Chapter V: Part II: Woburn Place (2)

"Well," Archie said presently, looking at his watch, "I must be off; I've a chap to meet. Thanks, Aunt Angela (beg pardon; I know you don't like being called that). I'll come on Thursday, then."

But Miss Angela exclaimed: "A man to meet! At this hour!"

Archie took his hat from a chair. "Yes. About a dog. Why not? Fox terrier," he added facetiously; "must make sure they've got over the distemper, you know. Thursday then. You two are staying a bit, I suppose?" he invited us.

He made his adieux; but almost before the door had closed behind him Evie had risen from her hassock.

"You'll excuse me, won't you?" she said quickly. "I've got a headache. I shall go straight to bed. Good-night."

And she followed him out--whether straight to bed or not I don't know. Kitty and I followed shortly afterwards.

And now that I've got to this Woburn Place portion of my story I may as well, while I am about it, skip the two intervening days and come to the evening of Archie Merridew's birthday.

Thursday was not in any case one of Evie's class evenings, and on that Thursday she must have been very busy indeed. We were to go to supper at eight; and as the routine of the boarding house did not provide for private entertainments the aunt and niece had had all to do themselves. The supper was therefore of necessity cold, with the exception of some hot soup, which I suspect to have been heated over a bedroom fire; and for the furnishing of the round table with the pink-shaded lamp Miss Angela had rummaged in drawers and trunks and bundles, with notable results. White heavy plates with the name of the boarding house contained within an oval garter were set between common knives and delicate and worn old silver forks and spoons, really beautiful glass finger-bowls stood on straw mats with a circular hole in the middle; and a long slender-handled punch-ladle stuck up out of the cheap earthenware jug full of home-made lemonade.

I suspect, too, that Evie had changed her mind a dozen times about the height of her dress at the neck; and probably her aunt's guidance had led her finally, since she had no special dress for the evening, to reject the compromise of altering her blouse to an intermediate =V=. Her dark hair had been newly washed. A softer lace than Kitty Windus' came quite up to her ears, and Miss Angela had lent her a pearl ring, which seemed to be mutely asking to be transferred to the finger next to the one on which she wore it. She was in white, with a longer skirt than usual; Miss Angela wore the old grey and Indian silk shawl she always wore; and Kitty looked prettier than I have ever seen her in a spotted blue foulard (I think I have that right) with wonderfully crimped sleeves and a cameo brooch at her rather wiry throat.

She and I arrived before Archie, who, indeed, was a full quarter of an hour late. When he did turn up, there mingled with his apologies the bumptious assumption of ease with which he sought to make a joke of his negligence. He came in noisily, as if he intended to make the party a success out of hand; and before he had been in the room half-a-minute a whiff told me what I had instantly surmised from the brightness of his eyes--that he had been drinking sherry and bitters already.

"Thanks, Aunt Angela--but that's not all, I hope!" he cried, as Miss Angela wished him many happy returns of the day.

And he skipped to her, passed his arm about her waist, and kissed her.

"Hope you won't mind for once, Jeff," he went on, dancing to Kitty Windus. Kitty both stiffened rigidly and flushed with excitement as he kissed her also on the cheek-bone.

"Here--I'm going all round now--where's Evie?" he demanded.

But Evie had slipped out of the room.

We sat down to supper.

I found Archie insufferable. He made the whole running with an ignorant egotism that caused my fingers to itch to box his ears. More than once he contradicted Miss Angela flatly, instantly trying to redeem the grossness by laughing loudly and crying, "Excuse my frankness--no offence--only Archie's way!" He made so familiar both with Kitty and myself that, out of mere hostility to him, I came very near to an alliance with her. Evie, I saw, was miserable. How much she knew about his habits I could only guess; I think that already she knew more than a little; but his had been the fortune to reveal her to herself, and I am not sure whether that ever wholly dies. I think it has since died as much as ever it can.

"But," Miss Angela said by-and-by, seeking to quieten him, "I've forgotten to ask you how your father is. Better, I hope?"

"The pater? Oh, he's all right; it's only a bilious attack. Afraid he got poisoned with some _foie gras_ he ate--jolly good tack _I_ call it--I'll have some more, please. And what's that you've got to drink there, Evie?"

Evie poured him out some lemonade. He looked at it, but made no remark on it.

"Here's your _foie gras_--have some cress with it," said Miss Angela.

And so we feted his lordship.

After supper there were nuts and almonds, which we ate sitting round the fire. I say "we," but Archie had what was left afterwards. With a "Half-a-mo," he had gone out, and I myself thought our party much pleasanter without him.

