THE MAN WHO WAS GOOD

BY

LEONARD MERRICK

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

J.K. PROTHERO

HODDER & STOUGHTON

LONDON—NEW YORK—TORONTO

1921

"That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true;
Such is life's trial, as old earth smiles and knows.
If you loved only what were worth your love,
Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you."

James Lee's Wife.

INTRODUCTION

There is a rare refreshment in the works of Leonard Merrick; gracious yet distinctive, his style has a polished leisure seldom enjoyed these days when perfection of literary form is at a discount. His art is impossible of label; almost alone amongst the writers of to-day he has the insight and the courage at once to admit the pitiless facts of life and to affirm despite them—through hunger and loneliness, injustice and disappointment—the spirit can and does remain unbroken; that if there be no assurance of success, neither is there certainty of failure.

There is no sentimental weakness in the method he employs. A rare genius for humour tempers all his work; he can record the progressive starvation of an actor out of work in an economy of phrase that leaves no room for gratuitous appeal, trace the long-drawn efforts to outpace persistent poverty of pence with a simplicity that enforces conviction. His pen is never so poignant or restrained as when he shows us a woman sharpened and coarsened by cheap toil. But throughout the tale of struggle and triumph, defeat and attainment, there persists that sense of eternal quest which shortens the hardest road. Do you starve to-day? Opportunity of plenty may wait at the street corner, the chance of a lifetime alight from the next bus; for Leonard Merrick is not concerned with people of large incomes and small problems; the men and women of whom he writes earn their own living.

His most marked successes deal with stage life, indeed he is one of the very few authors who convince one of the actuality of theatrical folk. He shows us the chorus girl in her lodgings, in the Strand bars, at the dramatic agency; we understand her ambitions, become familiar with her unconquerable pluck and capacity for comradeship, even acquire a liking for the smell of grease-paint. We meet the same girl out of an engagement, follow her pilgrimage from Bloomsbury to Brixton seeking an ever cheaper lodging; we watch the mud and wet of the streets soak her inadequate boots, endure with her the pangs of hunger ill-allayed by a fugitive bun. We accompany her to the pawnbroker's, and experience the joys of combat with a recalcitrant "uncle" who refuses to lend more than eighteenpence on a silk blouse. And still the sense of adventure persists, the reality of romance endures, the joy of laughter remains. We realise the compensation of precarious tenure on sufficiency, appreciate the great truth that the adversity of to-day is lightened by the uncertainty of to-morrow, that no matter how grim the struggle, how sharp the hardship—and the hunger—the sense of adventure companions and consoles. Authors who concern themselves only with men and women of assured position and regular incomes have forgotten the truth which Leonard Merrick so triumphantly affirms. Romance is no respecter of persons. The freedom of the open road, its promise, its pitfalls, sudden ecstasies and fugitive glamours is not a preserve of the rich but the heritage of the people.

His psychological methods allure one by their seeming simplicity; quietly, with a delicate deliberation, he emphasises the outline of his characters until with sudden swift decision, in the utterance of a phrase, the doing of some one of those small things that are life's real revelations, he shows you the soul of the man or woman whose externals he has so carefully portrayed. Half-forgotten words and acts crowd in on the memory, as in The Man who was Good when Carew appeals to Mary to save his child—and her rival's. It needed the genius of Merrick to make one realise that the high-water mark of betrayal was reached not by the man's desertion of the woman who loved him, but by his pitiful exploitation of that love.

I know of no author with a more subtle understanding of woman, her generosity and meanness, her strange reticence, amazing candours. Mary Brett an, that tragedy of invincible fidelity, could only have been portrayed by a man able to sense feminine capacity for dumb fortitude. One feels that had she made even a gesture of revolt, Mary would have been freed of the paralysis of sterile constancy; and one knows that women of her type can never make the ultimate defiance.

Leonard Merrick has the inimitable gift of inducing his readers to experience the emotions he portrays. The zest of adventure grips you, as it grips the hero of Conrad in Quest of his Youth, perhaps the greatest of his triumphs. We share with that perfect lover his mellow regrets and his anticipatory ardours; we wait in tremulous expectancy outside the little restaurant in Soho for his delightful Lady Parlington, falling, with him-from light-hearted confidence to sickening uncertainty as time wears on and still she does not come. The same emotional buoyancy stirs in all his work; his incomparable humour endears to us the least of his creations. His adorable landladies become our friends, his "walking gentlemen" our close acquaintance. I do not know to this day whether I have met certain of these heavenly creatures in life or in Mr. Merrick's novels, and it is difficult to enter a theatrical lodging without feeling that you are living the last story in The Man who Understood Women, or revisiting the first beginnings of Peggy Harper.

London has many lovers, none so intimate with her allurements as Leonard Merrick. He knows the glamour of her midnight pavements, the hunger of her clamant streets, and the enchantments of her grey river have drawn him. He has felt the deciduous charm of her luxury, the abiding pleasure of her leafy spaces, and the intriguing alleys of Fleet Street are to him familiar and dear. For the suburbs he has an infinite kindness, and has companioned adventure on many a questing tram.

It has long been a matter of insuperable difficulty to obtain Mr. Merrick's novels; for years I have essayed to find a copy of Conrad, and from every bookseller have been sent empty away. In a moment of folly I lent my own copy to a neighbour—I cannot call him friend—who forthwith adopted the volume as his most invaluable possession, and, undeterred by savagery or threats, refused to give it up. And now after long waiting, I am made glad by a reissue of these incomparable works, and the knowledge that an ever-increasing public, too long denied the opportunity of their acquaintance, will share my delight. Far removed from the nightmare of the problem novel, his books centre on simple human things savoured with the rare salt of his humour; and whether in the suburbs or the slums, in Soho or the Strand, whether prosperous or starving, the men and women of whom he writes are touched with that high courage, that fine comradeship, which is the very essence of romance.

J.K. PROTHERO.

CHAPTER I

There were three women in the dressing-room. Little Miss Macy, who played a subaltern, was pulling off her uniform; and the "Duchess," divested of velvet, stood brushing the powder out of her hair. The third woman was doing nothing. In a chair by the theatrical hamper labelled "Miss Olive Westland's Tour: 'The Foibles of Fashion' Co.," she sat regarding the others, her hands idle in her lap. She was scarcely what is called "beautiful," much less was she what ought to be called "pretty"; perhaps "womanly" came nearer to suggesting her than either. Her eyes were not large, but they were so pensive; her mouth was not small, but it curved so tenderly; the face was not regular, but it looked so deliciously soft. Somebody had once said that it "made him admire God"; in watching her, it seemed such a perfect thing that there should be a low white brow, and hair to shade it; it seemed such an exquisite and consummate thing that there should be lips where the Maker put lips, and a chin where the chin is modelled. Her age might have been twenty-seven, also it might have been thirty. The wise man does not question the nice woman's age—he just thanks Heaven she lives; and she in the chair by the hamper was decidedly nice. Other women said so.

"Have you been in front, Mrs. Carew?" asked the "Duchess."

She answered that she had. "I came round at the end. It was a very good house; the business is improving."

"I should think," remarked the "subaltern," reaching for her skirt, "you must know every line of the piece, the times you've seen it! But, of course, you've nothing else to do."

"No, it isn't lively sitting alone all the evening in lodgings; and it's more comfortable in the circle than behind. How you people manage to get dressed in some of the theatres puzzles me; I look at you from the front, remembering where your things were put on, and marvel. If I were in the profession, my salary wouldn't keep me in the frocks I ruined."

"I wonder Carew has never wanted you to go into it."

The nice woman laughed.

"Go into the profession!" she exclaimed—"I? Good gracious, what an idea! No; Tony has a very flattering opinion of his wife's abilities, but I don't think even he goes the length of fancying I could act."

"You'd be as good as a certain leading lady we know of, at any rate. Nobody could be much worse than our respected manageress, I'll take my oath!"

