On the breakfast-table there was another letter for her, redirected by the Professor. Hilda called her attention to it.
"For you," she piped in her thin voice. "What hours you've been dressing! I began to think you were never coming down. Do pour the tea out, or it will be cold; it has been standing there ten minutes."
"You shouldn't have waited for me." She poured the tea, and picked up the letter absently. It was an invitation to exhibit "The Sun's Last Rays" in Liverpool, and at any other time the request would have excited her; now she was too preoccupied to find it interesting.
"Oh," she murmured.
"'Oh,' what?"
"They want 'The Sun's Last Rays' at the Walker Art Gallery when the Academy closes, that's all."
"Where's that? Pass me the salt, will you?"
"Liverpool."
"Shall you let them have it?"
"Oh yes," she said, "I suppose so. Why not?"
"The carriage will cost a lot, won't it?"
"No, it won't cost anything. They'll send for the picture, and return it to me free of charge, if it isn't sold." Her lips tightened, and she looked away through the window. Engrossed as she was, she noticed that her sister did not say "How jolly for you!" but "Won't the carriage cost a lot?" In the course of the summer Hilda would refer to the invitation casually as "That nice letter you had from Liverpool," quite unconscious that she had shown no perception of its being "nice" when it came.
"Why don't you eat your breakfast?" she asked now, having exhausted the subject of the picture.
"I don't want it," said Bee. "You can have this egg too, if you like."
When the table was cleared, and she was left alone, she sat down to her task. What should she say? Now that the pen was in her hand her eagerness deserted her, and the thought of dispelling his delusion made her tremble again. Her arguments of a while ago recurred to her vainly—she was as sure that he imagined her what she would like to be as she was sure that ugliness repelled him. She set her teeth, and dipped the pen in the ink.
She could find no words. Presently she addressed the envelope, but the notepaper was still blank. In the kitchen the mother and the girl were talking; she could hear them quite distinctly: "And don't forget to call in about the bread as you come back!" She glanced at the clock, and wrote desperately.
"I cannot do as you wish," she scrawled, "because I have never been photographed in my life. I have never been photographed because I am deformed, and——"
No! not like that, she couldn't say it like that. She sat motionless again, hearing the loud ticking of the clock, and hating herself. The clock struck insistently. She pushed the sheet of paper aside, and searched through the blotting-book for another. There was no other in it, so she went to the chiffonnier and opened the drawer. In the drawer there were several things besides the stationery: a sketch-book, some unmounted photographs that she had taken last week in Penshurst, some unmounted photographs that she had taken last week of Hilda. She picked one of them up mechanically, and stood looking at it; stood looking at the photograph of Hilda—a study in sunlight and shadow, dreaming in a garden chair under the boughs.
There was a knock at the door, and Miss Kemp came in.
"I'm just going, Miss," she said. "Have you got your letter ready?"
"What?" said Bee huskily, without turning.
"I'm just going. Is your letter ready?"
"Yes," muttered the woman. She ran back to the table, and thrust the photograph in the envelope, and put it in the girl's hand.
David sat hunched in a chair, the likeness on his knees. He had risen determinedly and put it from him twice—lodged it against one of the eyesores on the mantelpiece that were referred to as the "ornaments "—but after intervals of abstraction he had found that he was nursing it again. He had a lurking consciousness that if he put it from him half a dozen times, it would be back on his lap before five minutes had gone by.
It surpassed all his dream-pictures of her. The situation confused him; he could not realise it quite, with the photograph under his eyes. He had for a friend this young, this beautiful girl. Though he had vaguely imagined her beautiful, the definite was bewildering; his letters seemed suddenly audacious to him—there was a breath of the incredible in the thought that he had written them to her. And hers! still more wonderful the thought of hers. His correspondent was this daughter of the gods, serene, imperial, proud—the girl who wrote to him was like this!
He had for a friend this young, this beautiful girl. For a "friend"? His manhood abjured the word. Was she not his by a subtler, stronger bond than friendship? If the community between them could be called friendship, what was love? She had yielded herself to him—her spiritual self—surrendered to his keeping thoughts more sacred than her body. He craved to go to her, and trembled with the dread of effacing by his personality the impression that he had made upon her by his art. To let his looks destroy the love his soul was waking in her? No, he could not go, he must be strong. But if he dared—if only it were possible! She lived—it was no vision conjured up by loneliness—she lived. She was smiling, speaking, thinking of him not thirty miles away. He was fevered by the idea of their meeting as it might have been—as it would have been if he had had a white skin. He found her here where she was sitting; the sunlight touched her just as now—"Your friend has come to you!" The eyes in the portrait shone to him, and he saw gladness in their gaze.... The trees had darkened, and the stars were lit. How long a time had passed? In his fancy there was no calendar, but the photograph had magic powers. He was telling her he loved her. The eyes looked tenderer, the bosom swelled; the lips——Oh, madman! the thing was only paper after all. If the delusion had lasted a second longer!
Then a new idea possessed him. He might see her at least—he might see her without her knowing who he was. It must be easy to catch a glimpse of her in such a place as she had described, easier by far than it would be when she was at home. He would go to Godstone on the first fair morning and discover Daisymead, and linger in its neighbourhood till she came out.... Perhaps when he arrived it would be wet? Then he must obtain a bedroom for the night. He might even stay a week; why shouldn't he? He might stay a week and see her every day. His thoughts spun exultantly. She and her sister themselves were in lodgings—there was nothing to prevent his seeking rooms in the same house. But his name? Well, he could assume a name for the week; he would go as "Tremlett." By no earthly chance could "Mr. Tremlett," looking as he looked, suggest David Lee to her mind. He might stroll round the field when she was in it, sit near her under the trees; he might even speak to her after a day or two. By degrees she would grow used to his appearance. In the circumstances, in the solitude, she might not disdain his company. One evening he might avow himself, talk to her of his work, tell her all that was in his heart for her—on an evening when the moon was hidden and she couldn't see his face. Elisha had once said to him: "When I was in love with your mother I used to sing to her—in the dusk." The dead man's words came back to him, and he shivered. He thought: "I am following in my father's way!"
