Presently he was sitting in his slippers, with a cup of tea in his hand, and Ethel, kneeling on the hearthrug with the firelight on her face, was telling him of an answer that had come that afternoon to her advertisement in the Athenaeum.
"That's good," said Lewisham.
"It's a novelist," she said with the light of pride in her eyes, and handed him the letter. "Lucas Holderness, the author of 'The Furnace of Sin' and other stories."
"That's first rate," said Lewisham with just a touch of envy, and bent forward to read by the firelight.
The letter was from an address in Judd Street, Euston Road, written on good paper and in a fair round hand such as one might imagine a novelist using. "Dear Madam," said the letter, "I propose to send you, by registered letter, the MS. of a three-volume novel. It is about 90,000 words—but you must count the exact number."
"How I shall count I don't know," said Ethel.
"I'll show you a way," said Lewisham. "There's no difficulty in that. You count the words on three or four pages, strike an average, and multiply."
"But, of course, before doing so I must have a satisfactory guarantee that my confidence in putting my work in your hands will not be misplaced and that your execution is of the necessary high quality."
"Oh!" said Lewisham; "that's a bother."
"Accordingly I must ask you for references."
"That's a downright nuisance," said Lewisham. "I suppose that ass, Lagune … But what's this? 'Or, failing references, for a deposit …' That's reasonable, I suppose."
It was such a moderate deposit too—merely a guinea. Even had the doubt been stronger, the aspect of helpful hopeful little Ethel eager for work might well have thrust it aside. "Sending him a cheque will show him we have a banking account behind us," said Lewisham,—his banking was still sufficiently recent for pride. "We will send him a cheque. That'll settle him all right."
That evening after the guinea cheque had been despatched, things were further brightened by the arrival of a letter of atrociously jellygraphed advices from Messrs. Danks and Wimborne. They all referred to resident vacancies for which Lewisham was manifestly unsuitable, nevertheless their arrival brought an encouraging assurance of things going on, of shifting and unstable places in the defences of the beleaguered world. Afterwards, with occasional endearments for Ethel, he set himself to a revision of his last year's note-books, for now the botany was finished, the advanced zoological course—the last lap, as it were, for the Forbes medal—was beginning. She got her best hat from the next room to make certain changes in the arrangement of its trimmings. She sat in the little chair, while Lewisham, with documents spread before him, sat at the table.
Presently she looked up from an experimental arrangement of her cornflowers, and discovered Lewisham, no longer reading, but staring blankly at the middle of the table-cloth, with an extraordinary misery in his eyes. She forgot the cornflowers and stared at him.
"Penny," she said after an interval.
Lewisham started and looked up. "Eh?"
"Why were you looking so miserable?" she asked.
"Was I looking miserable?"
"Yes. And cross!"
"I was thinking just then that I would like to boil a bishop or so in oil."
"My dear!"
"They know perfectly well the case against what they teach, they know it's neither madness nor wickedness nor any great harm, to others not to believe, they know perfectly well that a man may be as honest as the day, and right—right and decent in every way—and not believe in what they teach. And they know that it only wants the edge off a man's honour, for him to profess anything in the way of belief. Just anything. And they won't say so. I suppose they want the edge off every man's honour. If a man is well off they will truckle to him no end, though he laughs at all their teaching. They'll take gold plate from company promoters and rent from insanitary houses. But if a man is poor and doesn't profess to believe in what some of them scarcely believe themselves, they wouldn't lift a finger to help him against the ignorance of their followers. Your stepfather was right enough there. They know what's going on. They know that it means lying and humbug for any number of people, and they don't care. Why should they? They've got it down all right. They're spoilt, and why shouldn't we be?"
Lewisham having selected the bishops as scapegoats for his turpitude, was inclined to ascribe even the nail in his boot to their agency.
Mrs. Lewisham looked puzzled. She realised his drift.
"You're not," she said, and dropped her voice, "an infidel?"
Lewisham nodded gloomily. "Aren't you?" he said.
"Oh no," said Mrs. Lewisham.
"But you don't go to church, you don't—"
"No, I don't," said Mrs. Lewisham; and then with more assurance, "But I'm not an infidel."
"Christian?"
"I suppose so."
"But a Christian—What do you believe?"
"Oh! to tell the truth, and do right, and not hurt or injure people and all that."
"That's not a Christian. A Christian is one who believes."
"It's what I mean by a Christian," said Mrs. Lewisham.
"Oh! at that rate anyone's a Christian," said Lewisham. "We all think it's right to do right and wrong to do wrong."
"But we don't all do it," said Mrs. Lewisham, taking up the cornflowers again.
"No," said Lewisham, a little taken aback by the feminine method of discussion. "We don't all do it—certainly." He stared at her for a moment—her head was a little on one side and her eyes on the cornflower—and his mind was full of a strange discovery. He seemed on the verge of speaking, and turned to his note-book again.
Very soon the centre of the table-cloth resumed its sway.
The following day Mr. Lucas Holderness received his cheque for a guinea. Unhappily it was crossed. He meditated for some time, and then took pen and ink and improved Lewisham's careless "one" to "five" and touched up his unticked figure one to correspond.
You perceive him, a lank, cadaverous, good-looking man with long black hair and a semi-clerical costume of quite painful rustiness. He made the emendations with grave carefulness. He took the cheque round to his grocer. His grocer looked at it suspiciously.
"You pay it in," said Mr. Lucas Holderness, "if you've any doubts about it. Pay it in. I don't know the man or what he is. He may be a swindler for all I can tell. I can't answer for him. Pay it in and see. Leave the change till then. I can wait. I'll call round in a few days' time."
"All right, wasn't it?" said Mr. Lucas Holderness in a casual tone two days later.
"Quite, sir," said his grocer with enhanced respect, and handed him his four pounds thirteen and sixpence change.
Mr. Lucas Holderness, who had been eyeing the grocer's stock with a curious intensity, immediately became animated and bought a tin of salmon. He went out of the shop with the rest of the money in his hand, for the pockets of his clothes were old and untrustworthy. At the baker's he bought a new roll.
He bit a huge piece of the roll directly he was out of the shop, and went on his way gnawing. It was so large a piece that his gnawing mouth was contorted into the ugliest shapes. He swallowed by an effort, stretching his neck each time. His eyes expressed an animal satisfaction. He turned the corner of Judd Street biting again at the roll, and the reader of this story, like the Lewishams, hears of him no more.