THEN Effie came with beauty, shattering the life he lived as sunshine breaks the April clouds. At first he did not know what had happened to him: there was a radiance, but he thought it nothing greater than her physical appeal. He was disturbed, moved as nothing had moved him before—not even applause—but did not see that more had come to him than loveliness where all had been unlovely. He did not realize that there were greater things in Effie than her comeliness.

She was the daughter of a doctor who had lived up to every penny of his income and died leaving his widow nothing but a cottage in the country, which had been their week-end haunt. The widow sold the practice and got for it enough to keep herself, with care, in the cottage.

There Mrs. Mannering lived unhappily, resentfully, nourishing a grudge against her poverty, developing a vein of hardy thrift unseen till now. With management, she had enough, but lacked the gift of management. She did not see things in proportion, imagined herself deep sunk in poverty and made unreasoning demands on Effie. On Effie, not on her son who managed a rubber plantation at Penang and followed the spendthrift habits of his father. Father and son, the Mannerings were cursed with a passion for popularity and entertained with open house to all comers. In the East, it cost Rex Mannering more than it had cost his father at home and, granted his habits, he was right in saying that he could do nothing for his mother. He could deny himself nothing.

It left the more for Effie. She who was not trained to work must go into the world and fight not only for her bread but for her mother’s luxuries. Augusta Mannering was merciless in her demands. She believed, quite sincerely, that Eflie was gaining riches in the offices of Manchester and withholding a share from her in simple self-indulgence. Was it not by going to offices that Dr. Mannering’s rich patients had been able to pay their bills? And hadn’t they an army of friends who used to eat their salt?

But the friends, misunderstanding Effie’s pride, offered no help of the kind she could accept. She wanted work, not invitations to houses where, with dress and servants’ tips, it would cost her more to live than in the rooms she found in Rusholme. She had not the means to be decorative now, and it occurred to nobody that Effie was a clerk, wanting a clerk’s place. They could not think of her, that brilliant girl, shackled to a typewriter. They did not offer what she wanted and she was too proud to ask.

Then memories are short, especially of the popular men who buy their popularity across the dining-table and charge high fees to the unwell to procure high feeding for the well; and when the Mannerings disappeared, Augusta to her cottage and Effie to Rusholme, there were few inquiries made.

Some other entertainer stepped into the breach of local hospitality; Effie’s net-play became a legend on their tennis lawns; and she herself was deemed to be with her mother in the country, shining on other courts than theirs.

It was not pure callousness, but things are as they are, and one cannot live by money and then lose money without losing more than money.

Effie went into the city unfriended and alone, and her mother lived, a miser, in her cottage. She wrote to Effie that she needed this and that; that Effie must spare of her abundance or her mother must starve, and Effie out of her thirty shillings a week did send, but her mother did not buy. She warmed her hands at a bank-book, wore ancient clothes and watched her credit grow. It was more than a perversion of her old extravagance, it was insanity and Effie knew it. To keep an insane woman moderately happy, she sacrificed necessities. That is why she was shabby when she came into Mr. Branstone’s office for the post of typist one bright, revealing afternoon soon after his party had triumphed at the polls and he had made himself a figure on the hustings.

Effie had found companionship in Rusholme, and knew by now the difference between the friendship which is given and the friendship which is bought. She had become expert in friendship, and Sam, from their first encounter, seemed to her more like a friend than an employer. By then, she had experience of employers. That was why she was out of work.

It wasn’t, of course, the normal Sam she met, but a Sam exalted, genuinely raised and not merely puffed up, by his electioneering notoriety. He had a new self-confidence; it seemed to him that little was beyond his reach, that he might even hope to come to terms with Effie. Not, that is to say, to such terms as her last employer had proposed. Sam was not, in these matters, the average sensual man. The point was, and it was to his credit, that he discerned something fine in Effie even at this stage, and the mood of confidence gave him to hope that he might not seem commonplace to her. Already, that afternoon, he cared so much. Her opinion mattered.

