ON the evening that succeeded this apparently pointless encounter he had
an interview more conclusive with Mrs. Bundy, for whose shrewd and
philosophic view of life he had several times expressed, even to the good
woman herself, a considerable relish. The situation at Jersey Villas
(Mrs. Ryves had suddenly flown off to Dover) was such as to create in him
a desire for moral support, and there was a kind of domestic
determination in Mrs. Bundy which seemed, in general, to advertise it.
He had asked for her on coming in, but had been told she was absent for
the hour; upon which he had addressed himself mechanically to the task of
doing up his dishonoured manuscript—the ingenious fiction about which Mr.
Locket had been so stupid—for further adventures and not improbable
defeats. He passed a restless, ineffective afternoon, asking himself if
his genius were a horrid delusion, looking out of his window for
something that didn’t happen, something that seemed now to be the advent
of a persuasive Mr. Locket and now the return, from an absence more
disappointing even than Mrs. Bundy’s, of his interesting neighbour of the
parlours. He was so nervous and so depressed that he was unable even to
fix his mind on the composition of the note with which, on its next
peregrination, it was necessary that his manuscript should be
accompanied. He was too nervous to eat, and he forgot even to dine; he
forgot to light his candles, he let his fire go out, and it was in the
melancholy chill of the late dusk that Mrs. Bundy, arriving at last with
his lamp, found him extended moodily upon his sofa. She had been
informed that he wished to speak to her, and as she placed on the
malodorous luminary an oily shade of green pasteboard she expressed the
friendly hope that there was nothing wrong with his ’ealth.
The young man rose from his couch, pulling himself together sufficiently
to reply that his health was well enough but that his spirits were down
in his hoots. He had a strong disposition to “draw” his landlady on the
subject of Mrs. Ryves, as well as a vivid conviction that she constituted
a theme as to which Mrs. Bundy would require little pressure to tell him
even more than she knew. At the same time he hated to appear to pry into
the secrets of his absent friend; to discuss her with their bustling
hostess resembled too much for his taste a gossip with a tattling servant
about an unconscious employer. He left out of account however Mrs.
Bundy’s knowledge of the human heart, for it was this fine principle that
broke down the barriers after he had reflected reassuringly that it was
not meddling with Mrs. Ryves’s affairs to try and find out if she struck
such an observer as happy. Crudely, abruptly, even a little blushingly,
he put the direct question to Mrs. Bundy, and this led tolerably straight
to another question, which, on his spirit, sat equally heavy (they were
indeed but different phases of the same), and which the good woman
answered with expression when she ejaculated: “Think it a liberty for you
to run down for a few hours? If she do, my dear sir, just send her to me
to talk to!” As regards happiness indeed she warned Baron against
imposing too high a standard on a young thing who had been through so
much, and before he knew it he found himself, without the responsibility
of choice, in submissive receipt of Mrs. Bundy’s version of this
experience. It was an interesting picture, though it had its
infirmities, one of them congenital and consisting of the fact that it
had sprung essentially from the virginal brain of Miss Teagle.
Amplified, edited, embellished by the richer genius of Mrs. Bundy, who
had incorporated with it and now liberally introduced copious
interleavings of Miss Teagle’s own romance, it gave Peter Baron much food
for meditation, at the same time that it only half relieved his curiosity
about the causes of the charming woman’s underlying strangeness. He
sounded this note experimentally in Mrs. Bundy’s ear, but it was easy to
see that it didn’t reverberate in her fancy. She had no idea of the
picture it would have been natural for him to desire that Mrs. Ryves
should present to him, and she was therefore unable to estimate the
points in respect to which his actual impression was irritating. She had
indeed no adequate conception of the intellectual requirements of a young
man in love. She couldn’t tell him why their faultless friend was so
isolated, so unrelated, so nervously, shrinkingly proud. On the other
hand she could tell him (he knew it already) that she had passed many
years of her life in the acquisition of accomplishments at a seat of
learning no less remote than Boulogne, and that Miss Teagle had been
intimately acquainted with the late Mr. Everard Ryves, who was a “most
rising” young man in the city, not making any year less than his clear
twelve hundred. “Now that he isn’t there to make them, his mourning
widow can’t live as she had then, can she?” Mrs. Bundy asked.
