted fool he 
 was. 
 
 As unused to craft and guile as John must be 
 supposed to have been, there can scarcely exist any 
 wonder that he was no match for the stealth of 
 such an opponent as Mrs. Dealtry. All he had were 
 his ideals and no sophistry with which to match 
 them against the wiles of his antagonist. 
 
 "What is it your daughter is really going to 
 suffer," he asked in reply, "if she gives up the com- 
 fort of her home here to come out, side by side, 
 with a man she loves and fight for her place in the 
 world with him? A man has to do it when he 
 strikes out into life for himself. He has to give 
 up comforts he had at home. I was comfortable 
 at home once with parents who cared for me. And 
 no doubt I suffered bodily discomforts when I began 
 to make my way but I should have been a deal 
 more uncomfortable in my mind if I'd stayed. Why 
 should your daughter suffer more than me ? She will 
 have some one at her side with love to give her. 
 I had no one." 
 
 "I won't comment," said Mrs. Dealtry gently, 
 "on the selfishness and egotism of what you are 
 saying. I am sure you have the power to appreciate 
 a virtue when you see it. I will only confine myself
 
 286 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 to an answer to your question. The discomfort my 
 daughter will suffer will arise out of the fact that 
 she is used to a home like this and not a couple of 
 rooms in what I might call the slums of London." 
 
 "There are people," said John, "who are used 
 to receiving twenty per cent for their investments 
 but that doesn't say it's right and it doesn't say it's 
 good for them." 
 
 "I should like to know," said Mr. Dealtry, 
 "where people are getting their twenty per cent." 
 
 "We'll keep business out of this discussion," said 
 his wife, who was determined the talk should be 
 of things she understood. "Mr. Grey's allusion to 
 speculation has nothing to do with this affair noth- 
 ing at all." 
 
 Suddenly then, John saw red. His heart came 
 into his mouth and he spoke it, without thought of 
 consequence, without consideration of cost or ex- 
 pediency. 
 
 "But it's all to do with speculation 1" he cried. 
 "You're speculating with your daughter's happiness 
 gambling with it. You want to marry her to a 
 rich man. You want her to get her twenty per 
 cent out of life by a doubtful investment. You 
 don't ask yourselves really whether she is going to 
 be happy in that speculation, but just that she should 
 get her twenty per cent without working for it. But 
 it's work that is the happiness in this world and the 
 idle speculator drawing his fat dividends is wretched 
 in his heart. He doesn't know what happiness is. 
 It's happiness to make your life, not to sit in idle- 
 ness and have it made for you. You want for her
 
 The Primitive Instinct 287 
 
 the clothes she can put on her back, the money she 
 can put in her purse, you don't want the joy she 
 can put in her heart. These things the things you 
 say she's used to are not the things that make 
 joy. They all contribute to a sense of staleness in 
 life if you're used to them. That's what you make 
 of life. You make it stale. You'd have everybody 
 inherit rather than earn. You'd give them the 
 things they're used to rather than the things that 
 are new. And that's just the way people and na- 
 tions and whole civilizations and religions fag them- 
 selves out to degeneracy because they catch hold 
 of the things they're used to rather than the ad- 
 venture and the health of the things that are new." 
 
 He stopped for breath and, as he looked at their 
 two faces there in the silence of that room, he won- 
 dered what he had said and in the quiet, subdued 
 smile of triumph on Mrs. Dealtry's face, he real- 
 ized that so far as they were concerned, he had 
 lost everything. 
 
 "George," she said to her husband, "you might 
 ring the bell and let them know Mr. Grey is going. 
 I think you understood as well as I that Mr. Grey 
 was a gentleman at least. Hyde Park socialism 
 probably has its place, but it's not in our house, nor 
 from the way we have brought her up will it ever 
 be in Jill's." 
 
 John stood quickly to his feet. 
 
 "Does this mean you refuse to let your daughter 
 marry me?" he asked. 
 
 "We can't refuse," said Mrs. Dealtry, "she's over 
 twenty-one. That is to say we can't prevent her-
 
 288 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 It's only that you've made so much easier by what 
 you've said, the advice we can give her about her 
 future. I am sure you will realize, Mr. Grey, that 
 it is something in a difficult world for a girl to cling 
 to the belief that she is a lady. I know my daughter 
 will always be that." 
 
 The door opened. It remained open. They 
 watched him all the way across the hall till he had 
 gone. He had no sight of Jill.
 
 Chapter XLIV: Charles Henry Quirk 
 & Co. 
 
 THERE was little sleep for John that night; 
 little effort indeed on his part to induce it. 
 For some hours after he had gone to bed, 
 he sat with his hands huddled up against his chin, 
 staring at the wall in front of him, on which hung 
 a little reproduction of the portrait of Beatrice 
 d'Este by di Predis. 
 
 It was not so much that he was thinking of her. 
 More it was, almost the whole of that time, he was 
 thinking of nothing; just vibrative to countless sen- 
 sations, but that was all. With his eyes he saw that 
 familiar, childish face, of Beatrice d'Este, pale with 
 the sudden redness of its lips, a little tilt at the 
 end of the nose, the round chin, the open forehead, 
 the wonder in the eye. He saw the full color of 
 that auburn hair, tied in a ribband beneath her 
 chin, bound with a fillet about her head. He could 
 see the firm, straight neck, the high and virtuous 
 bodice of her dress, the red stone, as though it held 
 the secret of the blood that was warm in her veins, 
 that lay like a talisman on her breast: all these 
 things he could see as he sat there like a tailor on 
 his bench, but in the consciousness of his mind there 
 was no thought of her; no thought of Jill or of 
 
 289
 
 290 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 Amber, or the scene that had taken place that morn- 
 ing in Prince of Wales's Terrace. 
 
 One sensation after another played upon the 
 strings of the instrument of his mind. All impro- 
 visations they were; never once the thoughtfully- 
 constructed melody. Without prelude they came. 
 Without fulfillment of expression, they faded away. 
 
 He could not think. No thoughts were with him. 
 All that he felt was, in the abstract, no more 
 than senses of fear, of courage, of doubt, of belief, 
 of hope and then despair. He did not know what 
 the morrow would bring him and he neither dared 
 nor was he able to come at knowledge by any process 
 of thought. 
 
 If Jill came in the morning as she had promised, 
 it was she who would bring revelation and set free 
 the normal operations of his brain. Until then he 
 could only sit, huddled in mind and body, waiting 
 for the hour of his deliverance. 
 
 He ate no breakfast the next morning. In this 
 condition, when the physical and definite processes 
 of his being are held in rigid arrest, food is not so 
 much nauseous to a man, as that it does not enter 
 his conception of necessity. 
 
 John told Mrs. Rowse to clear away the things 
 directly he came in from his bedroom and saw that 
 breakfast was there, waiting on the table. 
 
 "Don't you feel well, then, sir or something?" 
 
 "I feel all right," said he, and looked at and 
 straight through her, which gave her so uncanny 
 a sensation that she began taking up the breakfast 
 things without another word.
 
 Charles Henry Quirk & Co. 291 
 
 She recounted this incident to her husband who, 
 when he was sober, sat patiently, as men do with 
 their women-folk, and listened to a bit of gossip 
 just as though she had been reading extracts to 
 him out of the Sunday papers. 
 
 " 'E made me feel," said Mrs. Rowse, " 'e made 
 me feel just as if I'd got no clothes. Well you'd 'a' 
 thought that 'ud have made me nervous, uncom- 
 fortable wouldn't yer? It didn't. It made me 
 feel annoyed at first; 'cos while I felt I'd got no 
 clothes on, there 'e was lookin' as though 'e never 
 noticed it." 
 
 Mrs. Rowse was always somewhat complicated 
 in her statements and descriptions. Probably some 
 woman, reading this, will know at once what she 
 meant, and with some man, it may be that half-an- 
 hour afterwards, while he is buttoning or hooking 
 up his wife's dress at the back, he will suddenly 
 give vent to a guffaw. 
 
 Whatever she felt, she took away the breakfast 
 things without another word and left him alone. 
 Then, punctually at eleven, came Jill. 
 
 He heard the sound of footsteps up the stairs 
 and knew, by the sudden chill that followed a jerk 
 in his heart, that they were Jill's. But he could 
 not move to the door. He stood at the other end 
 of the room by his desk and when she knocked, 
 without putting forward a step, he called out: 
 "Come in." 
 
 She entered; closed the door softly behind her, 
 stood there silent a moment while his eyes for the 
 first time narrowed to reality and a searching glance.
 
 292 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 The next moment she was across the room and in 
 his arms crying out: 
 
 "You do love me, don't you? They said you 
 didn't love me. at all; that you were just selfishly 
 trying to get your own pleasure and had no thought 
 of my happiness at all. Say you love me, say it 
 say it do say it now." 
 
