Whereupon he would simply shake his head, and she would steam forwards--
"Then who are you?"
Whereupon he would say, as calmly as he could--
"I"m Priam Farll. I"ll tell you precisely how it all happened."
Thus the talk might happen. Thus it would happen, immediately he began.
But, as at the Dean"s door in Dean"s Yard, so now, he could not begin.
He could not utter the necessary words aloud. Spoken aloud, they would sound ridiculous, incredible, insane--and not even Mrs. Challice could reasonably be expected to grasp their import, much less believe them.
"_There"s been a mistake about the so-called death of Priam Farll._"
"_Yes, a hundred and forty thousand pounds._"
No, he could enunciate neither the one sentence nor the other. There are some truths so bizarre that they make you feel self-conscious and guilty before you have begun to state them; you state them apologetically; you blush; you stammer; you have all the air of one who does not expect belief; you look a fool; you feel a fool; and you bring disaster on yourself.
He perceived with the most painful clearness that he could never, never impart to her the terrific secret, the awful truth. Great as she was, the truth was greater, and she would never be able to swallow it.
"What time is it?" she asked suddenly.
"Oh, you mustn"t think about time," he said, with hasty concern.
_Results of Rain_
When the lunch was completely finished and the grill-room had so far emptied that it was inhabited by no one except themselves and several waiters who were trying to force them to depart by means of thought transference and uneasy, hovering round their table, Priam Farll began to worry his brains in order to find some sane way of spending the afternoon in her society. He wanted to keep her, but he did not know how to keep her. He was quite at a loss. Strange that a man great enough and brilliant enough to get buried in Westminster Abbey had not sufficient of the small change of cleverness to retain the company of a Mrs. Alice Challice! Yet so it was. Happily he was buoyed up by the thought that she understood.
"I must be moving off home," she said, putting her gloves on slowly; and sighed.
"Let me see," he stammered. "I think you said Werter Road, Putney?"
"Yes. No. 29."
"Perhaps you"ll let me call on you," he ventured.
"Oh, do!" she encouraged him.
Nothing could have been more correct, and nothing more ba.n.a.l, than this part of their conversation. He certainly would call. He would travel down to the idyllic Putney to-morrow. He could not lose such a friend, such a balm, such a soft cushion, such a comprehending intelligence. He would bit by bit become intimate with her, and perhaps ultimately he might arrive at the stage of being able to tell her who he was with some chance of being believed. Anyhow, when he did call--and he insisted to himself that it should be extremely soon--he would try another plan with her; he would carefully decide beforehand just what to say and how to say it. This decision reconciled him somewhat to a temporary parting from her.
So he paid the bill, under her sagacious, protesting eyes, and he managed to conceal from those eyes the precise amount of the tip; and then, at the cloak-room, he furtively gave sixpence to a fat and wealthy man who had been watching over his hat and stick. (Highly curious, how those common-sense orbs of hers made all such operations seem excessively silly!) And at last they wandered, in silence, through the corridors and antechambers that led to the courtyard entrance. And through the gla.s.s portals Priam Farll had a momentary glimpse of the reflection of light on a cabman"s wet macintosh. It was raining. It was raining very heavily indeed. All was dry under the gla.s.s-roofed colonnades of the courtyard, but the rain rattled like kettledrums on that gla.s.s, and the centre of the courtyard was a pond in which a few hansoms were splashing about. Everything--the horses" coats, the cabmen"s hats and capes, and the cabmen"s red faces, shone and streamed in the torrential summer rain. It is said that geography makes history.
In England, and especially in London, weather makes a good deal of history. Impossible to brave that rain, except under the severest pressure of necessity! They were in shelter, and in shelter they must remain.
He was glad, absurdly and splendidly glad.
"It can"t last long," she said, looking up at the black sky, which showed an edge towards the east.
"Suppose we go in again and have some tea?" he said.
Now they had barely concluded coffee. But she did not seem to mind.
"Well," she said, "it"s always tea-time for _me_."
He saw a clock. "It"s nearly four," he said.
Thus justified of the clock, in they went, and sat down in the same seats which they had occupied at the commencement of the adventure in the main lounge. Priam discovered a bell-push, and commanded China tea and m.u.f.fins. He felt that he now, as it were, had an opportunity of making a fresh start in life. He grew almost gay. He could be gay without sinning against decorum, for Mrs. Challice"s singular tact had avoided all reference to deaths and funerals.
And in the pause, while he was preparing to be gay, attractive, and in fact his true self, she, calmly stirring China tea, shot a bolt which made him see stars.
"It seems to me," she observed, "that we might go farther and fare worse--both of us."
He genuinely did not catch the significance of it in the first instant, and she saw that he did not.
"Oh," she proceeded, benevolently and rea.s.suringly, "I mean it. I"m not gallivanting about. I mean that if you want my opinion I fancy we could make a match of it."
It was at this point that he saw stars. He also saw a faint and delicious blush on her face, whose complexion was extraordinarily fresh and tender.
She sipped China tea, holding each finger wide apart from the others.
He had forgotten the origin of their acquaintance, forgotten that each of them was supposed to have a definite aim in view, forgotten that it was with a purpose that they had exchanged photographs. It had not occurred to him that marriage hung over him like a sword. He perceived the sword now, heavy and sharp, and suspended by a thread of appalling fragility. He dodged. He did not want to lose her, never to see her again; but he dodged.
"I couldn"t think----" he began, and stopped.
"Of course it"s a very awkward situation for a man," she went on, toying with m.u.f.fin. "I can quite understand how you feel. And with most folks you"d be right. There"s very few women that can judge character, and if you started to try and settle something at once they"d just set you down as a wrong "un. But I"m not like that. I don"t expect any fiddle-faddle.
What I like is plain sense and plain dealing. We both want to get married, so it would be silly to pretend we didn"t, wouldn"t it? And it would be ridiculous of me to look for courting and a proposal, and all that sort of thing, just as if I"d never seen a man in his shirt-sleeves. The only question is: shall we suit each other? I"ve told you what I think. What do you think?"
She smiled honestly, kindly, but piercingly.
What could he say? What would you have said, you being a man? It is easy, sitting there in your chair, with no Mrs. Alice Challice in front of you, to invent diplomatic replies; but conceive yourself in Priam"s place! Besides, he did think she would suit him. And most positively he could not bear the prospect of seeing her pa.s.s out of his life. He had been through that experience once, when his hat blew off in the Tube; and he did not wish to repeat it.
"Of course you"ve got no _home_!" she said reflectively, with such compa.s.sion. "Suppose you come down and just have a little peep at mine?"
So that evening, a suitably paired couple chanced into the fishmonger"s at the corner of Werter Road, and bought a bit of sole. At the newspaper shop next door but one, placards said: "Impressive Scenes at Westminster Abbey," "Farll funeral, stately pageant," "Great painter laid to rest,"
etc.
CHAPTER VI
_A Putney Morning_
Except that there was marrying and giving in marriage, it was just as though he had died and gone to heaven. Heaven is the absence of worry and of ambition. Heaven is where you want nothing you haven"t got.
Heaven is finality. And this was finality. On the September morning, after the honeymoon and the settling down, he arose leisurely, long after his wife, and, putting on the puce dressing-gown (which Alice much admired), he opened the window wider and surveyed that part of the universe which was comprised in Werter Road and the sky above. A st.u.r.dy old woman was coming down the street with a great basket of a.s.sorted flowers; he took an immense pleasure in the sight of the old woman; the sight of the old woman thrilled him. Why? Well, there was no reason, except that she was vigorously alive, a part of the magnificent earth.