Therefore. "Well," I said, as we approached Portland Road Station again, "hadn"t we better be turning? It"s getting late."
"I suppose so," she sighed reluctantly, with a pressure of my arm.
"Let"s go this way."
She indicated one of the darker side streets. We took it.
By-and-by we stood by the modiste"s window again. That is not a very reputable neighbourhood, and as she stood there, lingering out our talk to the thinnest of excuses, I guessed what was in her mind. But the general environment of laxity only produced a primness in her. In being all that she should be, she was sometimes a good deal more. Still, there was no harm in dallying with a secret thought.
But under all circ.u.mstances she ever displayed a sort of tempted prudishness.
"You and Evie and Miss Soames must come in one Sunday and have tea with me," she said resignedly at last, allowing the thought that some day I might go up with her to recede.
"That will be charming," I replied.
Then she sighed. "It has been so lovely tonight!"
"In what way?" I asked, forcing a smile.
"Archie was horrid, and you, Jeff----"
Yes, I remembered that hostility to Archie certainly had resulted in a _rapprochement_ between ourselves.
"Well," she said at last, lifting her face, "good-night, dearest--I know who _I_ shall dream of!"
I kissed her, heard the sound of her key in the lock, and, turning, saw her little face still looking through the half-closed door after me. I returned to King"s Cross by way of Woburn Place, but there was only a glimmer of light within the fanlight of Evie"s dwelling as I pa.s.sed.
Perhaps Archie had chosen the whisky and soda after all.
I soon saw that only by means of a studied unemotionalness should I be able for long to head her off from the things she sought; and I set about the creation of this atmosphere without loss of time. In this I found my far-reaching ambition useful to me; I had simply to be preoccupied with business to be spared much. I had not to play this part. I actually was a ferment of new plans. That my absorbing ambition was all for her sake was allowed to pa.s.s as understood. And when she began to make touching attempts to be interested in my affairs, I, lest a worse thing should befall me, encouraged her. I talked fully and freely, knowing that I ran no more risk of betrayal than Napoleon did when he laid before a Russian peasant woman unacquainted with French the plan of campaign he feared to trust to his own staff. This I did as the almonds pushed forth their pink, and the plane-trees budded, and the building birds sang loudly. Once she called me her building bird.
I had had to tell her, vaguely, about my employment; and I was also vague about where I lived. Here her own tempted timorousness helped me.
It was not difficult for me to be stern about the proprieties, and indeed, as she saw this, and began to feel perfectly safe with me, she even affected a liberality of thought. "Why not?" she would sometimes ask almost defiantly; "why not see one another in our own places--if there was nothing horrid?"
And for that I usually found a surprised stare answer enough.
But the hunger was on her, and I had to give her morsels. That was a haggard horror. It was the more horrible that her vanities always turned on the things of which she had the least reason to be vain. As an affectionate and devoted and dull spinster my heart was often soft to her; but her coquetries would have made an angel groan. For example: her hands were not remarkably pretty; her fingers had almost the pinkness, and a little of the shape, of the smaller claws of a freshly boiled crab; but she gave them no rest from display. I was sometimes commanded, with a vapid imperiousness, to make much of them. And once, on a seat on the Embankment, she yielded to a temptation never far removed from her.
It was at night; unnoticed, a portion of her hair had shaken loose; and, suddenly becoming aware of this, and doubtless with some idea of maddening me with the thought of something prohibited, she put up her hands, shook down the short ma.s.s on her shoulders, and grimaced at me.
The next day she begged, with a shamed face, that I would try to forget this sin in her--for apparently she had intended it as sin; but I had nothing to forget. All that I remembered was the contrast, as she had put the hair up again, between the bosom under her uplifted arms and that other bosom from which Archie Merridew had turned away as Evie had stood before the mantelpiece mirror in Woburn Place.