But as he remained away, Miss Angela had no choice but to say presently: "What _can_ have become of our young man? I wonder if you'd mind fetching him, Mr Jeffries!"

I went, and found him.

He had picked up, on the stairs or in the hall, a Japanese with whom he had contracted some sort of acquaintance, and I heard his call as I passed the half-open door of the dining-room.

"Here--Jeff!" he called. "Hold on--I sha'n't be a minute--come and let me introduce you to Mr Shoto--Mr Shoto, Mr Jeffries."

I distrust that too affable little race from the other side of the world, and I gave Mr Shoto the most perfunctory of nods. Archie was having a very golden whisky and soda with him.

"Come along--you oughtn't to clear off like this," I said curtly. "Miss Soames is asking for you."

"All right--good old Angela--just a minute till I finish this. We were talking about Japan, or rather Mr Shoto was. Tell him that about the Yoshiwara, Shoto."

But that cunning little alien had evidently summed me up already, and had a different choice of subject for me.

I haled Archie back. I wondered, as he sat down by Evie, whether he would have another man about another dog to see presently, but he hadn't. Magnanimously he gave us the whole of the rest of the evening. This he did in spite of the cold encouragement he got from Evie. Twice, I was certain, while his face did not cease to be animated with the talk he gave the rest of us, his hand sought hers behind the arm of his chair; but she drew away. Nevertheless she drew away discreetly. By doing so openly she could have shown him up, but evidently she did not wish to show him up. There was no irreconcilable difference between them. She was angry, but not to the point of refusing to make it up afterwards. And I knew she was not far from unhappy tears.

Kitty and I were the first to leave. This was at half-past eleven, and I had no desire to outsit Archie. He would either leave in another half-hour, which would leave him time for another golden whisky and soda, or, setting the smoothing over of Evie's ruffled temper before the attractions of the public-house, would linger till after closing-time, when there would be no hurry. To see which alternative he would take didn't on the whole seem to be worth waiting for.

So Kitty and I took our leave; and as I walked with her to Percy Street--where she had two rooms over a modiste's--I--and she too--had to suffer as best we might the kind of thing I will relate in the next chapter.

IV

From the beginning she wanted one thing, I another. She was prepared to "love" me (as if it had been a matter of will, to which, nevertheless, I am quite certain she would faithfully have adhered) on the condition that that heart of hers should be no longer a parched pod; but I wanted no more of her than that my name should be linked with hers as that of her suitor. To me the appearance was the indispensable thing; she wanted the substance. And she was already plaguing me for it.

God knows I gave her what I could give. Afterwards, when all was over, she still had the memory of it. I hope she found comfort in it.

For of course it was precisely over that which was Evie's, and which I was resolved to keep for Evie, that we were locked in a grapple. She lisped and besought and cajoled. Before I began sometimes utterly to forget that we were betrothed at all I could often have groaned aloud at her inexpert playfulness; and I doubt whether the wit of man could have devised a more acute torture than that which I now began to undergo at her unsuspecting hands.

For Archie's birthday was early in March, and already the crocuses were out, and the barrows in the streets were so aflame with daffodils that the flowers almost illuminated the faces of the sellers of them. It was still cold and backward, but the days were long past the turn, and while single twigs were still of a wintry iron hue, in the mass they took a softness, and the vistas of the parks had perceptibly changed. In the streets of the wealthy in which I walked the house-painters were at work, painting doors and railings and window-boxes; and even at my King's Cross corner the railway companies' announcements told of the coming summer. Spring was breaking in London--spring, the merry time of the year--spring, when lovers cannot keep asunder--and when Kitty and myself could not, yet must, keep asunder.

In the streets I knew I was fairly safe. Her hand on my sleeve filled me with no repugnance. Let me, for example, tell you of our walk back to Percy Street on that night of Archie's birthday-party.

As we crossed Tottenham Court Road she slipped her hand into my overcoat pocket, and my own encountered it there. It held it. It retained it along dark Percy Street, and still retained it when we stopped together at the side door next the window with the two fly-blown hats on pedestals that formed the whole of the modiste's display. There I would have left her; but "Don't go just yet, Jeff," she begged; "just eentie walk?"

"Well, a short one," I said.

We turned up Fitzroy Street into the Marylebone Road, but I was wary of the dark empty spaces about Regent's Park. The streets and the crowds for me. Indeed I may say that during this period of our "walking out" no couple in London sought solitude as I sought to avoid it; and I resolutely suppressed the thought of what was going to happen when the warm days should come and she should ask me to take her to Richmond or Epping or Kew. It was no good meeting that horror half way.

