Do not her dark eyes tell thee thou art not despised? The
Heaven's messenger! All Heaven's blessings be hers.
"I'M sorry," she said, "but you'll have to help me upstairs. Wasn't I a
fool to go and get tripped up like that?--O-o-h! Hercules!"
René took her in his arms and carried her up the narrow little stairs.
She opened the door and asked him to come in and have a cup of tea.
After she had put the kettle on and lit the gas she sat and took a
long look at him.
"I like you," she said. "And I suppose I shan't see you again. That's
always the way. The people you like best you see only once, or in the
train, or going by in a bus. Is it far where you live?"
"I don't know where I live."
"Go on. I'm not that sort."
"It's true. I've only just come to London. This morning."
"Leave your things at the station?"
"Things? No, I didn't bring any."
"Well! I never!"
She shrugged her amazement away, his adventures being no business of
hers.
After she had made the tea she removed her shoes and stockings and
examined her ankle. It was inflamed and slightly swollen. She made him
rub it, giving little gasps as he touched or wrenched the soreness.
"'Tisn't a sprain? You don't think it's a sprain? I don't care as long
as it isn't a sprain."
"No, I shouldn't think it's a sprain; but you'd better ask someone
else."
"Are you Scotch?"
"No. Why do you ask?"
"You talk funny. I say arsk."
"My home's up north."
"Home. Father and mother?"
"Well--no. A wife and all that."
"O-o-h! Married?"
She looked unhappy and uncomfortable for a moment. Then she said:
"I shouldn't have thought it. You look so young. What did you do?"
"Lectured and took pupils at the university."
"College? I know. There's a big school just round here. I suppose it's
something like that. I seen the teachers. Half-baked they look, some
of them. Was that it?"
"I don't know what it was. Things came to a head suddenly. I was taken
by surprise. I think it will take me some time to realize quite what
has happened."
She asked his name. He gave it and she hers, Ann Pidduck, and she
worked in a factory, pickles and condiments, at the packing, putting
wooden boxes together with a machine that drove in four nails at a
time. Once she had been ill and sent away and taught the artificial
flowers, and she did that too, in her spare time, for some hat-shops
in the High Street, and for one or two ladies she knew. She used to
live at home with her mother, who had turned religious and couldn't
put up with a bit of fun. And she had a friend who lived in these
rooms when there were still horses in the mews, but the friend had
gone out to Canada on a farm, "where you get married at once if you're
anything like." She broke off her story:
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know."
"Well, you can't just sit and look at London till it begins to look at
you."
"No."
"You look as if you'd like to sit there forever and ever. Oh, you do
look tired, poor thing! But keep awake a little, there's a dear. I
must know what I'm going to do with you."
He could hardly keep his attention fixed on what she was saying, but
he fastened his eyes on her to make her understand that he was
listening.
"You don't want to go home? No?"
He shook his head.
"Popped the lid on it, have you?"
He nodded.
"Got any money?"
"In a bank."
"All right. You'll want clothes and things. You can write. Only I want
to know; it's nothing I shouldn't like? Is it?"
"No."
"I don't want you to tell me, but I wouldn't like to think you'd done
something you'd be sorry for. . . . You haven't drunk your tea. I say,
you haven't drunk your tea. Asleep. I'm off. Good night."
And she limped away into the inner room.
When he awoke the next day he remembered that she had come to him in
the morning, shaken him out of his deep sleep, and made him understand
that he could have her bed, sent him staggering toward it, and then,
as he sank back into unconsciousness, he remembered hearing the door
slam.
She had laid breakfast for him, tea, bread and butter, and an egg
lying ready to be boiled in a saucepan. He was at first petulant at
her absence, but shook himself up enough to see that he was not in a
position to feel any such thing, and to be amazed at his own
acquiescence in the unexpected. It was somehow disreputable, this
discovery of himself in a strange room after two nights spent in his
clothes. He had not even removed his boots. His gratitude to Ann
Pidduck was appreciably lessened as he remembered that she had not
thought to take them off for him. To put a man in her bed with his
boots on! That was, to say the least of it, distasteful. It was
sufficiently against the grain of his physical and mental habits to
send his thoughts flying back to the life he had left, but they were
caught in the mists of the excitement and pain through which he had
passed, and he relapsed into an insensate pondering, forgot his
breakfast, his surroundings, and sat unheeding through the day, until
Ann returned in the evening. She brought flowers.
"Well, of all the----" she cried. "I did think you'd have cleared
away. Why, you haven't touched your breakfast. Haven't you been out?"
He had not exactly forgotten her. Indeed, he had been awaiting her
coming, but now he was puzzled because her return was so expected, and
it ought to have been unexpected. He felt injured, that he had been
cheated, that things on this side of his crisis were too much like
things on the other side: a woman, habit, meals, interest in his
appetite.
"Wake up, stoopid," said Ann. "You'll be wasting off like the niggers
in Africa if you don't wake up. You can't go sleeping on forever."
"Can't I?"
"Well, you can, of course, but if you do, I'll be thinking you're a
case. You're not a case, are you? You weren't last night."
She spoke as though to be called a case was the horridest of insults,
and he took it as such and roused himself not to deserve it.
"That's better," she said. "Nothing to eat all day."
"No. Nothing."