Awe fell upon him. He heard his father's warnings again—was walking with him on the lawn. For an instant the past had swept so near that the present seemed unreal. The scent of the trite flower-beds, the scenes of jealousy, the taunts of the languid woman toying with her rings, the sound of her sneering laugh, even the rustle of her dress, all these things were close, close upon him. He thought of his childhood, and it ached in him anew. His own child would not escape! Wouldn't it be cruel, wouldn't it be monstrous, to bring a child into the world to suffer as he had suffered himself? Human nature pleaded that his own child would know a different kind of mother; and memory answered: "We always think a woman 'so different' before we've got her." But shewasdifferent! Yes, he affirmed it to the dead; his father would have owned that she was different.... She was different, but the world was the same. The recollection of his schooldays, the consciousness of all his dull, empty, years of passionate rebellion, menaced him. It would be a cowardice, it would be a crime, to snatch a joy of which his child must pay the cost.
Awe had fallen on him, and of awe was born an ardent wish to pin the thought to paper, to capture it for verse. It was a gruesome thought, that even his will was leagued against him; but while half his consciousness shrank from it appalled, the artist in him, allured by the thought's poetical promise, darted to it admiringly, tremulous with the fear that it might escape. With the verbal artificer whose servitude is complete it is always so, this instinctive, inevitable appraisement of the spirit. It is the penalty of his degrading craft. He has surrendered to a power which holds nothing sacred, not a son's remembrance, nor a father's love, nor a husband's agony—not death, nor devotion, nor despair, and the power is inexorable and remorseless. He may forget in hours and rejoice and suffer simply, like a free man, but the clash of his chains will jangle on the divinest melodies of his life, forcing him to scrutinise, and analyse, and define, when he were worthier merely to feel. He shall register the heart-beats of his passion, and whittle an aphorism with his head on the breast of his bride. His mind is for ever alert to estimate the literary value of his soul. When he fondles his child his idolatry cannot save him from seeking copy in his emotions, and when he sorrows by a grave his tears shall not blind him to the virtues of a lament that has not been written before.
The morrow was fine, but David did not go to Godstone. Just to ascertain how long it took to get there, however, he bought an "A B C," a fascinating book with the breeze of the moors, and the splash of the sea in it, and the suggestiveness of old townlets with quaint names. The toss of a Channel crossing, and the lights of the Boulevard are in it; and the luxury of ideal hotels in English gardens, and the aroma of after-dinner coffee under the trees. The reader may arrive in imagination at a thousand delightful places for sixpence.
And he did not go on the next day either, though he had half a mind to do so during the afternoon, and only stayed at home because he vacillated until it was too late to catch the train. He succumbed on the third day. An omnibus jolted him to Charing Cross with his bag behind his legs, and he bought a copy of a weekly journal with an essay by him in it, and was fortunate enough to secure a corner seat.
Exhilaration was in his veins as he saw the flag waved; he would even have forgotten his colour if a lady who had entered the compartment while he was reading his essay had not looked affronted when he displayed his face. The train loitered about the city in so exasperating a fashion that he began to think it would never get any further than London Bridge; but after about twenty minutes it dragged itself away, and puffed Surreyward with a hundred shrieks. At the shout of "Godstone" he threw the paper down, and made haste to disencumber himself of the bag. A spirit of adventure possessed him as he turned from the cloak-room and strode into the pebbled yard. He did not inquire for Daisymead at once; it was enough that he was here. He saw the receding train glide far along the line, watched the smoke trail across the distance and dissolve. The roar came to him more faintly—was not unpleasant, and was still. His eagerness melted into peace; he crossed the pebbles, and walked along the winding road. The perfume of honeysuckle was blown across his nostrils; the hedges were gemmed with the pink of bachelor's buttons, and the blue of bird's-eye; meadows sloped graciously. It was the country.
His soul gave thanks for that sweet and rare thing, silence. At first he thought it silence. Then as his hearing became attuned to the surroundings, he grew conscious that the air was indeed alive with sound—with a twittering and trilling, with the hum of bees, and the whisper of long grass running in silver wavelets before the wind. It must also be said that he was aware of the buzzing of a fly which accompanied him for nearly half a mile, and kept alighting on his neck.
He picked some wild-flowers that caught his glance, and stuck them in his coat; they were beautiful, and he wondered what they were. Presently he met a band of village children, and inquired the flowers' names. The youngest of the party perhaps was twelve: they stared and did not know. The notes of a storm-cock held him, calling in an elm; again he wondered. A woman came down the road with a basket on her arm, and he spoke to her, and asked, "What bird is that?" She was old and bent, and had lived here all her life: she stared and did not know.
"I've never took no heed o' birds," she answered. It was the country.
He trusted that information would be easier to acquire when he sought the house. A stile suggested a pipe, and, smoking, he noticed a hedge-gap, and found himself at the entrance to a wood. It must be the wood of which he had heard, the wood thatshehad pictured to him in her letters. He always thought of her as "She"; the formality of "Miss Sorrenford" as impossible in meditation, and he could hardly think of her as "H." She had said that she came here constantly; it might be that she would come while he lingered—it might be that the bushes hid her from him now! In the sadden fancy it appeared to him that the wood was the scene where he desired most fervidly to find her—that it was here that he must first behold her in order to complete the joy. He parted the brambles, and pushed eagerly into the depths.
He pressed into the labyrinth as ardently as if he could hope to speak to her if they met. How dark it was with the sky shut out! The foliage sighed a little overhead; the tangle was so low that often he had to stoop. His feet crushed the litter of dry dead leaves; the branches of the wild-rose clung to his clothes. He attained to light. Solitude engulfed him, and the bracken was as high as his knees; in the cool, moist hush he could hear a twig drop upon the moss. He stood reflecting that it was not a place for a girl to roam in unprotected—the nearest habitation might have been miles away. Near as it was, no scream could reach it, no cry for help was likely to penetrate even to the road. His mind was now less occupied with agreeable visions of discovering her than with solicitude for her safety every day. At this moment he was startled by a stealthy tread.