Therefore. "Well," I said, as we approached Portland Road Station again, "hadn't we better be turning? It's getting late."

"I suppose so," she sighed reluctantly, with a pressure of my arm. "Let's go this way."

She indicated one of the darker side streets. We took it.

By-and-by we stood by the modiste's window again. That is not a very reputable neighbourhood, and as she stood there, lingering out our talk to the thinnest of excuses, I guessed what was in her mind. But the general environment of laxity only produced a primness in her. In being all that she should be, she was sometimes a good deal more. Still, there was no harm in dallying with a secret thought.

But under all circumstances she ever displayed a sort of tempted prudishness.

"You and Evie and Miss Soames must come in one Sunday and have tea with me," she said resignedly at last, allowing the thought that some day I might go up with her to recede.

"That will be charming," I replied.

Then she sighed. "It has been so lovely tonight!"

"In what way?" I asked, forcing a smile.

"Archie was horrid, and you, Jeff----"

Yes, I remembered that hostility to Archie certainly had resulted in a _rapprochement_ between ourselves.

"Well," she said at last, lifting her face, "good-night, dearest--I know who _I_ shall dream of!"

I kissed her, heard the sound of her key in the lock, and, turning, saw her little face still looking through the half-closed door after me. I returned to King's Cross by way of Woburn Place, but there was only a glimmer of light within the fanlight of Evie's dwelling as I passed. Perhaps Archie had chosen the whisky and soda after all.

I soon saw that only by means of a studied unemotionalness should I be able for long to head her off from the things she sought; and I set about the creation of this atmosphere without loss of time. In this I found my far-reaching ambition useful to me; I had simply to be preoccupied with business to be spared much. I had not to play this part. I actually was a ferment of new plans. That my absorbing ambition was all for her sake was allowed to pass as understood. And when she began to make touching attempts to be interested in my affairs, I, lest a worse thing should befall me, encouraged her. I talked fully and freely, knowing that I ran no more risk of betrayal than Napoleon did when he laid before a Russian peasant woman unacquainted with French the plan of campaign he feared to trust to his own staff. This I did as the almonds pushed forth their pink, and the plane-trees budded, and the building birds sang loudly. Once she called me her building bird.

I had had to tell her, vaguely, about my employment; and I was also vague about where I lived. Here her own tempted timorousness helped me. It was not difficult for me to be stern about the proprieties, and indeed, as she saw this, and began to feel perfectly safe with me, she even affected a liberality of thought. "Why not?" she would sometimes ask almost defiantly; "why not see one another in our own places--if there was nothing horrid?"

And for that I usually found a surprised stare answer enough.

But the hunger was on her, and I had to give her morsels. That was a haggard horror. It was the more horrible that her vanities always turned on the things of which she had the least reason to be vain. As an affectionate and devoted and dull spinster my heart was often soft to her; but her coquetries would have made an angel groan. For example: her hands were not remarkably pretty; her fingers had almost the pinkness, and a little of the shape, of the smaller claws of a freshly boiled crab; but she gave them no rest from display. I was sometimes commanded, with a vapid imperiousness, to make much of them. And once, on a seat on the Embankment, she yielded to a temptation never far removed from her. It was at night; unnoticed, a portion of her hair had shaken loose; and, suddenly becoming aware of this, and doubtless with some idea of maddening me with the thought of something prohibited, she put up her hands, shook down the short mass on her shoulders, and grimaced at me. The next day she begged, with a shamed face, that I would try to forget this sin in her--for apparently she had intended it as sin; but I had nothing to forget. All that I remembered was the contrast, as she had put the hair up again, between the bosom under her uplifted arms and that other bosom from which Archie Merridew had turned away as Evie had stood before the mantelpiece mirror in Woburn Place.

Her dwelling, which I first visited with Evie and her aunt, was on the first floor of the modiste's at the back. Her sleeping apartment I never saw; and of her sitting-room I have no very clear memory now. There was a penny-in-the-slot gas-meter on the landing, I remember, and the floor of the room into which one walked was covered with a greenish jute "art square," with the wide spaces of bare boarding about it stained with Condy's Fluid. The previous occupant had left on the walls a "French boudoir" paper with a pattern of thin vertical lines and tiny garlands of pink rosebuds (Kitty had cleaned it with dough on taking possession). The furniture was scanty, with a good deal of muslin about it, and a sewing-machine stood in the back window, which looked over a restaurant yard. When she had more than two visitors at once she had to fetch an extra chair from her bedroom, and from the sound her heels made at these times I gathered that that room was uncarpeted.

