In the Year of Jubilee Part 63

'You can guess what it is. I quite believe what you told me some time ago, but I shan't feel quite easy until I know--'

She finished the sentence with a look. Nancy's eyes fell.

'Curiosity, nothing else,' added the other. 'Just to make quite sure it isn't anybody I've thought of.'

There was a long silence. Leaning forward upon the table, Nancy turned her wine-gla.s.s about and about. She now had a very high colour, and breathed quickly.

'Is it off, then?' said Beatrice, in an indifferent tone.

Thereupon Nancy disclosed the name of her husband--her lover, as Miss.

French thought him. Plied with further questions, she told where he was living, but gave no account of the circ.u.mstances that had estranged them. Abundantly satisfied, Beatrice grew almost affectionate, and talked merrily.

Nancy wished to ask whether Luckworth Crewe had any knowledge of her position. It was long before her lips could utter the words, but at length they were spoken. And Beatrice a.s.sured her that Crewe, good silly fellow, did not even suspect the truth.

CHAPTER 5

'For a man,' said Tarrant, 'who can pay no more than twelve and sixpence a week, it's the best accommodation to be found in London. There's an air of civilisation about the house. Look; a bath, and a little book-case, and an easy-chair such as can be used by a man who respects himself. You feel you are among people who tub o' mornings and know the meaning of leisure. Then the view!'

He was talking to his friend Harvey Munden, the journalist. The room in which they stood might with advantage have been larger, but as a bed-chamber it served well enough, and only the poverty of its occupant, who put it to the additional use of sitting-room and study, made the lack of s.p.a.ce particularly noticeable. The window afforded a prospect pleasant enough to eyes such as theirs. Above the lower houses on the opposite side of the way appeared tall trees, in the sere garb of later autumn, growing by old Westminster School; and beyond them, grey in twilight, rose the towers of the Abbey. From this point of view no vicinage of modern brickwork spoilt their charm; the time-worn monitors stood alone against a sky of ruddy smoke-drift and purple cloud.

'The old Adam is stronger than ever in me,' he pursued. 'If I were condemned for life to the United States, I should go mad, and perish in an attempt to swim the Atlantic.'

'Then why did you stay so long?'

'I could have stayed with advantage even longer. It's something to have studied with tolerable thoroughness the most hateful form of society yet developed. I saw it at first as a man does who is living at his ease; at last, as a poor devil who is thankful for the inst.i.tution of free lunches. I went first-cla.s.s, and I came back as a steerage pa.s.senger. It has been a year well spent.'

It had made him, in aspect, more than a twelve-month older. His lounging att.i.tude, the spirit of his talk, showed that he was unchanged in bodily and mental habits; but certain lines new-graven upon his visage, and an austerity that had taken the place of youthful self-consciousness, signified a more than normal progress in experience.

'Do you know,' said Munden slyly, 'that you have brought back a trans-Atlantic accent?'

'Accent? The devil! I don't believe it.'

'Intonation, at all events.'

Tarrant professed a serious annoyance.

'If that's true, I'll go and live for a month in Limerick.'

'It would be cheaper to join a Socialist club in the East End. But just tell me how you stand. How long can you hold out in these aristocratic lodgings?'

'Till Christmas. I'm ashamed to say how I've got the money, so don't ask. I reached London with empty pockets. And I'll tell you one thing I have learnt, Munden. There's no villainy, no scoundrelism, no baseness conceivable, that isn't excused by want of money. I understand the whole "social question." The man who has never felt the perspiration come out on his forehead in asking himself how he is going to keep body and soul together, has no right to an opinion on the greatest question of the day.'

'What particular scoundrelism or baseness have you committed?' asked the other.

Tarrant averted his eyes.

'I said I could understand such things.'

'One sees that you have been breathed upon by democracy.'

'I loathe the word and the thing even more than I did, which is saying a good deal.'

'Be it so. You say you are going to work?'

'Yes, I have come back to work. Even now, it's difficult to realise that I must work or starve. I understand how fellows who have unexpectedly lost their income go through life sponging on relatives and friends.

I understand how an educated man goes sinking through all the social grades, down to the common lodging-house and the infirmary. And I honestly believe there's only one thing that saves me from doing likewise.'

'And what's that?'

'I can't tell you--not yet, at all events.'

'I always thought you a very fine specimen of the man born to do nothing,' said Munden, with that smile which permitted him a surprising candour in conversation.

'And you were quite right,' returned Tarrant, with a laugh. 'I am a born artist in indolence. It's the pity of pities that circ.u.mstances will frustrate Nature's purpose.'

'You think you can support yourself by journalism?'

'I must try.--Run your eye over that.'

He took from the table a slip of ma.n.u.script, headed, 'A Reverie in Wall Street.' Munden read it, sat thoughtful for a moment, and laughed.

'Devilish savage. Did you write it after a free lunch?'

'Wrote it this morning. Shall I try one of the evening papers with it,--or one of the weeklies?'

Munden suggested a few alterations, and mentioned the journal which he thought might possibly find room for such a bit of satire.

'Done anything else?'

'Here's a half-finished paper--"The Commercial Prospects of the Bahamas."'

'Let me look.'

After reading a page or two with critically wrinkled forehead, Munden laid it down.

'Seems pretty solid,--libellous, too, I should say. You've more stuff in you than I thought. All right: go ahead.--Come and dine with me to-morrow, to meet a man who may be useful.'

'To-morrow I can't. I dine at Lady Pollard's.'

'Who is she?'

'Didn't you know Pollard of Trinity?--the only son of his mother, and she a widow.'

'Next day, then.'