"I beg your pardon," said the stranger. "I knocked three times. Perhaps you did not hear me?"
"No, I didn't," confessed Tommy, closing the book of Czerny's Exercises, and rising with chin at an angle that, to anyone acquainted with the chart of Tommy's temperament, might have suggested the advisability of seeking shelter.
"This is the editorial office of Good Humour, is it not?" inquired the stranger.
"It is."
"Is the editor in?"
"The editor is out."
"The sub-editor?" suggested the stranger.
"I am the sub-editor."
The stranger raised his eyebrows. Tommy, on the contrary, lowered hers.
"Would you mind glancing through that?" The stranger drew from his pocket a folded manuscript. "It will not take you a moment. I ought, of course, to have sent it through the post; but I am so tired of sending things through the post."
The stranger's manner was compounded of dignified impudence combined with pathetic humility. His eyes both challenged and pleaded. Tommy held out her hand for the paper and retired with it behind the protection of the big editorial desk that, flanked on one side by a screen and on the other by a formidable revolving bookcase, stretched fortress-like across the narrow room. The stranger remained standing.
"Yes. It's pretty," criticised the sub-editor. "Worth printing, perhaps, not worth paying for."
"Not merely a--a nominal sum, sufficient to distinguish it from the work of the amateur?"
Tommy pursed her lips. "Poetry is quite a drug in the market. We can get as much as we want of it for nothing."
"Say half a crown," suggested the stranger.
Tommy shot a swift glance across the desk, and for the first time saw the whole of him. He was clad in a threadbare, long, brown ulster--long, that is, it would have been upon an ordinary man, but the stranger happening to be remarkably tall, it appeared on him ridiculously short, reaching only to his knees. Round his neck and tucked into his waistcoat, thus completely hiding the shirt and collar he may have been wearing or may not, was carefully arranged a blue silk muffler. His hands, which were bare, looked blue and cold. Yet the black frock-coat and waistcoat and French grey trousers bore the unmistakable cut of a first-class tailor and fitted him to perfection. His hat, which he had rested on the desk, shone resplendent, and the handle of his silk umbrella was an eagle's head in gold, with two small rubies for the eyes.
"You can leave it if you like," consented Tommy. "I'll speak to the editor about it when he returns."
"You won't forget it?" urged the stranger.
"No," answered Tommy. "I shall not forget it."
Her black eyes were fixed upon the stranger without her being aware of it. She had dropped unconsciously into her "stocktaking" attitude.
"Thank you very much," said the stranger. "I will call again to-morrow."
The stranger, moving backward to the door, went out.
Tommy sat with her face between her hands. Czerny's Exercises lay neglected.
"Anybody called?" asked Peter Hope.
"No," answered Tommy. "Oh, just a man. Left this--not bad."
"The old story," mused Peter, as he unfolded the manuscript. "We all of us begin with poetry. Then we take to prose romances; poetry doesn't pay. Finally, we write articles: 'How to be Happy though Married,' 'What shall we do with our Daughters?' It is life summarised. What is it all about?"
"Oh, the usual sort of thing," explained Tommy. "He wants half a crown for it."
"Poor devil! Let him have it."
"That's not business," growled Tommy.
"Nobody will ever know," said Peter. "We'll enter it as 'telegrams.'"
The stranger called early the next day, pocketed his half-crown, and left another manuscript--an essay. Also he left behind him his gold-handled umbrella, taking away with him instead an old alpaca thing Clodd kept in reserve for exceptionally dirty weather. Peter pronounced the essay usable.
"He has a style," said Peter; "he writes with distinction. Make an appointment for me with him."
Clodd, on missing his umbrella, was indignant.
"What's the good of this thing to me?" commented Clodd. "Sort of thing for a dude in a pantomime! The fellow must be a blithering ass!"
Tommy gave to the stranger messages from both when next he called. He appeared more grieved than surprised concerning the umbrellas.
"You don't think Mr. Clodd would like to keep this umbrella in exchange for his own?" he suggested.
"Hardly his style," explained Tommy.
