"And they were all wealthy-looking people."
"Clients," he said dreamily. "All clients." Then, with an awakening interest, "Will you have tea or coffee?"
"Tea, please. And they all smiled and bowed to you just as if they had been your personal friends."
"Well, you know, it"s like this. I"ve had to deal with them in some very important family matters--dark secrets. They possibly have the feeling that it is better to be on good terms with me--that I shall be more careful not to talk about their secrets, you know."
Even as the young man said it he was aware of the remarkable feebleness of it. So apparently was the girl.
"But I thought solicitors never talked about their clients" business,"
she said.
"They don"t. Of course. Certainly not. But then I"m not a solicitor; I"m only a clerk. Still, it"s a mistaken feeling; I"ve often wondered how it gets to be so common."
The young man felt that the game, though interesting, was becoming difficult. He reflected that at any minute people who knew him might come in and insist on talking to him. And then--the girl would discover everything and never forgive him. And the more he saw of her the more he wanted to be forgiven when the game came to its end.
He was unable to place her exactly. She was not a typist. She seemed too educated to be a governess. It was even more certain that she was not a fashionable London woman. She might possibly be a student of one of the arts. She was a little imperious in her way, yet she had the kindest and friendliest eyes. She was transparently good, and he guessed that unconventionality was unusual with her. She had not spoiled its effect for herself by making it commonplace. And who on earth was this solicitor"s clerk whom this charming person had meant to meet, and why had she been going to meet him? It occurred to the young man that he would like to wring the neck of that clerk (whom he was at present fraudulently under-studying) for his infernal impertinence.
"Now," said the girl, "I want you to tell me why you wrote in the first instance?"
This was a facer. He chanced it. "But I think you know," he said; and it turned out very well.
"Yes, I do, more or less. I know you read my verses, and that you then wrote to me at the office of the paper and said the kindest things."
The young man shook his head. "They were less than the truth," he said.
"But, after all, the idea in the verses--the kindred souls that Fate keeps strangers to each other--that"s not a new idea. You must have seen something of the kind scores of times before."
"If I had seen it before I did not remember it. I certainly had not seen it treated in that way. Your poem seemed to come to me like a message."
This for a young man who had not read one word of the poem was distinctly good--or, if you prefer it, distinctly bad.
"Well, when you wrote the first letter had you any idea of writing the second, the one in which you asked me to meet you?"
"I had to see how you would take it. I know it was great presumption on my part to hope for anything of the kind; it was most good of you to come."
"I wondered how long it would be before you thanked me."
"A thousand pardons. I see little society, of course. I am shy and awkward. I never say the right thing."
"But you are not shy and awkward. You are not at all what I expected. I have your second letter here. Listen. I leave out the part where you speak of your loneliness."
"There are few lives," said the young man, sorrowfully, "more solitary than that of a solicitor"s clerk. You don"t know." Nor, for that matter, did he.
"Then the letter goes on: "If you could make it convenient to spare me a few moments of your valuable time--""
"Did I really say that?"
"Of course you did. Here it is."
"These business forms ring in one"s head. They get into one"s blood.
One uses them unconsciously and inelegantly."
"I will read on: "If you could make it convenient to spare me a few moments of your valuable time I should like to have a go at telling you my story. Sympathy in my case has generally been conspicuous by its absence, but I think I could depend on the author of "The Strangers." I am rather a doleful sort, I am afraid, but I daresay you don"t care for larking about any more than I do.""
He had to hear that letter through to the end, and there was a good deal more of it. He had made himself responsible for the personality of a man who described himself as rather a doleful sort, said that he did not care for larking about, and spoke of a thing being conspicuous by its absence. And there was not even the possibility of protest. He had to accept it. He could not even groan out loud. The punishment for yielding to sudden impulses was heavy indeed.
"Now," she went on, "you see what I mean when I say that you do not at all match with the Samuel Pepper who wrote that letter."
His name was Samuel Pepper then! It was almost too much. This, he felt, would be a lifelong lesson to him. He had to say something. "But," he pleaded, "few people write and speak in just the same way."