She pondered that.
"I expect your stomach knows best. Now, then, stir yourself. You got
to write home."
She gave him writing materials and he drew up to the table and sat
staring at the blank sheet of paper. He took pen in hand, but could
not write, could not concentrate his will even that much.
"What am I to say?" he asked.
"Don't you know?"
"No."
"Well, I'm blowed! If you aren't the funniest. . . . It's to your
wife! Don't you know what to say to your wife?"
He wrote:
"Dear Linda----"
Then he thought of Linda in a friendly, distant fashion, as someone
charming and taking whom he had known, of whom it was pleasant to
think.
"Dear Linda, Linda Brock, Lin----"
Ann saw his hesitation, and suggested:
"You want your clothes."
He wrote down:
"I want my clothes. I don't think I want my books. You can sell the
car. You gave me a nice picture once by some German. I think I should
like you to send that. I have been walking about London. It is very
wonderful. A railway porter was nice to me, and there are other
friendly people."
He stopped. Ann said:
"The address is 6 Mitcham Mews, West Kensington."
He wrote that down. There was something else he wanted to say, but he
could not fix in his mind a sufficient image of Linda to be able to
write to her. So he gave it up presently and only added: "That's all,"
and his signature.
The letter was addressed and stamped, and Ann, still limping, took it
to the post.
When she returned, she said:
"I've fixed you up. You're to sleep with Jimmy at No. 10 until your
things come, and then we'll begin to think. You're not much use to
anybody now, are you?"
"No," said he. Then he began to stammer out an apology.
"Silly," said Ann. "Just a lost boy, that's what you are. Lucky for
you it was me and not the police found you. They'd have sent you back
where you came from." She saw that it was useless to joke with René
and soon dropped her bantering tone. She took him for a walk round the
houses, and was delighted when he remembered that he must have a clean
collar and a toothbrush; a return to grace, or sense.
"Oh! I'd be sorry now if it wasn't true, and you went back."
"I shan't go back."
Her question, the necessity of responding to her spontaneity, brought
back in a sudden flood his will, and he had a quick pleasure in
feeling the air upon his face and seeing the evening color of the
streets.
"No. I shan't go back. People can't go back. But my father went back."
"Why did you say that?"
"What did I say?"
"'But my father went back.'"
"Did I? I didn't know I said that. I didn't know I even thought of
him."
"I know," said Ann. "It's like suddenly finding yourself talking
aloud. And don't you feel a fool if there's anybody listening?"
They bought collar, toothbrush, pajamas, and a red sausage for supper.
With these they returned to Mitcham Mews and had to wait up until
Jimmy at No. 10 turned up. He did so about one o'clock, a strange
figure strutting up the mews, beaming all over his face, and humming:
Can you see me, gray eyes,
Hiding in the tree,
Waiting for the moonrise?
Gray eyes, look at me,
In the apple-tree.
Apple-tree, apple-tree.
He had on a mortar-board cap, a white collar reaching up to his ears,
an enormous black bow tie, a red satin waistcoat hung with chains, and
his face was blacked except for one eye and a quarter of an inch all
round his mouth. He carried a banjo. As he saw Ann he drew his hand
across the strings and croaked out in a hoarse voice:
"Give us a kiss, old dear, I'm that hellish dry."
"Oh, go on. You got to behave yourself now, Jimmy, now you got a
lodger."
"Like old times," said Jimmy. "Ma had lodgers. What Ma didn't know
about lodgers----"
"Give it a rest," said Ann. "Do keep off the comic for a bit. Mr.
Fourmy wants to get to bed. So do I, and you'll have the neighbors up,
the way voices go ringing up the mews. Good night."
She turned away.
"Good night, old gal," said Jimmy, and he led René up the stairs of
No. 10. "Good sort, that gal. Likes her bit o' fun same as any gal,
but she's a tiddler, she is. Independent! I don't fink. Gals look
arter theirselves nowadays. Cos why? Cos they're three to one. We
don't go round, us men. What a awful thought! There's your bed, Mr.
---- What's your name? 'Ardly a gent's bed, but you can lie on it, and
what more can be said of any bed?"
He went into the inner room and began undressing, talking all the
while, explaining that minstrelsy was only one of his professions,
that he had had a rotten day, not a smile in the world; that he
wouldn't try again for a week, not if he starved; that Mr. Fourmy must
be prepared for a shock when he saw him without his black, as it made
such a difference, and that there was a silver lining to every cloud.
He got into bed without removing his black, for René heard no sound of
water, and talked himself to sleep. . . . René lay sleepless, this
third night of his adventure, and rejoiced as one who had awakened
from a long and painful dream. Jimmy amused him, Ann amused him, and
all amusement was new to him.
Jimmy woke up talking, ran out in nightshirt and trousers, and
returned with a jug of beer and a loaf of bread. That was breakfast.
He sat on René's bed and they consumed their fare together.
"Gardening to-day," said Jimmy. "Ladies all want their gardens dug up
these days. I got two or three gardens. They call me Gardener, though
I ain't no blooming gardener. 'D'you think sweet peas will do in the
smoke, gardener?' they say. I dunno, but I sticks 'em all in. They
gets it all out of a book, and what's good enough for them is good
enough for me. Gardener! Well, here's luck!"