"I "ave my idears of things, as I don"t doubt you "ave yours--"
"Ideas--mine!" Oleron had cried wrathfully, immediately dropping his voice as heads had appeared at windows of the square. "Look you here, my man; you"ve an unwholesome mind, which probably you can"t help, but a tongue which you can help, and shall! If there is a breath of this repeated ..."
"I"ll not be talked to on my own doorstep like this by anybody,..."
Barrett had bl.u.s.tered....
"You shall, and I"m doing it ..."
"Don"t you forget there"s a Gawd above all, Who "as said..."
"You"re a low scandalmonger!..."
And so forth, continuing badly what was already badly begun. Oleron had returned wrathfully to his own house, and thenceforward, looking out of his windows, had seen Barrett"s face at odd times, lifting blinds or peering round curtains, as if he sought to put himself in possession of Heaven knew what evidence, in case it should be required of him.
The unfortunate occurrence made certain minor differences in Oleron"s domestic arrangements. Barrett"s tongue, he gathered, had already been busy; he was looked at askance by the dwellers of the square; and he judged it better, until he should be able to obtain other help, to make his purchases of provisions a little farther afield rather than at the small shops of the immediate neighbourhood. For the rest, housekeeping was no new thing to him, and he would resume his old bachelor habits....
Besides, he was deep in certain rather abstruse investigations, in which it was better that he should not be disturbed.
He was looking out of his window one midday rather tired, not very well, and glad that it was not very likely he would have to stir out of doors, when he saw Elsie Bengough crossing the square towards his house. The weather had broken; it was a raw and gusty day; and she had to force her way against the wind that set her ample skirts bellying about her opulent figure and her veil spinning and streaming behind her.
Oleron acted swiftly and instinctively. Seizing his hat, he sprang to the door and descended the stairs at a run. A sort of panic had seized him.
She must be prevented from setting foot in the place. As he ran along the alley he was conscious that his eyes went up to the eaves as if something drew them. He did not know that a slate might not accidentally fall....
He met her at the gate, and spoke with curious volubleness.
"This is really too bad, Elsie! Just as I"m urgently called away! I"m afraid it can"t be helped though, and that you"ll have to think me an inhospitable beast." He poured it out just as it came into his head.
She asked if he was going to town.
"Yes, yes--to town," he replied. "I"ve got to call on--on Chambers. You know Chambers, don"t you? No, I remember you don"t; a big man you once saw me with.... I ought to have gone yesterday, and--" this he felt to be a brilliant effort--"and he"s going out of town this afternoon. To Brighton. I had a letter from him this morning."
He took her arm and led her up the square. She had to remind him that his way to town lay in the other direction.
"Of course--how stupid of me!" he said, with a little loud laugh. "I"m so used to going the other way with you--of course; it"s the other way to the bus. Will you come along with me? I am so awfully sorry it"s happened like this...."
They took the street to the bus terminus.
This time Elsie bore no signs of having gone through interior struggles.
If she detected anything unusual in his manner she made no comment, and he, seeing her calm, began to talk less recklessly through silences. By the time they reached the bus terminus, n.o.body, seeing the pallid-faced man without an overcoat and the large ample-skirted girl at his side, would have supposed that one of them was ready to sink on his knees for thankfulness that he had, as he believed, saved the other from a wildly unthinkable danger.
They mounted to the top of the bus, Oleron protesting that he should not miss his overcoat, and that he found the day, if anything, rather oppressively hot. They sat down on a front seat.
Now that this meeting was forced upon him, he had something else to say that would make demands upon his tact. It had been on his mind for some time, and was, indeed, peculiarly difficult to put. He revolved it for some minutes, and then, remembering the success of his story of a sudden call to town, cut the knot of his difficulty with another lie.
"I"m thinking of going away for a little while, Elsie," he said.
She merely said, "Oh?"
"Somewhere for a change. I need a change. I think I shall go to-morrow, or the day after. Yes, to-morrow, I think."
"Yes," she replied.
"I don"t quite know how long I shall be," he continued. "I shall have to let you know when I am back."
"Yes, let me know," she replied in an even tone.
The tone was, for her, suspiciously even. He was a little uneasy.
"You don"t ask me where I"m going," he said, with a little c.u.mbrous effort to rally her.
She was looking straight before her, past the bus-driver.
"I know," she said.
He was startled. "How, you know?"
"You"re not going anywhere," she replied.
He found not a word to say. It was a minute or so before she continued, in the same controlled voice she had employed from the start.
"You"re not going anywhere. You weren"t going out this morning. You only came out because I appeared; don"t behave as if we were strangers, Paul."
A flush of pink had mounted to his cheeks. He noticed that the wind had given her the pink of early rhubarb. Still he found nothing to say.
"Of course, you ought to go away," she continued. "I don"t know whether you look at yourself often in the gla.s.s, but you"re rather noticeable.
Several people have turned to look at you this morning. So, of course, you ought to go away. But you won"t, and I know why."
He shivered, coughed a little, and then broke silence.
"Then if you know, there"s no use in continuing this discussion," he said curtly.
"Not for me, perhaps, but there is for you," she replied. "Shall I tell you what I know?"
"No," he said in a voice slightly raised.
"No?" she asked, her round eyes earnestly on him.
"No."
Again he was getting out of patience with her; again he was conscious of the strain. Her devotion and fidelity and love plagued him; she was only humiliating both herself and him. It would have been bad enough had he ever, by word or deed, given her cause for thus fastening herself on him ... but there; that was the worst of that kind of life for a woman.
Women such as she, business women, in and out of offices all the time, always, whether they realised it or not, made comradeship a cover for something else. They accepted the unconventional status, came and went freely, as men did, were honestly taken by men at their own valuation--and then it turned out to be the other thing after all, and they went and fell in love. No wonder there was gossip in shops and squares and public houses! In a sense the gossipers were in the right of it. Independent, yet not efficient; with some of womanhood"s graces forgone, and yet with all the woman"s hunger and need; half sophisticated, yet not wise; Oleron was tired of it all....
And it was time he told her so.
"I suppose," he said tremblingly, looking down between his knees, "I suppose the real trouble is in the life women who earn their own living are obliged to lead."
He could not tell in what sense she took the lame generality; she merely replied, "I suppose so."
"It can"t be helped," he continued, "but you do sacrifice a good deal."