FINISH OF THE COMEDY
Those who may have seen Hilary driving towards the little model's
lodgings saw one who, by a fixed red spot on either cheek, and the
over-compression of his quivering lips, betrayed the presence of that
animality which underlies even the most cultivated men.
After eighteen hours of the purgatory of indecision, he had not so much
decided to pay that promised visit on which hung the future of two lives,
as allowed himself to be borne towards the girl.
There was no one in the passage to see him after he had passed Bianca in
the doorway, but it was with a face darkened by the peculiar stabbing
look of wounded egoism that he entered the little model's room.
The sight of it coming so closely on the struggle she had just been
through was too much for the girl's self-control.
Instead of going up to him, she sat down on the corded trunk and began to
sob. It was the sobbing of a child whose school-treat has been
cancelled, of a girl whose ball-dress has not come home in time. It only
irritated Hilary, whose nerves had already borne all they could bear. He
stood literally trembling, as though each one of these common little sobs
were a blow falling on the drum-skin of his spirit; and through every
fibre he took in the features of the dusty, scent-besprinkled room--the
brown tin trunk, the dismantled bed, the rust-red doors.
And he realised that she had burned her boats to make it impossible for a
man of sensibility to disappoint her!
The little model raised her face and looked at him. What she saw must
have been less reassuring even than the first sight had been, for it
stopped her sobbing. She rose and turned to the window, evidently trying
with handkerchief and powder-puff to repair the ravages caused by her
tears; and when she had finished she still stood there with her back to
him. Her deep breathing made her young form quiver from her waist up to
the little peacock's feather in her hat; and with each supple movement it
seemed offering itself to Hilary.
In the street a barrel-organ had begun to play the very waltz it had
played the afternoon when Mr. Stone had been so ill. Those two were
neither of them conscious of that tune, too absorbed in their emotions;
and yet, quietly, it was bringing something to the girl's figure like the
dowering of scent that the sun brings to a flower. It was bringing the
compression back to Hilary's lips, the flush to his ears and cheeks, as a
draught of wind will blow to redness a fire that has been choked.
Without knowing it, without sound, inch by inch he moved nearer to her;
and as though, for all there was no sign of his advance, she knew of it,
she stayed utterly unmoving except for the deep breathing that so stirred
the warm youth in her. In that stealthy progress was the history of life
and the mystery of sex. Inch by inch he neared her; and she swayed,
mesmerising his arms to fold round her thus poised, as if she must fall
backward; mesmerising him to forget that there was anything there,
anything in all the world, but just her young form waiting for
him--nothing but that!
The barrel-organ stopped; the spell had broken! She turned round to him.
As a wind obscures with grey wrinkles the still green waters of
enchantment into which some mortal has been gazing, so Hilary's reason
suddenly swept across the situation, and showed it once more as it was.
Quick to mark every shade that passed across his face, the girl made as
though she would again burst into tears; then, since tears had been so
useless, she pressed her hand over her eyes.
Hilary looked at that round, not too cleanly hand. He could see her
watching him between her fingers. It was uncanny, almost horrible, like
the sight of a cat watching a bird; and he stood appalled at the terrible
reality of his position, at the sight of his own future with this girl,
with her traditions, customs, life, the thousand and one things that he
did not know about her, that he would have to live with if he once took
her. A minute passed, which seemed eternity, for into it was condensed
every force of her long pursuit, her instinctive clutching at something
that she felt to be security, her reaching upwards, her twining round
him.
Conscious of all this, held back by that vision of his future, yet
whipped towards her by his senses, Hilary swayed like a drunken man. And
suddenly she sprang at him, wreathed her arms round his neck, and
fastened her mouth to his. The touch of her lips was moist and hot. The
scent of stale violet powder came from her, warmed by her humanity. It
penetrated to Hilary's heart. He started back in sheer physical revolt.
Thus repulsed, the girl stood rigid, her breast heaving, her eyes
unnaturally dilated, her mouth still loosened by the kiss. Snatching
from his pocket a roll of notes, Hilary flung them on the bed.
"I can't take you!" he almost groaned. "It's madness! It's impossible!"
And he went out into the passage. He ran down the steps and got into his
cab. An immense time seemed to pass before it began to move. It started
at last, and Hilary sat back in it, his hands clenched, still as a dead
man.
His mortified face was recognised by the landlady, returning from her
morning's visit to the shops. The gentleman looked, she thought, as if
he had received bad news! She not unnaturally connected his appearance
with her lodger. Tapping on the girl's door, and receiving no answer,
she went in.
The little model was lying on the dismantled bed, pressing her face into
the blue and white ticking of the bolster. Her shoulders shook, and a
sound of smothered sobbing came from her. The landlady stood staring
silently.
Coming of Cornish chapel-going stock, she had never liked this girl, her
instinct telling her that she was one for whom life had already been too
much. Those for whom life had so early been too much, she knew, were
always "ones for pleasure!" Her experience of village life had enabled
her to construct the little model's story--that very simple, very
frequent little story. Sometimes, indeed, trouble of that sort was soon
over and forgotten; but sometimes, if the young man didn't do the right
thing by her, and the girl's folk took it hardly, well, then---! So had
run the reasoning of this good woman. Being of the same class, she had
looked at her lodger from the first without obliquity of vision.
But seeing her now apparently so overwhelmed, and having something soft
and warm down beneath her granitic face and hungry eyes, she touched her
on the back.
"Come, now!" she said; "you mustn't take on! What is it?"
The little model shook off the hand as a passionate child shakes itself
free of consolation. "Let me alone!" she muttered.
The landlady drew back. "Has anyone done you a harm?" she said.
The little model shook her head.
Baffled by this dumb grief, the landlady was silent; then, with the
stolidity of those whose lives are one long wrestling with fortune, she
muttered:
"I don't like to see anyone cry like that!"
And finding that the girl remained obstinately withdrawn from sight or
sympathy, she moved towards the door.
"Well," she said, with ironical compassion, "if you want me, I'll be in
the kitchen."
The little model remained lying on her bed. Every now and then she
gulped, like a child flung down on the grass apart from its comrades,
trying to swallow down its rage, trying to bury in the earth its little
black moment of despair. Slowly those gulps grew fewer, feebler, and at
last died away. She sat up, sweeping Hilary's bundle of notes, on which
she had been lying, to the floor.
At sight of that bundle she broke out afresh, flinging herself down
sideways with her cheek on the wet bolster; and, for some time after her
sobs had ceased again, still lay there. At last she rose and dragged
herself over to the looking-glass, scrutinising her streaked, discoloured
face, the stains in the cheeks, the swollen eyelids, the marks beneath
her eyes; and listlessly she tidied herself. Then, sitting down on the
brown tin trunk, she picked the bundle of notes off the floor. They gave
forth a dry peculiar crackle. Fifteen ten-pound notes--all Hilary's
travelling money. Her eyes opened wider and wider as she counted; and
tears, quite suddenly, rolled down on to those thin slips of paper.
Then slowly she undid her dress, and forced them down till they rested,
with nothing but her vest between them and the quivering warm flesh which
hid her heart.