 And he said it out of all the deepest purpose of 
 his heart and held her there in his arms for a 
 long while, kissing her cheek, her eyes, her fore- 
 head, her neck, her hair and feeling he could wait 
 for months when life was even greater than then 
 to kiss her lips. 
 
 Still holding her close in his arms, he asked her 
 what more they had said and listened to the im- 
 pression he had made in Prince of Wales's Ter- 
 race. The impression it was of witlessness, of 
 egotism, of insensibility to the feelings of others 
 and all the accepted standards of life. 
 
 "They think you want to marry me because 
 because we're better off and it may help you to 
 get on and be successful with your work." 
 
 He laughed but did not let her go. 
 
 "They think," she went on, "that you're a menace 
 to these are their words to all that's best in 
 English life. They painted for me all the squalor 
 and discomfort of the life I should have with you 
 here because they know how small and incon- 
 venient it is. I told them that." 
 
 "You told them that?" said John. 
 
 "Yes did you mind?" 
 
 "No. I don't mind."
 
 Charles Henry Quirk 6f Co. 293 
 
 "They said I should be miserable in a few months. 
 They more or less said what Father Peake did about 
 children. I knew they'd do that. And of course 
 they think your selfishness in wanting to give me a 
 life like that, is unspeakable. Father stands 
 amazed at it. He says he didn't think men could 
 be " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Oh I forget what word he used." 
 
 "No, you don't." 
 
 "Yes I forget." 
 
 "No you don't, my dear. You don't forget. 
 What word was it?" 
 
 "Such such cads," she whispered, and felt the 
 solidity of ice all through John's body. 
 
 "But I don't care what they say," she went on 
 vehemently. "I don't care. I want love. I must 
 have love!" And she clung so close to him that 
 he felt every line of her body against his own. 
 
 And then, as they stood there, his arms about 
 her, her body one with his, there came the sounds 
 of music out in the street below. It was an old 
 familiar tune a tune as old to John as the carpet 
 with its inkstains, as old as the marks on the wall- 
 paper where pictures had been hung and taken 
 away: 
 
 Come lassies and lads 
 
 Get leave of your dads 
 
 And away to the May-pole high. 
 
 Yet old as it was, there was something new about 
 it that morning which arrested him. Not only was
 
 294 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 it played upon the clarionet. The notes of a violin 
 came mingled with it and made it all strange in 
 his ears. He dropped his arms gently from Jill's 
 shoulders and he went to the window. For an in- 
 stant he knew nothing but surprise and then laughter 
 came to him like a gush of water from a stream 
 that had been dammed. 
 
 There, by the side of the curbstone, standing in 
 the gutter, were Charles Henry Quirk and Matteo 
 Allievi, a united couple in the business of life, 
 amalgamating their efforts to produce the same old 
 tunes for the pleasure or annoyance of their fellow- 
 men. 
 
 Hearing his laughter, Jill was on the moment 
 at his side, holding his arm and looking down into 
 the street below. 
 
 "Poor old Charles Henry," said John, still laugh- 
 ing. "He'll lose all his fineness of distinction now. 
 That Allievi with all the flourish of his bow, is 
 only a charlatan at best. He'll destroy the honest 
 art of Charles Henry. As soon as he finds out 
 where the bread is buttered, he'll take Charles 
 Henry every day to the places where they pay him 
 to go into the next street. Charles Henry won't 
 be playing for his little slaveys on the doorsteps any 
 more. I suppose it's sad but it's damned funny!" 
 
 He looked round at Jill with the laughter still 
 in his eyes and found her face pale and set, as far 
 from laughter as the poles are sundered. 
 
 "They're the men," she said in a breath. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "The men we had lunch with?"
 
 Charles Henry Quirk fef Co. 295 
 
 "Yes, my dear." 
 
 "The men who were going to be witnesses to 
 to our marriage." 
 
 "Yes, I know." 
 
 His throat was dry. With an effort, he mois- 
 tened it. 
 
 "Then they aren't really good musicians. I 
 I thought they played in Queen's Hall places 
 like that I didn't know they played in the gutter." 
 
 John took a deep breath, such a breath as a man 
 must take to keep the courage of his soul when 
 he hears the sentence of death passed upon him. 
 
 He reached down for her hand and led her away 
 from the window. Guiding her gently by her 
 shoulders, he set her down in the chair in which 
 he worked, then stood before her. 
 
 "Jill, my dear," said he in a strange voice. 
 "You've got to listen to every word I say."
 
 Chapter XLV : Goldsmith's Grave 
 
 SHE sat in his chair and listened, sometimes 
 her lip quivering, always her eyes very big 
 and soft with tears that had not gathered 
 weight to fall. 
 
 After that last caress conveyed in the guiding of 
 her shoulders as he brought her to the chair, John 
 did not touch her again. For the first few moments 
 he stood with his back to the fire-place, never mov- 
 ing and with his eyes fixed straight before him as 
 he talked. Later he came away from that place 
 and walked up and down the room as words came 
 more easily to be said. 
 
 "All that your father and mother told you yes- 
 terday after I'd gone everything they said sounded 
 cruel, unsympathetic, unjust, didn't it?" This was 
 how he began, standing there by the fire-place. 
 
 She just inclined her head. 
 
 "And it's hard to see the reason and the com- 
 mon-sense of what people say when you believe them 
 to be cruel and unjust isn't it?" 
 
 Her silence admitted that to be true. 
 
 "But supposing I were to have said it all," he 
 went on. "Not about my being a cad not about 
 my wanting to marry you to improve my position, 
 because that was their cruelty and injustice; that 
 
 296
 
 Goldsmith's Grave 297 
 
 was how they destroyed the force of all their argu- 
 ments. They were cads to have said it and nothing 
 that a cad says sounds true. Supposing I were to 
 have told you that life here with me in three rooms, 
 or wherever we chose to live, would be difficult for 
 you a struggle a beating against head-winds and 
 a heavy tide. Supposing I were to have pointed out 
 that in marrying me, you would have inevitably to 
 take part in that struggle, not in the making of 
 money, but in sharing, cheerfully and with a sense 
 of laughter at life, sharing in the frequent want 
 of it?" 
 
 Suddenly he turned for the first time and looked 
 at her, and had she looked at him she would have 
 seen he had suddenly grown old, a child no longer 
 as he had always seemed, even in his appearance, 
 but an old man. There was not a line in his face 
 to indicate it. It lay in his eyes. They had sud- 
 denly grown tired, and there was that fear in them 
 as in the eyes of one who has a long journey before 
 him and has just found in his heart the doubt that 
 he will ever reach his journey's end. His eyes were 
 gray but now they were the gray of a river in winter 
 that would become solid ice were it not so swift 
 the gray of a river in which snow has melted as it 
 tumbled from the trees. 
 
 "Do you see anything dignified in poverty?" he 
 asked her with a sudden directness. 
 
 Her eyes grew puzzled as she stared before her. 
 
 "Dignified? It's such a funny word," said she. 
 
 "Oh all right. Well, then, do you see any 
 laughter in poverty the humor of it the fun and
 
 298 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 the adventure of your wriggling out and scraping 
 through; of having streets with mad dogs in them 
 and being compelled to walk half a mile out of 
 your way to avoid them and get home?" 
 
 "Mad' dogs?" 
 
 "Yes bills." 
 
 "I see I didn't realize what you meant." 
 
 "Well, do you see any fun, any adventure in that 
 do you see anything to laugh at at all?" 
 
 "Not to laugh at, John you don't mean to 
 laugh at. I'm sure I could stand it all right for 
 a bit. But then I believe you're going to get on. 
 You're going to make money. You've said so your- 
 self. We shouldn't be poor for long. I know I 
 shouldn't whine about it, but I don't see how I could 
 laugh." 
 
 It was then John began walking up and down 
 the room, backwards and forwards as though some- 
 thing were at his heels in pursuit of him. 
 
 "Supposing I told you you couldn't get through 
 life without laughter? Supposing I said life were 
 a long journey, if you saw all the way without a 
 turn in the road, and that laughter was the water 
 in the leather bottle slung round your shoulder to 
 moisten your lips when they were parched with 
 thirst, to clear your eyes, to cool your heart when 
 it felt burning and dry. Supposing I said, if you 
 and I don't set out with laughter in our hearts 
 we should die? Would you hesitate then? Would 
 you begin to believe that what your people said 
 was right, only they said it the wrong way?" 
 
