OF A LADY AND GENTLEMAN ON THE EDGE OF A LONG VOYAGE TOGETHER.
SHALL THEY TAKE THE TICKETS? HOW MR. PELLEW HEARD SEVERAL CLOCKS
STRIKE ONE. HOW HE CALLED NEXT DAY, AND HEARD ABOUT THE CHOBEY
FAMILY. THE PROFANITY OF POETS, WHEN PROFANE. HOW MR. PELLEW
SOMETIMES WENT TO CHURCH. THE POPULAR SUBJECT OF LOVE, IN THE END.
MRS. AMPHLETT STARFAX'S VIEWS. KISSING FROM A NEW STANDPOINT. HOW
MR. PELLEW FORGOT, OR RECOLLECTED, HIMSELF. BONES, BELOW, AND HIS
BAD GUESSING. HOW THE CARRIAGE CAME BACK WITH A FRIEND IT HAD
PICKED UP, WHOM MR. PELLEW CARRIED UPSTAIRS. UNEQUIVOCAL SIGNS OF
AN ATTACHMENT WHICH
Had Gwen really been able to see to the bottom of her cousin's, the Hon.
Percival's mind, she might not have felt quite so certain about his
predispositions towards her adopted aunt. The description of these two
as wanting to rush into each other's arms was exaggerated. It would have
been fairer to say that Aunt Constance was fully prepared to consider an
offer, and that Mr. Pellew was beginning to see his way to making one.
The most promising feature in the lady's state of mind was that she was
formulating consolations, dormant now, but actively available if by
chance the gentleman did not see his way. She was saying to herself that
if another flower attracted this bee, she herself would thereby only
lose an admirer with a disposition--only a slight one perhaps, but still
undeniable--to become corpulent in the course of the next few years. She
could subordinate her dislike of smoking so long as she could suppose
him ever so little in earnest; but, if he did waver by any chance, what
a satisfaction it would be to dwell on her escape from--here a mixed
metaphor came in--the arms of a tobacco shop! She could shut her eyes,
if she was satisfied of the sincerity of a redeeming attachment to
herself, to all the contingencies of the previous life of a middle-aged
bachelor about town; but they would no doubt supply a set-off to his
disaffection, if that was written on the next page of her book of Fate.
In short, she would be prepared in that case to accept the conviction
that she was well rid of him. But all this was subcutaneous. Given only
the one great essential, that he was not merely philandering, and then
neither his escapades in the past, nor his cigars, nor even his
suggestions towards a corporation, would stand in the way of a
whole-hearted acceptance of a companion for life who had somehow managed
to be such a pleasant companion during that visit at the Towers. At
least, she would be better off than her four sisters. For this lady had
a wholesome aversion for her brothers-in-law, tending to support the
creed which teaches that the sacrament of marriage makes of its
votaries, or victims, not only parties to a contract, but one flesh, and
opens up undreamed-of possibilities of real fraternal dissension.
The gentleman, on the other hand, was in what we may suppose to be a
corresponding stage of uncertainty. He too was able to perceive, or
affect a perception, that, after all, if he came to the scratch and the
scratch eventuated--as scratches do sometimes--in a paralysis of
astonishment on the lady's part that such an idea should ever have
entered into the applicant's calculations, it wouldn't be a thing to
break his heart about exactly. He would have made rather an ass of
himself, certainly. But he was quite prepared not to be any the worse.
This was, however, not subcutaneous, with him. He said it to himself,
quite openly. His concealment of himself from himself turned on a sort
of passive resistance he was offering to a growing reluctance to hear a
negative to his application. He was, despite himself, entertaining the
question:--Was this woman whom he had been assessing and wavering over,
_more masculino_, conceivably likely to reject him on his merits? Might
she not say to him:--"I have seen your drift, and found you too pleasant
an acquaintance to condemn offhand. But now that you force me to ask
myself the question, 'Can I love you?' you leave me no choice but to
answer, 'I can't.'" And he was beginning to have a misgiving that he
would very much rather that that scratch, if ever he came to it, should
end on very different lines from this. All this, mind you, was under the
skin of his reflections.
As he walked away slowly in the moonlight, with the appointment fresh in
his mind to return next day on a shallow archaeological pretext, he may
have been himself at a loss for his reason for completing a tour of the
square, and pausing to look up at the house before making a definite
start for his Club, or his rooms in Brook Street. Was any reason
necessary, beyond the fineness of the night? He had an indisputable
right to walk round Cavendish Square without a reason, and he exercised
it. He rather resented the policeman on his beat saying goodnight to
him, as though he were abnormal, and walked away in the opposite
direction from that officer, who was searchlighting areas for want of
something to do, with an implication of profound purpose. He decided on
loneliness and a walk exactly the length of a cigar, throwing its last
effort to burn his fingers away on his doorstep. He carried the
animation of his thoughts on his face upstairs to bed with him, for it
lasted through a meditation at an open window, through a chorus of cats
about their private affairs, and the usual controversy about the hour
among all the town-clocks, which becomes embittered when there is only
one hour to talk about, and compromise is impossible. Mr. Pellew heard
the last opinion and retired for the night at nine minutes past. But he
first made sure that that _Quarterly Review_ was in evidence, and
glanced at the Egyptian article to confirm his impression of the
contents. They were still there. He believed all his actions were sane
and well balanced, but this was credulity. One stretches a point
sometimes, to believe oneself reasonable.