As by quickening degrees she began to accept her unlooked-for situation more as a matter of course, her thoughts naturally turned to the future and that I found to involve her whole attitude to Life. The things we were to do "when we were married" were dictated by the narrowness of her outlook. She had about a pound a week of her own money, I don't know exactly where from, but I think from some tramways Edgbaston way, and this sum, together with whatever she might be able to earn for herself, was practically the limit of her conception of any income she was ever likely to have. From the stories she told me of her earlier years I gathered that she came from a social stratum in which the men are lords indeed, sometimes "in work," sometimes "out," and apparently content during these last vicissitudes to be dependent on their wives or sisters or mothers. It seemed to me such a pitiful little world, of milliners, lodging-house keepers, music-mistresses, fancy needlewomen and daughters in offices; and I was given the corresponding male standing. As with the men her cousins (her nearest relatives) had married, if I should ever happen to earn money, well and good; if not, so much the worse. She reckoned only on her weekly pound and her own efforts. And as I learned that Cousin Alf and Cousin Frank were boundlessly optimistic, and looked forward to a future no less bright than that of which I felt the certitude within me, I soon discovered that I was merely indulged in what in her heart she set down as vapourings. It was the woman who, in her experience, "kept the home together," and she was prepared to keep me.

"Well," I laughed, "I daresay I shall learn to pare the potatoes as well as Cousin Alf in time."

But she smiled a sad, wise little smile. I might joke, but she knew.

"And it's just possible that some time or other I may make a pound or two," I said, smiling back.

"There'll be your clothes and pocket-money," she replied.

So I was to be kept--kept by virtue of my masculinity, as one keeps a dog to bark. I was to be kept, I divined, somewhere in a suburb, in a house the smallness of the rent of which would be exactly balanced by the increased cost of the season ticket that would take me daily to my work, when I was "in." Even when I was "out" I was to be treated with a nice consideration, for she "never had liked to see Frank washing up--it looked so unmanly," but as she said nothing about cleaning boots or fetching coals, these things apparently were not unmanly. And I wondered whether the Alfs and Franks were more numerous than I had thought, or were becoming so. Small wonder their women treated them with almost contemptuous tolerance, blazing out once in a while into a row. And I now see that in this sense I wronged Kitty when I said she was one of Life's takers. There are always two sides to a thing, and on this side she wanted nothing but to give.

But, willing as she was to do all this in the future, I soon discovered that she wanted her small solatium in the present. In the matter of little treats and outings I did not compare very favourably even with her Franks and Alfs. As you know, I simply had not the necessary shillings. And so I began (I knew) to appear "near" and "close" to her. One Friday evening, as we left the college together, she allowed as much to be seen.

"Jeff," she said suddenly, as we approached the corner by the Oxford together, "do you know, you've never taken me to a theatre yet!"

Personally I have never greatly cared for the theatre; but it happened that I had spoken to her once or twice rather off-handedly that evening, and was not unwilling to make amends. Besides, the theatre might save a walk in Hyde Park. I pumped up a vivacity.

"No more I have," I replied. "Good idea. It's too late to go to-night, but we might have a walk round and see what's on."

She fell in with the suggestion gleefully, and we walked down Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue, looking at theatre announcements as we went. At the Circus we turned along Coventry Street, and presently found ourselves opposite the Prince of Wales'. I think it was _La Poupee_ that was running there; if it wasn't it was some other piece that seemed light; and as I like, when I do go to the theatre, to be amused rather than instructed, I plumped for _La Poupee_ as against Kitty's suggestion--some stern and ennobling tragedy. I had drawn my week's money that evening. It would be a sorry business if, with all those years of Alfing and Franking before me, I could not once in a while spare five shillings out of my eighteen; and so we elected for _La Poupee_ for the following evening.

We went. We waited for perhaps two hours outside the pit door, but, as Kitty said when at last we did get inside, our places were worth it. When we were married, she said, we ought to be able to afford at least one theatre a month--she didn't in the least mind going to the gallery--and it would be something to think about for the next month. She didn't intend, when we were married, to get rusty. We were going to have our little outings like other married people, and if I continued, when we were married, to like light things and she serious pieces, we would choose in turn. And so on. I only half heard. I was spreading my remaining ten shillings over the week to come--ten shillings, mark you, not thirteen, for I had had to buy Kitty a ring, for which I was paying at the rate of three shillings a week.

