THE little red-armed servant beamed an amiable recognition.
“Very hot day!” Richard said.
“Beg pardon, sir.”
“Very hot day,” rather louder. They were in the passage.
The door of the sitting-room opened, and Mr. Aked’s niece stood before him, her finger on her lips and her eyebrows raised in a gesture of warning. She suddenly smiled, almost laughed. Richard remembered that smile for a long time afterwards. It transformed not only a girl’s face, but the whole of Carteret Street. He had never seen anything like it. Shaking hands in silence, he followed her into the room, and she gently closed the door.
“Uncle’s not well,” she explained. “He’s asleep now, and I don’t want you to wake him. In this house, you know, if any one speaks in the passage, you can hear it even in the attic. Uncle was caught in the rain last night; he has a very weak chest, and gets bronchitis directly.”
“I’m awfully sorry I disturbed you,” said Richard.
“The fact is I was down this way, and I thought I’d call.” It sounded a sufficiently reasonable excuse, he considered. “I hope you weren’t asleep too.”
“Yes, I was dozing in this chair.” She put her head back, and drummed with her fingers lightly on the arms of the chair. “But I’m glad you’ve called.”
“Why?”
“Oh! Because one wants to see some one — some one new, especially after being in a sick-room.”
“You’ve been sitting up late.” His tone was accusing. It seemed to him that somehow they were already intimate.
“Only till three o’clock, and I slept later this morning. How changeable the sun is to-day!” She moved her chair, and he saw her in profile. Her hands were on her lap. She coaxed a foot stool into position with her toes, and placed her feet on it.
“You look just like a picture in this week’s ‘Illustrated London News’ — I mean in general pose,” he exclaimed.
“Do I? How nice that sounds! What is it?”
“Whistler’s ‘Portrait of his Mother.’ But I hope you don’t think I think you look old.”
“How old do I look?” She turned her head slightly towards him.
“About twenty-three, only I imagine you’re much younger.”
Although she did not reply, she made no pretence of being annoyed, nor did Richard tax himself with a gaucherie.
“It took me years to like Whistler’s pictures,” she said; and in response to Richard’s surprised question she was beginning to explain that a large part of her life had been passed in the companionship of works of graphic art, when a slippered step was heard in the hall and some one fumbled with the door-handle. Mr. Aked entered.
“Uncle! You wicked old man!” She sprang up, flushed, and her eyes sparkled angrily. “Whatever did you get up for? It’s enough to kill you.”
“Calm yourself, my child. I got up because I didn’t want to stay in bed, — exactly that.” Mr. Aked paused to take breath and sank into a chair. “Larch, I heard your voice in the passage. Upon my word, I quite forgot you yesterday. I suppose Adeline’s been telling you I’m seriously ill, eh? Ah! I’ve had many a worse attack than this. Put that antimacassar over my shoulders, child.”
He had given Richard a hot, limp hand, on which the veins formed soft ridges in the smooth, brittle skin. His grey hair was disarranged, and he wore a dirty, torn dressing-gown. His face had lost its customary alert expression; but his sunk, shining eyes glanced with mysterious restlessness first at Richard, then at Adeline, who, uttering no further word, covered him well and put the hassock under his feet.
“Well, well, well!” he sighed and closed his eyes wearily. The other two sat silent for a time; then Adeline, talking very quietly, and with a composure not quite unaffected, took up their interrupted conversation. Richard gathered that her justifiable vexation would remain in abeyance till he had gone. Soon her tone grew more natural; she leaned forward with hands clasped round one knee, and Richard felt like a receiver of confidences as she roughly outlined her life in the country which had come to an end only two years ago. Were all the girls so simply communicative, he wondered; it pleased him to decide that they were not, and that to any other but himself she would have been more reserved; that there was, in fact, an affinity between them. But the presence of her uncle, which Adeline seemed able to ignore utterly, hindered Richard from being himself.
“How do you like London, after living so long in the country?” he asked inevitably.
“I know practically nothing of London, real London,” she said; “but I think these suburbs are horrid, — far duller than the dullest village. And the people! They seem so uninteresting, to have no character!”
