The Foolish Lovers Part 72

"We'd better be moving," said Uncle William. "Are you settled in your mind that you're going back to London?"

"Yes," said John.

VI

"Good-bye, Eleanor!" he said when the time came to catch the train to Belfast.

"Good-bye, John!"

He took hold of her hand and waited for her to offer her lips to him, but she did not offer them.

"If you change your mind," he said, but she interrupted him quickly.

"I shan't change my mind," she said.

"Very well. Good-bye!"

She did not speak. She was afraid to speak.

"Well, good-bye again!" he said.

He turned to his mother. Her eyes were very bright, but there were no tears in them. She looked steadily at him.

"It's a pity," she said.

Her hand sought Eleanor's and pressed it. "We must all do what's for the best," she said. "None of us can do any more!"

THE FIFTH CHAPTER

I

He oscillated between an almost uncontrollable desire to return to Eleanor and a cold rage against her. Women, he told himself, always stepped between men and their work. Women drew men away from great labours and made creatures of comfort of them. They took an aspiring angel and made a domestic animal of him. He was prepared to endure hunger and thirst for righteousness' sake, but Eleanor demanded that first of all he should provide comfort and security for her and her child. She would gladly turn a creative artist into a small tradesman for the sake of the greater profit that was made by the small tradesman. He would not be seduced from his proper work ... and yet, when he went back to Miss Squibb's after the _Sensation_ had gone to bed, walking sometimes all the way from Fleet Street, over Blackfriars Bridge, he would spend the time of the journey in dreaming of Eleanor as he first saw her or as he saw her in the box at the Albert Hall when Tetrazzini sang. He would conjure up pictures of her standing at the bookstall at Charing Cross, waiting for him, or saying goodbye to him at the steps of the Women's Club in Bayswater or kneeling beside him in St. Chad's Church as the priest blessed their marriage or sitting before the fire in Ballyards holding her baby in her arms. And when these visions of her went through his mind, he felt an intense longing to go away from London at once and stay contentedly with her wherever she chose to be. Sometimes his mind was full of thoughts about his child. He had not felt much emotion about it when he was at Ballyards ... he had thought of it mostly with amazement and with some dislike of its shapeless face ... but now there were stirrings in his heart when he thought of it, and he wished that he could be with Eleanor and watch the gradual growth of the baby into a recognising being. His work at the _Sensation_ office had become mechanical, and he worked at the table in the sub-editors' room without any consciousness of it; but he consoled himself for the fatigue and the dullness by promising himself a swift and brilliant release from Fleet Street when his second book was published. Even if his book were not to make money, it would establish his reputation, and when that was done, he could surely persuade Eleanor to believe that his life must be lived elsewhere than behind the counter of the shop. He had written to her several times since his return to London, and she had written to him, but there were signs of restraint in his letters and in hers. He told her that he had made arrangements for the sub-tenants to remain in the flat for the present. He wrote "for the present" deliberately. The phrase that shaped itself in his mind as he wrote the letter was "until you come back to London," but he changed it before he put his thoughts into written words. She gave long accounts of the baby to him, and described her life in Ballyards. She was helping Uncle William who said that her help was very useful to him. They were going to fight Pippin's multiple shops and beat them. She had suggested some alterations in the shop to Uncle William, and he, agreeing that one must move with the times, had consented to make the alterations. She did not ask John to come back, but when he read her letters, he felt that she was preventing herself, with difficulty, from doing so.

II

A month after his return to London, _Hearts of Controversy_ was published. He took the complimentary copies out of their parcel and fingered them, turning the leaves backward and forward, and looking for a long while at the dedication "To the Memory of my Uncle Matthew." How pleased and proud Uncle Matthew would have been of this book, but how little pleasure John was deriving from it. He hardly cared now whether it failed or succeeded. If only something would happen that would enable him to return to Ballyards and Eleanor with some sort of pride left! ... Uncle Matthew's romantic dreams had remained romantic dreams because he had never left Ballyards; but John had gone out into the world to seek adventures, and all of them had ended dismally ... except his adventure with Eleanor. He had pursued her and won her and made her his wife and the mother of his son, and she was still his, even although he had left her and was living angrily away from her. He remembered how he had wandered into Hanging Sword Alley when he first came to London, and had been bitterly disappointed to find that this romantically-named lane was a dirty, grimy gutter of a street....

"I've been living a fool's life," he said to himself. "I had one great adventure, finding Eleanor, and I did not realise that that was the only romance I could hope for!"

He put the book down. "I'm not a writer," he said mournfully, "I'm a grocer. I'm not even a grocer. I'm ... a hack journalist!"

