Dudley hardly new, himself, why he spoke diffidently about his plans for Sunday, and why he did not tel Hal outright that he was taking Doris Hayward to a picnic at Marlow, given by mutual friends of his and theirs - friends of the old vigorous days, when he and Basil Hayward had gone everywhere together, and Hal had still been a boisterous schoolgirl. Perhaps he felt she might seem to have been rather unkindly left out.
As a matter of fact, an invitation to include his sister had been given; but, for reasons he hardly stopped to face, he chose not to mention it. That was after he had learnt from a visit to the little Hol oway flat that nothing would persuade Ethel to leave her brother, who had been ailing more than usual of late, and Doris would accompany him alone.
It had been with a curious mixture of feelings he had heard this.
Things were very pitiful up at the little flat, and though his inmost sympathy had gone out generously enough to both girls, with a perversity born of narrow insight he had reserved the deepest of it for Doris.
It seemed to him that she was so young to face such circumstances, and at such an early age to become saddened by the vicissitudes of life.
In the depths of her wide blue eyes he saw unshed tears, and the little droop of her pretty mouth went straight to his heart. He wanted to gather her up in his arms, and kiss her and pet her till she was again all sunshine and smiles.
Ha was not unaware that Ethel probably suffered more, but her way of showing it, or perhaps hiding it, appealed to him less. Instead of that mute distress of unshed tears, her quiet eyes wore an inscrutable veil. It was as if the anguish behind the veil were something too terrible and too sacred to be looked upon by a workaday world; but Dudley only knew that a wall of reserve was between him and her trouble.
And her firm, strong mouth had no engaging droop at the corners. It was only if anything a little firmer, almost to sternness.
Dudley believed that Basil was dying at last, after his weary martyrdom, and he believed that Ethel knew it; and in some vague way it hurt him that she gave no sign, and refused to be drawn into any speech concerning his increased weakness.
Doris, on the other hand, spoke of it in a faltering, tearful voice, adding a little pitifully that it made it harder for her that Ethel was so distant and unsympathetic.
In a sense the circumstances nonplussed Dudley altogether. Some inner voice told him that such a depth of wondrous, unselfish devotion as Ethel showed to her invalid brother could not live in the same heart with hardness and want of sympathy; and yet there was the evidence of the swimming, melting eyes and drooping lips of the younger sister left out in the cold.
Perhaps it was unfortunate that on that very evening of Dudley's visit Ethel had come home rather earlier than her wont, to find Doris not yet returned from her daily outing, and, in consequence, the fire out and the sick man shivering with cold. He had looked so dreadful y ill that she had hastened first to get som brandy to revive him, only to find Doris had forgotten her promise to get the empty bottle replaced that morning.
In desperation she had hastened to the other little flat on the same floor, hoping its inmate might chance to have a little to lend.
The tenant was a lonely, harsh-featured spinster, who eked out a precarious living by teaching music. Ethel knew her slightly, as a gaunt woman who usually toiled up the stairs with a sort of scornful weariness of herself and everything else.
She knew that because she was not fashionable, nor striking, nor wel -dressed, she taught mostly in rather second-rate schools, and often had to take long journeys to her pupils, coming home tired and worn at night to an empty, comfortless little dwel ing, to light her own fire and cook her own evening meal.
She knew, too, that she was a gentlewoman, the daughter of a poor clergyman, left penniless, to fight a hard world alone. Had her own home been happier, she would gladly have asked her to join them sometimes; but the weight of Basil's il ness, and her own usual condition of weariness, had left the invitation always unspoken.
"A little brandy," the music-teacher echoed, with a quick note of concern; "yes, I believe I have a drop. Is it your brother? Let me come and see if I can help?"
"Thank you," Ethel had replied, trying not to allow her voice to show how much she would have preferred not to accept the proffered help. "I think I can manage quite well."
But the gaunt spinster fol owed her across the little landing obstinately. She had seen Doris out half an hour before, and knew that she had not yet returned.
"Ah, you have no fire," she said, in her somewhat grating voice; "if you wil let me I wil light it," and without more ado she had procured coals and wood for herself, and was down on her knees before the empty grate.
Ethel turned away with a sick, helpless feeling over Doris'
selfishness, and after administering a few drops of brandy, chafed the sick man's hands and feet. When Basil felt better he glanced up curiously at the strange, dried-up-looking female who had just succeeded in persuading a cheerful blaze to brighten the room. She looked back into his face frankly.
"You needn't mind me," she informed him; "I'm only the music-teacher from the opposite flat."
