"But it's raining heavily now, and, of course, you can't stay out in
the streets any longer. Here are my rooms--just here. Why shouldn't
you step in and wait? I shall have to go upstairs for an overcoat
anyway."
Bessie showed no embarrassment, and Victor felt at first that what he
was doing was something a little courageous and rather noble. But as
soon as they reached the door, and he began to fumble with his key to
open it, he became nervous and a voice within him seemed to say,
"Take care!"
"Come in," he said bravely, but when Bessie brushed him on entering
the house he trembled, and from that moment onwards he was conscious
of a struggle between his blood and his brain.
As he was closing the door on the inside he saw that there was a
letter in the letter-box at the back of it, but he left it there, and
held out his hand to Bessie to guide her up the stairs, saying:
"It's dark here. Give me your hand. Now come this way. Don't be
afraid. You shan't fall. I'll take care of you."
There were two short flights and then a landing, from which a door
opened on either side--on the right to Victor's offices, on the left
to his living-rooms. He opened the door on the left, leaving Bessie
to stand on the landing until he had found matches and lit the gas.
He was long in finding them, and while rummaging in the dark room he
heard the girl's quick breathing behind him.
"Ah, here they are at last!" he cried in a tremulous voice, and then
he lit up a branch under a white globe on one side of the mantelpiece.
"Now you can come in," he said, and turning to the window he loosened
the cord of the Venetian blind and it came clattering down.
Bessie stepped into the room. It was a warm and cosy chamber, with a
thick Persian carpet, two easy chairs, an open bookcase full of law
books, a desk-table with ink-stand, writing-pad and reading-lamp
(looking so orderly as to suggest that no work was done there) and a
large pier-glass with a small bust of a pretty Neapolitan girl and a
little silver-cased clock in front of it. The clock was striking one.
"One o'clock! It was stupid to stay out in the streets so long,
wasn't it?"
"Yes."
"Your hat is dripping. Hadn't you better take it off for the few
minutes you'll have to stay?"
"Should I?"
"Do; and I'll light the gas-fire--a bachelor has to have gas-fires,
you know."
While he was down on his knees lighting the fire, and regulating its
burning from blue to red, Bessie, with trembling fingers, was drawing
the pins out of her hat--the wonderful new hat of a few hours ago,
now wet and bedraggled. In doing so she pulled down her hair and
made a faint cry,
"Oh!"
"Don't mind that at this time of night," said Victor. But at sight
of the girl's face, now framed in its shower of waving black hair,
his nervousness increased. He had always thought her a good-looking
girl, but he had never known before that she was beautiful.
"My coat is wet, too. I must change it," he said, getting up and
going towards his bedroom door. "It would be foolish to put an
overcoat over a wet jacket, wouldn't it?"
"Yes."
"But your blouse seems to be soaking. Why shouldn't you take it off
and dry it at the fire while I'm away at Mrs. Quayle's?"
"Should I?"
"Why not?"
While he was in the inner room, opening and closing his wardrobe, and
changing his wet coat for a dry one, he kept on talking. Mrs. Quayle
was a good creature who had lost her husband in that January gale a
few years ago. She would take Bessie in--he was sure she would. But
this was only to drown the clamour of two voices within himself, one
of which was saying, "Must you go?" and the other "Certainly you
must! Be a man and play the game, for God's sake."
When he returned to the sitting-room the breath was almost smitten
out of his body by what he saw. Bessie had taken off her blouse, and
was kneeling by the fire to dry it. She did not raise her eyes to
his, and after a first glance he did not look at her. Opening the
outer door to the landing, where the hat-rail stood, he pulled on a
cap and dragged on an ulster, saying, in a nervous voice,
"It's only a hop-skip-and-a-jump to Mrs. Quayle's. I shall be back
presently."
Suddenly there came a flash of lightning which lit up the dark
bedroom, and then a clap of thunder, loud and long, which rattled the
window frames.
"It would be foolish to go out in a storm like that, wouldn't it?" he
said.
"'Deed it would," said Bessie. She had risen with a start, but now
she knelt again and held her steaming blouse before the fire.
Stowell took off his cap and ulster and dropped them on to a chair.
Then he walked about the room, trying to keep his eyes from the girl,
and to fill the difficult silence by talking on indifferent
subjects--other storms he had seen in other countries.
After a while the thunder went off in the direction of Ireland, its
echo becoming fainter and fainter in the sonority of the sea.
"It's gone--now I can go," he said.
But hardly had he taken up his cap again when the rain, which had
ceased for a moment, came in a sudden torrent.
"Only a thunder shower--it will soon be over," he said.
But the rain went on and on. Good Lord, were the very forces of
nature conspiring to keep him there all night?
It was half-past one by the clock on the mantelpiece, and the rain
was still pelting on the pavement of the street outside with a sound
like that of an army in retreat. Stowell was feeling alternately hot
and cold, and the voice within him was saying, "Must you go? You
would be drenched through before you got back from Mrs. Quayle's, and
the girl would be as wet in getting there as if you had dropped her
into the sea." After a few minutes more he said,
"Bessie, I'm afraid we shall have to give up the idea of going to
Mrs. Quayle's."
"Yes?"
"But you can stay here, and I can go over to the Mitre."
"No, no."
"It's nothing--only two yards away."
Johnny Kelly, the boots, slept on the ground floor--he could get him
up without ringing the bell. Of course he would have to tell the old
man some cock-and-bull story--that he had lost his key or something.
"But it's the very thing. I wonder I didn't think of it before."
He half hoped and half feared she might make some further protest.
But she did not, so he picked up his cap and ulster and was making
for the door when he thought of the gas. Would Bessie, who had been
brought up in a thatched cottage, know how to put it out?
"Well, no, no," she stammered.
"It's quite simple. You turn the tap, so...."
He had to kneel by her side to show her, and he was feeling the warm
glow he had felt in the glen.
"But not being used of it...."
"Then I know--the reading-lamp!"
He leapt up to light it, and having done so, he turned out the branch
under the white globe, saying, with a laugh, it was lucky he had
thought of the lamp, for if old Johnny had seen the light in the
window the story of the key would have sounded thin, wouldn't it?
Then she laughed too, and they laughed together, but their laughter
broke into a sharp and breathless silence.
He carried the lamp into the bedroom, put it on the table by the
bedside and then pulled down the white window-blind, breaking the
cord by the tug of his trembling fingers. He was feeling as if
another storm, a storm of emotions, were now thundering within him.
"Must you go?" "You must! You shall! Good Lord, could a man of any
conscience .... Never! Never!"
When he returned to the sitting-room Bessie had risen to her feet.
She was standing at the opposite side of the mantelpiece and the
intoxicating red light of the fire was over her. Stowell thought he
had never seen anything so beautiful. But he could not trust himself
to look twice.
"You'll be all right here, Bessie," he said, in a loud voice,
snatching up his coat and cap and making for the door. "You can let
yourself out of the house as early as you like in the morning; and if
you decide to go back to that damned old devil at Baldromma you can
tell him from me where you passed the night, and I'll stand up for
you--why shouldn't I?"
Then he heard a breathless cry behind him, and then the words,
"Must you go?"
He stopped and turned. Was it Bessie who had spoken? She had taken
a step towards him, was breathing irregularly and looking at him with
gleaming eyes.
He felt as if the floor were rocking under his feet, as if the walls
were reeling round him, as if he were seeing the face of woman for
the first time.
At the next moment they were clasped in each other's arms.