Nothing happened at that performance of _La Poupee_. I am merely telling you this in order that you may see exactly how we stood, not at the crisis of our lives, but during the intervening stretches. I added to the problem of the coming week by giving a shilling for a box of chocolates, and no extravagance I have ever committed brought me a richer return than Kitty's look of pleasure. I suppose that really this was all that was demanded of Alf and Frank--a trifling, unexpected superfluity once in a while. Lucky fellows! I, however, was neither a Frank nor an Alf, my dreams were not the mere beguilings of an idleness; and neither during my courtship (my real one, I mean) nor thereafter was I going, in any woman's heart, to lord it on so little.

V

I remember the Sunday on which Evie, Miss Angela and I first took tea with Kitty Windus for two reasons. The first was that Miss Angela, who at first had begged to be excused, had come after all (knocking on the head my plan of walking back with Evie alone). And the second was Kitty's asking me to remain behind after the others had taken their departure.

We had gone at four o'clock; and even as the three of us had walked towards Percy Street together (I had picked the others up on my way) I had wondered what had suddenly come over Evie. She had seemed pale and jumpy and morose, and had scarcely spoken a word during the whole of our walk. Nor had she said very much more as we had eaten the hot muffins and drunk the tea Kitty had provided. Indeed, the greater part of the talk had been between Miss Angela and myself, and even that had languished.

Then suddenly Miss Angela had said something that had, I thought, explained matters. Archie's father, whose illness Miss Angela had asked about on the evening of the birthday-party, had taken a sudden turn for the worse, and Archie had been summoned to Guildford the day before.

"Well, we must hope for the best," Miss Angela had concluded. "There's no need to begin moping yet, child----"

Miss Angela also had jumped at my own explanation of Evie's moodiness--that now that Archie was in trouble his misdoings were forgotten.

I was to learn my error half-an-hour later, when Evie and her aunt rose to depart.

I, of course, had intended to leave with them; but as I held the door open for them to pass out Kitty said: "You stay for a few minutes, Jeff; I've something to tell you.... Good-bye, Evie dear. I do hope your cold will soon be well, Miss Soames----"

And she waved her hand to them as they passed down the stairs.

I swore under my breath, but there was no help for it. I followed Kitty back into her sitting-room. She crossed to the fireplace and sank into a canvas deck-chair with her back to the sewing-machine. I remained standing, with my hat in my hand, at the other corner of the mantelpiece.

She had allowed her head to fall back against the sagging canvas, and had closed her eyes.

"Sit down," she said, without opening her eyes, and, wondering what was wrong, I reached for her bedroom chair and sat down.

"What's the matter?" I asked, a little alarmed already, though I knew not why. I wondered if anything had been discovered about myself. There were, as you know, plenty of such things to discover.

Her eyes still remained closed, but her head fell a little on one side. It was not until I had asked her again what was the matter that she spoke.

"It's--it's dreadful!" she moaned. "I--I can see you haven't heard----"

"What is? Come, come!" I said, with some concern but more impatience. "No, I've not heard anything to take on like this about--unless you mean something about Archie's father?..."

"No, it's nothing to do with Archie's father. Oh, I can't possibly tell you, Jeff----"

It was on the tip of my tongue to say that in that case it was of little use my remaining; but she went on.

"Just a minute," she said. "You haven't heard ... about Louie Causton?"

I was certainly surprised. You will remember that I had not set eyes on Miss Causton since the evening of the breaking-up party, when she had danced twice round the room with me, sought me out again subsequently, and told me what the result had since falsified--that she was returning to the college in the new term.

"No," I said abruptly. "What about her? Nothing wrong, I hope?"

But she only sobbed, "Oh, Jeff!" and with her eyes still closed put out a helpless hand.

I had to approach and take the hand before I learned what the mystery was. I don't know whether you have already guessed it. I hadn't, but for all that my surprise, great as it was, passed even in the moment of Kitty's broken whispering in my ear. I had known Louie Causton for a deep, still pool; I don't think any revelation whatever could have added to my respect for her powers of irony and nonchalance; and yet when I say that my surprise passed it passed only to return. Good gracious!... I seemed to hear her carefully lackadaisical voice again as she had munched nougat: "So long since I've seen a man, my dear" ... and other circumstances, unmarked at the time, flashed on me now.

A child!

"Good gracious!" I breathed again in consternation.

My next thought was of Evie.

I was kneeling by Kitty's chair, holding her hand. I asked quickly:

"Does Evie know of this?"

