The Woman's Way Part 5

Her cheeks were wet and wetted his; he drew his hand across his face with barely-concealed impatience and annoyance.

"That's all right," he said. "Of course, I had to do the best I could for him, poor devil! for the sake of--of old times. I didn't forget that you were once fond of him--well, rather taken with him; that you were old friends. Look here, Miriam, we don't want to harp upon this affair; it's a beastly bad business, and the sooner we forget it the better. For Heaven's sake, let's drop it here and now. I shan't refer to it, shan't mention Derrick Dene's name again; and don't you. Just push that tray over, will you? I've had a deuced unpleasant scene with him, I can tell you; and it's upset me deucedly. But there!" he added, with a jerk of the head, as he mixed a stiff soda and whisky, "there's an end of him, so far as we're concerned. What?"

CHAPTER V

Celia lay awake half the night, and was up and dressed early in the morning, waiting for the cry of "Pipers! Daily Pipers!" and when the newsboy came bounding up the steps she almost sprang out on him in her eagerness and anxiety.

"Give me--which of the papers has the best police news?" she asked, trying to speak casually.

"Oh, the _Wire_, o' course," replied the boy, promptly; "they don't let nothing escape them, you bet, miss!"

She bought the halfpenny paper and eagerly scanned its columns, forgetting that there could be no report of the case until the appearance before the magistrate; but the absence of any mention of an arrest, following the message which the old gentleman had given her, confirmed her relief and encouraged her. Notwithstanding, she found it almost impossible to eat; but she drank a cup of tea, gathered her papers together, and went down to the Museum. For the first time she found her work difficult; for she could not dismiss the young man and his tragic fate from her mind. Staring at the blank paper, she went over all the details of the strange scene, and, standing out from them all, was the expression in his face, in his eyes, as he had paused at the bend of the stairs and looked at her.

Something in that expression haunted her as she had never been haunted by anything in her life before, and she was weighed down by the sense of a burden, the burden of a man's life, destiny; she could not forget that she had sent him away, that if she had waited and he had remained, he would have learned that he had no longer reason to fear, that "it was all right."

She was disturbed in her reverie by the arrival of a young man, who seated himself in the next chair at her desk; she turned to her book and papers and began to work; but now a fresh difficulty arose in the conduct of the young man beside her; the attendant had brought him a pile of books, and the young fellow was turning them over, in a restless way, thrusting his hands through his hair, fidgeting with his feet and muttering impatiently and despairingly.

Celia glanced at him involuntarily. She saw that he was young and boyish-looking; there was a look of perplexity and worry in his blue eyes, and muttering a word of apology he rose and went quickly to the inner circle, the rotunda, where the patient and long-suffering superintendent stands to be badgered by questions from the readers needing the a.s.sistance of his wonderfully-stored brain. In a minute or two the young man came back, accompanied by an attendant bearing another pile of books.

"I don't know whether you'll find what you want," he said; "but it's all I know of it." He looked at Celia as he spoke, and added, "Oh, perhaps this young lady can help you; she does antiquarian work."

The young man coloured and raised his eyes appealingly to Celia.

"Oh, I couldn't trouble you," he said, humbly.

"What is it?" she asked. "I shall be glad to help you, if I can."

He took up some slips of paper on which were "pulled" impressions of blocks, and Celia saw that they were pictures of ruined castles, abbeys, and similar buildings.

"This is the trouble," said the young man. "The man I work for--he's the proprietor of the _Youth's Only Companion_--is a rum sort of chap, and fancies he has ideas. One of them was to buy up a lot of old blocks in Germany; these are they, and he's given me the job of writing them up, fitting them with descriptive letterpress--history, anecdote, that kind of thing, you know."

"That should not be very difficult," Celia remarked.

"Oh, no!" he a.s.sented; "but"--he grinned, and his whole face lit up with boyish humour--"the beastly things have no names to them! See? I've tried to hunt them up in all the old county histories, and books of that kind; but I've succeeded in getting only two or three, and there's a couple of dozen of the wretched things. I've driven the superintendent pretty nearly mad, and--But look here, I don't want to drive you mad, too. You mustn't let me bother you about it; you've got your own work to do."

"That's all right," said Celia, bending over the slips with the literary frown on her young face. "Oh, I can recognize some of them; that's Pevensey Castle; and that's Knowle House, before it was rebuilt; and, surely, this one is meant for Battle Abbey."

"I say, how clever you are!" he exclaimed, gazing at her with admiration.

"Oh, no, I'm not," said Celia, with a smile; "I just happen to remember them because I've come across them in the course of my own work. Let us go over the others."

She turned to his pile of books and, still with knit brows, tried to find the counterpart of the other pulls; and the young fellow watched her, his eyes growing thoughtful and something more, as they dwelt upon her face.

