And, therewith, he sat himself down to answer her letter.
It was necessary, if he were to re-create the interest of the little old white-haired lady, for him to meet Jill again. Accordingly, with some ingenious preamble, in which he explained his silence of the preceding months, he began with the description of his second meeting with Jill in Kensington Gardens--that time when she came and spent the entire morning in telling him that she could not come and meet him that day.
"_Undoubtedly God could have made a place more fitted for Romance than Kensington Gardens,_" he began--"_but unquestionably He never did._"
And this was how the last tissue of nonsense came to be woven.
Of course, he told her, that it was all a secret. Jill had to keep it a secret from her people. He had to do that. Well--surely it was true?
He put the question boldly for his conscience to answer, and a look of the real thing came into his eyes. It was as well, however, that he thought of doing it, for the old lady was nearly landing him in an awkward predicament. She enclosed a letter to Jill and asked him to forward it, as, of course, she did not know the address.
He made a grimace at Miss Morrell when he received it, as though asking her what she would do under the circumstances. Miss Morrell yawned. It was so simple. So far, she had taken an interest in the case, had come in every day since the writing of the first letter to get her saucer of milk and hear the latest. But if he was going to put questions to her like this, there was all probability that she would be bored. Of course there was only one thing to be done. Miss Morrell could see that. And John did it. He answered the letter himself--wrote in a woman's hand; which is to say, he wrote every letter slanting backwards--said all that was important when the letter was finished, and scribbled it in and out between the date and the address, then, with a last effort at realism, spelt two words wrong on every page.
By this means, he was getting two letters every week, answering them both himself with as much industry and regularity as he ever put into his work.
This was all very well--all very simple so long as it lasted. But even Miss Morrell, whose eye to the main chance was unerring when it concerned a saucer of milk, warned him of what would follow. One morning, he received a letter from the little old white-haired lady, asking him when they were going to be married.
Quite placidly, he sat down and wrote----
"_We're to be married on the 16th of February. I've taken a small cottage down in the country. It costs forty pounds a year. I thought it wise to begin on economical lines. There's a little rustic porch to the front door, with William Allan Richardson roses climbing all over it. In the front, there are ten feet of garden, protected from the road by a wooden railing about two foot and a brick high with a tiny gate that's always locked to prevent burglars getting in. Three pink chestnuts combine to give it the appearance of an ambrosial park. At the back, there's a little lawn, just large enough for pitch and toss--I've measured it myself, it takes thirty-nine and a half of the longest steps I can take. And in the middle there's an apple tree,--that's likely to have a crop of three this year._"
Miss Morrell closed her eyes in silent acquiescence when he read it out to her. It is possible that she may have considered him extravagant and, having that eye to the main chance, wondered whether he would be able to afford her her basin of milk with all this expenditure on two establishments. She did not say it, however, and listened patiently when he told her of other arrangements he had made.
"I forgot to tell you," he said, taking Miss Morrell on his knee--"that Lizzie Rowse is going to give up sticking labels on the jam-jars at Crosse and Blackwell's and is coming to do housemaid, cook, and general help for seven and sixpence a week--including beer money as she doesn't drink. I wanted to pay her more, but she wouldn't take it. I asked her why and she said, because she mightn't get it; that it was better to be certain of things in this world, rather than spending your life in hoping for what was too good to be true. It was no good my telling her that the whole business was only going to be transacted on paper, and that black and white would be the colour of everything she'd ever make out of it. But no! Seven and six was what she stuck at. As it was, it was a rise of sixpence to what she was getting at the jam-jars, and she wouldn't take a penny more. She said I'd been too kind to her as it was."
Miss Morrell listened to all this with contempt. Mrs. Rowse was not in good repute just then. They thought very nasty things about her on the third and second floors--what is more, they said them, and in tones quite loud enough for Miss Morrell and her tortoiseshell companion to hear.
Mrs. Rowse, it appeared, had spilt some water on the landing mid-way between the first and second floor where was the water cock common to the entire uses of the whole establishment. Five drops would convey an idea of about the amount she had spilled. At a first glance, this may seem very slight, but when it is explained that the stairs from the first to the second floor were covered with linoleum specially purchased by Mrs. Brown to make the approach to her residence the more ornate, it will be easily understood what a heinous offence this was.