"Yes."

"And does she know you're telling me?"

"Yes."

"And of course Miss Soames does not know?"

"No."

"She thinks as I thought, that it's about Archie's father Evie's so upset?"

"Yes; but perhaps she is about that too a little. I'm horribly upset, Jeff."

This last I took as a hint that the effect of this very startling intelligence on Evie was not the first thing to be considered.

"Yes, yes.... I see...." I murmured.

We were silent, and I felt Kitty's fingers move within my grasp. They pressed mine more closely.

"Don't leave me just yet, Jeff," she begged faintly. She was genuinely prostrated.

"No, no," I said. "Let me think for a minute...."

The next moment my brain was buzzing with thought.

I knew that only some such contact with plain raw actuality as this had been lacking in order to make Evie's transition from girlhood to womanhood complete. No longer now was she the fair young tree standing over its sprinkling of delicate discarded sheaths; this puff of Life's east wind had carried away the last of them. She had heard of these things, and so in a sense knew of them; but that somebody she knew ... that it should have come so near ... yes, poor shocked heart, that finished it. Archie's insupportable vanities had begun her enlightenment; the menace of his father's condition had touched her with the fringe of its shadow; and now this revelation had come upon her.

Mr Merridew's illness, moreover, had a plainly seen peril for me. I knew that if anything happened Archie would immediately have enough money to marry on, and my own labours--all that I had planned and done from the first moment of my loving her to this present hour when I sat in Kitty Windus' back room holding Kitty's hand--would go for nothing. They, Evie and Archie, would probably marry, and I--I knew this in that moment for a certainty--I, from sheer yielding, should find myself married to Kitty Windus the moment I could scrape the money together.

I gave a soft groan. I don't know whether Kitty supposed my groan the commiseration for Louie Causton.

Yet what else, if I had chosen a different line, could I have done? Nothing! My shrinking heart cried, Nothing! What was I to have spoken to a young girl of marriage? An Agency clerk--with dazzling hopes! A dweller over a sordid publi-house--and a dreamer of visions! The possessor of a single suit of presentable clothes, the knees of which I was even now deteriorating past remedy--and of a heart tapestried with purple and gold, filled with an almost insensate ambition!

And I saw Evie only at all on the well-nigh insupportable footing that I was the betrothed of Kitty Windus!

Oh, if I had but had two suits of clothes, and thirty-six shillings a week instead of eighteen shillings, I think I would have cut the knot there and then and have sought Evie out that very night and asked her to marry me!

Then after a time I became more practical. Things, even the heart-breaking small things of my life, were after all slowly changing. One of these things was that my slavery at Rixon Tebb & Masters' was already promising to draw to a close. I have not yet spoken of this. Let me do so, briefly, now.

Once more I had been looking for a billet elsewhere, and this time I had excellent hopes of success. The post for which I had applied would not be vacant for six weeks yet, but I had forced a personal interview with one of my prospective employers, and had done what I had intended to do--impressed him strongly with a sense of my mental capacity. He had promised me his interest, and, unless he forgot it again (which, of course, was not impossible), I might have at least enough for one to live on before long. And once more my wider hopes were, I knew in my soul, not illusions. Soon there would remain only the bond that tied me to Kitty, and, with that broken, I would no longer envy even Archie Merridew that luck and weak charm of his that in the past had so often seemed more valuable than all I possessed.

But Kitty, lying back in her deck-chair, had opened her eyes again. They were full of softness and fright. She spoke.

"I wonder, Jeff--whether----" she said timidly and stopped.

"You wonder what, Kitty?" I asked gently.

"I know how strict you are--and if you say no I won't--but if I might go and see her----"

"Miss Causton?"

"Not if you don't wish it, Jeff----"

I considered.

"Has she asked you to go?"

"No--but if you wouldn't mind--very much----"

It mattered little to me, but I had to pretend to ponder deeply.

I really don't know whether I felt sorrow for Miss Causton or not. She was altogether beyond my comprehension. For all I knew my sorrow might be an impertinence. So I must seem to ponder.

"Where is she?" I asked.

"She's taken rooms in Putney."

"Alone?" I asked, with a quick glance at Kitty.

"Oh yes!... Until June or July, that is----"

"It is then that she expects----"

"Yes.... And I thought, Jeff, that perhaps next Saturday--we shall be out that way----"

We had arranged a little excursion for the following Saturday, the four of us--Evie and Archie, and Kitty and myself. We were to wander on Wimbledon Common.

