"What is it?" she said again.

"Don't you see that we can marry?" he said, with the flood of his resolution suddenly strong and steady. "Don't you see that is the only thing for us? The dead lane we are in! You must come out of your cheating, and I must come out of my ... cramming. And we--we must marry."

He paused and then became eloquent. "The world is against us, against--us. To you it offers money to cheat--to be ign.o.ble. For it _is_ ign.o.ble! It offers you no honest way, only a miserable drudgery. And it keeps you from me. And me too it bribes with the promise of success--if I will desert you ... You don't know all ... We may have to wait for years--we may have to wait for ever, if we wait until life is safe. We may be separated.... We may lose one another altogether.... Let us fight against it. Why should we separate?

Unless True Love is like the other things--an empty cant. This is the only way. We two--who belong to one another."

She looked at him, her face perplexed with this new idea, her heart beating very fast. "We are so young," she said. "And how are we to live? You get a guinea."

"I can get more--I can earn more, I have thought it out. I have been thinking of it these two days. I have been thinking what we could do. I have money."

"You have money?"

"Nearly a hundred pounds."

"But we are so young--And my mother ..."

"We won't ask her. We will ask no one. This is _our_ affair. Ethel!

this is _our_ affair. It is not a question of ways and means--even before this--I have thought ... Dear one!--_don't_ you love me?"

She did not grasp his emotional quality. She looked at him with puzzled eyes--still practical--making the suggestion arithmetical.

"I could typewrite if I had a machine. I have heard--"

"It's not a question of ways and means. Now. Ethel--I have longed--"

He stopped. She looked at his face, at his eyes now eager and eloquent with the things that never shaped themselves into words.

"_Dare_ you come with me?" he whispered.

Suddenly the world opened out in reality to her as sometimes it had opened out to her in wistful dreams. And she quailed before it. She dropped her eyes from his. She became a fellow-conspirator. "But, how--?"

"I will think how. Trust me! Surely we know each other now--Think! We two--"

"But I have never thought--"

"I could get apartments for us both. It would be so easy. And think of it--think--of what life would be!"

"How can I?"

"You will come?"

She looked at him, startled. "You know," she said, "you must know I would like--I would love--"

"You will come?"

"But, dear--! Dear, if you _make_ me--"

"Yes!" cried Lewisham triumphantly. "You will come." He glanced round and his voice dropped. "Oh! my dearest! my dearest!..."

His voice sank to an inaudible whisper. But his face was eloquent. Two garrulous, home-going clerks pa.s.sed opportunely to remind him that his emotions were in a public place.

CHAPTER XX.

THE CAREER IS SUSPENDED.

On the Wednesday afternoon following this--it was hard upon the botanical examination--Mr. Lewisham was observed by Smithers in the big Education Library reading in a volume of the British Encyclopaedia. Beside him were the current Whitaker's Almanac, an open note-book, a book from the Contemporary Science Series, and the Science and Art Department's Directory. Smithers, who had a profound sense of Lewisham's superiority in the art of obtaining facts of value in examinations, wondered for some minutes what valuable tip for a student in botany might be hidden in Whitaker, and on reaching his lodgings spent some time over the landlady's copy. But really Lewisham was not studying botany, but the art of marriage according to the best authorities. (The book from the Contemporary Science Series was Professor Letourneau's "Evolution of Marriage." It was interesting certainly, but of little immediate use.)

From Whitaker Lewisham learnt that it would be possible at a cost of 2, 6s. 1d. or 2, 7s. 1d. (one of the items was ambiguous) to get married within the week--that charge being exclusive of vails--at the district registry office. He did little addition sums in the note-book. The church fees he found were variable, but for more personal reasons he rejected a marriage at church. Marriage by certificate at a registrar's involved an inconvenient delay. It would have to be 2, 7s. 1d. Vails--ten shillings, say.

Afterwards, without needless ostentation, he produced a cheque-book and a deposit-book, and proceeded to further arithmetic. He found that he was master of 61, 4s. 7d. Not a hundred as he had said, but a fine big sum--men have started great businesses on less. It had been a hundred originally. Allowing five pounds for the marriage and moving, this would leave about 56. Plenty. No provision was made for flowers, carriages, or the honeymoon. But there would be a typewriter to buy. Ethel was to do her share....

"It will be a devilish close thing," said Lewisham with a quite unreasonable exultation. For, strangely enough, the affair was beginning to take on a flavour of adventure not at all unpleasant. He leant back in his chair with the note-book closed in his hand....

