“I shall be with you at seven o’clock to take you out to dinner. Toby.”
Anne read this note with conflicting feelings. She was very pleased Toby
had come back. She was ashamed of their last meeting, and she was above
all anxious to have her own way in their present one. Anne was
preeminently a feminine woman, that is to say, she had the endurance of
an angel, the patience of a saint, the mingled tenderness and flint of a
Mother Superior, the unpractical helplessness of a child, the
common-sense of a genius, and the unscrupulousness of a rake. She didn’t
understand men, she merely knew how to please them. She hadn’t
understood Norman, but Norman was not openly masculine, and he had ways
of disguising his manliness which made him (for Anne) much easier to
deal with. Toby’s masculinity was without disguises. Anne couldn’t
imagine what he would feel about going to Madonna di Campiglio. She was
afraid of his saying “No” at once, and she was quite sure he would be
angry. It was strange how anxious she was to have him go, it wasn’t only
to please Norman and Nina; she was surprised to find that she wanted it
for herself. She felt that if Toby was there, ostensibly as her friend,
it would make her loneliness only an inner thing. She wouldn’t have to
feel that Norman and Nina were bothering about her. They could go off
without a pang for days together and not have her on their minds. Anne
hadn’t wanted, when she first went back to them, to look too poor. But
would Toby consent to act as a feather in her cap? She dressed more
carefully for Toby that evening than she had ever dressed for him
before, and she was relieved to see that her clothes looked as good as
new. They were already a year old, and they would have to last a long
time because she couldn’t afford new ones. She probably couldn’t afford
Norman and Nina’s hotel, though she would go there first for a night,
and then pretend to fall in love with something picturesque and cheap
the next day. If Toby decided to come with her, there would be a minor
awkwardness because Anne intended to travel third class. Up till now
Toby hadn’t taken in about her money. She had allowed him to pay for all
their excursions together, because she knew that he would have hated not
to pay for her, and she was always more anxious to spare other people’s
pride than she was to save her own; but the moment would come when she
would have to pay for something, and when she would have to choose the
cheaper rather than the more expensive thing to pay for, this would
shock Toby very much. Anne had always been a person of few, and what she
had supposed, were simple tastes; she either took the best of what she
wanted, or she went without. She was beginning to realise now that this
standard is probably the most expensive one that exists. Even now she
could have travelled first class if she could have brought herself to
tip less generously, but this was out of the question. If Anne had not
been able to pay, and to pay rather extravagantly, for good service, she
would have refused to accept it.
She dressed slowly but without hesitation. This was what she knew how to
do, but while she was doing it she reflected on her coming interview
with Toby much as an inexperienced lion tamer reviews his impending turn
with his formidable fellow artist. Anne wished that she had the reckless
audacity of Nina. Nina was not feminine. She was impatient of pain and
rushed to meet danger. Anne took pain without flinching, but she had
danger always on her mind. At seven o’clock Anne gave the last touch to
her black lace hat and went down into the hall.
“My dear Toby,” she said, “this is delightful! I am so glad to see you
back again, and I think it specially delightful of you to come back.”
Her greeting was at once a confession and an apology, and she made it
with a warmth that went straight to Toby’s heart. He was very proud of
Anne’s appearance, but he wasn’t on this occasion going to show her off.
He took her instead to a little restaurant he had been told about in
Trastevere. Motors seldom crossed that side of the Tiber, but Toby
explained to Anne as they sought out his well-hidden resort that it was
the best place in Rome. “It’s not at all swagger,” he explained. “You
eat under a trellis and walk through the kitchen—as spotless as a Dutch
one—where you pick out your vegetable and point at your cutlet, and
have it out with the cook. He’s a splendid person, and if he sees you
are worthy of his efforts he won’t let you go far wrong.”
Toby found her a table under thick green leaves. The place was not
crowded, it was quiet, leisurely and discriminating. An old man came in
and sat in a corner slowly tuning a zither which he put on the table and
began to thumb dreamily, as if for his own amusement. The zither is not
a highly finished instrument but the old man played on it with
surprising tenderness little, silly, quavering tunes, which crept in and
out among the leaves, wanderingly, like cow bells over an Alpine
pasture. Toby had never enjoyed himself so much in his life. If Anne was
still nervous she did not show it. She was a quiet woman without any of
the restlessness which makes vivacity fatiguing to the onlooker; and she
had at all times that perfect self-possession which comes only to those
women who have never been exposed to anything which could ruffle their
self-respect. She asked Toby with interest where he had been and what he
had done. Toby felt as if he had been away a long time, and had a great
deal to tell Anne. He had been to Cori, to Palestrina and to Subiaco.