It was a model September afternoon--and what can one say more of
weather?--when at half-past three precisely Mr. Pellew's hansom overshot
the door of 102, Cavendish Square, and firmly but amiably insisted on
turning round to deposit its fare according to the exact terms of its
contract. Its proprietor said what he could in extenuation of its
maladroitness. They shouldn't build these here houses at the corners of
streets; it was misguiding to the most penetrating intellect. He
addressed his fare as Captain, asking him to make it another sixpence.
He had been put to a lot of expense last month, along of the strike, and
looked to the public to make it up to him. For the cabbies had struck,
some weeks since, against sixpence a mile instead of eightpence. Mr.
Pellew's heart was touched, and he conceded the other sixpence.
There at the door was Miss Grahame's open landaulet, and there were she
and Gwen in it, just starting to see the former's little boy. That was
how Dave was spoken of, at the risk of creating a scandal. They
immediately lent themselves to a gratuitous farce, having for its
object the liberation of Mr. Pellew and Miss Dickenson from external
influence.
"Constance _was_ back, wasn't she?" Thus Miss Grahame; and Gwen had the
effrontery to say she was almost certain, but couldn't be quite sure. If
she wasn't there, she would have to go without that pulverised Pharaoh,
as Sir Somebody Something's just yearnings for his _Quarterly_ were not
to be made light of. "Don't you let Maggie take the book up to her,
Percy. You go up in the sitting-room--you know, where we were playing
last night?--and if she doesn't turn up in five minutes don't you wait
for her!" Then the two ladies talked telegraphically, to the exclusion
of Mr. Pellew, to the effect that Aunt Constance had only gone to buy a
pair of gloves in Oxford Street, and was pledged to an early return. The
curtain fell on the farce, and a very brief interview with Mary at the
door ended in Mr. Pellew being shown upstairs, without reservation. So
he and Aunt Constance had the house to themselves.
To do them justice, the attention shown to the covering fiction of the
book-loan was of the very smallest. It could not be ignored altogether;
so Miss Dickenson looked at the article. She did not read a word of it,
but she looked at it. She went further, and said it was interesting.
Then it was allowed to lie on the table. When the last possible book has
been printed--for even Literature must come to an end some time, if Time
itself does not collapse--that will be the last privilege accorded to
it. It will lie on the table, while all but a few of its predecessors
will stand on a bookshelf.
"It's quite warm out of doors," said Mr. Pellew.
"Warmer than yesterday, I think," said Miss Dickenson. And then talk
went on, stiffly, each of its contribuents execrating its stiffness, but
seeing no way to relaxation.
"Sort of weather that generally ends in a thunderstorm."
"Does it? Well--perhaps it does."
"Don't you think it does?"
"I thought it felt very like thunder an hour ago."
"Rather more than an hour ago, wasn't it?"
"Just after lunch--about two o'clock."
"Dessay you're right. I should have said a quarter to." Now, if this
sort of thing had continued, it must have ended in a joint laugh, and
recognition of its absurdity. Aunt Constance may have foreseen this,
inwardly, and not been prepared to go so fast. For she accommodated the
conversation with a foothold, partly ethical, partly scientific.
"Some people feel the effect of thunder much more than others. No doubt
it is due to the electrical condition of the atmosphere. Before this was
understood, it was ascribed to all sorts of causes."
"I expect it's nerves. Haven't any myself! Rather like tropical storms
than otherwise."
Here was an opportunity to thaw the surface ice. The lady could have
done it in an instant, by talking to the gentleman about himself. That
is the "Open Sesame!" of human intercourse. She preferred to say that in
their village--her clan's, that is--in Dorsetshire, there was a sept
named Chobey that always went into an underground cellar and stopped its
ears, whenever there was a thunderstorm.
Mr. Pellew said weakly:--"It runs in families." He had to accept this
one as authentic, but he would have questioned its existence if
anonymous. He could not say:--"How do you know?" to an informant who
could vouch for Chobey. Smith or Brown would have left him much freer.
The foothold of the conversation was giving way, and a resolute effort
was called for to give it stability. Mr. Pellew thought he saw his way.
He said:--"How jolly it must be down at the Towers--day like this!"
"Perfectly delicious!" was the answer. Then, in consideration of the
remoteness of mere landscape from personalities, it was safe to
particularise. "I really think that walk in the shrubbery, where the
gentian grew in such quantity, is one of the sweetest places of the kind
I ever was in."
"I know I enjoyed my ..." Mr. Pellew had started to say that he enjoyed
himself there. He got alarmed at his own temerity and backed out ... "my
cigars there," said he. A transparent fraud, for the possessive pronoun
does not always sound alike. "My," is one thing before "self," another
before "cigars." Try it on both, and see. Mr. Pellew felt he was
detected. He could slur over his blunder by going straight on; any topic
would do. He decided on:--"By-the-by, did you see any more of the dog?"
"Achilles? He went away, you know, with Mr. Torrens and his sister, a
few days after."
"I meant that. Didn't you say something about seeing him with the
assassin--the old gamekeeper--what was his name?"
"Old Stephen Solmes? Yes. I saw them walking together, apparently on the
most friendly terms. Gwen told me afterwards. They were walking towards
his cottage, and I believe Achilles saw him safe home, and came back."
"Just so. Torrens told me about the dog when old Solmes came to say
good-bye to him, and do a little more penance in sackcloth and ashes. I
am using Torrens's words. The old chap made a scene--went down on his
knees and burst out crying--and the dog tried to console him. Torrens
seemed quite clear about what was passing in the dog's mind."
"What did he say the dog meant? Can you remember?" Miss Dickenson was
settling down to chat, perceptibly.
