The Quaint Companions

"Do you play or sing yourself, Mr. Harris?" Bee inquired.

"No," he said; "no, I'm not musical." In this musical family he regretted to acknowledge it.

"Sure?" asked Hilda, swinging round on the stool.

"Oh yes, unfortunately – quite sure." He was at the point of adding: "Though I was, brought up in the thick of it all," but to explain that his mother's second husband had been a negro was never agreeable to him. "I'm awfully fond of it, though! I could listen to singing all night. Won't you give us something else? Do, please; don't get up!"

"I really don't know what there is." She ruffled the stack beside her listlessly. "I'm afraid there's nothing else for me to sing."

"Let me help you find something."

"If you can. If you really haven't had enough?"

He went across to her, and they bent their heads over the heap together; and he hung at the piano while she sang another entirely new ballad about Days that were No More, and a Stream.

When she finished he murmured "Thank you," and threw into his manner the suggestion of being too much moved to say anything more lengthy.

"It's rather pretty, isn't it?" she said, lifting her eyes in the candle-light.

"Yes; and your voice – " he sighed expressively.

"Oh!" she looked down again, affording him a good view of her lashes, and stroked the keys. "My voice is really as small as a voice can be."

"I've never heard one that carried me away as yours does. Do you know – I suppose you'll be shocked – but I like the drawing-room ballad – sometimes – nearly as well as the classical things."

"I like them better," she said archly.

"Do you?" He was delighted. "So do I. I hadn't the courage to own that."

"I daren't let my father hear. It would be high treason."

They both laughed. The pretence of having a secret together was quite charming.

"I see there is a concert announced for Thursday fortnight at the Town Hall," remarked the Professor. "Those are pleasures you're unable to enjoy, Mr. Harris, eh? I suppose you can't leave the theatre? But there is a big bill. We shall have some fine artists. We shall have a treat, quite a rare treat."

"Yes," said Vivian. "I know. I'm afraid it'll spoil our Thursday night's house; I wish they had fixed it for another evening. Thursday is our best night in the dress-circle as a rule."

"How lovely it must be," exclaimed Hilda, "to go to the theatre every evening! Though I suppose you get tired of it, too?"

"I should think it was nicer in the country than in London," said Bee, "isn't it? You do see a different piece here every week."

"Yes," he answered. "One gets a change. But I never see a piece right through, you know. There's so much to do in front."

"The business of a theatre," observed the Professor ponderously, "is naturally enormous. The outsider has no conception of the – er – intricacies of theatrical management. These young ladies look at the stage in the limelight, they know nothing of the commercial element of the enterprise. The sea of figures in which the manager wades is to them of course a terra incognita."

Vivian stroked his moustache, and hid a smile.

"Yes, the figures are a bit of a bore," he said. "I was acting manager to a company on tour before I joined Jordan. That was more bother still, you know."

"Acting manager?" said Hilda. "To manage the acting I should have thought was jolly?"

"Oh, I had nothing to do with the stage! 'Acting manager' and 'business manager' mean the same thing."

"How curious!"

"Yes, it is rather odd. No, I had nothing to do with the stage, but there were the journeys to arrange then, and there are always people in a company who grumble at the train call, whatever time it's for. If you take them early they complain because they have to get up so soon; and if you take them late, they say they've never known a tour on which they had to make so many journeys at night. And of course it's always the poor acting manager's fault!"

"Why not take them in the afternoon? Wouldn't that get over the difficulty?"

"Well, you can't travel from Bristol to Yarmouth in an afternoon, and that was one of the journeys we had to make. The train call was for twelve o'clock Saturday night, after the show, and we didn't get into Yarmouth till the next evening. How cross some of them were!"

"So should I have been!"

He tried to look as if he couldn't imagine her cross. "It wasn't very pleasant certainly. At four in the morning we were at a standstill. Black dark. And we had to stick in the station till half-past seven. There was no refreshment room open, of course; we all sat shivering in the train. And it rained. Oh! how it rained! About six o'clock, one of the ladies asked two or three of us into her compartment, and made tea with a little spirit-lamp that she had brought. I think I enjoyed that tea more than any I've ever drunk, but we didn't get a solid meal till we reached Peterborough – three hours more to wait. It had stopped raining by then, and we had roast mutton at an hotel, and yawned at the cathedral."

