“Do you remember the riddle with the rude answer?” she asked suddenly, “about the hare. There was a hare in a pit, sixty feet deep, and there was no way out, and a greyhound was let into it. How did the hare escape. And the answer was: That’s the hare’s business.”
She had hooked herself on to his arm again.
“What’s that got to do with it?” he asked thinkingly.
“Oh,” she answered, “I was only thinking; itisthe bare’s business, you know. That means that you can’t really get away from your past. It comes back again. Do you remember a French story called ’Toutes les Amoureuses’? ... about a man who had hundreds of adventures. And of each lady he kept a ribbon or a lock of hair, or a shoe-buckle—some trifle. And once a year he used to lock his door and take out these odds and ends—and remember—just remember! Well, Mr. Dudley Leicester, that’s a good thing to do. It’s an act of piety for one thing; it averts evil for another. It’s like touching for the evil chance. If you’d done that for me—for my sake, because you had a good slice of my life—if you had done it ... well! you’d not have been so desperately unhappy now.”
“I’m not unhappy,” he said, and he spoke the truth.
“Aren’t you?” she mocked him. “Aren’t you?”
They were within a few steps of her door, almost opposite where, black and silent, his own house awaited him—as if, reproachfully, it gazed at him with darkened eyes. And suddenly she burst into a carol, and with quickened steps she danced him onwards:
“He called me a penguin, a penguin, a penguin;He called me a penguin a long time ago!”
“He called me a penguin, a penguin, a penguin;He called me a penguin a long time ago!”
“He called me a penguin, a penguin, a penguin;He called me a penguin a long time ago!”
“He called me a penguin, a penguin, a penguin;
He called me a penguin a long time ago!”
She sang it to the triumphant hit of “Voici le sabre!” And then they were on her doorstep. She had her key in the latch, the door went back into darkness.
“I’ll prove to you you called me that,” she said, and crouching forward, as she had bent to open the door, she caught the end of his sleeve and pulled him into the inner darkness. He could see nothing, and the heavy door was closed behind him.