"Jeannie," said the "Duchess" sharply, "don't quarrel with your bread-and-butter!"

"I'm not," said the girl; "I'm criticising it—a very different matter, my dear. I hate these amateurs with money, even if they do take out companies and give shops to us pros. She queers the best line I've got in the piece every night because she won't speak up and nobody knows what it's an answer to. The real type of the 'confidential actress' is Miss Westland; no danger of her allowing anyone in the audience to overhear what she says!"

"Tony believes she'll get on all right," said Mrs. Carew, "when she has had more experience. You do, too, don't you, Mrs. Bowman?"

The "Duchess" replied vaguely that "experience did a great deal." She had profited by her own, and at the "aristocratic mother" period of her career no longer canvassed in dressing-rooms the capabilities of the powers that paid the treasury.

"Get on?" echoed Jeannie Macy, struggling into her jacket, "of course she'll get on; she has oof! If it's very much she's got, you'll see her by-and-by with a theatre of her own in London. Money, influence, or talent, you must have one of the three in the profession, and for a short-cut give me either of the first two. Sweet dreams, both of you; I've got a hot supper waiting for me, and I can smell it spoiling from here!" The door banged behind her; and Mrs. Carew turned to the "Duchess" with a smile.

"You're coming round to us afterwards, aren't you?" she said.

"Yes, Carew asked the husband in the morning: I hope he's got some coppers; I reminded him. It's such a bother having to keep an account of how we stand after every deal. We'll be round about half-past twelve. Are you going?"

"I should think Tony ought to be ready by now. You remember our number?"

"Nine?"

"Nine; opposite the baker's."

Mrs. Carew hummed a little tune, and made her way down the stairs. The stage, of which she had a passing view, was dark, for the foot-lights were out, and in the T-piece only one gas-jet flared bluely between the bare expanse of boards and the blackness of the empty auditorium. In the passage, a man, hastening from the star-room, almost ran against her; Mr. Seaton Carew still wore the clothes in which he finished the play, and he had not removed his make-up yet.

"What!" she cried, "haven't you changed? How's that? What have you been doing?"

"I've been talking to Miss Westland," he explained hurriedly. "There was something she wanted to see me about. Don't wait any longer, Mary; I've got to go up to her lodgings with her."

She hesitated a moment, surprised.

"Is it so important?" she asked.

"Yes," he said; "I'll tell you about it later on; I want to have a talk with you afterwards. I shan't be long."

Whenever she came to the theatre, which was four or five times a week, they, naturally, returned together, and she enjoyed the stroll in the fresh air, "after the show," with Tony. Three years' familiarity with the custom had not destroyed its charm to her. To-night she went out into the Leicester streets a shade disconsolately. The gas was already lighted when she reached the house, and a fire—for the month was March—burnt clearly in the grate. The accommodation was not extensive: a small ground-floor parlour, and a bedroom at the back. On the parlour mantelpiece were some faded photographs of people who had stayed there —Mr. Delancey as the Silver King; Miss Ida Ryan, smoking a cigarette, as Sam Willoughby. She took off her coat, and, turning her back on the supper-table, wondered what the conference with Miss Westland was about.

The tedium of the delay began to tell upon her. The landlady had brought in her book of testimonials during the afternoon, to ask Mr. and Mrs. Carew for theirs; and fetching it from where it lay, she began listlessly to turn the leaves. These books were abominated by Carew, for he never knew what to write; and, perusing the comments in this one, she mentally agreed with him that it was not easy to find a medium between curtness and exaggeration. Some she recognised, knowing before she looked what signatures were appended. The "Stay but a little, I will come again" quotation she had seen above the same name in a score of lodgings, and there were two or three "impromptus" in rhyme that she had met before.

She had been very happy this time at Leicester. They had arrived on the anniversary of her and Tony's first meeting, and she had felt additionally tender towards him all the week. The landlady had not effected the happiness certainly, but her lodger was quite willing to give her some of the benefit of it. She dipped the pen in the ink, and wrote in a bold, upright hand, "The week spent in Mrs. Liddy's apartments will always be a pleasant remembrance to Mr. and Mrs. Seaton Carew." Then she put the date underneath.

She had just finished when Mrs. Liddy entered with the beer. The Irishwoman said that she was going to bed, but that Mrs. Carew would find more glasses in the cupboard when her friends came. She supposed that that was all?

It was now twelve o'clock, and Mrs. Carew, with an occasional glance at the cold beef and the corner of rice pudding, began to walk about the room. Presently she stopped and listened. A whistle had reached her from outside—the whistle of eight notes that is the actor's call. She surmised that young Dolliver had forgotten their number, as he did in every town. She drew aside the blind and let the light shine out. Young Dolliver it was.

"I've been whistling all up and down the road," he said, aggrieved; "what were you doing?"

"Well, that isn't bad," she laughed. "Why don't you remember addresses like anybody else?"

"Can't," he declared; "never could! Never know where I'm staying myself if I don't make a note of it as soon as I go in. In Jarrow, one Monday, I had to wander all over the place for three' mortal hours in the pouring rain, looking for someone in the company to tell me where I lived. Hallo! where's Carew?"

"He'll be in directly," she said. "Sit down."

"Oh! I'm awfully sorry to have come so early," he exclaimed; "why, you haven't fed or anything."

He was a bright-faced boy, with a cheery flow of chatter, and she was glad he had appeared.

"I expect the Bowmans any minute," she assured him; "you aren't early. Do sit down, there's a good child, and don't stand fiddling your hat about; put it on the piano! Have you banqueted yourself?"

"To repletion. What did you think of Carew's notice in the Great Sixpennyworth on Saturday? Wasn't it swagger? 'The rôle finds an ideal exponent in Mr. Seaton Carew, an actor who is rapidly making his way into the foremost ranks of his profession'!"

"A line and a half," she said, "by a provincial correspondent! I shan't be satisfied till—— well!"

"I know—till you see him with sixteen lines all to himself in the Telegraph! No more will he, I fancy. He's red-hot on success, is Carew—do anything for it. So'm I; I should like to play Claude."

"Claude?" she exclaimed. "Why, you're funny!"

"Not by disposition," he declared. "Miss Westland is responsible for my being funny. When they said 'a small comedy-part is still vacant,' I said small comedy-parts are my forte of fortes! Had it been an 'old man' that was wanted, I should have professed myself born to dodder. But if it comes to choice—to the secret tendency of the sacred fire—I am lead, I am romantic, I have centre-entrances in the limelight. Look here: 'A deep vale, shut out by Alpine——' No, wait a minute; you do the Langtry business and let the flowers fall, while I 'paint the home.' Do you know, my private opinion is that Claude only took those lessons so that the widow shouldn't be put to any expense doing up the home. Haven't got any flowers? Anything else then—where are the cards?"

He found the pack on the sideboard, and pushed a few into her hand.

"These'll do for the flowers," he said; "finger 'em lovingly; think you're holding a good nap.

"Don't be so ridiculous!"

"I'm not," said Dolliver, with dignity; "I really want to hear your views on my reading. Where was I—er—er——

"'Near a clear lake margin'd by fruits of gold
And whispering myrtles; glassing softest skies
As cloudless, save with rare and roseate shadows....
As I would have thy fate.'

"You see I make a pause after 'shadows'—I'm natural. I gaze hesitatingly at the floats, and the borders, and a kid in the pit. Then I meet the eyes of the fair Pauline, and conclude with 'As I would have thy fate,' smiling dreamily at the excellence of the comparison. That's a new point, I take it?"

He was seriously enamoured of his "new point," and was still expatiating on it when they heard Carew unlocking the street-door.

It was a man much of the woman's own age who came in. His face was clean-shaven, and his hair was worn a trifle longer than the hair of most men. Now that he was seen in a good light, it was plain that he was disturbed; but he shook Dolliver by the hand as if relieved to find him there.

"What, not had supper? You must be starving, Mary?"

