Alice Keeling was sitting close to the window of her mother’s room
making the most of the fading light of a gray afternoon at the end of
October, and busily fashioning leaves of gold thread to be the sumptuous
foliage of no less sumptuous purple pomegranates, among which sat
curious ecclesiastical fowls, resembling parrots. The gold thread had to
be tacked into its place with stitches of gold silk, and this strip of
gorgeous embroidery would form when completed part of the decoration of
an altar-cloth for the church which till but a few weeks ago, had not
even had an altar at all, but only a table. Many other changes had
occurred in that hitherto uncompromising edifice. The tables of
commandments had vanished utterly; a faint smell of incense hung
permanently about the church, copiously renewed every Sunday, candles
blazed, vestments flashed, and a confessional, undoubtedly Roman in
origin, blocked up a considerable part of the vestry. But chief of all
the changes was that of the personality of the vicar, and second to that
the state of mind of the parish in general to which, taking it
collectively, the word Christian could not properly be applied. But
taking the parish in sections, it would not be in the least improper to
apply the word ecstatic to that section of it to which Alice Keeling
belonged, and the embroidery on which she, like many other young ladies,
was employed was not less a work of love than a work of piety. As the
blear autumnal light faded, and her mother dozed quietly in her chair,
having let her book fall from her lap for the third time, Alice,
short-sightedly peering at the almost completed leaf, would have
suffered her eyes to drop out of her head rather than relinquish her
work. She was sewing little fibres and shreds of her heart into that
pomegranate leaf, and it gave her the most exquisite satisfaction to do
so.
It would have been easy, so the simple and obviously-minded person would
think, for her to have turned on the electric light, and have saved her
eyes. But there were subtler and more compelling reasons which stood in
the way of doing that. The first was that the light would almost
certainly awaken her mother, who, by beginning to talk again, as she
always did when a nap had refreshed her, would put an end to Alice’s
private reflections which flourished best in dusk and in silence. A
second reason was that it was more than likely that Mr Silverdale would
presently drop in for tea, and it was decidedly more interesting to be
found sitting at work, with her profile outlined against the smouldering
glow of sunset, than to be sitting under the less becoming glare of an
electric lamp. For the same reason she did not put on the spectacles
which she would otherwise have worn.
The leaf was all but finished when her mother began to talk with such
suddenness that Alice wondered for the moment whether she was but
talking in her sleep. But the gist of her remarks was slightly too
consecutive to admit of that supposition.
‘Though it looks very odd,’ she said, beginning to give utterance to her
reflections in the middle of a sentence, ‘that your father and Hugh
should go to Cathedral, while you and I go to St Thomas’s. But the
Cathedral is very draughty, that’s what I always say, and with my autumn
cold due, if not overdue, it would be flying in the face of Providence
to encourage it by sitting in draughts. As for incense and confession
and----’
Her voice suddenly ceased again, as if a tap been turned off by some
external agency, and Alice wisely made no reply of any kind, feeling
sure that in a minute or two her mother would begin to give vent to that
faint snoring which betokened that she had gone to sleep again. That did
not interrupt the flow of her ecstatic musings, whereas her mother’s
general attitude to all the novel institutions which were so precious to
her gave her a tendency to strong shudderings. Only half an hour ago Mrs
Keeling had said that she was sure she saw nothing wrong in confession
and would not mind going herself if she could think of anything worth
telling Mr Silverdale about.... Alice had drawn in her breath sharply
when her mother said that, as if with a pang of spiritual toothache.
There came a slight sound from the drawing-room next door which would
have been inaudible to any but expectant ears, and Alice bent over her
work with more intense industry. Then the door opened very softly, and
Mr Silverdale looked in. He was dressed in a black cassock and had a
long wooden shepherd’s crook in his hand. He saw Alice seated in the
window, he saw Mrs Keeling with her mouth slightly open and her eyes
completely shut in a corner of the sofa, and rose to his happiest level.
‘Hush!’ he said, very gently, and tiptoed across the room to where Alice
sat. He took her hand in his, pressing it, and spoke in the golden
whisper which she was getting to know so well in the vestry.
‘My dear girl,’ he said, ‘how good and industrious you are.’
‘I shall get it done well before Christmas,’ whispered Alice.
‘How pleased the herald angels will be!’ he answered.
Alice gave a great jerk of emotion which most unfortunately upset her
embroidery-frame, which fell off the table with a crash that might have
awaked the dead, and certainly awoke the living.