 She did not answer. Her lips quivered. She
 
 Goldsmith's Grave 299 
 
 pulled out her handkerchief and knowing that once 
 she began to cry she would cry till her heart broke, 
 she put her handkerchief back again. It seemed 
 she had come of a sudden upon a need for pride. 
 What she had wanted from John was help, strength, 
 courage to go through with all, which despite their 
 cruelty, and injustice, her parents had shown her 
 to be the most difficult moments of her life. He 
 seemed to be giving her none of these. And with 
 all he said, it seemed more difficult than it had been 
 before. 
 
 It was not only what he was saying, but the 
 strange distance that had come in his voice as 
 though he had lost sympathy and did not realize 
 all she had been willing to face for his sake. For 
 it was not a little. The losing of her friends well, 
 perhaps her real friends might still wish to see her, 
 but such friends were few; the discomforts which 
 he had acknowledged her father was right in point- 
 ing out, these were all sacrifices he seemed to have 
 lost sight of, yet was increasing her consciousness 
 of the fact that she was making them. 
 
 For it was not as though they were new to her. 
 That day when they went to the Zoo, she had be- 
 lieved those sacrifices to be unmakable. Then love 
 had persuaded her to courage and she had been 
 prepared to face anything for love. It was love 
 she needed, and she did not want to think of it in 
 any light but that of the very brightest. Had she 
 seen inside John's mind as he stood outside the 
 prison at Holloway, had she heard his laughter at 
 the thought that the marble walls of the Alcazar
 
 30O World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 Restaurant were conceived to give people the im- 
 pression they had had a good meal, that the silk 
 and the brocade in the theaters were intended to 
 make them feel comfortable in their bodies when 
 their minds were discomfited by a foolish play, 
 had she realized his mind then, she still would 
 have been unable to associate its ideas with this 
 desire in her heart to set love in the brightest light 
 in order to make it seem what she believed of it. 
 
 Upon a pedestal she had set love, as most girls 
 do; and about that pedestal she had built a bower 
 of roses to fence it off from life. Love was a 
 dream world to her, a place of magic happenings, 
 of fountains playing in the sun, of fairy glens and 
 mid-summer night's ecstasy. Love was a prince in 
 armor with a sword forever drawn to assail the 
 slightest sadness that threatened her. She could 
 not see Love in an ordinary pair of trousers that 
 life had frayed, carrying only on rarest occasions 
 an umbrella that had been bought for half-a- 
 crown at a lost property sale. 
 
 Had not John written himself: 
 
 But you and I will find earth's quiet places 
 
 Make Life a woodland freshet where the mosses grow. 
 
 That was what she wanted and, in wanting it 
 in reality, had taken it for its beauty as literally 
 as her father had done for its folly. 
 
 John had shown her love. Why then was he 
 saying all this? Why was he not keeping love be- 
 fore her eyes to give her courage when her heart 
 was failing?
 
 Goldsmith's Grave 301 
 
 She looked down on the ground in her distress 
 and saw John's feet as he stood beside her and 
 saw the frayed ends of his trousers. As her eye 
 traveled up, in a sudden wonder to look at his 
 face, she noticed the unlinked cuffs of his shirt 
 sleeve. And then his face when, fight as she would 
 against the thought of it, she found for the first 
 time in all the times they had met, that it looked 
 poor. It was beyond all power of her understand- 
 ing in the stress of those moments, to realize that 
 poverty was pain. She did not know he was suf- 
 fering. She could only think how much she was 
 suffering herself at this fear of losing love. 
 
 So came Jill, round her corner of life into the 
 World of Wonderful Reality, and the first glimpse 
 of it set a chill with iron fingers close about her 
 heart. 
 
 When she gave no answer to his questions, John 
 began walking the room again, still speaking from 
 his distance, still hurting her with every word he 
 said when, in those moments, his heart to hers had 
 never been so close. 
 
 "Love," he said, almost as though he guessed 
 what had been passing in her mind, "love is won- 
 der, as well as beauty, and it has as much of pain 
 in it as it has of pleasure. It isn't a thing that 
 only carries people through the happy places. 
 Much more is it a spirit that bears you through 
 the dark forests and the silent wilderness. It's a 
 thing to face life with, to make life with, more 
 than to enjoy life with. You walk with it through 
 the open country, but it's most wonderful of all
 
 302 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 when it can take you down gutters with a happy 
 heart. Love's realized in some human being, it's 
 not a symbol, a thing in itself. You can think about 
 love and dream about love and imagine all that it 
 is but nothing do you know of love at all till it 
 comes to you in the mind and the body and the 
 soul of just one person in whom you recognize it." 
 
 Suddenly he came up to her side and, almost to 
 her surprise, dropped on his knees by her chair. 
 
 "Do you love me like that?" he asked with a 
 quick breath. 
 
 She tried to answer him yes but the word, un- 
 qualified, would not come alone. 
 
 "Of course I do," she said slowly, "but you're 
 speaking so differently to-day. You've never talked 
 like this before. You've always made love and 
 life out to be so full of beauty. That's how 
 how you've made me believe in it before anything 
 else. Now you talk of it in gutters, a thing of 
 pain as much as pleasure. Almost you make me 
 afraid of it really you do. And we've come to 
 no decision. I thought you were going to help me 
 to put away the impression of what they said and 
 you haven't helped me in the least. I feel almost 
 alone now, and I've got to go. They'll guess I'm 
 here if I stay any longer. I must go." 
 
 She rose to her feet and as she turned to the 
 door, the tears gathered the fullness of their weight 
 and tumbled down her cheeks. 
 
 "Which way are you going?" he asked. 
 
 "Underground from Temple Station."
 
 Goldsmith's Grave 303 
 
 He said he would walk with her there and they 
 went down the stairs together. 
 
 All down Fetter Lane, they never spoke. He 
 felt he could say no more than he had said. She 
 felt she could hear no more. 
 
 Turning in by Inner Temple Gate, they walked 
 down towards the Church, feeling it was a stream 
 in flood that bore them and bore them on to the 
 swirling waters of the whirlpool of life. As they 
 passed the turning of Dr. Johnson's Buildings, John 
 stretched out his hand to catch a branch, just for 
 an instant to stay the rush of their passage, in the 
 broil of the waters. 
 
 "Just come along for a moment to Goldsmith's 
 Grave," said he and, wondering, she went with him. 
 
 Beside that gray grave stone that lies in the 
 gravel, he took her hand and made her eyes look 
 to his. 
 
 "You think I've talked differently to-day," said 
 he quietly. "Perhaps I have. I've talked with 
 more love in my heart and more understanding of 
 it than ever I've had in my life before. I'll guard 
 and keep you through everything but I can't keep 
 you out of the gutters or the dark forests, or the 
 sad places of life. If ever you need to know or to 
 remember what love is, come back here to Gold- 
 smith's Grave and think of that. No man can keep 
 you out of the sad places only with his love, he 
 can keep you through everything in the world. 
 And that's what I'm here for if you'll believe in 
 me. That's more than half of what love is be-
 
 304 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 lief. The woman who believes the best of her man, 
 gets the best out of him. If you believe in me, love 
 will bring us through the meanest streets." 
 
 She looked as though her heart were breaking 
 and then they turned away. 
 
 At the steps down to the Underground, she held 
 his hand an instant. 
 
 "I know you love me in your way," she said, and 
 then she was gone. A few steps, a mingling with 
 a mass of people and he could see her no more.
 
 Chapter XLVI: An Exercise in Mental 
 Occupation 
 
 THAT morning's shopping in Holborn, no less 
 than the game of being a millionaire in 
 Bond Street, had revived memories in 
 Amber's mind she found herself unable to set at 
 rest. 
 
 Never had she made herself so busy about the 
 house in Hogarth Road. A sudden conviction that 
 all the china wanted cleaning seized hold upon her, 
 whereupon she found basin, warm water and an old 
 nail-brush and set to work, seated on the floor sur- 
 rounded by mountains of china, the skin of her 
 fingers wrinkling more and more like a washer- 
 woman's, and singing her whole vast repertoire of 
 snatches till her mother gazed at her in amazement. 
 
 "You seem to have got something to make you 
 full of life," said she. 
 
 "P'raps I have," said Amber and scrubbed 
 harder than ever with the nail-brush in the crevices. 
 
 But those memories were not to be hidden away 
 by soap-lather, the voice of them was not to be 
 drowned by her singing. And the key that ad- 
 mitted them back again into her heart was that poem 
 of parting she had found on John's desk. Again 
 and again as she slammed the doors of recollection,
 
 306 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 some demon of mischief or revenge slipped the key 
 into the lock, turned it and the door swung open 
 again. 
 