"I am pretty hungry," she admitted; "aren't you?"

"Well, I've had something—still, I'll come to the table." She had looked disappointed, and he drew his chair up. "Dolliver?"

"Nothing for me, thanks. Oh! a glass of beer—I don't object to that."

Despite her assertion, Mary made no great progress with her supper, and Carew's evident disquietude even damped the garrulity of the boy. It was not until the Bowmans arrived and a game of napoleon had been begun, that the faint restraint caused by his manner wore away.

Mr. Bowman, mindful of his wife's injunction, had provided himself with several shillings'-worth of coppers, and, profiting by his forethought, each of the party started with a rouleau of pence. These occasional card parties after the performance had become an institution in "The Foibles of Fashion" company, and it was seldom that anyone found them expensive. Mary's capital, coppers included, was half a sovereign, and to have won or lost such a sum as that at a sitting would have been the subject of allusion for a month. To-night, however, the luck was curiously unequal, and, to the surprise of all, Dolliver found himself losing seven shillings before he had been playing half an hour. Much sympathy was expressed for Dolliver.

"Never mind, dear boy; it's always a mistake to win early in the evening," said Carew. "There's plenty of time. I pass!"

"Pass," said the "Duchess."

Mary called three, and made them.

"How do you stand, Mrs. Carew?" asked Bowman.

"I'm just about the same as when we began. Tony, Mr. Bowman has nothing to drink.—Oh, what a shame, Dolliver!—thanks! Fill up your own, won't you?—He's a perfect martyr, this boy," she went on; "he cleared the table before you two people came in—didn't you?"

"Four!" cried Dolliver. "Yes; I cleared it beautifully. Utility is my line of business."

"Since when? I thought just now——"

"Oh, confidences, Mrs. Carew!" He turned scarlet. "Don't give me away!... Now, Mrs. Bowman, which is it to be?"

She played trumps, and led with a king.

A breathless moment, crowned by an unsuspected "little one" from Dolliver. His "four" were safe, and he leant back radiant.

The "Duchess" prepared to deal.

"Who's got an address for the next town?" she inquired.

"Haven't you written yet?"

"No, we haven't got a place to write to; hateful, isn't it? If there's a thing I loathe, it's having to look for rooms after we get in. We've —pass!—always stayed in the same house, and—everybody to put in the kitty again!—and now the woman's left, or something. My! isn't the kitty getting big—look at all those sixpences underneath. Somebody count it!"

"Now then, Carew, don't go to sleep!"

Carew, thus adjured, gathered up the cards. Fitfully he was almost himself again, and only Mary was really sure that anything was amiss.

"There's a little hotel I've stopped at there," he said. "Not at all bad—they find you everything for twenty-five bob the week; for two people there'd be a reduction, too. Remind me, and I'll give you the name; I have it in my book. Bowman, you to call!"

Bowman called nothing; everybody passed again, and the kitty was augmented once more.

"What time do we travel Sunday—anybody know?"

"You can be precious sure," said Bowman, "that it will be at some unearthly hour. I've had a good many years' experience in the profession, but I never in my life was in a company where they did so many night journeys as they do in this one. I believe that little outsider arranges it on purpose!"

"A daisy of an acting-manager, isn't he? I once knew another fellow much the—two, I call two—and then, at the end of the tour, hanged if they didn't rush us for a presentation to him!"

"So they will for this chap. Presentations in the profession, upon my soul, are the——"

"Three," said the "Duchess."

"And when the time comes, not a member of the crowd will have the pluck to refuse. You see!"

"Did you ever know an actor who had, when he was asked?"

Dolliver flushed excitedly.

"Nap!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, oh, oh! Dolliver goes nap!"

"No; d'ye mean it? Very well, fire ahead, then; play up!"

There was two minutes' silence, and the youngster smacked down his last card, preparing a smile for defeat.

"He's made it! Mrs. Bowman, you threw it away; if you'd played hearts, instead——"

"No, no, she couldn't help it. She had to follow suit."

"Of course!"—the "Duchess" caught feebly at the explanation—"I had to follow suit. What a haul! good gracious!"

"That puts you right again, eh, dear boy?"

"'I am once more the great house of Lyons!'" remarked Dolliver, piling up the pennies. "Six, seven, eight! Look at the silver, great Scott! Mrs. Carew, there's the ninepence I owe you."

"'I have paid this woman, and I owe her nothing,'" quoted Carew. "Dolliver, you've ruined me, you beggar! Where's the 'bacca?"

At something to three there was a murmur about its being late, but the loser now was Mrs. Bowman, and as her shillings had drifted into the possession of Mary, the hostess said it really was not late at all.' This disposed of the breaking-up question for half an hour. Then Bowman began to talk of concluding the game after a couple of rounds. When two such arrangements had been made and set at naught, the "Duchess" proposed that they should finish at the next "nap." To "finish at the next nap" was a euphemism for continuing for a good: long while, and the resolution was carried unanimously.

The clock had struck four when the nap was made, and the winner was Mary. She had won more than six shillings, and the "Duchess," who was the poorer by the amount, smiled with sleepy resignation.

"You had the luck after all, Mrs. Carew," laughed Dolliver. "Good-night."

"Yes," she said carelessly; "I've made something between me and the workhouse, anyhow! Good-night."

She loitered about the room, putting little aimless touches to things, while Carew saw the trio to the door. She heard him shut it behind them, and heard their steps growing fainter on the pavement. He was slow returning, queerly slow. Dolliver's voice reached her, taking leave of the Bowmans at the corner, and still he had not come in.

"Tony!" she called.

He rejoined her almost as she spoke.

"Don't go to bed, Mary," he said huskily; "I've something to say to you."

"What is it?" she asked.

He hesitated for an instant, seeking an introductory phrase. The agitation that he had been fighting all the night had conquered him.

"My release has come at last," he answered. "My wife is dead."

"Dead?"

She stood gazing at him with dilated eyes, the colour ebbing from her cheeks.

"She was ill some time. Drink it was, I hear; I daresay! Anyhow, she's gone; the mistake is finished. I've paid for it dearly enough, Lord knows!"

He had paused midway between her and the hearth, and he moved to the hearth. She was sensible of a vague pang as he did so. A tense silence followed his words. In thoughts that she had been unable to escape, the woman who had paid for his mistake more dearly still had sometimes imagined such a moment as this—had sometimes foreseen him crying to her that he was free. Perhaps, now that the moment was here, it was a little wanting—a little barer than the announcement of freedom that she had pictured.

"You're bound to feel the shock of it," she said, almost inaudibly. "It's always a shock, the news of death." But she felt that the burden of speech should be his. "Were you—used you to be very fond of her? Does it come back?"

"I was twenty. 'Fond'? I don't know. I wasn't with her three months when——She had walked Liverpool; I never saw her from the day I found it out. She didn't want me; the money was enough for her—to be sure of it every week!"

His attitude remained unchanged, his hands thrust deep into his trouser-pockets. Opposite each other, both reviewed the past. She waited for him to come to her—to touch her. Yes, the reality was barer than the picture that she had seen.

"When was it?" she murmured.

"It was some weeks ago."

"So long?"

He left the hearth moodily, and began to pace the room from end to end. The woman did not stir. The memory was with her of the morning that he had avowed this marriage—of the agony that had wept to her for pity—of the clasp that would not let her go. She looked abstractedly at the fire; but in her heart she saw his every step, and counted the turns that kept him from her side.

"It makes a great difference!" he said abruptly.

The consciousness of the difference was flooding her reason, yet she did not speak. It should not be by her that the sanctification of her sacrifice was broached. The wish, the reminder, the reparation, all should be his! She nodded assent.

"A great difference," he repeated hoarsely. He smeared the dampness from his mouth and chin. "If—if my reputation were made now, Mary, I should ask you to be my wife."

