Chapter VI: Part 6

“Beastly.” He went over to the washstand and dipped his fingers in water. “Are you all right now? Shall I switch off the light?”

“Yes, please. No. Boogles! Come back here a moment. Sit down by me. Give me your hand.” She turns his signet ring. “Why weren’t you asleep? Boogles, listen. Come closer. I sometimes wonder—do you mind awfully being out here with me?”

He bends down. He kisses her. He tucks her in, he smoothes the pillow.

“Rot!” he whispers.

Mr. Reginald Peacock’s Day

If there was one thing that he hated more than another it was the way she had of waking him in the morning. She did it on purpose, of course. It was her way of establishing her grievance for the day, and he was not going to let her know how successful it was. But really, really, to wake a sensitive person like that was positively dangerous! It took him hours to get over it—simply hours. She came into the room buttoned up in an overall, with a handkerchief over her head—thereby proving that she had been up herself and slaving since dawn—and called in a low, warning voice: “Reginald!”

“Eh! What! What’s that? What’s the matter?”

“It’s time to get up; it’s half-past eight.” And out she went, shutting the door quietly after her, to gloat over her triumph, he supposed.

He rolled over in the big bed, his heart still beating in quick, dull throbs, and with every throb he felt his energy escaping him, his—his inspiration for the day stifling under those thudding blows. It seemed that she took a malicious delight in making life more difficult for him than—Heaven knows—it was, by denying him his rights as an artist, by trying to drag him down to her level. What was the matter with her? What the hell did she want? Hadn’t he three times as many pupils now as when they were first married, earned three times as much, paid for every stick and stone that they possessed, and now had begun to shell out for Adrian’s kindergarten? . . . And had he ever reproached her for not having a penny to her name? Never a word—never a sign! The truth was that once you married a woman she became insatiable, and the truth was that nothing was more fatal for an artist than marriage, at any rate until he was well over forty. . . . Why had he married her? He asked himself this question on an average about three times a day, but he never could answer it satisfactorily. She had caught him at a weak moment, when the first plunge into reality had bewildered and overwhelmed him for a time. Looking back, he saw a pathetic, youthful creature, half child, half wild untamed bird, totally incompetent to cope with bills and creditors and all the sordid details of existence. Well—she had done her best to clip his wings, if that was any satisfaction for her, and she could congratulate herself on the success of this early morning trick. One ought to wake exquisitely, reluctantly, he thought, slipping down in the warm bed. He began to imagine a series of enchanting scenes which ended with his latest, most charming pupil putting her bare, scented arms round his neck, and covering him with her long, perfumed hair. “Awake, my love!” . . .

As was his daily habit, while the bath water ran, Reginald Peacock tried his voice.

When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror, Looping up her laces, tying up her hair,

he sang, softly at first, listening to the quality, nursing his voice until he came to the third line:

Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded . . .

and upon the word “wedded” he burst into such a shout of triumph that the tooth-glass on the bathroom shelf trembled and even the bath tap seemed to gush stormy applause. . . .

Well, there was nothing wrong with his voice, he thought, leaping into the bath and soaping his soft, pink body all over with a loofah shaped like a fish. He could fill Covent Garden with it! “_Wedded_,” he shouted again, seizing the towel with a magnificent operatic gesture, and went on singing while he rubbed as though he had been Lohengrin tipped out by an unwary Swan and drying himself in the greatest haste before that tiresome Elsa came along along. . . .

Back in his bedroom, he pulled the blind up with a jerk, and standing upon the pale square of sunlight that lay upon the carpet like a sheet of cream blotting-paper, he began to do his exercises—deep breathing, bending forward and back, squatting like a frog and shooting out his legs—for if there was one thing he had a horror of it was of getting fat, and men in his profession had a dreadful tendency that way. However, there was no sign of it at present. He was, he decided, just right, just in good proportion. In fact, he could not help a thrill of satisfaction when he saw himself in the glass, dressed in a morning coat, dark grey trousers, grey socks and a black tie with a silver thread in it. Not that he was vain—he couldn’t stand vain men—no; the sight of himself gave him a thrill of purely artistic satisfaction. “_Voilà tout!”_ said he, passing his hand over his sleek hair.

That little, easy French phrase blown so lightly from his lips, like a whiff of smoke, reminded him that someone had asked him again, the evening before, if he was English. People seemed to find it impossible to believe that he hadn’t some Southern blood. True, there was an emotional quality in his singing that had nothing of the John Bull in it. . . . The door-handle rattled and turned round and round. Adrian’s head popped through.

“Please, father, mother says breakfast is quite ready, please.”

“Very well,” said Reginald. Then, just as Adrian disappeared: “Adrian!”

“Yes, father.”

“You haven’t said ‘good morning.’”

A few months ago Reginald had spent a week-end in a very aristocratic family, where the father received his little sons in the morning and shook hands with them. Reginald thought the practice charming, and introduced it immediately, but Adrian felt dreadfully silly at having to shake hands with his own father every morning. And why did his father always sort of sing to him instead of talk? . . .

In excellent temper, Reginald walked into the dining-room and sat down before a pile of letters, a copy of the _Times_, and a little covered dish. He glanced at the letters and then at his breakfast. There were two thin slices of bacon and one egg.