‘And vestments,’ said Mrs Keeling again going on precisely at the point
where sleep had overtaken her, ‘I can’t see that there’s any harm in
them, though your father----’
There was a moment’s dead silence as she became drowsily aware that
there was somebody else in the room. Mr Silverdale’s gay laugh, as he
gave a final pressure to Alice’s hand, told her who it was.
‘Dear lady,’ he said. ‘Go on with your Protestant exhortations. I have
been exhorting all afternoon, and I am so tired of my own exhortations.
We will listen, and try to agree with you, won’t we, Miss Alice?’
Mrs Keeling got up in some confusion.
‘Bless me, to imagine your having come in while I was so busy thinking
about what I had been reading that I never heard the door open,’ she
said, hastily picking up the book which had fallen face downwards on the
floor. ‘Well, I’m sure it’s time for tea. How the evenings draw in! But
there are unpleasanter things than a muffin and a chat by the fire when
all’s said and done.’
Alice seemed inclined to prefer her pomegranates to muffins, and had to
be personally conducted from her work, and told she was naughty by Mr
Silverdale, who sat on the hearthrug with woollen stockings and very
muddy boots protruding from below his cassock, for he had had a game of
football with his boys’ club before his afternoon preaching. He had only
just had time to put on his cassock and snatch up his shepherd’s crook
when the game was over, and ran to church, getting there in the nick of
time. But he had kicked two goals at his football, and talked to twice
that number of penitent souls afterwards in the vestry, so, as he
delightedly exclaimed, he had had excellent sport. And he poked the fire
with his shepherd’s crook.
‘And you didn’t go home and change after your football?’ asked Alice.
‘You are too bad! You promised me you would!’
He held up apologetic hands, and spoke in baby voice.
‘I vewy sowwy,’ he said. ‘I be dood to-morrow!’
‘I’m not sure I shall forgive you,’ said Alice radiantly.
‘Please! If I have another cup of tea to keep the cold out?’
‘Well, just this once,’ said Alice, pouring him out another cup.
He fixed his fine eyes on the fire, and became so like the figure of
Jonah in the stained-glass window that Alice almost felt herself in
Nineveh.
‘I’m getting spoiled here,’ he said, ‘all you dear ladies of Bracebridge
positively spoil me with your altar-cloths and our extra cups of tea.
I’m getting too comfortable. And here’s Miss Alice with a cigarette at
my elbow. But I don’t know whether it’s allowed. Have one with me, Miss
Alice, and then your mother will have to scold us both, and I know she’s
too fond of you to scold you.’
This was slightly too daring an experiment for Alice, but she resolved
to have a try in her bedroom that night.
‘Indeed, it’s allowed,’ said Mrs Keeling, ‘but as for Alice smoking,
well, that is a good joke. And as for your being too comfortable I call
that another joke.’
‘I call it a very bad one,’ said Alice delightedly. ‘Mr Silverdale is
very naughty. You mustn’t encourage him, Mamma, to think he is funny
when he is only naughty!’
She went to the window and brought back her strip of pomegranates.
‘You’re naughty too,’ he said. ‘This is play-time. And now there’s
something else I want to talk about. You ladies are the queens of your
homes: don’t you think you could persuade Mr Keeling not to think me the
thin edge of the Pope, so to speak?’
‘Delicious!’ said Alice, beginning to be naughty with her pomegranates.
Mrs Keeling shook her head.
‘It’s no use,’ she said. ‘You can have incense or Mr Keeling, but not
both. And such a draughty pew as he’s got in the Cathedral!’
‘It isn’t only his attendance there that I mean,’ said Mr Silverdale.
‘But you know his Stores are in my parish, and he employs some four
hundred work-people there. I went to see him at his office this morning,
and asked him if I couldn’t have a daily service for them.’
‘He didn’t refuse?’ said Alice.
‘He said they might all do what they liked, out of their work hours, but
he couldn’t have them encroached on. I was tempted to give him a good
rap with my shepherd’s crook, but there was a lady present. So I
appealed to her for her assistance in persuading him.’
‘Indeed, and who was that?’ asked Mrs Keeling.
‘He introduced me: it was his secretary. Such a handsome girl. I think
she tried to snub me, but we poor parsons are unsnubbable. She told me
that she quite agreed with Mr Keeling.’
