"Lexie's coming to lunch to-morrow," Maggy informed Woolf. "We must
give her a good one, Fred, and you'll behave, won't you, D.D.?"
"D.D." in Maggy's language of love stood for Dearest Darling. She was
not free from the modern, time-saving habit, set by trade advertisements
and the halfpenny papers, of abbreviating words in common use down to
their lowest denomination.
"So she's woken up to the fact that there may be something to be got out
of you," yawned Woolf.
"I wish you wouldn't talk like that, Fred. Lexie couldn't be on the
make-haste. She's not made that way."
"Sounds as if she's too good and uninteresting to live."
"She isn't uninteresting. You'll like her. She's very pretty. Do be
good and do me credit."
"Well ... I like that!" Woolf stared at her, half-amused.
"I mean, don't say the things you say to me. She's sensitive."
"My dear girl, don't teach me how to talk to women. Judging by what
you've told me I'm inclined to think your copybook Lexie is a deep 'un.
I don't think I'll come, anyway."
"Oh, but you must. I've asked her on purpose to meet you. I want her
to see what a duck you are, and to like you, and not to think me bad
just because I let you wipe your shoes on me."
She slipped to the ground and sat at his feet. Woolf liked her in her
devoted moods. Like many another unworthy man, adulation gave him
peculiar satisfaction. Maggy was rarely flippant now. She loved Woolf
with a passion that almost frightened her. It was not a passion of the
mind. He dominated her in other ways. She was too transparent to hide
how much she cared. She gave too much. It was her pleasure, when she
knew he was going to stay several hours with her, to take off his shoes
and put on the pumps which with a few other things he kept at the flat.
She commenced to unlace his shoes now. Then she dragged his pumps from
under the sofa, kissing them first before she put them on his feet.
"You funny creature. What makes you do that?" he asked, well enough
aware of her reason, but desirous of extracting an expression of it.
"Because I adore you. I feel like Mary Magdalene or whoever it was who
broke the precious ointment all over her Master's feet. Oh, yes, I know
who it was. But do you think she wouldn't have done it just the same if
He had been an ordinary man? He was _her_ lord. She never thought of
Him as everybody's Lord. That isn't blasphemy. It's love."
"You don't know how I love you," she went on ardently. "Men think they
know how to love, but they never love as a woman loves. I love you so
much that first of all I wish I had been your mother, so that I might
have held you in my arms when you were tiny and given you dill water for
your tummy aches, and bathed and powdered you.... And next I wish I had
been your twin sister to have grown up with you.... And next I wish I
had been the first woman in your life.... And next I wish.... Oh, and
I'm thankful to be--just yours." She sat up, and went on in rather a
tense voice. "I wonder if you'll ever get tired of me. Could you,
Fred?"
"Well, I'm not yet." He gave a playful pull at her loosened hair.
"And treat me like men treat the A.F.'s in story-books."
"What's an A.F.?"
"Abandoned female, you goose. That's what I am. And when you've
finished with me will you leave me to starve in a garret while you live
in a mansion with a beautiful and good wife? And will I haunt your
doorstep and throw vitriol in your belovedest face?"
"What nonsense you're talking, Maggy."
"It isn't all nonsense. It isn't only in the story-books that women do
that. They do it in real life too. I read about a case in the paper
not long ago, and the judge asked the girl why she did it. She answered
'Because I love him.' The silly judge said: 'That's a funny way of
showing love,' and there was laughter in Court, in brackets. Laughter in
Court! I expect it sounded to that girl like laughter in hell. I know
what she must have felt. I daresay she lived so long with the man and
loved him so much that she felt as good as his wife. Then when he left
her, she must have gone mad, poor thing."
She got up and stood in front of him, looking very sweet and alluring.
"How long will you love me, I wonder?" she mused.
Woolf drew her on to his knees.
"So long as you look like you do now."
"You mean so long as I'm pretty? Wouldn't you love me if I looked like
poor Mrs. Slightly? She's losing her fur."
"What's the matter with Mrs. Slightly?" he asked.
He did not care for Maggy's mongrel pets, and his tone was not
encouraging. It put Maggy on her guard. She had a premonition that it
would be best to hide Mrs. Slightly's secret until it could no longer be
hidden.
"I'm not quite sure," she said.
"Where is she?"
"I left her in the bathroom. I'll get her. She hasn't had her supper
yet."
She went out of the room. Woolf heard her calling the cat softly, then
came a smothered exclamation, and she called to him eagerly, excitedly.
"Oh, Fred! Fred! Come here! Come and _look_!"
He followed her. She was standing before Mrs. Slightly's basket. The
cat was purring, its eyes half-shut, tired after the tremendous function
of motherhood. Six little rat-like, squirming bodies lay against her
own.
"Six of them!" breathed Maggy triumphantly. "Aren't they lovely! Wasn't
it worth going on the tiles for, Mrs. Dearest? The cat's cradle is
full, full!"
Woolf disengaged her arm from his.
"It's disgusting," he said angrily. "You ought to have got rid of her
before this, or--or kept her in. You can't keep the kittens. They'll
have to be drowned."
Maggy looked at him blankly.
"Aren't you pleased?" she asked, surprised.
"Pleased! At a sight like that! Besides, you told me a lie. I won't
have lies. You must have known before you went to the theater that the
cat had had kittens--"
"I didn't. Oh, how dare you say so! Do you think I'd have gone out and
left her all these hours without any milk by her side if I'd guessed
they were coming so soon?"
She flew off, and came back with a saucer of bread and milk. She put it
on the floor and went down on her hands and knees beside the newly-born
animals. There was a rapt expression on her face.
"I don't think I'll stop," said Woolf huffily, and moved to the door.
He expected that she would call him back, but to his surprise she did
not even look up. She was wholly absorbed with the natural phenomenon.
For the first time in their intercourse she was oblivious of his
presence. She did not even hear him go. She knelt entranced.
At last a sigh broke from her. She became articulate.
"Oh, you babies!" she whispered. "Oh, you little, little things!"