“Don’t you want any bacon?” he asked.

“No, I prefer a cold baked apple. I don’t feel the need of bacon every morning.”

Now, did she mean that there was no need for him to have bacon every morning, either, and that she grudged having to cook it for him?

“If you don’t want to cook the breakfast,” said he, “why don’t you keep a servant? You know we can afford one, and you know how I loathe to see my wife doing the work. Simply because all the women we have had in the past have been failures and utterly upset my regime, and made it almost impossible for me to have any pupils here, you’ve given up trying to find a decent woman. It’s not impossible to train a servant—is it? I mean, it doesn’t require genius?”

“But I prefer to do the work myself; it makes life so much more peaceful. . . . Run along, Adrian darling, and get ready for school.”

“Oh no, that’s not it!” Reginald pretended to smile. “You do the work yourself, because, for some extraordinary reason, you love to humiliate me. Objectively, you may not know that, but, subjectively, it’s the case.” This last remark so delighted him that he cut open an envelope as gracefully as if he had been on the stage. . . .

“DEAR MR. PEACOCK,
I feel I cannot go to sleep until I have thanked you again for the
wonderful joy your singing gave me this evening. Quite
unforgettable. You make me wonder, as I have not wondered since I
was a girl, if this is _all._ I mean, if this ordinary world is
_all._ If there is not, perhaps, for those of us who understand,
divine beauty and richness awaiting us if we only have the
_courage_ to see it. And to make it ours. . . . The house is so
quiet. I wish you were here now that I might thank you in person.
You are doing a great thing. You are teaching the world to escape
from life!

Yours, most sincerely, ÆNONE FELL.

P.S.—I am in every afternoon this week. . . .”

The letter was scrawled in violet ink on thick, handmade paper. Vanity, that bright bird, lifted its wings again, lifted them until he felt his breast would break.

“Oh well, don’t let us quarrel,” said he, and actually flung out a hand to his wife.

But she was not great enough to respond.

“I must hurry and take Adrian to school,” said she. “Your room is quite ready for you.”

Very well—very well—let there be open war between them! But he was hanged if he’d be the first to make it up again!

He walked up and down his room, and was not calm again until he heard the outer door close upon Adrian and his wife. Of course, if this went on, he would have to make some other arrangement. That was obvious. Tied and bound like this, how could he help the world to escape from life? He opened the piano and looked up his pupils for the morning. Miss Betty Brittle, the Countess Wilkowska and Miss Marian Morrow. They were charming, all three.

Punctually at half-past ten the door-bell rang. He went to the door. Miss Betty Brittle was there, dressed in white, with her music in a blue silk case.

“I’m afraid I’m early,” she said, blushing and shy, and she opened her big blue eyes very wide. “Am I?”

“Not at all, dear lady. I am only too charmed,” said Reginald. “Won’t you come in?”

“It’s such a heavenly morning,” said Miss Brittle. “I walked across the Park. The flowers were too marvellous.”

“Well, think about them while you sing your exercises,” said Reginald, sitting down at the piano. “It will give your voice colour and warmth.”

Oh, what an enchanting idea! What a _genius_ Mr. Peacock was. She parted her pretty lips, and began to sing like a pansy.

“Very good, very good, indeed,” said Reginald, playing chords that would waft a hardened criminal to heaven. “Make the notes round. Don’t be afraid. Linger over them, breathe them like a perfume.”

How pretty she looked, standing there in her white frock, her little blonde head tilted, showing her milky throat.

“Do you ever practise before a glass?” asked Reginald. “You ought to, you know; it makes the lips more flexible. Come over here.”

They went over to the mirror and stood side by side.

“Now sing—moo-e-koo-e-oo-e-a!”

But she broke down, and blushed more brightly than ever.

“Oh,” she cried, “I can’t. It makes me feel so silly. It makes me want to laugh. I do look so absurd!”

“No, you don’t. Don’t be afraid,” said Reginald, but laughed, too, very kindly. “Now, try again!”

The lesson simply flew, and Betty Brittle quite got over her shyness.

“When can I come again?” she asked, tying the music up again in the blue silk case. “I want to take as many lessons as I can just now. Oh, Mr. Peacock, I _do_ enjoy them so much. May I come the day after to-morrow?”

“Dear lady, I shall be only too charmed,” said Reginald, bowing her out.

Glorious girl! And when they had stood in front of the mirror, her white sleeve had just touched his black one. He could feel—yes, he could actually feel a warm glowing spot, and he stroked it. She loved her lessons. His wife came in.

“Reginald, can you let me have some money? I must pay the dairy. And will you be in for dinner to-night?”

“Yes, you know I’m singing at Lord Timbuck’s at half-past nine. Can you make me some clear soup, with an egg in it?”

“Yes. And the money, Reginald. It’s eight and sixpence.”

“Surely that’s very heavy—isn’t it?”

“No, it’s just what it ought to be. And Adrian must have milk.”

There she was—off again. Now she was standing up for Adrian against him.

“I have not the slightest desire to deny my child a proper amount of milk,” said he. “Here is ten shillings.”