Toby had no sentiments about what he had seen, but he had acquired a
good many facts. Anne lulled him with her intimate, impersonal interest,
into a perfect serenity. She had a feeling that if she only made him
comfortable enough first, he wouldn’t resent being made uncomfortable
afterwards; he would hardly know, in fact, that he was being made
uncomfortable. The process had often answered excellently with Norman.
“What a mercy,” Toby thought to himself, “that Anne isn’t clever, but
just quietly and comfortably Anne—the simplest and least calculating
woman in the world!”
“And while you’ve been away,” said this uncalculating woman, “I’ve been
missing you so much, Toby, and finding out all the kind and helpful
things you did for me (which I’m afraid I had rather taken for granted)
while you were here.”
“Nonsense!” said Toby, “there was nothing to find out, but I’m glad you
missed me. I always find myself that these foreign places are the better
for companionship—of the right kind, of course.”
“Oh, you’re superlatively the right kind,” said Anne smiling. “Look at
the meals you order and the places you find! I thought the Trastevere
was only a place for beggars, fleas and 13th century mosaics—and see
what you’ve found in it!”
“Well, see what I’ve brought to it!” Toby nearly said, but he had nearly
said things like this for twenty years, and not said them. It was
unfortunate that he was beginning to find it harder than ever to keep
such things unsaid.
“Something else has happened while you’ve been away,” Anne went on
serenely, “something that has been a great surprise and a great pleasure
to me, Toby—only it depends on you a little, how perfect the pleasure
can be.” Toby began to peel a pear for her. He peeled it with care and
precision, and Anne saw that the peel was all going to come off in one
piece.
“Yes,” he said without looking up, “and what is this pleasing surprise?
At my age I always expect pleasure and surprise to arrive separately.
Pleasure I plan for, surprise generally lays me by the heels.”
Anne hesitated. Her heart beat with a curious instability. She wished
that Toby had Norman’s intuitive way of easing off difficult moments,
but she knew by experience that Toby left such moments to shift for
themselves. “They’ve invited us,” she said a little breathlessly,
“Norman and Nina—both of us—to go to them, at Madonna di Campiglio.”
Toby did not look at all concerned. He finished peeling the pear without
a break, laid it carefully down, and extracted its core before handing
it to her on a plate. Then he said, “And when do you want us to go?”
Now that it was all going to be so easy, an incredible feeling swept
over Anne. She suddenly knew that she didn’t want to go at all! It was a
thought so contradictory and absurd that she banished it in silence, and
with barely a pause, before she answered Toby. “They leave Venice
to-morrow. I thought we might join them in a week?”
“Our best way,” said Toby reflectively, “is to go by train to Belluno,
and motor through the Dolomites. It’s a good road.” Anne leaned back in
her chair. Now that it was safely over she realised what an effort she
had made, because she found she was still trembling. The old man with
the zither started up a plaintive little dance tune that had no
beginning and no end. Toby took another pear, peeled it and began to eat
it. “I hope yours was all right,” he said disgustedly. “It’s a peculiar
thing, but I’ve never yet peeled two consecutively good pears. They seem
to obey the law of life. You pay for your good moment with your bad.”
“Mine was perfect,” said Anne regretfully, “I wish I’d kept some of it
for you.” Then she said a little defensively (for after all their going
to Madonna di Campiglio was more important than the flavour of pears),
“It will be such a good opportunity for you to get to know Nina.”
“Excellent,” said Toby without enthusiasm, “if one does ever get to know
a woman on her honeymoon with another man.”
“It isn’t really their honeymoon,” Anne explained, “they’ve had five
weeks.”
“Personally,” said Toby, “if I ever get mine, I doubt if you’d see me
human again for a year.”
Anne looked at him sympathetically. “I feel, Toby,” she said, “as if it
was very stupid and unkind of me never to have guessed that you wanted
one.”
“Not at all,” said Toby gruffly, “why should you have known what you
weren’t told?”
“I think one ought to feel things, whether one is told them or not,”
said Anne gently; “that’s one of the great advantages of not being so
shut up in happiness, one does perhaps see and feel things more. Are you
quite sure, Toby, that you’ve got, always, to be unhappy?”
“I’m not unhappy now,” said Toby, “but I don’t suppose, taking it by and
large, that I shall ever be much happier.”
Anne dismissed this trifling substitution for happiness. That was the
way to take sorrow—it was her own way—but it was not the way people
express their joy. She thought that Toby, like herself, would probably
rather leave the subject alone, so that she went on after a slight pause
to deal with the smaller practical difficulty which still remained on
her mind. How was she going to manage the railway journey third class?