"It's very peculiar," said the stranger, with a smile. "I have been trying to get rid of this umbrella for the last three weeks. Once upon a time, when I preferred to keep my own umbrella, people used to take it by mistake, leaving all kinds of shabby things behind them in exchange. Now, when I'd really like to get quit of it, nobody will have it."
"Why do you want to get rid of it?" asked Tommy. "It looks a very good umbrella."
"You don't know how it hampers me," said the stranger. "I have to live up to it. It requires a certain amount of resolution to enter a cheap restaurant accompanied by that umbrella. When I do, the waiters draw my attention to the most expensive dishes and recommend me special brands of their so-called champagne. They seem quite surprised if I only want a chop and a glass of beer. I haven't always got the courage to disappoint them. It is really becoming quite a curse to me. If I use it to stop a 'bus, three or four hansoms dash up and quarrel over me. I can't do anything I want to do. I want to live simply and inexpensively: it will not let me."
Tommy laughed. "Can't you lose it?"
The stranger laughed also. "Lose it! You have no idea how honest people are. I hadn't myself. The whole world has gone up in my estimation within the last few weeks. People run after me for quite long distances and force it into my hand--people on rainy days who haven't got umbrellas of their own. It is the same with this hat." The stranger sighed as he took it up. "I am always trying to get OFF with something reasonably shabby in exchange for it. I am always found out and stopped."
"Why don't you pawn them?" suggested the practicable Tommy.
The stranger regarded her with admiration.
"Do you know, I never thought of that," said the stranger. "Of course. What a good idea! Thank you so much."
The stranger departed, evidently much relieved.
"Silly fellow," mused Tommy. "They won't give him a quarter of the value, and he will say: 'Thank you so much,' and be quite contented." It worried Tommy a good deal that day, the thought of that stranger's helplessness.
The stranger's name was Richard Danvers. He lived the other side of Holborn, in Featherstone Buildings, but much of his time came to be spent in the offices of Good Humour.
Peter liked him. "Full of promise," was Peter's opinion. "His criticism of that article of mine on 'The Education of Woman' showed both sense and feeling. A scholar and a thinker."
Flipp, the office-boy (spelt Philip), liked him; and Flipp's attitude, in general, was censorial. "He's all right," pronounced Flipp; "nothing stuck-up about him. He's got plenty of sense, lying hidden away."
Miss Ramsbotham liked him. "The men--the men we think about at all," explained Miss Ramsbotham--"may be divided into two classes: the men we ought to like, but don't; and the men there is no particular reason for our liking, but that we do. Personally I could get very fond of your friend Dick. There is nothing whatever attractive about him except himself."
Even Tommy liked him in her way, though at times she was severe with him.
"If you mean a big street," grumbled Tommy, who was going over proofs, "why not say a big street? Why must you always call it a 'main artery'?"
"I am sorry," apologised Danvers. "It is not my own idea. You told me to study the higher-class journals."
"I didn't tell you to select and follow all their faults. Here it is again. Your crowd is always a 'hydra-headed monster'; your tea 'the cup that cheers but not inebriates.'"
"I am afraid I am a d
eal of trouble to you," suggested the staff.
"I am afraid you are," agreed the sub-editor.
"Don't give me up," pleaded the staff. "I misunderstood you, that is all. I will write English for the future."
"Shall be glad if you will," growled the sub-editor.
Dick Danvers rose. "I am so anxious not to get what you call 'the sack' from here."
The sub-editor, mollified, thought the staff need be under no apprehension, provided it showed itself teachable.
"I have been rather a worthless fellow, Miss Hope," confessed Dick Danvers. "I was beginning to despair of myself till I came across you and your father. The atmosphere here--I don't mean the material atmosphere of Crane Court--is so invigorating: its simplicity, its sincerity. I used to have ideals. I tried to stifle them. There is a set that sneers at all that sort of thing. Now I see that they are good. You will help me?"
Every woman is a mother. Tommy felt for the moment that she wanted to take this big boy on her knee and talk to him for his good. He was only an overgrown lad. But so exceedingly overgrown! Tommy had to content herself with holding out her hand. Dick Danvers grasped it tightly.