The door-bell rang. He went to the door.

“Oh,” said the Countess Wilkowska, “the stairs. I have not a breath.” And she put her hand over her heart as she followed him into the music-room. She was all in black, with a little black hat with a floating veil—violets in her bosom.

“Do not make me sing exercises, to-day,” she cried, throwing out her hands in her delightful foreign way. “No, to-day, I want only to sing songs. . . . And may I take off my violets? They fade so soon.”

“They fade so soon—they fade so soon,” played Reginald on the piano.

“May I put them here?” asked the Countess, dropping them in a little vase that stood in front of one of Reginald’s photographs.

“Dear lady, I should be only too charmed!”

She began to sing, and all was well until she came to the phrase: “You love me. Yes, I _know_ you love me!” Down dropped his hands from the keyboard, he wheeled round, facing her.

“No, no; that’s not good enough. You can do better than that,” cried Reginald ardently. “You must sing as if you were in love. Listen; let me try and show you.” And he sang.

“Oh, yes, yes. I see what you mean,” stammered the little Countess. “May I try it again?”

“Certainly. Do not be afraid. Let yourself go. Confess yourself. Make proud surrender!” he called above the music. And she sang.

“Yes; better that time. But I still feel you are capable of more. Try it with me. There must be a kind of exultant defiance as well—don’t you feel?” And they sang together. Ah! now she was sure she understood. “May I try once again?”

“You love me. Yes, I _know_ you love me.”

The lesson was over before that phrase was quite perfect. The little foreign hands trembled as they put the music together.

“And you are forgetting your violets,” said Reginald softly.

“Yes, I think I will forget them,” said the Countess, biting her underlip. What fascinating ways these foreign women have!

“And you will come to my house on Sunday and make music?” she asked.

“Dear lady, I shall be only too charmed!” said Reginald.

Weep ye no more, sad fountains Why need ye flow so fast?

sang Miss Marian Morrow, but her eyes filled with tears and her chin trembled.

“Don’t sing just now,” said Reginald. “Let me play it for you.” He played so softly.

“Is there anything the matter?” asked Reginald. “You’re not quite happy this morning.”

No, she wasn’t; she was awfully miserable.

“You don’t care to tell me what it is?”

It really was nothing particular. She had those moods sometimes when life seemed almost unbearable.

“Ah, I know,” he said; “if I could only help!”

“But you do; you do! Oh, if it were not for my lessons I don’t feel I could go on.”

“Sit down in the arm-chair and smell the violets and let me sing to you. It will do you just as much good as a lesson.”

Why weren’t all men like Mr. Peacock?

“I wrote a poem after the concert last night—just about what I felt. Of course, it wasn’t _personal._ May I send it to you?”

“Dear lady, I should be only too charmed!”

By the end of the afternoon he was quite tired and lay down on a sofa to rest his voice before dressing. The door of his room was open. He could hear Adrian and his wife talking in the dining-room.

“Do you know what that teapot reminds me of, Mummy? It reminds me of a little sitting-down kitten.”

“Does it, Mr. Absurdity?”

Reginald dozed. The telephone bell woke him.

“Ænone Fell is speaking. Mr. Peacock, I have just heard that you are singing at Lord Timbuck’s to-night. Will you dine with me, and we can go on together afterwards?” And the words of his reply dropped like flowers down the telephone.

“Dear lady, I should be only too charmed.”

What a triumphant evening! The little dinner _tête-à-tête_ with Ænone Fell, the drive to Lord Timbuck’s in her white motor-car, when she thanked him again for the unforgettable joy. Triumph upon triumph! And Lord Timbuck’s champagne simply flowed.

“Have some more champagne, Peacock,” said Lord Timbuck. Peacock, you notice—not Mr. Peacock—but Peacock, as if he were one of them. And wasn’t he? He was an artist. He could sway them all. And wasn’t he teaching them all to escape from life? How he sang! And as he sang, as in a dream he saw their feathers and their flowers and their fans, offered to him, laid before him, like a huge bouquet.

“Have another glass of wine, Peacock.”

“I could have any one I liked by lifting a finger,” thought Peacock, positively staggering home.

But as he let himself into the dark flat his marvellous sense of elation began to ebb away. He turned up the light in the bedroom. His wife lay asleep, squeezed over to her side of the bed. He remembered suddenly how she had said when he had told her he was going out to dinner: “You might have let me know before!” And how he had answered: “Can’t you possibly speak to me without offending against even good manners?” It was incredible, he thought, that she cared so little for him—incredible that she wasn’t interested in the slightest in his triumphs and his artistic career. When so many women in her place would have given their eyes. . . . Yes, he knew it. . . . Why not acknowledge it? . . . And there she lay, an enemy, even in her sleep. . . . Must it ever be thus? he thought, the champagne still working. Ah, if we only were friends, how much I could tell her now! About this evening; even about Timbuck’s manner to me, and all that they said to me and so on and so on. If only I felt that she was here to come back to—that I could confide in her—and so on and so on.