"Pretty well. Achilles had wished to say that he personally, so far from
finding fault with Mr. Solmes for trying to shoot him, fully recognised
that he drew trigger under a contract to do so, given circumstances
which had actually come about. He would not endeavour to extenuate his
own conduct, but submitted that he was entitled to a lenient judgment,
on the ground that a hare, the pursuit of which was the indirect cause
of the whole mishap, had jumped up from behind a stone.... Well--I
suppose I oughtn't to repeat all a profane poet thinks fit to say...."
"Please do! Never mind the profanity!" It really was a stimulus to the
lady's curiosity.
Mr. Pellew repeated the apology which the collie's master had ascribed
to him. Achilles had only acted in obedience to Instincts which had been
Implanted in him in circumstances for which he was not responsible, and
which might, for anything he knew, have been conceived in a spirit of
mischief by the Author of all Good. This levity was stopped by a shocked
expression on the lady's face. "Well," said the gentleman, "you mustn't
blow _me_ up, Miss Dickenson. I am only repeating, as desired, the words
of a profane poet. He had apologized, he told me, for what he said, when
his sister boxed his ears."
"Serve him right. But what was his apology?"
"That he owed it to Achilles, who was unable to speak for himself, to
lay stress on what he conceived to be the dog's Manichaean views, which
he had been most unwillingly forced to infer from his practice of
suddenly barking indignantly at the Universe, in what certainly seemed
an unprayerful spirit."
"It was only Mr. Torrens's nonsense. He wanted to blaspheme a little,
and jumped at the opportunity. They are all alike, Poets. Look at Byron
and Shelley!"
Mr. Pellew, for his own purposes no doubt, managed here to insinuate
that he himself was not without a reverent side to his character. These
fillahs were no doubt the victims of their own genius, and presumably
Mr. Torrens was a bird of the same feather. He himself was a stupid
old-fashioned sort of fillah, and couldn't always follow this sort of
thing. It was as delicate a claim as he could make to sometimes going
to Church on Sunday, as was absolutely consistent with Truth.
To his great relief, Miss Dickenson did not catechize him closely about
his religious views. She only remarked, reflectively and vaguely:--"One
hardly knows what to think. Anyone would have said my father was a
religious man, and what does he do but marry a widow, less than three
years after my mother's death!"
Certainly the coherency of this speech was not on its surface. But Mr.
Pellew accepted it contentedly enough. At least, it clothed him with
some portion of the garb of a family friend; say shoes or gloves, not
the whole suit. Whichever it was, he pulled them on, and felt they
fitted. He began to speak, and stopped; was asked what he was going to
say, and went on, encouraged:--"I was going to say, only I pulled up
because it felt impertinent...."
"Not to me! Please tell me exactly!"
"I was going to ask, how old is your father? Is he older than me?"
"Why, of course he is! I'm thirty-six. How old are you? Tell the truth!"
At this exact moment a funny thing happened. The _passee_ elderly young
lady vanished--she who had been so often weighed, found wanting, and
been put back in the balance for reconsideration. She vanished, and a
desirable _alter ego_--Mr. Pellew's, as he hoped--was looking across at
him from the sofa by the window, swinging the tassel of the red blind
that kept the sun in check, and hushed it down to a fiery glow on the
sofa's occupant waiting to know how old he was.
"I thought I had told you. Nearly forty-six."
"Very well, then! My father is five-and-twenty years your senior."
"If you had to say exactly _why_ you dislike your father's having
married again, do you think you could?"
"Oh dear, no! I'm quite sure I couldn't. But I think it detestable for
all that."
"I'm not sure that you're right. You may be, though! Are you sure it
hasn't something to do with the ... with the party he's married?"
"Not at all sure." Dryly.
"Can't understand objecting to a match on its own account. It's always
something to do with the outsider that comes in--the one one knows least
of."
"You wouldn't like this one." It may seem inexplicable, that these words
should be the cause of the person addressed taking the nearest chair to
the speaker, having previously been a nomad with his thumbs in the
armholes of his waistcoat. Close analysis may connect the action with an
extension of the family-friendship wardrobe, which it may have
recognised--a neckcloth, perhaps--and may be able to explain why it
seemed doubtful form to the Hon. Percival to keep his thumbs in those
waistcoat-loops. To us, it is perfectly easy to understand--without any
analysis at all--why, at this juncture, Miss Dickenson said:--"I suppose
you know you may smoke a cigarette, if you like?"
In those days you might have looked in tobacconist's shopwindows all day
and never seen a cigarette. It was a foreign fashion at which sound
smokers looked askance. Mossoos might smoke it, but good, solid John
Bull suspected it of being a kick-shaw not unconnected with Atheism. He
stuck to his pipe chiefly. Nevertheless, it was always open to skill to
fabricate its own cigarettes, and Mr. Pellew's aptitude in the art was
known to Miss Dickenson. The one he screwed up on receipt of this
licence was epoch-making. The interview had been one that was going to
last a quarter of an hour. This cigarette made its duration
indeterminate. Because a cigarette is not a cigar. The latter is like a
chapter in a book, the former like a paragraph. At the chapter's end
vacant space insists on a pause for thought, for approval or
condemnation of its contents. But every paragraph is as it were kindled
from the last sentence of its predecessor; as soon as each ends the next
is ready. The reader aloud is on all fours with the cigarette-smoker. He
doesn't always enjoy himself so much, but that is neither here nor
there.
It was not during the first cigarette that Mr. Pellew said to Aunt
Constance:--"Where is it they have gone to-day, do you know?" That first
one heard, if it listened, all about the lady's home in Dorsetshire and
her obnoxious stepmother. It may have wondered, if it was an observant
cigarette, at the unreserve with which the narrator took its smoker into
the bosom of her confidence, and the lively interest her story provoked.