Baron was not prepared to say that she could, but he thought of another
way she might live as he sat, the next day, in the train which rattled
him down to Dover. The place, as he approached it, seemed bright and
breezy to him; his roamings had been neither far enough nor frequent
enough to make the cockneyfied coast insipid. Mrs. Bundy had of course
given him the address he needed, and on emerging from the station he was
on the point of asking what direction he should take. His attention
however at this moment was drawn away by the bustle of the departing
boat. He had been long enough shut up in London to be conscious of
refreshment in the mere act of turning his face to Paris. He wandered
off to the pier in company with happier tourists and, leaning on a rail,
watched enviously the preparation, the agitation of foreign travel. It
was for some minutes a foretaste of adventure; but, ah, when was he to
have the very draught? He turned away as he dropped this interrogative
sigh, and in doing so perceived that in another part of the pier two
ladies and a little boy were gathered with something of the same
wistfulness. The little boy indeed happened to look round for a moment,
upon which, with the keenness of the predatory age, he recognised in our
young man a source of pleasures from which he lately had been weaned. He
bounded forward with irrepressible cries of “Geegee!” and Peter lifted
him aloft for an embrace. On putting him down the pilgrim from Jersey
Villas stood confronted with a sensibly severe Miss Teagle, who had
followed her little charge. “What’s the matter with the old woman?” he
asked himself as he offered her a hand which she treated as the merest
detail. Whatever it was, it was (and very properly, on the part of a
loyal _suivante_) the same complaint as that of her employer, to whom,
from a distance, for Mrs. Ryves had not advanced an inch, he flourished
his hat as she stood looking at him with a face that he imagined rather
white. Mrs. Ryves’s response to this salutation was to shift her
position in such a manner as to appear again absorbed in the Calais boat.
Peter Baron, however, kept hold of the child, whom Miss Teagle artfully
endeavoured to wrest from him—a policy in which he was aided by Sidney’s
own rough but instinctive loyalty; and he was thankful for the happy
effect of being dragged by his jubilant friend in the very direction in
which he had tended for so many hours. Mrs. Ryves turned once more as he
came near, and then, from the sweet, strained smile with which she asked
him if he were on his way to France, he saw that if she had been angry at
his having followed her she had quickly got over it.
“No, I’m not crossing; but it came over me that you might be, and that’s
why I hurried down—to catch you before you were off.”
“Oh, we can’t go—more’s the pity; but why, if we could,” Mrs. Ryves
inquired, “should you wish to prevent it?”
“Because I’ve something to ask you first, something that may take some
time.” He saw now that her embarrassment had really not been resentful;
it had been nervous, tremulous, as the emotion of an unexpected pleasure
might have been. “That’s really why I determined last night, without
asking your leave first to pay you this little visit—that and the intense
desire for another bout of horse-play with Sidney. Oh, I’ve come to see
you,” Peter Baron went on, “and I won’t make any secret of the fact that
I expect you to resign yourself gracefully to the trial and give me all
your time. The day’s lovely, and I’m ready to declare that the place is
as good as the day. Let me drink deep of these things, drain the cup
like a man who hasn’t been out of London for months and months. Let me
walk with you and talk with you and lunch with you—I go back this
afternoon. Give me all your hours in short, so that they may live in my
memory as one of the sweetest occasions of life.”
The emission of steam from the French packet made such an uproar that
Baron could breathe his passion into the young woman’s ear without
scandalising the spectators; and the charm which little by little it
scattered over his fleeting visit proved indeed to be the collective
influence of the conditions he had put into words. “What is it you wish
to ask me?” Mrs. Ryves demanded, as they stood there together; to which
he replied that he would tell her all about it if she would send Miss
Teagle off with Sidney. Miss Teagle, who was always anticipating her
cue, had already begun ostentatiously to gaze at the distant shores of
France and was easily enough induced to take an earlier start home and
rise to the responsibility of stopping on her way to contend with the
butcher. She had however to retire without Sidney, who clung to his
recovered prey, so that the rest of the episode was seasoned, to Baron’s
sense, by the importunate twitch of the child’s little, plump, cool hand.
