They can be cold, those nights in April, for spring comes timidly to
this little island of ours. I have seen children, like her, peep round
a door. There is laughter in their faces; it flows in a silver ripple,
quivering shyly on their lips. For one instant they look in on you and
then are gone. It is no good your calling. Nothing under Heaven will
induce them to come back. Perhaps the next morning at the very same
hour the door will open gently, you will see the sudden flash of eager
eyes, but never again that day. It were as well you gave up hope of it.
And so comes spring in such fashion to us here.
That very morning I had been sitting again in the Park. The sun was of
pure white silver in a sky of blue. There was that cool, faint sense
of chill about it, too, as when you see the flame of candles freshly
lit. The daffodils under the trees lifted high their yellow petals from
the grass to try and touch the warmth of it. Yet it only lasted for an
hour or two. I looked down at Dandy as a grey cloud sailed up above the
trees and hid the sun, and I saw a little wrinkle quiver swiftly up his
back.
"Ah, my friend," said I, "I've no doubt you'd like Nature to spoil
you. We all do; but, unfortunately, she won't."
I am always making these little reflections aloud to Dandy. It is not
that he understands, but they do such a heap of good to me.
By night time that grey cloud had drawn a score of others after it.
When I came out of the restaurant after supper the wind was scouring
the streets with a shower of rain. As I walked home I thought with
gratitude of the fire that I knew was burning in my room. My steps
quickened as I pictured to myself the sight of Dandy lying curled in a
complete circle upon the hearthrug. What manner of person, I wondered,
would rise to his feet from such a comfortable position as that and
greet you rapturously upon your entrance, put his hands on your wet
coat and say between cavernous yawns and jovial laughter how jolly glad
he was to have you back again? Perhaps there was one in the world who
would have greeted a man like that.
Clarissa.
Ah, but there would be more than laughter, there would be those
uncontrollable tears of gratitude if Clarissa's lover came back to her
that night. Perhaps she had not even a fire by which to curl herself
into the complete circle of contentment. No doubt at such an hour as
that she was fast asleep in her tiny bed--or was she lying awake with
eyes set deep into the darkness, listening to the ceaseless driving of
the rain upon her window? Wherever she was, whatever doing, I could
see the joy, lit radiant in her face, at the sound of his voice.
Then, when I thought of his return, I thought as well of him. The
sudden picture of his face came straight into my eyes. I heard his
voice. I heard his laughter. My God! thought I, what hopelessness to
wait for such a man as that! Surely she knew the worthless kind he was?
No, it was more likely she did not. So few, few women do.
"But what law of God or Nature is it," said I to myself, "that makes
men treat women so?" Had there been an answer which left one shred of
dignity to my back, I might have made it. So far as I could see there
was none. "Unless," I thought, "unless it is she asks no better of us
and gets but little more."
The words had scarcely entered my mind when I was contradicted flatly
to my face. From a doorway as I passed I heard a woman's voice.
"Here, I say."
I stopped, peering into the shadow. A girl was there, sheltering
beneath the overhanging portal of the door.
"What is it?" I asked.
Perhaps the tone of genuine inquiry in my voice, no doubt a thousand
other things as well, checked her in what she was going to say, for she
caught the words and shut her lips upon them.
"What is it?" I asked again.
She screwed up her face into a smile; no doubt to hide the injured
dignity in her heart.
"Would you like to give me my cab fare home?" said she.
Now had I received a blow of her hand across my face I should not have
felt more surprise. It was so direct an answer to my assumption, to the
very question I had put myself but a few steps back. I had assumed that
women received the worst from us because they asked no better. Yet what
better can a woman ask of any man than charity?
In some awkward effort to explain I have said that life has never
reached me--no woman has ever come to me in trouble. But it is more
than that--and it is less. I have often wanted a woman to say to me,
"Come and buy me a hat." No woman ever has. I have known women whom I
would like to have adorned from the top of their dainty heads to the
soles of their elegant feet; but either it is that they have husbands
who do it for them or there is some ridiculous etiquette which forbids
it. It seems I am one of those men of whom a woman asks nothing,
another symptom of the disease which I forgot to tell my doctor.
You may imagine, then, what I felt when this girl came out of nowhere
and asked me to pay her cab fare home. My hand went straight to my
pocket. She might have asked so many things other than that. She might
have asked for a new hat. Her own was sodden with rain.
"Well, what is the cab fare?" said I. "Where do you live?"
I said it all in the voice of one who is in two ways about what he
is doing. You see, I had to make something to my credit out of the
business. She had asked for so very little. Even when she told me it
was Bloomsbury way, I felt a sense of disappointment. It might as well
have been Highgate or Clapham Junction. But in this world, whether or
not it be true that you want little, little it is most surely that you
get. How long you get it for is another matter. It did not interest me
then.
