A NIGHT OF SPRING
The room was a long bare one, with three deep windows. They were all
open so that the fog and the noises of the street came in freely. It had
for furniture a long office table, an American desk, several
cupboards--the door of one of these last stood open, revealing lettered
pigeon-holes inside. Everywhere there were files, letter-baskets, all
manner of receptacles for papers. There were a number of hard, painted
chairs. An American clock ticked on the mantel-shelf, a fire burned in
the grate behind a high wire screen. The unshaded gas-lights gave the
room a dreary aspect it need not have had otherwise.
The only occupant of the room was Mary Gray, who sat at a small table
working a typewriter. She had pulled a gas-jet down low over her head,
and the light of it was on her hair, bringing out bronze lights in it,
on her neck, showing its whiteness and roundness. The machine clicked
away busily. Sheet after sheet was pulled from it and dropped into a
basket. The basket was half-filled with the pile of papers that had
fallen into it.
Suddenly there came a little tap at the door. Mary raised her head and
looked towards it expectantly as she said, "Come in."
Someone came in, someone whom she had expected to see, although she had
said to herself that she supposed the caretaker of the building had
grown tired of waiting, and was coming to remind her that the church
clock had just struck seven.
"Ah, Sir Robin," she said, turning about to shake hands with him. "Who
would have thought of seeing you? I am just going home."
"As I came past this way I looked up and saw your light through the fog.
I thought you would be going home, and that you would let me escort you
to your own door. There is a bit of a fog really."
"I am glad you did not come out of your way. Thank you. I shall be ready
in a few minutes. You don't mind waiting?"
"Not at all. May I smoke?"
"Do. It will be pleasanter than the smell of the fog."
"Ah! I hadn't noticed the smell. I have a delusion, or do I really
smell--violets?"
"There are some violets by your elbow. I was wearing them, but they
drooped, so I put them into water to revive them."
She turned back again to her work, and the clicking of the machine began
anew. He leant to inhale the smell of the violets. Then, with a glance
at her bent head, he drew one from the bunch, and, taking a pocket-book
out of his coat-pocket, he opened it, and laid the violet between two of
its pages.
While he waited he looked about him. The ugliness of the room did not
affect him. The flaring gas, the business-like furniture, the unhomely
aspect of the place, did not depress him. On the contrary, in his eyes
it was pleasant. He always came to it with a sensation of happiness,
which was not lessened because he felt half-guilty about it. To him the
room was the room which for certain hours of every day contained Mary
Gray. What did it matter if the case was unlovely since it held her?
Presently the clicking of the machine ceased, and she looked up at him
with a smile.
"You are very good to wait for me," she said.
"Am I?" he answered, smiling back at her. "There is not very much to do
to-day. The House is not sitting, and my constituency has been less
exacting than usual."
She put the cover on her machine, locked up her desk, and then retired
into a corner, where she changed her shoes, putting her slippers away
tidily in a cupboard. She put on her hat, setting it straight before a
little glass that hung in one corner. She got into her little blue
jacket, with its neat collar and cuffs of astrachan. Then she came to
him, drawing on her gloves.
"I am quite ready now," she said.
They lowered the gas, and went down the stone steps side by side. At the
foot of the stairs Mary stopped to call into the depths of the back
premises that she was going home, and a woman's voice bade her
good-night.
It was cold in the street, and there was a light brown fog through which
the street lamps shone yellowly.
The omnibuses crept by quietly, in a long string, making a muffled sound
in the fog. As they went towards the nearest station a wind suddenly
blew in their faces.
"It is the west wind," she said. "And it breathes of the spring."
"There will be no fog to-night," he answered. "See, it is lifting. The
west wind will blow it away."
"It comes from fields and woods and mountains and the sea," she said
dreamily.
The fog was indeed disappearing. The gas-jets shone more clearly; the
'buses broke into a decorous trot. The long line of lights came out
suddenly, crossing each other like a string of many-coloured gems.
Outside the Tube station they paused as though the same thought had
struck both of them.
"It is like the washing of the week before last," Mary said, as the
indescribable odour floated out to them.
"Why not take a 'bus?" said he. "The air grows more delicious."
