The time of posting for the night-mail was seven at the latest, and at
five I went down to fetch Mizzi. "For God's sake," I told her, "come up
and tell him that letters for England don't go on a Sunday. He's trying
to write something, and if he doesn't get it done in time, he'll
collapse.... Tell him anything you like that'll put him off."
She did. She did it rather well. She waited for a few moments till after
I had rejoined him, and then came up with some idle chatter about the
weather. He was still at his desk, taking hardly any notice of anything
but the paper in front of him; and at last, with an excellently assumed
air of casualness, she remarked that he seemed busy. He said he was
writing a letter. And then she remarked: "If it iss a letter to England,
you know of course that there iss no post to-night." He turned round
suddenly, astonished, but perhaps, beyond his astonishment, relieved.
And she went on: "It iss a new rule. No mails for foreign lands from
Saturday night until Monday night." Her tone was just right; he put down
his pen, walked across the room, and said, with a sort of moody
resignation: "Nothing for it but to wait, then." Then a further idea
seemed to occur to him; he exclaimed sharply: "What was it you came up
to see me about, Mizzi?"
She wasn't altogether prepared for that. She said: "Iss it necessary
that I must always haf a special reason when I come up to see you?" And
before he could reply she went on: "But of course, I _had_ a reason--it
was to ask you--both of you--if you would care to come with me now to
the Cathedral...."
So we went--the three of us.
It was, as she told me afterwards, the only thing she had been able to
think of on the spur of the moment. She even apologized, then, and hoped
that the service at the Stefans-Dom hadn't bored me. I assured her it
hadn't; but all the same, she might have been surprised if she had known
my thoughts during that solemn candle-lit hour. They weren't especially
religious, and yet--devout Catholic as she was--Mizzi might have been
thinking them too. Perhaps she also, lured by the singing and the
twilight, came under the spell of the one perfect solution--that she
should become Terry's wife; perhaps she also remembered Helen's advice
that he should marry some Viennese girl who loved him and was a business
woman.
That night, after we came back from the Cathedral, Terry seemed calmer.
I even spoke to him about my return to England, and he renewed his
promise that he would take a long and complete holiday "as soon as this
business is settled." Then we talked about Mizzi. He thought it odd that
she had invited us to the Cathedral with her. "She's rather religious,"
he said, "but she never talks about it or tries to force it on you. When
I first came here she asked me if I were a Catholic, but that was all."
He paused for a while, and then, in a different tone, continued: "I
suppose a Catholic doesn't care to marry a Protestant?"
I must have shown my astonishment when he said that. "It rather depends
who the Protestant is," I answered, hoping he would say more. He didn't,
however, and even when I asked him why he had put the question, he only
answered that there hadn't been any particular reason.
But there had.
That night was very hot, and neither he nor I was in the mood for
sleep. About midnight I left him still pondering over the letter he
would write to Helen; I said I would go for a short walk to make myself
drowsy. But when I got downstairs the lounge was so cool and so fragrant
with the scent of the flowers in the window-boxes, that I sank into one
of the largest armchairs and lit a cigar. I didn't trouble to press any
of the switches, for the moonlight was streaming in, and besides, I
could see through the open doorway the little office in which Mizzi,
that night as on most nights, was working late over her bills and
ledgers. I didn't wish to interrupt her, yet I was just beginning to
wonder if she would mind very much, if I did, when I heard Terry's voice
in the hall. He was asking her if she could spare him a moment, and she
replied, with her quiet and never-altering cordiality: "Why, of course I
can. Come in and sit down."
The office was a small affair of glass partitions, and I could see as
well as hear all that took place. I wasn't consciously eavesdropping at
first, and later when I must confess to a certain eagerness of ear and
eye, I had the excuse that it would have been impossible for me to move
away without creating a distinctly awkward situation. So I sat there
quiet and still, hardly daring even to smoke lest the smell of the cigar
should drift across into the hall and betray me.
For he was proposing to her! There in that little hotel-office, with his
face as pale as chalk and his voice half-trembling, he was asking her to
marry him! At first he spoke in German, but after a short while relapsed
into stammering staccato English.
Most men, when they propose, are doubtless optimists--not only about the
proposal, but about themselves and the world in general. But Terry
wasn't an optimist. The whole business would have been just comic, if
one had allowed oneself to see the joke of it. He informed her in a
series of short sentences that he was entirely ineligible--he had no
money, and poorish prospects, and it might and probably would be years
before he could afford to marry her. Altogether he was a pretty hopeless
sort of suitor, and he even reminded her that she could always give him
up if she had the good sense to change her mind while there was yet
time. All he wanted, apparently, was a vague assurance that some day, if
and when he could afford it, and if and when she wished, she would marry
him.
While he was talking in this stumbling, sorrowful way, she was all the
time sitting at her desk, pen in hand, looking up at him. She didn't say
a word; she let him talk on, and then, when he had said everything, she
just lifted up her hands and arms and pulled him down to her. I never
saw anything so swift and sudden. A second afterwards she was in his
arms and kissing him....
Where I was I could feel the sharp slackening of tension as they clung
together. And then, after the ecstasy of that first embrace, she seemed
to recover a certain self-protective calmness; she was the business
woman again, chary of committing herself. "Terry," she whispered, "you
must not ask me for an answer now. It would not be possible after
this.... To-morrow I will give it you--when I have thought it over
calmly...."
He didn't protest. He didn't seem to care greatly whether she gave him
an answer or not. His mind and body were reeling; he could only stammer:
"Oh, Mizzi--Mizzi----"
He threw himself into a chair and buried his face in his hands, and she
stooped over him like a mother over a child. It was unbearable, somehow,
to be spying on them then. I took the risk of tip-toeing out of the room
and across to the foot of the staircase. They neither saw nor heard. And
it was later--much later--when he came up to bed.