‘His typewriter dared to say that!’ hissed Alice. ‘Oh----’
‘Then he began dictating to her something about linoleums. But I’ve not
done with him yet. The dear man! I’ll plague his life out for him if
you’ll only help me.’
A pink lustre clock of horrible aspect suddenly chimed six, and he
jumped up.
‘Evensong at half-past!’ he said. ‘Blow evensong! There!’
He picked up his crook.
‘I’ve got to get hold of all you dear people, he said, grasping Alice’s
long lean fingers in one hand, and Mrs Keeling’s plump ones in the
other and, kissing them both. ‘What an hour of refreshment I have had.
Blessings! Blessings!’
He ran lightly across the room, kissed his hand at the door, and they
heard him running across the drawing room.
‘Blow evensong!’ said Alice ecstatically. ‘Wasn’t that delicious of him.
And the Pope, too; the thin end of the Pope. But how could father be so
rude as to begin dictating about linoleum?’
‘Your father doesn’t like working hours interfered with, my dear,’ said
Mrs Keeling. ‘But we’ll do what we can. Anyhow, Mr Silverdale will have
to change before he goes to church.’
‘Oh, I hope so,’ said Alice, extending her long neck over her
embroidery.
‘Not that it will do any good talking to your father,’ continued Mrs
Keeling placidly, ‘for I’m sure in all these thirty years I never saw
him so vexed as when you and I said we should keep on going to St
Thomas’s after the incense and the dressing-up began. But I had made up
my mind too.’
Alice flushed a little.
‘I wish you would not call it dressings-up, Mamma,’ she said. ‘You know
perfectly well that they are vestments. They all signify something: they
have a spiritual meaning.’
‘Very likely, my dear,’ said Mrs Keeling amiably, ‘and I’m sure that’s
a beautiful bit of figured silk which he has his coat made of.’
Alice drew in her breath sharply.
‘Cope, Mamma,’ she said.
‘Yes, dear, I said coat,’ rejoined her mother, who was not aware that
she was a little deaf.
Alice did not pursue the subject, and since there was now no chance of
Mr Silverdale’s coming in again, she put on her spectacles, which
enabled her to see the lines of the pomegranate foliage with far greater
distinctness. Never before had she had so vivid an interest in life as
during these last two months; indeed the greater part of the female
section of the congregation at St Thomas’s had experienced a similar
quickening of their emotions, and a ‘livelier iris’ burnished up the
doves of the villas in Alfred Road. The iris in question, of course, was
the effect of the personality of Cuthbert Silverdale, and if he was not,
as he averred, being spoiled, the blame did not lie with his
parishioners. They had discovered, as he no doubt meant them to do, that
a soldier-saint had come among them, a missioner, a crusader, and they
vied with each other in adoring and decorative obedience, making banners
and embroideries for his church (for he allowed neither slippers nor
neckties for himself) and in flocking to his discourses, and working
under his guidance in the parish. There had been frantic discussions and
quarrels over rites and doctrines; households had been divided among
themselves, and, as at The Cedars, sections of families had left St
Thomas’s altogether and attached themselves to places of simpler
ceremonial. The Bishop had been appealed to on the subject of lights,
with the effect that the halo of a martyr had encircled Mr Silverdale’s
head, without any of the inconveniences that generally attach to
martyrdom, since the Bishop had not felt himself called upon to take any
steps in the matter. Even a protesting round-robin, rather sparsely
attested, had been sent him, in counterblast to which Alice Keeling with
other enthusiastic young ladies had forwarded within a couple of days a
far more voluminously signed document, quoting the prayer-book of Edward
VI. in support of their pastor, according to their pastor’s
interpretation of it at his Wednesday lectures on the history of the
English Church.
Cuthbert Silverdale was not unaware of the emotion which he had roused
in so many female breasts, and it is impossible to acquit him of a sort
of clerical complacency in the knowledge that so many young ladies gazed
and gazed on him with a mixture of religious and personal devotion.
Though a firm believer in the celibacy of the clergy, he did not feel
himself debarred from sentimental relations with both married and
unmarried members of his flock, indeed the very fact that nothing could
conceivably come of these little mawkishnesses made them appear
perfectly licit. He held their hands, and took their arms, and sat at
their knees, and called them ‘dear girls’ two or three at a time,
finding safety perhaps in numbers, and not wishing to encourage false
hopes. He was an incorrigible if an innocent flirt; a licensed lap-dog
practising familiarities which, if indulged in by the ordinary layman,
would assuredly have led to kickings. In some curious manner he quite
succeeded in deceiving himself as to the propriety of those affectionate
demonstrations, and considered himself a sort of brother to all those
young ladies, who worked for him with the industry (and more than the
excitement) of devoted sisters. To do him justice he was just as
familiar with the male members of his congregation, and patted his boys
on the back, and linked his arm in theirs, but it would be idle to
contend that he got as much satisfaction out of those male embraces.