She wasn’t going to travel over Italy at Toby’s expense. She would go
with him, unchaperoned, without a murmur, because she would never have
dreamed of making a fuss about propriety with a man she trusted, or of
going out of her way for half an inch with a man whom she didn’t trust.
To have hesitated to go with Toby alone would have seemed to Anne a
discourtesy as grave and even as vulgar as a breach of faith.
“I believe it’s a beautiful journey,” she said after a pause; “I think
you must miss not speaking Italian when it comes to travelling. My great
delight is to travel third class with the peasants themselves.” Toby
gave her one of his queer sharp glances, then he ordered coffee. “It’s
not only,” Anne went on with increasing skill, “their charming manners,
the way they produce garlic out of carpet bags, and drink wine with
their heads tilted like Apollos—but they make such friends with one and
give one such valuable information. I often pity the ordinary English
traveller who will go by himself in a stuffy first.” “Do you, Anne?”
asked Toby. “Sweltering in the heat in a third class carriage in Italy
hardly seems to me a position to envy. Have you made many lasting and
valuable friendships by this practice?” Anne felt herself colouring
under Toby’s mocking eyes. He needn’t have looked at her as if he was
paying her out for something. “I hope,” he added, “that you won’t mind
deferring your search for friendship for another occasion, as I intend
to take two first class tickets to Belluno, where we shall pick up the
car, unless you have a more feasible objection to this method of
travelling, or dislike cleanliness in a travelling companion? I may not
have the charm of an Italian peasant, but I can procure you plenty of
information.”
“Of course,” said Anne quietly, “I much prefer travelling with you, but
I see you are going to make me say what I don’t want to have to say. I
simply can’t afford to travel very grandly, and I’m not going to let you
pay for my travels. After all, Toby, I’ve been good about money, haven’t
I? I’ve let you pay for everything else.”
Anne had no idea that this would make Toby furious. He gave the hovering
waiter a look that drove him into the kitchen like a scourge, and even
checked the plaintive tones of the old man with the zither. “May I ask
you to tell me,” he asked Anne in icy tones, “as an old friend of your
parents and of Norman’s, what your present income is?”
“Oh, Toby!” she cried, “as if I wouldn’t tell you because you are mine!”
“Your friend!” he said bitterly, “when you fence me off from your
concerns as if I were a stranger! A man can stand a good deal, Anne, if
he has to, but I’m damned if I’m going to stand your penury!”
“It’s exactly the kind of income,” said Anne reassuringly, “that I like.
Before the war people were rich on half of it. They——”
“Look here, Anne,” interrupted Toby, “I’ll shake you if you don’t tell
me at once how little it is!”
“Two hundred a year,” Anne admitted desperately. There was a long
silence. Anne believed that Toby’s odd and sudden fury had dropped. She
did not know that he was taking it in slowly and permanently, with every
breath he drew. “I wouldn’t take any more from Norman,” she explained
timidly, “because he only makes fifteen hundred a year and Nina is very
delicate. I want them, you see, most awfully, to have children, and it’s
difficult to bring up even two children on much less than that nowadays.
I can manage beautifully by myself. Ordinarily, of course, I shan’t
travel, but I had savings for this time abroad. There isn’t really
anything to make a fuss about.”
“No, of course not,” said Toby drily. “How much did that black filmy
thing you’ve got on cost, and the lace hat and those shoes? D’you
suppose because a man isn’t married he doesn’t know what a woman spends
on her clothes? You are a good manager, Anne, but if you tell me that
you spent less than two hundred a year on yours, I shan’t believe you!”
“Oh yes, I did _then_,” agreed Anne impatiently, “one dresses for one’s
position. But don’t you see I haven’t got a position now, so that I
shan’t need to dress for it?”
Toby said “Waiter,” and the Maître d’Hôtel appeared as if shot from a
catapult. “The account,” said Toby grimly, then he turned with a touch
of the same restrained violence to Anne. “You’ll go first class with me
to Belluno anyhow,” he said. “What on earth do your people say?”
“It doesn’t matter what they say,” Anne replied wearily. “If one began
to care about that, where would one be? You shall pay for my ticket this
time if you like—but it’s silly to make such a fuss about what one
minds, for oneself, least.”
“I’m sorry, Anne,” said Toby in a gentler voice. “You see, I only make a
fuss about what I can help. It isn’t any use making a fuss about what I
can’t help, is it?”
Anne gave him her eyes again. They had the steady cheerfulness, which
perhaps of all her expressions cut him sharpest and closest to the
heart. “But after all,” she said, “there really isn’t anything at all to
make a fuss about, is there? I am particularly lucky in many ways. I
can’t tell you how glad I am you are coming to Madonna di Campiglio. It
just makes all the difference.”