HE had the literary sense, but he had it as an inverted instinct. He had
a keen perception of the dramatically fitting in art, but no
counteracting vision of the fitting in life. Life and art, indeed, he
found from his earliest years difficult to disentwine, and later,
impossible to disentangle. And to disentangle and disentwine them became
at last the point of honour to him.
He first knew that he loved her on the occasion of her "coming of age
party." His people and hers lived in the same sombre London square:
their Haslemere gardens were divided only by a sunk fence. He had known
her all his life. Her coming of age succeeded but by a couple of days
his return from three years of lazy philosophy--study in Germany--and
the sight of her took his breath away. In the time-honoured _cliche_ of
the hurried novelist--too hurried to turn a new phrase for an idea as
old as the new life of spring--he had left a child: he found a woman.
She wore a soft satiny-white gown, that showed gleams of rose colour
through its folds. There were pink hollyhock blossoms in the bright
brown of her hair. Her eyes were shining with the excitement of this
festival of which she was the goddess. He lost his head, danced with her
five times, and carried away a crumpled hollyhock bloom that had fallen
from her hair during the last Lancers, through which he had watched her.
All his dances with her had been waltzes. It was not till, alone again
at his hotel, he pulled out the hollyhock flower with his ball programme
that he awoke to a complete sense of the insipid flatness of the new
situation.
He had fallen in love--was madly _epris_, at any rate--and the girl was
the girl whose charms, whose fortune, whose general suitability as a
match for him had been dinned into his ears ever since he was a callow
boy at Oxford, and she a long-black-silk-legged, short-frocked tom-boy
of fourteen. Everyone had always said that it was the obvious thing. And
now he had, for once, done exactly what was expected of him, and his
fine literary sense revolted. The worst of all was that she seemed not
quite to hate him. Better, a thousand times better, that he should have
loved and longed, and never won a smile from her--that he should have
sacrificed something, anything, and gone his lonely way. But she had
smiled on him, undoubtedly she had smiled, and he did not want to play
the part so long ago assigned to him by his people. He wanted to be
Sidney Carton. Darnay's had always seemed to him the inferior role.
Yet he could not keep his thoughts from her, and for what was left of
the year his days and nights were a restless see-saw of longing and
repulsion, advance and retreat. His moods were reflected in hers, but
always an interview later; that is to say, if he were cold on Tuesday
she on Thursday would be colder. If on Thursday he grew earnest, Sunday
would find her kind. But he, by that time, was frigid. So that they
never, after the first wildly beautiful evening when their hearts went
out to each other in a splendour of primitive frankness, met in moods
that chimed.
This safe-guarded him. It irritated her. And it most successfully
bewitched them both.
His people and her people looked on, and were absolutely and sadly
convinced that--as her brother put it to his uncle--it was "no go."
Thereupon, a certain young-old cotton broker appearing on the scene and
bringing gifts with him, her people began to put pressure on her. She
loathed the cotton-broker, and said so. One afternoon everyone was by
careful accident got out of the way, and the cotton-broker caught her
alone. That night there was a scene. Her father talked a little too much
of obedience and of duty, her mother played the hysterical symphony with
the loud pedal hard down, and next morning the girl had vanished,
leaving the conventional note of farewell on the pincushion.
Now the two families, being on all accounts close allies, had bought
jointly a piece of land near the Littlestone golf links, and on it had
built a bungalow, occupied by members of either house in turn, according
to any friendly arrangement that happened to commend itself. But at this
time of the year folk were keeping Christmas season dismally in their
town houses.
It was on the day when the cotton-broker made his failure that the whole
world seemed suddenly worthless to the man with the hollyhock bloom in
his pocket-book, because he had met her at a dance, and he had been
tender, but she, reflecting his mood of their last meeting, had been
glacial. So he lied roundly to his people, and told them that he was
going to spend a week or two with an old chum who was staying up for the
vacation at Cambridge, and instead, he chose the opposite point of the
compass, and took train to New Romney, and walked over to the squat,
one-storied bungalow near the sea. Here he let himself in with the
family latch-key, and set to work, with the help of a box from the
stores, borne behind him with his portmanteau on a hand-cart, to keep
Christmas by himself. This, at least, was not literary. It was not in
the least what a person in a book would do. He lit a fire in the
dining-room, and the chimney was damp and smoked abominably, so that
when he had fed full on tinned meats he was fain to let the fire go out
and to sit in his fur-lined overcoat by the be-cindered grate, now fast
growing cold, and smoke pipe after pipe of gloomy reflection. He
thought of it all. The cursed countenance which his people were ready to
give to the match that he couldn't make--her maddening indecisions--his
own idiotic variableness. He had lighted the lamp, but it smelt vilely,
and he blew it out, and did not light candles because it was too much
trouble. So the early winter dusk deepened into night, and the bitter
north wind had brought the snow, and it drifted now in feather-soft
touches against the windows.