If it had--which is not likely, considering the extent of its
experience--a shrewd perception of the philosophy of reciprocity,
probably it wondered less. It heard to the end of the topic, and Mr.
Pellew asked the question above stated, as he screwed up its successor,
and exacted the death-duty of an ignition from it.
"They ought to be coming back soon," was the answer. "I told them I
wouldn't have tea till they came. They're gone to see a _protegee_ of
Clotilda's, who lives down a Court. It's not very far off; under a mile,
I should think. We saw him in the street, coming from the
railway-station. He looked a nice boy. That is to say, he would have
looked nice, only he and his friends had all been blacking their faces
with burnt cork."
"What a lark! Why didn't you go to the Court?... I'm jolly glad you
didn't, you know, but you might have...." This was just warm enough for
the position. With its slight extenuation of slang, it might rank as
mere emphasized civility.
It was Miss Dickenson's turn to word something ambiguous to cover all
contingencies. "Yes, I should have been very sorry if you had come to
bring the book, and not found me here." This was clever, backed by a
smile. She went on:--"They thought two would be quite enough,
considering the size of the Court."
A spirit of accommodation prevailed. Oh yes--Mr. Pellew quite saw that.
Very sensible! "It don't do," said he, "to make too much of a descent on
this sort of people. They never know what to make of it, and the thing
don't wash!" But he was only saying what came to hand; because he was
extremely glad Miss Dickenson had not gone with the expedition. How far
he perceived that his own visit underlay its arrangements, who can say?
His perception fell short of being ignorant that he was aware of it.
Suppose we leave it at that!
Still, regrets--scarcely Jeremiads--that she had not been included would
be becoming, all things considered. They could not be misinterpreted. "I
was sorry not to go," she said. "His father was a prizefighter and seems
interesting, according to Clotilda. Her idea is to get Gwen enthusiastic
about people of this sort, or any of her charitable schemes, rather than
dragging her off to Switzerland or Italy. Besides, she won't go!"
"That's a smasher! The idea, I suppose, is to get her away and let the
Torrens business die a natural death. Well--it won't!"
"You think not?"
"No thinking about it! Sure of it! I've known my cousin Gwen from a
child--so have you, for that matter!--and I know it's useless. If she
will, she will, you may depend on't; and if she won't she won't, and
there's an end on't. You'll see, she'll consent to go fiddling about for
three months or six months to Wiesbaden or Ems or anywhere, but she'll
end by fixing the day and ordering her trousseau, quite as a matter of
course! As for _his_ changing--pooh!" Mr. Pellew laughed aloud. Miss
Dickenson looked a very hesitating concurrence, which he felt would bear
refreshing. He continued:--"Why, just look at the case! A man loses his
eyesight and is half killed five minutes after seeing--for the first
time, mind you, for the first time!--my cousin Gwen Rivers, under
specially favourable circumstances. When he comes to himself he finds
out in double quick time that she loves him? _He_ change? Not he!"
"Do tell me, Mr. Pellew.... I'm only asking, you know; not expressing
any opinion myself.... Do tell me, don't you think it possible that it
might be better for both of them--for Gwen certainly, if it ... if it
never...."
"If it never came off? If you ask me, all I can say is, that I haven't
an opinion. It is so absolutely their affair and nobody else's. That's
my excuse for not having an opinion, and you see I jump at it."
"Of course it is entirely their affair, and one knows. But one can't
help thinking. Just fancy Gwen the wife of a blind country Squire. It is
heartbreaking to think of--now isn't it?"
But Mr. Pellew was not to be moved from his position. "It's their own
look out," said he. "Nobody else's!" He suddenly perceived that this
might be taken as censorious. "Not finding fault, you know! You're all
right. Naturally, you think of Gwen."
"Whom ought I to think of? Oh, I see what you mean. It's true I don't
know Mr. Torrens--have hardly seen him!"
"I saw him a fairish number of times--one time with another. He's a sort
of fillah ... a sort of fillah you can't exactly describe. Very unusual
sort of fillah!" Mr. Pellew held his cigarette a little way off to look
at it thoughtfully, as though it were the usual sort of fellow, and he
was considering how he could distinguish Mr. Torrens from it.
"You mean he's unusually clever?"
"Yes, he's that. But that's not exactly what I meant, either. He's
clever, of course. Only he doesn't give you a chance of knowing it,
because he turns everything to nonsense. What I wanted to say was, that
whatever he says, one fancies one would have said it oneself, if one had
had the time to think it out."
Miss Dickenson didn't really identify this as a practicable shade of
character, but she pretended she did. In fact she said:--"Oh, I know
exactly what you mean. I've known people like that," merely to lubricate
the conversation. Then she asked: "Did you ever talk to the Earl about
him?"
"Tim? Yes, a little. He doesn't disguise his liking for him, personally.
He's rather ... rather besotted about him, I should say."
"_She_ isn't." How Mr. Pellew knew who was meant is not clear, but he
did.
"Her mother, you mean," said he. "Do you know, I doubt if Philippa
dislikes him? I shouldn't put it that way. But I think she would be glad
for the thing to die a natural death for all that. Eyes apart, you
know." When people begin to make so very few words serve their purpose
it shows that their circumferences have intersected--no mere tangents
now. A portion of the area of each is common to both. Forgive geometry
this intrusion on the story, and accept the metaphor.
"Yes, that's what it is," said Aunt Constance. And then in answer to a
glance that, so to speak, asked for a confirmation of a telegram:--"Oh
yes, I know we both mean the same thing. You were thinking of that old
story--the old love-affair. I quite understand." She might have added
"this time," because the last time she knew what Mr. Pellew meant she
was stretching a point, and he was subconscious of it.
