The City of Beautiful Nonsense Part 24

"Well--you never know," said he, looking up again. "I'm stayin' here, aren't I? They said you was a writer--that you wrote books. Well, have you never seen a person who wrote books, like me? Why there was a woman I 'ad to get the rent from once--a journalist, she called herself.

She'd got a bit of a beard and a fair tidy moustache--and by gum, she dressed queerer than anything my old woman would ever put on. I felt quite ashamed to be stoppin' with her."

John laughed again; laughed uproariously. Mr. Chesterton was so amused at the remembrance of it, that he laughed as well. Suddenly their laughter snapped, as you break a slate pencil. There came a gentle, a timid knock on the door.

"This is she," whispered John. "The door below was open. She's come upstairs. What the devil am I going to do?"

At last the little man believed him. He really was going to see the lady this time, the lady who would never understand the likes of him, and he began to feel quite nervous. He began to feel ashamed of being a bailiff.

"Introduce me as a friend," he whispered--"It'll be all right--introduce me as a friend."

"Sit down there, then--on that settle."

Then John opened the door and Jill stepped hesitatingly into the room.

Mr. Chesterton rose awkwardly to his feet.

This was the lady, materialised at last. From long habit of summing up in a glance the people with whom he had to deal, he made his estimation of Jill in a moment. The quietness of her voice as she said--"I was rather afraid to knock, for fear I had made a mistake"--that gentleness in the depth of the eyes which admits of no sudden understanding, yet as gently asks for it--the firm repose of the lips already moulded for the strength which comes with maturity, and all set in a face whose whole expression was that innocence of a mind which knows and has put aside until such moment when life shall demand contemplation. This--there was no doubt of it--was the lady who would not understand the likes of him.

John shook hands with her. Mr. Chesterton took it all in with his little solemn eyes. He was in the way. Never had he been so much in the way before. As their hands touched, he felt that John was telling her just how much in the way he was.

"May I introduce you," said John, turning, when that touching of the hands was done with. "This is my friend--Mr. Chesterton. Miss----" he paused. It seemed sacrilege to give her name to a bailiff, and the little man felt sensitively, in his boots every moment of that pause.

His red socks were burning him. He could see the colour of his tie in every reflection. It was even creeping up into his cheeks.

"Miss Dealtry."

He was going to come forward and shake hands, but she bowed. Then, when she saw his confusion, out, generously, came her hand.

"Are you a writer, too?" she asked.

John was about to interpose; but the little man wanted to stand well with her. He felt that his socks and his tie and his corn-coloured suit ought all to be explained, and what more lucid or more natural explanation than this.

"Oh, yes, I'm a writer," he said quickly. "Books, you know--and a little journalism--just to--to keep me goin'--to amuse myself like.

Journalism's a change, you know--what you might call a rest, when your always writin' books----" Then he remembered a quotation, but where from, he could not say, "Of the writin' of books, you know--at least, so they say--there's no end." And he smiled with pleasure to think how colloquially he had delivered the phrase.

"Why, of course, I know your work," said Jill--"Aren't you _the_ Mr.

Chesterton?"

The little man's face beamed. That was just what they all called him--_the_ Mr. Chesterton.

"That's right," said he delightedly, "the one and only." And under the mantle of genius and celebrity his quaintnesses became witticisms, his merest phrase a paradox.

CHAPTER XX

WHY JILL PRAYED TO ST. JOSEPH

Little as you might have imagined it, there was a heart beneath that corn-coloured waistcoat of Mr. Chesterton's. His old woman, as he called her, would have vouched for that.

"He may have to do some dirty tricks in his job," she had said of him.

"But 'e's got a 'eart, 'as my young man, if you know where to touch it."

And seemingly, Jill had known; tho' the knowledge was unconscious. It was just that she had believed--that was all. She had believed he was the Mr. Chesterton, presumably a great writer, a man to command respect.

He had never commanded respect before in his life. Abuse! Plenty of that! So much of it that his skin had become hardened and tough. But respect--never.

Ah! She was a lady, certainly--a delightful, a charming young lady. He could quite believe that she would not understand the likes of him. He would even dare to swear, and did, when eventually he went home to his old woman, that she had never heard of a bailiff in her life.