It mattered so greatly that he went slowly about the business of surprising her: for that, of course, was what he thought he had to do. She might not know things about Branstone which it was good for her to know. He might be any employer who advertised for a typist, and he was not any employer. He was Branstone, of the Classics and the Novels; town councillor; politician; and she must be told about him. She must learn what manner of man he was. He wanted to tell her how much greater he was going to be, but decided that could wait. First she must know what he had done, before it came to telling her what he was going to do, and his record would come better from others than from himself. In the office they knew it all and, even if she asked no questions, there was much which the routine work would tell her of him.

He curbed impatience and left her for some weeks in the general office, where it was supposed that she was picking up some knowledge of the business before beginning to act as his secretary, but what he hoped she was picking up was some knowledge of him. He had the idea that he was popular with his staff, and did not think that they would libel him to her.

All the time he burned to have her sitting with him in the private office. It was for that purpose that he had advertised for a typist-secretary, and to bring her from the general office could excite no comment. On the contrary, to leave her there so long might look strange or at least suggest that Effie was a failure. A failure! Much he cared whether she was efficient at her work. Yet she was splendidly efficient, and still he coquetted with his purpose of having her with him. It seemed to him that to call her in would be a step definite and irrevocable, one which he wanted and even yearned to make, but about which he hesitated sensuously as a bridegroom might hesitate on the threshold of the bridal chamber. He neglected to make two certainly profitable journeys to London at this time because he could not deny himself the pleasure of seeing her neck as she bent over her typewriter when he passed through the office.

And he had hardly spoken to her! But his dreams were vibrant with the music of her voice, swelling like an organ till it filled his life with new harmony. It filled his life not because he refused to think of Ada, but because he could not think of her. Ada wasn’t there; she didn’t exist. She never had been there, for Sam, in the true sense, so that the step from the custom which is nothingness to complete nothingness was almost imperceptible. She was a ghost from the past fading in the radiance of the present. The sun puts out the candlelight.

He was seeing Effie, of course, with quite grotesquely unperceiving eyes. She might have been, for all he saw of her, the beautiful doll she emphatically was not. Her outside pleased and satisfied his eye, and he took it for granted that the woman within would satisfy him in the same way as the woman without. And so, in the long run, she did, but not till Sam had made a hurdle race of it and come some awkward croppers on the course. The harmony of his organ dream might have been true prophecy; it certainly was not present fact. He wasn’t seeing himself as Effie saw him, or the sidelong glances he cast at her pretty neck might have expressed more desire to break than to kiss it.

He seemed to her a jolly monster, quite lovable if trained, but at present as untrained as a badly brought-up dog, and perhaps too old to learn. But it might be amusing to see if he could learn, and from her who was not used to breaking in a mastiff. That made the thing worth while, his bigness and the lovableness she recognized behind the rankness of him. Chance might not come her way, and she thought it unlikely that it would, but if it did, she meant to take it with both hands. Effie, aged twenty-six, proposed to herself to form Sam Bran-stone, who was thirty-five and her employer! She smiled at her preposterous audacity, but the more she saw and the more she heard of him, the more determination bit into her. Droll, officious, absurd—all these her idea was, and she liked it because it was fantastic and because Sam was Sam. In Effie’s wise, impertinent eyes fantasy and Sam seemed bound together. And yet he paid her wages; he was a solid man, a member of the Council, and a serious politician! She was impertinent indeed.

But he could not, either for his sake or hers, keep her for ever on the threshold. For all his late-won confidence he was quite pitiably nervous, and held back for days in pure hesitation before the simple action of calling her into his office. He thought of it as initiation, a ritual to which a high solemnity attached. He intended to act up to its solemnity, to usher her into that office with all that was most impressive, to signify to her the importance of being secretary to Branstone; and, instead, he who was wordy fumbled for words, he who was painfully correct dropped two aitches in a sentence, and stood there most comically aghast at his slip.