The hoarse, fatigued voice of Mr. Aked crept in between them. “Child!” he said — and he used the appellation, not with the proper dignity of age, but rather like an omniscient schoolboy, home for the holiday, addressing a sister—”Child!” — his eyes were still closed,—”the suburbs, even Walham Green and Fulham, are full of interest, for those who can see it. Walk along this very street on such a Sunday afternoon as to-day. The roofs form two horrible, converging straight lines I know, but beneath there is character, individuality, enough to make the greatest book ever written. Note the varying indications supplied by bad furniture seen through curtained windows, like ours” (he grinned, opened his eyes, and sat up); “listen to the melodies issuing lamely from ill-tuned pianos; examine the enervated figures of women reclining amidst flowerpots on narrow balconies. Even in the thin smoke ascending unwillingly from invisible chimney-pots, the flutter of a blind, the bang of a door, the winking of a fox terrier perched on a window-sill, the colour of paint, the lettering of a name, — in all these things there is character and matter of interest, — truth waiting to be expounded. How many houses are there in Carteret Street? Say eighty. Eighty theatres of love, hate, greed, tyranny, endeavour; eighty separate dramas always unfolding, intertwining, ending, beginning, — and every drama a tragedy. No comedies, and especially no farces! Why, child, there is more character within a hundred yards of this chair than a hundred Balzacs could analyse in a hundred years.”
All the old vivacity had returned to his face; he had been rhetorical on a favourite subject, and he was frankly pleased with himself.
“You will tire yourself, uncle,” said Adeline. “Shall we have tea?”
Richard observed with astonishment that she was cold and unmoved. Surely she could not be blind to the fact that Mr. Aked was a very remarkable man with very remarkable ideas! Why, by the way, had those ideas never presented themselves to him? He would write an article on the character of Raphael Street. Unwillingly he announced that he must go; to remain longer would be to invite himself to tea.
“Sit still, Larch. You’ll have a cup of tea.” Adeline left the room; and when she had gone, Mr. Aked, throwing a glance after her, said, —
“Well, what do you think of my notions of the suburb?”
“They are splendid,” Richard replied, glowing.
“There’s something in them, I imagine,” he agreed complacently. “I’ve had an idea lately of beginning to scribble again. I know there’s a book waiting to be written on ‘The Psychology of the Suburbs,’ and I don’t like to see copy lying about wasted. The old war-horse scenting the battle, you understand.” He smiled grandiosely. “‘Psychology of the Suburbs’! Fine title that! See how the silent P takes away all the crudity of the alliteration; that’s because one never listens to words with the ears alone, but with the eyes also.... But I should need help. I want a clever chap who can take down from dictation, and assist me in the details of composition. I suppose you wouldn’t care to come here two or three evenings a week?”
Richard answered sincerely that nothing would suit him better.
“I should make you joint author, of course. ‘Psychology of the Suburbs,’ by Richard Aked and Richard Larch. It sounds rather catchy, and I think it ought to sell. About four hundred octavo pages, say a hundred thousand words. Six shillings — must be popular in price. We might get a royalty of ninepence a copy if we went to the right publisher. Sixpence for me and threepence for you. Would that do?”
“Oh, perfectly!” But was not Mr. Aked running on rather fast?
“Perhaps we’d better say fivepence halfpenny for me and threepence halfpenny for you; that would be fairer. Because you’ll have to furnish ideas, you know. ‘Psychology of the Suburbs, Psychology of the Suburbs’! Fine title! We ought to do it in six months.”
“I hope you’ll be quite well again soon. Then we—”
“Quite well!” he repeated sharply. “I shall be as right as a trivet to-morrow. You don’t suppose that I can’t take care of myself! We’ll start at once.”
“You’re not forgetting, Mr. Aked, that you’ve never seen any of my stuff yet? Are you sure I shall be able to do what you want?”
“Oh, you’ll do. I’ve not seen your stuff, but I guess you’ve got the literary habit. The literary habit, that’s the thing! I’ll soon put you up to the wrinkles, the trade secrets.”
“What is your general plan of the book?” Richard asked with some timidity, fearing to be deemed either stupid or inquisitive at the wrong moment. He had tried to say something meet for a great occasion, and failed.
“Oh, I’ll go into that at our first formal conference, say next Friday night. Speaking roughly, each of the great suburban divisions has, for me at any rate, its own characteristics, its peculiar moral physiognomy.” Richard nodded appreciatively. “Take me blindfold to any street in London, and I’ll discover instantly, from a thousand hints, where I am. Well, each of these divisions must be described in turn, not topographically of course, but the inner spirit, the soul of it. See? People have got into a way of sneering at the suburbs. Why, the suburbs are London! It is alone the —— the concussion of meeting suburbs in the centre of London that makes the city and West End interesting. We could show how the special characteristics of the different suburbs exert a subtle influence on the great central spots. Take Fulham; no one thinks anything of Fulham, but suppose it were swept off the face of the earth the effect would be to alter, for the seeing eye, the character of Piccadilly and the Strand and Cheapside. The play of one suburb on another and on the central haunts is as regular, as orderly, as calculable, as the law of gravity itself.”