There was no question, however, about the devotion and strenuousness of
his life. His congregation, in spite of the secession of such plain men
as Mr Keeling, crammed his church to the doors and spilt into the
street, and he kindled a religious fervour in the parish, which all the
terrors of hell as set forth by his predecessor had been unable to fan
into a blaze. In a thoroughly cheap but in a masterly and intelligible
manner he preached the gospel, and in his life practised it, by
incessant personal exertions, of which others as well as himself were
very conscious. It was more his surface than his essential self which
was so deplorable a mass of affectation and amorousness, and the horror
he inspired in minds of a certain calibre by his skippings and his
shepherd’s crook and his little caresses was really too pitiless a
condemnation. Indeed, the gravest of his errors was not so much in what
he did, as his omission to consider what effect his affectionate dabs
and touches and pawings might have on their recipients. He would, in
fact, have been both amazed and shocked if he could have been an unseen
witness of Alice Keeling’s proceedings when she found herself in the
privacy of her own bedroom that night.
She had gone up to bed early, feeling that nameless stir of the spirit
which can only find expansion in solitude. She wanted to let herself go,
to be herself, and the presence of her family forced her to wear the
carapace of convention. But having pleaded fatigue at ten o’clock,
though her eyes sparkled behind her spectacles, she escaped from the
cramping influence of the drawing room, and locked herself into her own
bedroom with her thoughts and her glowing altar-cloth.
She spread it over the side of her bed, and in front of it proceeded to
her evening devotions. In the pre-Silverdale days these were the
briefest and most tepid orisons, now they were invested with sincerity
and heart-felt worship. First she thought over her misdoings for the
day, a series of the most harmless omissions and commissions, which she
set honestly before herself. She had not got up with the punctuality she
had vowed: she had not kept her mind free from irritation when she went
to see her grandmother: she had been guilty of gluttony with regard to
jam pancakes; she had said she was tired just now when she never had
felt fresher in her life. Then followed her prayers; like the rest of
her vicar’s numerous Bible-class she read a chapter from the Gospels,
and she finished up with the appointed meditation from the devotional
book which Mr Silverdale had given her.
Up to this point there would have been nothing to surprise or amaze him;
he might not even have blushed to see how, when her meditations were
done, she pored over the title page where he had written her name with
good wishes from her friend C. S. She kissed that page before putting
the book away in a box, which contained two or three notes from him,
which she read through before locking them up again. They were perfectly
harmless little notes, only no man should ever have written them. One
had been received only this morning, and she had not read it more than a
dozen times yet. It ran--
‘Won’t I just come in this afternoon after my football and my
preachment, and get some opodeldoc for my bruises and some muffins
for my little Mary, and some refreshment for my silly tired brain.
God bless you!
‘Your friend,
‘Cuthbert S.’
That required much study. He had never signed himself like that before.
She wondered if she could ever venture to call him Mr Cuthbert, and said
‘Mr Cuthbert’ out aloud several times in order to get used to the
unfamiliar syllables. ‘Preachment’ too: that was a word he often used;
once when he came to see them he entered the room chanting,--
‘I admit the soft impeachment
That I’ve been making preachment.’
Alice thought that quite lovely, even when she subsequently found out
that the identical effusion had already been chanted on his arrival at
the house of Mrs Fyson the day before. Julia Fyson, her most intimate
friend and co-adorer of the vicar, had told her.
She locked up those treasures, and going to the window drew aside the
curtain and looked out. The autumnal fall of the leaf from the trees in
the garden had brought into view houses in the town hidden before; among
these was St Thomas’s Vicarage, that stood slightly apart from the
others and was easily recognisable. With the aid of an opera glass she
could distinguish the windows, and saw that a light was burning behind
the blinds of his study. He had come in, then, and for a full minute she
contemplated the luminous oblong. Later, she had sometimes seen that a
window exactly above that was lit. She liked seeing that, for it meant
that he was going to bed, and would soon be asleep, for he had mentioned
that he went to sleep the moment he got into bed. Once she had watched
till that light went out also.
