"I love your word," she responded, "that you are 'so much in earnest that you are quite truthful,' deep love and truth always go together, don't they?"
"Always," I replied. Her quick ears heard someone coming and she turned away, but the touches had thrilled me, and I could not forbear clasping her waist from behind. She wound herself out of my arms with infinite litheness and with pouting lips and frowning brows reproved my daring, but the finger on her mouth was a warning and her eyes were smiling: she was not really angry at all. The next minute her mother came in.
The situation of the father and mother filled me with pity for the girl; I felt in my bones that the father in especial must have called on her sometimes to help pay the weekly bills. She had been trained in worldly wisdom, yet had kept her spiritual enthusiasms. Her difficulties, which I surmised, endeared her to me.
On Christmas Eve we happened to be alone again in the sitting-room. After the first kiss I naturally kissed her whenever I had the chance, and under my kissing and caressing her lips grew hot. But she drew back almost at once.
"How strangely you kiss," she said, her eyes thoughtful.
I loved her for her frankness and read it rightly, I think: she was still virgin, but on the point of yielding. I resolved to be worthy of her.
"Laura, dear," I said, "I want to speak to you soul to soul. I love you and want you: give me six months or at most a year more and I shall have won a position in London and money. I've done a good deal in four months; I'll win completely in a year. Give me the year, will you, and I'll ask you to marry me!"
"I love you," she replied, "and trust you. I'll wait, you can be sure," and we kissed again as a sort of consecration-indeed as lovers kiss, whose spirits flow together at meeting of the lips.
The rest of those Christmas holidays can be told rapidly. I felt that Laura did not put much confidence in my assurances of splendid and rapid success. She had heard similar hopes expressed far too often by her father and had found them evaporate. I first heard the American word from her for such forecasts of hope, "hot air." How was she to know the difference between the gambler and the workman, whose self-confidence was rooted in many and widely different experiences?
I resolved to get back to London as soon as possible, and up to the last day, with the optimism of first love, I hoped to meet Laura there almost every day.
On the second of January I paid the hotel bill and was astonished by it; it took nearly all my nest-egg: Clapton had drunk champagne in his bedroom.
But what did it matter? I had had the time of my life and a smile from Laura's lips; a glance of approval from her eyes meant more to me than a fortune.
Just before lunch the father asked me to go out with him for a stroll. As soon as we were alone, he began by thanking me for the holiday. "I'd never have let you foot the bill," he began, "but I've had a long run of bad luck in this open stock exchange I founded in London. My partner, I find, has bolted in my absence and taken all the funds, but I only need just a small sum for expenses, a thousand '11 do-"
I would not let him conclude; I wanted to spare him the humiliation of asking.
I broke in at once, "I'd let you have it with a heart and a half if I had got it, but the truth is the holiday has brought me, too, to rock-bottom. I must go back and get to work, and I can't even get such a sum quickly. I say to you, as I've said to Laura, give me a year and I'll win."
His look was enough; the splendid long hazel eyes were as hard as buttons.
"Never mind," he said, "it doesn't matter." In ten minutes we were back in the hotel and I don't think I got ten words more from him that day. Evidently the father, too, thought me no prize.
When we reached London I drove them first to Gower Street, but their rooms were not ready for them. The father saw the landlady and came down to us in the hall and told us, with feigned indignation, that the hostess had not acted on his wire, but in a couple of hours their old rooms would be ready. "Mr.
Harris will perhaps take care of you till then," he added. "I have to see-"
The vagueness of the arrangements confirmed my suspicions of Clapton's irresponsibility and increased my sympathy with the queenly girl. Of course, I was only too glad to be of service. I drove the ladies first to my rooms to get rid of my luggage. Though I had not wired, my rooms were all ready, swept and garnished; and the mother and daughter came in and had tea and afterwards I took them to Kettners, a good Bohemian restaurant, for dinner. I left them at eleven o'clock in their rooms and got a long kiss from Laura in the passage; I felt well repaid. As soon as I was alone and rehearsed the happenings of the day, as was my custom, I saw I had no time to lose. "If you want the girl," I said to myself, "you'll have to win a position quickly." Clearly I felt that now both the father and the mother would be linked against me.
They might, probably would, turn the cold shoulder and make it unpleasant for me even to call. Besides, I must not lose time and energy courting Laura; this was the determining thought: I must get to work at once and without encumbrance of any kind. That night I wrote to Laura fully, saying I would not see her for three months and telling her why: I would ask her to marry me within the year. She answered, saying she understood and would wait. My choice of her was so absolute that I took it for granted that she had chosen me with the same complete certitude. Yet I felt I must win as soon as possible and win big.
Next morning I went down to Chapman, the publisher. What would he give me for a book on my experiences in western America as a cowboy, etc.? He listened to me and told me he might give?. 100. "But it's only because I know you," he added. "Usually we expect the author to help us in bringing out his first book." In half an hour I learned a good deal of the practice of publishing and found reason to echo Byron's caustic reply to Murray, who sent him a Bible instead of a check. Byron returned the book with one alteration. He had written in the word: "Now Barrabas was a 'publisher'," instead of the Biblical "robber."
No hope of a fortune through a book. Five days in every week I spent now on this trail, now on that, but London business was better organized than business in the United States at that time and so again and again I found the hoped-for outlet was a blind alley. At length, after nearly a month of disappointments, I went down to the stock exchange and sought for a place as a clerk in a broker's office. I found that only one clerk in each office had the entree to the floor of the House, a privileged position again, to conquer which would cost at least a year's hard work. Besides, except the house of a German-Jew, not a single stockbroker seemed to want my services. But the Jew wanted many German letters written and I was more than willing to do them after hours; but the pay offered was only three pounds a week, and I stood hesitating. On my birthday, the fourteenth of February, I resolved to take Klein's offer and wrote to him that as soon as I had settled some business I'd be round, certainly within a week.
All this time I had been working steadily on the Spectator and growing there in influence. On each Saturday and Sunday I wrote two articles that always appeared; indeed, now I could control their position, for one day Hutton had taken me downstairs and introduced me to Meredith Townsend, his partner, saying that in the holidays, when he (Hutton) was away, he'd be glad if Townsend would use me in his (Hutton's) place.
"He knows half a dozen languages," said Hutton, "and he corrects proofs as carefully as a born reader." Townsend assured me of his interest, and while Hutton was away I got a good deal of editorial work to do on the Spectator and came to know Townsend intimately. In many respects he was the complement of Hutton. He had spent many years in the East and knew China fairly well. As Hutton was profoundly religious, so Townsend cared chiefly for success. Hutton believed with all his soul and mind that mankind was growing in goodness and grace to some divine fulfilment. Townsend was certain that "man in the loomp was bad," as Tennyson's Northern Farmer had it, and must come to a bad end. But the two men together fairly filled the English ideal at once sentimental and practical, and so the paper came to power and influence and wealth, notwithstanding the fact that save for a smattering of French, neither editor knew anything of modern Europe or America, nor of modern art and literature. I was really needed by them, and had I started with them a year or two sooner, or continued a year or two longer, I might have brought it to a partnership and the paper to a wider success. But when Hutton wanted to know if twenty-five pounds would satisfy me for the extra editorial work I had done, I smiled and assured him his good word was all I wanted and that I was fully paid with the six pounds a week I made from my articles. I knew how to win, if I didn't know when I would win. However, my chance came, as always, at the last moment.