The Complete Five Towns Collections. Bennett Arnold

towards the view from his cottage door.) Richard grasped this. In a luminous moment of self-revelation, he was able to trace the growth of the malady. From its first vague and fugitive symptoms, it had so grown that now, on seeing an attractive woman, he could not be content to say, "What an attractive woman!" and have done with it, but he needs must build a house, furnish a room in the house, light a fire in the room, place a low chair by the fire, put the woman in the chair, with a welcoming smile on her upturned lips—and imagine that she was his wife. And it was not only attractive women that laid the spell upon him. The sight of any living creature in petticoats was liable to set his hysterical fancy in motion. Every woman he met was Woman.... Of the millions of women in London, why was he not permitted to know a few? Why was he entirely cut off? There they were: their silk skirts brushed him as they passed; they thanked him for little services in public vehicles; they ministered to him in restaurants; they sang to him at concerts, danced for him at theatres; touched his existence at every side—and yet they were remoter than the stars, unattainable as the moon.... He rebelled. He sank in despair, and rose to frenzies of anger. Then he was a pathetic figure, and extended to himself his own pity, smiling sardonically at fate. Fate was the harder to bear because he was convinced that, at the heart of him, he was essentially a woman's man. None could enjoy the feminine atmosphere more keenly, more artistically than he. Other men, who had those delicious rights for which he longed in vain, assessed them meanly, or even scorned them.... He looked back with profound regret to his friendship with Adeline. He dreamt that she had returned, that he had fallen in love with her and married her, that her ambitions were leading him forward to success. Ah! Under the incentive of a woman's eyes, of what tremendous efforts is a clever man not capable, and deprived of it to what deeps of stagnations will he not descend! Then he awoke again to the fact that he knew no woman in London.

      Yes, he knew one, and his thoughts began to play round her caressingly, idealising and ennobling her. She only gave him his change daily at the Crabtree, but he knew her; there existed between them a kind of intimacy. She was a plain girl, possessing few attractions, except the supreme one of being a woman. She was below him in station; but had she not her refinements? Though she could not enter into his mental or emotional life, did she not exhale for him a certain gracious influence? His heart went forth to her. Her flirtations with Mr. Aked, her alleged dalliance with Jenkins? Trifles, nothings! She had told him that she lived with her mother and father and a younger brother, and on more than one occasion she had mentioned the Wesleyan chapel; he had gathered that the whole family was religious. In theory he detested religious women, and yet—religion in a woman ... what was it? He answered the question with a man's easy laugh. And if her temperament was somewhat lymphatic, he divined that, once roused, she was capable of the most passionate feeling. He had always had a predilection for the sleeping-volcano species of woman.

      Chapter XXX

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      Richard was soon forced to the conclusion that the second writing of his novel was destined to be a failure. For a few days he stuck doggedly to the task, writing stuff which, as he wrote it, he knew would ultimately be condemned. Then one evening he stopped suddenly, in the middle of a word, bit the penholder for a moment, and threw it down with a "Damn!" This sort of thing could not continue.

      "Better come up and see my new arrangements at Raphael Street to-night," he said to Jenkins the next day. He wanted a diversion.

      "Any whisky going?"

      "Certainly."

      "Delighted, I'm sure," said Jenkins, with one of his ridiculous polite bows. He regarded these rare invitations as an honour; it was more than six months since the last.

      They drank whisky and smoked cigars which Jenkins had thoughtfully brought with him, and chattered for a long time about office matters. And then, as the cigar-ash accumulated, the topics became more personal and intimate. That night Jenkins was certainly in a serious vein; further, he was on his best behaviour, striving to be sympathetic and gentlemanly. He confided to Richard his aspirations. He wished to learn French and proposed to join a Polytechnic Institute for the purpose. Also, he had thoughts of leaving home, and living in rooms, like Richard. He was now earning twenty-eight shillings a week; he intended to save money and to give up all intoxicants beyond half a pint of bitter a day. Richard responded willingly to his mood, and offered sound advice, which was listened to with deference. Then the talk, as often aforetime, drifted to the subject of women. It appeared that Jenkins had a desire to "settle down" (he was twenty-one). He knew several fellows in the Walworth Road who had married on less than he was earning.

      "What about Miss Roberts?" Richard questioned.

      "Oh! She's off. She's a bit too old for me, you know. She must be twenty-six."

      "Look here, my boy," said Richard, good-humouredly. "I don't believe you ever had anything to do with her at all. It was nothing but boasting."

      "What will you bet I can't prove it to you?" Jenkins retorted, putting out his chin, an ominous gesture with him.

      "I'll bet you half-a-crown—no, a shilling."

      "Done."

      Jenkins took a leather-case from his pocket, and handed Richard a midget photograph of Miss Roberts. Underneath it was her signature, "Yours sincerely, Laura Roberts."

      Strange to say, the incident did not trouble Richard in the least.

      He walked down to Victoria with Jenkins towards midnight, and on returning to his lodging, thought for the hundredth time how futile was his present mode of existence, how bare of all that makes life worth living. Of what avail to occupy pretty rooms, if one occupied them alone, coming into them at night to find them empty, leaving them in the morning without a word of farewell? In the waste of London, Laura Roberts made the one green spot. He had lost interest in his novel. On the other hand, his interest in the daily visit to the Crabtree was increasing.

      As day succeeded day he fell into a practice of deliberately seeking out and magnifying the finer qualities in her nature, while ignoring those which were likely to offend him; indeed he refused to allow himself to be offended. He went so far as to retard his lunch-hour permanently, so that, the rush of customers being past, he should have better opportunity to talk to her without interruption. Then he timidly essayed the first accents of courtship, and finding his advances accepted, grew bolder. One Sunday morning he met her as she was coming out of the Wesleyan chapel at Munster Park; he said the encounter was due to accident. She introduced him to her relations, who were with her. Her father was a big, stout, dark man, dressed in black faced-cloth, with a heavy beard, huge chubby fingers, and jagged grey fingernails. Her mother was a spare woman of sorrowful aspect, whose thin lips seldom moved; she held her hands in front of her, one on the top of the other. Her brother was a lank schoolboy, wearing a damaged mortar-board hat.

      Shortly afterwards he called on her at Carteret Street. The schoolboy opened the door, and after inviting him as far as the lobby, vanished into a back room only to reappear and run upstairs. Richard heard his loud, agitated whisper: "Laura, Laura, here's Mr. Larch come to see you."

      They strolled to Wimbledon Common that night.

      His entity seemed to have become dual. One part of him was willingly enslaved to an imperious, headstrong passion; the other stood calmly, cynically apart, and watched. There were hours when he could foresee the whole of his future life, and measure the bitter, ineffectual regret which he was laying up; hours when he admitted that his passion had been, as it were, artificially incited, and that there could be no hope of an enduring love. He liked Laura; she was a woman, a balm, a consolation. To all else he obstinately shut his eyes, and, casting away every consideration of prudence, hastened to involve himself more and more deeply. Swiftly, swiftly, the climax approached. He hailed it with a strange, affrighted joy.

      Chapter XXXI

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      They