 When the china was done, she cleaned brass. 
 When that was done, she sat down and played the 
 piano, the few odd things she knew. The execution 
 of music was not a thing she had any heart for. 
 Her songs were not music. They were more the 
 patter of her mind. But playing the piano in 
 those moments was something to do and when that 
 had become an occupation no longer, she thrust a 
 hat on her head and went out. 
 
 Involuntarily she found herself going East. She 
 was not going to see John. That, in the midst of 
 confusion, was the one clear thing in her mind. She 
 was not going to see John. To begin with she had 
 not so much as twopence for a bus and certainly 
 she was not going to walk all that way to Fetter 
 Lane. 
 
 If there was one thing in life she hated more than 
 another, it was making a fool of herself. And a 
 fool she certainly would be to seek John out when 
 aiow she knew so well how much his heart and mind 
 were understood and satisfied by Jill. 
 
 "He's a bit of a poet," she said aloud to herself 
 as she walked, "and Lord knows, I could never 
 understand a poet. They must be a bit daft, and if 
 there's one thing I am, it is sane. I am sane." 
 
 Seeing a man coming towards her, she dropped 
 her voice to silence and felt annoyed with him for 
 his interruption. As soon as he had passed, she 
 went on again.
 
 An Exercise in Mental Occupation 307 
 
 "I wonder if he's really worth understanding?" 
 she said. It was a new thought and had never 
 occurred to her before. "I suppose a man can 
 write, like he does, without having much in him. 
 I wonder if what he writes is really good. But why 
 should writing, or painting or anything, make a man 
 different from others? I can't see why it should. 
 It's only because he sits down and thinks a lot of 
 things and then puts them on paper. He's clever, 
 of course, but so are doctors and so are barristers 
 and people like that. They don't go about wanting 
 to be understood. They just fall in love in the 
 ordinary sort of way and I suppose they've got 
 ideas too, but they don't make a fuss about them. 
 John does make a fuss about his ideas and his 
 understanding. I must say that. He talks an 
 awful lot and then of course he's fool enough to 
 do what he says. And he doesn't always do that. 
 But thank God! he can laugh when he likes. He 
 can have a bit of fun when he isn't in a mood." 
 
 She stopped. This talking, like the washing of 
 the china and the cleaning of the brass, was leading 
 to no good. It had started splendidly. She was 
 beginning to believe there was little sentiment left 
 in her heart about John at all, and then suddenly, 
 open swung the door of recollection once more, and 
 she was welcoming memories of days when they 
 had laughed together, as at the Rest House when 
 they had told them they ought to be Friends. 
 
 It was just that game of being a millionaire that 
 had done it. It was when he was Tike that, she 
 thought him the best of all possible companions and
 
 308 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 companionship was a good thing to her. Indeed, 
 she asked for little else. It was dearer to her than 
 all the greatest passions in the world. 
 
 Cromwell Road had turned into South Kensing- 
 ton, South Kensington had led in the Bromptor 
 Road. She had one penny and she took a 'bus, and 
 in those days with a penny you could get to Charing 
 Cross. 
 
 The Strand is an amusing thoroughfare. It al- 
 ways was. I suppose it always will be., It mixes 
 the amusements and the business of Life with more 
 ingredients than any other street in London. You 
 know what you may expect in almost every other 
 neighborhood; you know the type of person you 
 are likely to meet. But in the Strand there are 
 people making towards the Law Courts, there are 
 theatrical agents in the by-streets and publishers 
 grow like currents on a bush. It is the approach 
 to Fleet Street and the newspaper world and in 
 the midst of it all stands St. Mary-le-Strand, part- 
 ing the tide of Commerce and cherishing her quiet 
 memories of the days when she stood in the peace 
 and reverence of green fields. 
 
 There was enough attraction for anyone and 
 certainly enough to bring Amber along that enticing 
 thoroughfare. She walked from shop window to 
 shop window, always meaning to turn back but 
 always going on. And when she came in sight of 
 the Law Courts there was sudden realization for 
 her of a purpose in having come so far. She would 
 go into one of the courts and listen to a case. 
 
 In less than five minutes, she found herself in
 
 An Exercise in Mental Occupation 309 
 
 a gallery with a few others, listening to a case 
 concerning the right-of-way across a brick field. 
 She got so annoyed at the thought of people spend- 
 ing hundreds of pounds to establish the right to 
 keep the public from a narrow path, one foot wide, 
 across a filthy brick field, that she came out and 
 why she did so, she could not have told, but when 
 she reached the street again, she turned to the left. 
 
 The Law Courts Chancery Lane Fetter Lane. 
 To avoid the last, she turned into the passage and 
 went under the archway that leads to Clifford's 
 Inn. She had always thought of looking round 
 Clifford's Inn and now, in its quiet courts, where 
 she might have expected her mind to find repose, 
 her heart began an importunate thumping once she 
 came alone with her thoughts. The Strand had 
 been too busy to let her think. But thoughts now 
 came hot and swift upon her. 
 
 She wanted to go and see John. She knew now 
 she wanted to go and see him. But she wouldn't go ! 
 She wouldn't go! That she was determined upon. 
 Tramping round Clifford's Inn on those flatworn 
 stones, she saw a gateway and made directly to- 
 wards it. She would not go and see him! She 
 would go straight home from there and, passing 
 hastily through an iron gate-way to wherever it led, 
 she found herself in Fetter Lane.
 
 Chapter XLVII: Jack of Clubs and 
 Queen of Hearts 
 
 IT is no good pretending there is anything hap- 
 hazard about life. Circumstance may have 
 all the appearance of shuffling the cards, but 
 if the Jack of Clubs is to lie next to the Queen 
 of Hearts, the hand of circumstance may shuffle for 
 a week of Sundays yet there will he be. Circum- 
 stance may efface the sword he carries, but what- 
 ever it may do, while it sorts the cards out one 
 by one, makes not a ha'porth of difference once the 
 affair is left to Chance and the shuffling has begun. 
 
 With the sternest intentions in the world, Amber 
 walked out of that gate, determined upon going 
 home and found herself in Fetter Lane. Still con- 
 firmed in her resolution, she walked up the Lane, 
 carrying out her purpose of returning by Holborn 
 and just looking up at his windows as she went by. 
 
 So far, so good. Up to this moment, Circum- 
 stance had had the control of everything. She was 
 going home. She did no more than look at those 
 two windows on the first floor as she went by. Just 
 the snap in her mind had passed when she might 
 have gone in and had flogged her will to go on 
 and then the shuffling of the cards gave liberty to 
 the sport of Chance. 
 
 310
 
 Jack of Clubs and Queen of Hearts 311 
 
 At the instant of going by, when, so far as Amber 
 was concerned, the matter was settled, Mrs. Rowse 
 came out of the side door with a bag on her arm 
 to do her bit of shopping. 
 
 At any other time, she might have just nodded 
 her head with a smile and gone on. At any other 
 time she might never have noticed Amber at all. 
 Now, not only did she see her, she nodded her 
 head and smiled in a beckoning way and, without a 
 moment's consideration, made to come across the 
 road. 
 
 Amber stopped. Could she have done other- 
 wise? 
 
 "I don't know what's the matter with Mr. Grey, 
 Miss," she began, directly she had reached Amber's 
 side. "But something's the matter with him. I've 
 been workin' for 'im now goin' on four years and 
 a married woman with children of 'er own gets 
 fond of a man you know what I mean if Vs a 
 nice gentleman to work for. And Vs always been 
 so jolly. If you asked me what 'e did most of 'is 
 day, I'd say laughin' and teasin' that's what I'd 
 say. Of course, that's 'ow I sees 'im, me doin' a 
 bit o' dustin' and gettin' 'is tea of a mornin' and 
 makin' 'is bed." 
 
 "Then what's the matter with him now?" asked 
 Amber, despairing at last of ever getting the facts 
 of the case. 
 
 "What's the matter? He's sittin' *p there in his 
 room, cryin' 'is eyes out. Not lettin* me see, mind 
 you. 'E wouldn't let me see for nothin'. Pretends 
 Vs blowin' 'is nose and all that sort o' nonsense.
 
 312 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 But I know well enough. He's 'ad a letter this 
 mornin' that's upset 'im. That's what it is. Gen- 
 erally he cuts 'is letters open with a knife. This 
 one 'e tore open with 'is fingers. I don't know 
 what it is. But while I was makin' 'is bed I 'card 
 'im in the sittin' room. He must V been cryin' 
 then, 'cos 'e made that noise like an animal you 
 know a sort of moan and a grunt mixed, like men 
 do when they're cryin' like as if they'd forgotten 
 'ow to cry and was ashamed of the silly mess they 
 was makin' of it." 
 
 That was enough for Amber. She was across 
 the street and in through the door and up those 
 uncarpeted stairs in a minute. 
 