And while John laid out the tea things, she talked to him all the time as if he were a great man--bless her little heart! He was a fine fellow, whoever this Chesterton was, and he seemed to have said some mighty smart things. Anyhow, if writing books was not a paying game, as, judging by this young Mr. Grey, it would not seem to be, it certainly brought one a deal of credit. The little bailiff basked in the light of it, feeling like a beggar who has awakened in the King's bed-chamber, ensconced in the King's bed. Only when, occasionally he caught sight of the expression on John's face, did he realise how abominably he must be in the way.

At last, when tea was ready, the kettle spitting on the little spirit stove in the grate, Mr. Chesterton rose to his feet. A look had pa.s.sed between those two, a look unmistakable to his eyes--a look of mute appeal from her, an answering look of despair from John. Had it been John alone, he would have taken no notice. John had been making grimaces to himself for the last quarter of an hour; besides, he had brought it on himself. Young men should pay their rent up to time. He had little or no sympathy for John. But when he saw that look in Jill's eyes, realising that it was only her gentle politeness which made her talk to him so nicely--only her gentle politeness and the kudos which he had stolen from the name of Chesterton--then, he felt he could stay there no longer. He had always had a tender heart for women, so long as they were not uns.e.xed by journalism, by a bit of a beard and a fair tidy moustache. He had no sympathy for them then if their rents were overdue. But now, this was a different matter. That look in Jill's eyes had cut him to the quick.

"I've got to be goin' now, Mr. Grey," he said.

John's mouth opened in amazement. He had just decided in his mind that Kensington Gardens was the only place left to them from this abominable interloper.

"Going?" he echoed. It might almost have seemed as if he were intensely sorry, his surprise was so great.

"Yes--goin'," said Mr. Chesterton with a look that meant the absolute certainty of his return. "Good-bye, Miss Dealtry--you'll excuse me runnin' away, won't you? Time and tide--they won't wait, you know--they're just like a pair o' children goin' to a circus. They don't want to miss nuthin'."

Now that was his own, his very own! He had been determined all through their conversation to work in something of his own. _The great_ Mr.

Chesterton had never said that! This credit of being another man, and gleaning all the approbation that did not belong to him, had brought with it its moments of remorse, and he longed to win her approval for something that was truly, really his.

He looked proudly at John as he said it. He laughed loudly at the thought of the two children dragging at their mother's hands all the way to the circus. It was a real picture to him. He could see it plainly.

He had been one of those children himself once. Time and tide--like a pair o' children goin' to a circus! He thought it excellent--good, and he laughed and laughed, till suddenly he realised that John was not even smiling. Then wasn't it funny after all? Wasn't it clever? Yet the things which this Mr. Chesterton was reputed to have written, were quite unintelligible to him.

"The apple which Eve ate in the Garden of Eden was an orange and the peel has been lying about ever since."

Where was the sense in that? How could an apple be an orange. But Time and Tide, like a pair o' children going to a circus! Oh--he thought it excellent.

Then, with a pitiable sensation of failure, he turned in almost an att.i.tude of appeal to Jill. But she was smiling. She was amused. Then there was something in it after all! It had amused her. He held out his hand, feeling a wild inclination to grip it fiercely and bless her for that smile.

"Good-bye," said he in his best and most elaborate of manners. "I'm very pleased to have made your acquaintance," and he marched, with head erect, to the door.

John followed him.

"I'll just come down with you," he said.

As soon as they were outside and the door was closed, he caught the little man's hand warmly in his.

"You're a brick," said he. "You're a brick. I'll let you in whenever you come back--you needn't be afraid."

Mr. Chesterton stopped on the stairs as they descended.

"I wouldn't have done it," he said emphatically--"if it wasn't that she was a lady as wouldn't understand the likes of me. I tell you, she's a sort of lady as I shall never come across again,--not even in my line of business,--bless her heart." He descended another step or so, then stopped once more. "See the way she smiled at that what I said. I tell you, she's got a nicer sense of understandin' than what you have."

John smiled.