Barrie, J M - When A Man's Single

by When A Man's Single

  " You will remain out of consideration for papa. How could I think worse of you for that?"

  Mary rose to leave the room, and as Sir Clement opened the door for her he said :

  "We shall say nothing of all this to Colonel Abinger?"

  "Oh, no, certainly not," said Mary.

  She glanced up in his face, her mouth twisted slightly to one side, as it had a habit of doing when she felt disdainful, and the glory of her beauty filled him of a sudden. The baronet pushed the door close and turned to her passionately, a film over his eyes, and his hands outstretched.

  " Mary," he cried, "is there no hope for me?"

  " No," said Mary, opening the door for herself and passing out.

  Sir Clement stood there motionless for a minute. Then he crossed to the fireplace, and sank into a lux- uriously cushioned chair. The sunlight came back to his noble face.

  "This is grand, glorious," he murmured, in an ecstasy of enjoyment.

  In the days that followed, the baronet's behavior was a little peculiar. Occasionally at meals he

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  seemed to remember that a rejected lover ought not to have a good appetite. If, when he was smoking in the grounds, he saw Mary approaching, he covertly dropped his cigar. When he knew that she was sit- ting at a window he would pace up and down the walk with h is head bent as if life had lost its interest to him. By-and-bye his mind wandered on these oc- casions to more cheerful matters, and he would start to find that he had been smiling to himself and swish- ing his cane playfully, like a man who walked on air. It might have been said of him that he tried to be miserable and found it hard work.

  Will, who discovered that the baronet did not know what 1. b. w. meant, could not, nevertheless, despise a man who had shot lions, but he never had quite the same respect for the king of beasts again. As for Greybrooke, he rather liked Sir Clement, because he knew that Nell (in her own words) "loathed, hated, and despised " him.

  Greybrooke had two severe disappointments that holiday, both of which were to be traced to the ca- pricious Nell. It had dawned on him that she could not help liking him a little if she saw him take a famous jump over the Dome known to legend as the "Robber's Leap." The robber had lost his life in trying to leap the stream, but the captain practised in the castle grounds until he felt that he could clear it. Then he formally invited Miss Meredith to come and see him do it, and she told him instead that he

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  was wicked. The captain and Will went back si- lently to the castle, wondering what on earth she would like.

  Greybrooke's other disappointment was still more grievous. One evening he and Will returned to the castle late for dinner an offence the colonel found it hard to overlook, although they were going back to school on the following day. Will reached the din- ing-room first, and his father frowned on him.

  "You are a quarter of an hour late, William," said the colonel sternly. " Where have you been?"

  Will hesitated.

  "Do you remember," he said, at last, "a man called Angus, who was here reporting on Christmas Eve?"

  Mary laid down her knife and fork.

  "A painfully powerful-looking man," said Dow- ton, " in hob-nailed boots. I remember him."

  "Well, we have been calling on him," said Will.

  " Calling on him, calling on that impudent news- paper man!" exclaimed the colonel; "what do you mean?"

  " Greybrooke had a row with him some time ago, " said Will; "I don't know what about, because it was private ; but the captain has been looking for the fellow for a fortnight to lick him I mean punish him. We came upon him two days ago, near the castle gates."

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  Here Will paused, as if he would prefer to jump what followed.

  "And did your friend 'lick' him then?" asked the colonel, at which Will shook his head.

  " Why not?" asked Sir Clement.

  "Well," said Will reluctantly, "the fellow would not let him." He he lifted Greybrooke up in his arms, and and dropped him over the hedge."

  Mary could not help laughing.

  " The beggar I mean the fellow must have mus- cles like ivy-roots," Will blurted out admiringly.

  "I fancy," said Dowton, "that I have seen him near the gates several times during the last week."

  " Very likely, " said the colonel shortly. " I caught him poaching in the Dome some months ago. There is something bad about that man."

  " Papa !" said Mary.

  At this moment Greybrooke entered.

  " So, Mr. Greybrooke," said the colonel," I hear you have been in Silchester avenging an insult."

  The captain looked at Will, who nodded.

  "I went there," admitted Greybrooke, blushing, " to horsewhip a reporter fellow, but he had run away. "

  "Run away?"

  "Yes. Did not Will tell you? We called at the Mirror office, and were told that Angus had bolted to London two days ago."

  " And the worst of it," interposed Will, " is that he ran off without paying his landlady's bill."

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  "I knew that man was a rascal," exclaimed the colonel.

  Mary flushed.

  " I don't believe it," she said.

  "You don't believe it," repeated her father an- grily; "and why not, pray?"

  "Because because I don't," said Mary.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  IN FLEET STREET.

  MARY was wrong. It was quite true that Rob had run away to London without paying his land- lady's bill.

  The immediate result of his meeting with Miss Ab- inger had been to make him undertake double work and not do it. Looking in at shop-windows, where he saw hats that he thought would just suit Mary (he had a good deal to learn yet) , it came upon him that he was wasting his time. Then he hurried home, contemptuous of all the rest of Silchester, to write an article for a London paper, and when he next came to himself, half an hour afterward, he was sitting before a blank sheet of copy-paper. He began to review a book, and found himself gazing at a Christmas card. He tried to think out the action of a government, and thought out a ring on Miss Abinger's finger instead. Three nights running he dreamed that he was married, and woke up quaking.