 She knocked at the door, but that was about all 
 she did. Hardly waiting to hear his smothered 
 growl of ^"come in" she entered. 
 
 There he was, as she might have imagined he 
 would be from Mrs. Rowse's description, seated 
 in his chair staring with resentment at the door to 
 see who ever the intruder might be. When he saw 
 it was Amber he shrank into himself as one who 
 is fearful of being found out. 
 
 She came straight across the room to his side. 
 Down 'on the floor by the chair she knelt, just as 
 he had done with Jill the day before and straight 
 out, without a moment's pause, she asked him what 
 was the matter. 
 
 "How do you know there's anything the matter?" 
 he growled at her. 
 
 She declared she was no fool. She lied that she
 
 Jack of Clubs and Queen of Hearts 313 
 
 had just turned in by accident to see him. She added 
 she had the capacity of sight as much as anyone. 
 
 "What is it?" she demanded, for if he could 
 growl at her, then assuredly she could bark at him. 
 
 He looked her straight in the eyes and he made 
 the face he always put on when he was prepared 
 to show he was as strong as a lion while emotion 
 was making him feel as helpless as a child and he 
 said: 
 
 "It's all over, my dear. That's what's the mat- 
 ter. Not love I don't mean that but all the rest 
 * it's all over. Her people have interfered 
 quite rightly too I'm sure. They're a different 
 
 class they're a " He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "They've interfered." He thought it best to stop 
 there. 
 
 But it was not sufficient for Amber. 
 
 "Still that hasn't anything to do with her," said 
 she. "She's free. She's over twenty-one, isn't she? 
 What's she say to it all?" 
 
 He just handed her a letter and in a glance 
 Amber read it through: 
 
 "My dear believe me I shall always Icve you but I sup- 
 pose after all they're right. God bless you Jill." 
 
 She handed it back in silence and looked into his 
 face. 
 
 He smiled and then he laughed and then he 
 stared and stared at her and as he stared the tears 
 swam in his eyes, and flowing over, pelted in a 
 torrent down his cheeks.
 
 314 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 "Now you've seen a man make an ass of him- 
 self," said he and jumping up from his chair, he 
 strode into his bedroom and shut the door. 
 
 For a while she waited, standing in the middle 
 of the room, patiently, helplessly. Patient at last 
 no longer and chafing against that helplessness, she 
 went to his door and knocked. 
 
 "Is there anything I can do, John?" 
 
 He came at once to the door, opened it, entered 
 the room again and took her hand. Something had 
 happened to him in there. All signs of tears were 
 gone. There was a wild look in his eyes, but his 
 voice was steady and firm. 
 
 "I don't believe it," he said. "Love doesn't end 
 like that. I don't believe it. They've bullied her 
 into writing that letter. But she doesn't think 
 they're right. One day she'll knock on that door 
 and I shall hear her calling to come in. Love 
 doesn't end like that." 
 
 He pressed her hand and a smile, she knew he 
 thought to be full of real conviction, spread over 
 his face. She answered that pressure and turned 
 away. There was more sadness in that convincingly 
 happy smile than she could bear to witness. 
 
 "If it matters at all if you care to," she said, 
 "let me know what happens," and she hurried 
 away.
 
 Chapter XLVIII : The Sound of Pennies 
 
 IT is the little issues of Life that bring their 
 fret of doubt. When the issue is great 
 enough, doubt has no place or meaning. 
 
 Once he had recovered from the first shock of 
 that letter from Jill, John came back to the whole- 
 hearted impulse of his belief. A negative condition 
 of doubt was impossible. One thing he must think, 
 or the other. There was no half-way house. Half 
 the way was a distance, of the length of which his 
 heart knew no measure. 
 
 They had coerced her into writing that letter. 
 In that prison of Prince of Wales's Terrace, with 
 its pretentious surroundings of wealth, as preten- 
 tious as the castellated turrets, the towers and 
 bastions of Holloway jail, they had tortured her 
 mind to send that message. 
 
 It was not that he believed in himself, but be- 
 cause he believed in love and in no half-hearted 
 fashion, that he made so sure of his conviction. 
 
 A week went by, a week of silence and, with his 
 eyes growing harder and harder as they looked 
 out upon life with each fresh day, he held to the
 
 316 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 truth love had brought him. She cared more for 
 love than the possessions and expediencies of life. 
 They might continue to torture her, but in the end 
 they would see they were torturing her life away 
 and they would have to give in. 
 
 All that time Mrs. Rowse did not know what 
 to make of him. He put the fear of God into 
 her, she said, for there was the same look in his 
 eyes as when she felt she had not a stitch to her 
 back and it was distressing, day after day, to come 
 in and out of those rooms in that uncomfortable 
 condition. 
 
 At the end of the week she was on the point of 
 giving him notice. Except in making answer to a 
 direct question, he had said no word to her for 
 seven days. 
 
 It was more than a body could endure, she in- 
 formed her husband, and upon being told what a 
 fool she was to take any notice of him beyond 
 doing her work, she decided to bear it for another 
 week. 
 
 But the first day of the second week, there was 
 another letter opened as the first had been with a 
 slashing finger. Then she knew that something had 
 happened, because he had changed into his best 
 clothes and in five minutes had been singing at the 
 top of his voice there in the bedroom. 
 
 Jill had written, saying: "You must come and 
 see me here father wants to see you, too. Come 
 at once after you get this." 
 
 He took a hansom all the way and gave the 
 cabman four shillings.
 
 The Sound of Pennies 317 
 
 Of course it would come. It had to come. He 
 knew it would come. The sound of the old horse's 
 hoofs as they rattled along, played all the tunes he 
 had in his head. 
 
 He was shown into that same room at the end 
 of the hall. This time there was but one person 
 in it. It was Jill. The instant the door had closed, 
 she was in his arms. 
 
 What she said was almost incoherent to him. It 
 was love in all the confusion of words with which 
 she could express it. She begged him to forgive 
 her for that letter she had written and did not 
 wait for the expression of forgiveness, but clung to 
 him and kissed. 
 
 Suddenly then she held him at arm's length and 
 said: 
 
 "Do you know what's happened?" 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 "Poor Mr. Skipwith's died and left all his money 
 to me. Think of it! I'm rich. We shall never 
 be poor again!" 
 
 Before he could answer; before he could disen- 
 tangle one thought out of the confusion of sensa- 
 tions that heaped themselves upon him, the door 
 had opened and Mr. Dealtry had entered. 
 
 He came forward with a certain reserved genial- 
 ity. He held out his hand as though opening the 
 preliminaries of an interview in which, were he 
 satisfied, he was prepared to give John a respon- 
 sible post in a vast concern to which a really 
 excellent salary was attached. 
 
 "I've no doubt this was unexpected for you, Mr.
 
 3l8 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 Grey," he said, "but perhaps Jill has told you 
 already." 
 
 He spoke as though the interview which had 
 taken place between them in that very room had 
 never occurred. Feeling that atmosphere again, it 
 was vibrating in John's memory. Mr. Dealtry ap- 
 peared to have entirely inhibited it from his mind. 
 
 "Jill has just told me she has been left some 
 money," he replied, and not only the expression on 
 his face but the tone of his voice were almost 
 comical in their bewilderment. 
 
 "One hundred thousand pounds," said Mr. Deal- 
 try, as though he were announcing the capital funds 
 of that vast concern in which it was his intention 
 to offer John a post of responsibility. 
 
 "Yes, one hundred thousand pounds we calculate 
 it when the death duties are paid. Quite a nice little 
 
 sum. My poor friend Skipwith " his voice 
 
 dropped to the appropriate tone. It was like an 
 undertaker removing the sad tie of private life and 
 putting on the crepe of commerce. "My poor 
 friend Skipwith died very suddenly. I hardly real- 
 ize it myself yet. He was an old friend of mine 
 many years' standing we were at Eton and Oxford 
 together the best of friends and it affects me more 
 deeply than I like to say when I find this expression 
 of his regard for Jill which in some measure, I know, 
 throws light upon the friendship he felt for me. 
 However, let's put that aside for the present those 
 are my own private feelings and expression makes 
 them neither deeper nor easier to bear." 
 
 His voice changed.
 
 The Sound of Pennies 319 
 
 "We sent for you, Mr. Grey, because well to 
 put it bluntly, Jill has a power now she did not 
 possess before, to demand consideration." 
 
 The funeral was over. Mr. Skipwith was de- 
 cently interred in the cemetery of proper considera- 
 tion. The crepe of commerce could be put aside. 
 Almost with relief, the undertaker donned once 
 more the red tie of his emphatic satisfaction with 
 life. 
 