He thought of the good warm dining-room in Russell Square--of the
gathering of aunts and uncles and cousins, uncongenial, perhaps, but
still human, and he shivered in his fur-lined coat and his icy solitude,
damning himself for the fool he knew he was.
And even as he damned, his breath was stopped, and his heart leaped at
the sound, faint but unmistakable, of a key in the front door. If a man
exist not too remote from his hairy ancestors to have lost the habit of
the pricking ear, he was that man. He pricked his ears, so far as the
modern man may, and listened.
The key grated in the lock--grated and turned; the door was opened, and
banged again. Something was set down in the little passage, set down
thumpingly and wholly without precaution. He heard a hand move along the
partition of match-boarding. He heard the latch of the kitchen door rise
and fall--and he heard the scrape and spurt of a struck match.
He sat still. He would catch this burglar red-handed.
Through the ill-fitting partitions of the jerry-built bungalow he could
hear the intruder moving recklessly in the kitchen. The legs of chairs
and tables grated on the brick floor. He took off his shoes, rose, and
crept out through the passage towards the kitchen door. It stood ajar. A
clear-cut slice of light came from it. Treading softly in his stockinged
feet, he came to it and looked in. One candle, stuck in a tea-saucer,
burned on the table. A weak blue-and-yellow glimmer came from some
sticks in the bottom of the fireplace.
Kneeling in front of this, breathless with the endeavour to blow the
damp sticks to flame, crouched the burglar. A woman. A girl. She had
laid aside hat and cloak. The first sight of her was like a whirlwind
sweeping over heart and brain. For the bright brown hair that the
candle-light lingered in was like Her dear brown hair--and when she rose
suddenly, and turned towards the door, his heart stood still, for it was
She--her very self.
She had not seen him. He retreated, in all the stillness his tortured
nerves allowed, and sat down again in the fur coat and the dining-room.
She had not heard him. He was, for some moments, absolutely stunned,
then he crept to the window. In the poignant stillness of the place he
could hear the heavy flakes of snow dabbing softly at the glass.
She was here. She, like him, had fled to this refuge, confident in its
desertion at this season by both the families who shared a right to it.
She was there--he was there. Why had she fled? The question did not wait
to be answered; it sank before the other question. What was he to do?
The whole literary soul of the man cried out against either of the
obvious courses of action.
"I can go in," he said, "and surprise her, and tell her I love her, and
then walk out with dignified propriety, and leave her alone here.
That's conventional and dramatic. Or I can sneak off without her knowing
I've been here at all, and leave her to spend the night unprotected in
this infernal frozen dog-hutch. That's conventional enough, heaven
knows! But what's the use of being a reasonable human being with
free-will if you can't do anything but the literarily and romantically
obvious?"
Here a sudden noise thrilled him. Next moment he drew a long breath of
relief. She had but dropped a gridiron. As it crashed and settled down
with a rhythmic rattle on the kitchen flags, the thought flowed through
him like a river of Paradise. "If she did love me--if I loved her--what
an hour and what a moment this would be!"
Meantime she, her hands helpless with cold, was dropping clattering
gridirons not five yards from him.
Suppose he went out to the kitchen and suddenly announced himself!
How flat--how obvious!
Suppose he crept quietly away and went to the inn at New Romney!
How desperately flat! How more than obvious!
Suppose he--but the third course refused itself to the desperate clutch
of his drowning imagination, and left him clinging to the bare straw of
a question. What should he do?
Suddenly the really knightly and unconventional idea occurred to him, an
idea that would save him from the pit of the obvious, yawning on each
side.