Clodd was the only one who did not approve of him.
"How did you get hold of him?" asked Clodd one afternoon, he and Peter alone in the office.
"He came. He came in the usual way," explained Peter.
"What do you know about him?"
"Nothing. What is there to know? One doesn't ask for a character with a journalist."
"No, I suppose that wouldn't work. Found out anything about him since?"
"Nothing against him. Why so suspicious of everybody?"
"Because you are just a woolly lamb and want a dog to look after you. Who is he? On a first night he gives away his stall and sneaks into the pit. When you send him to a picture-gallery, he dodges the private view and goes on the first shilling day. If an invitation comes to a public dinner, he asks me to go and eat it for him and tell him what it's all about. That doesn't suggest the frank and honest journalist, does it?"
"It is unusual, it certainly is unusual," Peter was bound to admit.
"I distrust the man," said Clodd. "He's not our class. What is he doing here?"
"I will ask him, Clodd; I will ask him straight out."
"And believe whatever he tells you."
"No, I shan't."
"Then what's the good of asking him?"
"Well, what am I to do?" demanded the bewildered Peter.
"Get rid of him," suggested Clodd.
"Get rid of him?"
"Get him away! Don't have him in and out of the office all day long-looking at her with those collie-dog eyes of his, arguing art and poetry with her in that cushat-dove voice of his. Get him clean away--if it isn't too late already."
"Nonsense," said Peter, who had turned white, however. "She's not that sort of girl."
"Not that sort of girl!" Clodd had no patience with Peter Hope, and told him so. "Why are there never inkstains on her fingers now? There used to be. Why does she always keep a lemon in her drawer? When did she last have her hair cut? I'll tell you if you care to know--the week before he came, five months ago. She used to have it cut once a fortnight: said it tickled her neck. Why does she jump on people when they call her Tommy and tell them that her name is Jane? It never used to be Jane. Maybe when you're a bit older you'll begin to notice things for yourself."
Clodd jammed his hat on his head and flung himself down the stairs.
Peter, slipping out a minute later, bought himself an ounce of snuff.
"Fiddle-de-dee!" said Peter as he helped himself to his thirteenth pinch. "Don't believe it. I'll sound her. I shan't say a word--I'll just sound her."
Peter stood with his back to the fire. Tommy sat at her desk, correcting proofs of a fanciful story: The Man Without a Past.
"I shall miss him," said Peter; "I know I shall."
"Miss whom?" demanded Tommy.
"Danvers," sighed Peter. "It always happens so. You get friendly with a man; then he goes away--abroad, back to America, Lord knows where. You never see him again."
Tommy looked up. There was trouble in her face.
"How do you spell 'harassed'?" questioned Tommy! "two r's or one."
"One r," Peter informed her, "two s's."
"I thought so." The trouble passed from Tommy's face.
"You don't ask when he's going, you don't ask where he's going," complained Peter. "You don't seem to be interested in the least."
"I was going to ask, so soon as I had finished correcting this sheet," explained Tommy. "What reason does he give?"
Peter had crossed over and was standing where he could see her face illumined by the lamplight.
"It doesn't upset you--the thought of his going away, of your never seeing him again?"
"Why should it?" Tommy answered his searching gaze with a slightly puzzled look. "Of course, I'm sorry. He was becoming useful. But we couldn't expect him to stop with us always, could we?"
Peter, rubbing his hands, broke into a chuckle. "I told him 'twas all fiddlesticks. Clodd, he would have it you were growing to care for the fellow."
"For Dick Danvers?" Tommy laughed. "Whatever put that into his head?"
"Oh, well, there were one or two little things that we had noticed."
"We?"
"I mean that Clodd had noticed."
I'm glad it was Clodd that noticed them, not you, dad, thought Tommy to herself. They'd have been pretty obvious if you had noticed them.
"It naturally made me anxious," confessed Peter. "You see, we know absolutely nothing of the fellow."
"Absolutely nothing," agreed Tommy.
"He may be a man of the highest integrity. Personally, I think he is. I like him. On the other hand, he may be a thorough-paced scoundrel. I don't believe for a moment that he is, but he may be. Impossible to say."