 "Apart from all silly sentiment, we know Jill is 
 in love with you. She's told us so. Indeed, the 
 fact that she even wished to marry you when she 
 had this excellent offer of marriage from my friend 
 you know he had asked her of course proves 
 conclusively how earnest her affection must have 
 been. I don't want to talk platitudes, but a girl 
 must be very what shall I say overcome, if for 
 the sake of a romantic idea, she could refuse an 
 excellent fellow and five thousand a year. How- 
 ever, fortune has not deserted her, and believing 
 that her happiness does lie with you, we sent for 
 you to say that we have no objection now, so long 
 as you will adopt just a little different standpoint in 
 your views of life. Won't you sit down?" 
 
 John sat down and Jill, beside him, slipped her 
 hand into his. 
 
 "I want to say, first of all, that I've read that 
 poem of yours again and in a different light for 
 circumstance does change the lighting, doesn't it? 
 I much better appreciate its merits now. I'm not 
 given to over-praise, Mr. Grey, but in the last few 
 days some things you have written have been a
 
 320 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 help to me in this bereavement. I've been reading 
 some of your work, some that Jill had in her book- 
 shelves, and I find a lot of, shall we say, feeling 
 genuine feeling in them. I believe you will get on." 
 
 He paused. To have said this of any man was 
 a prophetic pronouncement. He gave the words 
 the full value of the silence that followed them, and 
 then he continued: 
 
 "Novelists now-a-days," he said, "unlike they 
 were in the days of Johnson and Goldsmith and 
 wasn't there a man called Sterne? Unlike them, 
 novelists have come into Society. They don't have 
 to sit on the doorstep of a patron. I've met novel- 
 ists, writers, men like yourself, at Stafford House 
 and the Lord Mayor's banquet. Well that's get- 
 ting on. It's not the sort of socialistic stuff you 
 talked when you were here before. That, I want 
 to tell you frankly, is what we're afraid of. There 
 are still writers in this country who, metaphorically, 
 have a sort of distaste for a clean shirt. They don't 
 want to get on. They don't affect the clean linen 
 of society. Now I am a believer in the social at- 
 mosphere. I hold that as one enters the world, 
 the class in which one finds oneself constitutes a duty 
 to the individual to keep in that class." 
 
 For the first time John spoke. 
 
 "You don't believe in bettering yourself?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "Bettering oneself why certainly. r A good 
 many novelists and quite a lot of actors have been 
 knighted. Bettering oneself? Why, of course. It 
 gives me hope to hear you say that. Bettering one-
 
 The Sound of Pennies 321 
 
 self, certainly, but never falling into a lower class. 
 At present, living where you do, I know you won't 
 think it snobbish of me to say that your environment 
 is scarcely that to which Jill has been accustomed. 
 She has lived here in Prince of Wales's Terrace and, 
 no doubt now with the money she has, will be able 
 to afford a still better address. I will honestly 
 admit, Mr. Grey, that even when Jill knew she 
 was coming into this money, I did not favor you 
 at all as her husband. Money is not everything. 
 It can't make a man what he is not. But when I 
 read that poem of yours again and, as I have told 
 you, some of the books you have written, I saw 
 that there were potentialities in your work, that 
 you had something in you, that in time, with the 
 encouragement of a successful marriage, you might 
 even become one of those novelists who have won a 
 knighthood for themselves. Now-a-days, I know, a 
 knighthood does not mean much, but it does give a 
 distinction, a recognition in the artistic world where 
 I believe, so far as the herald's office goes, all 
 writers, actors, and musicians are still classed as 
 vagabonds. That of course is ridiculous. But the 
 old laws prevail. You mayn't shoot conies in 
 Regent Street, you know. Ha! Ha! Ha! Didn't 
 know that I expect did you? No you mayn't 
 shoot conies in Regent Street! Well I hope I 
 shall never be in such need of a meal as to feel 
 the temptation of breaking the law." 
 
 He laughed again and Jill laughed. Her laugh 
 grew chill as she stole a glance at John. Mr. 
 Dealtry noticed nothing. He had never, with so
 
 322 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 delicate a subject before him, spoken better in his 
 Jife. He was anxious to continue. 
 
 "I am sure now," said he, "you see more or less 
 what I am aiming at. Candidly you frightened 
 us, my wife and myself, when you were here the 
 other day, and when first Jill said that now she 
 had money of her own and could marry whom she 
 liked, we were a little bit afraid until she assured us 
 she was certain you would see things in a different 
 light when there was plenty of money for you to 
 live upon in comfort." 
 
 "You said that, Jill?" asked John quietly. 
 
 "Yes yes. I said I knew it was only because 
 you had to put up with poverty that you talked 
 about the dignity and the humor of it. I know 
 that's how you've helped yourself to get through. 
 I know you like pretty things and comfortable things 
 as well as anyone and that now we've got all this 
 money, you'll you'll not want to choose your 
 friends amongst well the sort of people in Fetter 
 Lane." 
 
 "Like Charles Henry Quirk," said John. 
 
 "Yes and the other man." 
 
 "Who, might I ask, is Charles Henry Quirk?" 
 inquired Mr. Dealtry with interest. 
 
 "Charles Henry Quirk," replied John, "is a 
 clarionet-player. He plays in the street outside my 
 windows every Friday morning." 
 
 "A friend of yours?" repeated Mr. Dealtry, not 
 quite sure of what he had heard. 
 
 "Yes, a friend of mine: a man with so fine a 
 distinction between the joy of his work and the re-
 
 The Sound of Pennies 323 
 
 numeration for it, that he prefers to make a servant 
 girl cleaning a doorstep sing 'Sally in our Alley' 
 without any profit to himself, to playing outside the 
 houses of the rich where they pay him well to go 
 into the next street." 
 
 Mr. Dealtry overcame his astonishment with 
 laughter. Suddenly he threw back his head and 
 laughed. 
 
 "Ah, copy, Mr. Grey! Isn't that what you call 
 it? Copy!" 
 
 "No, I said friendship," replied John. "He 
 plays outside my window, certainly but if I lived 
 in Park instead of Fetter Lane, there would always 
 be mornings when I should ask him to come up- 
 stairs. He wouldn't take advantage of it." 
 
 Mr. Dealtry dismissed the laughter from his face. 
 
 "Yes," he interrupted, "I'm glad you've said this. 
 This is just the kind of thing I mean just the kind 
 of thing we're afraid of. If you marry my daughter, 
 Mr. Grey, you'll have to drop all acquaintances of 
 that character." 
 
 "I should," said John. "I should drop them 
 automatically. In the places where people live with 
 an income of five thousand a year, the Charles 
 Henry Quirks never make an appearance. I'm not 
 dogmatic about it. I shouldn't purposely go down 
 to Fetter Lane to bring Mr. Quirk back to dinner 
 in my house in Kensington." 
 
 "Your house? Well. You mean Jill's and 
 yours." 
 
 "Yes. I mean ours." 
 
 "Oh, well, that's all right. Believe me, Mr. Grey,
 
 324 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 I'm being intensely sympathetic very tolerant 
 very open-minded. As you can imagine, with this 
 money, my daughter could make an excellent match, 
 yet if I find that you are willing to adopt our views 
 of life, I can, seeing that she is in love with you, 
 raise no objections no drastic objections to her 
 marrying you." 
 
 John dropped Jill's hand and sat up in his chair. 
 
 "What exactly do you mean by your views of 
 life? It seems to me vital I should know what 
 they are before I adopt them." 
 
 Mr. Dealtry thrust his hands deep into his 
 pockets. It was beginning to occur to him that this 
 young man was not showing the spirit of apprecia- 
 tion due to the situation. Fortune had never come 
 his way to the extent in which it was being flung 
 at this young man's feet. His wife had not brought 
 him five thousand a year, or five hundred. The 
 whole affair and John's attitude into the bargain 
 seemed to savor to him of the domestic servant as 
 she had become; the domestic servant who wants 
 first to know whether the place is going to suit her, 
 not she the place. He began to persuade himself 
 that what John was exhibiting was damned im- 
 pertinence. After all he was nothing better than 
 an artist. His was not a situation in life where a 
 man could pick and choose. 
 
 "While you're inquiring into our views of life," 
 he said with great restraint, "I hope you won't 
 overlook the fact that in marrying my daughter, 
 you will find an entrance to a world very useful to
 
 The Sound of Pennies 325 
 
 you in the selling of your books. You will give 
 dinner parties and in turn be entertained, and all 
 amongst a class of people essential to your success. 
 You want to sell your books, I'm sure. The sale 
 of your books, when it goes up, must be a cause for 
 considerable gratification in your mind. All this I 
 hope you won't overlook when you set yourself up 
 to ask what our view of life may be." 
 