And then she did not speak. There was an instant in which the wall swam before her in a haze, and the floor lurched. In the next, she was still fronting the fireplace; she was staring at it with the same intentness of regard; and his voice was sounding again, though she heard it dully:

"—while a poor due can't choose! I would—I'd ask you to marry me. I know what you've been to me—I don't forget—I know very well! But, as it is, it'd be madness—it'd be putting a rope round my own neck. I want you to hear how I'm situated. I want you to listen to the circumstances——"

"You won't ... make amends?"

"I tell you I'm not my own master."

"You tell me that—that we're to part! We can't remain together any longer unless I'm your wife."

"We can't remain together any longer at all; that's what I'm coming to." He went back to the mantelpiece, and leant his elbows on it, kicking the half-hot coals. "I'm going to marry Miss Westland!"

He had said it; the echo of the utterance sung in his ears. Behind him her figure was motionless—its its—stillness frightened him. Intensified by the riotous ticking of the clock, through which his pulses were strained for the relief of a rustle, a breath, the pause grew unendurable.

"For God's sake, why don't you say something?" he exclaimed. He faced her impetuously, and they looked at each other across the table. "Mary, it's my chance in life! She cares for me, don't you see? You think me a scoundrel—don't you see what a chance it is? What can I come to as I am? With her—she'll get on, she has money—I shall rise, I shall be a manager, I shall get to London in time. Mary!"

"You're going to ... marry Miss Westland?"

"I must," he said.

For the veriest second it was as if she struggled to understand. Then she threw out her hands dizzily, crying out.

"That is what your love was, then—a lie, a shameful lie?"

"It wasn't; no, Mary, it was real! I cared for you—I did; the thing is forced on me!"

"'Cared'? when you use your liberty like this? You 'cared'? And I pitied you—you wrung the soul of me with your despair—I forgave you keeping back the tale so long. I came to you to be your wife, and you went down on your knees and vowed you hadn't had the courage to tell me before, but your wife was living—some awful woman you couldn't divorce. I gave myself to you, I became the thing you can turn out of doors, all because I loved you, all because I believed in your love for me." She caught at her throat. "You deserved it, didn't you?—you justify it now so nobly, the faith that has made me a ——"

"Mary!"

"Oh, I can say it!" she burst forth hysterically. "I am, you know; you have made me one—you and your 'love'! Why shouldn't I say it?"

"I told you the truth; if I had been free at that time——"

"When did you hear the news of the death? Answer me—it wasn't to-night?"

"What's the difference," he muttered, "when I heard?"

"Oh!" she moaned, "go away from me, don't come near me! You coward!"

She sank on to the edge of the sofa, rocking herself to and fro. The man roamed aimlessly around. Once or twice he glanced across at her, but she paid no heed. His pipe was on the sideboard; he filled it clumsily, and drew at it in nervous pulls.

He was the first to speak again.

"I know I seem a hound, I know it all looks very bad; but I don't suppose there's a man in five hundred who would refuse such an opportunity, for all that. No, nor one in five thousand, either! You won't see it in an unprejudiced light, of course; but it seems to me—yes, it does, and I can't help saying so—that if you were really as fond of me as you think, if my interests were really dear to you, you yourself 'd counsel me to leap at the chance, and, what's more, feel honestly glad that a prospect of success had come in my way.... You know what it means to me," he went on querulously; "you have been in the profession—at least, as good as in the profession—three years; you know that, in the ordinary course of events, I should never get any higher than I am, never play in London in my life. You know I've gone as far as I can ever expect to go without influence to back me, that in ten years' time I should be exactly what I am now, a leading-man for second-rate tours; and that ten years later I should be playing heavy fathers, or Lord knows what, still on the road, and done for—the fire all spent, wasted and worn out in the provinces. That's what it would be; you've heard me say it again and again; and I should go on seeing Miss Somebody's son, and Mr. Somebody-else's-daughter, with their parents' names to get them the engagements, playing prominent business in London theatres before they've learnt how to walk across a stage. Miss Westland's a fine-looking girl, and she knows a lot of Society people in town; and she has money enough to take a theatre there when she's lost her amateurishness a bit. Right off I shall be somebody, too—I shall manage her affairs. I'll have a big ad. in The Era every week: 'For vacant dates apply to Mr. Seaton Carew!' Oh, Mary, it's such a chance, such a lift! I am fond of you, you know I am; I care more for your little finger than for that woman's body and soul. Don't think me callous; it's damnable I've got to behave so—it takes all the light, all the luck, out of the thing that the way to it is so hard. I wish you could know what I'm feeling."

"I think I do know," she said bitterly—"better than you, perhaps. You're remembering how easily you could have taken the luck if your prayers to me had failed. And you're angered at me in your heart because the shame you feel spoils so much of the pleasure now."

He was humiliated to recognise that this was true. Her words described a mean nature, and his resentment deepened.

"When did you tell Miss Westland?" she faltered.

"Tell her?"

"What I am. That I'm not——When was it?"

"This evening. It won't make any awkwardness for you; I mean, she won't speak of it to any of the others. Nobody will know for——"

"The whole company may know to-morrow!" she answered, drying her eyes. "Seeing that I shall be gone, they may as well know to-morrow as later. Oh, how they will talk, all of them, how they'll talk about me—the Bowmans, and that boy, too!"

"You'll be gone to-morrow—what do you say?"

"Do you suppose——"

"Mary, there are—I must make some—good heavens! how will you go?—where? Mary, listen: by-and-by, when something is settled, in—in a month or more—I want to arrange to send—I couldn't let you want for money, don't you see!"

"I would not take a penny from you," she said, "not the value of a penny, if I were dying. I wouldn't, as Christ hears me! Our life together is over—I am going away."

He looked at her aghast.

"Now," he ejaculated, "at once? In the middle of the night?"

"Now at once—in the middle of the night."

"Be reasonable"—he caught her fingers, and held them in miserable expostulation—"wait till day, at any rate. You're beside yourself, there's nothing to be gained by it. In the morning, if you must——"

"Oh!" she choked, "did you think I would stop here an hour after this? Did you—did you think so? You man! Yes, I should be no worse to you I but to me, the lowness of it! All in a moment the lowness of it! I've tried to feel that we were married; I always believed it was your trouble that I had to be what I was. If you had ever heard—as soon as it was possible, I thought every minute 'd have been a burden to you till you had made it all real and right. To stop with you now, the thing I am—despised—on sufferance——"

She dragged her hand from him and stumbled into the bedroom. There it was quite dark, and, shaking, she groped about for matches and the candle. A small bag, painted with the initials of "Mary Brettan," her own name, was under the toilet-table. She pulled it out, and, dropping on her knees before the trunk that held her clothes, hastily pushed in a little of the top-most linen. As she did so, her eyes fell on the wedding-ring that she wore. Painful at all times, the sight of it now was horrible. She strangled a sob, and, lifting the candlestick, peered stupidly around. By the parlour grate she could hear Tony knocking his pipe out on the bars. Above the washhand-stand a holland "tidy" contained her brushes; she rolled it up and crammed the bundle among the linen. In fastening the bag she hesitated, and looked irresolutely at the trunk. Going over to it, she paused again—left it; returned to it. She plunged her arm suddenly into its depths, and thrust the debated thing into her bag as if it burnt her. Across the photographer's address was written, "Yours ever, Tony." Her preparations for leaving him had not occupied ten minutes. Then she went back.

Her coat and hat lay by the piano where she had cast them when she came in from the theatre. The man watched her put them on.

"Here's your ring!" she said.

The tears were running down her cheeks; she dabbed at them with a handkerchief as she spoke. The baseness of it all was eating into him. Though the ardour of his earlier passion was gone and his protestations of affection had been insults, her loss and her aversion served to display the growth of a certain attachment to her of which her possession and her constancy had left him unaware. Twice a plea to her to remain rose to his lips, and twice his tongue was heavy from self-interest, and from shame. He followed her instinctively into the passage; his limbs quaked, and his soul was cowed. She had already opened the door and set her foot on the step.