In his emotion he pulled off his evening boot and simply hurled it in the corner. The noise woke his wife with a terrible start. She sat up, pushing back her hair. And he suddenly decided to have one more try to treat her as a friend, to tell her everything, to win her. Down he sat on the side of the bed, and seized one of her hands. But of all those splendid things he had to say, not one could he utter. For some fiendish reason, the only words he could get out were: “Dear lady, I should be so charmed—so charmed!”

Sun and Moon

In the afternoon the chairs came, a whole big cart full of little gold ones with their legs in the air. And then the flowers came. When you stared down from the balcony at the people carrying them the flower pots looked like funny awfully nice hats nodding up the path.

Moon thought they were hats. She said: “Look. There’s a man wearing a palm on his head.” But she never knew the difference between real things and not real ones.

There was nobody to look after Sun and Moon. Nurse was helping Annie alter Mother’s dress which was much-too-long-and-tight-under-the-arms and Mother was running all over the house and telephoning Father to be sure not to forget things. She only had time to say: “Out of my way, children!”

They kept out of her way—at any rate Sun did. He did so hate being sent stumping back to the nursery. It didn’t matter about Moon. If she got tangled in people’s legs they only threw her up and shook her till she squeaked. But Sun was too heavy for that. He was so heavy that the fat man who came to dinner on Sundays used to say: “Now, young man, let’s try to lift you.” And then he’d put his thumbs under Sun’s arms and groan and try and give it up at last saying: “He’s a perfect little ton of bricks!”

Nearly all the furniture was taken out of the dining-room. The big piano was put in a corner and then there came a row of flower pots and then there came the goldy chairs. That was for the concert. When Sun looked in a white faced man sat at the piano—not playing, but banging at it and then looking inside. He had a bag of tools on the piano and he had stuck his hat on a statue against the wall. Sometimes he just started to play and then he jumped up again and looked inside. Sun hoped he wasn’t the concert.

But of course the place to be in was the kitchen. There was a man helping in a cap like a blancmange, and their real cook, Minnie, was all red in the face and laughing. Not cross at all. She gave them each an almond finger and lifted them up on to the flour bin so that they could watch the wonderful things she and the man were making for supper. Cook brought in the things and he put them on dishes and trimmed them. Whole fishes, with their heads and eyes and tails still on, he sprinkled with red and green and yellow bits; he made squiggles all over the jellies, he stuck a collar on a ham and put a very thin sort of a fork in it; he dotted almonds and tiny round biscuits on the creams. And more and more things coming.

“Ah, but you haven’t seen the ice pudding,” said Cook. “Come along.” Why was she being so nice, thought Sun as she gave them each a hand. And they looked into the refrigerator.

Oh! Oh! Oh! It was a little house. It was a little pink house with white snow on the roof and green windows and a brown door and stuck in the door there was a nut for a handle.

When Sun saw the nut he felt quite tired and had to lean against Cook.

“Let me touch it. Just let me put my finger on the roof,” said Moon, dancing. She always wanted to touch all the food. Sun didn’t.

“Now, my girl, look sharp with the table,” said Cook as the housemaid came in.

“It’s a picture, Min,” said Nellie. “Come along and have a look.” So they all went into the dining-room. Sun and Moon were almost frightened. They wouldn’t go up to the table at first; they just stood at the door and made eyes at it.

It wasn’t real night yet but the blinds were down in the dining-room and the lights turned on—and all the lights were red roses. Red ribbons and bunches of roses tied up the table at the corners. In the middle was a lake with rose petals floating on it.

“That’s where the ice pudding is to be,” said Cook.

Two silver lions with wings had fruit on their backs, and the salt cellars were tiny birds drinking out of basins.

And all the winking glasses and shining plates and sparkling knives and forks—and all the food. And the little red table napkins made into roses. . . .

“Are people going to eat the food?” asked Sun.

“I should just think they were,” laughed Cook, laughing with Nellie. Moon laughed, too; she always did the same as other people. But Sun didn’t want to laugh. Round and round he walked with his hands behind his back. Perhaps he never would have stopped if Nurse hadn’t called suddenly: “Now then, children. It’s high time you were washed and dressed.” And they were marched off to the nursery.

While they were being unbuttoned Mother looked in with a white thing over her shoulders; she was rubbing stuff on her face.

“I’ll ring for them when I want them, Nurse, and then they can just come down and be seen and go back again,” said she.

Sun was undressed, first nearly to his skin, and dressed again in a white shirt with red and white daisies speckled on it, breeches with strings at the sides and braces that came over, white socks and red shoes.

“Now you’re in your Russian costume,” said Nurse, flattening down his fringe.

“Am I?” said Sun.

“Yes. Sit quiet in that chair and watch your little sister.”

Moon took ages. When she had her socks put on she pretended to fall back on the bed and waved her legs at Nurse as she always did, and every time Nurse tried to make her curls with a finger and a wet brush she turned round and asked Nurse to show her the photo of her brooch or something like that. But at last she was finished too. Her dress stuck out, with fur on it, all white; there was even fluffy stuff on the legs of her drawers. Her shoes were white with big blobs on them.

“There you are, my lamb,” said Nurse. “And you look like a sweet little cherub of a picture of a powder-puff?” Nurse rushed to the door. “Ma’am, one moment.”