"I hope you took the good Samaritan who had given you the tea?" said the Professor.

"We did, yes. As a matter of fact, the leading man proposed to her during the wait at Peterborough. It was the tea that had done it – he said he hadn't believed any woman could look so nice at 6 A.M. Of course the other ladies declared she had curled her hair before she invited us into the compartment, but that was jealousy; he was a good-looking chap, and getting ten pounds a week… They were engaged all the tour."

"Do you mean that they married then?" Bee asked.

"No, they didn't marry, but they were engaged all the tour. They quarrelled at the Grand, Islington. Her father had been a celebrated wit, and she used to say awfully insulting things and think they were funny."

It was nearly midnight when he rose to go. He was perhaps less impressionable than most young men of his age, less addicted to wasting time in flirtations that promised nothing more satisfactory than a kiss and a keepsake; but as he strode down the silent road to his apartments he was not quite fancy-free in the moonlight, his reverie was not quite so practical as usual. He resolved to send a box to the Professor at the earliest date that it was desirable to "put a little paper out"; and as he foresaw himself welcoming the party in the foyer, he was gratified to reflect that he looked his best in an evening suit. He was also gratified to reflect that "the belle" must go for walks, and examine the windows in the High Street, and that her sister couldn't be always with her.

After he had gone the Professor said —

"Well, he was taken by what he heard of the opera, I think? He'll mention it to Jordan if I'm not very much mistaken. Rome wasn't built in a day, but I've laid the foundation stone. We're getting on!"

"Yes, I'm sure he liked it," answered Bee. "I wish it had been Mr. Jordan himself, though. Don't you think Mr. Harris is rather young to have much authority, father?"

"Tut, tut," replied the composer tetchily, "what nonsense! He's shrewd, he's a smart fellow. What do you suppose he came for – to smoke a cigar with me? Business men don't run after strangers for nothing. You talk without considering. There's always a motive for these friendly actions, my dear. Women don't look beneath the surface; I could never teach your poor mother, God bless her! to look beneath the surface. I daresay he'll drop in next Sunday again; it wouldn't surprise me at all."

He turned to Hilda, as he generally did when he wasn't in trouble. And Hilda nodded – and smiled.

CHAPTER XXI

The following morning there came to "Miss H. Sorrenford" a letter from David Lee – an urgent letter because he had been so long impatient, demanding an explanation of her silence. The explanation was that each time she had re-read the note of thanks he had written before leaving town her imposture had looked to her more shameful; but after considering a great deal how to say as much in her answer, she did not say it at all. She told him instead something of her feelings in returning to the house that was called her home.

It was very sweet, very strange, to David to receive the first of her confessions breathing a familiar presence. Hilda had never seemed so close to him as she did in the hour when he pored over these pages of her sister's. He heard Hilda's voice while he welcomed Bee's thoughts; when he replied to Bee, he saw Hilda's face. And it was the face, not the thoughts, that maddened him with longing. It was the face that was dizzying him as he paltered with his conscience and offered prayers to the future. Though he did not discriminate, though he associated the soul of the woman with the form of the girl, the triumph was to the physical. The form, not the soul, tempted him to renounce his father's gospel, even while he proclaimed the soul his justification. The charm of the woman's letters lay no longer in what she said, but in his belief that the girl said it.

Hilda's fairness, not Bee's mind, held his love; and in his confidences to Bee there was a cadence that there had not been, a difference which she strove to persuade herself was imaginary, because to admit that it existed would be to realise that the photograph had wrought mischief. There was nothing tangible, no word to point to, but beneath the intimate record of his doings, and the references to his work, underlying the intuition which enabled him to respond, as always, to more than she had spelt, she felt something in her friend's letters that was new, something – she was conscious of it only in moments – something that made them now a man's letters to a woman.