Mrs. Brown had spoken about it and the untidy habits of the people on the first floor generally, in tones so opprobrious and so loud that not only the first floor, but indeed the whole house had heard her.
Following this, there had appeared, stuck upon the wall so that all who approached the fountain must read, the accompanying notice--"If persons spill the water, will they have the kindness to slop it up."
It may be imagined how, in the effort to compose so reserved a notice as this, the feelings of Mrs. Brown, aided and abetted by Mrs. Morrell, must have overflowed in speech, all of which, of course, Miss Morrell would undoubtedly have heard. Hence her contempt.
When John had finished his dissertation upon the generosity and good qualities of Lizzie Rowse, Miss Morrell climbed down quietly from his knee. She was too dignified to say what she thought about it and so, with tail erect, stiffened a little perhaps for fear he might not perceive the full value of her dignity, she walked from the room.
The time passed by. It grew perilously near to that 16th of February.
But John took it all very placidly; probably that is the way, when one does these things on paper. He invented all day long, and took as much pride in the ingenuity and construction of those letters as ever he took over his work.
"We went last night to the pit of a theatre," he said one morning to Miss Morrell. "Took Mrs. Rowse and Lizzie and Maud. The two girls persisted in eating oranges till Maud put a piece of a bad one in her mouth; then they both stopped. I was rather glad, Maud got hold of a bad one, because I was just racking my brains to know how I could stop them without giving offence."
Miss Morrell looked quietly up into his face.
"You shouldn't take those sort of people to a theatre," said she.
John took no notice of her grammar. "It was Jill's idea," he replied.
On the 16th of February, right enough, they were married. Miss Morrell came that morning to drink her saucer of milk in honour of the event.
She walked in without knocking. It was her privilege. John was seated at his table, with his head buried in his hands, his shoulders shaking like a woman's with sobs that had no tears in them. And there, before him, with their paper wrappings all scattered about the place, were a pair of Dresden china shepherds, playing gaily on their lutes. Hanging about the neck of one of them was a card, on which was written: "_To John on his wedding day--from his loving father_."
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE DISSOLUBLE BONDAGE
If only it were that these things could continue--but alas! they cannot!
We make our bubbles with all the colours of heaven in them, but cannot abide to see them only floating in the air. The greens and purples, the golds and scarlets, they seem so real upon the face of that diaphanous, crystal disc, that to touch them, to find their glorious stain upon the fingers, becomes the desire of every one of us. Out stretches the hand, the fingers tighten! The bubble is gone!
That was much the way with John's beautiful bubble of Nonsense. So long as Jill knew nothing of it; so long as he played with the fairy thing by himself, it was enough; but the every-day business of life, in which death is one of the unavoidable duties, intervened. One cannot play at these wonderful games for long. You cannot be married on paper--more perhaps is the pity. There would be fewer separations, fewer misunderstandings if you could. Life unfortunately does not permit of it. The law of Gravity is universal. You come down to earth.
When John had been living a married life of unbroken happiness for two months, there came two letters on the same day to Fetter Lane. He looked at one with no greater bewilderment than he did at the other.
The first was from Venice in a strange handwriting; the second, from Jill. He opened it apprehensively. It could not be an invitation to her wedding? She could not have done that? Then what?
"_Is there any reason why we should not see each other again? I shall be in Kensington Gardens to-morrow at 11.30._"
He laid it down upon the table. For the moment, he forgot the existence of the other letter. In the midst of all his make-believe, this message from Jill was hard to realise; no easy matter to reconcile with all the phantoms in whose company he had been living.
What strange and unexpected things were women! Did ever they know what they wanted? or, knowing, and having found it, did any of them believe it to be what they had thought it at first?
Was she married? Since he had come back from Venice, the world might have been dead of her. He had heard nothing--seen nothing--and now this letter. Like the falling of some bolt of destruction from a heaven of blue, it had dropped into his garden, crushing the tenderest flowers he had planted there, in its swift rush of reality.