"Quite impossible," agreed Tommy.
"Considered merely as a journalist, it doesn't matter. He writes well. He has brains. There's an end of it."
"He is very painstaking," agreed Tommy.
"Personally," added Peter, "I like the fellow." Tommy had returned to her work.
Of what use was Peter in a crisis of this kind? Peter couldn't scold. Peter couldn't bully. The only person to talk to Tommy as Tommy knew she needed to be talked to was one Jane, a young woman of dignity with sense of the proprieties.
"I do hope that at least you are feeling ashamed of yourself," remarked Jane to Tommy that same night, as the twain sat together in their little bedroom.
"Done nothing to be ashamed of," growled Tommy.
"Making a fool of yourself openly, for everybody to notice."
"Clodd ain't everybody. He's got eyes at the back of his head. Sees things before they happen."
"Where's your woman's pride: falling in love with a man who has never spoken to you, except in terms of the most ordinary courtesy."
"I'm not in love with him."
"A man about whom you know absolutely nothing."
"Not in love with him."
"Where does he come from? Who is he?"
"I don't know, don't care; nothing to do with me."
"Just because of his soft eyes, and his wheedling voice, and that half-caressing, half-devotional manner of his. Do you imagine he keeps it specially for you? I gave you credit for more sense."
"I'm not in love with him, I tell you. He's down on his luck, and I'm sorry for him, that's all."
"And if he is, whose fault was it, do you think?"
"It doesn't matter. We are none of us saints. He's trying to pull himself together, and I respect him for it. It's our duty to be charitable and kind to one another in this world!"
"Oh, well, I'll tell you how you can be kind to him: by pointing out to him that he is wasting his time. With his talents, now that he knows his business, he could be on the staff of some big paper, earning a good income. Put it nicely to him, but be firm. Insist on his going. That will be showing tru
e kindness to him--and to yourself, too, I'm thinking, my dear."
And Tommy understood and appreciated the sound good sense underlying Jane's advice, and the very next day but one, seizing the first opportunity, acted upon it; and all would have gone as contemplated if only Dick Danvers had sat still and listened, as it had been arranged in Tommy's programme that he should.
"But I don't want to go," said Dick.
"But you ought to want to go. Staying here with us you are doing yourself no good."
He rose and came to where she stood with one foot upon the fender, looking down into the fire. His doing this disconcerted her. So long as he remained seated at the other end of the room, she was the sub-editor, counselling the staff for its own good. Now that she could not raise her eyes without encountering his, she felt painfully conscious of being nothing more important than a little woman who was trembling.
"It is doing me all the good in the world," he told her, "being near to you."
"Oh, please do sit down again," she urged him. "I can talk to you so much better when you're sitting down."
But he would not do anything he should have done that day. Instead he took her hands in his, and would not let them go; and the reason and the will went out of her, leaving her helpless.
"Let me be with you always," he pleaded. "It means the difference between light and darkness to me. You have done so much for me. Will you not finish your work? Will you not trust me? It is no hot passion that can pass away, my love for you. It springs from all that is best in me--from the part of me that is wholesome and joyous and strong, the part of me that belongs to you."
Releasing her, he turned away.
"The other part of me--the blackguard--it is dead, dear,--dead and buried. I did not know I was a blackguard, I thought myself a fine fellow, till one day it came home to me. Suddenly I saw myself as I really was. And the sight of the thing frightened me and I ran away from it. I said to myself I would begin life afresh, in a new country, free of every tie that could bind me to the past. It would mean poverty--privation, maybe, in the beginning. What of that? The struggle would brace me. It would be good sport. Ah, well, you can guess the result: the awakening to the cold facts, the reaction of feeling. In what way was I worse than other men? Who was I, to play the prig in a world where others were laughing and dining? I had tramped your city till my boots were worn into holes. I had but to abandon my quixotic ideals--return to where shame lay waiting for me, to be welcomed with the fatted calf. It would have ended so had I not chanced to pass by your door that afternoon and hear you strumming on the piano."
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