When September was nearing its end, David received a few lines from Ownie. She wrote:

"I have been meaning to congratulate you oh the success of the book of poems that people are talking about. So you have made a hit? Well, I am very glad. I was always sure when you were a child you would do well at writing – you have all my poor father's talent. Well, I am very glad. Though I haven't had a chance to read it, and never seen anything of you, I am delighted to hear you have done so well. I hope you are well, and don't forget I like to see you whenever you have time to spare." She remained, on paper, his "Affectionate Mother."

His conscience pricked him, for his last visit had been paid in the spring. When he sent a copy of the book, which he knew would bore her to the verge of extinction, he promised to call on her the next Sunday.

He went in the afternoon. The latest of the Swiss lads to be described in the advertisements as "man servant" opened the door while struggling into his coat. His English was as unintelligible as his predecessors', and David had doubts whether she was at home while he waited in the hall. Dinner was over, but the smell of it lingered; she was unlikely to be out, he thought. The Swiss sped back, and delivering himself of strange syllables, led the way to the drawing-room. It was empty, and the smell of dinner was less strong here. After some minutes Ownie came in.

Her hair was yellow still, but the yellow of a "restorer," not the yellow of her youth, and under this piteous travesty of the past her aged face looked older. The years had caricatured her defects, and her business had stamped its mark upon her. Ownie was a bulky woman with a long upper lip and a fretful, vulgar mouth. In conversation she had the restless eye and mechanical smile of the boarding-house keeper, who during three meals every day makes an effort at cheerful small-talk – illustrating the advantages of the district in which her boarding-house is situated – while she listens suspensive to the servant inquiring behind a chair whether the occupant will "take any more." Of the girl who had once smiled victoriously in the mirror of a theatre vestibule nothing was left; in her stead was all the pathos of a lifetime. Only to the bulky woman it was given still to discern a likeness to the girl. Nature had yielded that; she did not see herself as she was. To her the rouge on her cheeks was not so palpable, the wrinkles were not so deep. Dyed, painted, dreary, she sank into a chair, and yawned widely, with her hands in her lap.

"I thought you were never coming again," she said.

He pleaded stress of work: "And I've been in the country since I saw you. Well, how are you, mother?"

"Oh, nothing to brag about; the heat has been killing, hasn't it? I should have liked a change too… I haven't been able to read your book yet – I can't read for long, it tries my eyes so; I must get some new glasses. Well, are you making a fortune out of it?"

"It's selling splendidly – for poetry. Yes, I shall make a good deal by it, strange to say. If you want a change, why not go to Brighton for a week or two? I" – he was embarrassed – "I can give you the money."

"Oh, it isn't that," she explained with another gape; "I can't leave the house. Who's going to look after it while I'm gone? It's an awful drag if you haven't got a house-keeper. And if you have, you can't go away and leave everything to her! Fancy you with money to spare, though! Well, you've got to thank me for that, David – your cleverness comes from my side. You didn't have your father's voice, you know; if you hadn't written, I don't know what you'd have done."

He did not know either; his life would have been insupportable if he hadn't written. He looked beyond her vaguely, and nodded. "Is the house full?" he asked.

"Pretty full. They're most of them new now – Americans, and people up for a few weeks; the others 'll be coming back at the end of the month… There's another boarding-house opened round the corner; they keep the gas full up in every room all the evening."

"As an advertisement?"

"Yes; it's stupid. Not enough people pass here in the evening to make it pay. It isn't as if it were at the seaside. Would you like a cup o' tea or anything?"

"No, thanks," he said.

"You may as well. I want a cup o' tea myself; it'll wake me up – I was just going to have forty winks when the man told me you were here."

"I'm sorry." He rang the bell. "I wish I'd come at another time."

"Oh, it doesn't matter," she returned; "there's always something… I suppose you haven't heard from Vivian?"

"I never hear from him. I think it's nearly a year since I saw him. What is he doing?"

"He's got a first-rate berth. He left the company at the end of the last tour; you knew he was on tour with a theatrical company, didn't you? He's settled in one place now – much nicer for him than travelling all the time, a great improvement in every way." She roused herself to boast feebly about Vivian. "Not many young men of his age get into such a thing; it's a very responsible position, to be business manager of a theatre. And there's the salary all the year round – every week he's sure of so much. That's an advantage you can't hope for, eh? You may be comfortably off one year, and have nothing the next. Writing is so precarious – you never know where you are."

