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THE PEST
by
W. TEIGNMOUTH SHORE
Author of “The Talking Master,” “Egomet,” etc., and
Part Author of “The Fruit of the Tree”
[Illustration]
New York
C. H. Doscher & Co.
1909
Copyright, 1909, by
C. H. Doscher & Co.
The Pest
CHAPTER I
PAVEMENTS and roadway slippery with greasy, black mud; atmosphere yellow
with evil-tasting vapor; a November afternoon in London; evening drawing
on, fog closing down.
George Maddison, tall, erect, dark, walked slowly along, his eyes, ever
ready to seize upon any striking effect of color, noting the curious
mingling of lights: the dull yellow overhead, the chilly beams of the
street lamps, the glow and warmth from the shop windows. Few of the
faces he saw were cheerful, almost all wearing that expression of
discontent which such dreary circumstances bring to even the most
hardened and experienced Cockneys. For his own part he was well pleased,
having heard that morning of his election as an Associate of the Royal
Academy, a fact that gratified him not as adding anything to his repute,
but as being a compliment to the school of young painters of which he
was the acknowledged leader and ornament: impressionists whose
impressions showed the world to be beautiful; idealists who had the
imagination to see that the ideal is but the better part of the real.
Maddison paused before a highly lighted picture-dealer’s window,
glancing with amusement at the conventional prettiness there displayed;
then, turning his back upon it, he looked across the street, debating
whether he should cross over and have some tea at the famous pastry
cook’s. A tall, slight figure of a woman, neatly dressed in black,
caught his attention. Obviously, she too was hesitating over the same
question. In spite of the simplicity and quiet fashion of her black
gown, her air was elegant; her head nicely poised; her shoulders well
held; the lines of her figure graceful, lithe and seductive. Though he
could not see her face he felt certain that she was interesting and
attractive, if not beautiful; also, there was a something wistful and
forlorn about her that appealed to him. Warily stepping through the
slippery mud, he crossed over and stood behind her for a moment, marking
the graceful tendrils of red-gold hair that clustered round the nape of
her neck and the delicate shape and coloring of her ears. As she turned
to move away, she came full face to him, instant recognition springing
into her eyes.
“George—!” she exclaimed.
“Miss Lewis!”
There was immediate and evident constraint on each side, as though the
sudden meeting were half-welcome, half-embarrassing.
“Were you going in to tea here?” he asked. “I was. Let me come with you?
It’s an age since we met. It’s horrid and damp out here.”
“It is,” she replied, slightly shivering. “Yes, I should like a cup of
tea.”
They went through the heavy swing doors, opened for them by a diminutive
boy in buttons, into the long, highly decorated, dimly lighted, discreet
tea room, which lacked its usual crowd. A few couples, in one case two
young men, occupied the cozy corners, to one of the more remote of which
Maddison led the way, and settled himself and his companion in the
comfortable armchairs. He ordered tea and cakes of the pretty,
black-eyed waitress, dainty and demure in the uniform of deep, dull red.
“You sigh as if you were tired, Miss Lewis, and glad to rest?” he said,
trying in the dim light to study her expression.
“I am tired and I am glad to rest. It’s very cozy in here. I’ve never
been here before.”
She laid her hand upon the arm of the chair next to him and he noticed
that she wore a wedding ring.
“I called you Miss Lewis. I see——?”
“Yes—I’m married. I don’t suppose you remember much about Larchstone—I
recognized you before you did me; I saw you across the road. But just
possibly you do remember our curate, Mr. Squire—you used to laugh at
him. I’m Mrs. Squire. He’s still a curate, but not any longer in the
country. We live at Kennington; what a world of difference one letter
makes! Kennington—Kensington. Have you ever been in Kennington?”
Maddison remembered Edward Squire distinctly: a tall, gaunt enthusiast,
clumsy in mind and in body. He leaned back in his chair as a whirl of
recollections rushed across his mind: the red-roofed, old-fashioned
village of Larchstone; the old-world rector and his daughter, a pretty
slip of a country girl, who had grown into—Mrs. Squire. He remembered
the summer weeks he had spent there, painting in the famous woodlands,
and the half-jesting, half-serious love he had made to the rector’s
daughter. Since then until this afternoon he had not met her, though the
memory of her face, with the searching eyes, had come to him now and
again.
She watched him as he dreamed. He had changed very little; how
distinctly she had always remembered him; the swarthy, narrow face
framed in heavy black hair, the deep-set black eyes, the thin nose, the
trim pointed beard and mustache hiding the sensual mouth, the tall,
well-knit figure. Far more vividly than he did she recall those summer
months; in her life they had been an outstanding event, an episode
merely in his.
