"Very kind of Mrs. Hepburn. Well, how are you feeling to-day, old girl?"
"Better, thanks, Ed."
"That"s the style. You"ll be yourself again soon. Daisy says you"ve been out to-day?"
"Yes, I went for a walk. But not far; I went to the Museum and then sat down. You"re early, aren"t you?"
He turned away to get a chair, from which he had to move a ma.s.s of tissue-paper patterns and buckram linings. He brought it to the rug.
"Yes. I stopped last night late to cash up for Vedder, so he"s staying to-night. Turn and turn about. Well, tell us all about it, Bess."
Their faces were red in the firelight. Hers had the prettiness that the first glance almost exhausts, the prettiness, amazing in its quant.i.ty, that one sees for a moment under the light of the street lamps when shops and offices close for the day. She was short-nosed, pulpy-mouthed and faunish-eyed, and only the rather remarkable smallness of the head on the splendid thick throat saved her from ordinariness. He, too, might have been seen in his thousands at the close of any day, hurrying home to Catford or Walham Green or Tufnell Park to tea and an evening with a girl or in a billiard-room, or else dining cheaply "up West" preparatory to smoking cigarettes from yellow packets in the upper circle of a music-hall. Four inches of white up-and-down collar encased his neck; and as he lifted his trousers at the knee to clear his purple socks, the pair of paper covers showed, that had protected his cuffs during the day at the office. He removed them, crumpled them up and threw them on the fire; and the momentary addition to the light of the upper chamber showed how curd-white was that superb neck of hers and how moody and tired her eyes.
From his face only one would have guessed, and guessed wrongly, that his preferences were for billiard-rooms and music-halls. His conversation showed them to be otherwise. It was of Polytechnic cla.s.ses that he spoke, and of the course of lectures in English literature that had just begun.
And, as if somebody had a.s.serted that the pursuit of such studies was not compatible with a certain measure of physical development also, he announced that he was not sure that he should not devote, say, half an evening a week, on Wednesdays, to training in the gymnasium.
"_Mens sana in corpore sano_, Bessie," he said; "a sound mind in a sound body, you know. That"s tremendously important, especially when a fellow spends the day in a stuffy office. Yes, I think I shall give it half Wednesdays, from eight-thirty to nine-thirty; sends you home in a glow.
But I was going to tell you about the Literature Cla.s.s. The second lecture"s to-night. The first was splendid, all about the languages of Europe and Asia--what they call the Indo-Germanic languages, you know.
Aryans. I can"t tell you exactly without my notes, but the Hindoos and Persians, I think it was, they crossed the Himalaya Mountains and spread westward somehow, as far as Europe. That was the way it all began. It was splendid, the way the lecturer put it. English is a Germanic language, you know. Then came the Celts. I wish I"d brought my notes. I see you"ve been reading; let"s look--"
A book lay on her knees, its back warped by the heat of the fire. He took it and opened it.
"Ah, Keats! Glad you like Keats, Bessie. We needn"t be great readers, but it"s important that what we do read should be all right. I don"t know him, not _really_ know him, that is. But he"s quite all right--A1 in fact. And he"s an example of what I"ve always maintained, that knowledge should be brought within the reach of all. It just shows. He was the son of a livery-stable keeper, you know, so what he"d have been if he"d really had chances, been to universities and so on, there"s no knowing.
But, of course, it"s more from the historical standpoint that I"m studying these things. Let"s have a look--"
He opened the book where a hairpin between the leaves marked a place.
The firelight glowed on the page, and he read, monotonously and inelastically:
"_And as I sat, over the light blue hills There came a noise of revellers; the rills Into the wide stream came of purple hue-- "Twas Bacchus and his crew!
The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills From kissing cymbals made a merry din-- "Twas Bacchus and his kin!
Like to a moving vintage down they came, Crowned with green leaves, and faces all on flame All madly dancing through the pleasant valley To scare thee, Melancholy!"_
It was the wondrous pa.s.sage from _Endymion_, of the descent of the wild inspired rabble into India. Ed plucked for a moment at his lower lip, and then, with a "Hm! What"s it all about, Bessie?" continued:
_"Within his car, aloft, young Bacchus stood, Trifling his ivy-dart, in dancing mood, With sidelong laughing; And little rills of crimson wine imbrued His plump white arms and shoulders, enough white For Venus" pearly bite; And near him rode Silenus on his a.s.s, Pelted with flowers as he on did pa.s.s, Tipsily quaffing."_
"Hm! I see. Mythology. That"s made up of tales, and myths, you know. Like Odin and Thor and those, only those were Scandinavian Mythology. So it would be absurd to take it too seriously. But I think, in a way, things like that do harm. You see," he explained, "the more beautiful they are the more harm they might do. We ought always to show virtue and vice in their true colours, and if you look at it from that point of view this is just drunkenness. That"s rotten; destroys your body and intellect; as I heard a chap say once, it"s an insult to the beasts to call it beastly. I joined the Blue Ribbon when I was fourteen and I haven"t been sorry for it yet. No. Now there"s Vedder; he "went off on a bend," as he calls it, last night, and even he says this morning it wasn"t worth it. But let"s read on."
Again he read, with unresilient movement:
"_I saw Osirian Egypt kneel adown Before the vine wreath crown!
I saw parched Abyssinia rouse and sing To the silver cymbals" ring!
I saw the whelming vintage hotly pierce Old Tartary the fierce!
Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans_ ..."