"Mary!" he gasped.

It was just beginning to get light. Under the faint paling of the sky the pavements gleamed cold and grey, forlornly visible in the darkness.

"Mary, don't go!"

A rush of chill air swept out of the silence, raising the hair from her brow. The coat fell about her loosely in thick folds. He put out nervous hands to touch her, and nothing but these folds seemed assailable; they enveloped and denied her to him.

"Don't go," he stammered; "stay—forget what I've done!"

She saw the impulse at its worth, but she was grateful for its happening. She knew that he would regret it if she listened, knew that he knew he would regret it. And yet, knowing and disdaining as she did, the gladfulness and thankfulness were there that he had spoken.

"I couldn't," she said—her voice was gentler; "there can never be anything between you and me any more. Good-bye, Tony."

She walked from him firmly. The receding figure was distinct—uncertain—merged in gloom. He stood gazing after it till it was gone——

CHAPTER II

The town lay around her desolate. Her footsteps smote the wretchedly-laid street, and echoed on the loneliness. A cold wind blew in fitful gusts, nipping her cheeks and hands. On the vagueness of the market-place the gilded statue, with its sheen obscured, loomed shapeless as she passed. She heard the lumber and creak of a wagon straining out of sight; the quaver of a cock-crow, then one shriller and more prolonged; two or three thin screams in quick succession from a distant train. She knew, rather than decided, that she would go to London, though there would not be a familiar face to greet her in all its leagues of houses, not a door among its countless doors to reveal a friend. She would go there because she was adrift in England and "England" meant a blur of names equally unpitying, and London, somehow, seemed the natural place to book to.

Few persons' ruin leaves them alone at once; the crash generally sees some friends who prove loyal beneath the shock of the catastrophe and drop away only afterwards under the wearisomeness of the worries. It is the situation of few to emerge from the wreck of a home without any personality dominating their consciousness as the counsellor to whom they must turn for aid. But it was the situation of Mary Brettan to be without a soul to turn to in the world; and briefly it had happened thus.

Her father had been a country doctor with a large practice among patients who could not afford to pay. From the standpoint of humanity his conduct was admirable; regarded from the domestic hearthstone perhaps it was a little less. The practitioner who neglected the wife of the Mayor in order to attend a villager, because the villager's condition was more critical, offered small promise of leaving his child provided for, and before Mary was sixteen the problems of the rent and butcher's book were as familiar to her as the surgery itself. The exemplary doctor and unpractical parent struggled along more or less placidly by means of the girl's surveillance. Had he survived her, it is difficult to determine what would have become of him; but, dying first, he had her protection to the end. She found herself after the funeral with a crop of bills, some shabby furniture, and the necessity for earning a living. The furniture and the bills were easy to dispose of; they represented a sum in division with nothing over. The problem was, what was she fitted to do? She knew none of those things which used to be called "accomplishments," and which are to-day the elements of education. Her French was the French of "Le Petit Précepteur"; in German she was still bewildered by the article. And, a graver drawback, since the selling-price of education is an outrage on its cost—she had not been brought up to any trade. She belonged, in fact, and circumstances had caused her to discover it, to the ranks of refined incompetence: the incompetence that will not live by menial labour, because it is refined; the refinement that cannot support itself by any brain work, because it is incompetent. It was suggested that she might possibly enter the hospital of a neighbouring town and try to qualify for a nurse. She said, "Very well." By-and-by she was told that she could be admitted to the hospital, and that if she proved herself capable, that would be the end of her troubles. She said "Very well" again—and this time, "thank you."

She had a good constitution, and she saw that if she failed here she might starve at her leisure before any further efforts were put forth on her behalf; so she gave satisfaction in her probation, and became at last a nurse like the others, composed and reliable. When that stage arrived, she owned to having fainted and suppressed the fact, after an early experience of the operating-room; her reputation was established, and it didn't matter now. The surgeon smiled.

Miss Brettan had been Nurse Brettan several years, when an actor who had met with an accident was brought into the hospital. The mishap had cost him his engagement, and he bewailed his fate to everyone who would listen. The person who heard most was she, since it was she who had the most to do for him, and she began by feeling sympathetic. He was a paying patient, or he would have had to limp away much sooner; as it was, it was many weeks before he was pronounced well enough to leave. And during those weeks she remembered what in the years of routine she had forgotten—that she was a woman capable of love.

One evening she learnt that the man really cared for her; he asked her to marry him. She stooped, and across the supper-tray, they kissed. Then she went upstairs, and cried with joy, and there was no happier woman in or out of any hospital in Christendom.

He talked to her about himself more than ever after this, suppressing only the one fact that he lacked the courage to avow. And when at last he went away their engagement was made public, and it was settled that she should join him in London as soon as he was able to write for her to come.

There were many expressions of good-will heaped upon Nurse Brettan on the summer morning that she bade the Yaughton Hospital good-bye; a joint wedding-gift from the other nurses was presented, and everybody shook her hand and wished her a life of happiness, for she was popular. Carew met her at Euston. He had written that he had dropped into a good part, anti that they would shortly be starting together on the tour, but that in the meanwhile they were to be married in town. It was the first time she had been to London. He took her to lodgings in Guilford Street, and here occurred their great scene.

He confessed that when he was a boy he had made a wild marriage; he had not set eyes on the woman since he discovered her past, but the law would not annul his blunder. He was bound to a harlot, and he loved Mary. Would she forgive his deception and be his wife in everything except the ceremony that could not be performed?

It was a very terrible scene indeed. For a long while he believed her lost to him; she could be brought to give ear to his entreaties only by force, and he upbraided himself for not having disclosed his position in the first instance. He had excused his cowardice by calling it "expedience," but, to do him justice, he did not do justice to himself. The delay had been due far less to his sense of its expedience than to the tremors of his cowardice. Now he suffered scarcely less than she.

Had his plea been based on any but the insuperable obstacle that it was, it would have failed to a certainty; but his helplessness gave the sophistry of both full play. He harped on the "grandeur of the sacrifice" she would be making for him, and the phrase pierced her misery. He cried to her that it would be a heroism, and she wondered dully if it really would. She queried if there was indeed a higher duty than denial—if her virtue could be merely selfishness in disguise. His insistence on the nobility of consent went very far with her; it did seem a beautiful thing to let sunshine into her lover's life at the cost of her own transgression. And then, in the background, burnt a hot shame at the thought of being questioned and commiserated when she returned to the hospital with a petition to be reinstalled. The arguments of both were very stale, and equally they blinked the fact that the practical use of matrimony is to protect woman against the innate fickleness of man. He demanded why, from a rational point of view, the comradeship of two persons should be any more sacred because a third person in a surplice said it was; and she, with his arms round her, began to persuade herself that he was a martyr, who had broken his leg that she might cross his path and give him consolation. Ultimately he triumphed; and a fortnight later she burst into a tempest of sobs—in suddenly realising how happy she was.

He introduced her to everybody as his wife; their "honeymoon" was spent in the, to her, unfamiliar atmosphere of a theatrical tour. One of the first places that the company visited was West Hartlepool, and he and she had lodgings outside the town in a little sea-swept village—a stretch of sand, and a lane or two, with a sprinkling of cottages—called Seaton Carew, from which, he told her, he had borrowed his professional name. She said, "Dear Seaton Carew!" and felt in a silly minute that she longed to strain the sunny prospect against her heart.

In the rawness of dawn a clock struck five, and she stood forsaken in the streets.

The myriad clocks of Leicester took up the burden, and the air was beaten with their din. The way to the station appeared endless; yards were preternaturally lengthened; and ever pressing on, yet ever with a lonely vista to be covered, the walk began to be charged with the oppression of a nightmare, in which she pursued some illimitable road, seeking a destination that had vanished.