She let the curtain fall into place again, and sat by the fire for a
little feeling alive to the very tips of her fingers. To-morrow would be
a busy day; she had her lesson for her Sunday-school to get ready (she
and Julia Fyson were going to prepare that together); there was a
hockey-match for girls in the afternoon, at which Mr Silverdale--she
said ‘Mr Cuthbert’ aloud again--had promised to be referee, she was
going to read the paper to her grandmother (this was now a daily task
directly traceable to the vicar), and her altar-cloth would fill up any
spare time.
But as the fire began to die down, the invigorating prospect of next day
lost its quality, and there began to stir in her mind a vague disquiet.
Hitherto it had really been enough for her that Mr Silverdale existed;
to put him on a pedestal and adore in company with other reverential
worshippers had satisfied her, and the inspiration had resulted in many
useful activities. But to-night she began to wish that there had not
been so many other worshippers, towards whom he exhibited the same
benignant and affectionate aspect. There was Julia Fyson, for instance:
he would walk between them with an arm for each, and a pressure of the
hand for Julia as well as herself. In moments of expansion she and Julia
had confided to each other their adoration and its rewards; they had
sung their hymns of praise together, and had bewailed to each other the
rare moments when he seemed to be cold and distant with them, each
administering comfort to the other, and being secretly rather pleased.
But now Alice felt that any story of his coldness to Julia would give
her more than a little pleasure. She would like him to be always cold to
Julia. She wanted him herself. And at that moment the truth struck her:
she was in love with him. Till then, she had not known it: till then,
perhaps, there had been nothing definite and personal to know. But now,
as the fire died down, she was aware of nothing else, and her heart
starved and cried out. She had admired and adored before; those were
self-supporting emotions. But this cried out for its due sustenance.
She got up and went to her looking-glass, turning on the electric light
above it. Certainly Julia was much prettier than she, with her mutinous
little pink and white face and her violet eyes. But she was such a
little thing, she hardly came above Alice’s shoulder, and Alice, who
knew her so well, had often thought, in spite of her apparent
earnestness nowadays, that she was flighty and undependable. With the
self-consciousness that was the unfortunate fruit of her newly found
habits of self-examination and confession, she told herself that Julia
had not a quarter of her own grit and character. Only the other day,
when he was walking between them, he had said, ‘I always think of my
friends by nicknames.’ Then he had undeniably squeezed Julia’s arm and
said, ‘You are “Sprite,” just “Sprite.”’ Julia had liked this, and with
the anticipation of a less attractive nickname for Alice, had said, ‘And
what is she?’ Then had come a memorable reply, for he had answered, ‘We
must call her Alice in Wonderland: she lives in a fairyland of her own.’
And he had squeezed Alice’s arm too.
It was comforting to remember that, and Alice saw wonder and wistful
pensiveness steal into the reflection of her face. There was the girl
who would upset all his convictions about a celibate clergy; indeed, he
had said that he did not think it morally wrong for them to marry. It
was a case of the thin end of the wedge again, not this time of the
Pope, but of Benedick, the married man.
Alice went once more to the window, and lifted the curtain. There was an
oblong of light in the window above his study. She kissed her hand to
it, and once more said aloud, ‘Good-night, Mr Cuthbert.’... But it
would have been juster if she had wished him a nightmare.
* * * * *
Had Alice been in a condition to observe any windows and the lights in
them, except those of the dark study and the illuminated bedroom at the
Vicarage, she would have seen that, late as it was, there was a patch of
gravel on the garden-wall outside her father’s library window which
smouldered amid the darkness of the night and showed there was another
wakeful inhabitant in the house. He had gone to his room very shortly
after Alice’s disappearance from the drawing room, leaving his wife
talking about table linen to Hugh. He, like Alice, wanted, though more
dimly than she, the expansion of solitude. But when he got into that
retreat, he found he was not quite alone in it. He had intended to look
through the Leonardo publication which had just arrived, and for which
he thought he thirsted. But it still lay unturned on the table. He had
but unpacked and identified it, and in ten minutes had forgotten about
it altogether. Another presence haunted the room and disquieted him.