  Without much misgiving Rob heard it said in Sil- chester that there was some one staying at Dome Castle who was to be its mistress' husband. On discovering that they referred to Dowton, and not be- 134

  IN FLEET STREET. 135

  ing versed in the wonderful ways of woman, he told himself that this was impossible. A cynic would have pointed out that Mary had now had several days in which to change her mind. Cynics are persons who make themselves the measure of other people.

  The philosopher who remarked that the obvious truths are those which are most often missed, was probably referring to the time it takes a man to dis- cover that he is in love. Women are quicker because they are on the outlook. It took Rob two days, and when it came upon him checked his breathing. Af- ter that he bore it like a man. Another discovery he had to make was that, after all, he was nobody in particular. This took him longer.

  Although the manner of his going to London was unexpected, Rob had thought out solidly the induce- ments to go. Ten minutes or so after he knew that he wanted to marry Mary Abinger, he made up his mind to try to do it. The only obstacles he saw in his way were that she was not in love with him, and the lack of income. Feeling that he was an un- common type of man (if people would only see it) he resolved to remove this second difficulty first. The saw-mill and the castle side by side did not rise up and frighten him, and for the time he succeeded in not thinking about Colonel Abinger. Nothing is hopeless if we want it very much.

  Rob calculated that if he remained on the Mirror for another dozen years or so, and Mr. Licquorish

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  continued to think that it would not be cheaper to do without him, he might reach a salary of 200 per annum. As that was not sufficient, he made up his mind to leave
Silchester.

  There was only one place to go to. Rob thought of London until he felt that it was the guardian from whom he would have to ask Mary Abinger; he pic- tured her there during the season, until London, which he had never seen, began to assume a homely aspect. It was the place in which he was to win or lose his battle. To whom is London much more? It is the clergyman's name for his church, the law- yer's for his office, the politician's for St. Stephen's, the cabman's for his stand.

  There was not a man on the press in Silchester who did not hunger for Fleet Street, but they were all afraid to beard it. They knew it as a rabbit- warren ; as the closest street in a city, where the boot- black has his sycophants, and you have to battle for exclusive right to sweep a crossing. The fight for- ward had been grimmer to Rob, however, than to his fellows, and he had never been quite beaten. He was alone in the world, and poverty was like an old friend. There was only one journalist in London whom he knew even by name, and he wrote to him for advice. This was Mr. John Rorrison, a son of the minister whose assistance had brought Rob to Silchester. Rorrison was understood to be practically editing a great London newspaper, which is what is

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  understood of a great many journalists until you make inquiries, but he wrote back to Rob asking him why he wanted to die before his time. You collec- tors who want an editor's autograph may rely upon having it by return of post if you write threatening to come to London with the hope that he will do something for you. Rorrison's answer discomfited Rob for five minutes, and then going out he caught a glimpse of Mary Abinger in the Merediths' car- riage. He tore up the letter, and saw that London was worth risking.

  One forenoon Rob set out for the office to tell Mr. Licquorish of his determination. He knew that the entire staff would think him demented, but he could not see that he was acting rashly. He had worked it all out in his mind, and even tranquilly faced pos- sible starvation. Rob was congratulating himself on not having given way to impulse when he reached the railway station.

  His way from his lodgings to the office led past the station, and, as he had done scores of times before, he went inside. To Rob all the romance of Silchester was concentrated there ; nothing stirred him so much as a panting engine ; the shunting of carriages, the bustle of passengers, the porters rattling to and fro with luggage, the trains twisting serpent-like into the station and stealing out in a glory to be gone, sent the blood to his head. On Saturday nights, when he was free, any one calling at the station.

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  would have been sure to find him on the platform from which the train starts for London. His heart had sunk every time it went off without him.

  Rob woke up from a dream of Fleet Street to see the porters slamming the doors of the London train. He saw the guard's hand upraised, and heard the carriages rattle as the restive engine took them un- awares. Then came the warning whistle, and the train moved off. For a second of time Rob felt that he had lost London, and he started forward. Some one near him shouted, and then he came upon the train all at once, a door opened, and he shot in. When he came to himself, Silchester was a cloud climbing to the sky behind him, and he was on his way to London.

  Rob's first feeling was that the other people in the carriage must know what he had done. He was re- lieved to find that his companions were only an old gentleman who spoke fiercely to his newspaper be- cause it was reluctant to turn inside out, a little girl who had got in at Silchester and consumed thirteen halfpenny buns before she was five miles distant from it, and a young woman, evidently a nurse, with a baby in her arms. The baby was noisy for a time, but Rob gave it a look that kept it silent for the rest of the journey. He told himself that he would get out at the first station, but when the train stopped at it he sat on. He twisted himself into a corner to count his money covertly, and found that it came to

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  four pounds odd. He also took the Christmas card from his pocket, but replaced it hastily, feeling that the old gentleman and the little girl were looking at him. A feeling of elation grew upon him as he saw that whatever might happen afterward he must be in London shortly, and his mind ran on the letters he would write" to Mr. Licquorish and his landlady. In lieu of his ticket he handed over twelve shillings to the guard, under whose eyes he did not feel com- fortable, and he calculated that he owed his landlady over two pounds. He would send it to her and ask her to forward his things to London. Mr. Licquor- ish, however, might threaten him with the law if he did not return. But then the Mirror owed Rob sev- eral pounds at that moment, and if he did not claim it in person it would remain in Mr. Licquorish's pocket. There was no saying how far that consider- ation would affect the editor. Rob saw a charge of dishonesty rise up and confront him, and he drew back from it. A moment afterward he looked it in the face, and it receded. He took his pipe from his pocket.