At last the building loomed before her, ponderously still, and she passed in over the cob-stones. There were no indications of life about the place; the booking-office was fast shut, and between the dimly-burning lamps, the empty track of rails lay blue. For all she knew to the contrary, she would have to wait some hours.

By-and-by, however, a sleepy-eyed porter lounged into sight, and she learnt that there would be a train in a few minutes. Shortly after his advent she was able to procure a ticket—a third-class ticket, which diminished the little sum in her possession by eight shillings and a halfpenny; and returning to the custody of her bag, she waited miserably till the line of carriages thundered into view.

It was a wretched journey—a ghastly horror of a journey—but it did not seem particularly long; with nothing to look forward to, she had no cause to be impatient. Intermittently she dozed, waking with a start as the train jerked to a standstill and the name of a station was bawled. When St. Pancras was reached, her limbs were cramped as she descended among the groups of dreary-faced passengers, and the load on her mind lay like a physical weight. She had not washed since the previous evening, and she made her way to the waiting-room, where a dejected attendant charged her twopence. Then, having paid twopence more to leave the bag behind her, she went out to search for a room.

A coffee-bar, with a quantity of stale pastry heaped in the window, reminded her that she needed breakfast. A man with blue shirt-sleeves rolled over red arms brought her tea and bread-and-butter at a sloppy table. The repast, if not enjoyable, served to refresh her and was worth the fourpence that she could very ill afford. Some of the faintness passed; when she stood in the fresh air again her head was clearer; the vagueness with which she had thought and spoken was gone.

It was not quite five minutes to eight; she wished she had rested in the waiting-room. To be seeking a lodging at five minutes to eight would look strange. Still, she could not reconcile herself to going back; and she was eager, besides, to find a home as quickly as possible, yearning to be alone with a door shut and a pillow.

She turned down Judd Street, forlornly scanning the intersecting squalor. The tenements around her were not attractive. On the parlour-floor, limp chintz curtains hid the interiors, but the steps and the areas, and here and there a frouzy head and arm protruding for a milkcan, were strong in suggestion of slatternly discomfort. In Brunswick Square the aspect was more cheerful, but the rooms here were obviously above her means. She walked along, and came unexpectedly into Guilford Street, almost opposite the house where she had given herself to Tony. The sudden sight of it was not the shock that she would have imagined it would prove; indeed, she was sensible of a dull sort of wonder at the absence of sensation. But for the veranda and confirmatory number, the outside would have borne no significance to her; yet it had been in that house——What a landmark in her life's history was represented by that house!' What emotions had flooded her soul behind the stolid frontage that she had nearly passed without recognising it; how she had wept and suffered, and prayed and joyed within the walls that would have borne no significance to her but for a veranda and the number that proclaimed it was so! The thoughts were deliberate; the past was not flashed back at her, she retraced it half tenderly in the midst of her trouble. None the less, the idea of taking up her quarters on the spot was eminently repugnant, and she turned several corners before she permitted herself to ring a bell.

Her summons was answered by a flurried servant-girl, who on hearing that she wanted a lodging, became helplessly incoherent—as is the manner of servant-girls where lodgings are let—and fled to the basement, calling "missis."

Mary contemplated the hat-stand until the "missis" advanced towards her along the passage. There was a flavour of abandoned breakfast about missis, an air of interruption; and when she perceived that the stranger on the threshold was a young woman, and a charming woman, and a woman by herself, the air of interruption that she had been struggling to conceal all the way up the kitchen-stairs began to be coupled with an expression of defensive virtue.

"I am looking for a room," said Mary.

"Yes," said the householder, eyeing her askance.

"You have one to let, I think, by the card?"

"Yes, there's a room."

She made no movement to show it, however; she stood on the mat nursing her elbows.

"Can you let me see it—if it isn't inconvenient so early?"

"Oh, I suppose so," said the landlady. She preceded her to the top-floor, but with no alacrity. "This is it," she said.

It was a back attic of the regulation pattern: brown drugget, yellow chairs, and a bed of parti-coloured clothing. Nevertheless, it seemed to be clean, and Mary was prepared to take anything.

"What is the rent?" she asked wearily.

"Did you say your husband would be joining you?"

"My husband? No, I'm a widow."

There was a glance shot at her hand. She wore gloves, but saw that it would have been wiser to have told the truth and said "I am unmarried."

"As a single room, the rent is seven shillings. You'd be able to give me references, of course?"

"I'm afraid I couldn't do that," she said, not a little surprised. "I've only just arrived; my luggage is at the station."

"What do you work at?"

"Really!" she exclaimed; "I am looking for a room. You want references; well, I will pay you in advance!"

"I don't take single ladies," answered the woman bluntly.

Mary looked at her bewildered; she thought that she had not made herself understood.

"I should be quite willing to pay in advance," she repeated. "I'm a stranger in London, so I can't refer you to anyone here; but I will pay for the first week now, if you like?"

"I don't take ladies; I must ask you to look somewhere else, please."

They went down in silence. Virtue turned the handle with its backbone stiff, and Mary passed out, giving a quiet "Good-day." Her blood was tingling under the inexplicable insolence of the treatment she had received, and she had yet to learn that it is possible for an unaccompanied woman to seek a lodging until she falls exhausted on the pavement; the unaccompanied woman being to the London landlady an improper person—inadmissible not because she is improper, but because her impropriety is presumably not monopolised.

During the next hour, repulse followed repulse. Sometimes, with the curt assertion that they didn't take ladies, the door was shut in her face; frequently she was conducted to a room, only to be cross-examined and refused, as with her first venture, just when she was at the point of engaging it. Sometimes a room was displayed indifferently, and there were no questions put at all, but in these cases the terms asked were so exorbitant that she came out astounded, not realising the nature of the house.

It occurred to her to try the places where she would be known—not the one in Guilford Street, the associations of that would be unendurable—but some of the apartments that Carew and she had occupied when they had come to town between the tours. None of these addresses was in the neighbourhood, however, and the notion was too distasteful to be adopted save on impulse.

She set her teeth, and pulled bell after bell. Along Southampton Row, through Cosmo Place into Queen Square, she wandered, while the day grew brighter and brighter; down Devonshire Street into Theobald's Road, past the Holborn Town Hall. Amid these reiterated demands for references a sudden terror seized her; she remembered the need for the certificate that she had had when she quitted the hospital. She had never thought about it since. It might be lying crushed in a corner of the trunk that she had left behind in Leicester; it might long ago have got destroyed—she did not know. It had never occurred to her that the resumption of her former calling would one day present itself as her natural resource. In ordinary circumstances the loss would have been a trifle; but she felt it an impossibility to refer directly to the Matron, because to do so would lead to the exposure of what had happened in the interval. The absence of a certificate therefore meant the absence of all testimony to her being a qualified nurse. As the helplessness of her plight rushed in upon her she trembled. How long must she not expect to wait for employment when she had nothing to speak for her? To go back to nursing would be more difficult than to earn a living in a capacity that she had never essayed. And she could wait so short a time for anything, so horribly short a time! She would starve if she did not find something soon!

Busses jogged by her laden with sober-faced men and women, bound for the vocations that sustained the white elephant of life. Shops already gave evidence of trade, and children with uncovered heads sped along the curb with a "ha'porth o' milk," or mysterious breakfasts folded in scraps of newspaper. Each atom of the awakening bustle passed her engrossed by its own existence, operated by its separate interests, revolving in its individual world. London looked to her a city without mercy or impulse, populated to brimfulness, and flowing over. Every chink and crevice seemed stocked with its appointed denizens, and the hope of finding bread here which nobody's hand was clutching appeared presumption.

Eleven o'clock had struck—that is to say, she had been walking for more than three hours—when she saw a card with "Furnished Room to Let" suspended from a blind, and her efforts to gain shelter succeeded at last. It was an unpretentious little house, in an unpretentious turning; and a sign on the door intimated that it was the residence of "J. Shuttleworth, mason."