The friends wandered together with a conjugal air and Sidney not between
them, hanging wistfully, first, over the lengthened picture of the Calais
boat, till they could look after it, as it moved rumbling away, in a
spell of silence which seemed to confess—especially when, a moment later,
their eyes met—that it produced the same fond fancy in each. The
presence of the boy moreover was no hindrance to their talking in a
manner that they made believe was very frank. Peter Baron presently told
his companion what it was he had taken a journey to ask, and he had time
afterwards to get over his discomfiture at her appearance of having
fancied it might be something greater. She seemed disappointed (but she
was forgiving) on learning from him that he had only wished to know if
she judged ferociously his not having complied with her request to
respect certain seals.
“How ferociously do you suspect me of having judged it?” she inquired.
“Why, to the extent of leaving the house the next moment.”
They were still lingering on the great granite pier when he touched on
this matter, and she sat down at the end while the breeze, warmed by the
sunshine, ruffled the purple sea. She coloured a little and looked
troubled, and after an instant she repeated interrogatively: “The next
moment?”
“As soon as I told you what I had done. I was scrupulous about this, you
will remember; I went straight downstairs to confess to you. You turned
away from me, saying nothing; I couldn’t imagine—as I vow I can’t imagine
now—why such a matter should appear so closely to touch you. I went out
on some business and when I returned you had quitted the house. It had
all the look of my having offended you, of your wishing to get away from
me. You didn’t even give me time to tell you how it was that, in spite
of your advice, I determined to see for myself what my discovery
represented. You must do me justice and hear what determined me.”
Mrs. Ryves got up from her scat and asked him, as a particular favour,
not to allude again to his discovery. It was no concern of hers at all,
and she had no warrant for prying into his secrets. She was very sorry
to have been for a moment so absurd as to appear to do so, and she humbly
begged his pardon for her meddling. Saying this she walked on with a
charming colour in her cheek, while he laughed out, though he was really
bewildered, at the endless capriciousness of women. Fortunately the
incident didn’t spoil the hour, in which there were other sources of
satisfaction, and they took their course to her lodgings with such
pleasant little pauses and excursions by the way as permitted her to show
him the objects of interest at Dover. She let him stop at a
wine-merchant’s and buy a bottle for luncheon, of which, in its order,
they partook, together with a pudding invented by Miss Teagle, which, as
they hypocritically swallowed it, made them look at each other in an
intimacy of indulgence. They came out again and, while Sidney grubbed in
the gravel of the shore, sat selfishly on the Parade, to the
disappointment of Miss Teagle, who had fixed her hopes on a fly and a
ladylike visit to the castle. Baron had his eye on his watch—he had to
think of his train and the dismal return and many other melancholy
things; but the sea in the afternoon light was a more appealing picture;
the wind had gone down, the Channel was crowded, the sails of the ships
were white in the purple distance. The young man had asked his companion
(he had asked her before) when she was to come back to Jersey Villas, and
she had said that she should probably stay at Dover another week. It was
dreadfully expensive, but it was doing the child all the good in the
world, and if Miss Teagle could go up for some things she should probably
be able to manage an extension. Earlier in the day she had said that she
perhaps wouldn’t return to Jersey Villas at all, or only return to wind
up her connection with Mrs. Bundy. At another moment she had spoken of
an early date, an immediate reoccupation of the wonderful parlours.
Baron saw that she had no plan, no real reasons, that she was vague and,
in secret, worried and nervous, waiting for something that didn’t depend
on herself. A silence of several minutes had fallen upon them while they
watched the shining sails; to which Mrs. Ryves put an end by exclaiming
abruptly, but without completing her sentence: “Oh, if you had come to
tell me you had destroyed them—”
“Those terrible papers? I like the way you talk about ‘destroying!’ You
don’t even know what they are.”
“I don’t want to know; they put me into a state.”
“What sort of a state?”
“I don’t know; they haunt me.”