"Why not, indeed?" she answered. "Except that I shall be so late getting
home. And it will keep you late for your dinner."
"So it will," he said. "To say nothing of your dinner. I know you had
only sandwiches and tea for lunch. You have told me that when you go
home you make yourself a chafing-dish supper. You must need a meal at
this moment. Supposing--Miss Gray, will you do me the honour of dining
with me?"
"Will you let me pay for my dinner? I am a working-woman, and expect to
be treated like a man."
"If you insist. But I hope you will not insist."
She looked at him for a moment hesitatingly. There was no prudery about
Mary Gray. She had become a woman of the world, and she had had no
reason to distrust the _camaraderie_ of men or to think it less than
honest.
"Very well, then," she said, "if you will let me pay for your lunch
another time."
"Why, so you shall," he answered. For a usually grave young man he
laughed with an uncommon joyousness. "You shall give me one day a French
lunch with a bottle of wine thrown in at one-and-sixpence. Mind, I must
have the wine."
"You shall have the wine. But it isn't good form to talk about the price
of a lunch you are invited to."
Laughing light-heartedly, they plunged into a labyrinth of dark streets.
The west wind had brought a gentle rain with it now. It was benignant
upon their faces, with a suggestion of grasses and spring flowers
pushing their heads above the earth. They passed by the Soho
restaurants, crowded to the doors. They found one at last in a more
pretentious street.
Over the dinner they laughed and talked. There was something
intoxicating to Robin Drummond's somewhat phlegmatic nature in their
being together after this friendly fashion.
"You have a crease in your forehead, just above your nose," he said,
while they waited for their salmon, the waiter having removed the plates
from which they had eaten their _bisque_. "Have the Working Women been
more unsatisfactory than usual to-day?"
"I was not thinking of the Working Women," she answered. "It is family
cares that are on my mind. Supposing you had seven young brothers and
sisters whom you wanted to help to place out in the world----"
"Heaven forbid! It's no wonder you look worried. What do you want to do
for them, Miss Gray?"
"There's Jim. He's seventeen years old. I think he'd make a very good
bank-clerk, but at present he wants to go to sea. There isn't the
remotest chance of his being able to go to sea. The question is whether
he can get a nomination to a bank. It will be quite a step in the social
scale if we can manage it for Jim."
She looked at Drummond with her frank, direct gaze, and he blushed
awkwardly.
"I don't know anything at all about your people, or anything of that
sort, Miss Gray, but if I could help----"
"I don't think you could help." Mary's big mysterious eyes under their
dark lashes, under their beautiful brows, looked at him reflectively.
"You see, you don't know anything about us. I am the eldest of a large
family. The others are my stepbrothers and sisters. I love them dearly,
and I love my stepmother, too. But not like my father--oh, not at all
like my father. I would never have left him only he sent me away. Lady
Agatha was very good to me. She paid me a disproportionate salary. And
besides--after I had been away from them for a time they could really do
very well without me. Cis and Minnie grew up so fast. To be sure, none
of them make up to father for me. But he was really anxious that I
should go. He thought I would be cramped at home, after----" She paused,
and then went on: "He would never think of himself when it was a
question of me."
What she was saying did not greatly enlighten him. But, without a doubt,
something would come out of the desultory talk by-and-by.
As he watched her in the light of the electric candle-lamps on the
table, which, sending their shaded light upwards reflected from the
white cloth, made her face luminous in the shadow of her cloudy hair, he
was struck again by a baffling resemblance to someone he had known. Now
and again during the months since they had known each other her face had
seemed familiar; then the likeness had disappeared; he had forgotten to
be curious about it. At this moment the suggestion was very strong.
They had the top of the 'bus to themselves as they went on westward. At
this hour the traffic was eastward, and the mist of rain saved them from
fellow-travellers. They were as much alone as though they were in a
desert, up there in the darkness at the back of the bus, with the long
line of blurred jewels that were the street lamps stretching away before
them.
They passed close to the trees overhanging a square, and the branches
brushed them.
"The sap is stirring in the trees to-night," she said. "Can't you smell
the sap and the earth?"
"I associate you with the country and green things," he answered
irrelevantly. "Can you tell me, Miss Gray, how it is that I who have
always seen you in London yet always think of you in fields and woods?"