Her dwelling, which I first visited with Evie and her aunt, was on the first floor of the modiste"s at the back. Her sleeping apartment I never saw; and of her sitting-room I have no very clear memory now. There was a penny-in-the-slot gas-meter on the landing, I remember, and the floor of the room into which one walked was covered with a greenish jute "art square," with the wide s.p.a.ces of bare boarding about it stained with Condy"s Fluid. The previous occupant had left on the walls a "French boudoir" paper with a pattern of thin vertical lines and tiny garlands of pink rosebuds (Kitty had cleaned it with dough on taking possession).
The furniture was scanty, with a good deal of muslin about it, and a sewing-machine stood in the back window, which looked over a restaurant yard. When she had more than two visitors at once she had to fetch an extra chair from her bedroom, and from the sound her heels made at these times I gathered that that room was uncarpeted.
As by quickening degrees she began to accept her unlooked-for situation more as a matter of course, her thoughts naturally turned to the future and that I found to involve her whole att.i.tude to Life. The things we were to do "when we were married" were dictated by the narrowness of her outlook. She had about a pound a week of her own money, I don"t know exactly where from, but I think from some tramways Edgbaston way, and this sum, together with whatever she might be able to earn for herself, was practically the limit of her conception of any income she was ever likely to have. From the stories she told me of her earlier years I gathered that she came from a social stratum in which the men are lords indeed, sometimes "in work," sometimes "out," and apparently content during these last vicissitudes to be dependent on their wives or sisters or mothers. It seemed to me such a pitiful little world, of milliners, lodging-house keepers, music-mistresses, fancy needlewomen and daughters in offices; and I was given the corresponding male standing. As with the men her cousins (her nearest relatives) had married, if I should ever happen to earn money, well and good; if not, so much the worse. She reckoned only on her weekly pound and her own efforts. And as I learned that Cousin Alf and Cousin Frank were boundlessly optimistic, and looked forward to a future no less bright than that of which I felt the cert.i.tude within me, I soon discovered that I was merely indulged in what in her heart she set down as vapourings. It was the woman who, in her experience, "kept the home together," and she was prepared to keep me.
"Well," I laughed, "I daresay I shall learn to pare the potatoes as well as Cousin Alf in time."
But she smiled a sad, wise little smile. I might joke, but she knew.
"And it"s just possible that some time or other I may make a pound or two," I said, smiling back.
"There"ll be your clothes and pocket-money," she replied.
So I was to be kept--kept by virtue of my masculinity, as one keeps a dog to bark. I was to be kept, I divined, somewhere in a suburb, in a house the smallness of the rent of which would be exactly balanced by the increased cost of the season ticket that would take me daily to my work, when I was "in." Even when I was "out" I was to be treated with a nice consideration, for she "never had liked to see Frank washing up--it looked so unmanly," but as she said nothing about cleaning boots or fetching coals, these things apparently were not unmanly. And I wondered whether the Alfs and Franks were more numerous than I had thought, or were becoming so. Small wonder their women treated them with almost contemptuous tolerance, blazing out once in a while into a row. And I now see that in this sense I wronged Kitty when I said she was one of Life"s takers. There are always two sides to a thing, and on this side she wanted nothing but to give.
But, willing as she was to do all this in the future, I soon discovered that she wanted her small solatium in the present. In the matter of little treats and outings I did not compare very favourably even with her Franks and Alfs. As you know, I simply had not the necessary shillings. And so I began (I knew) to appear "near" and "close" to her.
One Friday evening, as we left the college together, she allowed as much to be seen.
"Jeff," she said suddenly, as we approached the corner by the Oxford together, "do you know, you"ve never taken me to a theatre yet!"
Personally I have never greatly cared for the theatre; but it happened that I had spoken to her once or twice rather off-handedly that evening, and was not unwilling to make amends. Besides, the theatre might save a walk in Hyde Park. I pumped up a vivacity.
"No more I have," I replied. "Good idea. It"s too late to go to-night, but we might have a walk round and see what"s on."