He had written a tragedy that was dead. He had written a novel that was dead. This second novel ... in a little while it, too, would be dead.

Perhaps it was dead already. Perhaps it had never been alive. And he had written a music-hall sketch ... that lived. He had done no other work than his sub-editing on the _Sensation_ since his return to London, and he realised that he would never do any more while he remained in Fleet Street....

Hinde entered the room while these thoughts were in his mind. "When's Eleanor coming back?" he asked, throwing himself into a chair in front of the fire.

"She's not coming back," John answered.

Hinde looked up sharply. "Oh?" he said in a questioning manner.

"I'm going to her ... as soon as I can. I've had my fill of this life.

Do you remember asking me why I didn't sell happorths of tea and sugar?" Hinde nodded his head. "Well, I'm going back to sell them. The author of _The Enchanted Lover_ and _Hearts of Controversy_ has retired from the trade of writing and will now ... now devote himself to ... selling happorths of tea and sugar!" He laughed nervously as he spoke.

Hinde did not make any reply.

"I shall go and see the man who has the flat to-morrow. He wants to buy our furniture. It's a piece of luck, isn't it? The only piece of luck I've had.... By G.o.d, Hinde, this serves me right. Eleanor always said I was selfish, and I am. I'm terribly self-satisfied and thick-skinned. I had no qualification for this work ... nothing but my conceit ... and I've been let down. I'm a failure!..."

"We're all failures," said Hinde. "The only thing we can do, all of us, is to lull ourselves to sleep and hope for forgetfulness. Compared with you, I suppose I'm a success ... as a journalist anyhow ... but this is the end of my work ... this room, with Lizzie and Miss Squibb and sometimes the Creams. You've got Eleanor and a son ... what more do you want? Isn't it enough luck for a man to have a wife that he loves and who loves him, and to have a child? What's a book anyway? Paper with words on it. All over the world, there are thousands and thousands of books ... with millions and millions of words in them. What's the good of them? We make a little stir and then we die ... we poor scribblers.

And that's all. It's much better to marry and breed healthy babies than to live in an attic making songs about the stars. The stars don't care, but the babies may!"

"You're a cheerful fellow, Hinde," said John, rallying a little.

"Don't pay any heed to me. I was always a dismal devil at the best of times. You see, Mac, I've got ink in my veins. I'm not a man ... I'm part of a printing press. That's what you'd become if you were to stay in Fleet Street. Go home, my lad, and get more babies!..."

III

He wrote to Eleanor that night, telling her that he would capitulate.

Immediately he had settled about the flat and had arranged for his withdrawal from the office of the _Sensation_, he would return to Ballyards. He would write no more books!... In the morning, there was a letter from Eleanor. She could hold out no longer. If he would come and fetch her and the little John, she would do whatever he asked of her.

She loved him so much that she could not keep up this pretence of strength!...

He laughed to himself as he read her letter. "She wrote before I did," he said. "I suppose I've won. I suppose I held out longer than she did ... but I don't feel that I've gained anything!"

The copies of _Hearts of Controversy_ were lying where he had left them on the previous night. "I don't care what the papers say about them," he said to himself picking one of them up. "What's a book anyway when I've got Eleanor!"

He was able to arrange the sale of his furniture to the sub-tenant and get his release from the _Sensation_ in less than a week, and he wired to Eleanor to say that he was coming home and would arrive at Ballyards on Sunday. "I'm going home with my tail between my legs," he said to himself, as he walked down the gangway from the Liverpool boat on to the quay at Belfast. He was too early for the Ballyards train, and he went for a walk to fill the time of waiting. He pa.s.sed the restaurant where Maggie Carmichael had been employed, and saw that a new name was on the lintel of the door. "Well, I hope she's happy with her peeler!" he said to himself. He went on, and presently found himself before the Theatre Royal, and when he glanced at the playbills, he saw that a Shakespearian Company were in possession of it. _Romeo and Juliet_ had been performed on Sat.u.r.day night, and he remembered the line that had sustained him after his love-making with Maggie Carmichael:

_If love be rough with you, be rough with love._

"How can you?" he said aloud. "You can't, no matter what it does to you!"

He went at last to the station and caught his train to Ballyards.

Eleanor was waiting on the platform for him. She did not speak when he arrived. She ran to him and put her arms about him and hugged him and cried over him. "My dear, my dear!" she said when she had recovered herself. He took her arm and led her out of the station, and they walked home together.

"It was terrible." she said. "I had to fight hard to keep myself from going to you. We've been very foolish, John, haven't we?"

He nodded his head.

They entered the house by the side-door and went into the kitchen where Mrs. MacDermott was preparing the mid-day meal. She waited for him to speak to her.