  " This is not a smoking-carriage," gasped the little girl, so promptly that it almost seemed as if she had been waiting her opportunity ever since the train started. Rob looked at her. She seemed about eight, but her eye was merciless. He thrust his pipe back into its case, feeling cowed at last.

  The nurse, who had been looking at Rob and. blush-

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  ing when she caught his eye, got out with her charge at a side station, and he helped her rather awkwardly to alight. " Don't mention it," he said, in answer to her thanks.

  "Not a word; I'm not that kind," she replied, so eagerly that he started back in alarm, to find the lit- tle girl looking suspiciously at him. -

  As Rob stepped out of the train at King's Cross he realized sharply that he was alone in the world. He did not know where to go now, and his heart sank for a time as he paced the platform irresolutely, feel- ing that it was his last link to Silchester. He turned into the booking-office to consult a time-table, and noticed against the wall a railway map of London. For a long time he stood looking at it, and as he traced the river, the streets familiar to him by name, the districts and buildings which were household words to him, he felt that he must live in London somehow. He discovered Fleet Street in the map, and studied the best way of getting to it from King's Cross. Then grasping his stick firmly, he took pos- session of London as calmly as he could.

  Rob never found any difficulty afterward in pick- ing out the shabby eating-house in which he had his first meal in London. Gray's Inn Road re- mained to him always its most romantic street be- cause he went down it first. He walked into the roar of London in Holborn, and never forgot the alley into which he retreated to discover if he had suddenly be-

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  come deaf. He wondered when the crowd would pass. Years afterward he turned into Fetter Lane, and suddenly there came back to his mind the thought that had held him as he went down it the day he ar- rived in London.

  A certain awe came upon Rob as he went down Fleet Street on the one side, and up it on the other. He could not resist looking into the faces of the per- sons who passed him, and wondering if they edited the Times. The lean man who was in such a hurry that wherever he had to go he would soon be there, might be a man of letters whom Rob knew by heart, but perhaps he was only a broken journalist with his eye on half a crown. The mild-looking man whom Rob smiled at because, when he was half-way across the street, he lost his head and was chased out of sight by half a dozen hansom cabs, was a war cor- respondent who had been so long in Africa that the perils of a London crossing unmanned him. The youth who was on his way home with a pork-chop in his pocket edited a society journal. Rob did not recognize a distinguished poet in a little stout man who was looking pensively at a barrowf ul of walnuts, and he was mistaken in thinking that the bearded gentleman who held his head so high must be some- body in particular. Rob observed a pale young man gazing wistfully at him, and wondered if he was a thief or a sub-editor. He was merely an aspirant who had come to London that morning to make his

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  fortune, and
he took Rob for a leader-writer at the least. The offices, however, and even the public buildings, the shops, the narrowness of the streets, all disappointed Rob. The houses seemed squeezed to- gether for economy of space, like a closed concertina. Nothing quite fulfilled his expectations but the big letter-holes in the district postal offices. He had not been sufficiently long in London to feel its greatest charm, which has been expressed in many ways by poet, wit, business man and philosopher, but comes to this, that it is the only city in the world in whose streets you can eat penny buns without people's turn- ing round to look at you.

  In a few days Rob was a part of London. His Silchester landlady had forwarded him his things, and Mr. Licquorish had washed his hands of him. The editor of the J/zrror's letter amounted to a la- ment that a man whom he had allowed to do two men's work for half a man's wages should have treated him thus. Mr. Licquorish, however, had conceived the idea of " forcing" John Milton, and so saving a reporter, and he did not insist on Rob's re- turning. He expressed a hope that his ex-reporter would do well in London, and a fear, amounting to a conviction, that he would not. But he sent the three pounds due to him in wages, pointing out, justifi- ably enough, that, strictly speaking, Rob owed him a month's salary. Rob had not expected such lib- erality, and from that time always admitted that

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  there must have been a heroic vein in Mr. Licquorish after all.

  Rob established himself in a little back room in Islington, so small that a fairly truthful journalist might have said of it, in an article, that you had to climb the table to reach the fireplace, and to lift out the easy-chair before you could get out at the door. The room was over a grocer's shop, whose window bore the announcement : " Eggs, new laid, Is. 3d. ; eggs, fresh, Is. 2d. ; eggs, warranted, Is. ; eggs, lOd. " A shop across the way hinted at the reputation of the neighborhood in the polite placard, " Trust in the Lord: every other person cash."