The big pink roses of the chintzes and the gold bordered bowls of the
black mirrors looked at you rememberingly.
There was a sort of brutality about it. To come here and be happy, to
come here in order to be happy, when _they_ were gone; when you had hurt
them both so horribly.
"I'm sitting in her chair," she thought.
Richard Nicholson sat, in a purely temporary attitude, by the table in
the window. Against the window-pane she could see his side face drawn in
a brilliant, furred line of light. His moustache twitched under the
shadow of his nose. He was smiling to himself as he wrote the letter to
Mamma.
There was a brutality about that, too. She wondered if he had seen old
Baxter's pinched mouth and sliding eyes when he took the letter. He was
watching him as he went out, waiting for the click of the latch.
"It's all right," he said. "They expect you. They think it's work."
He settled himself (in Mr. Sutcliffe's chair).
"It's the best way," he said. "I want to see you and I don't want to
frighten your mother. She _is_ afraid of me."
"No. She's afraid of the whole thing. She wishes it hadn't happened.
She's afraid of what'll happen next. I can't make her see that nothing
need happen next."
"She's cleverer than you think. She sees that something's got to happen
next. I couldn't stand another evening like the last."
"You couldn't," she agreed. "You couldn't possibly."
"We can't exactly go on like--like this, you know."
"Don't let's think about it. Here we are. Now this minute. It's an hour
and a half till dinner time. Why, even if I go at nine we've got three
hours."
"That's not enough.... You talk as though we could think or not think, as
we chose. Even if we left off thinking we should have to go on living.
Your mother knows that."
"I don't think she knows more than we do."
"She knows enough to frighten her. She knows what _I_ want.... I want to
marry you, Mary."
(This then was what she had been afraid of. But Mamma wouldn't have
thought of it.)
"I didn't think you wanted to do that. Why should you?"
"It's the usual thing, isn't it? When you care enough."
"_Do_ you care enough?"
"More than enough. Don't you? ... It's no use saying you don't. I know
you do."
"Can you tell?"
"Yes."
"Do I go about showing it?"
"No; there hasn't been time. You only began yesterday."
"When? _When_?"
"In the hotel. When you stopped talking suddenly. And when I gave you
your book. You looked as though you wished I hadn't. As though I'd
dragged you away from somewhere where you were happy."
"Yes.... If it only began yesterday we can stop it. Stop it before it
gets worse."
"I can't. I've been at it longer than that."
"How long?"
"Oh--I don't know. It might have been that first week. After I'd found
out that there was peace when you came into the room; and no peace when
you went out. When you're there peace oozes out of you and soaks into me
all the time."
"Does it feel like that?"
"Just like that."
"But--if it feels like that now, we should spoil it by marrying."
"Oh no we shouldn't."
"Yes.... If it's peace you want. There won't be _any_ peace.... Besides,
you don't know. Do you remember telling me about your uncle?"
"What's he got to do with it?"
"And that girl. You said I couldn't have known anything about it.... You
said I couldn't even have come in for the sad end of it."
"Well?"
"Well.... I did.... I _was_ the sad end of it.... The girl was me."
"But you told me it wasn't true."
...He had got up. He wanted to stand. To stand up high above you.
"You _know_," he said, "you told me it wasn't true."
* * * * *
They would have to go through with it. Dining. Drinking coffee. Talking
politely; talking intelligently; talking. Villiers de L'Isle Adam,
Villiers de L'Isle Adam. "The symbolistes are finished ... Do you know
Jean Richepin? 'Il était une fois un pauvre gars Qui aimait celle qui ne
l'aimait pas'? ... 'Le coeur de ta mère pour mon chien.'" He thinks I
lied. "You ought to read Henri de Regnier and Remy de Gourmont. You'd
like them." ... Le coeur de ta mère. He thinks I lied. Goodness knows
what he doesn't think.
The end of it would come at nine o'clock.
* * * * *
"Are you still angry?"
He laughed. A dreadful sniffling laugh that came through his nostrils.
"_I_'m not. If I were I should let you go on thinking I lied. You see, I
didn't know it was true. I didn't know I was the girl."
"You didn't _know_?"
"How could I when he never said a word?"
"I can't understand your not seeing it."
"Would you like me better if I had seen it?"
"N-no.... But I wish you hadn't told me. Why did you?"
"I was only trying to break the shock. You thought I couldn't be old
enough to be that girl. I meant you to do a sum in your head: 'If she was
that girl and she was seventeen, then she must be thirty-nine now.'"
"Is _that_ what you smashed up our evening for?"
"Yes."
"I shouldn't care if you were fifty-nine. I'm forty-five."
"You're sorry. You're sorry all the same."
"I'm sorry because there's so little time, Mary. Sorry I'm six years
older than you...."
Nine o'clock.
She stood up. He turned to her. He made a queer sound. A sound like a
deep, tearing sigh.
* * * * *
"If I were twenty I couldn't marry you, because of Mamma. That's one
thing. You can't marry Mamma."
"We can talk about your mother afterwards."
"No. Now. There isn't any afterwards. There's only this minute that
we're in. And perhaps the next.... You haven't thought what it'll be
like. You can't leave London because of your work. I can't leave this
place because of Mamma. She'd be miserable in London. I can't leave
her. She hasn't anybody but me. I promised my brother I'd look after
her.... She'd have to live with me."
"Why not?"
"You couldn't live with her."
"I could, Mary."
"Not you. You said you couldn't stand another evening like yesterday....
_All the evenings would be like yesterday_.... Please.... Even if there
wasn't Mamma, you don't want to marry. If you'd wanted to you'd have
done it long ago, instead of waiting till you're forty-five. Think of
two people tied up together for life whether they both like it or not.
It isn't even as if one of them could be happy. How could you if the
other wasn't? Look at the Sutcliffes. Think how he hated it.... And _he_
was a kind, patient man. You know you wouldn't dream of marrying me if
you didn't think it was the only possible way."
"Well--isn't it?"
"No. The one impossible way. I'd do anything for you but that....
Anything."
"Would you, Mary? Would you have the courage?"
"It would take infinitely more courage to marry you. We should be risking
more. All the beautiful things. If it wasn't for Mamma.... But there _is_
Mamma. So--you see."
She thought: "He _hasn't_ kissed me. He _hasn't_ held me in his arms.
He'll be all right. It won't hurt him."