It was nearly a month since the Sunday afternoon when he had held
conference with the two Properts here. He had gone back to his office on
the following Monday morning, feeling that he had shown a human side to
Norah. She had done the same to him: she had talked to ‘Mr Keeling’;
not to ‘sir’; there was some kind of communication between them other
than orders from an employer to an employed, and obedience, swift and
deft from the employed to the employer. When he arrived at the office,
punctual to nine o’clock, with a large post awaiting his perusal, he had
found she had not yet come, and had prepared a little friendly speech to
her on the lines of Mr Keeling. She arrived not five minutes afterwards,
and he had consciously enjoyed the sound of her steps running along the
passage, from the lift. But when she entered she had no trace of the
previous afternoon.
‘I am late, sir,’ she said. ‘I am exceedingly sorry.’
At that, despite himself, the Sunday afternoon mood dried up also. She
was in the office again, was she? Well, so was he. If she had only
looked at him, had called him Mr Keeling, he would have been Mr Keeling.
As it was, he became ‘sir’ with a vengeance.
‘I hope it won’t happen again,’ he said. ‘I cannot allow unpunctuality.
Open the rest of the letters, and give me them.’
She had frozen into the perfect secretary. With incredible speed she had
the sheaf of letters before him, and with her writing pad in her hand
awaited his dictation. Twice during the next hour she, with downcast
eyes, corrected some error of his, once producing an impeccable file to
show him that a week before he had demanded a reduction on certain
wholesale terms, once to set him right in a date regarding previous
correspondence. She had been five minutes late that morning, but she had
saved him fifty in future correspondence. She seemed to know her files
by heart: it was idle to challenge her for proof when she made a
correction.
Then she had gone back with her shorthand notes to her room, and all
morning the noise of her nimble fingers disturbed him through the
felt-lined door. He was in two minds about that: sometimes he thought he
would send her into Hugh’s room, where another typewriter worked. Hugh
was accustomed to the clack of the machine, and two would be no worse
than one. Then again he thought that the muffling of the noise alone
disturbed him, that if she sat at the table in the window, and did her
work there, he would not notice it. It was the concealed clacking of the
keys that worried him. Perhaps it would even help him to attend to his
own business to see how zealously she attended to hers. Those deft long
fingers! They were the incarnation of the efficiency which to him was
the salt of life.
Five days had passed thus, and on the next Saturday he had asked her
brother and her, this time giving the invitation to her, to visit his
library again. She had refused with thanks and a ‘sir,’ but Charles had
come. Keeling had determined not to allude to his sister’s refusal, but
had suddenly found himself doing so, and Charles, with respect, believed
that she was having a friend to tea. And again, despite himself, he had
said on Charles’s departure, ‘I hope I shall see you both again some
Sunday soon.’
Well, he was not going to ask twice after one refusal of his favours,
but, as the next week went by, he found the ‘sir’ and the dropped eyes
altogether intolerable. These absolutely impersonal relationships were
mysteriously worrying. She had shown herself a compatriot of the secret
garden, and now she had retreated into the shell of the secretary again.
This week the weather turned suddenly cold, and since there was no
fireplace in her room, he invited her to sit at the table by the window
in his, which was close to the central-heating hot-water pipes. A
certain employer-sense of pride had come to his aid, and now he hardly
ever glanced at her. But one day the whole card-house of this pride fell
softly on the table, just as he took his hat and stick after the day’s
work.
‘I wonder if you would do a book-plate for me, Miss Propert,’ he said.
‘I should like to have a book-plate for my library.’
She paused in her work but did not look at him.
‘Yes, sir, I will gladly do you one,’ she said. ‘Shall I draw a design
and see if you approve of it?’
‘No, I know nothing of these things. But I should like a book-plate.
Similar to the sort of thing you did for Lord Inverbroom.’
He hesitated a moment.
‘As regards size,’ he said, ‘perhaps you will come up and have a look at
my books again, and get a guide from them.’
She smiled, or he thought she smiled, and that together with her reply
enraged him.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said. ‘Book-plates will suit any volume
except duodecimos. I don’t think you have any. If so, I could cut the
margin down, sir. But I should like to submit my design to you before I
cut the block.’
‘That also will not be necessary,’ he said. ‘Something in the style of
Lord Inverbroom’s. Good-afternoon, Miss Propert.’
‘Good afternoon, sir,’ said she.