A rough figure was creeping cautiously between the trees. He did not see David; but for an instant David saw nothing but him, nothing but the cruel eyes, the avid face, the upraised arm. For an instant. In the next, he saw—trusting itself to earth a few yards off—a starling; and the lad stole towards it greedily, the only thought quickened in him by its loveliness, the idea of smashing it with a stone. It was the country.
The bird's plumage gleamed like satin; the little creature was so confident, so fragile, so happy that the hellishness of the thing turned the man's heart sick. He flung his pipe, and the starling flew upward, saved, a second before the stone was hurled. The lad was both aggrieved and contemptuous: viewed as a missile, the pipe argued the man a fool. Then David, who burned to thrash him, explained himself with heat; but the other showed such dull amazement at his indignation, such utter lack of understanding, that wrath gave place to misery in the poet. It even seemed to him, as he moved away, that he had been unjust. A little later in the year cultured men and graceful women would also murder birds for fun. One bird, or another, with a gun, or a stone—? To the yokel, too, his shame was "sport." The difference in the barbarism was only a difference of class.
David had had enough of the wood. Having recovered his pipe among the ferns, he made his way out, and sauntered back along the high-road. Overtaking a large sack, slung across the shoulder of a small boy, who at close quarters revealed the peaked cap and uniform of a postman, he asked to be directed to Daisymead, and learnt that he had not far to go.
It was a low white house, with stiff white curtains hanging in the windows, and full white roses climbing on the walls. The sight of it disappointed him rather, and it seemed to him to be on the wrong side of the way, though he had never preconceived its situation consciously. A flight of steps led to a white gate and a patch of front-garden wonderfully abloom—a revel of pinks and canterbury-bells, and the velvet of sweetwilliam. He gave a knock, questioning a little how to account for his application, for he saw no card with the familiar London legend, "Furnished Apartments," over the door.
It was opened by a strapping woman, drying her hands on her apron. She was not a peasant—her eyes were alert, her face was mobile; and, though she had grey hair, she bore herself erect. Her gaze widened at him; there was even a tinge of apprehension in it.
"Good morning," he said; "I'm looking for rooms—or for one room if I can't get any more. Have you any to let?"
"Y-e-s," answered the woman, hesitatingly. "Can I see them?"
"Well, I'm not quite sure," she faltered. He understood that it was his appearance that made her doubtful. "I don't know whether—Might I ask 'oo it was that recommended you?"
He pointed airily. "The postman directed me here. I've just come down from town; my luggage is at the station."
"I'm not sure whether my husband 'd care to take in any more people this year. We've got two ladies staying with us already, and If you'll wait a minute I'll see what 'e says about it."
He waited in suspense. She returned after a consultation in the kitchen, her husband with her. Though the man came fully informed of what was wanted, David felt sure that it would be necessary to begin at the beginning again, and in this he wasn't mistaken. The couple stood contemplating him curiously, waiting for him to speak.
"Good morning," he said. "I'm looking for two rooms, or for one room if I can't get any more. Have you any to let?"
"Well, we 'avegot two rooms," admitted the man.
"Can I see them?"
The householder scratched his head. "Well, I don't know," he said slowly. "My wife 'ere she's not quite sure whether she could manage with anybody else this summer. Are you, Emma? There's two ladies staying 'ere now, and it makes a bit o' work for her. Don't it, Emma? You might get a room a bit lower down, very likely. What was it you were wanting?"
"Oh, anything would suit me!" exclaimed David, with an ingratiating smile, and suppressed rage. "I'm not particular at all—only I should have liked to go to a house where I could be sure of being comfortable. Yours looks so pretty, and so clean; it's the only place I've seen round here that I should care to pay much in." He had been struggling to recall their name—trying to see it mentally in one of Bee's letters—and it flashed upon him now. "Cold meat and cleanliness, Mrs. Kemp——It is 'Mrs. Kemp,' I think?" He made her a bow. "Cold meat and cleanliness are worth more than late dinners and—er——" The sentence would not round itself; he forced another smile for climax.
"You might eat off any floor in this 'ouse!" she declared, deciding he was human.
"I'm sure you might," he replied. "In London we don't often see a house like it, I can tell you!"
"You've not been in London long, I suppose?" she said. "You come from abroad, don't you?"
"No, I've lived in London all my life—my business is there. That's why I go to the country when I get a holiday."
"Ah," said Mr. Kemp reflectively, "it's a great place, London—room for all sorts in it!"
"Yes," said David. "What lovely roses you have, Mrs. Kemp, and how sweet the pinks smell! What flowers are those in the corner—the high, purple flowers against the wall?"
"Them?" she said. "Lor! I'm a poor one at flowers. What do you call 'em, John?"
"Idunno," said John.
"Well, I don't wonder you think twice about taking lodgers, but I"—he laughed feebly—"I'm a very honest person; I wouldn't steal so much as a leaf."
There was a pause. They all looked at one another.
"What do you say, John?" she murmured. "We might manage to take the young man in, perhaps, eh?"
"You won't find me any trouble if you do. You'll give me a first-rate character when I leave you!" cried David with geniality that exhausted him.
"About rent," said Mr. Kemp. "What did you think of paying?"
"What do you want?"
The couple exchanged anxious glances. Mr. Kemp breathed heavily.
"Well, we have had as much as a pound for those two rooms, for a lady and three children through the summer," he said.
"Of course," added the woman, "for only one person——"
"Call it a pound!" said David, whipping out his purse. "And I suppose it's fairest to pay in advance. My name is Tremlett. I'll just look round, and then I'll go to the station, and get my bag."