But there was much to see to that afternoon. First of all he had to discover the district superintendent registrar, and then to find a lodging whither he should take Ethel--their lodging, where they were to live together.

At the thought of that new life together that was drawing so near, she came into his head, vivid and near and warm....

He recovered himself from a day dream. He became aware of a library attendant down the room leaning forward over his desk, gnawing the tip of a paper knife after the fashion of South Kensington library attendants, and staring at him curiously. It occurred to Lewisham that thought reading was one of the most possible things in the world. He blushed, rose clumsily and took the volume of the Encyclopaedia back to its shelf.

He found the selection of lodgings a difficult business. After his first essay he began to fancy himself a suspicious-looking character, and that perhaps hampered him. He had chosen the district southward of the Brompton Road. It had one disadvantage--he might blunder into a house with a fellow-student.... Not that it mattered vitally. But the fact is, it is rather unusual for married couples to live permanently in furnished lodgings in London. People who are too poor to take a house or a flat commonly find it best to take part of a house or unfurnished apartments. There are a hundred couples living in unfurnished rooms (with "the use of the kitchen") to one in furnished in London. The absence of furniture predicates a dangerous want of capital to the discreet landlady. The first landlady Lewisham interviewed didn't like ladies, they required such a lot of attendance; the second was of the same mind; the third told Mr. Lewisham he was "youngish to be married;" the fourth said she only "did" for single "gents." The fifth was a young person with an arch manner, who liked to know all about people she took in, and subjected Lewisham to a searching cross-examination. When she had spitted him in a downright lie or so, she expressed an opinion that her rooms "would scarcely do," and bowed him amiably out.

He cooled his ears and cheeks by walking up and down the street for a s.p.a.ce, and then tried again. This landlady was a terrible and pitiful person, so grey and dusty she was, and her face deep lined with dust and trouble and labour. She wore a dirty cap that was all askew. She took Lewisham up into a threadbare room on the first floor, "There's the use of a piano," she said, and indicated an instrument with a front of torn green silk. Lewisham opened the keyboard and evoked a vibration of broken strings. He took one further survey of the dismal place, "Eighteen shillings," he said. "Thank you ... I'll let you know." The woman smiled with the corners of her mouth down, and without a word moved wearily towards the door. Lewisham felt a transient wonder at her hopeless position, but he did not pursue the inquiry.

The next landlady sufficed. She was a clean-looking German woman, rather smartly dressed; she had a fringe of flaxen curls and a voluble flow of words, for the most part recognisably English. With this she sketched out remarks. Fifteen shillings was her demand for a minute bedroom and a small sitting-room, separated by folding doors on the ground floor, and her personal services. Coals were to be "sixpence a kettle," she said--a pretty subst.i.tute for scuttle. She had not understood Lewisham to say he was married. But she had no hesitation.

"Aayteen shillin'," she said imperturbably. "Paid furs day ich wik ... See?" Mr. Lewisham surveyed the rooms again. They looked clean, and the bonus tea vases, the rancid, gilt-framed oleographs, two toilet tidies used as ornaments, and the fact that the chest of drawers had been crowded out of the bedroom into the sitting-room, simply appealed to his sense of humour. "I'll take 'em from Sat.u.r.day next," he said.

She was sure he would like them, and proposed to give him his book forthwith. She mentioned casually that the previous lodger had been a captain and had stayed three years. (One never hears by any chance of lodgers stopping for a shorter period.) Something happened (German) and now he kept his carriage--apparently an outcome of his stay. She returned with a small penny account-book, a bottle of ink and an execrable pen, wrote Lewisham's name on the cover of this, and a receipt for eighteen shillings on the first page. She was evidently a person of considerable business apt.i.tude. Lewisham paid, and the transaction terminated. "Szhure to be gomfortable," followed him comfortingly to the street.

Then he went on to Chelsea and interviewed a fatherly gentleman at the Vestry offices. The fatherly gentleman was chubby-faced and spectacled, and his manner was sympathetic but business-like. He "called back" each item of the interview, "And what can I do for you?

You wish to be married! By licence?"

"By licence."

"By licence!"

And so forth. He opened a book and made neat entries of the particulars.

"The lady's age?"

"Twenty-one."

"A very suitable age ... for a lady."

He advised Lewisham to get a ring, and said he would need two witnesses.