"I jog along," said David amiably.

"Oh yes," she allowed, "I'm sure it's wonderful, your keeping yourself as you have. And it's nice to have your book talked about. But of course there's no certainty about your profession – you can't depend on that sort of thing." She tittered. "Fame is all very well, but I'm afraid Vivian would say 'Give me a regular income.' … He'll be up on Sunday, if you'd like to see him."

"Yes, I'll come in," he answered. "What town has he gone to?"

"Beckenhampton," she said; "the Theatre Royal."

"Beckenhampton?" He looked at her wide-eyed.

"Do you know it?"

"N-no," he said; "no, I don't know it exactly. How long has he been there?"

"Oh, two or three months. He's having great times, I believe – he's so popular wherever he goes; he gets asked out to supper parties, and all that." She hesitated, toying with the keeper on her finger, as he remembered her toying in his childhood with rings that flashed. But now the ring no longer turned. "I rather fancy there's an attraction," she went on more slowly; "I hope to goodness it isn't serious! Don't let out that I said anything when you meet him; I didn't mean to mention it."

"An attraction?"

She lifted her fat shoulders impatiently. "There may be nothing in it, but young men are so soft; any girl can catch the smartest of them. It wouldn't astonish me a bit when he comes up, to hear that he's engaged. I had a gushing letter from him a few weeks ago, telling me he'd met the prettiest girl he'd ever seen. I know what that means! He wouldn't have written about her if he hadn't lost his head. And he doesn't answer my questions. It looks as if he's making an idiot of himself."

"Who is she?" asked David, in a low voice.

"He didn't say. What's the difference who she is? You may be sure she hasn't got a sixpence to bless herself with. A nice mess he'll make of his life if he doesn't take care. It's a lucky thing for you that you haven't got that sort of risk to run. 'A young man married is a man that's marred,' as Ouida says."

"Shakespeare," he said, in the same dull tone; "not Ouida."

"Was it? It's at the beginning of one of Ouida's books, I know. If your brother gets married at his age, he might as well hang himself at once."

The tremor was in his pulses still. But Beckenhampton was not a village – the coincidence was so unlikely; he kept repeating that it couldn't be.

"If his salary is such a good one, and he's fond of her – " he demurred.

"'Such a good one'? Well" – she was a shade confused – "it's good enough for him as he is; it wouldn't go far with a wife and family to keep. Besides, a man's always better off single than married; only he's so soft as soon as a pretty face comes along. Some artful minx who wants a home makes up to him, and all of a sudden he imagines he can't go through life without her. Good Lord! if a man could see into a girl's head while she's gushing about the view and pretending she's an angel. Men are taken in by every girl they meet, the fools!" Her scorn of the fools was in no wise restrained by the fact that she had captured two husbands herself. She was thinking of her son. When a woman lives to see the arts by which she gained her husband practised to ensnare her son, candour can reveal no more. Nor in the badly constructed tragedy of life is there any other situation that comes so close to poetical justice.

David found the afternoon the most irksome that he had spent at Regent's Park. Though he told himself that his misgiving was fantastic, it continued to disturb him, and while he sipped weak tea, and made perfunctory responses, he was trying to define Hilda's feeling for him, questioning whether it was in woman's nature for Hilda to write to him as he believed she wrote, and yet to be susceptible to the courtship of another man. Vivian was handsome, debonair, "so popular wherever he went." Yes, Vivian had always been popular, he remembered bitterly. Might not the passion of a lover at her side prove a stronger force than the worship of a correspondent which had never been confessed? Could she not say – might she not be happy to say – that by never a word had her letters to himself been more than the letters of a friend? Then Vivian would take her from him. Vivian, who it seemed to him in a burst of fear and jealousy had always taken everything, would rob him of her too!.. But, again, the coincidence was so improbable. Besides, his mother might be wrong; she might be exaggerating the idlest fancy; perhaps Vivian had no desire to marry anyone!

He was relieved when the clock gave him an excuse to rise.

"Well, good-bye, mother." He avoided her complexion and dropped a kiss on her dyed fringe.