There was a bicycle shed, where, also, wood was stored and coal, and
lumber of all sorts. He would pass the night there, warm in his fur
coat, and his determination not to let his conduct be shaped by what
people in books would have done. And in the morning--strong with the
great renunciation of all the possibilities that this evening's meeting
held--he would come and knock at the front door--just like anybody
else--and--_qui vivra verra_. At least, he would be watching over her
rest--and would be able to protect the house from tramps.
Very gently and cautiously, all in the dark, he pushed his bag behind
the sofa, covered the stores box with a liberty cloth from a side
table, crept out softly, and softly opened the front door; it opened
softly, that is, but it shut with an unmistakable click that stung in
his ears as he stood on one foot on the snowy doorstep struggling with
the knots of his shoe laces.
The bicycle shed was uncompromisingly dark, and smelt of coal sacks and
paraffin. He found a corner--between the coals and the wood--and sat
down on the floor.
"Bother the fur coat," was his answer to the doubt whether coal dust and
broken twigs were a good down-setting for that triumph of the Bond
Street art. There he sat, full of a chastened joy at the thought that he
watched over her--that he, sleepless, untiring, was on guard, ready, at
an instant's warning, to spring to her aid, should she need protection.
The thought was mightily soothing. The shed was cold. The fur coat was
warm. In five minutes he was sleeping peacefully as any babe.
When he awoke it was with the light of a big horn lantern in his eyes,
and in his ears the snapping of wood.
She was there--stooping beside the heaped faggots, breaking off twigs to
fill the lap of her up-gathered blue gown; the shimmery silk of her
petticoat gleamed greenly. He was partly hidden by a derelict bicycle
and a watering-can.
He hardly dared to draw breath.
Composedly she broke the twigs. Then like a flash she turned towards
him.
"Who's there?" she said.
An inspiration came to him--and this, at least, was not flat or obvious.
He writhed into the darkness behind a paraffin cask, slipped out of his
fur coat, and plunged his hands in the dust of the coal.
"Don't be 'ard on a pore cove, mum," he mumbled, desperately rubbing the
coal dust on to his face; "you wouldn't go for to turn a dawg out on a
night like this, let alone a pore chap outer work!"
Even as he spoke he admired the courage of the girl. Alone, miles from
any other house, she met a tramp in an outhouse as calmly as though he
had been a fly in the butter.
"You've no business here, you know," she said briskly. "What did you
come for?"
"Shelter, mum--I won't take nothing as don't belong to me--not so much
as a lump of coal, mum, not if it was ever so!"
She turned her head. He almost thought she smiled.
"But I can't have tramps sleeping here," she said.
"It's not as if I was a reg'lar tramp," he said, warming to his part as
he had often done on the stage in his A.D.C. days. "I'm a respectable
working-man, mum, as 'as seen better days."
"Are you hungry?" she said. "I'll give you something to eat before you
go if you'll come to the door in five minutes."
He could not refuse--but when she was gone into the house he could bolt.
So he said--
"Now may be the blessing! It's starving I am, mum, and on Christmas
Eve!"
This time she did smile: it was beyond a doubt. He had always thought
her smile charming. She turned at the door, and her glance followed the
lantern's rays as they pierced the darkness where he crouched.
The moment he heard the house door shut, he sprang up, and lifted the
fur coat gingerly to the wood-block. Flight, instant flight! Yet how
could he present himself at New Romney with a fur coat and a face like a
collier's? He had drawn a bucket of water from the well earlier in the
day; some would be left; it was close by the back door. He tiptoed over
the snow and washed, and washed, and washed. He was drying face and
hands with a pocket-handkerchief that seemed strangely small and cold
when the door opened suddenly, and there, close by him, was she,
silhouetted against the warm glow of fire and candles.
"Come in," she said; "you can't possibly see to wash out there."
Before he knew it her hand was on his arm, and she had drawn him to the
warmth and light.
He looked at her--but her eyes were on the fire.
"I'll give you some warm water, and you can wash at the sink," she said,
closing the door and taking the kettle from the fire.
He caught sight of his face in the square of looking-glass over the sink
tap.
Was it worth while to go on pretending? Yet his face was still very
black. And she evidently had not recognised him. Perhaps--surely she
would have the good taste to retire while the tramp washed, so that he
could take his coat off? Then he could take flight, and the situation
would be saved from absolute farce.
But when she had poured the hot water into a bowl she sat down in the
Windsor chair by the fire and gazed into the hot coals.