And so it was accomplished. The same roof sheltered him and Her! He smiled now naturally in savouring the fact. His little sitting-room was at the back, overlooking the cabbages and a red, rose-bordered path that led to the hennery and the field. Its old-fashioned shabbiness was not without a charm, and, having yielded consent, Mrs. Kemp adopted a solicitous manner with a strong flavour of wondering compassion in it. She still seemed to him in moments to be marvelling silently that he was able to talk her language. When he came in from the station he found that she had brightened his table with a bowl of poppies and elder-blossom. Gathering the poppies had robbed them of their sprightliness, and they hung shrivelled, like pricked airballs, but the delicacy of the elder-blossom was exquisite, and he liked the tone of what she called the old "crock." Because wild-flowers pleased him less in his coat than anywhere else, he put those that he was wearing into a mug preserved on the mantelshelf. On the front of the mug he saw a view described as "Rickmansworth Church from the East," and on the base he saw the inscription "Made in Germany."
His mind began to misgive him about the sister—perhaps she would prove a dragon, in the way? He half hoped that Mrs. Kemp would let fall some particulars when she brought in his chop. She said nothing to the point, however, nor did he hear any voice about the premises to wake sensations. When his dinner was eaten he went out to the path, and threw eager-glances round the field; but the two chairs under the trees were empty, and there was nobody in sight; so he came back and smoked a pipe on the sofa.
A young girl entered with his tea; he judged her rightly to be the Kemps' daughter. She evidently came to ascertain how a mulatto looked, and she was not disinclined to hear one talk. He felt that he was enlarging his circle of acquaintances amazingly; in a day here he had spoken to more people than he addressed at home in a month. From Miss Kemp he learnt in conversation that she had just been getting tea ready for "the ladies" too. She coupled the information with a reference to "one pair of hands"; he waited for her to add the companion phrase about "her head never saving her legs," but she did not.
She was a nice girl, and not uneducated, though she did say "one pair of hands" when she meant "one person"; and when he bewailed the fact that it had begun to rain, and she brought him some novels to pass the time, he was surprised to find what novels she read. However, they entertained him very little. His soul was divided between dejection at the weather and gratitude for her kindness. He was so unused to kindness that the landlady's daughter offering to lend him books seemed to him a tender and a touching thing. The chairs had been brought indoors; the rain rattled on the laurels, and strewed the petals of the roses on the path. Through the long twilight a pair of heavy hands in a neighbouring cottage laboured a hymn—the village pianist always chooses hymns—with mournful persistence. David stood at the window, recognising despondently that "the ladies" would remain in their parlour all the evening. The field of his expectations would be void and profitless—it might even be too wet for them to-morrow.
But it was not. When he woke, the day was radiant. A guileless sky denied its misdemeanour merrily. Mrs. Kemp, in clattering the china, asked him "how he lay last night." He thanked her, and took a mental note of the locution, inquiring in his turn when the rain had ceased. For answer she snorted "Rain?" and frowned reproof at the sunshine, and he attributed her manner to crops.
His pouch was empty. She told him that tobacco could be obtained at the grocer's; so he went across the road presently and bought some at a little shop that proclaimed itself "Renowned for its breakfast-eggs," and "Celebrated for its bacon." As he came out, a woman passed him, laden with a canvas, and a sketching box, a camp-stool, and what looked like a bunch of rods. She was pale and slight. He saw that she was deformed as he hurried by. He didn't take much notice of her.
A chair had been put back in the shade of the boughs, and he waited feverishly where it was well in view. Soon a girl strolled down the path between the roses. She wore a white frock, and had a book in her hand. Her face dazzled him; his heart leapt to greet her. She entered the field, and sat down under the tree. The photograph had come to life. He leant, gazing at her, unnoticed.
This was the event of his second day here. This was all. He had seen her; the knowledge sang in his senses. Momentarily he felt that if his visit yielded no more, it would have been bountiful enough. When her glance lighted on him, he read her thought in it, and drew back ashamed. He turned away ashamed, and afraid of seeming to intrude. In town he had dared to picture himself sitting near her, watching her movements, breaking the ice. In Godstone self-consciousness confounded him. She appeared to him unapproachable; he had even been humiliated by her look.
Hilda said to Bee that afternoon: "There's another lodger here; he's a nigger—or something of the sort. Isn't it a nuisance? I wonder the Kemps take that kind of people in, with us in the house!"
"Oh, is he staying here?" said Bee; "I saw him coming out of Peters'. Perhaps he is only down for the week-end. I don't suppose he'll be in our way. If he does make himself objectionable, you had better come out with me in the morning while he stops."
"I think I could keep him at a distance without that," returned Hilda scornfully. "Besides, he would never have the impudence. What horrid luck, though! If it had been a man come to stay here now, it would have been rather nice."
But they had no reason to complain of his being "in their way"; the new lodger did not attempt to scrape acquaintance with them, although in the next two days they often passed him, idling in the garden, or sauntering along the road. He refrained so punctiliously from staring at them, that they were able to steal a few glances themselves. Bee observed that he looked unhappy, and was fond of flowers; and Hilda remarked that he wore a well-cut suit, and had a nice taste in neckties. "Evidently not a common 'nigger,'" she said; "a medical student, or something!" She was not concerned, though it was clear that he had come for longer than the week-end.
On Tuesday she was obliged to acknowledge his existence. It was a stupid incident—to happen with a "nigger." It might as easily have happened with somebody worth meeting; say, with one of the young men who bowled into the station-yard in dog-carts and looked as if they wished they knew her. She had gone out to get a daily paper, and the lodger was in the shop buying foolscap. She was told that the last of the newspapers had just been sold to him. As soon as he heard that, he stammered something about "not depriving" her of it. He stood before her with his straw-hat in one hand, and the paper extended in the other. She thanked him, but said that it really had no interest for her at all. He persisted. She was firm—and left him overwhelmed by his gaucherie in not persuading her to take it.
Ten minutes later—Mrs. Kemp to Miss Hilda Sorrenford: "Mr. Tremlett has done with this paper, so 'e says you can 'ave it now if you like."
Miss Hilda Sorrenford, understanding that the message has suffered in delivery: "Tell Mr. Tremlett I am much obliged to him." And in the evening, when she saw him in the garden, she bowed and said that she thought the weather was a little cooler.
David went back to his foolscap, having discovered that it is sometimes much easier to write poetry about a girl than to talk to her. And already he was reconciled to her voice because it was hers.