Mother came in again with half her hair down.

“Oh,” she cried. “What a picture!”

“Isn’t she,” said Nurse.

And Moon held out her skirts by the tips and dragged one of her feet. Sun didn’t mind people not noticing him—much. . . .

After that they played clean tidy games up at the table while Nurse stood at the door, and when the carriages began to come and the sound of laughter and voices and soft rustlings came from down below she whispered: “Now then, children, stay where you are.” Moon kept jerking the table cloth so that it all hung down her side and Sun hadn’t any—and then she pretended she didn’t do it on purpose.

At last the bell rang. Nurse pounced at them with the hair brush, flattened his fringe, made her bow stand on end and joined their hands together.

“Down you go!” she whispered.

And down they went. Sun did feel silly holding Moon’s hand like that but Moon seemed to like it. She swung her arm and the bell on her coral bracelet jingled.

At the drawing-room door stood Mother fanning herself with a black fan. The drawing-room was full of sweet smelling, silky, rustling ladies and men in black with funny tails on their coats—like beetles. Father was among them, talking very loud, and rattling something in his pocket.

“What a picture!” cried the ladies. “Oh, the ducks! Oh, the lambs! Oh, the sweets! Oh, the pets!”

All the people who couldn’t get at Moon kissed Sun, and a skinny old lady with teeth that clicked said: “Such a serious little poppet,” and rapped him on the head with something hard.

Sun looked to see if the same concert was there, but he was gone. Instead, a fat man with a pink head leaned over the piano talking to a girl who held a violin at her ear.

There was only one man that Sun really liked. He was a little grey man, with long grey whiskers, who walked about by himself. He came up to Sun and rolled his eyes in a very nice way and said: “Hullo, my lad.” Then he went away. But soon he came back again and said: “Fond of dogs?” Sun said: “Yes.” But then he went away again, and though Sun looked for him everywhere he couldn’t find him. He thought perhaps he’d gone outside to fetch in a puppy.

“Good night, my precious babies,” said Mother, folding them up in her bare arms. “Fly up to your little nest.”

Then Moon went and made a silly of herself again. She put up her arms in front of everybody and said: “My Daddy must carry me.”

But they seemed to like it, and Daddy swooped down and picked her up as he always did.

Nurse was in such a hurry to get them to bed that she even interrupted Sun over his prayers and said: “Get on with them, child, _do._” And the moment after they were in bed and in the dark except for the nightlight in its little saucer.

“Are you asleep?” asked Moon.

“No,” said Sun. “Are you?”

“No,” said Moon.

A long while after Sun woke up again. There was a loud, loud noise of clapping from downstairs, like when it rains. He heard Moon turn over.

“Moon, are you awake?”

“Yes, are you.”

“Yes. Well, let’s go and look over the stairs.”

They had just got settled on the top step when the drawing-room door opened and they heard the party cross over the hall into the dining-room. Then that door was shut; there was a noise of “pops” and laughing. Then that stopped and Sun saw them all walking round and round the lovely table with their hands behind their backs like he had done. . . . Round and round they walked, looking and staring. The man with the grey whiskers liked the little house best. When he saw the nut for a handle he rolled his eyes like he did before and said to Sun: “Seen the nut?”

“Don’t nod your head like that, Moon.”

“I’m not nodding. It’s you.”

“It is not. I never nod my head.”

“O-oh, you do. You’re nodding it now.”

“I’m not. I’m only showing you how not to do it.”

When they woke up again they could only hear Father’s voice very loud, and Mother, laughing away. Father came out of the dining-room, bounded up the stairs, and nearly fell over them.

“Hullo!” he said. “By Jove, Kitty, come and look at this.”

Mother came out. “Oh, you naughty children,” said she from the hall.

“Let’s have ’em down and give ’em a bone,” said Father. Sun had never seen him so jolly.

“No, certainly not,” said Mother.

“Oh, my Daddy, do! Do have us down,” said Moon.

“I’m hanged if I won’t,” cried Father. “I won’t be bullied. Kitty—way there.” And he caught them up, one under each arm.

Sun thought Mother would have been dreadfully cross. But she wasn’t. She kept on laughing at Father.

“Oh, you dreadful boy!” said she. But she didn’t mean Sun.

“Come on, kiddies. Come and have some pickings,” said this jolly Father. But Moon stopped a minute.

“Mother—your dress is right off one side.”

“Is it?” said Mother. And Father said “Yes” and pretended to bite her white shoulder, but she pushed him away.

And so they went back to the beautiful dining-room.

But—oh! oh! what had happened. The ribbons and the roses were all pulled untied. The little red table napkins lay on the floor, all the shining plates were dirty and all the winking glasses. The lovely food that the man had trimmed was all thrown about, and there were bones and bits and fruit peels and shells everywhere. There was even a bottle lying down with stuff coming out of it on to the cloth and nobody stood it up again.

And the little pink house with the snow roof and the green windows was broken—broken—half melted away in the centre of the table.

“Come on, Sun,” said Father, pretending not to notice.

Moon lifted up her pyjama legs and shuffled up to the table and stood on a chair, squeaking away.

“Have a bit of this ice,” said Father, smashing in some more of the roof.