"That's the idea," said he. "I fancy Philippa's feelings must be rather
difficult to define. So must his papa's, I should think."
"I can't fancy anything more embarrassing."
"Of course Tim has a mighty easy time of it, by comparison."
"Does he necessarily know anything about it?"
"He must have heard of it. It wasn't a secret, though it wasn't
announced in the papers. These things get talked about. Besides, she
would tell him."
"Tell him? Of course she would! She would tell him that that young
Torrens was a 'great admirer' of hers."
"Yes--I suppose she _would_ make use of some expression of that sort.
Capital things, expressions!"
Aunt Constance seemed to think this phrase called for some sort of
elucidation. "I always feel grateful," said she, "to that
Frenchman--Voltaire or Talleyrand or Rochefoucauld or somebody--who said
language was invented to conceal our thoughts. That was what you meant,
wasn't it?"
"Precisely. I suppose Sir Torrens--this chap's papa--told the lady he
married ..."
"She was a Miss Abercrombie, I believe."
"Yes--I believe she was.... Told her he was a great admirer of her
ladyship once on a time--a boyish freak--that sort of thing! Pretends
all the gilt is off the gingerbread now. Wish I had been there when Sir
Hamilton turned up at the Towers, after the accident."
"I _was_ there."
"Well! And then?"
"Nothing and then. They were--just like anybody else. When I saw them
was after his son had begun to pull round. Till then I fancy neither he
nor the sister ..."
"Irene. ''Rene,' he calls her. Jolly sort of girl, and very handsome."
"Neither Irene nor her father came downstairs much. It was after you
went away."
"And what did they say?--him and Philippa, I mean."
"Oh--say? What _did_ they say? Really I can't remember. Said what a long
time it was since they met. Because I don't believe they _had_ met--not
to shake hands--for five-and-twenty years!"
"What a rum sort of experience! Do you know?... only of course one can't
say for certain about anything of this sort ..."
"Do I know? Go on."
"I was going to say that if I had been them, I should have burst out
laughing and said what a couple of young asses we were!" The Hon.
Percival was very colloquial, but syntax was not of the essence of the
contract, if any existed.
Aunt Constance was not in the mood to pooh-pooh the _tendresses_ of a
youthful passion. She was, if you will have it so, sentimental. "Let me
think if I should," said she, with a momentary action of closing her
eyes, to keep inward thought free of the outer world. In a moment they
were open again, and she was saying:--"No, I should not have done
anything of the sort. One laughs at young people, I know, when they are
so very inflammatory. But what do we think of them when they are not?"
She became quite warm and excited about it, or perhaps--so thought Mr.
Pellew as he threw his last cigarette-end away through that open
window--the blaze of a sun that was forecasting its afterglow made her
seem so. Mr. Pellew having thrown away that cigarette-end
conscientiously, and made a pretence of seeing it safe into the front
area, was hardly bound to go back to his chair. He dropped on the sofa,
beside Miss Dickenson, with one hand over the back. He loomed over her,
but she did not shy or flinch.
"What indeed!" said he seriously, answering her last words. "A young man
that does not fall in love seldom comes to any good." He was really
thinking to himself:--"Oh, the mistakes I should have been saved in
life, if only this had happened to me in my twenties!" He was not making
close calculation of what the lady's age would have been in those days.
She was dwelling on the abstract question:--"You know, say what one may,
the whole of their lives is at stake. And we never think them young
geese when the thing comes off, and they become couples."
"No. True enough. It's only when it goes off and they don't."
"And what is so creepy about it is that we never know whether the couple
is the right couple."
"Never know anything at all about anything beforehand!" Mr. Pellew was
really talking at random. Even the value of this trite remark was
spoiled. For he added:--"Nor afterwards, for that matter!"
Miss Dickenson admitted that we could not lay too much stress on our own
limitations. But she was not in the humour for platitudes. Her mind was
running on a problem that might have worried Juliet Capulet had she
never wedded her Romeo and taken a dose of hellebore, but lived on to
find that County Paris had in him the makings of a lovable mate. Quite
possible, you know! It was striking her that if a trothplight were
nothing but a sort of civil contract--civil in the sense of courteous,
polite, urbane, accommodating--an exchange of letters through a callous
Post Office--a woman might be engaged a dozen times and meet the males
implicated in after-life, without turning a hair. But even a hand-clasp,
left to enjoy itself by its parents--not nipped in the bud--might poison
their palms and recrudesce a little in Society, long years after! While,
as for lips....
Something crossed her reflections, just on the crux of them--their most
critical point of all. "There!" said she. "Did you hear that? I knew we
should have thunder."
But Mr. Pellew had heard nothing and was incredulous. He verified his
incredulity, going to the window to look out. "Blue sky all round!" said
he. "Must have been a cart!" He went back to his seat, and the
explanation passed muster.
Miss Dickenson picked up her problem, with that last perplexity hanging
to it. No, it was no use!--- that equable deportment of Sir Hamilton and
Philippa remained a mystery to her. She, however--mere single Miss
Dickenson--could not of course guess how these two would see themselves,
looking back, with all the years between of a growing Gwen and Adrian;
to her, it was just the lapse of so much time, nothing more--a year or
so over the time she had known Philippa. For Romeo and Juliet were
metaphors out of date when she came on the scene, and Philippa was a
Countess.
