Chapter XV

"Lexie's coming to lunch to-morrow," Maggy informed Woolf. "We must give her a good one, Fred, and you'll behave, won't you, D.D.?"

"D.D." in Maggy's language of love stood for Dearest Darling. She was not free from the modern, time-saving habit, set by trade advertisements and the halfpenny papers, of abbreviating words in common use down to their lowest denomination.

"So she's woken up to the fact that there may be something to be got out of you," yawned Woolf.

"I wish you wouldn't talk like that, Fred. Lexie couldn't be on the make-haste. She's not made that way."

"Sounds as if she's too good and uninteresting to live."

"She isn't uninteresting. You'll like her. She's very pretty. Do be good and do me credit."

"Well ... I like that!" Woolf stared at her, half-amused.

"I mean, don't say the things you say to me. She's sensitive."

"My dear girl, don't teach me how to talk to women. Judging by what you've told me I'm inclined to think your copybook Lexie is a deep 'un. I don't think I'll come, anyway."

"Oh, but you must. I've asked her on purpose to meet you. I want her to see what a duck you are, and to like you, and not to think me bad just because I let you wipe your shoes on me."

She slipped to the ground and sat at his feet. Woolf liked her in her devoted moods. Like many another unworthy man, adulation gave him peculiar satisfaction. Maggy was rarely flippant now. She loved Woolf with a passion that almost frightened her. It was not a passion of the mind. He dominated her in other ways. She was too transparent to hide how much she cared. She gave too much. It was her pleasure, when she knew he was going to stay several hours with her, to take off his shoes and put on the pumps which with a few other things he kept at the flat.

She commenced to unlace his shoes now. Then she dragged his pumps from under the sofa, kissing them first before she put them on his feet.

"You funny creature. What makes you do that?" he asked, well enough aware of her reason, but desirous of extracting an expression of it.

"Because I adore you. I feel like Mary Magdalene or whoever it was who broke the precious ointment all over her Master's feet. Oh, yes, I know who it was. But do you think she wouldn't have done it just the same if He had been an ordinary man? He was _her_ lord. She never thought of Him as everybody's Lord. That isn't blasphemy. It's love."

"You don't know how I love you," she went on ardently. "Men think they know how to love, but they never love as a woman loves. I love you so much that first of all I wish I had been your mother, so that I might have held you in my arms when you were tiny and given you dill water for your tummy aches, and bathed and powdered you.... And next I wish I had been your twin sister to have grown up with you.... And next I wish I had been the first woman in your life.... And next I wish.... Oh, and I'm thankful to be--just yours." She sat up, and went on in rather a tense voice. "I wonder if you'll ever get tired of me. Could you, Fred?"

"Well, I'm not yet." He gave a playful pull at her loosened hair.

"And treat me like men treat the A.F.'s in story-books."

"What's an A.F.?"

"Abandoned female, you goose. That's what I am. And when you've finished with me will you leave me to starve in a garret while you live in a mansion with a beautiful and good wife? And will I haunt your doorstep and throw vitriol in your belovedest face?"

"What nonsense you're talking, Maggy."

"It isn't all nonsense. It isn't only in the story-books that women do that. They do it in real life too. I read about a case in the paper not long ago, and the judge asked the girl why she did it. She answered 'Because I love him.' The silly judge said: 'That's a funny way of showing love,' and there was laughter in Court, in brackets. Laughter in Court! I expect it sounded to that girl like laughter in hell. I know what she must have felt. I daresay she lived so long with the man and loved him so much that she felt as good as his wife. Then when he left her, she must have gone mad, poor thing."

She got up and stood in front of him, looking very sweet and alluring.

"How long will you love me, I wonder?" she mused.

Woolf drew her on to his knees.

"So long as you look like you do now."

"You mean so long as I'm pretty? Wouldn't you love me if I looked like poor Mrs. Slightly? She's losing her fur."

"What's the matter with Mrs. Slightly?" he asked.

He did not care for Maggy's mongrel pets, and his tone was not encouraging. It put Maggy on her guard. She had a premonition that it would be best to hide Mrs. Slightly's secret until it could no longer be hidden.

"I'm not quite sure," she said.

"Where is she?"

"I left her in the bathroom. I'll get her. She hasn't had her supper yet."

She went out of the room. Woolf heard her calling the cat softly, then came a smothered exclamation, and she called to him eagerly, excitedly.

"Oh, Fred! Fred! Come here! Come and _look_!"

He followed her. She was standing before Mrs. Slightly's basket. The cat was purring, its eyes half-shut, tired after the tremendous function of motherhood. Six little rat-like, squirming bodies lay against her own.

"Six of them!" breathed Maggy triumphantly. "Aren't they lovely! Wasn't it worth going on the tiles for, Mrs. Dearest? The cat's cradle is full, full!"

Woolf disengaged her arm from his.

"It's disgusting," he said angrily. "You ought to have got rid of her before this, or--or kept her in. You can't keep the kittens. They'll have to be drowned."

Maggy looked at him blankly.

"Aren't you pleased?" she asked, surprised.

"Pleased! At a sight like that! Besides, you told me a lie. I won't have lies. You must have known before you went to the theater that the cat had had kittens--"

"I didn't. Oh, how dare you say so! Do you think I'd have gone out and left her all these hours without any milk by her side if I'd guessed they were coming so soon?"

She flew off, and came back with a saucer of bread and milk. She put it on the floor and went down on her hands and knees beside the newly-born animals. There was a rapt expression on her face.

"I don't think I'll stop," said Woolf huffily, and moved to the door.

He expected that she would call him back, but to his surprise she did not even look up. She was wholly absorbed with the natural phenomenon. For the first time in their intercourse she was oblivious of his presence. She did not even hear him go. She knelt entranced.

At last a sigh broke from her. She became articulate.

"Oh, you babies!" she whispered. "Oh, you little, little things!"