Mother took a little plate and held it for him; she put her other arm round his neck.

“Daddy. Daddy,” shrieked Moon. “The little handle’s left. The little nut. Kin I eat it?” And she reached across and picked it out of the door and scrunched it up, biting hard and blinking.

“Here, my lad,” said Father.

But Sun did not move from the door. Suddenly he put up his head and gave a loud wail.

“I think it’s horrid—horrid—horrid!” he sobbed.

“There, you see!” said Mother. “You see!”

“Off with you,” said Father, no longer jolly. “This moment. Off you go!”

And wailing loudly, Sun stumped off to the nursery.

Feuille d’Album

He really was an impossible person. Too shy altogether. With absolutely nothing to say for himself. And such a weight. Once he was in your studio he never knew when to go, but would sit on and on until you nearly screamed, and burned to throw something enormous after him when he did finally blush his way out—something like the tortoise stove. The strange thing was that at first sight he looked most interesting. Everybody agreed about that. You would drift into the café one evening and there you would see, sitting in a corner, with a glass of coffee in front of him, a thin, dark boy, wearing a blue jersey with a little grey flannel jacket buttoned over it. And somehow that blue jersey and the grey jacket with the sleeves that were too short gave him the air of a boy that has made up his mind to run away to sea. Who has run away, in fact, and will get up in a moment and sling a knotted handkerchief containing his nightshirt and his mother’s picture on the end of a stick, and walk out into the night and be drowned. . . . Stumble over the wharf edge on his way to the ship, even. . . . He had black close-cropped hair, grey eyes with long lashes, white cheeks and a mouth pouting as though he were determined not to cry. . . . How could one resist him? Oh, one’s heart was wrung at sight. And, as if that were not enough, there was his trick of blushing. . . . Whenever the waiter came near him he turned crimson—he might have been just out of prison and the waiter in the know. . . .

“Who is he, my dear? Do you know?”

“Yes. His name is Ian French. Painter. Awfully clever, they say. Someone started by giving him a mother’s tender care. She asked him how often he heard from home, whether he had enough blankets on his bed, how much milk he drank a day. But when she went round to his studio to give an eye to his socks, she rang and rang, and though she could have sworn she heard someone breathing inside, the door was not answered. . . . Hopeless!”

Someone else decided that he ought to fall in love. She summoned him to her side, called him “boy,” leaned over him so that he might smell the enchanting perfume of her hair, took his arm, told him how marvellous life could be if one only had the courage, and went round to his studio one evening and rang and rang. . . . Hopeless.

“What the poor boy really wants is thoroughly rousing,” said a third. So off they went to cafés and cabarets, little dances, places where you drank something that tasted like tinned apricot juice, but cost twenty-seven shillings a bottle and was called champagne, other places, too thrilling for words, where you sat in the most awful gloom, and where some one had always been shot the night before. But he did not turn a hair. Only once he got very drunk, but instead of blossoming forth, there he sat, stony, with two spots of red on his cheeks, like, my dear, yes, the dead image of that ragtime thing they were playing, like a “Broken Doll.” But when she took him back to his studio he had quite recovered, and said “good night” to her in the street below, as though they had walked home from church together. . . . Hopeless.

After heaven knows how many more attempts—for the spirit of kindness dies very hard in women—they gave him up. Of course, they were still perfectly charming, and asked him to their shows, and spoke to him in the café, but that was all. When one is an artist one has no time simply for people who won’t respond. Has one?

“And besides I really think there must be something rather fishy somewhere . . . don’t you? It can’t all be as innocent as it looks! Why come to Paris if you want to be a daisy in the field? No, I’m not suspicious. But——”

He lived at the top of a tall mournful building overlooking the river. One of those buildings that look so romantic on rainy nights and moonlight nights, when the shutters are shut, and the heavy door, and the sign advertising “a little apartment to let immediately” gleams forlorn beyond words. One of those buildings that smell so unromantic all the year round, and where the concierge lives in a glass cage on the ground floor, wrapped up in a filthy shawl, stirring something in a saucepan and ladling out tit-bits to the swollen old dog lolling on a bead cushion. . . . Perched up in the air the studio had a wonderful view. The two big windows faced the water; he could see the boats and the barges swinging up and down, and the fringe of an island planted with trees, like a round bouquet. The side window looked across to another house, shabbier still and smaller, and down below there was a flower market. You could see the tops of huge umbrellas, with frills of bright flowers escaping from them, booths covered with striped awning where they sold plants in boxes and clumps of wet gleaming palms in terra-cotta jars. Among the flowers the old women scuttled from side to side, like crabs. Really there was no need for him to go out. If he sat at the window until his white beard fell over the sill he still would have found something to draw. . . .

How surprised those tender women would have been if they had managed to force the door. For he kept his studio as neat as a pin. Everything was arranged to form a pattern, a little “still life” as it were—the saucepans with their lids on the wall behind the gas stove, the bowl of eggs, milk jug and teapot on the shelf, the books and the lamp with the crinkly paper shade on the table. An Indian curtain that had a fringe of red leopards marching round it covered his bed by day, and on the wall beside the bed on a level with your eyes when you were lying down there was a small neatly printed notice: GET UP AT ONCE.

