Leonard Merrick

“ My life isn't idyllic, Mary; if it weren't for the child——Upon my soul, the only moments I get rid of my worries are when I'm playing with the child, or when I'm drunk!"
"Your marriage hasn't been happy?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"We don't fight; we don't throw the furniture at each other and have the landlady up, like—what was their name?—the Whittacombes. But we don't find the days too short to say all we've got to tell each other, she and I; and——Oh, you can't think what a dreadful thing it is to be in front of a woman all day long that you haven't got anything to say to—it's awful! ”

“ He would have taken her to his heart with as profound a reverence as if no shame had ever touched her. If all the world had been cognizant of her disgrace, he would have triumphed to cry "My wife!" in the ears; of all the world. A baser love might well have; thirsted for her too, but it would have had its hours of hesitation. Kincaid's had none. No flood of passion blinded his higher judgment and urged him on; no qualms of convention intervened and gave him pause. ”

“ To reflect that there had been a period when he had known no Mary Brettan was strange. He wondered that he had not felt the want of her. The day that he had met her in Corri's office appeared to him dim in the mists of at least five years. The exterior of the man, and the yearnings within him—Kincaid as he knew himself, and the doctor as he was known to the hospital—were so at variance that the incongruity would have been ludicrous if it had not been beautiful. ”

“ The force of education is so strong that, much as she insisted on such a death, and close as she had approached to it, she was unable to realise its happening to her. She told herself that it must; the world was of a sudden horribly wide and empty; but for Mary Brettan actually to die like that had an air of exaggeration about it still. Pushing forward, she pondered on it, and the fact came close; the sensation of the world's widening about her grew stronger. ”

“ Could he expect, or dare to ask for tenderness from Mary Brettan—and to the other woman's child? He doubted it.
In the revulsion of feeling that followed that leaping hope, he almost determined to withhold the request. Many children were safe in a hospital; why not his own child? He would pay for everything. And then the thought of Archie forsaken among strangers made him tremble; and the little form seemed to him, in its lassitude, to have become smaller still, more fragile.
Again and again, in the jolting cab, he debated an appeal to Mary, wrestling with shame for the sake of his boy. ”

“ Mary assured her that the warning should be borne in mind, and left the little person wiping her brow. The remark about marrying, idle as it was, distressed her. Last night too there had been a mention of the possibility, and, knowing that she could never be any man's wife, the suggestion shook her painfully. How she had wrecked her life, she reflected, and for a man who had cared nothing for her!
The assertion that he cared nothing for her was bitterer to her soul than the knowledge that she had wrecked her life. To have a love despised is always a keener torture to a woman than to a man ”

“ Virtue turned the handle with its backbone stiff, and Mary passed out, giving a quiet "Good-day." Her blood was tingling under the inexplicable insolence of the treatment she had received, and she had yet to learn that it is possible for an unaccompanied woman to seek a lodging until she falls exhausted on the pavement; the unaccompanied woman being to the London landlady an improper person—inadmissible not because she is improper, but because her impropriety is presumably not monopolised. ”

“ And why?—you'd spare me nothing."
"You'll never be satisfied. Oh, yes, let us be honest with each other, you're right! Your misgivings about me are true enough; but you are principally anxious for me to stop that you may still see me. And what'll come of it? I can never marry you, never; and you'll be wretched. If I gave you a chance to forget——"
"I shall never forget, whether you stop or whether you go."
"You must forget!" she cried. "You must forget me till it is as if you had never known me. I won't be burdened with the knowledge that I'm spoiling your life. I won't!"
"Mary!" ”

“ Mary contemplated the hat-stand until the "missis" advanced towards her along the passage. There was a flavour of abandoned breakfast about missis, an air of interruption; and when she perceived that the stranger on the threshold was a young woman, and a charming woman, and a woman by herself, the air of interruption that she had been struggling to conceal all the way up the kitchen-stairs began to be coupled with an expression of defensive virtue. ”

“ In the globe beside the mirror the gas flared brightly, and this, coupled with the heat of the fire, filled the room with a moist radiance, against which the narrow line of dawn above the window-sill grew slowly more defined. The advent had been long expected, when sharp footfalls on the pavement smote Mary's ear, and, forgetting that Kincaid had his own key, she sprang up to let him in. The hall-door swung back, and she paused with her hand on the banisters. He came swiftly forward and passed her with a hurried salutation on the stairs. ”

“ When a man's thoughts mean worries, he acquires the habit of keeping them to himself very soon; that is, if he isn't a fool. It isn't calculated to make him popular, but it prevents him becoming a bore."
"Out comes your old bugbear! Isn't it possible for you to believe a man's pals may listen to his worries without being bored?"
"How many times?"
"Oh, damn, whenever they're there!"
"No," said Kincaid meditatively, "it isn't. They'd hide the boredom, of course, but he ought to hide the worries. Let a man do his cursing in soliloquies, and grin when it's conversation." ”