 "No I won't overlook it," said John slowly. 
 "How could I? It's partly an expression of your 
 point of view. It's the very kind of thing I'm ask- 
 ing for information about. You don't really expect 
 me to adopt your outlook on life without question, 
 do you?" 
 
 Jill quietly took his hand. The underlying strain 
 of the conversation was becoming apparent, more 
 in the quietness of their voices than in what they 
 said. 
 
 "John," she said, "father only means that if you 
 have the benefit of the money which I'm so glad 
 and willing that you should, you will give up your 
 present habits of life this sort of Bohemianism. 
 He only means that you should consider appearances 
 more. You may not like society people, in fact 
 I know you don't. I've often heard you talk about 
 them. But when we're married, it's only right to 
 me that you should appear to get on with them. 
 We shall have to entertain, of course. It would 
 be ridiculous having all this money if we didn't. 
 There's no need for people to think we're poor when 
 we're not. You needn't make your friends amongst
 
 326 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 them. Of course, I couldn't have men like Mr. 
 Quirk to the house, though he's very genuine and 
 kind, I'm sure." 
 
 "I beg pardon, Jill," interrupted Mr. Dealtry, 
 "but you haven't met this man who plays a clarionet 
 in the street?" 
 
 She was taken by surprise. Her glance at John 
 confessed it. 
 
 "Where did you meet him?" 
 
 "At lunch." 
 
 "At lunch! Having a meal with the man! 
 Where was this meal?" 
 
 "Wrigglesworth's." 
 
 "Wrigglesworth's I Where's that?" 
 
 John intervened. 
 
 "It's a little eating-house off Holborn," said he. 
 
 "And you invited my daughter to meet a street 
 musician in a little eating-house off Holborn?" 
 
 "I did." 
 
 "Well, Mr. Grey, I think we'd better come to 
 plain speaking. If you're going to marry my 
 daughter, you'll have to behave like a gentleman. 
 That's what all this conversation amounts to. 
 You're getting a fortune with her which, if you'll 
 excuse me saying so after what I've just heard, 
 seems to be a slice of luck you scarcely deserve. 
 Some people are born lucky and I expect you must 
 be. Here you'll have a wife with five thousand 
 a year and such a home as I dare say I'm right in 
 saying you could never have got by your own exer- 
 tions. Without a stroke of work for it, you'll be
 
 The Sound of Pennies 327 
 
 able to go about with everybody thinking you're a 
 rich man." 
 
 All through this speech, the gray look of winter 
 had been coming back into John's eyes. He did 
 not respond in anger to the suggestion that he was 
 not a gentleman. It needed, he felt, a gentleman 
 to make that suggestion hurt. What had happened 
 was that between them both, Mr. Dealtry by what he 
 had said, Jill as much by her silence, they had killed 
 his belief. Love did end like this with a frayed 
 and ragged edge a bedraggled thing one could not 
 recognize for the dainty garment it once had been. 
 Both of them, they were dragging it through the 
 mud before his eyes. 
 
 "I just want to say this," said he quietly. "It's 
 Jill I've wanted not the advantages she could 
 bring me. I hate her money. I couldn't give her 
 anything in return for that. You've made it so 
 plain to me that it stands out to you above every- 
 thing it's the commanding factor in this discussion. 
 We began with it. We end with it. One hundred 
 thousand pounds. Now it's yours, you believe it 
 can buy everything." 
 
 He turned to Jill. 
 
 "You believe it can pay for love, my dear. When 
 you wrote that letter the other day, I never thought 
 it came from your heart. I believed pressure had 
 been brought to bear; that you'd been compelled to 
 write it. But the moment you told me you had 
 been left this money and that now we could marry, 
 that was the first moment I felt love turn its back." 
 
 He directed his eyes again to Mr. Dealtry.
 
 328 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 "I've no doubt all this sounds the sheerest folly 
 to you, sir. Money makes your life easy. Accord- 
 ing to you, I should be a lucky man if I married 
 a wife with five thousand a year and, as you say, 
 I ought to make any amount of sacrifices, however 
 sacred to me, to justify and pay for my luck. It's 
 not so much that I think my view of life is the 
 only view or that it's anything wonderful in its way, 
 as that by offering me money for it, you've made 
 me realize how valuable it is to me. I've got an 
 idea about love, that it's beyond a price and in 
 putting a price on it, you have only convinced me 
 the more how much beyond a price it is to me. 
 As I stand here at this moment, I love your 
 daughter but I love her with my nature, not yours. 
 I love her with the thoughts that are worth some- 
 thing to me not the thoughts that are worth some- 
 thing to you. I can't help saying this, but I despise 
 the thoughts and ideas that mean something to you, 
 and were I to adopt them I should have nothing 
 left to love her with." 
 
 "I suppose you want to suggest," said Mr. Deal- 
 try, "that you can only love her in poverty not 
 in wealth, and that being the case I don't think you 
 can wonder at my considerable doubt of your 
 sanity." 
 
 "Well it looks as if I would suggest that 
 doesn't it?" said John. "But I don't. I should 
 have worked hard terrifically hard to make a good 
 income for her had she married me when I was 
 poor. What's more, I should have done it. Love, 
 when you have it, helps you to win. But she
 
 The Sound of Pennies 329 
 
 wouldn't marry me when I was poor. And I don't 
 blame her for that. The thing that's hurt and 
 deadened nearly all the feelings I have is that she 
 has only believed in money to buy us happiness. I 
 know you can't buy it. That's one of the things 
 I know. That's one of the things I believe and I 
 shall go on believing it, even if I make five thou- 
 sand a year myself." 
 
 "Well I don't know that I want to listen any 
 more to this sort of talk," interrupted Mr. Dealtry. 
 "Mr. Grey doubts your affection for him, Jill. I 
 should have thought you had proved it, pretty 
 plainly. Do you want to say anything more?" 
 
 John turned, looking to her to speak. In the long 
 silence that fell about them, she could say nothing. 
 Mr. Dealtry crossed the room and opened the door 
 and, when he had waited beyond the expectant beat- 
 ing of his heart, John walked out. 
 
 Suddenly, standing there then, there came to 
 Jill's mind the remembrance of his story of the 
 black-cap in the Zoo and she realized what he had 
 meant when he said that all his feelings had been 
 hurt and deadened. She had opened the window 
 to his singing and she had thrown down her pennies 
 into the street. 
 
 So she understood it must be the end because, 
 as she watched him passing down the length of the 
 hall, she did not even see how she could have done 
 anything else. 
 
 The hall door closed and Mr. Dealtry turned to
 
 33 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 "Hadn't it ever occurred to you before, my dear, 
 that that young man's a little bit mad?" 
 
 And just as before in that atmosphere they had 
 made her doubt her own sanity, so there leapt upon 
 her then a doubt of John's.
 
 Chapter XLIX : The Rest House 
 
 AIDER waited through the silence of a whole 
 week. On the eighth day, she could bear it 
 no longer. Borrowing twopence from her 
 mother, she took the first 'bus that passed, went 
 down to Holborn, and walked along Fetter Lane. 
 
 It was morning. Mrs. Rowse opened the door 
 when she knocked. The whole room was being 
 done out. It was like an auction sale. The furniture 
 was anyhow. Staring with astonishment into the 
 room, Amber realized in a sub-conscious moment 
 how the atmosphere of a place depended upon its 
 occupation. 
 
 On that other occasion, she had just seen John 
 leave the house. The room had still been warm 
 with the atmosphere of his presence. Now, al- 
 though the same furniture was there, the same 
 carpet, the same curtains on the windows, the spirit 
 of John seemed to have gone. With all its furniture 
 the room was empty. 
 
 On that other occasion, when she felt all she had 
 been unable to give him, an utter despair had fallen 
 across her heart. But now he was adrift. With the 
 chill and emptiness of that room as now she beheld 
 it, there was something she felt in herself she could 
 give wherever he was, if once she could find him. 
 
 331'
 
 332 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 "Gone away?" said she, and saying it did not 
 interrupt her thoughts. 
 
 "Yes, Miss went three days ago." 
 
 "Where to?" 
 
 "Well 'e's left 'is address 'ere 'case there was 
 letters. Said I was to post 'em on." 
 
 She fished out a slip of paper from the confusion 
 on his desk and handed it to Amber. 
 
 "Jordan's Rest House Nr. Beaconsfield." 
 
 She handed it back to Mrs. Rowse, and paused 
 for one instant wondering whether it would be the 
 proper thing to borrow five shillings from John's 
 woman. A sudden recollection of what Mrs. Rowse 
 knew of her financial transactions induced her to 
 think better of it. She just smiled nodded her 
 head and said: "I'll write there. I shall remember 
 it," and was gone. 
 