"I never really knew her well, Jeff, understood her, I mean," she went on, "but after all I did see a good deal of her. It's horrible, when I remember the things she used to say.... And--and--you've made such a difference to me, darling--I wasn't going--to be married--before.... I should like to go, Jeff--just once," she begged.

"You wouldn't commit yourself to anything?"

"Oh no!"

"Does Evie want to go too?" I asked.

"No. She says she couldn't bear it. She cried half last night as it is."

"Then you'd call on your way next Saturday, and meet the three of us later?"

"Yes."

"Very well," I concluded. "You'd better go."

She threw her arms impulsively about my neck.

Then a change came over her. I think the change began with the failure of the supply of gas from the penny-in-the-slot meter. She had arranged for her little party a pink tissue-paper shade about her milky globe, an idea she had borrowed from Woburn Place; and slowly its colour faded. I had several pennies in my pocket. Quickly I felt for them.

But she moved closer to me. I was still on my knees by her deck-chair.

"Don't bother about it--just for once, Jeff," she murmured.

She could do it with impunity now. After what had passed our situation could hardly be commonplace, and our nearness was as little compromising as nearness ever can be. She luxuriated in her little perilous letting-go--could toy with, and yet be immune from, a danger.

Slowly the gas expired, and the firelight glowed on the blue and white check tablecloth and the disarray of tea-things upon it. On the back wall of the restaurant yard was a square of orange light which the shadow of a waiter's head crossed from time to time. I don't know that with some men--Mackie, for instance--her position would have been all she supposed it to be, but, poor heart, she had had little enough experience from which to surmise that. And I myself could hardly be said to be there at all. She lay in my arms; and in whatever false sweet fancies she lay endrowsed she was not alone. I had my torturing vision too. It was neither of her nor of Louie Causton, that vision. I was trying to persuade myself that she was another than Kitty Windus.

VI

Of our visit to Wimbledon on the following Saturday I intend to say as little as may be. When you have read it you will not, I know, ask my reason.

Archie did not appear. This time he had cause enough. The wire which was handed to me at Rixon Tebb & Masters' a little before Saturday midday (Polwhele brought it to me with a look that said plainly, "What next?") announced that his father had died during the night, and he had despatched it from Victoria Station on his way down to Guildford. Instantly my heart leaped.

Kitty was going to see Miss Causton. If, this new tidings notwithstanding, Evie would still keep to the engagement, I should have an hour with her alone.

I persuaded Evie to come. At first she obstinately refused, but I had the support of Miss Angela, to whom I privately whispered the desirability of "taking her mind off it." We left Woburn Place, the two of us, called for Kitty, and sought the Putney 'bus. Kitty left us at the corner of a street off the New King's Road, and Evie and I passed on to the bridge.

That was about four o'clock, and Kitty was to rejoin us near the Windmill at an hour that would depend upon the length of her stay with Miss Causton. She expected to be at the Windmill by five.

But at five there was no sign of her, nor had she appeared by half-past five. At a little before six I said to Evie, "She'll know we've gone on to the nearest place to tea, and will follow us. Let's go----"

Not far from the Windmill, on the Wimbledon side, there is a sort of small hamlet, with cottages and alleys and split-oak palings, and a refreshment house at the end of a garden. There Evie and I had tea, and there we sat after tea, waiting for Kitty. I talked of this and that, all very much away from the two subjects uppermost in her heart, and by half-past six I had given Kitty up.

"She's missed us," I said. "We may happen to run across her, but it's no good waiting here. Shall we take a turn before we go back?"

We left the refreshment-room, and walked among the gorse and birches in the direction of Queen's Mere.

It was a green and amber evening, with the shadows already deepening over Coombe Woods and the calling of homing rooks in the air. Here and there in the glades family parties still continued to play games with a ball that was quickly becoming difficult to see, and lovers appeared among the coppices. The blackthorn was over, and the may hung in sprays of delicate drooping buds; and in the south-west hung the pale sickle of the new moon. Evie and I, saying little, dropped down a steep over-grown alley that led to the mere, and it was in a sandy bottom at the foot of the alley that I heard a distant rasping call. Another call followed it, and then a throaty thrilling, and then another short series of acrid and moving calls.

It was a nightingale.

By the time we had reached the motionless amber-green water it had broken into full song.