Every day was much the same. While the light was good he slaved at his painting, then cooked his meals and tidied up the place. And in the evenings he went off to the café, or sat at home reading or making out the most complicated list of expenses headed: “What I ought to be able to do it on,” and ending with a sworn statement . . . “I swear not to exceed this amount for next month. Signed, Ian French.”

Nothing very fishy about this; but those far-seeing women were quite right. It wasn’t all.

One evening he was sitting at the side window eating some prunes and throwing the stones on to the tops of the huge umbrellas in the deserted flower market. It had been raining—the first real spring rain of the year had fallen—a bright spangle hung on everything, and the air smelled of buds and moist earth. Many voices sounding languid and content rang out in the dusky air, and the people who had come to close their windows and fasten the shutters leaned out instead. Down below in the market the trees were peppered with new green. What kind of trees were they? he wondered. And now came the lamplighter. He stared at the house across the way, the small, shabby house, and suddenly, as if in answer to his gaze, two wings of windows opened and a girl came out on to the tiny balcony carrying a pot of daffodils. She was a strangely thin girl in a dark pinafore, with a pink handkerchief tied over her hair. Her sleeves were rolled up almost to her shoulders and her slender arms shone against the dark stuff.

“Yes, it is quite warm enough. It will do them good,” she said, putting down the pot and turning to some one in the room inside. As she turned she put her hands up to the handkerchief and tucked away some wisps of hair. She looked down at the deserted market and up at the sky, but where he sat there might have been a hollow in the air. She simply did not see the house opposite. And then she disappeared.

His heart fell out of the side window of his studio, and down to the balcony of the house opposite—buried itself in the pot of daffodils under the half-opened buds and spears of green. . . . That room with the balcony was the sitting-room, and the one next door to it was the kitchen. He heard the clatter of the dishes as she washed up after supper, and then she came to the window, knocked a little mop against the ledge, and hung it on a nail to dry. She never sang or unbraided her hair, or held out her arms to the moon as young girls are supposed to do. And she always wore the same dark pinafore and the pink handkerchief over her hair. . . . Whom did she live with? Nobody else came to those two windows, and yet she was always talking to some one in the room. Her mother, he decided, was an invalid. They took in sewing. The father was dead. . . . He had been a journalist—very pale, with long moustaches, and a piece of black hair falling over his forehead.

By working all day they just made enough money to live on, but they never went out and they had no friends. Now when he sat down at his table he had to make an entirely new set of sworn statements. . . . Not to go to the side window before a certain hour: signed, Ian French. Not to think about her until he had put away his painting things for the day: signed, Ian French.

It was quite simple. She was the only person he really wanted to know, because she was, he decided, the only other person alive who was just his age. He couldn’t stand giggling girls, and he had no use for grown-up women. . . . She was his age, she was—well, just like him. He sat in his dusky studio, tired, with one arm hanging over the back of his chair, staring in at her window and seeing himself in there with her. She had a violent temper; they quarrelled terribly at times, he and she. She had a way of stamping her foot and twisting her hands in her pinafore . . . furious. And she very rarely laughed. Only when she told him about an absurd little kitten she once had who used to roar and pretend to be a lion when it was given meat to eat. Things like that made her laugh. . . . But as a rule they sat together very quietly; he, just as he was sitting now, and she with her hands folded in her lap and her feet tucked under, talking in low tones, or silent and tired after the day’s work. Of course, she never asked him about his pictures, and of course he made the most wonderful drawings of her which she hated, because he made her so thin and so dark. . . . But how could he get to know her? This might go on for years. . . .

Then he discovered that once a week, in the evenings, she went out shopping. On two successive Thursdays she came to the window wearing an old-fashioned cape over the pinafore, and carrying a basket. From where he sat he could not see the door of her house, but on the next Thursday evening at the same time he snatched up his cap and ran down the stairs. There was a lovely pink light over everything. He saw it glowing in the river, and the people walking towards him had pink faces and pink hands.

He leaned against the side of his house waiting for her and he had no idea of what he was going to do or say. “Here she comes,” said a voice in his head. She walked very quickly, with small, light steps; with one hand she carried the basket, with the other she kept the cape together. . . . What could he do? He could only follow. . . . First she went into the grocer’s and spent a long time in there, and then she went into the butcher’s where she had to wait her turn. Then she was an age at the draper’s matching something, and then she went to the fruit shop and bought a lemon. As he watched her he knew more surely than ever he must get to know her, now. Her composure, her seriousness and her loneliness, the very way she walked as though she was eager to be done with this world of grown-ups all was so natural to him and so inevitable.

“Yes, she is always like that,” he thought proudly. “We have nothing to do with these people.”

But now she was on her way home and he was as far off as ever. . . . She suddenly turned into the dairy and he saw her through the window buying an egg. She picked it out of the basket with such care—a brown one, a beautifully shaped one, the one he would have chosen. And when she came out of the dairy he went in after her. In a moment he was out again, and following her past his house across the flower market, dodging among the huge umbrellas and treading on the fallen flowers and the round marks where the pots had stood. . . . Through her door he crept, and up the stairs after, taking care to tread in time with her so that she should not notice. Finally, she stopped on the landing, and took the key out of her purse. As she put it into the door he ran up and faced her.