"That is not my point. You write to me as a humble pleader for a favour."
"Naturally."
"When you meet me, you take something very much like the air of an amused social superior."
"I hope not!" exclaimed the young man with real sincerity. He struggled mentally after a correct Samuel Pepper att.i.tude. "It was quite unintentional, and no disrespect meant. I suppose on a Sat.u.r.day out, when I come up West, I get a bit above myself and my station. But I never meant to presume." He felt that this had the right Pepperian touch of humble commonness. "In the office or at home--"
"You mean in the Guildford Street boarding-house?"
"Quite so. It"s the only London home I"ve got. In the office or at home I"m quite a different person."
"Oh, please! I don"t mention the difference in manner because I care twopence about it, but to point out an inconsistency which puzzles me--perhaps I should say which did puzzle me at first. And why have you not told me that story that you wished me to hear. Why is it that you have not even referred to it?"
"Ah," said the young man, "how often one gets to the verge of a confession and then shirks it! Believe me, it is not an easy story for me to tell. Perhaps even it would be better for me to bear my burden alone."
"Very well. And those poems that you have written--you wished to show them to me, to get my opinion and see if I could help you towards publication."
"My fatal shyness! You, a writer yourself, must know what that is!" He felt that he was quite lost, and that the girl was getting angry, and he wished he could think of some way out of it.
"So I am not to have your verses or your story. But I think I will trouble you to hear a little of my story. You are not Samuel Pepper.
With my experience of story-writing I ought to have seen that that was a make-up name, to suit the part of a solicitor"s clerk. There is no Samuel Pepper. Your letters then were not genuine. They were very well done; as an artist I congratulate you. The thing that puzzles me is that you could not keep it up better when you had trapped me into meeting you. You cannot act a bit. You have not even dressed the part. You have not even taken the trouble to put a few verses in ma.n.u.script in your pocket. I will tell you why you succeeded in deceiving me in your letters. I live with my family, and I write stories and verses. I know they are not very good, but the money that I get for them is a consideration, and I hope with practice to do better. You touched my vanity, it is not often that anybody takes any notice of my work. And you appealed to my compa.s.sion. That part of your letter where you spoke of your loneliness among the people at the boarding-house seemed to me to be quite simple and unaffected. It made some impression on me. I was interested in what you said about your writing, and I remembered what a struggle I had at first myself; I thought I could help you. I felt safe because I trusted to your timidity and your sense of the difference between us, so cleverly conveyed in your letters. That was why you were able to trap me; and it will teach me in future not to be vain or kind-hearted. I don"t know why you wanted to do it. You have had your joke, perhaps, or you have won your bet. You won"t make the mistake of supposing that you have made my acquaintance, or of writing to me again.
Now, I am going."
So that was it; she had taken a firm feminine intelligent grasp of the wrong end of the stick. She had also caught up her gloves. Her eyes were filled with tears of rage, and he felt very bad indeed. If he had asked her to stop she would have hurried away all the quicker; he could see that.
"Our meeting was a chance one," he said. "I know nothing of Pepper or his letters except what you have told me. You mistook me for the man you were going to meet. I am sorry I did not correct your mistake since it has pained you. Otherwise I should have been very glad of it."
She sat down again, bewildered. "Chance?" she said.
"Pure chance. I shouldn"t like to say much for my taste this afternoon, but really I don"t make bets or jokes of that kind. I was at a silly bazaar in Hill Street this afternoon for a few minutes, and some idiot sold me this rose. I don"t wear flowers, and I was on the point of taking it out of my coat when you spoke to me. The other man probably arrived after we had gone; you remember you said that we were a few minutes before the time."
The girl leaned her elbow on the table and her head on her hand and looked at him intently. "It is too amazing," she said. "I think you are telling me the truth now. But how am I to know? You have not behaved well. You have deceived me." There were perplexed pauses between her sentences.
"I tried to deceive you, with the intention of undeceiving you in the end. You must own that I failed and that the humiliation is mine. But it is true that I have behaved badly; and it is true that I am sorry for it."
"Why did you do it? I can"t think why."