“Do you still take three lumps of sugar?” she asked, as she poured out
the tea.
“You remember that? Yes, still three, thanks.”
“You see, I hadn’t very much to remember in those days.”
“It’s five years ago—” he hesitated.
“Five this last summer, and a good many things have happened since then.
My father’s dead—three years ago—and I’m a good young curate’s wife.
And you? But I needn’t ask; the newspapers have told me all about you.
Are you still full of enthusiasms?”
“I suppose so. I think so, only they’re crystallizing into practices. As
we grow older the brain grows stiff, and we’re not so ready to go
climbing mountains to achieve impossible heights.”
“You’ve climbed pretty high. A step higher to-day—A.R.A. Fame, success
and money, that’s a fairly high mountain to have climbed—at least it
looks so to me.”
The forlorn tone of her voice confirmed the impression his first sight
of her had made upon him. He looked at her keenly as she sat there with
her eyes fixed upon her tea which she was stirring slowly. She had
become a very lovely woman and a poor curate’s wife.
“Lonely?” he asked almost unintentionally.
“Did I say lonely?” she asked looking quickly at him. “We were talking
in metaphors. I suppose that way of talking was invented by some one who
didn’t want to blurt out ugly truths.”
“Or who fancied that commonplace ideas become uncommon when divorced
from commonplace words.”
“It’s strange, isn’t it, sitting here, chatting like old friends—after
all this time? You didn’t answer my question: have you ever been in
Kennington?”
“I go down to the Oval now and then to watch the cricket; that’s all I
know about Kennington.”
“And that’s nothing. You might as well judge West Kensington by an
Earl’s Court exhibition, or a woman’s nature by her face. I think it
would do you good to see more of Kennington. I can believe that to
anyone who has lived there any other place on earth would seem heaven.”
“Heaven?”
“Even the other place would be an improvement.”
“You’re rather hard on Kennington, aren’t you?”
“It’s very hard on _me_! It stifles me. I come up to town—you see, I
speak of coming up to town—every now and then, just to escape from the
horrible atmosphere. There; just to breathe freely for a bit, to look at
the shops, to see faces with some thoughts in them, to escape
from—Kennington.”
“And do you escape?”
“Not altogether. The atmosphere there is saturating.”
“Does your husband like it?”
“He doesn’t know anything about it. Souls to save and bodies to feed,
that’s his simple want in life. There are plenty of both in our
neighborhood. I suppose you wouldn’t come down to see us?”
“If I may——?”
“You may,” she answered, laughing softly, almost to herself, and he
noticed how her smile lit up her whole face for the moment. “You’ll seem
so queer down there.”
“Why?”
“Just think—but no, you couldn’t realize what I’m laughing at; you’ve
never been in Kennington, and—even more likely—have never seen
yourself as I see you.”
Resisting the temptation to ask her in what light she saw him, he in
turn laughed as he looked down into the provocative face turned toward
him.
“You’re getting better,” he said.
“Yes, thanks; the tea has done me good, and the meeting with you.”
She spoke quite frankly.
“I’m glad,” he answered, “and glad I was lucky enough to meet you.”
“What a pretty, empty phrase,” she said, with a little sigh and a droop
of the corners of her mouth. “Sayings like that are the threepenny bits
of conversation; they’re not worth sixpence, but they’re better than
coppers. Now, I must be off.”
“It’s quite early.”
“Yes, for you. But for me—Kennington and high tea; but you know neither
of them.”
“You’ve asked me to come——”
“Not to high tea. Come some afternoon or evening. Drop me a post card so
that we shall be sure to be in. My husband will be so glad to see you
again.”
“And you?”
“I _have_ seen you again.”
“Very well, I’ll drop you a line of warning. And how are you going
home?”
“By a clever and cheap combination of penny bus and halfpenny tram. Now,
good-by, and thank you.”
They lingered a moment in the shop entrance, warmth and coziness behind,
the darkness and the thickening fog before.
“I don’t like you’re going alone. The fog’s getting very thick.”
“Please don’t worry about me; if the tram can’t get along I shall walk.
Good-by, and, again, thank you.”
Nodding in a friendly manner, she walked quickly away, leaving him
irresolute. But he soon determined to follow her.
“You really must let me see you home,” he said, as he caught up with
her; “it’s going to be bad.”
“So am I, and insist on having my own way. Don’t spoil it for me. I
don’t often have my own way with anything or anybody.”
Again she walked quickly away into the darkness.