"You know I didn't mean that. You are clever, and well-read, and probably fastidious. I'm... well, you see what I am! and no good for anything except trying to restrain horrible children from thumping till they break the notes."

"I thought you said you were a music-teacher?"

"That's what they call it," with a dry grimace; "but when I dare to be honest, I have too much respect for music."

"Well, you won't have to weary your soul restraining me from thumping anything, so it will be a change to come and talk to me. We'll turn the tables, and I'll try and restrain you from thumping the universe too hard."

"It would be much more to the point if we thumped together: I, because I'm not wanted, and it's an insult to foist me on to mankind whether I like it or not; and you, because... well, because you are a strong man cursed with helplessness."

"Very well, if you come in that particular mood, we'll just play football with the bally old universe, so to speak. The main point to me is, that we take a rise out of the powers that be, by being a source of entertainment occasionally to each other. As our alphabetical significance in the general scheme is next door to each other, we may as well get what we can out of the circ.u.mstance."

She turned aside, looking half humorous and half satirical.

"It sounds well enough as you say it, but I expect the powers are sneering diabolically at us both. However, if you'll let me try to be some sort of company, I'll come across again soon -"

A latch-key was heard in the door, and a moment later Doris entered.

When she saw the two women she looked taken aback, and stammered something about not knowing the time.

"When I got in Basil's fire was out, and he was perished with cold,"

Ethel said coldly; "and as I had to go to Miss... Miss -"

"Call it G," put in the music-teacher, with a comical twist of her mouth.

" - for brandy, she came over and lit the fire for me."

"I couldn't help not knowing the time," Doris murmured in a low, grumbling voice, and went away to take her hat off.

The music-teacher glanced from one to the other, as if about to say something, but changed her mind and moved towards the door. On the treshold she looked back, and said in her short, dry way:

"If F wants anything of G, G will be ready to come instantly."

"Thank you," Basil and Ethel replied together, the former adding, "And don't forget to put your head in at the door occasionally, by way of a reminder."

Ethel said no more to Doris, because she felt it useless, but her silence as they prepared the evening meal together signified her disapproval. She was deeply worried about Basil's failing strength, and longed to speak of it to someone who could understand; but felt such selfish forgetfulness as Doris showed shut her out from any sympathetic discussion.

Then Dudley came, and while Doris looked woebegone and sad, Ethel's face was a little stern with stress and anxiety. Basil tried valiantly to be cheerful enough for all three, but the effort cost him almost more strength than he could muster.

After Dudley had gone, carrying with him the image of Doris's plaintive prettiness and pathetic solitariness, and thinking gladly of the pleasure it would be to take her to Marlow on Sunday, Ethel slipped on her knees beside Basil's couch, overcome for a moment by the burden of his suffering, and the difficulties of their lives.

Often after Dudley had been, and some little act or glance or word had seemed to emphasise the barrier between them, her yearning over Basil had broken down her courage. When she had lost them both, what would become of her then? was the question that utterley undid her, finding no reply beyond a sense of empty darkness.

She told herself she would go right away to another land - to some far colony - where she could begin life afresh, with her haunting memories kept in the background. She would not stay to see the awakening come to Dudley, if Doris were his wife, nor struggle through the long months at the General Post Office, when the end of each day's labour brought no welcoming smile from Basil.

She would not settle down alone in a dingy little flat as their opposite neighbour, to become a mere letter of the alphabet to G.o.d and man, surrounded by countless other cyphers of as little meaning and account. She would go away to some new, young land, with her vigour and her courage, and carve out a path with some semblance of reality and value.

Only, could she ever get away from the awful emptiness that would come to her with the loss of Basil, and the utter lack of any incentive to carry on the unequal struggle?

Basil laid his hand on her bowed head, and for a little while seemed unable to speak. Then he steadied his voice, and rallied her with his brave, whimsical thoughts.

"Wouldn't the dear old pater have enjoyed G? She's just the kind of oddity he doted on. Fancy her teaching music of all things. It must be only scales and exercises. I think she's splendid to see the incongruity herself, and refuse to call it music when she dare be honest. What a grotesque figurehead she looks, chum, doesn't she? I thoroughly enjoyed talking to her."

But Ethel could not answer to his cheeriness just yet.

"Basil, why are so many humans just mere letters of the alphabet in the general scheme?"

She had slid into a sitting posture now, and leaned her head against his arm.