Prose was still a crutch that he couldn't afford to drop, and he had hoped to transfer some of an essay from his head to the foolscap by bedtime. His subject was before him, nothing less than an acorn, sprouting a slender stem and a handful of leaves, in a tumbler of water. Spying it in the woods, he had brought it home, and given it honour, to Mrs. Kemp's diversion. He had enthroned it on the table, that little acorn bursting with the ambition to be a tree, and as he sat wondering at it, the slip of a stalk had grown to be gnarled and old, and the bunch of leaves had towered above the centuries. Children came to play beneath it who were chided for forgetting whether Elizabeth or Victoria had reigned first over England in the long ago, and generations of lovers had flitted past its shade, prattling of eternity. The story of the acorn had clamoured in him to be written, but now he was too excited and unhappy to work. Besides, how could he say it all in two or three thousand words? It asked to be a book.
How clumsy he had been in the shop, stuttering and blundering like a schoolboy; how absurd in the garden, with his fatuous mono-syllable! Why couldn't he disguise his shyness? he had disguised it well enough from the landlady when he paid her compliments on the doorstep; nobody would have suspected how turbulent his nerves were then. At the time he had been proud of his fluency—are not shy people always proud of being fluent, even when they hear themselves saying things they don't mean?—now he remembered it wistfully, jealous of himself. And his letters! his letters mocked him. To write to a girl like that, and be tongue-tied in her presence. The thing was laughable.
But he had learnt her name at last, for when he made Mrs. Kemp his messenger, she had said: "Oh! you mean Miss 'Ilda."
Estimated by emotion it was ages before it happened, before their relations advanced beyond "good-morning," or "good-evening," with a platitude dropped in passing, and a commonplace returned with the lifting of his hat. Yes, estimated by emotion it was ages before it happened, but according to the almanac he had been here exactly nine days. She was under the same tree, in the same chair. He had seen her settle herself there half an hour ago, and for half an hour he had been questioning how she would receive him if he joined her. What should he say first; could he give to the indulgence a sufficiently casual air; in fine, what sort of figure would he cut?
He ruffled his manuscript irresolutely. In a yard close by somebody was hammering at a fence. It appeared to him that somebody began to hammer at a fence as often as he tried to work. There was no possibility of his writing even if he made another attempt, and inclination pulled him hard towards the field. He gathered the papers up, and put them cautiously away, as a criminal removes clues.
When he gained the path, she had risen from the chair, and was running bareheaded in his direction. He did not for an instant see more than that, more than that she was running; and he wondered. Then he saw her face, and her voice reached him, and he realised that she was running for help.
So they ran towards each other for five, perhaps ten seconds, she as if pursued, and he seeking the cause.
"A wasp," she panted, "in my hair! A wasp! Get it out!"
"A wasp?" Why must one always echo in emergencies? He called himself a fool. "Don't be frightened. Keep still. I'll get it out in a minute."
"Quick, quick!" she said, pulling at her hair frantically; "I shall go mad!"
"Keep still," he repeated. "Take your hands down—it'll sting you."
He could hear the angry buzzing of the thing, but it was entangled, hidden, and her hair dizzied him. She found the diffidence of his touches exasperating.
"Take the pins out," she cried; "yes, yes, take them out. Oh! not like that, be quick!"
Her impatience showed his breathlessness the way. He fought reverence down, and tore them out as fast as she. Her hair rained over his hands, and swept his arms. The wasp gave a last buzz venomously. "Oh, thank you so much! I hope, I do hope, you aren't stung?" she said.
"Stung?" He was faint, shaken by a hurricane of new and strange emotion. "It's all right, thanks."
"I've given you a lot of trouble," she said apologetically. "It was silly of me to make such a fuss, I suppose; but I can't tell you what it felt like."
"I can imagine."
"I've always been afraid it would happen one day; the place swarms with them, doesn't it?"
"They come from the shops across the road," he said.
He was being stupid; he felt it. His little minute of authority was over, and he was self-conscious again.
She began to pick up the hairpins from the grass. David stooped too. As she looked at his hands she thought of the service they had rendered, and shuddered slightly. Absorbed, he watched her lift her hair, and twist it in a hasty coil, and stab it thrice with unconcern. In "The People of the Dream Street" there is a line that was born at this moment, though it was not written till long afterwards.
"You have been staying here for some time, haven't you?" he blurted.
"Yes, nearly a month," she said.
"How pretty it is!"
"Isn't it? We came here for my sister's work—she paints, you know."
"Yes, I know; I saw her before I saw you, though I didn't know she was your sister then. She seems to work hard—I mean she is out a great deal."
"Yes, it's just the sort of country she likes; I think she's sorry we're going. She talks about coming back in the autumn to make some more studies here."
"You're going?" he said blankly. "Are you? When?"
"Our month is up the day after to-morrow; we only came for a month."
There was the slightest pause, while he cursed himself for wasted weeks.
"And you," he asked, "do you paint too?"
"I? Oh no." She smiled her foolish smile, complacent in the consciousness of youth and a profile. His eyes allayed her misgivings about her hair. "I don't do anything; I'm quite ordinary," she said.
David smiled with her. There was a fascination in pretending to know nothing of her mind when he believed he knew so much.
"It's original to be ordinary now that everybody is a genius."
"Is everybody a genius?" She looked a shade vacant. "Perhaps you live in London? Our home is in Beckenhampton; in the provinces, I am afraid, we are rather out of it."
"Oh, one can be quite as much out of it in London. What can be more 'provincial' than the life of the average Londoner? He goes to his business after breakfast, and he goes back to his villa after tea. The few friends he makes are, naturally, in the same groove, and talk about the same things. Why," he went on, overjoyed to have found his tongue, "he has no more acquaintance with artistic London, or political London, or fashionable London than the people with businesses and villas in the other towns. I don't understand the average Londoner's idea that, because his own particular hencoop is in the capital, he must have a wider range of vision than all the other hens in the kingdom; I don't know what it's based on. One would suppose that the sight of the General Post Office from the top of a bus every day converted people into a kind of intellectual aristocracy. The suburbs snigger at the provinces, and Bloomsbury sneers at the suburbs, and the truth is that, outside a few exclusive circles, Londoners get all their knowledge of London from the newspapers—which the provincials are reading at the same time."
