Agony In Meath Street.
I.
Silent, gloom-ridden, my sniffing Mary, my black-browed George laboured
to the station. Silent they sat upon a bench waiting the London train.
George bought his Mary a piece of chocolate from the automatic machine;
she was a forlorn picture as with tiny nibbles she ate it, tears in her
pretty eyes. In the restaurant George bought himself a huge cigar. This
man was a desperate spectacle as with huge puffs he smoked, hands deep
in pockets, legs thrust straight, brows horribly knitted.
They had no words.
The train came in. George found an empty compartment; helped his poor
Mary to a corner; roughly dumped the cat-basket upon the rack; moodily
plumped opposite his Mary.
They had no words.
It was as the train moved from the third stop that Mary, putting a giant
sniff upon her emotions, asked her George: “Wher--where are we going,
dear?”
It was not until the fifth stop that George made answer. “Those
Battersea digs,” he told her.
They had no words.
At Queen's Road station gloomily they alighted; silently laboured to the
house of Mrs. Pinking.
George answered her surprise. “Miss Humfray will have these rooms again,
Mrs. Pinking, if you will be so kind; and I--” He checked. “Could you
let us have some tea, Mrs. Pinking? Afterwards I'll have a talk with
you. We've got into a--We're very tired. If you could just let us have
some tea, then I'll explain.”
In silence they ate and drank. George was half turned from the table,
gloomily gazing from the window. Tiny sniffs came from his Mary; he had
no words for her; looked away.
But presently there was a most dreadful choking sound. He sprang
around. Most painfully his Mary was spluttering over a cup of tea. With
trembling hands she put down the cup; her face was red, convulsively
working.
George half rose to her. “Don't cry, darling Mary-kins. Don't cry.”
She set down the cup; swallowed; gasped, “I'm not crying--I'm
la-laughing,” and into a pipe of gayest mirth she went.
Gloom gathered its sackcloth skirts; scuttled from the room.
George roared with laughter; rocked and roared again. When he could
get a catch upon his mirth there was the clear pipe of his Mary's glee,
clear, compelling, setting him off again. When she would gasp for breath
there was her dear George, head in those brown hands, shaking with
tremendous laughter--and she must start again.
She gasped: “George! If you could have seen yourself standing there
telling those awful stories--!”
He gasped: “When I mistook the cats--!”
She gasped: “Mr. Marrapit's face--!”
He gasped: “Mrs. Major's--!”
The exhaustion of their mirth gave them pause at last. George wiped his
running eyes; Mary tremendously blew her little nose, patted her gold
hair where it eagerly straggled.
“I feel better after that,” George said.
She told him, “So do I--heaps. It's no good being miserable over what is
past, is it, dear?”
“Not a bit; not the slightest. Come and sit on the sofa and let's see
where we are.” She put that golden head upon his manly shoulder; he
fetched his right arm about her; she nursed her hands upon the brown
fist that came into her lap; that other brown hand he set upon the
three.
Together they viewed their prospects--gloomy pictures.
“But we're fairly in the cart,” George summed up. “We are, you know.”
His ridiculous Mary gave him that lovers' ridiculous specific. “We've
got each other,” she told him, snuggling to him.
George kissed her. He fumbled in his pockets. “I've got just about three
pounds--over from what Marrapit gave me for the clue-hunting. I say,
Mary, it's pretty awful.”
She snuggled the closer.
Early evening, tip-toeing through the window, was drawing her dusky
hangings about the room when at length George withdrew the brown hands;
stirred.
II.
Upon a little sigh Mary let go the string that held the dreams she had
been dreaming. Like a great gay bundle of many-coloured toy balloons
suddenly released, they soared away. She came to the desperate present;
noted her George filling his pipe.
He got upon his legs; paced the floor, puffing.
It was his characteristic pose when he was most tremendous. She watched
this tremendous fellow adoringly.
He told her: “I've settled it all, Marykins. I've fixed it all up. We'll
pull through right as rain.” He caught the admiring glance in his Mary's
eye; inhaled and gusted forth a huge breath of smoke; repeated the fine
sentence. “We'll pull through right as rain.”
“Dear George!” she softly applauded.
He pushed ahead. “There's this locum tenens I was going to take up in
the North. I haven't offed that yet--haven't refused it, I mean. Well,
I shall take it. The screw's pretty rotten, but up in the North--in the
North, you know--well, it's not like London. It's cheap--frightfully
cheap. You can live on next to nothing--”
She pushed out the irritating, practical, womanish side of her. “_Can_
you? How do you _know_, Georgie?”
We men hate these pokes at our knowledge; women will not understand
generalisations. George jerked back: “How do I _know_? Oh, don't
interrupt like that, Mary. Everybody knows that living is cheap in the
North--in the _North_.”
“Of course,” she excused herself. “Of course, dear, I see.”
“Well, where was I? Frightfully cheap, so the screw won't matter. I'll
take the job, dearest. I'll take it for next month. And--listen--we'll
marry and go up there together and live in some ripping little rooms.
There!”
She was flaming pink; could only breathe: “Georgie, _dear!_”
He stopped his pacing to give her a squeezing hug, a kiss upon the
top of the gold hair. Then he went through the steps of a wild dance.
