"Oh? Why?" I asked.
"You"re so--so----"
But she did not say what.
We turned down Putney Hill.
I said I should say little of this, and I shall say no more. I took her home, but did not go in with her, neither, though I ought to have done so, did I seek Kitty. I went home, but all that I knew of my getting there was that I found myself sitting, with my hat and coat still on, on the edge of the bed in my red-and-green-lighted apartment.
They were turning out from the public-house below when at last I rose sluggishly and began to prepare for bed.
For half the following week I was outside and beyond myself.
But exactly a week, less a day, from that Sat.u.r.day on which I had held Evie in my arms there dropped a thunderbolt into my life. On that Friday evening I had gone as usual to the cashier for my wages, and he had paid me; but as I had turned away again with my eighteen shillings he had said, as if giving utterance to an afterthought, "Oh--Jeffries--we find we shall not require your services after this week. You can have your notice in writing if you would prefer it."
And he had turned to pay Sutt, the next man in the queue.
PART III
THE GARRET
I
Poor, fussy, well-meaning Kitty had done it--had done it all unwittingly. In telling her vaguely where I lived I had left the number of my house unspecified, and when a letter had come for me to the Business College on an evening when I had announced my intention of being away, she, inspired by the urgency of my affairs, had got a directory and readdressed the letter to me at Rixon Tebb & Masters". It was a letter from the firm into whose service I hoped soon to enter, and I examined the flap of the envelope carefully when finally it did come into my hands. Polwhele (I have little doubt it was he) had steamed it open, read it and closed it again.
This time all I could get out of Gayns, whom I once more approached, was that Rixon Tebb & Masters" had no use for an employee whose mind was already elsewhere.
It was true that the sack from Rixon Tebb & Masters" was not now a matter of the first importance. That was not the thunderbolt. Scanty as my wages were I had still saved up nearly three pounds out of them; and, as the letter that Polwhele had tampered with contained the news that I might hold myself in readiness to begin my new work a month from that date, the sum was enough to tide me over. But the letter had a postscript. This was a merely formal intimation that it was a.s.sumed that I could produce the usual references of steadiness, reliability and so forth. I myself never dreamed that I should be denied them.
I was denied them, however, by Polwhele.
"But--but," I stammered, aghast.
Polwhele referred me to my real employers, the Agency. I gave him a long and gradually lowering stare.
"Do you mean----" I began slowly.
"I mean what I say," he snapped; and as he turned away he added in a lower voice, "You ain"t surprised, are you?"
And, remembering how I had seen him with his fingers in Mr Masters"
waste-paper basket, I could not say I was.
Again I sought Gayns. This time the cashier flew into a pa.s.sion.
"Confound you!" he cried. "You"re more trouble than all the rest of them put together! What is it now? A character? Oh yes, you can have a character! I"d advise you not to show it to anybody, though! First leaving us--then coming back--then days off--then d.i.c.kering with other firms! Go to Polwhele--go to the Agency--go to h.e.l.l!"
I left Rixon Tebb & Masters" without references.
Without references my new firm refused to have anything whatever to do with me.
I come now to the deepest slough of my poverty.
It was early in the month of June that I was thrown out of work, with thirty-five shillings in my pocket. The drizzling winter had given place to a glorious early summer, and the days increased in heat until they became torrid. Men walked Piccadilly at night in evening dress, with their light dust-coats thrown over their arms; and ragged urchins hailed the appearance of watercarts with whoops of joy and danced barelegged in the refreshing puddles behind them. Horses wore straw bonnets, out of which their ears stuck ludicrously up; in whole districts the water supply began to be cut off at certain hours of the day; the pitiless sun gave every street the appearance of a hard, hot snapshot; and, as the heat got on people"s nerves, the cries of children at play became intolerably strident.
My corner at King"s Cross was well-nigh insupportable. Why the quant.i.ty of torn paper in the gutters should redouble the moment the sun begins to glare on London I do not know, unless it be that the fried fish and ready-cooked provision businesses suddenly boom; and certainly the refuse in which I frequently walked ankle-deep was mostly heavy with grease. Even had I been able to afford it, my "pull-up" had now become such a stove that I do not think I could have entered it. I dined, or rather supped, late at night, at one of the coffee-stalls where the electric trams now sweep round from Gray"s Inn Road to St Pancras Station; and I breakfasted (my only other meal) on bread and the water I drew from my tap on the landing before it was cut off. The council didn"t save much in my case by cutting the supply off. I filled every vessel I could lay my hands on early in the morning. As Miss Causton had once said, one must be clean, and Archie, whose bath I could now have pa.s.sed my days in, was seldom to be found in his rooms near the Foundling Hospital now.