She laughed with a fresh sound of mirth.
"We met long ago, Sir Robin," she said. "I have always been wondering
how long it would be before you found out."
"Where?"
"Think!"
A sudden light broke over him.
"You were the little girl who came with old Lady Anne Hamilton to the
Court. It is nine years ago. I never knew your name. Lady Anne died one
Long Vacation when I was abroad. I did not hear of it for a long time
afterwards. I asked my mother once if she knew what had become of you,
but she did not. Why, to be sure, you are that little girl."
"Lady Anne was very good to me. She gave me an education. Only for her
the thing I am would not be possible. And I mean to be more than that.
Do you know that I am writing a book?"
"A novel? Poems?"
"That is what my father's daughter ought to be doing. No--it is a book
on the Economic Conditions of Women's Work."
"It is sure to be good, _citoyenne_."
"I am a revolutionary," she said seriously. "I have learnt so much since
I have been at this work. I have things to tell. Oh, you will see."
"I remember Lady Anne as the staunchest of Conservatives."
"Yes, yet she was tolerant of other opinions in her friends. She was
very good to me, dear old Lady Anne."
"To think I should not have remembered!"
"I knew you all the time. To be sure, there was your name. I don't think
you ever knew my name. You called me Mary all the afternoon. Do you
remember the puppy you sent me--the Clumber spaniel? He died in
distemper. He had a happy little life. I wept bitter tears over him."
"Why didn't you tell me before?"
"I thought I'd leave you to find out."
"I am a stupid fellow." He leant towards her, and inhaled the scent of
her violets.
"I don't think I should have guessed it now," he said, "only for the
spring. To think you are Mary!" He lingered over the name.
"I am sorry about the Clumber. You shall have another when you ask for
it."
It was a long drive westward. They got down at Kensington Church, and
went up the hill. Close by the Carmelites they turned into a little
alley. The lit doorway of a high building of flats faced them.
"Now, you must come no farther," she said, turning to him and holding
out her hand.
"Let me see you to your door," he pleaded.
"If you will, but it is a climb for nothing."
"What a barrack you live in!" he said, as they went up the stone steps.
"It was built for working men originally, but perhaps there is none
hereabouts. It is now chiefly occupied by working women. They are
extremely pleasant and friendly. To be sure, they are West-End working
women. Now, Sir Robin, I must bid you good-bye."
They were at the very top of the house. The staircase window was wide
open, and the sweet smell of wet earth came in. She had put the
latch-key in the door and opened it--she had turned on the electric
light. Now, as she held out her hand to him in farewell, he caught sight
of the pleasant little room beyond. He had the strongest wish to cross
the threshold on which she was standing; but, of course, it was
impossible.
"When my cousin comes back from abroad," he said, "I want you to know
each other, Miss Gray. Perhaps you will ask us to tea here."
"I shall be delighted," she said frankly.
"You like your quarters?"
He was oddly reluctant to go.
"Very much indeed."
"You are near Heaven."
"I hear the singing at the Carmelites. I can see the tops of the trees
in Kensington Gardens. To be sure, I ought to live nearer my work. But
these things counterbalance the distance. By the way, do you know that
Mrs. Morres is in town?"
"I had not heard."
"She has come up for a week's shopping."
"Ah! I must call on her. I like her douches of cold water on all our
schemes."
"So do I."
He looked at her with a dawning intention in his eyes. Before he could
speak the words that were on his lips the opposite door opened, and a
young woman, wearing an artist's blouse, with close-cropped dark hair
and a frank boyish face, came out.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Gray, do you happen to have any methylated
spirit?"
"Good-night, Miss Gray."
He lifted his hat and went down the stairs. On the next landing he
paused and listened with a smile to the conversation overhead. It
appeared that Mary had only enough methylated spirit for a single
occasion.
"Then you must come to breakfast with me in the morning," said the other
girl. "Can you oblige me with a few slices of bacon?"
It was the true communistic life.
He was smiling to himself still as he walked up the hill homewards.
"Winter is over and past, and the spring is come," he murmured to
himself. And to think that a few hours ago the fog was creeping over the
City!