Of course, the ritual was finished; one cannot be ritualistic and conscious of aitchlessness. Ritual implies the superhuman, the something, at least, which sets the executant above the common clay, and to drop an aitch is human. In the moment of solemnity, in the mouth of the ritualist, it is drolly human. We find incongruity amusing, and the more solemn the occasion the more readily does an impish mirth intrude on light pretext.

Effie giggled. She did not mean to be unkind, but the spectacle of his confusion was too much for her. She hadn’t the strength to resist, and though she turned her giggle, quite neatly, into a cough, it was not before he had seen.

This was his great moment, to which he had looked forward, and she giggled at him! He felt himself writ down an ass, and wondered for the fraction of a second whether he would get more satisfaction from smacking her or from kicking himself. Then he saw her looking at him, and nothing seemed to matter. He dropped aitches and she giggled. Very well, then he wasn’t a superman, and she wasn’t divine. They were human beings, at this moment in the relationship of employer and employed.

“In future, you will sit at the little desk in here, Miss Mannering.” He met her eye defiantly as he spoke the “here.”

“If you have your notebook you can take this letter down.”

He was running away from his ruined situation. To dictate a letter to her had not been in the scheme at all, as he had planned it. It was a refuge, and a safe one, but as he dictated he saw in the letter his opportunity to indicate to her that he forgave the giggle. He was writing to an author about a manuscript, which he intended to publish, but broke off before he reached that decisive point of his letter.

“Wait a bit,” he said. “Here is the novel I am writing about. I want your opinion of it to fortify my own before I do anything definite. Will you have a look at it in here? I’m due at a Council meeting and must go.”

“Certainly, Mr. Branstone,” she said; “but my judgment isn’t very reliable.”

“We don’t know that until you try,” he said, escaping from his office to the Town Hall, where he kicked his heels for an hour till the meeting began Nor did he return to business that day. He had a shyness and a feeling of deflation. He needed time before he could expand again.

Effie took her reading of the novel conscientiously rather than seriously, not supposing that her verdict either way would go for anything, but appreciating his hint of confidence, and the fact that, considered as work, novel-reading was pleasant. And not finishing the manuscript at the office, she took it home with her to Rusholme.

In Rusholme the landladies are a little humanized from their primitive Grundyism, partly by the girl clerk, but mainly because few of them have avoided, at one time or another, the theatrical lodger, a valiant tilter at conventionalities; and it is possible for a woman in lodgings to be called upon by a man in the evening without being evicted as a sinner. One must, of course, choose one’s landlady with discretion.

Effie, who had not had the opportunity of selecting her parents and had suffered accordingly, chose her landlady with discretion. By now she had her friends, those she had made in Manchester, not those she inherited from her father; there were men amongst them, and they came to see her. Often, in fact, and especially on Sundays, her room was over-crowded; but a bed, in the semi disguise of a travelling rug, holds many callers, and they solved the problem of hospitality by bringing each a contribution to the feast.

To-night she had one caller, Stewart, who, having been brought one Sunday by a man who knew a woman who was a fellow-clerk with Effie at her last-but-one place, had formed the habit of coming as often as he could. He was not at the Warden office that night, for the same reason which accounted for his not knowing that she had gone to Branstone’s. He was convalescent after influenza, too limp to write the super-journalism of the Warden, well enough to come out to take the tonic called Effie.

“I ought not to let you in to-night,” she said. “Thank Heaven for that,” he said, coming in. “Doing what one ought is the dullest thing I know—unless you’re really serious, Effie? In which case I’ll go.” His hand was on the door-knob.

“I’m really serious,” she said with mock impressiveness. “I’m working overtime. Behold!” She threw herself on the bed with the manuscript in hand. “This,” she announced, “is Work.”

“I can believe it,” he said, “because that looks like the typescript of a novel. If it were mine it would be a pleasure to read; but as it is not mine, it is probably work.”

“Oh, it’s work all right,” she said. “Hard labour, too. I’m reading it by order of my new chief. He publishes things like this.”