It was extraordinary to him how this girl got on his mind. He thought he
disliked her, but in some obscure way he could not help being interested
in her. There was somebody there, somebody from whom there came a call
to him. He wanted to know how she regarded him, what effect he had on
her. And there were no data: she sat behind her impenetrable mask, and
did her work in a manner more perfect than any secretary who had ever
served him. She declined to come to his house with her brother, she had
retreated again inside that beautiful shell. He noticed infinitesimal
things about her: sometimes she wore a hat, sometimes she left it in
her room. One day she had a bandage round a finger of her left hand, and
he wondered if she had cut herself. But her reserve and reticence
permitted him no further approach to her: only he waited with something
like impatience for the day when she would bring the block of his
book-plate or an impression of it. There would surely be an opportunity
for the personal relation to come in there.
He had begun to know that moment which few men of fifty, and those the
luckiest of all, are unaware of. He wanted a companion, somebody who
satisfied his human, not his corporal needs. While we are young, the
youthful vital force feeds itself by its own excursions, satisfies
itself with the fact of its travel and explorations. It is enough to go
on, to lead the gipsy life and make the supper hot under the hedge-side,
and sleep sound in the knowledge that next day there will be more travel
and fresh horizons, and a dawn that shines on new valleys and hillsides.
But when the plateau of life is reached, those are the fortunate ones
who have their home already made. For thirty years he had had his own
fireside and his wife, and his growing children. But never had he found
his home: some spirit of the secret garden had inspired him, and now he
felt mateless and all his money was dust and ashes in his mouth. Two
things he wanted, one to be different in breed from that which he was,
the other to find a companion. The shadow of a companion lurked in his
room, where were the piles of his books. Somewhere in that direction lay
the lodestone.
Another week passed, and still he waited for some word from his
secretary about the book-plate. He was not going to be eager about it,
for he would not confess to himself the anxiety with which he awaited an
opportunity that his twenty-five shillings a week secretary had denied
him. But day by day he scrutinized her face, and wondered if she was
going to say that the book-plate was finished.
The event occurred at the most inopportune moment. He had concluded a
bargain, a day or two before, for the purchase of the entire vintage of
a French vine-grower in the Bordeaux district, and had just opened a
letter to say that owing to the absence of a certain payment in advance,
the stock had been disposed of to another purchaser, and he had lost one
of the best bargains he had ever made. But he felt sure that he had
drawn the cheque in question: he remembered drawing it in his private
cheque-book, just before leaving one afternoon, when the cashier had
already gone home. He opened the drawer where he kept his cheque-book
and examined it. There it was: it was true he had drawn the cheque, but
he had forgotten to tear it out and despatch it, meaning no doubt to do
so in the morning.
Never in all his years of successful business had he made so stupid an
omission, an omission for which he would at once have dismissed any of
his staff, telling him that a man who was capable of doing that was of
no use to Keeling. And it was himself who had deserved dismissal. He
could remember it all now: he had locked the cheque up again as it was
necessary to send a certain order form with it, and that was
inaccessible now that his secretary had gone. He would do it in the
morning, but when morning came he had thought of nothing but the request
he was going to make that Norah should do him a book-plate. That, that
trivial trumpery affair, utterly drove out of his head this important
business transaction. He was furious with himself for his carelessness:
it was not only that he had lost a considerable sum of money, it was the
loss of self-respect that worried him. He could hardly believe that he
had shown himself so rotten a business man: he might as well have sold
stale fish, according to the amiable hint of his mother-in-law as have
done this. And at that unfortunate moment when he was savage with
himself and all the world Norah Propert appeared. Instantly he looked at
his watch to see if she was again late. But it had not yet struck nine,
it was he himself who was before his time.
She carried a small parcel with her, of which she untied the string.
‘I have brought the block of your book-plate, sir,’ she said, ‘with a
couple of impressions of it.’
He held out his hand for it without a word. She had produced a charming
design, punning on his name. A ship lay on its side with its keel
showing: in the foreground was a faun squatting on the sand reading:
behind was a black sky with stars and a large moon. He knew it to be a
charming piece of work, but his annoyance at himself clouded everything.
‘Yes, I see,’ he said. ‘What do you charge for it?’
‘Ten pounds,’ she said. ‘That will include a thousand copies.’
He looked at the block in silence for a moment. There did not seem to be
much work on it: he could get a woodcut that size for half of the price.
It was but three inches by two.
‘Ten pounds!’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t dream of giving more than seven for
it. Even that would be a fancy price.’
