THE BOURGEOIS PLAYS THE GENTLEMAN
The Saturday on which John Parfit came to see Eve was one of those
premature spring days that makes one listen for the singing of birds.
The little front garden was full of sunlight, and a few crocuses
streaked the brown earth under the window. The Bourgeois arrived with a
great bunch of daffodils, their succulent stems wrapped in blue tissue
paper.
“Well, how are you now? How are you? Brought you a few flowers!”
He was shy with the shyness of a big, good-natured creature who was slow
to adapt himself to strange surroundings. A feminine atmosphere had
always rendered John Parfit nervous and inarticulate. He could talk like
a politician in an office or a railway carriage, but thrust him into a
drawing-room with a few women, and he became voiceless and futile.
“Well, how are we?”
He put his top-hat on the table, and stood the flowers in it as though
it were a vase.
“But your poor hat!”
“Why, what’s the matter?”
“They are such sappy things. I must thank you for all the flowers. They
helped me to get well.”
He removed the daffodils, and wandered round the room till he found an
empty pot that agreed to rid him of them.
“Don’t you bother—don’t you get up! I’ll settle them all right.”
He came back to the fire, rubbing his hands and smiling. The smile died
a sudden death when he dared to take his first good look at Eve, and
with it much of his self-consciousness seemed to vanish. He sat down
rather abruptly, staring.
“I say, you have had a bad time!”
“I’m afraid I have.”
She looked thin, and ill, and shadowy, and plain, and her eyes were the
eyes of one who was worried. A tremulous something about her mouth, the
droop of her neck, the light on her hair, stirred in John Parfit an
inarticulate compassion. The man in him was challenged, appealed to,
touched.
“I say, you’ve been bad, you know!”
“But I’m getting better.”
“You’re—you’re so white and thin!”
He spoke in an awed voice, his glance fixed on one of her hands that
rested on the arm of her chair.
“I wanted to have a talk, you know. But I shall tire you.”
“No.”
She heard him draw a big breath.
“Look here, I’m a fool at expressing myself, but you’ve been having a
bad time. I mean, as to the money. Beastly thing money. I’ve guessed
that. Seems impertinent of me, but, by George! well, I can’t help it.
It’s upset me, seeing you like this. It’s made me start saying something
I didn’t mean to mention.”
He was out of breath, and sat watching her for one dumb, inarticulate
moment, his hands clenched between his knees.
“Look here, you may think me a fool, but I tell you one thing, I can’t
stand the thought of a girl like you having to scrape and scramble. I
can’t stand it. And I shouldn’t have had the cheek, but for feeling like
this. I’ll just blurt it out. I’ve been thinking of it for weeks. Look
here, let me take care of you—for life, I mean. I’m not a bad sort, and
I don’t think I shall be a selfish beast of a husband. There’s nothing I
won’t do to make you happy.”
He sat on the edge of the chair, his hands still clenched between his
knees. As for Eve, she was distressed, touched, and perhaps humbled. She
told herself suddenly that she had not faced this man fairly, that she
had not foreseen what she ought to have foreseen. The room felt close
and hot.
“I say, I haven’t offended you? It mayn’t seem quite sporting, talking
like this, when you’ve been ill, but, by George! I couldn’t help it.”
She said very gently:
“How could I be offended? Don’t you know that you are doing me a very
great honour?”
“Oh, I say, do you mean it?”
“Of course.”
Eve saw a hand come out tentatively and then recede, and in a flash she
understood what the possible nearness of this man meant to her. She
shivered, and knew that in the intimate physical sense he would be
hopelessly repellent. She could not help it, even though he had touched
her spiritually, and made her feel that there were elements of fineness
in him that were worthy of any woman’s trust.
He had been silent for some seconds, and his emotions could not be
stopped now that they were discovering expression.
“Look here, I’m forty-six, and I’m going bald, but I’m a bit of a boy
still. I was made to be married, but somehow I didn’t. I’ve done pretty
well in business. I’ve saved about seven thousand pounds, and I’m making
nine hundred a year. You ought to know. I’m ready to do anything. We
could take a jolly little house out somewhere—Richmond, or Hampstead,
say, the new garden place. And I don’t know why we shouldn’t keep a
little motor, or a trap. Of course, I’m telling you this, because you
ought to know. I’m running on ahead rather, but it’s of no consequence.