A hard-featured woman was evoked by the dispirited knock. Seeing a would-be lodger who was dressed like a lady, she added eighteenpence to the rent that she usually asked. She asked five shillings a week, and the applicant agreed to it and was grateful.

"About your meals, miss?" said Mrs. Shuttleworth, when Mary had sunk on the upright wooden chair at the head of the truckle-bed-stead. "Dinners I can't do for yer, but as far as breakfas', and a cup o' tea in the evening goes, you can 'ave a bit of something brought up when we 'as our own. I suppose that'll suit you, won't it?"

"A cup of tea and some bread-and-butter," answered Mary, "in the morning and afternoon, if you can manage it, will do very nicely, thank you." She roused herself to the exigencies of the occasion. "How much will that be?"

"Oh, well, we shan't break yer! You'll pay the first week now?"

The rent was forthcoming, and one more superfluity in the jostle of existence profited by the misfortunes of another: going back to the wash-tub cheerful.

Upstairs the lodger remained motionless; she was so tired that it was a luxury to sit still, and for awhile she was more alive to the bodily relief than the mental burden. It was afternoon by the time she faced the necessity for returning to St. Pancras for her bag; and, pushing up the rickety window to admit some air during her absence, she proceeded to the basement, to ascertain the nearest route.

She learnt that she was much nearer to the station than she had supposed, and in a little while she had her property in her possession again. Her head felt oddly light, and she was puzzled by the dizziness until she remembered she had had nothing to eat since eight o'clock. The thought of food was sickening, though; and it was not till five o'clock, when the tea was furnished, with a hunch of bread, and a slap of butter in the middle of a plate, that she attempted to break her fast.

And now ensued a length of dreary hours, an awful purposeless evening, of which every minute was weighted with despair. Fortunately the weather was not very cold, so the absence of a fire was less a hardship than a lack of company; but the fatigue, which had been acting as a partial opiate to her trouble, gradually passed, and her brain ached with the torture of reflection. With nothing to do but think, she sat in the upright chair, staring at the empty grate and picturing Tony during the familiar waits at the theatre. An evil-smelling lamp burned despondently on the table; outside, the street was discordant with the cries of children. To realise that it was only this morning that the blow had fallen upon her was impossible; an interval of several days appeared to roll between the poky attic and her farewell; the calamity seemed already old. "Oh, Tony!" she murmured. She got out his likeness. "Yours ever"—the mockery of it! She did not hate him, she did not even tell herself that she did; she contemplated the faded photograph quite gently, and held it before her a long time. It had been taken in Manchester, and she recalled the afternoon that it was done. All sorts of trivialities in connection with it recurred to her. He was wearing a lawn tie, and she remembered that it had been the last clean one and had got mislaid. Their search for it, and comic desperation at its loss, all came back to her quite clearly. "Oh, Tony!" Her fancies projected themselves into his future, and she saw him in a score of different scenes, but always famous, and in his greatness with the memory of her flitting across his mind. Then she wondered what she would have done if she had borne him a child—whether the child would have been in the garret with her. But no, if he had been a father this wouldn't have happened! he was always fond of children; to have given him a child of his own would have kept, his love for her aglow.

Presently a diversion was effected by the home-coming of Mr. Shuttle worthy evidently drunk, and abusing his wife with disjointed violence. Next the woman's voice arose shrieking recrimination, the babel subsiding amid staccato passages, alternately gruff and shrill.

The disturbance tended to obtrude the practical side of her dilemma, and the importance of obtaining work of some sort speedily, no matter what sort, appalled her. The day was Wednesday, and on the Wednesday following, unless she was to go forth homeless, there would be the lodging to pay for again, and the breakfasts and teas supplied in the meanwhile. She would have to spend money outside as well; she had to dine, however poorly, and there were postage-stamps, and perhaps train fares, to be considered: some of the advertisers to whom she applied might live beyond walking distance. Altogether, she certainly required a pound. And she had towards it—with a sinking of her heart she emptied her purse to be sure—exactly two and ninepence.

CHAPTER III

Next morning her efforts were begun. It rained, and she began to understand what it means to the unemployed to tramp a city where two days of every four are wet.

To buy papers, and examine them at home was out of the question; but she was aware that there were news-rooms where for a penny she could see them all. Directed to such an institution by a speckled boy, conspicuous for his hat and ears, she found several dejected-looking women turning over a heap of periodicals at a table. The "dailies" were spread on stands against the walls, and at a smaller table under the window lay a number of slips, with pens and ink, for the convenience of customers wishing to make memoranda of the vacant situations. She went first to The Times, because it was on the stand nearest to her, and proceeded from one paper to another until she had made a tour of the lot.

The "Wanted" columns were of the customary order; the needy endeavouring to gull the necessitous with speqious phrases, and the well-established prepared to sweat them without any disguise at all. A drapery house had a vacancy for a young woman "to dress fancy windows, and able to trim hats, etc., when desired"—salary fifteen pounds. There was a person seeking a general servant willing to pay twenty pounds a year for the privilege of doing the work. This advertisement was headed "Home offered to a Lady," and a few seconds were required to grasp the stupendous impudence of it. A side-street stationer, in want of a sales-woman, advertised for an "Apprentice at a moderate premium"; and the usual percentage of City firms dangled the decaying bait of "An opportunity to learn the trade." Her knowledge of the glut of experienced actresses enabled her to smile at the bogus theatrical managers who had "immediate salaried engagements waiting for amateurs of good appearance"; but some of the "home employment" swindles took her in, and, discovering nothing better, she jotted these addresses down.

From the news-room she went to a dairy, and dined on a glass of milk and a bun. And after an inevitable outlay on stamps and stationery, she returned to the lodging a shilling poorer than she had gone out.

Unacquainted with the wiles of the impostors she was answering, the thought of her applications sustained her somewhat; it seemed to her that out of the several openings one at least should be practicable. She did not fail to make the calculation that most novices make in such circumstances; she reduced the promised earnings by half, and believed that she was viewing the prospect in a sober light which, if mistaken at all, erred on the side of pessimism.

The envelopes that she had enclosed came back to her late the following afternoon; and the circulars varied mainly in colour and in the prices of the materials that they offered for sale. In all particulars essential to prove them frauds to everybody excepting the piteous fools who must exist, to explain the advertisements' longevity, they were the same.

With the extinction of the hope, the darkness of her outlook was intensified, and henceforth she eschewed the offers of "liberal incomes" and confined her attention to the illiberal wages. Day after day she resorted to the news-room—one stray more whom the proprietor saw regularly—resolved not to relinquish her access to the papers while a coin remained to her to pay for admission. She wrote many letters, and spent her evenings vainly listening for the postman's knock. She attributed her repeated failures to there being no mention of references in her replies; they were so concise and nicely written that she felt sure they could not have failed from any other reason. Probably her nicely-written notes were never read: merely tossed with scores of others, all unopened, into the wastepaper basket, after a selection had been made from the top thirty. This is the fate of most of the nicely-written notes that go in reply to advertisements in the newspapers; only, the people who compose them and post them with little prayers, fortunately do not suspect it. If they suspected it, they would lose the twenty-four hours' comfort of hugging a false hope to their souls; and an oasis of hope may be a desirable thing at the cost of a postage-stamp.

One evening an answer did come, and an answer in connection with a really beautiful "Wanted." When it was handed to her, she hardly dared to hope that it related to that particular situation at all. The advertisement had run:

"Secretary required by a Literary Lady. Must be sociable, and have no objection to travel on the Continent. Apply in own handwriting to C.B., care of Messrs. Furnival," etc.

The signature, however, was not "C.B.'s." The communication was from Messrs. Furnival. They wrote that they judged by Miss Brettan's application that she would suit their client; and that on receipt of a half-crown—their usual booking fee—they would forward the lady's address.

If she had had a half-crown to send, she might have sent it; as it was, instead of remitting to Messrs. Furnival's office, she called there.

