"Let"s sit down here," he said; "better not exert ourselves violently so soon after tea."
"For all the tea I"ve had, it wouldn"t matter," said Flossie as if resenting an ign.o.ble implication. Rickman laughed a little uncomfortably and blushed. Perhaps she had hardly given him the right to concern himself with these intimate matters. Yet from the very first his feeling for Flossie had shown itself in minute cares for her physical well-being. They sat for a while in silence. A man pa.s.sed them smoking; he turned his head to look back at the girl, and the flying ash from his cigarette lighted on her dress.
"Confound the brute!" said Rickman, trying to brush away the obnoxious powder with a touch which would have been more effectual if it had been less of a caress. She shivered slightly, and he put her cape gently about her shoulders. A curious garment, Flossie"s cape, made of some thin grey-blue stuff, with gold braid on the collar, cheap, pretty and a little vulgar.
"There"s not much warmth in that thing," he said, feeling it with his fingers.
"I don"t want to be warm, thank you, a day like this," she retorted, pushing back the cape. For, though it was no longer spring, Flossie"s dream tugged at her heartstrings. There was a dull anger against him in her heart. At that moment Flossie could have fought savagely for her dream.
What could have made her so irritable, poor little girl? She didn"t look well; or--perhaps it was her work. He was sorry for all women who worked. And Flossie--she was such an utter woman. That touch of exaggeration in the curves of her soft figure made her irresistibly, superlatively feminine. To be sure, as he had hinted in that unguarded moment, her beauty was of the kind that suggests nothing more interesting than itself. Yet there were times when it had power over him, when he was helpless and stupid before it. And now, as he leaned back looking at her, his intellect seemed to melt away gradually and merge in dreamy sense. They sat for a while, still without speaking; then he suddenly bent forward, gazing into her eyes.
"What is it, Flossie? Tell me."
Flossie turned away her face from the excited face approaching it.
"Tell me."
"It"s nothing. Can"t you see I"m only tired. I"ve "ad a hard day."
"I thought you never had hard days at the Bank?"
"No. No more we do--not to speak of."
"Then it"s something you don"t like to speak of. I say--have the other women been worrying you?"
"No, I should think not indeed. Catch any one trying that on with me!"
"Then I can"t see what it can be."
"I daresay you can"t. You don"t know what it is! It"s not much, but it"s the same thing day after day, day after day, till I"m sick and tired of it all! I don"t see any end to it either."
"I"m so sorry, Floss," said Rickman in a queer thick voice. She had turned her face towards him now, and its expression was inscrutable--to him. To another man it would have said that it was all very well for him to be sorry; he could put a stop to it soon enough if he liked.
"Oh--you needn"t be sorry."
"Why not? Do you think I don"t care?"
Immense play of expression on Flossie"s face. She bit her lip; and that meant that he might care no end, or he mightn"t care a rap, how was she to know? She smiled a bitter smile as much as to say that she _didn"t_ know, neither did she greatly care. Then her lips quivered, which meant that if by any chance he did care, it was a cruel shame to leave a poor girl in the dark.
"Care? About the Bank?" she said at last. "You needn"t. I shan"t stand it much longer. I shall fling it up some of these days; see if I don"t."
"Would that be wise?"
"I don"t know whether it"s wise or not. I know I can"t go on like this for ever."
"Yes, but would anything else be better, or even half as good? You didn"t get much fun out of that last place, you know."
"Well, for all the fun I get out of that old Bank, I might as well be in a ladies" boarding school. If I thought it would end in anything--but it won"t."
"How do you know? It may end in your marrying a big fat manager."
"Don"t be silly."
"Supposing you knew it would end some day, not necessarily in marrying the manager, would you mind going on with it?"
She looked away from him, and tears formed under her eyelashes, the vague light tears that never fall. "There"s no use my talking of flinging it up. I"m fixed there for good."
"Who knows?" said Rickman; and if Flossie"s eyes had been candid they would have said, "You ought to know, if anybody does." Whatever they said, it made him shudder, with fear, with shame, but no, not with hatred. "Poor Flossie," he said gently; and there was a pause during which Flossie looked more demure than ever after her little outburst.
She had seen the look in his eyes that foreboded flight.
He rose abruptly. "Do you know, I"m awfully sorry, but I"ve got an appointment at half past five to meet a fellow in Fleet Street."
