"Who did, then?"
"Not her, though I gave her _every_ chance! Six months ago she"d have told me like a shot, but we"re getting so blessed artful these days!...
He told me."
"Then it doesn"t look as if it _was_ the Baboon?"
"Oh, I daresay she"ll leave you your Baboon if you want him."
"Thanks. I think I should know which way to turn in _that_ case," Miss Causton replied evenly. "Coming?"
And they left the bay together.
It was by this admirable piece of Rixon Tebb & Masters" work that I learned what, it appeared, I had been watching too closely to see.
VI
I had intended in any case to spend the remainder of that evening with Archie Merridew. Mingled with my restlessness there had been a tremulous sensitiveness that had culminated half-an-hour before in a fit of satanic pride. Lately (I had decided) it had come to be taken rather too much as a matter of course that our frequent adjournments after the evening cla.s.s should be always to his quarters and never, or hardly ever, to mine. I had quite enough to bear without further gratuitous rubs of that kind, and I had resolved that I would make myself his host that evening though he had lived in a mansion and I in a sty.
But after what I had so altogether discreditably overheard now I had fifty other reasons for wishing him to come along with me. Almost every sentence that had been spoken on the other side of that bay of books had contained a reason. But I realised that before I could trust myself to face him I must swallow the anger that crowded thickly into my throat.
There was nothing to gain and everything to lose by letting him see my rage. So I walked back into the empty senior cla.s.sroom, there to remain until I should have got the worst of it over.
By half-past nine I had got myself in hand. I gathered my work together.
Students were coming to the row of washbowls in the small compartment at the end of the senior cla.s.sroom to wash their hands, and Evie gave me the smile that was to be my nourishment for three whole days as she pa.s.sed with her towel and the cake of soap in the new celluloid box.
Archie had been working all the evening in the typewriting-room; now was my chance, before he could make (supposing him to want to make) any appointment with her, to secure this myself, and I hurried for my hat and coat and sought him.
"Ready?" I said.
"Right-oh; just a minute," he replied. "I told "em to keep my fire in--I"m going to swot like blazes to-night."
"Oh no--you"re coming along with me this time," I laughed. "I shall be ashamed to show my face at your place much oftener ... unless," I added lest he should shake me off, "you love me merely for what I have----"
He laughed too. He was at the young and squab-like stage that takes a pride in scorning appearances, and even finds the heart more rather than less honest when the waistcoat over it is shabby. He accepted with quite a good grace, got his hat and coat, and we went out together, I giving Miss Windus an unimpeachable "Good-night" as I pa.s.sed her, hardly a yard from the spot where I had peeped on her less than an hour before.
The electrograph opposite my abode was an advertis.e.m.e.nt of "_Sarcey"s Fluid_," some sort of a disinfectant; and as we approached it Archie looked up.
"Phew!... Needs it rather, to-night, doesn"t it?" he laughed.
It did not seem to me to "need it" quite so badly that evening as it had on some other evenings--warm summer evenings, for example--I had known.
December had come in rawly, and the chestnut stoves and baked-potato engine were out. The poorer streets have no pleasanter smell than that of baked potatoes, broken up, sprinkled with salt from the big tin caster, and closed together again like a South Sea face with a mealy smiling mouth, and I had slipped a couple of these into my pocket for our supper. I suppose Archie meant the fried fish papers in the gutters and (as we entered by my side door) the acrid smell of the public-house; but it was part of my fiendish pride to rub those things in a little that evening, and I made light of them as we mounted the stairs.
"Oh, you"re pampered, Master Archie," said I. "I had thought of asking you round to supper next Sat.u.r.day evening--not to-morrow, a week to-morrow--but I think I shall save my hospitality."
You see what I was already angling for. Well, I caught my fish. Of course he couldn"t take Evie down to his folks at Guildford without my knowing of it, but I wanted to see the fashion in which he would make his avowal. We had left the carpeted corner of the stairs that the great ornamental public-house lamp illuminated brightly and were standing on the bare landing outside my room. He answered without an instant"s hesitation.
"Afraid you"ll have to, Jeff--twice over," he replied. "I"ve got to go down home that week-end; beastly nuisance! I was going with some fellows over to Richmond--stag-party; but the mater writes that she"s asked Miss Soames, so I suppose I shall have to be there to help out--confound it!"
I opened my door and let him into the red and green.
