Whoever, whatever, wherever He is, His power must be supreme to make itself felt through the thick veil of doubt and despair that hangs so heavily about His ident.i.ty.

Sally Bishop, who could not say the Apostles' Creed with unswerving conscience--to whom the story of the Resurrection was fogged, blurred with a thousand inconsistencies--even she could not dispense with that moment in each day, that moment of abandonment--the flinging of one's burden of questions at the feet of a deity whose ident.i.ty it would be impossible to define.

For many minutes she stayed there on her knees, her arms wound round about her head, her shoulders rising wearily with each breath that she took.

Long after Janet had fallen asleep, and when the cold was numbing in her limbs, she stayed there, pouring forth her importunate questions--the woman begging guidance, when she knows full well what course she is going to adopt.

CHAPTER IX

The life of the Bohemian in London is no brilliantly coloured affair.

The most that can be said for it is that it has its moments. The first flush of a full purse and the last despair of an empty pocket are always sensations that are worth while. With the one you can gauge the shallow depth of pleasure and find the world full of friends; with the other you can learn how superfluous are the things you called necessities and you may count upon the fingers of your hand the number of friends whom really you possess. In their way, these moments are true values--both of them.

But the life of the Bohemian, wherever it may be, has one advantage that no other life possesses. It is a series of contrasts. With his last sovereign, he may have supper at the Savoy, rubbing shoulders with the best and with the worst; the next night, he may be dining off a _maquereau grille_ in a Greek Street restaurant, jogging elbows with the worst and with the best. It is only the steady possession of wealth that makes a groove; but steady possession is an unknown condition in the life of the Bohemian. And so, drifting in this sporadic way through the wild journeys of existence, he comes truly to learn the definite, certain uncertainty of human things. This he learns; but it is no sure guarantee that he will follow the teaching of the lesson.

For in the heart of human nature is a common need of bondage. To this, no matter what movement may be afoot, a woman still yields herself willingly. To this, in deep reluctance, with dragging steps, but none the less inevitably, man yields as well. The desire for companionship, the desire to give, albeit there may be no giving in return, the shuddering sense of the empty room and the silent night come to all of us, however much we may wish for the former conditions of solitude when once they are ours.

It was this common need of bondage, this hatred of the silent emptiness of life that caught the mind of Jack Traill, arrested and held it in the interest of Sally Bishop.

You are never really to know why a man, pa.s.sing through life, meeting this woman, meeting that, some intimately, some in the vapid chance of acquaintanceship, will in one moment be held by the sight of a certain face. The table of affinities is the only attempt at regulating the matter, and in these changing times one cannot look even upon that with confidence.

There is a law, however, whatever it may be, and in unconscious obedience to it, Traill kept the face of Sally Bishop persistently before him. After she had left him at Knightsbridge, he too descended from the 'bus and walked slowly back to Piccadilly Circus.

Casting his eyes round the circle of houses with their brilliant illuminations, he decided, with no antic.i.p.ation of entertainment, where to dine. A meal is a ceremony of boredom when it has no pleasurable prospect. Indeed, the gratification of any appet.i.te becomes a sordid affair when the mind is stagnant and the body merely asking for its food. But in the last three years, Traill had gone through this same performance a thousand times; a thousand times he had looked out of the little circular window on the top floor of the house in Lower Regent Street where he lived; a thousand times he had taken a coin out of his pocket and let the head or the tail decide between the two restaurants which he most usually frequented.

On this night there was no tossing of a coin. He had not even so much interest in the meal as that. Making his way across the Circus, he entered a restaurant in Shaftesbury Avenue, and pa.s.sed down the stairs to the grill-room.

The music, the lights, the haze of smoke and the scent of food were depressing. The whole atmosphere rolled forward to meet him as he came through the doors. He had no subtle temperament. It did not offend his imagination, but it sickened his senses, even though he knew that in five minutes he would be eating with the rest and the atmosphere would have taken upon itself a false semblance of normality.

All the tables had one occupant or another. He was forced to seat himself at the same table with some man and a girl, who were already half through their meal. He did so with apologies, quite aware of the annoyance he was causing. But he was not sensitive. He had the right to a seat at the table. The rules of the restaurant offered no restrictions. With it all, he was British.

"Hope you'll excuse my intrusion," he said shortly.

The man, a clerk, with slavery written legibly across his face, offered some mumbled acceptance of the inevitable. Traill himself would not have borne with any such intrusion. He would have called the manager--insisted upon having the table to himself; but he intruded his presence with only a momentary consciousness of being in the way.

