Miss Latimer, thus, facing him across the table as she measured out the tea, was illuminated by such dying light as the sombre evening still afforded.
They had murmured a conventional greeting and he now asked her if she"d been out walking in this bad weather. It was some relief to see that she had not been with Tony the whole day through.
"Only down to the village," she said. "There is a woman ill there."
He went on politely to enquire if she weren"t very wet and would not rather change before tea--he wouldn"t mind waiting a bit; but she said, seating herself and pouring on the boiling water, that she was used to being wet and did not notice it.
He was determined not to speak of Antonia and to ask no questions. To ask questions would be to recognize the new bond between her and Antonia. But, unasked, emphasizing to his raw consciousness his own exclusion, she said: "Antonia is so sorry to leave you alone like this.
She had one of her bad nights and thought a complete rest would do her good."
He reflected that it was more dignified to show strength by generosity and to play into her hands. "Does she have bad nights?" he asked.
"Oh, very. Didn"t you know?" said Miss Latimer. "She"s obliged to take things."
"Drugs, do you mean?" He had not known at all. "That"s very bad for her."
"Very bad. But her doctor allows it apparently."
"She took one last night and it did no good?"
"None at all. I hope she is getting a little sleep now. Sugar?" Miss Latimer poised a lump before him in the tongs and, on his a.s.sent, dropped it into his cup. Could two creatures have looked more cosy, shut, for the blind-man"s-holiday hour, into the tranquil intimacy of the studious room, with the even glow of its tended fire, the cheer of its humming kettle, the scented promise of its tea-table? She pa.s.sed him toasted scones from the hot-water-basin and offered home-made jam. He wanted no jam, but he found himself quite hungry, absurdly so, he thought, until he remembered that he had really eaten no lunch. He was coming, now that the opening had been made, and while he ate his scone, to a new decision. It was the moment, and perhaps the only one he would have, for finding out just how much she counted against him. He determined, if it were necessary, on open warfare.
"I don"t think Wyndwards suits Tony," he said.
"Don"t you?" Miss Latimer returned, but quite without impertinence.
"She"s always been very well here before."
"Before what?"
"Her husband"s death," Miss Latimer replied.
"Yes," said Bevis, disconcerted. "Well, it"s that, perhaps."
"It is that undoubtedly," said Miss Latimer. Her voice, high and piping, was as dry and emotionless as her horrid little hands. What control it showed that it should be so! He felt that he hated her; hated her the more that she was not wishing to score off him as he wished to score off her. Yet he did not dislike her, if one could draw that distinction. And now he noticed, as she lifted her cup, that her hand trembled, as if with the slight, incessant shaking of palsy. The fear of an emergency burned in her. He felt sure that she, too, had not slept.
"Well, it all comes to the same thing, doesn"t it?" he said. "Since Malcolm"s death the place oppresses her. Quite naturally; and it would be much better that she should leave it; as soon as possible."
"I don"t think it would do Antonia any good to leave Wyndwards," said Miss Latimer, not looking at him.
"You think it would do her good if I did, I imagine," Bevis commented, with his dry laugh. "Thanks awfully."
She sat silent.
"You saw, of course, last night, how it was with us," he said. "Perhaps you saw it before."
Still she was silent, and for so long that he thought she might not be going to answer him. But she replied at last. "No; not before. I did not suspect it before."
Ah! He had an inner triumph. She hadn"t had her head down all the time; he was sure of it now. She had, when they went to the window, watched them. He did not quite know why this certainty should give him the sense of triumph; unless--was that it?--it pointed to some plotting secret instinct in her. "Yet you must have wondered how I came to be here--so intimately," he said.
"No; I did not wonder," said Miss Latimer. "I know that young women nowadays have friendships like that. I knew that you had been Malcolm"s friend."
"You did not see that it was more than friendship till last night?"
She paused, but only for a moment. "I saw that you were in love with her from the first."
"But only last night saw that we were in love with each other?"
Again she did not reply. Turning her head slightly aside, as if in distaste for the intimacies he forced upon her, she took up the tea-pot and, still with that slightly, incessantly, shaking hand, poured herself out a second cup of tea.
He would not pause for her distaste. "I am afraid you dislike it very much."
To this she replied, "I dislike anything that makes Antonia unhappy."
He owned that it was a good answer. Leaning back in the divan, his foot crossed over his knee, his hand holding his ankle, he contemplated his antagonist. "My point is that it wouldn"t make her unhappy if she came away," he took up. "If she came away and married me at once. It"s the place and its a.s.sociations that have got upon her nerves.--How much you saw last night!"
She had poured out the cup and she raised it automatically to her lips while he spoke. Then, untasted, she set it down, and then, with the effect of a pale, sudden glare, her eyes were at last upon him.
"I do not know what you mean by nerves. Antonia is not as light as you imagine," she said. "She loved her husband. She does not find it easy to forget him here, it is true; but I do not think she would find it easy if she left his home with another man."
"No one asks her to forget him," said Bevis. She could not drink her tea, but he pa.s.sed his cup, blessing the bland ritual that made soft, sliding links in an encounter all harsh, had it been unaccompanied, with the embarra.s.sment of their antagonism. "May I have another cup, please?" There was a malicious satisfaction, too, in falling back upon the ritual at such a moment. "With a little water?--I cared for Malcolm.
I have no intention of forgetting him."
Her eyes were still on him, and distraction, almost desperation, was working in her, for, though she took his cup as automatically as she had lifted her own, though she proceeded to fill it, it was, he noted with an amus.e.m.e.nt that almost expressed itself in a laugh--he knew that he was capable of feeling amus.e.m.e.nt at the most unlikely times and places!--with the boiling water only. She put in milk and sugar and handed it to him, unconscious of the absurdity.
"I did not mean in that sense," she said.
"I should like to know what you do mean." He drank his milk and water.
"I should like to know where I am with you. Do you dislike me? Are you my enemy? Or is it merely that you are pa.s.sionately opposed to remarriages?"
She rose as he asked his questions as if the closeness of his pursuit had become too intolerable. "I do not know you. How could I be your enemy? I only dislike you, because you make Antonia unhappy."
"Would you like me if I made her happy?"
The pale glare was in her eyes as she faced him, her hands on the back of her chair. "You can never make her happy. Never. Never," she repeated. "You can only mean unhappiness to her. If you care for her, if you have any real love for her, you will go away, now, at once, and leave her in peace."
"So you say. So you think. It"s a matter of opinion. I don"t agree with you. I don"t believe it would be to leave her in peace. You forget that we"re in love with each other." He, too, had risen, but in his voice, as he opposed her, there was appeal rather than antagonism. "Let us understand each other. Is it that you hate so much the idea of remarriages? Do you feel them to be infidelities?"
She had turned from him, but she paused now by the door, and it was as if, arrested by the appeal, she was willing to do justice to his mere need for enlightenment. "Not if people care more for some one else."
Care more? He did not echo her phrase, but he meditated, and then, courageously, accepted it. "And if they can, you don"t hate it?"
At that she just glanced at him. He seemed to see the caged prisoner pa.s.s behind his bars and look out in pa.s.sing; and he saw not only what her hate could be, but the dark and lonely anguish that encompa.s.sed her.
"People should be true to themselves," was all she said.
When she was gone, Bevis, characteristically, went back to the table and made himself a proper cup of tea. He had managed to make tea for himself and a wounded Tommy when he had lain, with his shattered leg, in No Man"s Land.