She was irritated by the inability she felt to comment freely on these
views of the position. It would have been easier--she saw this--to do so
had Mr. Pellew gone back to his chair, instead of sitting down again
beside her on the sofa. It was her own fault perhaps, because she could
not have sworn this time that she had not seemed to make room. That
unhappy sex--the female one--lives under orders to bristle with
incessant safeguards against misinterpretation. Heaven only knows--or
should we not rather say, Hell only knows?--what latitudes have claimed
"encouragement" as their excuse! That lady in Browning's poem never
should have looked at the gentleman so, had she meant he should not love
her. So _he_ said! But suppose she saw a fly on his nose--how then?
Therefore it would never have done for Miss Dickenson to go into close
analysis of the problems suggested by the meeting of two undoubted
_fiances_ of years long past, and the inexplicable self-command with
which they looked the present in the face. She had to be content with
saying:--"Of course we know nothing of the intentions of Providence. But
it's no use pretending that it would not feel very--queer." She had to
clothe this word with a special emphasis, and backed it with an implied
contortion due to teeth set on edge. She added:--"All I know is, I'm
very glad it wasn't _me_." After which she was clearly not responsible
if the topic continued.
Mr. Pellew took the responsibility on himself of saying with deep-seated
intuition:--"I know precisely what you mean. You're perfectly right.
Perfectly!"
"A hundred little things," said the lady. The dragging in of ninety-nine
of these, with the transparent object of slurring over the hundredth,
which each knew the other was thinking of, merely added to its
vividness. Aunt Constance might just as well have let it alone, and
suddenly talked of something else. For instance, of the Sun God's
abnormal radiance, now eloquent of what he meant to do for the
metropolis when he got a few degrees lower, and went in for setting, in
earnest. Or if she shrank from that, as not prosaic enough to dilute the
conversation down to mere chat-point, the Ethiopian Serenaders who had
just begun to be inexplicable in the Square below. But she left the
first to assert its claim to authorship of the flush of rose colour that
certainly made her tell to advantage, and the last to account for the
animation which helped it. For the enigmatic character of South Carolina
never interferes with a certain brisk exhilaration in its bones. She
repeated in a vague way:--"A hundred things!" and shut her lips on
particularisation.
"I don't know exactly how many," said Mr. Pellew gravely. He sat drawing
one whisker through the hand whose elbow was on the sofa-back, with his
eyes very much on the flush and the animation. "I was thinking of one in
particular."
"Perhaps _I_ was. I don't know."
"I was thinking of the kissin'."
"Well--so was I, perhaps. I don't see any use in mincing matters." She
had been the mincer-in-chief, however.
"Don't do the slightest good! When it gets to kissin'-point, it's all
up. If I had been a lady, and broken a fillah off, I think I should have
been rather grateful to him for getting out of the gangway. Should have
made a point of getting out, myself."
The subject had got comfortably landed, and could be philosophically
discussed. "I dare say everyone does not feel the point as strongly as I
do," said Miss Dickenson. "I know my sister Georgie--Mrs. Amphlett
Starfax--looks at it quite differently, and thinks me rather a ... prig.
Or perhaps _prig_ isn't exactly the word. I don't know how to put
it...."
"Never mind. I know exactly what you mean."
"You see, the circumstances are so different. Georgie had been engaged
six times before Octavius came on the scene. But, oh dear, how I _am_
telling tales out of school!..."
"Never mind Georgie and Octavius. They're not your sort. You were saying
how you felt about it, and that's more interesting. Interests me more!"
Conceive that at this point the lady glanced at the speaker ever so
slightly. Upon which he followed a slight pause with:--"Yes, why are you
a _prig_, as she thought fit to put it?"
"Because I told her that if ever I found a young man who suited me--and
_vice versa_--and it got to ... to what you called just now
'kissing-point,' I should not be so ready as she had been to pull him
off like an old glove and throw him away. That was when I was very
young, you know. It was just after she jilted Ludwig, who afterwards
married my sister Lilian--Baroness Porchammer; my eldest sister...."
"Oh, _she_ jilted Ludwig, and _he_ married your sister Lilian, was that
it?" Mr. Pellew, still stroking that right whisker thoughtfully, was
preoccupied by something that diverted interest from this family
history.
Aunt Constance did not seem to notice his abstraction, but talked on.
"Yes--and what is so funny about Georgie with Julius is that they don't
seem to mind kissing now from a new standpoint. Georgie particularly. In
fact, I've seen her kiss him on both sides and call him an old stupid.
However, as you say, the cases are not alike. Perhaps if Philippa's old
love had married her sister--Lady Clancarrock of Garter, you
know--instead of Uncle Cosmo, as they call him, they could have got used
to it, by now. Only one must look at these things from one's own point
of view, and by the light of one's experience." A ring on her right hand
might have been one of the things, and the sun-ray through the
blind-slip the light of her experience, as she sat accommodating the
flash-light of the first to the gleam of the second.
If everyone knew to a nicety his or her seeming at the precise point of
utterance of any speech, slight or weighty, nine-tenths of our wit or
profundity would remain unspoken. Man always credits woman with knowing
exactly what she looks like, and engineering speech and seeming towards
the one desired end of impressing him--important Him! He acquits himself
of studying the subject! Probably he and she are, as a matter of fact,
six of the one and half a dozen of the other. Of this one thing the
story feels certain, that had Miss Dickenson been conscious of her
neighbour's incorporation into a unit of magnetism--he being its
victim--of her mere outward show in the evening light with the
subject-matter of her discourse, this little lecture on the ethics of
kissing would never have seen the light. But let her finish it. Consider
that she gives a pause to the ring-gleam, then goes on, quite in
earnest.