“ In work, and grit, and Walter Corri. In doing your honest best in the profession you've chosen for the sake of the profession, not in the hope of what it's going to do for you. You can't, quite—that's the devil of it! Your own private ambitions will obtrude themselves sometimes; but they're only vanity, when all's said and done—just meant for the fuel. What does nine out of ten men's success do for anyone but the nine men? Leaving out the great truths, the discoveries that benefit the human race for all time, what more good does a man effect in his success than he did in his obscurity? ”

“ Why, in all London, there's no creature so forsaken as a gentleman's daughter without friends. A servant may be taken on trust; an educated woman, never!"
"She may sometimes," said Kincaid. "Hang it! it isn't so bad as all that. What I can do for you I will! Very likely my mother will call on you this afternoon. Where are you staying?"
A hansom had just discharged a fare at one; of the opposite houses, and he hailed it from the window.
"The best thing you can do now is to go home and rest, and try not to worry. Cheer up, and hope for the best, Miss Brettan—care killed a cat!" ”

“ But the following afternoon, Mrs. Kincaid broached the subject abruptly.
"What are you going to do, Miss Brettan?" she inquired. "Have you anything else in view?"
"No," said Mary hesitatingly; "not yet."
The suppression of her motive made plain speaking difficult to both.
"I've no doubt, though," she added, "that I shall be all right."
"What a pity it is! What a pity it is, to be sure!"
"Oh, you mustn't grieve about me!" she exclaimed; "it isn't worth that; I'm not worth it. You know—you know, so many women in the world have to make a living; and they do make it, somehow. It's only one more." ”

“ Kincaid, bewildered. "I never thought you would care for any woman at all—you never struck me as the sort of man, somehow; but now that you do care, you can't surely mean that you think it right for the woman to leave the only place where she has any friends and go out into the world by herself? Don't you say you are in love with her?"
"I asked Miss Brettan to marry me," he answered. "Since you put the question, I do think it right for her to leave the place; I think every woman would wish to leave in the circumstances. ”

“ Mary Brett an, that tragedy of invincible fidelity, could only have been portrayed by a man able to sense feminine capacity for dumb fortitude. One feels that had she made even a gesture of revolt, Mary would have been freed of the paralysis of sterile constancy; and one knows that women of her type can never make the ultimate defiance. ”

“ She is suited to you; the more I think about it, the more convinced I am she would make you comfortable. You might have thrown yourself away on some silly girl without a thought beyond her hats and frocks! And she's interested in your profession; you've always been able to talk to her about it; she understands these things better than I do."
"Listen," exclaimed Kincaid with repressed passion, "listen, and remember what you said just now—that I am a man, to judge for myself! You mustn't ask Miss Brettan to stay, and you are not to think that it is her going that makes me unhappy. ”

“ Kincaid had "noticed anything"; it was hard to believe she could have avoided it; but she had evinced no sign of suspicion: her manner was the same as usual.
With the complication that had arisen to disturb her, the woman perceived how prematurely old she was. Her courage had all gone, she told herself; she said she had passed the capability for any sustained effort; and it was a fact that the uneventful tenor of the life that she had been leading, congenial because it demanded no energy, had done much to render her lassitude permanent. ”

“ She felt wearily that women had a great deal to endure in life, what with the men they cared for, and the men for whom they did not care. There seemed no privileges pertaining to their sex; being feminine only amplified the scope for vexation. A fact which she did not see was that one of the most pathetic things in connection with the unloved lover is the irritability with which the woman so often thinks about him.
With what sentiments she might have listened to Kincaid had she met him prior to her intimacy with Carew one may only conjecture. ”

“ Few persons' ruin leaves them alone at once; the crash generally sees some friends who prove loyal beneath the shock of the catastrophe and drop away only afterwards under the wearisomeness of the worries. It is the situation of few to emerge from the wreck of a home without any personality dominating their consciousness as the counsellor to whom they must turn for aid. But it was the situation of Mary Brettan to be without a soul to turn to in the world ”

“ The Matron yielded:
"Nurse Brettan relieves Nurse Gay!"
In the room the boy lay motionless as if already dead. From the mouth breath no longer passed; only by holding a hand before the orifice of the tube inserted in the throat could one detect that he now breathed at all. As Mary took the seat by his side, the force of professional training was immediately manifest. She had begged for the extra work with almost feverish excitement; she entered upon it collected and self-controlled. A stranger would have said: "A conscientious woman, but experience has blunted her sensibilities." ”