She was not interested in the subject; it struck her only as a strange one for him to discuss.
"I suppose so," she said. "Still in London one sees things and one can get books to read. It's as difficult to get a new book in Beckenhampton as it is to get cream in the country."
"Is that difficult?" he asked, thinking of Keats's "tight little fairy."
"Oh, you don't know the country very well. Try! They look at you amazed when you ask for it." She laughed. "Last year when we went away we took a new American tinned thing in the shape of a breakfast food with us. I forget what it was called; a sort of porridge. They told you on the tin that it was to be eaten with cream. Carelessly, 'cream'! I believe in America cream isn't a curiosity. Our efforts to get threepennyworth! There was only one place for miles round where there was the slightest chance of it—a dairy belonging to a great lady who supplied the public with milk as a favour. I don't mean that she didn't take their money, but that the customers had to call for the milk and carry it away. We used to go there two or three times a week and kow-tow to a consequential dairy woman. We almost thought at first she must be the great lady, but when she accepted our tips we concluded she wasn't. She unbent so far as to promise 'to try to manage it for us one morning.' After about a fortnight we reckoned it would have cost us two shillings by the time it was 'managed.' I daresay it would have cost more, but we decided that we couldn't afford the price of threepennyworth of cream in the country, and we never got any. I can't say I'm very fond of the country on the whole."
"Why, I imagined you loved it. That is"—he corrected himself hastily—"you've the air of being so contented out here."
"Have I? Oh, I do gush about it sometimes, but"—she shrugged her shoulders—"country walks are rather tiresome after you've got used to them, don't you think so?"
He hesitated. "I think they must have been pleasanter before bicycles were invented," he said; "it's difficult to enjoy a stroll along a country lane when you have to keep skipping into a hedge to save yourself from being cut in halves. Men who drive realise their responsibility, but every counter-jumper seems to ride a bicycle, and the cad in power is always dangerous. The most exasperating thing about the country to me is the blindness and deafness of the people to all the beauties round them. I'll except Mr. Kemp because I've discovered that he notices the birds—they steal his grain, and he shoots them—but I've been trying to learn the names of the wild-flowers ever since I've been here, and it's impossible; one might as well inquire at Bethnal Green."
"I didn't know that," she said; "I haven't tried to find out. But certainly everybody is very stupid."
There was a moment's silence. His glance wandered, and reverted to her. She made a delightful picture; she was as lovely a philistine as ever looked to the main chance with the gaze of a goddess, and for him she had the magic of letters that she had never written, the seduction of thoughts that she had never known. He would not admit to himself that a shade of disappointment was clouding his mood.
Her name was cried before he spoke again.
"Hilda! where are you?"
"Hark! my sister's calling," she said; "I expect dinner's ready."
She moved towards the house, David beside her, and met Bee coming down the path.
"Mr. Tremlett has been saving my life, Bee! I've been attacked while you were out."
"Mr. Tremlett was very kind," answered Bee, smiling. "How did he do it?"
The three loitered in the doorway, talking, and she thanked him seriously when she understood what had happened. He noted that her tones were grave and sweet, and pitied her; and his gaze kept straying to the beautiful face. After a minute he turned away, and the sisters went inside.
"He's quite a gentleman," said the girl; "and I'm sure he must have been stung, though he pretended he wasn't. It would have been quite romantic if he had been another colour."
"She loved me for the dangers I had—averted," murmured Bee.
"What's that—a quotation?" asked Hilda,
The rest of the day was barren, and in the knowledge that their visit was so near its end, David chafed at each empty hour. He had seen Hilda for a moment only since the morning. Standing aside as she came down the stairs, he had asked her if she was going to the field again, and she shook her head, saying that she had a letter to write. He thrilled with the fancy that it might be a letter to himself.
How queer to think that she might even give it to him to post! Still queerer to reflect that the thoughts which had so often held him captive, and the blithesome chatter that had rung so false were coin from the same mint. If they had been the strangers to each other that she believed, he would never have divined the gold beneath the small change. For that matter he too had been commonplace; the soul wasn't a jack-in-the-box to jump to order. "Oh, Mr. Thackeray, don't!" breathed Charlotte Brontë disillusioned, when he helped himself again to potatoes; and probably he had said nothing to justify her homage by the time the cheese came. He, David Lee, hadtalkedpotatoes. More than likely the girl whom he had found trivial had found him trite.
Ever recurring, and overthrowing his reverie, was a gust of sensation—in part a perfume, in part a sickness, in which it seemed to him that the scent of her hair was in his throat.
Before he left town he had scribbled a few lines expressing his gratitude for the photograph, and now it occurred to him that an answer might be lying at his lodging already. He wished he could read it; he wished he could re-read all the letters here while he was seeing her. He felt that to do so would help him. Without defining his need he felt that the letters, tangible, familiar, would lessen the vague sense of unreality that blew across his mind. During a few seconds he craved more to re-read the letters than to find himself alone with her.
Not so in the morning. He rose eagerly. While he dressed, it seemed to him that he had been unreasonable yesterday; he accused himself of having resented circumstances, of having all unconsciously expected her to accord to Tremlett the confidences she made to Lee. That was absurd. Ostensibly a stranger, a mulatto thrown in her path by chance, how could he hope for her to lift her veil? But let her keep it down—it couldn't hide her from him. Let her yield a finger-tip, after she had bared her heart—he knew her even as she knew herself. He smiled to think that by a word he could transfigure her. It was too soon, he was afraid to speak it; the complexity of the emotion that he foresaw in her warned him back; but the idea of power was sweet to him. He could tear the veil aside and call the real woman breathless to his view, he the stranger! There was a throb of triumph in his delusion.
The day was Sunday, and when he joined her, he found the sisters together. He regretted that the elder had remained at home, although he knew that he had had nothing to hope from a tête-à-tête.
"You don't paint to-day, Miss Sorrenford?"
"No," she said, "I don't paint on Sunday."