It proved to be a very small and very dark back room on the ground-floor, and Messrs. Furnival were represented by a stout gentleman of shabby apparel and mellifluous manner. Mary began by saying that she was the applicant who had received his letter about "C.B.'s" advertisement; but as this announcement did not seem sufficiently definite to enable the stout gentleman to converse on the subject with fluency and freedom, she added that "C.B." was a literary lady who stood in need of a secretary.

On this he became very vivacious indeed. He told her that her chance of securing the post was an excellent one. No, it was not a certainty, as she appeared to have understood, but he did not think she had much occasion for misgiving; her speed in shorthand was in excess of the rate for which their client had stipulated.

She said: "Why, I especially stated that if she wanted someone who knew shorthand, I should be no use!"

He said: "So you did! I meant to say, your type-writing was your recommendation."

"Mr. Furnival," she exclaimed, "I wrote, 'I do not know shorthand, and I am not a typist'! You must be confusing me with someone else. Perhaps you have answered another application as well?"

Perhaps he had.

"You're my first experience of an applicant for a secretaryship who hasn't learnt shorthand or type-writing," he said in an injured tone. "Of course, if you don't know either, you'd be no good at all—not a bit."

"Then," she said, "why did you ask me to send you half a crown?"

Before he could spare time to enlighten her as to his reason for this line of action, they were interrupted by an urchin who deposited an armful of letters on the table. The gentleman seemed pleased to see them, and she came away wondering how many of the women who Messrs. Furnival "judged would suit their client" enclosed postal-orders to pay the "fee."

Quite ineffectually she visited some legitimate agencies, and once she walked to Battersea in time to learn that the berth that was the object of her journey had just been filled. Even when one walks to Battersea, and dines for twopence, however, the staying-powers of two-and-ninepence are very limited; and the dawning of the dreaded date for the bill found her capital exhausted.

Among her scanty possessions, the only article that she could suggest converting into money was a silver watch that she wore attached to a guard. It had belonged to her as a girl; she had worn it as a nurse; it had travelled with her on tour during her life with Carew. What a pawnbroker would lend her on it she did not know, but she supposed a sovereign. Had she been better off, she would have supposed two sovereigns, for she was as ignorant of its value as of the method of pledging it; but being destitute, a pound looked to her a very substantial amount. She made her way heavily into the street. She felt that her errand was printed on her face, and when she reached and paused beneath the sign of the three balls, all the passers-by seemed to be watching her.

The window offered a pretext for hesitation. She stood inspecting the collection behind the glass; perhaps anyone who saw her go in might imagine it was with the intention of buying something! She was nerving herself to the necessary pitch when, giving a final glance over her shoulder, she saw a bystander looking at her steadily. Her courage took flight, and she sauntered on, deciding to explore for a shop in a more secluded position.

Though she was ashamed of her retreat, the respite was a relief to her. It was not until she came to three more balls that she perceived that the longer she delayed, the worse she would feel. She went hurriedly in. There was a row of narrow doors extending down a passage, and, pulling one open, she found the tiny compartment occupied by a woman and a bundle. Starting back, she adventured the next partition, which proved to be vacant; and standing away from the counter, lest her profile should be detected by her neighbour in distress, she waited for someone to come to her.

Nobody taking any notice, she rapped to attract attention. A young man lounged along, and she put the watch down.

"How much?" he said.

"A pound."

He caught it up and withdrew, conveying the impression that he thought very little of it. She thought very little of it herself directly it was in his hand. His hand was a masterpiece of expression, whereas his voice never wavered from two notes.

"Ten shillings," he said, reappearing.

"Ten shillings is very little," she murmured. "Surely it's worth more than that?"

"Going to take it?"

He slid the watch across to her.

"Thank you," she said; "yes."

A doubt whether it would be sufficient crept over her the instant she had agreed, and she wished she had declined the offer. To call him back, however, was beyond her; and when he returned it was with the ticket.

"Name and address?"

New to the requirements of a pawnbroker, she stammered the true one, convinced that the woman with the bundle would overhear and remember. Even then she was dismayed to find the transaction wasn't concluded; he asked her for a halfpenny, and, with the blood in her face, she signified that she had no change. At last though, she was free to depart, with a handful of silver and coppers; and guiltily transferring the money to her purse when the shop was well behind, she reverted to routine.

It was striking five when she mounted to the attic, and she saw that Mrs. Shuttleworth, with the punctuality peculiar to cheap landladies when the lodger is out, had already brought up the tray. On the plate was her bill; she snatched at it anxiously, and was relieved to find it ran thus:

So far, then, she had been equal to emergencies, and another week's shelter was assured. The garret began to assume almost an air of comfort, refined by her terror of losing it. When she reflected that the week divided her from actual starvation, she cried that she must find something to do—she must! Then she realised that she could find it no more easily because it was a case of "must" than if it had been simply expedient, and the futility of the feminine "must," when she was already doing all she could do, served to accentuate her helplessness. She prayed passionately, without being able to feel much confidence in the efficacy of prayer, and told herself that she did not deserve that God should listen to her, because she was guilty, and sinful, and bad. She did not seek consolation in repeating that it was always darkest before dawn, nor strive to fortify herself with any other of the aphorisms belonging to the vocabulary of sorrow for other people. The position being her own, she looked it straight in the eyes, and admitted that the chances were in favour of her being very shortly without a bed to lie on.

Each night she came a few pence nearer to the end; each night now she sat staring from the window, imagining the sensations of wandering homeless. And at last the day broke—a sunless and chilly day—when she rose and went out possessed of one penny, without any means of adding to it. This penny might be reserved to diminish the hunger that would seize her presently, or she might give herself a final chance among the newspapers. Having breakfasted, she decided on the final chance.

As she turned the pages her hands trembled, and for a second the paragraphs swam together. The next instant, standing out clearly from the sea of print, she saw an advertisement like the smile of a friend:

"Useful Companion wanted to elderly lady; one with some experience of invalids preferred. Apply personally, between 3 and 5, 'Trebartha,' N. Finchley."

If it had been framed for her, it could hardly have suited her better. The wish for personal application was itself an advantage, for in conversation, she felt, the obstacle of having no references could be surmounted with far less trouble than by letter. A string of frank allusions to the difficulty, a dozen easy phrases, leapt into her mind, so that, in fancy, the interview was already in progress, and terminating with pleasant words in the haven of engagement.

She searched no further, and it was not till she was leaving that she remembered the miles that she would have to walk. To start so early, however, would be useless, so on second thoughts she determined to pass the morning where she was.

She was surprised to discover that she was not singular in this decision, and she wondered if all; the clients that stayed so long had anywhere else to go. Many of them never turned a leaf, but sat at the table dreamily eyeing a journal; as if they had forgotten that it was there. She; watched the people coming in, noting the unanimity with which they made for the advertisement-sheets first, and speculating as to the nature of the work they sought.

There was a woman garbed in black, downcast and precise; she was a governess, manifestly. Once, when she had been young, and insolent with the courage of youth, she would have mocked a portrait looking as she looked now; there was little enough mockery left in her this morning. She quitted the "dailies" unrewarded, and proceeded to the table, her thin-lipped mouth set a trifle harder than before. A girl with magenta feathers in her hat bounced in, tracing her way down the columns with a heavy fore-finger, and departing nonchalantly with a blotted list. This was a domestic servant, Mary understood. A shabby man of sinister expression covered an area of possibilities: a broken-down tutor perhaps, a professional man gone to the bad. He looked like Mephistopheles in the prompter's clothes, she thought, contemplating him with languid curiosity. The reflections flitted across the central idea while she sat nervously waiting for the hours to pass, and when she considered it was time at last, she asked the newsagent in which direction Finchley lay. She omitted to mention that she had to walk there, but she obtained sufficient information about a tram-route to guide her up to Hampstead Heath, where of course she could inquire again.