She fell in with the suggestion gleefully, and we walked down Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue, looking at theatre announcements as we went. At the Circus we turned along Coventry Street, and presently found ourselves opposite the Prince of Wales". I think it was _La Poupee_ that was running there; if it wasn"t it was some other piece that seemed light; and as I like, when I do go to the theatre, to be amused rather than instructed, I plumped for _La Poupee_ as against Kitty"s suggestion--some stern and enn.o.bling tragedy. I had drawn my week"s money that evening. It would be a sorry business if, with all those years of Alfing and Franking before me, I could not once in a while spare five shillings out of my eighteen; and so we elected for _La Poupee_ for the following evening.
We went. We waited for perhaps two hours outside the pit door, but, as Kitty said when at last we did get inside, our places were worth it.
When we were married, she said, we ought to be able to afford at least one theatre a month--she didn"t in the least mind going to the gallery--and it would be something to think about for the next month.
She didn"t intend, when we were married, to get rusty. We were going to have our little outings like other married people, and if I continued, when we were married, to like light things and she serious pieces, we would choose in turn. And so on. I only half heard. I was spreading my remaining ten shillings over the week to come--ten shillings, mark you, not thirteen, for I had had to buy Kitty a ring, for which I was paying at the rate of three shillings a week.
Nothing happened at that performance of _La Poupee_. I am merely telling you this in order that you may see exactly how we stood, not at the crisis of our lives, but during the intervening stretches. I added to the problem of the coming week by giving a shilling for a box of chocolates, and no extravagance I have ever committed brought me a richer return than Kitty"s look of pleasure. I suppose that really this was all that was demanded of Alf and Frank--a trifling, unexpected superfluity once in a while. Lucky fellows! I, however, was neither a Frank nor an Alf, my dreams were not the mere beguilings of an idleness; and neither during my courtship (my real one, I mean) nor thereafter was I going, in any woman"s heart, to lord it on so little.
V
I remember the Sunday on which Evie, Miss Angela and I first took tea with Kitty Windus for two reasons. The first was that Miss Angela, who at first had begged to be excused, had come after all (knocking on the head my plan of walking back with Evie alone). And the second was Kitty"s asking me to remain behind after the others had taken their departure.
We had gone at four o"clock; and even as the three of us had walked towards Percy Street together (I had picked the others up on my way) I had wondered what had suddenly come over Evie. She had seemed pale and jumpy and morose, and had scarcely spoken a word during the whole of our walk. Nor had she said very much more as we had eaten the hot m.u.f.fins and drunk the tea Kitty had provided. Indeed, the greater part of the talk had been between Miss Angela and myself, and even that had languished.
Then suddenly Miss Angela had said something that had, I thought, explained matters. Archie"s father, whose illness Miss Angela had asked about on the evening of the birthday-party, had taken a sudden turn for the worse, and Archie had been summoned to Guildford the day before.
"Well, we must hope for the best," Miss Angela had concluded. "There"s no need to begin moping yet, child----"
Miss Angela also had jumped at my own explanation of Evie"s moodiness--that now that Archie was in trouble his misdoings were forgotten.
I was to learn my error half-an-hour later, when Evie and her aunt rose to depart.
I, of course, had intended to leave with them; but as I held the door open for them to pa.s.s out Kitty said: "You stay for a few minutes, Jeff; I"ve something to tell you.... Good-bye, Evie dear. I do hope your cold will soon be well, Miss Soames----"
And she waved her hand to them as they pa.s.sed down the stairs.
I swore under my breath, but there was no help for it. I followed Kitty back into her sitting-room. She crossed to the fireplace and sank into a canvas deck-chair with her back to the sewing-machine. I remained standing, with my hat in my hand, at the other corner of the mantelpiece.
She had allowed her head to fall back against the sagging canvas, and had closed her eyes.
"Sit down," she said, without opening her eyes, and, wondering what was wrong, I reached for her bedroom chair and sat down.
"What"s the matter?" I asked, a little alarmed already, though I knew not why. I wondered if anything had been discovered about myself. There were, as you know, plenty of such things to discover.
Her eyes still remained closed, but her head fell a little on one side.