"Good gracious!" exclaimed Hilda, "I should think she didn't. What do you suppose the Kemps would say to her? We should be turned out, shouldn't we, Bee?"
"Oh yes, I forgot the Kemps," he said; "it would shock them, of course."—"Bee," he assumed, was a diminutive of "Beatrice." "I've only spent one Sunday here. It was rather depressing; everybody looked so out of place—all the villagers seemed to have gone. Why do they dress up and spoil themselves on Sunday? It was as if a lot of supers in a play had come on in the wrong scene."
Hilda smiled. "They'd think you had very bad taste if they heard you say so. You might as well try to persuade a servant that she looks smarter in a frilled cap and a muslin apron than when she goes out to meet her young man. Poor people always make frights of themselves on Sunday—and they pride themselves on their boots creaking."
"Poor people!" he answered. "And the little children—that was worse still. It made me wretched to see the children; my heart ached for them whenever I went to the door."
"Oh, you noticed them," said Bee, "did you? Yes, it's painful. Their hushed voices, and their sad eyes! They mustn't play; they're forbidden to be happy. They sit in solemn groups, talking in whispers—cursing Sunday I often think. If one of them forgets and laughs, its mother comes out and shakes it—to teach it to love God."
"Bee, don't get on the platform, or we might as well have gone to church. We do go to church, Mr. Tremlett; don't think we never do any better than this, please! But one doesn't feel so religious in the country on Sunday as one does in a town. It must be something in the air."
"Perhaps it's because in the country one feels so much more religious every other day of the week," said David. Bee had frowned, discomfited; she sat silent. In her silence David was sorry for the Beauty—her banter had been so innocent; the frown, the tightened lips seemed to him an undeserved reproach.
Then he talked to the wrong woman while the right woman listened, and he was even a little piqued that his earnestness couldn't rouse the wrong woman to permit him a glimpse of the poetry that was not in her. But once, when her skirt fluttered against his hand, it was not the thought of the poetry in her that sent a shiver up his arm; and it was not the thought of her sensibility that made his heart gallop, as imagination gave him back the tingle of her hair. That was herself, her pretty flesh-and-blood, the potent pink-and-white reality of her.
Something he said, some chance remark, brought a line of "A Celibate's Love Songs" to Bee's mind. Her thoughts darted again to the photograph, and for the thousandth time she wished she could recall her stupid act; for the thousandth time she sought the courage to acknowledge it. The confession from which she had shrunk at the beginning looked by comparison easy: "I am deformed." Well, at least, no one could laugh at that. But "I sent my sister's likeness instead of my own." That was ridiculous, contemptible. And how could she explain the impulse? Wouldn't the man put his own construction on it? Wouldn't he think—wouldn't it be tacitly to admit—that she was in love with him?
Still, did the folly she had committed matter very much? He would never see her, never see her or Hilda either. If he had meant to come, surely he would have come already? Sooner or later the correspondence would die, and she would be alone again. Was it necessary to degrade herself in his sight?
He would think she was in love with him! Once more the question that she was always trying to evade flared through her brain. Did it really mean that—in love with a man she had not met? She said the thing was impossible, and felt it was indecent, and knew it was true. The man had needed an appeal to the senses before he repudiated the term of "friendship"; the woman had no such need. She knew that she loved him, although she refused to own it. She loved him for his mind, for all that was herself in him, for all that was kin to her, but beyond her reach. And now, while her reverie might have borne her far from the conversation at her side, she was forced to listen to him, though she had no suspicion that it was he who talked. The mind that she loved compelled her to listen—for David was striving to make the dainty Hilda lift a corner of the veil.
And there being no veil, she could not lift it; but the woman, whose presence he had half forgotten, felt her sympathies stirred within her strongly, and could have given him thought for thought, and note for note, while she sat there silent and unheeded. There was no veil. He was straining to clutch a phantasm, surrendering to the temptations of his fancied power. And, whilst the poet, pluming himself on power, put forth his intellect to master the girl that there was not, the indolent pink-and-white girl that there was, was mastering him.
"He talks too much, now he has got over his shyness," she murmured, as he moved away. "I'm glad he has gone."
"Are you?" said Bee. "Why? I'm not; he interested me."
"Really? Well, I wish you had joined in, then, instead of sitting there mum. Why didn't you?"
"I don't think he would have been very grateful; he didn't want to talk to me."
Hilda's admirable eyebrows rose just a shade higher than they would have risen if she had been surprised. Because she knew what was meant, she said, "What do you mean?"
"I could see he wanted to talk toyou. He always does. I think it's rather a good thing we're going home to-morrow."
"Good heavens! don't be so idiotic. Do you suppose for a single moment I could——"
"No; I was thinking ofhim, poor fellow!" said Bee. "I daresay he is unhappy enough without any other trouble."
It was not unpleasant to hear that she was esteemed so dangerous. The girl essayed the languid tone of her favourite heroines.
"What an imagination you have!" she drawled. "Now, he only struckmeas a dull person who didn't know when to get up. When a man looks like that, he ought to be very careful what he talks about; so few subjects go with his complexion."
Bee thought—"Oh, the arrogance of beauty! It would even deny to the others the right to have beautiful minds."
In the afternoon a thunderstorm broke over Godstone, and rain fell with more or less violence all the evening. It saved Hilda from being bored by him again, for their train next day was an early one, and after breakfast she was upstairs a good deal, watching the trunks being packed. Once or twice as she tripped to Bee from the sitting-room with a book, or a work-basket, or a packet of labels, he met her in the passage, and she threw him the brave smile of one who was sunny in fatigue; but there was no opportunity for conversation.
To David the shadow of her departure had fallen across Daisymead already. Already he felt desolate in anticipating its emptiness when she had gone. It seemed to him quite a month ago that he had arrived here, and the few scenes of their brief association, now that the end had come, were as dear to his regret as close companionship. Even the period of his bashfulness and despondence had a tender charm in looking back at it. He was eager to flee with his memories to town, instinctively conscious that in no place would he be so forlorn as in the place where she had been; but there would be heavy hours before he was able to go, poignant hours in which to miss her first.
