A SOFT GOOD NIGHT
Masters took his stand on that apology and made capital out of it. Miss
Mivvins resumed her seat. With all his ignorance of the treatment women
expected--out of books--he had acted in strict consonance with the sex's
idea of the fitness of things.
To own up to the rightness of the woman you are talking with, and your
own wrong, is as oil to machinery. It is an almost infallible way of
worming yourself into the woman's good graces; rarely fails. Its lack of
truth is compensated for by its success: the Jesuitical theory that the
end justifies the means.
"Why I said the exact opposite, was because in your hand there are
lines"--he was holding her hand in his now; holding it tightly as if he
did not want it to slip away again--"which signify love of
admiration--society--entertainment--jewels--riches--luxury--noise--
bustle and excitement."
She listened to the catalogue in silence--save for the eloquence of the
lashes of her eyes.
"And if," she queried after a moment, "if I confessed to all that--that
you had read correctly--what then?"
He smiled, so certain was he of the falsity of his catalogue: that her
character was very different from his delineation.
"At the risk of your again calling me rude," he answered, "I should say
you were speaking falsely."
"Why?"
"Because in Nature's library there is a more truthful book to read than
that of the hand--the face."
She started; he had commenced the perusal of what he referred to. Her
slight blush was hidden; a kindly cloud passed over the moon at the
moment.
"I have read that face of yours--read it again and again. I read it each
time I see you, I read it even when I do not see you; your face is never
away from me now."
His voice had grown very soft. Having taken his courage in both hands he
made the first real movement in their little comedy. There followed on
his speech a slight pause--an interval filled in, as it were, by the
provision of accompanying music: the rippling surge.
She essayed to draw her hand away--not putting too much heart in the
attempt. He needed to make no superhuman effort to be successful in its
retention.
"Do you know that you are the cause of my destruction of three-fourths
of a story I have written?"
Her astonishment at his utterance was due to the fact that she did not
at all understand him.
"I? Why?"
"The day we met here--a red-letter day in the calendar of my life--when
first we sat together on this seat, I was dissatisfied with the heroine
I was creating: she was not good enough. You came; I put you in my book;
put you in the place of the creation I had been dissatisfied with--the
study from life was so much better. And it was so simple; I never had to
wander or imagine things about her. She was always--is always--before
me."
She persisted in her affected disregard--a poor sort of performance--of
the meaning in his voice; asked:
"How have you painted her--me?"
"Unsophisticated, ingenuous, frank, guileless. She comes into the life
of a man who has lived away from women, who has never believed in them,
never wanted to. She makes the man see the error of his ways; leads him
out of the darkness and blackness of his night into the brightness of
her day. She becomes his sun."
His words, the manner of their utterance, made her bosom rise and fall.
The deep earnestness in his voice would have moved a much harder heart
than hers.
"And he?"
His eyes lighted up as, in reply to that question, he began a sort of
description of himself.
"He thanks God for the light! Lives! Lives! Sees things in life he never
saw before. She has thrown a searchlight on the barrenness of his
solitude: shown him its poverty. He realizes that it is not good for man
to live alone."
An onlooker just then would have imagined her sole object in life to be
the boring of a hole in the tarred path. She was watching her toe at
work with an engrossment of the most, apparently, intense kind.
"And all this--these ideas--were born of my--our--chance meetings?"
"Yes! My work became easier; there was no labour. Your face was as a
book to me; an open book. I just seemed to copy from it what was written
there. But as for chance--who can say? Chance is but unseen direction."
The caress in his voice made itself felt. Ignoring the latter part of
his speech she made hurried reply:
"And you read all this in my face? My face which contradicts my hand
so?"
So earnest was he, that he grew almost petulant over the wilful
misunderstanding, her changing of the subject; said:
"Let the reading of the hand go. I am content with the face."
Looking up, she realized that his eager eyes were fixed earnestly on
her. Saw in them the smouldering fire waiting for the smallest draught
to lick it into flame.
"Are you reading it now? Don't you know"--with a nervous little
laugh--"that it is very rude to stare so?"
He felt reminded of the action of an engine's piston: his heart was
pumping so furiously.
"Don't," he urged. "Please don't say so. It would wipe out half the
happiness of your presence if----"
That eagerness of his must be checked! There was no knowing how far it
would lead! She stepped behind the lattice of conventionality.
"It is growing late." She was on her feet; used the interview terminator
again. "We must be returning."
He drew in his breath; was so afraid. Struggled in vain to control his
rebellious pulse; fancied he had gone too far. Tried to retrace his
steps and found--as most of us do--walking backwards gracefully to be a
matter difficult of performance.
"I have not offended you by speaking as I have done, the truth?"
"Offended!"
She spoke shortly. Just repeated his word, not being in a mood for the
making of long speeches; added:
"Oh no!... Now let us be going."
They went. Homeward bound the conversation perched on stilts; seemed
artificially out of reach; a reserve had sprung up between them. Both
were making obvious efforts to be natural. Masters was appreciative of
the fact that his own were a sickly failure.
At her gate she assumed merriment; a transparent, fraudulent kind of
mirth. Said laughingly, one hand on the latch, the other ready to place
in his:
"And now, Mr. Prophet, what of the morrow? Think you will it hail, rain,
wind or snow?"
It was not infectious, that merriment of hers. She had fallen on the
first subject in Valapuk: the weather. Staple of English intercourse,
how many can deny it a debt of gratitude? Common ground--a national
heritage whereon we can disport ourselves at ease.
"Rain, I am afraid." He looked round. "Those banks of clouds augur
badly."
"You are not a comforting sort of prophet! Assumption of your
correctness means confinement to the house all day."
"Yes."
He looked at her as he answered. The glance made it hardly a laconic
reply.... She stretched out her hand. With the light in her
forget-me-not eyes full on, said:
"Good-bye."
Taking her hand--his retention of it was for a period considerably
longer than is considered quite good form in Mayfair--he asked:
"If a wet day--to-morrow, you know--I shall not see you at all, shall
I?"
Those eloquent lashes of hers helped her speech as she replied:
"It may clear in the evening, as it did to-day. I may not take Gracie
out in the damp. But, unless it rains, I shall take my own walk in the
evening."
Even a smaller mercy would have made him thankful. He enquired eagerly:
"At eight o'clock?"
The fringes lifted, giving him what he extravagantly labelled a glimpse
of Heaven. In the moonlight he saw all the glory of her eyes, as she
answered:
"Yes."
He had never thought it possible that room could be found for so
delightful a tone in a woman's voice, as was in Miss Mivvins' utterance
of that one-syllable word.
"If you should find me walking on the parade at that time," he
suggested, "you--you would not be displeased?"
She looked at him again. What she read prompted her to think him
deserving some little reward. Casting her eyes down to her hand, which
he was still holding, and lowering her voice too, till it was almost a
half-whisper, she said:
"What--what would you think if I said that----"
She hesitated--stopped. Quite eagerly he endeavoured to help her on;
interjected:
"Yes?"
"That I might be disappointed if I did not see you?"
The sigh he drew was of a plumbless nature. He answered, his soul in his
utterance:
"You will not be disappointed."
The sweetest of sweet tones, speaking in the low, tremulous voice which
may say so little but mean so much:
"Good-night!"
A grip of her hand that almost hurt her; a light in his eyes which had
never found place there before, and he echoed her final words:
"Good-night!"
Softness in both their voices, in their whole manner. A reciprocated
hand pressure.
So they parted.