"Must you go?" she said. "Er – David, if you're really sure you can spare a few pounds, I'd be very glad of the money to get a new dress with. I haven't got a decent thing to put on for dinner. This blouse is so shabby I'm ashamed to sit at the table in it."

He promised to send what she wanted, and took up his hat. When his hand was on the door-knob, she asked him if he would stay to supper; but he declined the invitation. As he made his way home, he repeated more than once that his tremor was ridiculous, and assured himself that he was much amused at his folly. He smiled stiffly, to prove his amusement… Still he wished that the week were past and Vivian had come to town. He would feel easier when he had seen Vivian.

CHAPTER XXII

Ownie's conjectures were not misleading her; the business manager's views of life had been deranged. To dress well and have a "good time" now appeared to him less dazzling a prospect than to clothe Hilda and have a home. Confronted by temptation he had been no stronger than the multitude; he was prepared to travel the course handicapped, and like every other young man at the inevitable crisis, persuaded himself that a pair of arms round his neck would accelerate the pace. Hilda, too, was in love. Moreover, she was in love with the idea of being married. She had, passed the stage at which the Beauty of every family looks forward to wedding a millionaire, and although she had gathered something of Vivian's position by now, she meant to accept him when he asked her. One of the greatest sacrifices for love that a girl in the provinces can make is to marry and remove to local lodgings. There were perfervid moments when Hilda felt equal even to this, but in moods less head-long it was her intention to remain engaged to him until he secured a similar appointment in another town. Meanwhile Vivian wondered whether she would be startled if he confessed his feelings thus early.

Fearful that he might "lose it all," he resolved to be discreet; so he confided to her facts of which she was unaware, and withheld the one that she knew. It was a vast relief to him to settle the matter of the opera between them. Of late the opera had seemed to darken his future; and when he had intimated nervously that her father overestimated his influence with Mr. Jordan, he thanked Heaven to see that she did not find the news an overwhelming shock.

One afternoon – it was on the Friday after Ownie unbosomed herself to David – Hilda exclaimed —

"What do you think, Bee? The man who wrote A Celibate's Love Songs is Mr. Harris's half-brother. He has just gone."

The colour left Bee's face; her heart thudded.

"Who?" she faltered. "David Lee?"

"No, Mr. Harris. He dropped in just now to return a book. Isn't it strange? His mother married twice; she married Elisha Lee, the black tenor – I don't know how she could have done it. The poet is their son – a mulatto. Fancy!"

The woman stood stone-still… She moved by a blind instinct to a chair. It seemed to her a long time before she could reach chair.

"A mulatto?" she said faintly.

"Yes – almost a nigger, Mr. Harris says. He's ashamed – I could tell, though he tried to sound casual. Of course it isn't nice for him to have a half-brother like that, is it? And then his mother doing such a thing! I was awfully sorry for him, poor fellow – he did look so uncomfortable while he was talking. Of course he hung on to his brother's cleverness and all that, but – Well, he can't be very proud, can he?"

Bee made no answer; she did not hear. "A mulatto – almost a nigger." For an instant her mind was dwarfed by it. She could not think beyond it, could see no further than the monstrous personality that seemed to close upon her. "Almost a nigger." The instant was heavy, affrighting with his presence. In the next, her thoughts flashed to the mulatto who had gone to Godstone – and she knew that he was the man.

"He must look rather like that Mr. Tremlett, I suppose," Hilda was saying.

She nodded. "Yes."

"Fancy a nigger writing poetry! You don't seem very interested? I thought you'd gasp when I told you – you liked his book so much."

"Did you? Oh, I am interested. Yes, fancy his writing poetry.'"

She felt sick, stupefied; she could not talk. David Lee was a mulatto; was the poor young man with the swarthy skin and the negro features whom she had pitied condescendingly, whom she had passed, and repassed, and addressed with no emotion. She sat struggling with the thing. She did not doubt it, she never questioned it for a moment; it was so obvious now that she even wondered that she had not suspected it then; but anomalously David seemed for the first time strange to her, remote. The association dazed her, and before the physical impression all the sense of familiarity receded.