“They haunted me; that was why, early one morning, suddenly, I couldn’t
keep my hands off them. I had told you I wouldn’t touch them. I had
deferred to your whim, your superstition (what is it?) but at last they
got the better of me. I had lain awake all night threshing about,
itching with curiosity. It made me ill; my own nerves (as I may say)
were irritated, my capacity to work was gone. It had come over me in the
small hours in the shape of an obsession, a fixed idea, that there was
nothing in the ridiculous relics and that my exaggerated scruples were
making a fool of me. It was ten to one they were rubbish, they were
vain, they were empty; that they had been even a practical joke on the
part of some weak-minded gentleman of leisure, the former possessor of
the confounded davenport. The longer I hovered about them with such
precautions the longer I was taken in, and the sooner I exposed their
insignificance the sooner I should get back to my usual occupations.
This conviction made my hand so uncontrollable that that morning before
breakfast I broke one of the seals. It took me but a few minutes to
perceive that the contents were not rubbish; the little bundle contained
old letters—very curious old letters.”
“I know—I know; ‘private and confidential.’ So you broke the other
seals?” Mrs. Ryves looked at him with the strange apprehension he had
seen in her eyes when she appeared at his door the moment after his
discovery.
“You know, of course, because I told you an hour later, though you would
let me tell you very little.”
Baron, as he met this queer gaze, smiled hard at her to prevent her
guessing that he smarted with the fine reproach conveyed in the tone of
her last words; but she appeared able to guess everything, for she
reminded him that she had not had to wait that morning till he came
downstairs to know what had happened above, but had shown him at the
moment how she had been conscious of it an hour before, had passed on her
side the same tormented night as he, and had had to exert extraordinary
self-command not to rush up to his rooms while the study of the open
packets was going on. “You’re so sensitively organised and you’ve such
mysterious powers that you re uncanny,” Baron declared.
“I feel what takes place at a distance; that’s all.”
“One would think somebody you liked was in danger.”
“I told you that that was what was present to me the day I came up to see
you.”
“Oh, but you don’t like me so much as that,” Baron argued, laughing.
She hesitated. “No, I don’t know that I do.”
“It must be for someone else—the other person concerned. The other day,
however, you wouldn’t let me tell you that person’s name.”
Mrs. Ryves, at this, rose quickly. “I don’t want to know it; it’s none
of my business.”
“No, fortunately, I don’t think it is,” Baron rejoined, walking with her
along the Parade. She had Sidney by the hand now, and the young man was
on the other side of her. They moved toward the station—she had offered
to go part of the way. “But with your miraculous gift it’s a wonder you
haven’t divined.”
“I only divine what I want,” said Mrs. Ryves.
“That’s very convenient!” exclaimed Peter, to whom Sidney had presently
come round again. “Only, being thus in the dark, it’s difficult to see
your motive for wishing the papers destroyed.”
Mrs. Ryves meditated, looking fixedly at the ground. “I thought you
might do it to oblige me.”
“Does it strike you that such an expectation, formed in such conditions,
is reasonable?”
Mrs. Ryves stopped short, and this time she turned on him the clouded
clearness of her eyes. “What do you mean to do with them?”
It was Peter Baron’s turn to meditate, which he did, on the empty asphalt
of the Parade (the “season,” at Dover, was not yet), where their shadows
were long in the afternoon light. He was under such a charm as he had
never known, and he wanted immensely to be able to reply: “I’ll do
anything you like if you’ll love me.” These words, however, would have
represented a responsibility and have constituted what was vulgarly
termed an offer. An offer of what? he quickly asked himself here, as he
had already asked himself after making in spirit other awkward dashes in
the same direction—of what but his poverty, his obscurity, his attempts
that had come to nothing, his abilities for which there was nothing to
show? Mrs. Ryves was not exactly a success, but she was a greater
success than Peter Baron. Poor as he was he hated the sordid (he knew
she didn’t love it), and he felt small for talking of marriage.
Therefore he didn’t put the question in the words it would have pleased
him most to hear himself utter, but he compromised, with an angry young
pang, and said to her: “What will you do for me if I put an end to them?”
She shook her head sadly—it was always her prettiest movement. “I can
promise nothing—oh, no, I can’t promise! We must part now,” she added.
“You’ll miss your train.”
He looked at his watch, taking the hand she held out to him. She drew it
away quickly, and nothing then was left him, before hurrying to the
station, but to catch up Sidney and squeeze him till he uttered a little
shriek. On the way back to town the situation struck him as grotesque.