"You mustn't worry any more," he begged her, presently. "You're losing all your own time; I feel ashamed; I'm most awfully grateful to you."

"Not at all," said Celia. "I'm afraid I've been of very little help to you; and I don't see that I can do any more----"

"No, no," he said, quickly; "don't take any more trouble. It wouldn't matter so much if I had plenty of time; but I haven't. You see"--he coloured--"one doesn't get too well paid for this kind of work, and can't afford----"

He coloured still more deeply, and his voice dropped below the regulation whisper in which one is permitted to speak in the Reading Room. Celia glanced at him, and saw that he was poorly dressed, that his s.h.i.+rt-cuffs were frayed, and that he had the peculiar look which is stamped on the countenances of so many of the frequenters of the Reading Room.

"Just tell me what you would do if you were in my fix," he said.

Celia hesitated for a moment, then a smile broke over her face which transfigured it and made it seem to the young fellow absolutely lovely.

"I should invent histories for them," she said. "It would be so much easier--and, perhaps, ever so much more interesting."

"Oh, that's stunning!" he exclaimed, in a whisper. "Of course, that's the way. I say, what a brick you are! Would you mind telling me your name?"

"Grant--Celia Grant," she told him, without hesitation.

"Mine's Rex--Reggie Rex," he said. "I've often noticed you and wondered what kind of work you did--But I beg your pardon; I mustn't disturb you any longer."

They both fell to work, and Celia heard his fountain-pen racing over the paper; once or twice he chuckled, as if he were enjoying a joke; but very soon Celia forgot him; and when, at last, she looked up from her work, she found his place empty; but on going out for her lunch she saw him standing by one of the pillars of the portico. He blushed at sight of her, moved forward, hesitated, then approached her.

"You're going to an A.B.C. for your lunch?" he said, with a mixture of a man's timidity and a boy's audacity. "May I--will you let me come with you? I feel as if I hadn't thanked you enough; I couldn't do it in that stuffy old hole, where you can't speak above your breath."

He took Celia's silence for consent, and they went together to the big shop in Oxford Street, and seated themselves at a table. They both ordered a cup of tea and a roll and b.u.t.ter; Celia would have liked to have added the omnipotent bun, but refrained; for, somehow, she knew that he could not afford one.

"Do you like the life, in there?" he asked, jerking his head in the direction of the Museum. "Dreadful grind, isn't it? But, somehow, it gets hold of you; there's a kind of fascination in literature." He spoke the magic word with the air of quite an old, old man of letters. "I ought to have been a grocer. My father's got a shop in Middleswick; he calls it The Emporium. I think that's why I couldn't stick it. Pity, isn't it? for it's a rattling good business. Another thing; I couldn't stand the ap.r.o.n. Guv'nor insisted on the ap.r.o.n; 'begin from the beginning' sort of thing, you know. And then I felt the call of literature. Fond of reading, and all that. You know?"

Celia nodded. That tender heart of hers was quite ready with its comprehension and sympathy.

"I hope you will succeed; but if you don't--Ah, well; you can go back,"

she said, half-enviously.

"No; one doesn't go back," he said, with a gravity that sat curiously on his boyish face. "Once you've got the fever, you've got it for life.

Tiger tasting blood, you know. I'd rather be a literary man than--than the German Emperor. Of course, I'm hoping to do better things; but even the stuff I do makes me--oh, well, kind of happy. Every time I get a proof something runs through me, something grateful and comforting--like the cocoa. I mean to get on to fiction presently." He blushed like a girl, and looked at her timidly, with the appealing look of a dog in his eyes. "I've tried my hand already at a short story or two." He paused.

"I say"--hesitatingly, his eyes still more dog-like--"you are so awfully kind, I wonder whether you'd mind looking at one of my things. Oh, of course, it's too much to ask! You're busy--you work hard, I know; I've watched you."

"Why, I shall be very pleased to read something you have written," said Celia, smiling encouragement.

"You will! Oh, that's stunning of you! I'll send you a short story to-night, if you'll give me your address. But perhaps you'd rather not,"

he added, quickly.

"Why not?" said Celia. She gave it to him.

"I'll send it," he whispered; but as he spoke, his hand went towards his breast-pocket.

Celia tried not to smile; for she saw what was coming.

"To tell you the truth," he said, with a burst of candour, "I've got one with me. I'll give it to you now. But for Heaven's sake don't look at it here! I should see by your face what you thought of it, and you're likely to think precious little of it; you'll think it tommy-rot; though, of course, you won't say so. Look here!" he went on, as he drew out the precious ma.n.u.script slowly, "don't tell me that it 'shows promise'; I can bear anything but that. That's fatal; it's what all the beastly editors say when they don't mean to have anything to do with you."

"Very well," said Celia. "I will tell you exactly what I think of it."