"It doesn't matter so much about the men; they can go out into the world and make friends by the way, and become something more if they wish; but what of the single women, who have to work for their living, and have nothing much to look forward to but a sort of terror as to what will become of them when they can work no more? If you could see some of them at the office, with that drawn, dried-up, joyless look, sc.r.a.ping and saving and starving for dread of the years ahead: it's so unfair, so grossly, hideously, cruelly unfair."

"It perhaps won't be when you see all round it, chum. It is so obvious we only see one side of things here. When we see the other side it will all look so different."

"Perhaps, but in the meantime they are here, now, in our very midst, all _these unwanted_ women. If you saw as much of them as I do, I think you would feel even the letter had better not have been supplied.

A blank would have meant so much less suffering. A penniless woman without attractiveness, and with neither husband, child, nor father wanting her, is such an anomaly. She just drags on, hating her loneliness, dreading and fearing the future or illness, merely existing because she is called upon to do so for no apparent reason."

"But she can always make friends, chum. If she is kind and cheerful and hopeful she will soon win love of some sort."

"If... yes... but, Basil, to be all that, when one is weighed down with the inequality of chance and a horror of the future calls for a heroine; and Life didn't bother to make many of them heroines. She doesn't seem to have paid much attention to them at all. Orphans and widows and sick people she remembers; but the lonely, ageing, hardened, unwanted spinster! It sometimes seems to me it is just sentimentality to be persuaded everything is all right.

"I don't believe it is all right. There's too much useless, silent aching, and useless, pa.s.sionate resentment over circ.u.mstances that it seems should either never have been, or should be remedied if any Guiding Hand has power. I have determination and I'm strong, Basil; the future doesn't frighten me badly yet, but when you are gone, I feel as if the loneliness might half kill me, and as if then I ought to have the right to become a blank if I wish, since I was never consulted about becoming a letter in the great alphabet."

He did not seek to stay her, knowing with his deep insight that to get such thoughts spoken was better than to brood inwardly; and because of his unshakable faith in her courage, he was not alarmed by them.

Yet he could not offer any comfort. Had not the enigma of useless pain racked and torn his soul piteously through the long years of his illness, leaving him indeed with a wonderful courage, but not with a theory that would fit the needs of suffering mankind? He could bear his own ills, because he had trained and taught himself to take them as a soldier takes the miseries of a hard campaign; but the general sum of suffering was another matter; and he shrank from saying either that suffering was sent by G.o.d to do good, or that it was necessary to the human race.

All he knew was simply that ills bravely borne seemed aided by some mysterious power outside their bearers; whereas the craven and the grumbler seemed but to add to their own burden. For the rest, though he would not say it for the pain it gave her, the knowledge of his growing weakness was already a solace to him, and he watched with hidden eagerness for the day that should set him free. At least a corpse was no drain upon the slender purse of a beloved sister; and the gnawing ache of his helplessness and uselessness would be stilled for ever.

If only Dudley had cared for her? From his vantage-ground of the looker-on, with his unnaturally sharpened sensitiveness, he knew perfectly how matters stood and how hopeless the desire seemed.

Dear old Dudlye, his life-long friend, would probably marry Doris and learn his mistake too late; and Ethel, with her fine nature, would go to some one else.

Well, one could not change either one's own little circle of fate, or the universe, just to suit oneself; one could only hope for the best, while there was still room for hope, and cultivate that soldier-spirit, undaunted even in a losing fight.

In the meantime there was the lonely, unwanted spinster opposite, with her immediate claim of nearness and loneness; and, as if to direct her thoughts into another channel, he said:

"You know, chum, I believe G was quite serious about wanting to come in here sometimes. Why not find out which afternoons she comes home early, and let her come and get tea and have it with me here. Then Doris need not worry about getting back in time."

"But if you are feeling weak it will tire you so, Basil, to have a stranger. You will feel obliged to talk to her."

"No, I don't think I shall; and it would be nice to feel she was rather glad not to be a blank after all. Let her come one afternoon and try.

Perhaps one way of grappling with the problem of human suffering - the best way - is to try and alleviate the atom of pain that is nearest each one of us."

She a.s.sented to please him, and then kissed his forehead with a lingering, adoring tenderness, marvelling that such a sufferer could so think for others. Then she went quietly to bed, feeling, as the gaunt spinster had tried to put it, "If _you_ can bear your ills so, surely I might manage to bear mine more courageously."

CHAPTER XIX