The fellow was Maddox, but the appointment, he had made it that very minute, which was the twenty-fifth minute past five.
They went their ways; he to Fleet Street, and she home. Maddox did not turn up to the appointment and Rickman had to keep it with himself. As the result of the interview he determined to try the effect of a little timely absence. He did not attempt to conceal from himself that he was really most Horribly afraid; his state of mind or rather body (for the disorder was purely physical) was such that he positively dared not remain in the same house with Flossie another day. What he needed was change of air and scene. He approached Mrs. Downey with a shame-faced air, and a tale of how he was seedy and thought if he could get away for a week it would set him up. It seemed to him that Mrs. Downey"s manner conveyed the most perfect comprehension of his condition. He did not care; he was brought so low that he could almost have confided in Mrs. Downey. "Mark my words," said the wise woman to the drawing-room. "He"ll be back again before the week"s up." And as usual, little Flossie marked them.
He walked out to Hampstead that very evening and engaged rooms there by the week, on the understanding that he might require them for a month or more. He did not certainly know how long the cure would take.
Hampstead is a charming and salubrious suburb, and Jewdwine was really very decent to him while he was there, but in four days he had had more of the cure than he wanted. Or was it that he didn"t want to be cured? Anyway a week was enough to prove that the flight to Hampstead was a mistake. He had now an opportunity of observing Miss Flossie from a judicious distance, with the result that her image was seen through a tender wash of atmosphere at the precise moment when it acquired relief. He began to miss her morning greetings, the soft touch of her hand when they said good-night, and the voice that seemed to be always saying, "How orf"ly good of you," "Thanks orf"ly, Mr.
Rickman, I"ve had a lovely day." He hadn"t given her many lovely days lately, poor little girl.
At the end of the week, coming up from Fleet Street, instead of making straight for the Hampstead Road as he ought to have done, he found himself turning aside in the direction of Tavistock Place. The excuse that he made to himself was that he wanted a book that he had left behind at Mrs. Downey"s. Now it was not in the least likely that he had left it in the dining-room, nor yet in the drawing-room, but it was in those places that he thought of looking first. Not finding what he wanted, he went on dejectedly to the second floor, feeling that he must fulfil the quest that justified his presence. And there in his study, in, yes, _in_ it, as far in as anybody could get, by the bookcase next the window, Flossie was sitting; and sitting (if you could believe it) on the floor; sitting and moving her hands along the shelves as familiarly as you please. Good Heavens! if she wasn"t busy dusting his books!
Flossie didn"t see him, for she had her back to the door; and he stood there on the threshold for a second, just looking at her. She wore a loose dark-blue overall evidently intended to wrap her up and conceal her. But so far from concealing her, the overall, tucked in and smoothed out, and altogether adorably moulded by her crouching att.i.tude, betrayed the full but tender outline of her body. Her face, all but the white curve of her cheek and forehead, was hidden from him, but he could see the ivory bistre at the nape of her bowed neck, with the delicate black tendrils of her curls cl.u.s.tering above it. Her throat, as she stooped over her task, was puckered and gathered, like some incredibly soft stuff, in little folds under her chin. He drew in his breath with a sighing sound which to Flossie was the first intimation of his presence.
To say that Flossie rose to her feet would be a misleading description of her method. She held on to the edge of a bookshelf by the tips of her fingers and drew herself up from the floor, slowly, as it were by some mysterious unfolding process, not ungraceful. She turned on him the wide half-mischievous, half-frightened eyes of a child caught this time in some superb enormity.
"Flossie," he said with an affectation of severity, "what _have_ you been doing?"
She produced her duster gingerly. "You can see," said she, "only I didn"t mean you to catch me at it." She knelt down by the fireplace and gave her duster a little flick up the chimney. "I never, never in all my life saw such a lot of dust. I can"t think how you"ve gone on living with it."
He smiled. "No more can I, Flossie. I don"t know how I did it."
"Well, you haven"t got to do it, now. It"s all perfectly sweet and clean."
"It"s all perfectly sweet, I know that, dear." She turned towards the door but not without a dissatisfied look back at the bookcase she had left. "Aren"t you going to let me thank you?"
"You needn"t. I was only helping Mrs. Downey."
"Oh--"
"She"s been having a grand turn-out while you were away."
"The deuce she has--"
"Oh you needn"t be frightened. n.o.body"s touched your precious books but me. I wouldn"t let them."
"Why wouldn"t you let them?"