“Marry!” he cried. “Marry, old girl, and let everybody go hang! We'll
have to work it through a registrar. I'm not quite sure how it's done,
but I'll find out tomorrow. I know you both have to have been resident
in the place for a week or so--I'll fix all that. Then we'll peg along
up in the North; and we'll look out for whatever turns up, and we'll
save, and in time we'll buy a practice just like Runnygate.”
Now he sat beside his Mary again; with a tremendous brush painted in
more details of this entrancing picture. Every doubt, every difficulty
he threw to tomorrow--that glad sea in which youth casts its every
trouble. Was he sure he still had the refusal of this locum?--rather!
but he would make certain, tomorrow. Was he sure they both could live
upon the salary?-rather! he would prove it to-morrow. Could they really
get married at a registrar's within a few days?-rather! he'd fix that up
to-morrow. As to the money necessary for the marriage, necessary to tide
over the days till the locum was taken up, why, he knew he could borrow
that--from the Dean or from Professor Wyvern--to-morrow.
They were upon the very crest and flood of their delight when George
noted the gathering dusk.
“I say, it's getting late!” he exclaimed. “I must fix it up with Mrs.
Pinking. We've made no arrangement with her yet.”
Mary agreed: “Yes, dear.” She went on, pretty eyes shining, face aglow:
“Oh, Georgie, think of the last time you brought me here! I had nothing
to expect but going out to work again; and you weren't qualified. And
now--now, although we've lost our little Runnygate home” (she could not
stop a tiny sigh), “we're actually going to be married in a few days!
Georgie, I shan't sleep for hoping everything will turn out all right
to-morrow.”
“It will,” George told her. “It will. Right as rain, old girl.”
Her great sigh of contentment advertised the drink she took of that
sparkling future. “Think of us being together always in a week or
so--belonging! Where will you stay till then? Quite close. Get a room
quite close, Georgie?”
He stared at her. “Why, you old goose, I'm not going.”
She echoed him: “Not going?”
“Of course not. I'm going to get a bedroom here, and we'll have all our
meals and everything in here. We're not going to part again, Marykins.
Not much!”
That maddening handicap beneath which the sweetest women trudge shackled
Mary, deluged this joy.
“Oh, Georgie!” she said; and again trembled, “Oh, Georgie!”
My impulsive George scented the damp. “Well?” he asked. “Well?
Whatever's--?”
“Oh, Georgie, you can't have a room here. We can't have all our meals
together here?”
He realised the trouble. He broke out: “Why ever not? Why ever--?”
“It wouldn't be _right_! Georgie, it _wouldn't_ be right!”
Her impulsive George choked for words. “Not right! 'Pon my soul, Mary, I
simply don't understand you sometimes. Not _right! Why_ isn't it right?”
It was so difficult to tell. “You don't understand, dear--”
“No, I'm damned if I do. I'm sorry, Mary, but you are so funny, you
women. It's so exasperating after the--the devil of a day I've had. Just
when I've fixed up everything you turn round and”--he threw out an angry
hand--“_Why_ isn't it right?”
This poor little Mary clung to her little principles. “Don't you see?
we're engaged, dear; and being engaged, we oughtn't to live alone like
this. People would--”
He began to rave. Certainly he had had a devil of a day; and this was a
maddening buffet.
“People!” he cried. “People! People! You're always thinking of people,
you women! Who's to know? Who on earth's to know?”
The instinct of generations of training gave her the instinctive reply
in the instinctive sweet little tone: “We should know, Georgie,” she
said.
He flung up his arms: “Oh, good God!”
He swallowed his boiling irritation; laughed 'spite himself; went to
his Mary. “Mary, don't be such an utter, utter goose. It's too, too
ridiculous.”
She took his kiss; but she held her stupid little ground.
“It wouldn't be right, Georgie, _really_!”
Her George clanged the bell with a furious stroke that brought Mrs.
Pinking in panic up the stairs. Holding himself very straight, speaking
in sentences short and hard, paying to his Mary no smallest attention,
he made the arrangements. Miss Humfray would take on her bedroom again.
By the week. If Mrs. Pinking would be so kind as to allow them the same
terms. He thanked her. That was settled, then. He would look in in the
morning. He would say good night, Mrs. Pinking.
Mrs. Pinking gave him good night; busied herself with the tea-things.
Her presence enabled this brutal George to preserve his stony bearing;
denied his pretty Mary opportunity to melt him with her tears.
Hard as flint, “Well, good night,” he said to her. “I'll look in
to-morrow morning.”
Upon a little sniff, “Good night,” she whispered; strangled an “Oh,
George! George!”
She followed him to the door. He was down the stairs before she could
command her voice for: “Where shall you go, George?”
With the reckless fury of one who sets forth to plunge into the river,
he called back, “I? I? Oh, _anywhere--anywhere_. Who cares where _I_
go?”
The hall door slammed.
* * * * *
Late into that night while a young woman sobbed her pretty eyes out upon
a pillow in a back room of Meath Street, Battersea, a young man, who
furiously had been pacing London, paced and repaced the street from end
to end, gazing the windows of the house where she lay. This young man
muttered, gesticulated, groaned. “Oh, damn!” was his song. “Oh, Mary!
Oh, what a cursed brute I am!”
It was a bitter ending to a fearful day.