"Hm! He was a Buddhist G.o.d, Brahma was; mythology again. As I say, if you take it seriously, it"s just glorifying intoxication.--But I say; I can hardly see. Better light the lamp. We"ll have tea first, then read. No, you sit still; I"ll get it ready; I know where things are--"
He rose, crossed to a little cupboard with a sink in it, filled the kettle at the tap, and brought it to the fire. Then he struck a match and lighted the lamp.
The cheap gla.s.s shade was of a foolish corolla shape, clear gla.s.s below, shading to pink, and deepening to red at the crimped edge. It gave a false warmth to the s.p.a.ces of the room above the level of the mantelpiece, and Ed"s figure, as he turned the regulator, looked from the waist upwards as if he stood within that portion of a spectrum screen that deepens to the band of red. The bright concentric circles that spread in rings of red on the ceiling were more dimly reduplicated in the old mirror over the mantelpiece; and the wintry eastern light beyond the chimney-hoods seemed suddenly almost to die out.
Bessie, her white neck below the level of the lamp-shade, had taken up the book again; but she was not reading. She was looking over it at the upper part of the grate. Presently she spoke. "I was looking at some of those things this afternoon, at the Museum."
He was clearing from the table more buckram linings and patterns of paper, numbers of Myra"s Journal and The Delineator. Already on his way to the cupboard he had put aside a red-bodiced dressmaker"s "shape" of wood and wire. "What things?" he asked.
"Those you were reading about. Greek, aren"t they?"
"Oh, the Greek room!... But those people, Bacchus and those, weren"t people in the ordinary sense. G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, most of "em; Bacchus was a G.o.d. That"s what mythology means. I wish sometimes our course took in Greek literature, but it"s a dead language after all. German"s more good in modern life. It would be nice to know everything, but one has to select, you know. Hallo, I clean forgot; I brought you some grapes, Bessie; here they are, in this bag; we"ll have "em after tea, what?"
"But," she said again after a pause, still looking at the grate, "they had their priests and priestesses, and followers and people, hadn"t they?
It was their things I was looking at--combs and brooches and hairpins, and things to cut their nails with. They"re all in a gla.s.s case there.
And they had safety-pins, exactly like ours."
"Oh, they were a civilised people," said Ed cheerfully. "It all gives you an idea. I only hope you didn"t tire yourself out. You"ll soon be all right, of course, but you have to be careful yet. We"ll have a clean tablecloth, shall we?"
She had been seriously ill; her life had been despaired of; and somehow the young Polytechnic student seemed anxious to a.s.sure her that she was now all right again, or soon would be. They were to be married "as soon as things brightened up a bit," and he was very much in love with her. He watched her head and neck as he continued to lay the table, and then, as he crossed once more to the cupboard, he put his hand lightly in pa.s.sing on her hair.
She gave so quick a start that he too started. She must have been very deep in her reverie to have been so taken by surprise.
"I say, Bessie, don"t jump like that!" he cried with involuntary quickness. Indeed, had his hand been red-hot, or ice-cold, or taloned, she could not have turned a more startled, even frightened, face to him.
"It was your touching me," she muttered, resuming her gazing into the grate.
He stood looking anxiously down on her. It would have been better not to discuss her state, and he knew it; but in his anxiety he forgot it.
"That jumpiness is the effect of your illness, you know. I shall be glad when it"s all over. It"s made you so odd."
She was not pleased that he should speak of her "oddness." For that matter, she, too, found him "odd"--at any rate, found it difficult to realise that he was as he always had been. He had begun to irritate her a little. His club-footed reading of the verses had irritated her, and she had tried hard to hide from him that his c.o.c.ksure opinions and the tone in which they were p.r.o.nounced jarred on her. It was not that she was "better" than he, "knew" any more than he did, didn"t (she supposed) love him still the same; these moods, that dated from her illness, had nothing to do with those things; she reproached herself sometimes that she was subject to such doldrums.
"It"s all right, Ed, but please don"t touch me just now," she said.
He was in the act of leaning over her chair, but he saw her shrink, and refrained.
"Poor old girl!" he said sympathetically. "What"s the matter?"
"I don"t know. It"s awfully stupid of me to be like this, but I can"t help it. I shall be better soon if you leave me alone."
"Nothing"s happened, has it?"
"Only those silly dreams I told you about."
"Bother the dreams!" muttered the Polytechnic student.
During her illness she had had dreams, and had come to herself at intervals to find Ed or the doctor, Mrs. Hepburn or her aunt, bending over her. These kind, solicitous faces had been no more than a glimpse, and then she had gone off into the dreams again. The curious thing had been that the dreams had seemed to be her vivid waking life, and the other things--the anxious faces, the details of her dingy bedroom, the thermometer under her tongue--had been the dream. And, though she had come back to actuality, the dreams had never quite vanished. She could remember no more of them than that they had seemed to hold a high singing and jocundity, issuing from some region of haze and golden light; and they seemed to hover, ever on the point of being recaptured, yet ever eluding all her mental efforts. She was living now between reality and a vision.
She had fewer words than sensations, and it was a little pitiful to hear her vainly striving to make clear what she meant.
"It"s so queer," she said. "It"s like being on the edge of something--a sort of tiptoe--I can"t describe it. Sometimes I could almost touch it with my hand, and then it goes away, but never quite away. It"s like something just past the corner of my eye, over my shoulder, and I sit very still sometimes, trying to take it off its guard. But the moment I move my head it moves too--like this--"