"Well," he said, "have you seen enough of me?"
They were outside the threshold now, and she stood there, one arm holding her lamp, the other stretched across the doorway, as if she would keep him from ever entering again.
"Or," said he, "may I come again? Soon?"
"Do," she said, "and bring Nina with you."
She set her lamp on the floor at the stairhead, and backed, backed from him into the darkness of the room.
XXVI
It was the twenty-seventh of June, Laura"s birthday. Tanqueray had proposed that they should celebrate it by a day on Wendover Hill. For the Kiddy"s increasing pallor cried piteously for the open air.
Nina was to bring Owen Prothero; and Jane, in Prothero"s interests, was to bring Brodrick; and Tanqueray, Laura insisted, was to bring his wife.
Rose had counted the days, the very hours before Laura"s birthday. She had plenty to do for once on the morning of the twenty-seventh, making rock cakes and cutting sandwiches and packing them beautifully in a basket. Over-night she had washed and ironed the white blouse she was to wear. The white blouse lay on her bed, wonderful as a thing seen in a happy dream. Rose could hardly permit herself to believe that the dream would come true, and that Tanqueray would really take her.
It all depended on whether Laura could get off. Getting Laura off was the difficulty they encountered every time she had a birthday.
So uncertain was the event that Nina and Prothero called at the house in Albert Street before going on to the station. They found Tanqueray, and Rose in her white blouse, waiting outside on the pavement. They heard that Jane Holland was in there with Laura, bringing pressure to bear on the obstinate Kiddy who was bent on the renunciation of her day.
Jane"s voice on the landing called to them to come up-stairs. Without them it was impossible, she said, to get Laura off.
The whole house was helping, in a pa.s.sionate publicity; for every one in it loved Laura. Mr. Baxter, the landlord, was on the staircase, bringing Laura"s boots. The maid of all work was leaning out of the window on the landing, brushing Laura"s skirt. A tall girl was standing by the table in the sitting-room. She had a lean, hectic face, and prominent blue eyes under ma.s.ses of light hair. She was Addy Ranger, the type-writer on the ground-floor, who had come up from her typewriting to see what she could do. She was sewing b.u.t.tons on Laura"s blouse while Jane brought pressure upon Laura. "Of course you"re going," Jane was saying. "It"s not as if you had a birthday every day."
For Laura still sat at her writing-table, labouring over a paragraph, white lipped and heavy eyed. Shuffling all over the room and round about her was Mr. Gunning. He was pouring out the trouble that had oppressed him for the last four years.
"She won"t stop scribbling. It"s scribble--scribble--scribble all day long. If I didn"t lie awake to stop her she"d be at it all night. I"ve caught her--in her nightgown. She"ll get out of her bed to do it."
"Papa, dear, you know Miss Lempriere and Mr. Prothero?"
His mind adjusted itself instantly to its vision of them. He bowed to each. He was the soul of courtesy and hospitality, and they were his guests; they had come to luncheon.
"Lolly, my dear, have you ordered luncheon?--You must tell Mrs. Baxter to give us a salmon mayonnaise, and a salad and lamb cutlets in aspic.
And, Lolly! Tell her to put a bottle of champagne in ice."
For in his blessed state, among the fragments of old splendours that still clung to him, Mr. Gunning had preserved indestructibly his sense of power to offer his friends a bottle of champagne on a suitable occasion, and every occasion now ranked with him as suitable.
"Yes, darling," said Laura, and dashed down a line of her paragraph.
He shuffled feebly toward the door. "I have to see to everything myself," he said. "That child there has no more idea how to order a luncheon than the cat. There should be," he reverted, "lamb cutlets in aspic. I must see to it myself."
He wandered out of the room and in again, driven, by his dream.
"Oh," cried Laura, "somebody else must have my birthday. _I_ can"t have it. I must sit tight and finish my paragraph."
"You"ll spoil it if you do," said Prothero.
"Besides spoiling everybody"s day," said Jane judiciously.
That brought Laura round. She reflected that, if she sat tight from ten that evening till two in the morning, she could save their day.
But first she had to finish her paragraph and then to hide it and lock it up. Then she put the pens and ink on a high shelf out of Mr.
Gunning"s reach. He had been known to make away with the materials of Lolly"s detestable occupation when he got the chance. He attributed to it that mysterious, irritating semblance of poverty in which they moved.
He smiled at her, a happy, innocent smile.
"_That"s_ right, _that"s_ right. Put it away, my dear, put it away."
"Yes, Papa," said Laura. She took the blouse from Addy Ranger, and she and Jane Holland disappeared with it into a small inner room. From the voices that came to him Prothero gathered that Jane Holland was "b.u.t.toning her up the back."
"Don"t say," cried Laura, "that it won"t meet!"
"Meet? It"ll go twice round you. You don"t eat enough."
Silence.
"It"s no good," he heard Jane Holland say, "not eating. I"ve tried both."
"I," said Laura in a voice that penetrated, "over-eat. Habitually."
"I must go," said Mr. Gunning, "and find my hat and stick." His idea now was that Laura was going to take him for a walk.
Addy Ranger began to talk to Prothero. He liked Addy. She had an amusing face with a long nose and wide lips, restless and cynical. She confided to him the trouble of her life, the eternal difficulty of finding anywhere a permanent job. Addy"s dream was permanence.
Then they talked of Laura.
"Do you know what _her_ dream is?" said Addy. "To be able to afford wine, and chicken, and game and things--for him."
"When you think of her work!" said Nina. "It"s charming; it"s finished, to a point. How on earth does she do it?"
"She sits up half the night to do it," said Prothero; "when he isn"t there."
"And it"s killing her," said Addy, who had her back to the door.
Mr. Gunning had come in again and he heard her. He gazed at them with a vague sweetness, not understanding what he heard.
Then Laura ran in among them, in a tremendous hurry. She wasn"t ready yet. It was a maddening, protracted agony, getting Laura off. She had forgotten to lock the cupboard where the whisky was (a shilling"s worth in a medicine bottle); and poor Papa might find it. Since he had had his sunstroke you couldn"t trust him with anything, not even with a jam-pot.
Then Addy, at Laura"s request, rushed out of the room to find Laura"s hat and her handkerchief and her gloves--not the ones with the holes in them. And then Laura looked at her hands.
"Oh," she cried, "_look_ at my poor hands. I can"t go like that. I _hate_ an inky woman."
And she dashed out to wash the ink off.