I looked up and down the street.
"You won't find the fare so difficult to get as the cab," said I. The
whole street was empty. She peered out of the shadow, and I could see
she must be wet to the skin.
"Look here," I continued, "come under this umbrella. I live just here.
You'd better sit indoors while I get them to whistle for a 'taxi.'"
She stood quite still for a moment and stared at me. A foolish thing to
do. Women behave ridiculously at times. It was the only obvious thing
to suggest, and yet she gazed at me as though I could not possibly be
aware of what I was saying. I was aware.
"Be good enough to come under this umbrella," I repeated, severely.
Then she obeyed.
As we walked along in silence to my door, I began to see myself that
there were two aspects to the case. I had forgotten for the moment my
man. He would be waiting up for me. He always does. There are little
things, and Moxon knows how to do them. I have come to believe he likes
it. But would he like this?
"Oh, Moxon be damned," said I, and, of course, I must have said it out
loud, for she asked me sympathetically who Moxon was.
"He looks after me," I replied.
I think that must have almost confirmed the opinion in her that I was
not quite sane; that Moxon, indeed, was my keeper, for she drew away a
little till I laughed and explained.
"You're a swell, then?" she said. She said it with conviction. She said
it as a question too.
"If you'll tell me what you mean by that," said I, "I'll tell you if
you're right."
Whereupon for a few moments she was silent, but when I prompted her for
an answer, she said,
"A swell's a swell."
"Then certainly the description doesn't apply to me," I replied, and,
taking out the latchkey, I opened my door.
At first she hesitated to come in, but I took her arm. The sleeve of
her dress was drenched.
"You mustn't stay outside," said I. "Just come and wait in my
sitting-room while Moxon gets a 'taxi.' He won't be long."
The moment I opened the door, there, sure enough, was Dandy to his
feet, but at the sight of my visitor he arrested all motion and
glared. At this time of night I was his personal belonging. He had
me to himself. There was no doubt he resented this intrusion of
another person, and when he realized it was a woman, his contempt was
wonderful. With just a glance at me, he turned round and stared into
the fire. I never saw reproach so clearly drawn in the outline of a
dog's back before.
"This is just a foretaste," thought I, "of what we shall get from
Moxon," and I rang the bell.
When I turned round, she was looking all about the room with a silent
wonder in her eyes. It is comfortable, I know. I have been told that.
But no one has ever surveyed it with such an expression in their eyes
as she had then. I felt almost ashamed of myself for calling it my own;
for in that look I seemed to see all the dull, cheap finery of her own
squalid little rooms in Bloomsbury.
"The world is hard on women," I said to myself, and again the name of
Clarissa came like an echo into my thoughts. Clarissa in her little
gown of canary-colored satin.
I was just going to ask her more about herself when she forestalled me.
"Do you live here alone?" she asked.
I nodded my head.
"All this to yourself?"
I nodded again.
"Aren't you lonely?"
I felt quite grateful for Moxon's entrance. He opened the door, and the
look of astonishment that leapt into his face was ludicrous to behold.
"I beg pardon, sir," he said quickly.
"I rang," said I. "I want you to whistle for a 'taxi' for this lady.
She's been caught in the rain outside."
He went out obediently, closing the door. Another moment and we heard
his whistle blowing violently in the street.
"Is that Moxon?" she asked, when he had gone.
"It is."
"What's he think of you bringing me in here?"
"I shouldn't attempt to say," said I. "Moxon's mind is one of the
riddles I shall never solve. Sometimes I feel inclined to believe that
he never thinks at all."
She sat silent for a moment or two staring at the fire, and then
suddenly looked up quickly at me.
"Why did you bring me in here?" she asked.
It came to my lips to give some irrelevant answer. Why should I tell
her? Would she understand it if I did? But then there flashed across my
mind the belief I always hold that above all creatures women are gifted
with understanding, and I told her of the story I had just heard.
"And what's that to do with me?" she asked.
"Nothing," I replied, "and everything. One woman in trouble is the
whole world of women in distress. What I have to complain of is that
they never come to me. You did. That's why I brought you in here. If
this child in Ireland were to appeal to me--"
"How can she?"
"That's true," said I, "she doesn't know me."
She looked at me queerly--deedily is the word--and, almost in a
whisper, she asked, "Why don't you go to her?"
I leant back in my chair and laughed.
"What, become a Don Quixote!" said I. "Go out and tilt at windmills,
try to pose knight-errant to a child who's lost her heart to some one
else! What's the good of saving any woman from her own infatuation?
She'll only hate you for it."
She looked me strangely in the face.
"She'll thank you for it one day," she said, and there were whole years
of terror in her voice.
Suddenly, then, I saw things different, and at that moment came Moxon
into the room.
"The 'taxi' for the lady," said he.