Blushing more crimson than ever, but looking at her severely he said, almost angrily: “Excuse me, Mademoiselle, you dropped this.”

And he handed her an egg.

A Dill Pickle

And then, after six years, she saw him again. He was seated at one of those little bamboo tables decorated with a Japanese vase of paper daffodils. There was a tall plate of fruit in front of him, and very carefully, in a way she recognized immediately as his “special” way, he was peeling an orange.

He must have felt that shock of recognition in her for he looked up and met her eyes. Incredible! He didn’t know her! She smiled; he frowned. She came towards him. He closed his eyes an instant, but opening them his face lit up as though he had struck a match in a dark room. He laid down the orange and pushed back his chair, and she took her little warm hand out of her muff and gave it to him.

“Vera!” he exclaimed. “How strange. Really, for a moment I didn’t know you. Won’t you sit down? You’ve had lunch? Won’t you have some coffee?”

She hesitated, but of course she meant to.

“Yes, I’d like some coffee.” And she sat down opposite him.

“You’ve changed. You’ve changed very much,” he said, staring at her with that eager, lighted look. “You look so well. I’ve never seen you look so well before.”

“Really?” She raised her veil and unbuttoned her high fur collar. “I don’t feel very well. I can’t bear this weather, you know.”

“Ah, no. You hate the cold. . . .”

“Loathe it.” She shuddered. “And the worst of it is that the older one grows . . .”

He interrupted her. “Excuse me,” and tapped on the table for the waitress. “Please bring some coffee and cream.” To her: “You are sure you won’t eat anything? Some fruit, perhaps. The fruit here is very good.”

“No, thanks. Nothing.”

“Then that’s settled.” And smiling just a hint too broadly he took up the orange again. “You were saying—the older one grows——”

“The colder,” she laughed. But she was thinking how well she remembered that trick of his—the trick of interrupting her—and of how it used to exasperate her six years ago. She used to feel then as though he, quite suddenly, in the middle of what she was saying, put his hand over her lips, turned from her, attended to something different, and then took his hand away, and with just the same slightly too broad smile, gave her his attention again. . . . Now we are ready. That is settled.

“The colder!” He echoed her words, laughing too. “Ah, ah. You still say the same things. And there is another thing about you that is not changed at all—your beautiful voice—your beautiful way of speaking.” Now he was very grave; he leaned towards her, and she smelled the warm, stinging scent of the orange peel. “You have only to say one word and I would know your voice among all other voices. I don’t know what it is—I’ve often wondered—that makes your voice such a—haunting memory. Do you remember that first afternoon we spent together at Kew Gardens? You were so surprised because I did not know the names of any flowers. I am still just as ignorant for all your telling me. But whenever it is very fine and warm, and I see some bright colours—it’s awfully strange—I hear your voice saying: ‘Geranium, marigold and verbena.’ And I feel those three words are all I recall of some forgotten, heavenly language. . . . You remember that afternoon?”

“Oh, yes, very well.” She drew a long, soft breath, as though the paper daffodils between them were almost too sweet to bear. Yet, what had remained in her mind of that particular afternoon was an absurd scene over the tea table. A great many people taking tea in a Chinese pagoda, and he behaving like a maniac about the wasps—waving them away, flapping at them with his straw hat, serious and infuriated out of all proportion to the occasion. How delighted the sniggering tea drinkers had been. And how she had suffered.

But now, as he spoke, that memory faded. His was the truer. Yes, it had been a wonderful afternoon, full of geranium and marigold and verbena, and—warm sunshine. Her thoughts lingered over the last two words as though she sang them.

In the warmth, as it were, another memory unfolded. She saw herself sitting on a lawn. He lay beside her, and suddenly, after a long silence, he rolled over and put his head in her lap.

“I wish,” he said, in a low, troubled voice, “I wish that I had taken poison and were about to die—here now!”

At that moment a little girl in a white dress, holding a long, dripping water lily, dodged from behind a bush, stared at them, and dodged back again. But he did not see. She leaned over him.

“Ah, why do you say that? I could not say that.”

But he gave a kind of soft moan, and taking her hand he held it to his cheek.

“Because I know I am going to love you too much—far too much. And I shall suffer so terribly. Vera, because you never, never will love me.”

He was certainly far better looking now than he had been then. He had lost all that dreamy vagueness and indecision. Now he had the air of a man who has found his place in life, and fills it with a confidence and an assurance which was, to say the least, impressive. He must have made money, too. His clothes were admirable, and at that moment he pulled a Russian cigarette case out of his pocket.

“Won’t you smoke?”

“Yes, I will.” She hovered over them. “They look very good.”

“I think they are. I get them made for me by a little man in St. James’s Street. I don’t smoke very much. I’m not like you—but when I do, they must be delicious, very fresh cigarettes. Smoking isn’t a habit with me; it’s a luxury—like perfume. Are you still so fond of perfumes? Ah, when I was in Russia . . .”

She broke in: “You’ve really been to Russia?”