Stewart sat up. “Not Branstone?” he, said. “Don’t say you’ve gone to Sammy!”

“Yes. Do you know him?”

“Know him? I invented him. Bit of a Frankenstein for all that. Better say I know most of him. He can still spring surprises on me, and you in his office are one of’em.”

“Why? Don’t you like his office?”

“It’s an office. So long as you’ve to be in an office, you could pick worse—easily. Sammy’s a stream with a lot of shallows in him, but there are also depths, and I’ve never fathomed them. There’s mud in him, but it’s not the nasty sort of mud.”

“I’ve seen that much,” she said. “Polluted but curable.”

“You’re not by any chance thinking of yourself as a Branstone River Conservancy, are you?”

“I rather like him, Dubby,” she said.

“Good Lord! You and Sam: I say, old thing, no offence, but you know he’s married?”

“I know,” said Ellie. “What’s she like?”

“Haven’t seen her since I was his best man. Wasn’t tempted to see more of her.”

“It’s as bad as that?”

“Oh, rather worse, I believe. Pitch that novel over. I’ll tell you in five minutes if it’s any use.”

“Five minutes isn’t very fair to the author,” she protested.

“Oh, quite. I’m a reviewer, and reviewing’s badly paid. It teaches you to rip the guts out of a novel quickly. Smoke that cigarette and I’ll tell you all about it by the time you’re through.”

He fluttered the pages while she smoked. “Utter,” he decided. “Utter.”

“I haven’t finished it,” she said; “but so far I agree with you.”

“You’ll agree with me to the end. Pluperfect trash. Sam will love it.”

“What!”

“You’ll see. It’s just his line.”

“Aren’t you trying to prejudice me against him?”

He stared. “I’m trying to save you the trouble of reading the beastly thing. I’ve given you expert opinion. It’s trash and the brand of trash that he likes. Didn’t I tell you there, was mud in Sam?”

“You told me you invented him. I don’t believe your influence has been for good.”

“Don’t be hard on a fellow, Effie; I only introduced him to the mud. I didn’t know he’d wallow. Anyhow, let’s talk of something else.”

“You know,” she said, “you do influence people, Dubby.”

“Of course. That’s what I’m paid for. I’m a journalist. Have you never heard of the power of the Press? It means a lot of little journalists like me writing as their editors tell ‘em to. But I don’t appear to have much influence on you. I asked you to change the subject and you’re still thinking about Sam.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “I’m still thinking of Sam.”

“You and Sam!” he repeated, looking incredulously at her.

Effie nodded. “But,” she said, “I don’t know yet.”

He rose to his feet. “You’re sure, Effie? You’re sure you don’t know about him yet?”

“Quite sure.”

“Then you do know about me? Effie, I’ve got to ask. Are you sure about me?”

She met his eyes bravely, knowing that she must hurt. She was sure she did not love Stewart, who was free, and not sure about Branstone, who was married. “I am quite, quite sure, Dubby,” she said softly.

“I see,” he said. “Well, I’m not the sort that pesters, but if you want me, Effie, if you find you want me, I’ll be there. I... I suppose I’d better go now. It will take some doing to change the subject after this.”

“Dubby, I’m sorry. You’re not well, and——”

She could see him trembling.

“Not that, old thing,” he interrupted. “Not pity. That would make me really ill. Love’s just a thing that happens along, but one starter doesn’t make a race.” He held out his hand. “Well, doctor’s orders to go to bed early. Good-night.”

“Good-night, Dubby,” she said, and added hesitatingly: “You’ll come on Sunday?”

“Lord, yes,” he said. “I don’t love and run away. Good-night.”

She sat for a long while staring into vacancy, then found that something wet was dropping on her hands. She bathed her eyes and took the novel up again. A proposal occupied, she found, twelve pages of turgid, emotional dialogue; but, of course, her experience might be limited. Certainly it did not confirm the book’s verbosity.

She was quite sure that she did not want Dubby Stewart. He did not strike her as humorous at all.