She wanted to see him again. The mere wish was a command; the mere statement that she would be in Kensington Gardens, a summons. All his sacrifice, his putting her away from him that day of her departure in Venice, was in one moment gone for nought. All this dream in which he had been living, became the bubble broken in the hand of such circumstance as this. While it had lasted, while he had continued to hear nothing of her, it had been real enough. Up till that moment, he had been happily married, quietly living down at Harefield in the county of Middlesex, in his cottage with its William Allan Richardson roses and its insurmountable wooden railing, two foot and a brick high. Every day, he had been coming up to London to work in Fetter Lane and to get his letters. Some very good reason, he had given to the old people why they should write to him there. And now, because he must obey this summons to go to Kensington Gardens and talk of things, perhaps, that little mattered, for fear they might embark upon the sea of those things that did, all his dream had vanished. The only reality left him, was that he was alone.
With a deep breath of resignation, he turned to the other letter and opened it.
"_Dear Mr. Grey--I am writing this for your mother, to tell you the unfortunate news that your father is very ill. He has had a heart seizure, and, I fear, cannot live more than a few days. I am told by Mrs. Grey to ask you and your wife to come here as soon as possible. He knows the worst, and is asking to see you before he dies._"
The paper hung limply in John's fingers. He stared blindly at the wall in front of him. One hand of ice seemed laid upon his forehead; the cold fingers of another gripped his heart.
Death--the end of everything--the irrevocable passing into an impenetrable darkness. It was well enough to believe in things hereafter; but to put it into practice wanted a power greater than belief. The old gentleman was going to die. The little old white-haired lady was to be left alone. How could he believe it? Would she believe it? Old people must die. He had said that often enough to himself while they had been well, while there had been no fear of it. He had said it, as the philosopher says that everything that is, is for the best. Now, as the philosopher so frequently has to do, he had to put it to the test.
His father was going to die. In a few days, he would see the last of him. Then pictures--scenes in his father's life--rode processionally through his mind. Last of all, he saw him, hands trembling, eyes alight and expression eager, placing back the Dresden Shepherd in the window of the Treasure Shop--that same gay figure in china which, with its fellow, he had sent to John on his imaginary wedding day.
With that picture, came the tears tumbling from his eyes. The wall opposite became a blurred vision in shadow as he stared at it. And all the time, the two Dresden Shepherds, perched upon his mantel-piece, played gaily on their lutes.
In the light-heartedness of his imagination, he had not conceived of this aspect of his deception. His father had asked to see his wife before he died. Now, he would give the world that the description had never been. Already, he could see the look of pain in the old gentleman's eyes, when he should say--as say he must--that he had had to leave her behind. Already, he could feel the sting of his own conscience when, by that bedside in the little room, he invented the last messages which Jill had sent to make his passing the easier.
It had been simple matter enough to conceive a thousand of these messages and write them upon paper; it had been simple matter enough to write those letters, which they were to suppose had come from Jill's own hand. But to act--to become the mummer in mask and tinsel, beside his father's death-bed, hurt every sensibility he possessed. It was beyond him. He knew he could not do it. Jill must know. Jill must be told everything, the whole story of this flight of his imagination. He trusted the gentle heart of her, at least, to give him some message of her own; something he could repeat for his father to hear, without the deriding knowledge in his heart that it was all a lie, all a fabrication, which, if the old gentleman did but know, he would reproach him with in his last moments.
There, then, with the tears still falling down his cheeks, he wrote to Jill, telling her everything; enclosing the last letter which he had just received.
"_Give me something to say,_" he begged--"_something which comes from the kindness of your heart and not from the fiendishness of my imagination. In those few moments you saw him, he must have shown you some of the gentleness of his nature; must have shown you something which, putting aside the blame which I deserve at your hands for all I have said, expects this generosity from you. I have become a beggar, an importunate beggar, scarcely to be denied; but I become so with all humility. Just write me a line. You can see now, that I dare not meet you to-morrow, now that you know. But send me a line as soon as you receive this, which I may learn by heart and repeat to him with a conscience made clear, in so much as I shall know that such words have actually been said by you._"
When he had posted this, John began the packing of those things which he would require for the journey. Into the chapel of unredemption he marched and made an indiscriminate offering of everything he possessed on his list of sacrificial objects. The high priest swept them all into his keeping and winked at his acolytes.