"But you do read?"
"Yes, sometimes a novel. I'm reading 'East Lynne.' Uncle bought it for me the other day."
"And you like it?"
There was a timid tap at the door, and a short, stout servant with red hands and a red face entered; her rough, chubby forearms were bare, and she carried a market basket. "Please, 'm," she ejaculated meaningly and disappeared. Mr. Aked's niece excused herself, and when she returned Richard looked at his watch and rose.
"I'm very sorry about uncle—but it's just like him."
"Yes, isn't it?" Richard answered, and they exchanged a smile.
He walked down Carteret Street humming a tuneless air and twirling his stick. Mr. Aked's niece had proved rather disappointing. She was an ordinary girl, and evidently quite unsusceptible to the artistic influences which subtly emanated from Mr. Aked. But with the exception of his landlady and his landlady's daughter, she was the first woman whom Richard had met in London, and the interview had been somewhat of an ordeal.
Yes, it was matter for regret. Suppose she had been clever, witty, full of that "nameless charm" with which youths invest the ideal maidens of their dreams—with which, indeed, during the past week he had invested her! He might have married her. Then, guided by the experience of a sympathetic uncle-in-law, he would have realised all his ambitions. A vision of Mr. Richard Larch, the well-known editor, and his charming wife, giving a dinner-party to a carefully selected company of literary celebrities, flitted before him. Alas! The girl's "East Lynne," her drawing-room ballads, the mean little serving-maid, the complacent vulgarity of the room, the house, the street, the neighbourhood, combined effectually to dispel it.
He felt sure that she had no aspirations.
It was necessary to wait for a train at Parson's Green station. From the elevated platform grass was visible through a gently falling mist. The curving rails stole away mysteriously into a general greyness, and the twilight, assuaging every crudity of the suburban landscape, gave an impression of vast spaces and perfect serenity. Save for the porter leisurely lighting the station lamps, he was alone,—alone, as it seemed to him, in an upper world, above London, and especially above Fulham and the house where lived the girl who read "East Lynne." How commonplace must she be! Richard wondered that Mr. Aked could exist surrounded by all the banalities of Carteret Street. Even his own lodging was more attractive, for at least Raphael Street was within sound of the central hum and beat of the city.
A signal suddenly shone out in the distance; it might have been a lighthouse seen across unnumbered miles of calm ocean. Rain began to fall.
Chapter XI
Richard's Sabbaths had become days of dismal torpor. A year ago, on first arriving in London, he had projected a series of visits to churches famous either for architectural beauty or for picturesque ritual. A few weeks, however, had brought tedium. He was fundamentally irreligious, and his churchgoing proceeded from a craving, purely sensuous, which sought gratification in ceremonial pomps, twilight atmospheres heavy with incense and electric with devotion, and dim perspectives of arching stone. But these things he soon discovered lost their fine savour by the mere presence of a prim congregation secure in the brass armour of self-complacency; for him the worship was spoilt by the worshippers, and so the time came when the only church which he cared to attend—and even to this he went but infrequently, lest use should stale its charm—was the Roman Catholic oratory of St. Philip Neri, where, at mass, the separation of the sexes struck a grateful note of austerity, and the mean appearance of the people contrasted admirably with the splendour of the priests' vestments, the elaborate music, and the gilt and colour of altars. Here deity was omnipotent and humanity abject. Men and women of all grades, casting themselves down before the holy images in the ecstatic abandonment of repentance, prayed side by side, oblivious of everything save their sins and the anger of a God. As a spectacle the oratory was sublime.
He visited it about once a month. The mornings of intervening Sundays were given to aimless perambulation of the parks, desultory reading, or sleep; there was nothing to prevent him leaving town for the day, but he was so innocent of any sort of rural lore that the prospect of a few hours in the country was seldom enticing enough to rouse sufficient energy for its accomplishment. After dinner he usually slept, and in the evening he would take a short walk and go early to bed. For some reason he never attempted to work on Sundays.
It had rained continuously since he left Parson's Green station on the previous night, till midday on Sunday, and in the afternoon he was lounging half asleep with a volume of verse on his knee, considering whether or not to put on his hat and go out, when Lily entered; Lily was attired for conquest, and with her broad velvet hat and pink bows looked so unlike a servant-girl that drowsy Richard started up, uncertain what fairy was brightening his room.
"Please, sir, there's a young gentleman as wants to see you."
"Oh!—who is it?" No one had ever called upon him before.
"I don't know, sir; it's a young gentleman."
The young gentleman was ushered in. He wore a new black frock coat, and light grey trousers which fell in rich folds over new patent-leather boots. The shortcomings of his linen, which was dull and bluish in tint, were more than atoned for by the magnificence of a new white silk necktie with heliotrope spots. He carried a silk hat and a pair of unworn kid gloves in one hand, and in the other a half-smoked cigar and a stick, with whose physiognomy Richard was quite familiar.
"Hello, Jenkins!"
"Good afternoon, Mr. Larch. I was just passing this way, and I thought I'd look you up." With an inclination of the head more ridiculous even than he intended, Jenkins placed his hat, stick, and gloves on the bed, and, nicely adjusting the tails of his coat, occupied a chair.
The quarrel between Richard and Jenkins had been patched up a few days before.
"So this is your digs. Nice large windows!"
"Yes, decent windows."
Although these two were on terms of almost brutal familiarity during office hours, here each felt slightly uncomfortable in the other's presence. Jenkins wiped his pallid, unhealthy face with a cambric handkerchief which he unfolded for the purpose.
"Been to church this morning?"
Meditatively Jenkins flicked some cigar-ash into the fire-grate, and then answered, "Yes."
"I thought so."
"Why?"
"Because you're such a swell."
"Ain't I, just!" Jenkins spoke with frank delight. "Two guineas the suit, my boy! Won't I knock 'em in the Wal—worth Road!"
"But where's your ring?" Richard asked, noticing the absence of the silver ring which Jenkins commonly wore on his left hand.
"Oh! I gave it to my sister. She wanted to give it to her young man."
"She's engaged, is she?"
"Yes—at least I suppose she is."
"And when are you going to get engaged?"
Jenkins