They continued the discussion until Adeline came in again with a tray in her hands, followed by the little red-armed servant. The two began to lay the cloth, and the cheerful rattle of crockery filled the room....
“Sugar, Mr. Larch?” Adeline was saying, when Mr. Aked, looking meaningly at Richard, ejaculated, —
“Friday then?”
Richard nodded. Adeline eyed her uncle distrustfully.
For some reason, unguessed by Richard, Adeline left them alone during most of the evening, and in her absence Mr. Aked continued to discourse, in vague generalities not without a specious poetical charm, on the subject upon which they were to collaborate, until Richard was wholly intoxicated with its fascinating possibilities. When he left, Adeline would not allow Mr. Aked to go to the door, and went herself.
“If I hadn’t been very firm,” she laughed as they were shaking hands in the passage, “uncle would have stood talking to you in the street for goodness knows how long, and forgotten all about his bronchitis. Oh, you authors, I believe you are every one like babies.” Richard smiled his gratification.
“Mr. Larch, Mr. Larch!” The roguish summons came after him when he was half-way up the street. He ran back and found her at the gate with her hands behind her.
“What have you forgotten?” she questioned. He could see her face but dimly in the twilight of the gas-lamps.
“I know — my umbrella,” he answered.
“Didn’t I say you were all like — little children!” she said, as she whipped out the umbrella and gave it to him over the gate.
Anxious at once to add something original to the sum of Mr. Aked’s observations, he purposely chose a round-about route home, through the western parts of Fulham and past the Salisbury hotel. It seemed to him that the latent poetry of the suburbs arose like a beautiful vapour and filled these monotonous and squalid vistas with the scent and the colour of violets, leaving nothing common, nothing ignoble. In the upturned eyes of a shop-girl who went by on the arm of her lover he divined a passion as pure as that of Eugénie Grandet; on the wrinkled countenance of an older woman he beheld only the nobility of suffering; a youth who walked alone, smoking a cigarette, was a pathetic figure perhaps condemned to years of solitude in London. When there was no one else to see, he saw Adeline, — Adeline with her finger on her lips, Adeline angry with her uncle, Adeline pouring out tea, Adeline reaching down his hat from the peg, Adeline laughing at the gate. There was something about Adeline that... How the name suited her!... Her past life, judging from the hints she had given, must have been interesting. Perhaps that accounted for the charm which...
Then he returned to the book. He half regretted that Mr. Aked should have a hand in it at all. He could do it himself. Just as plainly as if the idea had been his own, he saw the volume complete, felt the texture of the paper, admired the disposition of the titlepage, and the blue buckram binding; he scanned the table of contents, and carelessly eyed the brief introduction, which was, however, pregnant with meaning; chapter followed chapter in orderly, scientific fashion, and the last summoned up the whole business in a few masterly and dignified sentences. Already, before a single idea had been reduced to words, “The Psychology of the Suburbs” was finished! A unique work! Other authors had taken an isolated spot here or there in the suburbs and dissected it, but none had viewed them in their complex entirety; none had attempted to extract from their incoherence a coherent philosophy, to deal with them sympathetically as Mr. Aked and himself had done — or rather were to do. None had suspected that the suburbs were a riddle, the answer to which was not undiscoverable. Ah, that secret, that key to the cipher! He saw it as it might be behind a succession of veils, flimsy obstructions which just then baffled his straining sight, but which he would rip and rend when the moment for effort came.
The same lofty sentiments occupied his brain the next morning. He paused in the knotting of his necktie, to look out of the window, seeking even in Raphael Street some fragment of that psychology of environment invented by Mr. Aked. Nor did he search quite in vain. All the phenomena of humble life, hitherto witnessed daily without a second thought, now appeared to carry some mysterious meaning which was on the point of declaring itself. Friday, when the first formal conference was to occur, seemed distressingly distant. But he remembered that a very hard day’s work, the casting and completing of a gigantic bill of costs, awaited him at the office, and he decided to throw himself into it without reserve; the time would pass more quickly.