"It's very funny that it should be so, I know--but there it is! If I had
ever been engaged, or on the edge of it--I never have, really and
truly!--and the infatuated youth had ... had complicated matters to that
extent, I never should have been able to wipe it off. That's an
expression of a small niece of mine--three-and-a-quarter.... Oh
dear--but I never _said_ you might!..."
For the gentleman's conduct had been extraordinary! unwarranted,
perhaps, according to some. According to others, he may only have
behaved as a many in his position would have behaved half an hour
sooner. "I am," said he, "the infatuated youth. Forgive me, Aunt
Constance!" For he had deliberately taken that lady in his arms and
kissed her.
The foregoing is an attempt to follow through an interview the
development of events which led to its climax--a persistent and
tenacious attempt, more concerned with its purpose than with inquiring
into the interest this or that reader may feel who may chance to light
upon this narrative. No very close analysis of the sublatent impulses
and motives of its actors is professed or attempted; only a fringe of
guesswork at the best. But let a protest be recorded against the
inevitable vernacular judgment in disfavour of the lady. "Of
course--the minx! As if she didn't know what she was about the whole
time. As if she wasn't leading him on!" Because that is the attitude of
mind of the correct human person in such a case made and provided. That
is, if an inevitable automatic action can be called an attitude of mind.
Is rotation on its axis an attitude of a wheel's mind? To be sure,
though, a wheel may turn either of two ways. A ratchet-wheel is needed
for this metaphor.
However, the correct human person may be expressing a universal opinion.
This is only the protest of the story, which thinks otherwise. But even
if it were so, was not Miss Dickenson well within her rights? The story
claims that, anyhow. At the same time, it records its belief that
four-fifths of the _denouement_ was due to Helios. The magic golden
radiance intoxicated Mr. Pellew, and made him forget--or
remember--himself. The latter, the story thinks. That ring perhaps had
its finger in the pie--but this may be to inquire too curiously.
One thing looks as though Miss Dickenson had not been working out a
well-laid scheme. Sudden success does not stop the heart with a jerk, or
cause speechlessness, even for a moment. Both had happened to her by the
time she had uttered her _pro forma_ remonstrance. Her breath lasted it
out. Then she found it easiest to remain passive. She was not certain it
would not be correct form to make a show of disengaging herself from the
arms that still held her. But--she didn't want to!
This may have justified Mr. Pellew's next words:--"You do forgive me,
don't you?" more as assertion than inquiry.
She got back breath enough to gasp out:--"Oh yes--only don't talk! Let
me think!" And then presently:--"Yes, I forgive you in any case.
Only--I'll tell you directly. Let's look out of the window. I want to
feel the air blow.... You startled me rather, that's all!"
Said Mr. Pellew, at the window, as he reinstated an arm dispossessed
during the transit:--"I did it to ... to _clinch_ the matter, don't you
see? I thought I should make a mess of it if I went in for eloquence."
"It was as good as any way. I wasn't the least angry. Only...."
"Only what?"
"Only by letting you go on like this"--half a laugh came in here--"I
don't consider that I stand committed to anything."
"I consider that _I_ stand committed to everything." The arm may have
slightly emphasized this.
"No--that's impossible. It _must_ be the same for both."
"Dearest woman! Just as you like. But I know what I mean." Indeed, Mr.
Pellew did seem remarkably clear about it. Where, by-the-by, was that
_passee_ young lady, and that middle-aged haunter of Clubs? Had they
ever existed?
Bones was audible from below, as they stood looking out at the west,
where some cirro-stratus clouds were waiting to see the sun down beyond
the horizon, and keep his memory golden for half an hour. Bones was
affecting ability to answer conundrums, asked by an unexplained person
with a banjo, who treated him with distinction, calling him "Mr. Bones."
Both were affecting an air of high courtesy, as of persons familiar with
the Thrones and Chancelleries of Europe. The particulars of these
conundrums were inaudible, from distance, but the scheme was clear.
Bones offered several solutions, of a fine quality of wit, but wrong. He
then produced a sharp click or snap, after his kind, and gave it up. His
friend or patron then gave the true solution, whose transcendent humour
was duly recognised by Europe, and moved Bones to an unearthly dance,
dryly but decisively accompanied on his instrument. A sudden outburst of
rhythmic banjo-thuds and song followed, about Old Joe, who kicked up
behind and before, and a yellow girl, who kicked up behind Old Joe. Then
the Company stopped abruptly and went home to possible soap and water.
Silence was left for the lady and gentleman at No. 102 to speak to one
another in undertones, and to wonder what o'clock it was.
"They ought to be back by now," says she. "I wonder they are so late.
They are making quite a visitation of it."
Says he:--"Gwen is fascinated with the old prizefighter. Just like her!
I don't care how long they stop; do you?"
"I don't think it matters," says she, "to a quarter of an hour. The
sunset is going to be lovely." This is to depersonalise the position. A
feeble attempt, under the circumstances.
It must have been past the end of that quarter of an hour, when--normal
relations having been resumed, of course--Miss Dickenson interrupted a
sub-vocal review of the growth of their acquaintance to say, "Come in!"
The tap that was told to come in was Maggie. Was she to be making the
tea? Was she to lay it? On the whole she might do both, as the delay of
the absentees longer was in the nature of things impossible.
But, subject to the disposition of Mr. Pellew's elbows on the
window-sill, they might go on looking out at the sunset and feel
_regles_. Short of endearments, Maggie didn't matter.
The self-assertion of Helios was amazing. He made nothing of what one
had thought would prove a cloud-veil--tore it up, brushed it aside. He
made nothing, too, of the powers of eyesight of those whose gaze dwelt
on him over boldly.