He put the block down, laid the two impressions on the top of it, and
turned over the leaves of his cheque-book in order to pay for the thing
at once. But she picked up her work, and without a word began wrapping
it up in the paper she had just taken off it. Already he knew he had
made a blunder, and the blunder was the act of a cad. It had been his
business to ask the price beforehand, if he wanted to know it, not to
quarrel with it afterwards. But the cad in him had full possession just
then.
‘What are you doing?’ he said, and glancing up he found that for once
she was looking at him with contemptuous anger, held perfectly in
control.
‘I am going to take my work away again, sir, as you do not care to pay
the price I ask for it,’ she said.
‘Nonsense. Seven pounds is a very good price. I know the cost of
woodcuts.’
He had written the cheque and passed it over to her. She took no notice
whatever of it, tied the string round her parcel and put it on the table
in the window. Then, still without a word, she took up her pencil and
her writing-pad, and sat down to receive his dictation.
In his heart he knew he was beaten. She had given him even a sharper
lesson than he had given himself in the matter of the cheque he had
forgotten to post. And that was but business; the error was expensive,
but it was merely a matter of money as far as its effects went. He very
much doubted whether money would settle this. He still thought that ten
pounds was an excessive charge, but that did not detract from the fact
that he had behaved meanly. His pride still choked him, but he knew that
sooner or later he would be obliged to capitulate. He would have to
apologize, and hope that his apology would be accepted.
The morning’s work went on precisely as usual, and not by the tremor of
an eyelash did she betray whatever she might be feeling. Just that one
look had she given him of sovereign disdain, and the remembrance of it
stiffened him against her, and he battled against the surrender that he
knew must come. If she was going to be proud, he could match her in
that, and again he told himself that seven pounds was a very good price.
He was not going to be imposed on....
All the morning the see-saw went on within him, and when she rose to go
for her hour’s interval he noticed that she took the parcel containing
the wood-block with her. And very ill-inspired he made an attempt at
surrender.
‘Come, Miss Propert,’ he said. ‘Let’s have an end of this. I should have
asked the price before I commissioned you to do the work. Let me give
you a cheque for ten pounds.’
She smiled: there was no doubt about that.
‘I’m afraid that’s quite impossible, sir,’ she said, ‘now that you have
told me that you don’t consider my work worth that. Good-morning, sir.’
Up flamed his temper again at this. What on earth did the girl want
more? He had offered her the price she asked; he had said he was wrong
in not inquiring about it before. She might go hang, she and her
niceties and her contempt.
She had come back in the afternoon without her parcel, and his
imagination pictured her telling her brother all that had happened. He
felt he must have cut a sorry figure. ‘That’s the end of his books and
his book-plates for me,’ would be the sort of way Norah would sum it all
up. Probably they did not discuss it much: there really was very little
need for comment on what he had done. The simple facts were sufficient:
perhaps she had smiled again as she smiled when she rejected his first
overtures.
All afternoon they worked within a few yards of each other, all
afternoon his accusing conscience battered at his pride; and as she rose
to go when the day’s work was over, he capitulated. He stood up also,
grim and stern to the view, but beset with a shy pathetic anxiety that
she would accept his regrets.
‘I want to ask your pardon, Miss Propert,’ he said, ‘for my conduct to
you this morning. I am sure you did not charge me more than your work
was worth. I like your design very much. I shall be truly grateful to
you if you will let me have that plate. I am sorry. That’s all.... I am
sorry.’
It cost him a good deal to say that, but at every word his burden
lightened, though his anxiety to know how she would deal with him
increased.
She raised her eyes to his, quite in the secret garden manner, and she
smiled not as she had smiled when she left him this morning.
‘Thank you so much, Mr Keeling,’ she said. ‘I shall be delighted to let
you have the block if you feel like that about it. I will bring it back
with me to-morrow, shall I?’
To-night as he thought over this, when the hour was quiet, and upstairs
Alice kept vigil, Norah’s presence seemed to haunt the room. She had
only been here once, but he could remember with such distinctness the
trivial details of that afternoon, that his imagination gave him her
again, now standing by the book-shelves, now seated in one of the chairs
he had brought in that day, and kept here since. They would be needed
again, he hoped, next Sunday, for with the arrival of the Leonardo book
he had an adequate excuse for asking her again, and, he hoped, an
adequate cause for her acceptance. There it lay on the table still
unopened, and in the clinking of the ashes in the grate, and the
night-wind that stirred in the bushes outside, he heard with the inward
ear the sound of her voice, just a word or two spoken through the wind.