His manner with waiters was peremptory. He gave them the recognition of the position which they occupied, but beyond that, scarcely looked upon them as human.

"Look here," he began, "I want so and so--" he named a dish that was unknown to the companion of the young clerk. She felt a certain respect of him for that. Her friend had ordered the most ordinary of food and had tried to do it in a lordly manner. There was no lordliness about Traill. He wasted no time with a waiter; he had never met a German waiter who was worth it. All this gave the impression of brusqueness. The girl liked it. She looked at her friend and wished she was dining with Traill. But Traill took no notice of her. Except an occasional glance, he ignored them both. As soon as he could, he ordered an evening paper and sat concealed behind it--truly British in every outline. The music in the place was good, but no music appealed to him. It came as a confused wreckage of sounds to his ears as he read through the news of the evening; and when the girl rattled her spoon on the coffee cup and the young man clapped his hands vigorously at the conclusion of a selection, he looked over the top of his paper with annoyance. What music had ever penetrated his understanding of the art, had come in the form of chants of psalms and old hymn tunes, which a constant attendance at church in his youth had dinned into him--the driving of soft iron nails into the stern oak. He sang these laboriously with numberless crescendos as he dressed in the mornings.

He finished dinner as quickly as he could. The young people opposite him were insufferably dull. Apparently they had never met each other before and were at a loss to make conversation to suit the occasion.

Accordingly, they listened intently to the string band while the young man smoked a long cigar, and in the natural course of things, they applauded after each piece to show that they had heard it. Traill bolted his meal, glad to leave them.

He came out of the restaurant and thanked G.o.d--filling his lungs with it--for the clean air. Then he stood on the pavement contemplating the next move. Should he go back to his rooms, read--smoke--fall asleep? Should he turn into a music-hall? When you live alone, the greatest issues of life sometimes resolve themselves into such questions as these.

Finally, scarcely conscious of arriving at any definite decision, he walked slowly back across the Circus in the direction of Lower Regent Street.

Over by the Criterion he heard the sound of footsteps behind him, hurrying; then his Christian name in a woman's voice. He turned.

"I was up nearly at the Prince of Wales's," she said out of breath, "when I saw you crossing the Circus. My--I ran!"

"What for?" he asked laconically.

"Why to talk to you, of course--what else? Where are you going?"

He looked at her coloured lips, at the tired eyes with their blackened lashes, at the flush of rouge that adorned her cheeks. Involuntarily, he remembered when she was charming, pretty--a time when she required none of these things.

"Where are you going anyway?" she repeated. "You haven't been to see me these months. Where are you going now?"

"I'm going back to my rooms."

A look of resigned disappointment pa.s.sed like a shadow across her face. The first realization in a woman of her failure to attract is the beginning of every woman's tragedy.

"Never seen my rooms, have you?" he added.

"No; never expected to."

"Come in and see them now and have a talk."

"You don't mean that?" Eagerness dragged it out of her.

"Come along," he said; "they're just down here--in Regent Street."

She followed him silently--silently, but in that moment her spirits had lifted. There was a wider swing in her walk. But he took no notice of that; he was not observant.

She hummed a tune with a rather pretty voice as she walked up the flights of stairs behind him.

"Gosh! it's dark," she exclaimed.

"Oh, it's none of your bachelor flats with lifts and attendants and electric lights," he replied.

On the third landing she stopped--out of breath again.

"Tired?" he said.

"There--" she laid a hand on her chest and breathed heavily. Then she moved a step nearer to him.

"Give us a kiss, dearie," she whispered.

He retreated a step. "My dear child--I didn't want you for that. Come up to the next floor when you've got your breath. I'll go on and light the candles."

He left her there in the semi-darkness, the thin light from the landing window just breaking up the heavy shadows. When she heard him open the door upstairs, she moved close to the window, took a small mirror from her little reticule bag and gazed for a moment at her face in its reflection. Then from some pocket of the bag, she produced a powder-puff and a box of powdered rouge, applying them with mechanical precision.

"S'pose he thought I looked tired," she muttered to herself as she mounted the remaining flight of stairs.

The room was a bachelor's, but it showed discrimination. Everything was in good taste--taste that was beyond her comprehension. She stood there in the doorway and stared about her before she entered. She thought the rush matting that covered the floor was cold; she thought the oak furniture sombre. Without realizing the need for tact, she said so.