He washed.
He washed till he was quite clean.
He dried face and hands on the rough towel.
He dried them till they were scarlet and shone. But he dared not turn
around.
There seemed no way out of this save by the valley of humiliation. Still
she sat looking into the fire.
As he washed he saw with half a retroverted eye the round table spread
with china and glass and silver.
"As I live--it's set for two!" he told himself. And, in an instant,
jealousy answered, once and for all, the questions he had been asking
himself since August.
"Aren't you clean yet?" she said at last.
How could he speak?
"Aren't you clean _yet_?" she repeated, and called him by his name. He
turned then quickly enough. She was leaning back in the chair laughing
at him.
"How did you know me?" he asked angrily.
"Your tramp-voice might have deceived me," she said, "you did do it most
awfully well! But, you see, I'd been looking at you for ages before you
woke."
"Then good night," said he.
"Good night!" said she; "but it's not seven yet!"
"You're expecting someone," he said, pointing dramatically to the table.
"Oh, _that_!" she said; "yes--that was for--for the poor man as had seen
better days! There's nothing but eggs--but I couldn't turn a dog from my
door on such a night--till I'd fed it!"
"Do you really mean--?"
"Why not?"
"It's glorious!"
"It's a picnic."
"But?" said he.
"Oh--well! Go if you like!" said she.
It was not only eggs: it was all sorts of things from that stores box.
They ate, and they talked. He told her that he had been bored in town
and had sought relief in solitude. That, she told him, was her case
also. He told her how he had heard her come in, and how he had hated to
take either the obvious course of following her to the kitchen, saying
"How do you do?" and retiring to New Romney; or the still more obvious
course of sneaking away without asking her how she did. And he told her
how he had decided to keep watch over her from the bicycle shed. And how
the coal-black inspiration had come to him. And she laughed.
"That was much more literary than anything else you could have thought
of," said she; "it was exactly like a book. And oh--you've no idea how
funny you looked."
They both laughed, and there was a silence.
"Do you know," he said, "I can hardly believe that this is the first
meal we've ever had alone together? It seems as though--"
"It _is_ funny," she said, smiling hurriedly at him.
He did not smile. He said: "I want you to tell me why you were so
angel-good--why did you let me stay? Why did you lay the pretty table
for two?"
"Because we've never been in the same mood at the same time," she said
desperately; "and somehow I thought we should be this evening."
"What mood?" he asked inexorably.
"Why--jolly--cheerful," she said, with the slightest possible
hesitation.
"I see."
There was another silence. Then she said in a voice that fluttered a
little--
"My old governess, Miss Pettingill--you remember old Pet? Well, she's
coming by the train that gets in at three. I wired to her from town. She
ought to be here by now--"
"Ought she?" he cried, pushing back his chair and coming towards
her--"ought she? Then, by heaven! before she comes I'm going to tell you
something--"
"No, don't!" she cried. "You'll spoil everything. Go and sit down again.
You shall! I insist! Let _me_ tell _you_! I always swore I would some
day!"
"Why?" said he, and sat down.
"Because I knew _you'd_ never make up your mind to tell _me_--"
"To tell you what?"
"_Anything_--for fear you should have to say it in the same way someone
else had said it before!"
"Said what?"
"Anything! Sit still! Now _I'm_ going to tell _you_."
She came slowly round the table and knelt on one knee beside him, her
elbows on the arm of his chair.
"You've never had the courage to make up your mind to anything," she
began.
"Is that what you were going to tell me?" he asked, and looked in her
eyes till she dropped their lids.
"No--yes--no! I haven't anything to tell you really. Good night."
"Aren't you going to tell me?"
"There isn't anything to tell," she said.
"Then I'll tell you," said he.
She started up, and the little brass knocker's urgent summons resounded
through the bungalow.
"Here she is!" she cried.
He also sprang to his feet.
"And we haven't told each other anything!" he said.
"Haven't we? Ah, no--don't! Let me go! There--she's knocking again. You
must let me go!"
He let her slip through his arms.
At the door she paused to flash a soft, queer smile at him.
"It _was_ I who told you, after all!" she said. "Aren't you glad?
Because that wasn't a bit literary."
"You didn't. I told you," he retorted.
"Not you!" she said scornfully. "That would have been too obvious."