“ She nodded, warming with an impulse to go further and cry, "Also I have been a nurse: you are a doctor, can't you get me something to do?" But if she did, he would require corroboration, and, in the absence of her certificate, institute inquiries at the hospital; and then the whisper would circulate that "Brettan was no longer living with her husband"—they would soon ascertain that he had not died—and from that point to the truth would be the veriest step. "Never married at all—the disgrace! Of course, an actor, but fancy her!" ”

“ Her bosom lifted. "The blessed peace of it all!" she thought; "how happy I ought to be!"
But she was not happy. That first evening there came to her the soreness and sickness of recollection. She was left alone with Mrs. Kincaid, and in the twilight they sat in the pretty little parlour, chatting fitfully. How different was this arrival from those that she was used to! No unpacking of photographs; no landlady to chatter of the doings of last week's company; no stroll after tea with Tony just to see where the theatre was. ”

“ While I stop, it can never be really free for either of you. And of course she knows!"
"Do you think she does?" he exclaimed.
"Are women blind? Of course she knows! And what can she feel towards me? It's only the affection she has for you that prevents her discharging me."
"Oh, don't!" he said. "'Discharging' you!"
"What am I? I'm only her servant. Don't blink facts, Dr. Kincaid; I'm your mother's companion, a woman you had never seen two years ago. ”

“ Then a large woman, oppressed by packages and baskets, entered; and, as the new-comer belonged to the category of persons who regard a railway journey as a heaven-sent opportunity to eat an extra meal, her feats with sandwiches had a fascination that rivalled the interest of the landscape.
Of course, three hours later, when the train reached Westport, Mary felt elated. Of course she gazed eagerly from the platform over the prospect. It was new and pleasant and refreshing. There was a little winding road with white palings, and a cottage with a red roof. ”

“ There were books in profusion, books in virginity, books tempting and delightful to behold. Volume upon volume, crisp in cover and shiny of edge, they were piled on the table and heaped on the floor; and the young men handled them with as little concern as if they had been grocery. Such is the force of custom.
In response to her inquiry, her name and the card were despatched to Mr. Collins by a miniature boy endowed with a gape that threatened to lift his head off, and, pending the interview, she attempted to subdue her nervousness. ”

“ There is a rare refreshment in the works of Leonard Merrick; gracious yet distinctive, his style has a polished leisure seldom enjoyed these days when perfection of literary form is at a discount. His art is impossible of label; almost alone amongst the writers of to-day he has the insight and the courage at once to admit the pitiless facts of life and to affirm despite them—through hunger and loneliness, injustice and disappointment—the spirit can and does remain unbroken; that if there be no assurance of success, neither is there certainty of failure. ”

“ Remarked Kincaid:
"It's awful to be hard up, isn't it? I've been through all the stages; it's abominable!"
"You have?"
"Oh yes; I know all about it. So I don't tell you that 'money's the least thing.' Only people who have always had enough say that."
"One wants so little in the world to relieve anxiety," she said; "it does seem cruel that so few can get enough for ease." ”

“ To have no friends is a crime; one's helpless without them. And a woman's helplessness is the best of reasons why no help should be extended to her. But it sounds a merciless argument, doctor—horribly merciless, at the beginning!"
"It's a merciless life. Look here, Miss Brettan, I don't want to beat about the bush: you're in a beastly hole, and if I can pull you out of it I shall be glad—for your own sake, and for the sake of your dead father. It's like this, though; the only thing I can see my way to involves the comfort of someone else. You were talking about a place as companion ”

“ A nurse was called in to take the temperature. He watched her with suspense, and smiled feebly at the child across her arm.
"Diphtheritic throat. We'll put him to bed at once. Take him away, Nurse—put him into a special ward."
"I should like——" said Carew huskily; "I know one of the nurses here. Might I see her?"
"Yes, certainly. Which one?"
"Her name is 'Brettan—Mary Brettan.'" He stooped to pat the tearful face, and missed Kincaid's surprise. "If I might see her now——?"
"Ask if Nurse Brettan can come down, please! Say she is wanted in the waiting-room." ”

“ We meet the same girl out of an engagement, follow her pilgrimage from Bloomsbury to Brixton seeking an ever cheaper lodging; we watch the mud and wet of the streets soak her inadequate boots, endure with her the pangs of hunger ill-allayed by a fugitive bun. We accompany her to the pawnbroker's, and experience the joys of combat with a recalcitrant "uncle" who refuses to lend more than eighteenpence on a silk blouse. ”

“ I shall never be married to Mary."
"Yes," she declared, "you will. When you say that, you're not the 'best judge' any longer; it isn't judgment, it's pique, and I'm not going to have your life spoiled by pique and want of resolution. Phil, Phil, you're the last man I should have thought would have allowed a thing he wanted to slip through his fingers. And a woman—women often say 'no,' to begin with. It's not the girls who are to be had for the asking who make the best wives; the ones who are hardest to win are generally the worthiest to hold. Don't accept her answer, Phil! ”