I cannot tell--hitherto I have not attempted to tell--the mystery of that eve and of the song with which it rang. I cannot speak--nor would I if I could--of the responses that eve and that song called up in my heart. It was, I think, for both of us as if that bird's voice cried aloud all that we had left unuttered during the past few hours. Even Louie Causton, even Archie's father, had their part in it. It was as if that voice spoke of the feeble and infinitely moving wonder of birth--of the impinging of that relentless shadow that closes all--and of the griefs and joys and smarts and healings again of the brief passage from that unknowing to this forgetting again. All this crowded upon me in that exquisite agony of notes. And more came, until I could hardly endure it. There was no poignancy, no utter melting and surrender, that those importunate wellings did not give to the falling night. The unattainable greatness of Life and our own puny reachings forth for that greatness--Life's glory and the indignities of the miserable livers of it--Life's majesty and the nosings and burrowings of the fallen heirs to that majesty--all these shortcomings were reconciled in the song; and what man would be, that for an hour he was. I fail in expressing this; Evie, I am sure, did not seek to express it; but in that loud and lost and anguished outpouring, raptures and torments were folded together as in an Amen.... For one moment only I shuddered; I had remembered that but for an accident I might have stood by that water, listening to that song, with Kitty Windus, but the physical convulsion passed, and the bird sang on.

I had not looked at Evie. I do not think she knew she had drawn a little closer to me. Other listeners had been attracted by the melody, but we stood in a shadow, near a rill that fell into the mere. The water was nacre; the moon's sickle in it was a thin blade of amethyst; and I thrilled unspeakably as the bird's song changed without warning to long, low, caressing notes that drew the heart out of me as the nectar-bag of a floret is drawn from a flower. I heard Evie's slow sob.

Oh, might I but have crushed out that other nectar, to transmute into honey of our own!

Suddenly Evie flung herself on my breast, sobbing and strangling. Her fingers worked at the lapel of my collar; by bending my head I could have touched her small white knuckles with my lips. I was conscious that in my efforts not to do this I bared my teeth like a dog, but I remembered in time that to snatch was to lose. It was not my bosom against which her bosom heaved--it was the nearest sentient resting-place on which she could lay it. Her unhappiness and her happiness, her dream and her disillusion, her knowledge and her already failing hopes, rushed together in her sobs. Her love of a wastrel and her love for all he was a wastrel, and that hidden and sacred nook from which Louie Causton had ruthlessly ripped the curtain--for the pure strangeness of these things her tears gushed forth. I felt the long heave of her body.

"Come, come, my dear!" I said, with an infinitude of tender encouragement, close to her ear.

"Oh--oh--oh!" she sobbed.

"Dear, dear girl!" I murmured, passing my arm about her to support her.

But at that moment I could no more have said or done more than this than I could have sued for a favour by the bier of a scarce-cold lover.

"Hush, poor child!" I whispered, patting her shoulder. "Come, let's go. Let's leave that dreadful bird."

"Just a--mi--mi--minute----" she quavered. "I--I--love it--and I can't bear it----"

Even so did I love, and yet could scarce bear to hold the tender form in my arms.

Presently we left the mere, mounted the dark lane, and began to cross the common. Her hand was now on my sleeve, and it did not leave it again. Once her fingers made an impulsive little pressure on it, which, I cried sternly to my heart, I must not regard. But God knows the war there was between the sweetness of it and my fortitude.

"Jeff," she said more quietly by-and-by, using that name for the first time. "I--I couldn't have borne it if it hadn't been for you. It was too--too----"

"Never mind, dear," I soothed her. "Let's walk a little more quickly--your aunt will be wondering what's become of you----"

She laughed tremulously. "Kitty will be wondering what's become of _you_," she said. Then she added timidly, "She's a lucky girl!"

"Oh? Why?" I asked.

"You're so--so----"

But she did not say what.

We turned down Putney Hill.

* * * * *

I said I should say little of this, and I shall say no more. I took her home, but did not go in with her, neither, though I ought to have done so, did I seek Kitty. I went home, but all that I knew of my getting there was that I found myself sitting, with my hat and coat still on, on the edge of the bed in my red-and-green-lighted apartment.

They were turning out from the public-house below when at last I rose sluggishly and began to prepare for bed.

For half the following week I was outside and beyond myself.

But exactly a week, less a day, from that Saturday on which I had held Evie in my arms there dropped a thunderbolt into my life. On that Friday evening I had gone as usual to the cashier for my wages, and he had paid me; but as I had turned away again with my eighteen shillings he had said, as if giving utterance to an afterthought, "Oh--Jeffries--we find we shall not require your services after this week. You can have your notice in writing if you would prefer it."

And he had turned to pay Sutt, the next man in the queue.