For three weeks I trudged the streets looking for work; and then a bit of luck befell me. The new "professor" at the college broke down under the heat; it was not desired to give up the Friday evening advertis.e.m.e.nt-writing cla.s.s; and I daresay my anomalous standing at the place, something between student and pathetic high-and-dry "inst.i.tution," was the cause of its being offered to me. I got five shillings for the evening, and that five shillings kept me for five days. I discovered that I need not pay my rent. The first week I missed doing this I made a shamefaced apology to my landlord, the publican, and discovered that he was not a bad sort. It was too hot to worry about trifles, he said, and so set himself a precedent that cost him pretty dearly until, long afterwards, I saw to it that he was not the loser for having harboured me during that time.
Wherever I sought work my inability to produce a character d.a.m.ned me; and on the other hand I was not a Discharged Prisoner. Two or three times I was taken on casually, once as a packer at a large furniture emporium, once at a stocktaking for bankruptcy purposes, and once (I forget how I tumbled into this) I spent a whole day locked in an upper room of a town hall, counting the voting-papers in some borough or vestry election--a lucrative ten-shilling job. This was before I got, and retained for some weeks (until I had the Corps of Commissionaires down on me), the post of hall porter at the offices of a sporting paper.
I will tell you about that presently. You will see that I am making all the haste I can to have done with this horrible time.
Among other things, the general deterioration in my appearance had forced me to tell Kitty Windus that I was out of work. But I had made light of it, saying that, on the whole, it was rather a good thing, as I needed some sort of a spur; but I daresay Alf and Frank had said the same thing many a time. Presently my former boastings, about the great things I was shortly going to do, had committed me to the lie that I had at last found employment. It was my week"s stocktaking that I told this particular lie about, and Kitty never knew when that temporary job came to an end. Nor, poor girl, did I tell her what she had done when she had forwarded that letter to Rixon Tebb & Masters". It would become me ill to say that she stuck to me because it was myself or nothing for her; already I had begun to dread that it would be no easy matter to get rid of her when I might find it necessary to do so: and many a time, as my despair grew upon me, sweeping all personal reluctances and physical repugnances aside, I threw pride to the winds, and ate, in her sitting-room in Percy Street, the only food I had tasted during the day--becoming an Alf or a Frank in very fact.
For--perhaps this was partly the effect of the unrelenting heat--her insipid coquetries had begun to exasperate me more and more. I became increasingly petulant when I was commanded to "tiss eentie finger" and to look into the little scalene triangles of her eyes and say that I loved her. Presently, I am afraid, I began to cause her many tears. We wrangled frequently. I was "near," I was "close," I did not treat her as other engaged girls were treated, I never took her anywhere except for a bus ride, or to a cheap theatre once in a blue moon.
Then one day, without warning, she brought it up against me that I had "given her the slip" that afternoon on Wimbledon Common.
Of this I was technically so innocent, but morally so entirely guilty, that I broke out into anger, and there was a scene.
"I know some girls are younger and prettier than I am," she broke out, with unbridled temper, "but you _did_ ask me to marry you after all."
"So I did," I admitted, in a tone that made her flame.
"Yes," she cried shrilly. "And not only that--I"ve seen you looking at Louie Causton too."
"Oh?" I said, noting with relief that her jealousy was not specially of Evie. "Well, there are one or two pleasing points about her."
"And she was the only one you danced with at the party."
"Before I asked you to marry me?"
"And me--you"ve never _once_ taken me to a dance, though I"ve _seen_ Rachel Levey offer you tickets."
"Perhaps you"ve seen me look at Miss Levey too?"
"And you never spoke to me, and sat behind the books with Louie."
"Well, there only remains one other suggestion for you to make."
And so on. It was degrading in the extreme. But I was sufficiently punished for it later, when she lay with her head on my breast, sobbing out phrases of contrition for her vindictive temper and supplication for pardon.