 Payne and Welcome's was open. She was wear- 
 ing a brooch, not another thing of value had she 
 about her. It was the first present she had received 
 from John, a cheap little ornament. Flight of 
 imagination might have called it jewelry. It had 
 been pawned before. Any day of the week it was 
 worth five shillings. Whenever she put it away, 
 it was with no sense of desecration; rather it was 
 a warm feeling of gratitude to the donor, as though 
 John himself had slipped five, fat shillings into her 
 hand. Receiving them over the pawn-office counter, 
 she had always gone out into the street with a 
 whistle on her lips. 
 
 She took it out of her blouse as she walked into 
 Payne & Welcome's. Five shillings. It had never
 
 The Rest House 333 
 
 been more, but indignantly she had often refused 
 less. 
 
 There was a train at Great Central station that 
 brought her to Beaconsfield within an hour. Then 
 she set out to walk. 
 
 For some reason or other, all the way, she sang. 
 There was no conversation in an audible voice now. 
 Something there was she felt now for her to do; 
 not as before when there was everything to avoid. 
 
 She had never been conscious of anything she 
 could do for John at any other time. It had been 
 a hap-hazard affair, the companionship they had had 
 together. The whole of her life, indeed, had been 
 like a lot of beads, threaded on a string a string 
 of chance. That day she had come to him in Fetter 
 Lane and he had told her about his love for Jill, 
 the string had snapped and since then the beads 
 had been lying about on the floor. 
 
 It seemed to her, as she looked back on it, that 
 ever since, with that sudden realization of their 
 insecurity, she had been on her knees picking them 
 up and yet had nothing on which to re-thread them. 
 
 Now suddenly here was a string. She had no 
 idea what sort of a thread it was, but it was some- 
 thing, a purpose on which to hang her beads; 
 something definite amongst all the things in which 
 she had been inadequate, that she could do. It gave 
 a length to her stride as she walked from Beacons- 
 field station; it made the very ground feel more 
 solid beneath her feet. 
 
 And then, when the Rest House itself came in 
 sight from the bottom of that short turn to the left;
 
 334 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 when she saw the old Meeting-house, settled down 
 there in the keeping of the beech trees and, as she 
 passed the graves of the Quakers lying so restfully 
 in the grass, her heart began a sudden beating. 
 
 John was there. In the stress of his trouble, 
 he had gone there and the utter loneliness of him 
 came the closer to her consciousness when she 
 thought it was the Rest House he had chosen for 
 retreat. 
 
 He was hiding. He was like a dog with a sore 
 paw. He was lying in a corner out of the light and 
 she felt she could see him nursing it, dumb and 
 unable to tell any, but one who had a heart to 
 understand, that it hurt. 
 
 Almost she ran up the hill. Far louder and 
 more imperatively than she meant to, she knocked 
 on the white door. So imperatively did she knock 
 that the little girl's face was scared when the open 
 door revealed her to Amber. 
 
 "Is Mr. Grey in?" she asked. 
 
 It was a warm afternoon. The chances were 
 that he was out somewhere walking, somewhere in 
 a corner out of the light. 
 
 Another bound her heart gave when the little 
 girl said she had seen him only half an hour ago, 
 seated in the sunken wall-garden. 
 
 "Can I go round this way?" asked Amber. 
 
 The little girl nodded her head. 
 
 He was still there. She could see the top of 
 his head as he sat on the lower level by the side 
 of a tiny pool that is sunk in the middle of the
 
 The Rest House 335 
 
 stone slabs where the saxifrage and the clumps of 
 sweet alyssum grow. 
 
 Until she had come down the steps, he did not 
 look up. Evidently it was a last line he was writ- 
 ing. Nothing short of a thunderbolt could have 
 distracted him. She knew that bend of his head. 
 And then she stood in silence, waiting till he had 
 finished. When he raised his head, she saw that 
 he was a man, grown up. Life had driven the child 
 out of him and with the smile of welcome he gave 
 her, she realized that Life had left knowledge in 
 its place. She came and sat beside him on the warm 
 stones. He folded up the paper and looked up into 
 her face. 
 
 "I felt you'd come," said he. 
 
 She nodded her head. 
 
 "Mrs. Rowse told you I was down here." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "How did you manage it?" 
 
 "Pawned your brooch." 
 
 He smiled. 
 
 "What do they give you on it?" 
 
 "Five shillings." 
 
 He nodded his head as though he recognized the 
 quality of the commercial transaction. 
 
 There was a long silence then. He picked a 
 bloom of thrift from a tuft at his side, and with 
 the stalk began to help a water spider over what 
 he imagined was its job on the surface of the pool. 
 
 "You've been writing," she said presently. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "What have you done?"
 
 336 World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 He looked up straight into her eyes as if won- 
 dering for an instant would she understand. Then 
 he handed her the paper. It was verse. What he 
 most wanted to write. Verse at a guinea a time. 
 
 Whatever company I take, 
 
 Whatever highway I am shown, 
 By night-time or at morning-break 
 
 It is my charge to walk alone. 
 
 Whatever friend stretch out his hand, 
 
 Whatever love the bolt unbars, 
 I wander in a foreign land 
 
 Between the furrow and the stars. 
 
 Whatever hands shall make my bed, 
 
 Whatever beck'ning voices cry, 
 The more let me hold up my head 
 
 When I go out alone to die. 
 
 So Amber found John in his corner, nursing the 
 wound that Life had given him. 
 
 She looked up from the paper on which his lines 
 of verse were scrawled and there were no tears 
 in her eyes. Bright, they were, with a glittering 
 brightness, as though a frost had touched them; 
 but there came no tears to soften or obscure. She 
 knew, as he stood there, he was a child in mind 
 no longer. She knew he had come into a new world 
 and that light in her eyes was a bright, hard fear 
 he had lost the wonder and the joy of everything 
 a fear that the child in his mind which was gone 
 had taken with it by the hand, the child in his heart. 
 It was a fear that now he was a hard and bitter 
 man.
 
 The Rest House 337 
 
 She held out her hand as she gave the verses 
 back. 
 
 "What are you thinking, John?" she asked. 
 
 A long, long while he paused before he answered, 
 but there was that sense in the pause, by which she 
 knew he had heard her question and, if she did 
 not speak again, would answer it. 
 
 At last he replied. - 
 
 "I'm thinking," said he, "I'm thinking how plain 
 and certain it is in sudden moments, that we don't 
 belong to this world, yet that all our efforts while 
 we live in it are concentrated in chaining ourselves 
 down to it in a tremulous sort of fear that we're 
 lost if we don't retain our hold. I'm thinking how 
 people surround themselves with possessions which 
 become their only touch with the world they're 
 afraid to leave. I'm thinking how the representa- 
 tion rather than the essence is the secret link we 
 set in the chain; how we buy all that's beautiful in 
 life because we haven't the courage just to realize 
 that it's not our own, but belongs to well, God, if 
 you like. We're afraid to be alone. That's what it 
 amounts to. And that would be all right, were 
 it not that, in the essential and ultimate scheme 
 of things, we were meant to be alone. Even lovers 
 are meant to be alone. Only in a plan of Nature's 
 do they seem to come together and then, often, the 
 nearer they are together in actual contact, the 
 further they are apart. Lovers are closest perhaps 
 of all when Death separates their bodies. Perhaps 
 that's why lovers are so often glad to die. It's 
 this world that separates lovers this world and
 
 33$ World of Wonderful Reality 
 
 all the countless tangible representations and ap- 
 pearances that come between them. Once you love, 
 I believe nothing can part you. Death is a link, 
 not a severance. If one dies, the other is nearer 
 than he was before. If they both die I believe 
 they are so close to each other then, as that scarcely 
 the hand of God could come between them. 
 
 "That's what I'm thinking. Perhaps it sounds very 
 depressing; not the sort of talk to give to the people 
 who are hanging on to the world for their realiza- 
 tion of life. But I'm alone and I want courage, 
 and I believe courage is only found in looking 
 straight and not out of the corners of your eyes. 
 I may say very different things in a few years' time. 
 But I'm saying what I know now. I may say, what 
 I once remember saying to Jill, that the whole 
 world is a sort of city of beautiful nonsense. All 
 I can say now is, that it is a world and full of 
 the most wonderful reality, only the reality is not 
 in things that happen, or in things we possess. It's 
 in our hearts or it's nowhere." 
 
 He looked up at her and a twisted smile screwed 
 up his lips and his eyes. 
 
 "Let's go in and have some lunch," said he. 
 "Let's go in and tell them that we're Friends. 
 And let's tell them that friends can be together when 
 lover's can't."
 
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