"You seem to be rather a kind sort of music-teacher," he said, with his winsome smile, "even if you do only come from the opposite flat."
The hard face relaxed a very little, and she shrugged her shoulders.
"Oh, wel , it isn't easy to be kind," she answered, "when you don't stand for much else in the universe but a letter of the alphabet." She turned back to her grate and commenced sweeping up the ashes.
Basil roused himself a little further and looked interested.
"What letter do you stand for?"
"Just G." She gave a low, harsh laugh. "G is the letter that distinguishes my flat from the others, and it is al I stand for to God or man."
"I see." His white, pain wrung face looked extraordinarily kind.
"Well, G, I'm very deeply grateful to you for coming across to light my fire; and I'm glad there happened to be a G in the universe this afternoon."
She turned her head away sharply, that neither of them might see the sudden, swift mist that dimmed her eyes, but she only answered:
"Al the same, if there had been no G, and no you, the universe would have had an atom less pain in it, and no one have been any the worse."
"That's where you're wrong," he told her, "because Ethel couldn't have done without me, and if you put your head in at my door occasional y, and just remark to F that G is across the passage, F will be glad the universe didn't decide to leave G out of the alphabet."
The woman looked at him a moment with a curious expression in her eyes.
Then she said:
"Well, if _you_ can take the insult of a maimed, or joyless, or cursed life like that, it oughtn't to be so very hard for me to be glad I happened to be able to come over and light your fire."
"Nor so very hard to come again."
"Ah!..." she hesitated, then said to him, looking half-defiantly towards Ethel: "Time after time, when I thought you were alone, I've wanted to just look in and see if you were al right. But I didn't like to. People don't take to me as a rule, and I'm... I'm... wel , I'm not an ingratiating sort of person, and I guessed, probably, you'd all rather do without any help I had to give."
"It was kind of you to think of us at al ," Ethel said, not quite sure whether Basil would like her to come in or not.
"You guessed wrong," was his answer. "_I_ think it would be very nice of you to look in occasional y. It certainly seems rather absurd for you to be al alone there, and I al alone here, when we both want a little company. I'm sure the alphabet was not meant to be so unsociable."
"It just depends."
She got up from her keneeling posture on the hearth, and stood, a grotesque apparition enough, looking at him with her greenish, nondescript eyes. Her hay-coloured hair was tightly drawn back from a high, bulging forehead, her eyebrows were so light they scarcely showed at al , while her nose, which started in a nice straight line, had failed her at the last moment by suddenly taking an upward turn in an utterly incongruous fashion. She had high cheek-bones, a parchment skin, and a mouth that was not much more than a slit; the grotesque effect of the whole being heightened by a long, thin neck, which she made no effort to cover with a neat high collar, but accentuated by a half-and-half untidily loose one.
She wore a cheap, ready-made blouse, with absurd little bows tacked on down the front, which Ethel longed to abolish with one sweep, and her skirt, which had shrunk considerably in front, sagged in a dejected fashion behind.
Yet to Basil's kindly eyes, there was something behind it al that was attractive. Fore one thing, she was so eminently sincere. One felt she had no delusions whatever, concerning her appearance or her oddities; and though she looked out upon life with that scornful, resentful air, she had yet a keener sense of humour and a clearer brain than most women. Under different circumstances she might have been a success.
As it was, she appeared to have got into a wrong groove altogether, and, unable to extricate herself, to have merely become an oddity.
Basil, from his couch, looked up at her with friendly eyes, and she finished:
"One may want a little company, without wanting just any company."
"You think you will find me even duller than nothing?" and his eyes twinkled.
"You know I didn't mean that. You are clever, and wel -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 til they break the notes."
"I thought you said you were a music-teacher?"
"That's what they cal 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 wel , 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 wel get what we can out of the circumstance."
She turned aside, looking half humorous and half satirical.
"It sounds wel enough as you say it, but I expect the powers are sneering diabolical y 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 -"
"Cal 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 occasional y, 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 God 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 al things. It must be only scales and exercises. I think she's splendid to see the incongruity herself, and refuse to cal 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 wil 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, scraping 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 wil al 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 cal ed 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 al that, when one is weighed down with the inequality of chance and a horror of the future cal s 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 al right. There's too much useless, silent aching, and useless, passionate resentment over circumstances 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 kil 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 il ness, 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 God to do good, or that it was necessary to the human race.
Al 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 unnatural y 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 stil 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 al . 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 al eviate the atom of pain that is nearest each one of us."
She assented to please him, and then kissed his forehead with a lingering, adoring tenderness, marvel ing 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."