"It _is_ them," said Miss Dickenson, referring to a half-recognised
barouche that had turned the corner below. "But who on earth have they
got with them? I can't see for my eyes."
"Only some friend they've picked up," said Mr. Pellew. But he rubbed his
own eyes, to get rid of the sun. Recovered sight made him exclaim:--"But
what are the people stopping for?... I say, something's up! Come along!"
For, over and above a mysterious impression of the unusual that could
hardly be set down to the bird's-eye view as its sole cause, it was
clear that every passer-by was stopping, to look at the carriage.
Moreover, there was confusion of voices--Gwen's dominant. Mr. Pellew did
not wait to distinguish speech. He only repeated:--"Come along!" and was
off downstairs as fast as he could go. Aunt Constance kept close behind
him.
She was too bewildered to be quite sure, offhand, why Gwen looked so
more than dishevelled, as she met them at the stairfoot, earnest with
excitement. Not panic-struck at all--that was not her way--but at
highest tension of word and look, as she made the decision of her voice
heard:--"Oh, there you are, Mr. Pellew. Make yourself useful. Go out and
bring her in. Never mind who! Make haste. And Maggie's to fetch the
doctor." Mr. Pellew went promptly out, and Miss Dickenson was
beginning:--"Why--what?..." But she had to stand inquiry over. For
nothing was possible against Gwen's:--"Now, Aunt Connie dear, don't ask
questions. You shall be told the whole story, all in good time! Let's
get her upstairs and get the doctor." They both followed Mr. Pellew into
the street, where a perceptible crowd, sprung from nowhere, was already
offering services it was not qualified to give, in ignorance of the
nature of the emergency that had to be met, and in defiance of a
policeman.
Mr. Pellew had taken his instructions so quickly from Miss Grahame,
still in the carriage, that he was already carrying the doctor's
patient, whoever and whatever she was, but carefully as directed, into
the house. At any rate it was not Miss Grahame herself, for that lady's
voice was saying, collectedly:--"I don't think it's any use Maggie
going, Gwen, because she doesn't know London. James must fetch him, in
the carriage. Dr. Dalrymple, 65, Weymouth Street, James! Tell him he
_must_ come, at once! Say _I_ said so." It was then that Aunt Constance
perceived in the clear light of the street, that not only was the
person Mr. Pellew was carrying into the house--whom she could only
identify otherwise as having snow-white hair--covered with dust and
soiled, but that Gwen and Miss Grahame were in a like plight, the latter
in addition being embarrassed by a rent skirt, which she was fain to
hold together as she crossed the doorstep. Once in the house she made
short work of it, finishing the rip, and acquiescing in the publicity of
a petticoat. It added to Aunt Constance's perplexity that the carriage
and James appeared in as trim order as when they left the door three
hours since. These hours had been eventful to her, and she was really
feeling as if the whole thing must be a strange dream.
She got no explanation worth the name at the time of the incident. For
Gwen's scattered information after the old snow-white head was safe on
her own pillow--she insisted on this--and its owner had been guaranteed
by Dr. Dalrymple, was really good for very little. The old lady was
Cousin Clo's little boy's old Mrs. Picture, and she was the dearest old
thing. There had been an accident at the house while they were there,
and a man and a woman had been hurt, but no fatality. The man had not
been taken to the Hospital, as his family had opposed his going on the
ground of his invulnerability. The old prizefighter was uninjured, as
well as those two nice children. They might have been killed. But as to
the nature of the accident, it remained obscure, or perhaps the
ever-present consciousness of her own experience prevented Aunt
Constance getting a full grasp of its details. The communication,
moreover, was crossed by that lady's exclamation:--"Oh dear, the events
of this afternoon!" just at the point where the particulars of the
mishap were due, to make things intelligible.
At which exclamation Gwen, suddenly alive to a restless conscious manner
of Aunt Constance's, pointed at her as one she could convict without
appeal, saying remorselessly:--"Mr. Pellew has proposed and you have
accepted him while we were away, Aunt Connie! Don't deny it. You're
engaged!"
"My dear Gwen," said Miss Dickenson, "if what you suggest were true, I
should not dream for one moment of concealing it from you. But as for
any engagement between us, I assure you there is no such thing. Beyond
showing unequivocal signs of an attachment which...."
Gwen clapped the beautiful hands, still soiled with the dirt of Sapps
Court, and shook its visible dust from her sleeve. Her laugh rang all
through the House. "_That's_ all right!" she cried. "He's shown
unequivocal signs of an attachment which. Well--what more do you want?
Oh, Aunt Connie, I'm _so_ glad!"
All that followed had for Miss Dickenson the same dream-world character,
but of a dream in which she retained presence of mind. It was needed to
maintain the pretext of unruffled custom in her communications with her
male visitor; the claim to be, before all things, normal, on the part of
both, in the presence of at least one friend who certainly knew all
about it, and another who may have known. Because there was no trusting
Gwen. However, she got through it very well.
Regrets were expressed that Sir Somebody Something had not got his
_Quarterly_ after all; but it would do another time. Hence consolation.
After Mr. Pellew had taken a farewell, which may easily have been a
tender one, as nobody saw it, she heard particulars of the accident,
which shall be told here also, in due course.
Some embarrassment resulted from Gwen's headstrong action in bringing
the old lady away from the scene of this accident. She might have been
provided for otherwise, but Gwen's beauty and positiveness, and her
visible taking for granted that her every behest would be obeyed, had
swept all obstacles away. As for her Cousin Clotilda, she was secretly
chuckling all the while at the wayward young lady's reckless incurring
of responsibilities towards Sapps Court.