I only want you to know what’s what.”
He was out of breath again, and she sat and stared at the fire. His rush
of words had confused her. It was like being overwhelmed with food and
water after one had been dying of hunger and thirst and fear in a
desert. His essential and half pathetic sincerity went to her heart, nor
could she help her gratitude going out to him. Not for a moment did she
think of him as a fat, commonplace sentimentalist, a middle-aged fool
who fell over his own feet when he tried to make love. He was more than
a good creature. He was a man who had a right to self-expression.
She rallied her will-power.
“I don’t know what to say to you. I suppose I am feeling very weak.”
He rushed into self-accusation.
“There, I’ve been a selfish beast. I oughtn’t to have come and upset you
like this. But I couldn’t help telling you.”
“I know. It hasn’t hurt me. But you have offered me such a big thing,
that I am trying to realise it all. I don’t think I’m made for
marriage.”
“Oh, don’t say that! I know I’m a blundering idiot!”
“No, no, it is not you! It is marriage.”
“You don’t believe in marriage?”
“Not that. I mean, for myself. I don’t think I could make you understand
why.”
He looked puzzled and distressed.
“It’s my fault. I couldn’t do the thing delicately. I’m clumsy.”
“No, no. I have told you that it is not that.”
“Well, you think it over. Supposing we leave it till you get stronger?”
“But you are offering everything and I nothing.”
“Nonsense! Besides, I don’t believe in marrying a woman with money. I’d
rather have the business on my own back. Of course, I should settle two
or three thousand on you, you know, so that you would have a little
income for pin-money. I think that’s only fair to a woman.”
She coloured and felt guilty.
“I think you are more generous than fair. Don’t say any more. I’ll—I’ll
think it over.”
He got up and seized his hat.
“That’s it—that’s it. You think it over! I’m not one of those fellows
who thinks that a woman is going to rush at him directly he says come.
It means a lot to a woman, a dickens of a lot. And you’re not quite
yourself yet, are you? It’s awfully good of you to have listened.”
He reached for her hand, bent over it with cumbrous courtesy, and
covered up a sudden silence by getting out of the room as quickly as he
could.
When John Parfit had gone, Eve lay back in her chair with a feeling of
intense languor. All the strength and independence seemed to melt out of
her, and she lay like a tired child on the knees of circumstance.
And then it was that she was tempted—tempted in this moment of
weariness, by the knowledge that a way of escape lay so very near. She
had been offered a protected life, food, shelter, a generous allowance,
love, leisure, all that the orthodox woman is supposed to desire. He was
kind, understanding in his way, reliable, a man whose common sense was
to be trusted, and he would take her away from this paltry scramble,
pilot her out of the crowd, and give her an affection that would last.
Her intuition recognised the admirable husband in him. This middle-class
man had a rich vein of sentiment running through his nature, and he was
not too clever or too critical to tire.
Dusk began to fall, and the fire was burning low. It was the hour for
memories, and into the dusk of that little suburban room, glided a
subtle sense of other presences, and she found herself thinking of
Canterton and the child. If she were to have a child like Lynette. But
it could not be Lynette—it could not be his child, the child of that
one man. She sat up, shocked and challenged. What was she about to do?
Sell herself. Promise to give something that it was not in her power to
give. Deceive a man who most honestly loved her. It would be
prostitution. There was only one man living to whom she could have
granted complete physical comradeship. She was not made to be touched by
other hands.
She rose and lit the gas, and sat down at the table to write a letter.
She would tell John Parfit the truth; put the shame of temptation out of
her way.
It was not a long letter, but it came straight from her heart. No man
could be offended by it—hurt by it. It was human, honourable, a tribute
to the man to whom it was written.
When she had addressed and stamped it, she rang the bell for Mrs. Buss.
“I should be very much obliged if you could have this posted for me.”
Mrs. Buss was affable, having smelt matrimony and safe money.
“Certainly, miss. I’ll send Albert down to the pillar-box. Excuse me
saying it; but you do look pounds better. You’ve got quite a colour.”
And she went out, simpering.
* * * * *