"Oh?" I remarked casually. "Nice change for you. You"ll be all the fitter for the exams. Don"t tell _me_ about your stag-parties though. I know "em; you"d take jolly good care not to pick the place with the plainest waitresses for tea, what? _I_ know you!... But if I were you I"d go steady for a week or two, my boy, that Method paper"ll be harder than you think, I warn you!"
"I"m watching it!" he replied cheerfully. "By Jove! Jeff, I"d forgotten what a noisy pitch this of yours is! What on earth makes you stay here?"
"Oh, I don"t know," I replied carelessly, applying a match to the wick of my lamp and replacing the chimney. "As I say, you"re pampered. The place is all right. I don"t do much except sleep here. It"s a bit cold, though. I"d keep my coat on if I were you----"
"Wouldn"t be much sleep for me here," he remarked, sitting on the edge of my bed. "I should want a good stiff drink before I slept much in this racket!"
As I placed the lamp globe on its bra.s.s ring I glanced covertly at him.
It was a green interval, and his face looked as if he stood by a chemist"s window near the big pear-shaped green globe, while his waistcoat was turned to a black purple, with one bra.s.s b.u.t.ton gleaming green as a cat"s eye. Then the red came again, and the lamp flame crept up. I went to the little cupboard where I kept my few cups and saucers and plates. I filled my kettle at the tap on the landing, put it on the half-crown oil-stove, and began to prepare our feast.
In a quarter of an hour it was ready--tea, the baked potatoes, and a wedge of b.u.t.ter apiece. We ate it, he sitting on my bed, I in my sagging and string-mended old wicker chair. I saw quite plainly that already he wanted to be off, and would stay no longer than the barest decency demanded; but he had got to eat that pauper"s meal before I let him go, and there were my forty-nine other reasons for having got him up there.
One of these other reasons had, during the last hour, taken complete shape in my mind. Its consequences would have been impossible to foresee, but as far as it yet went, I thought it crafty enough. I filched another look at him; he was burning the roof of his mouth with hot potato as he lolled against my bed foot; and I judged it time to put my plan into execution.
I pushed my own plate away and sank back into my lifeless old wicker chair. He had turned his coat collar up by this time. My plan kept me warm.
"You"re a lucky beggar, you know, Archie," I sighed heavily.
He had moved, to set down his cup of untasted tea on the floor. He looked up.
"How?" he asked.
I settled myself farther back.
"How!" I repeated almost vindictively. "Don"t you call it lucky having a house and people and so on?"
"Oh! Everybody has----" he began, but corrected himself. "I mean, I thought you meant some special luck!"
"Oh no--just that," I murmured. "Having a place to ask people down to when you want--that"s all."
He seemed surprised. "Do you mean Miss Soames?" he said.
"Miss----?" I shook my head absently. "Oh no, I wasn"t thinking of Miss Soames--I was thinking of something quite different."
He meditated for a moment.
"You _have_ seemed a bit different lately.... What"s up?" he demanded, looking squarely at me.
My plan, to which his last words gave a new and unexpected fillip, was briefly this:
When, over the case of reference books, I had heard Miss Windus make the very remark he also had just made--namely, that I had been "different"--I had had a swift access of alarm. In what particular I had betrayed myself I didn"t know, but I realised very clearly, and doubly clearly now that the same remark had dropped from Archie himself, that love and a light cannot be hid, and that if my extreme former care had not secured me from remark no care I was likely to be able to take for the future would do so. I had laid myself open, and should do so again.
How was I to cover myself?
I thought I saw my way. I invite you to consider that way.
Were I to give it out to Archie--or rather, not so much to give it out as allow a surmise to dawn on him--that my heart was already pre-engaged in some carefully unspecified quarter or other, not only would this "difference," both he and Miss Windus had remarked on, be admitted and accounted for, but I should at one stroke set myself free from a hundred other trammels of gossip, past, present and to come. After that avowal nothing I did would be unaccountable. I should have a definite place in the general s.e.x-understanding. I should be cla.s.sed, out of the running, filed and docketed, totally uninteresting to either Miss Windus or Miss Causton and rid of the attentions of Miss Levey.
And I should also--my heart had thrilled suddenly and poignantly as I thought of this--I should also be admitted at once to privileges. I should have my share in such freedoms and exemptions as the married man knows fully and the attached bachelor at least to a probationary extent.
This state of things does by tacit acknowledgment exist. The man who can say all to one woman can say more than other men to all women. And the shining immunity I now saw before me would even include what so far I had had to deny myself--conversation, thus safeguarded, with Evie herself.