It had been in his mind to walk to the station with them both, but she did not seem to wish it, so he bade them good-bye in the front garden while the porter was making the luggage fast on the truck. The landlady and her daughter had come out too, and at the last minute Mr. Kemp appeared. He had a dead bird in his hand; Hilda uttered an exclamation of pity as she saw it, and Bee was mute.
"Oh, the dear! What bird is it, Mr. Kemp?"
"A green linnet, Miss," he said. "Mischeevious things!"
"A linnet? I thought linnets were always brown; I'd no idea they were ever so pretty as this. Why, it's perfectly lovely! What a shame they aren't all made green."
"Yes, it's a showy thing," admitted Mr. Kemp; "the brown 'un ain't much to look at alongside it, that's a fact." He rubbed his hand on his coat, and put it out to her in farewell. "But the green linnet has got no song."
The sisters went slowly up the road; and David followed the "showy" figure with his eyes until the road swerved.
"Well, my dears," said the Professor, "and how are you, eh? Got nice and sunburnt, and done yourselves good, have you? Bee, my dear, you might just touch the bell—I told the girl not to make the tea until we rang. Let me have a look at you both now!" He looked at Hilda. "Come, come, that's first rate! And what's the news?"
"Oh, we're splendid," she replied. "I don't think there's any news; we just did nothing. That is, I did nothing, and Bee worked. You might have come down to us, Dad, if only for a day! We were always expecting a wire to tell us you were coming."
"Yes, I know, my dear," he said, "I know; you wrote me. When I read your letter I thought I really would go down; I made up my mind to. 'Now I know what I'll do,' I thought; 'I won't answer her—I'll say nothing about it—and on Saturday I'll pack my bag, and take her by surprise.' But God bless my soul! when Saturday came I couldn't get away, my dear, I couldn't get away." His glance wandered to his other daughter, and rested on her doubtfully. "Or perhaps it was you who wrote, Bee? One of you did, I know; it's all the same."
"Just the same, father," she said, "all the same; we both wanted you."
The teapot was brought in presently, and half a dozen words were uttered which did more to make her feel at home again than anything that had happened yet. The servant knocked a cup over, put a forefinger inside it, in setting it right, and said in a hoarse whisper, "Can I speak to you, Miss?"
When the conference with the servant was over, Bee carried her father's cup to the armchair, and took Hilda's to the sofa; and the Professor murmured in the tone that belongs to after-thoughts:
"And did you make your studies, Bee?"
"Yes, thanks, father."
"That's right. Many?"
"Oh, just as many as I hoped to do. I'm rather pleased with one of them."
"That'sright."
"Anything new here, father?"
"In a way, my dear, in a way; the new man has taken over the Theatre Royal. Mobsby has left the town; I hear he has gone to Nottingham. You might give me another piece of sugar, a very small piece—or break a lump in halves."
"The new man taken over the theatre?" said Hilda. "Have you written to him about the opera?"
"Have you, father?" asked Bee, searching the sugar-basin.
"Yes," he said, "yes, I did write to him. I'm afraid he's not a gentleman. I dropped him a line, explaining matters, and offering to call on him one day when he had an hour to spare, if he would suggest an appointment, and he—er—I got no answer."
"Perhaps the letter didn't reach him, dear."
"I fancied that might be the reason," said the Professor; "the same idea occurred to me. So I wrote to him again, but——No, I'm afraid both letters reached him. Now Mobsby used to answer—I'll give him credit for that. He wasn't enterprising, but he was civil, at all events; he made excuses for declining my work. This Mr. Jordan seems to have no enterprise, and no politeness either. We don't go to the Royal any more, my dears! I put my foot down about that. For the future when we take tickets for a theatre, they shall be for the Grand."
"The Royal always has the best companies, though," pouted Hilda; "and the audience at the Grand is so dirty."
"For all that we shall go to the Grand," repeated the Professor; "it's the only dignified protest I can make. While the Royal remains under this fellow's management it will see no money of mine. I am quite firm on that point—unless of course diplomacy effects anything," he added, "unless diplomacy effects anything."
"Diplomacy can't effect much with a man who doesn't answer your letters," said Hilda. Her voice was tart.
"What more do you think of doing, then, father?" inquired Bee. "Have you a plan?"
"I never let the grass grow under my feet, you know; when there is an opportunity, I make the most of it. A friend at court may do a great deal, and the other afternoon——" He sipped slowly, and spread his handkerchief across his knee. "It seemed almost providential; I don't do such a thing once in two months, but it was a very hot day, and I was tired and thirsty; it was on my way home from Great Hunby. I turned into the 'George' for something to drink, my dear, and I made the acquaintance of Mr. Jordan's business manager. The thin edge of the wedge, perhaps! though I am never sanguine. Of course I did no more than mention the opera—the merest word—but he seemed interested. The next time we meet I shall refer to it again. It may lead to something. He was intelligent. He may pull the strings. I'm never sanguine, but it stands to reason that the business manager of a theatre has a lot to say in the conduct of affairs. If I cultivate him——" He looked about him impatiently. "You might pass me the tobacco-jar, my dear."
She got up, and took it from the mantelpiece, and gave it to him.
"Here it is, father. If you cultivate him, you think he might use his influence with Mr. Jordan?"
"Just so. Butfestina lente, my dear—hasten slowly. Don't look too far ahead. It's because people look too far ahead that they trip in reading aloud. The same principle, exactly! The eye travels too fast, and the tongue stumbles. Half the mistakes that the pupils make in reading blank verse are due to the fact that they look too far ahead. In life, as in reading, we should clearly enunciate one word at a time. What was I going to say?... Yes, having made his acquaintance, there's no telling what it may lead to if I show the young man a little hospitality. It's quite on the cards that Mr. Jordan may sing a different tune and ask me to let him hear the opera. If he should do that, I—I am not vindictive—if he should do that, and give the work his honest consideration, we would certainly go to the Royal as usual."
The prospect of his showing a new young man a little hospitality smoothed the frown from Hilda's brow. The young men of Beckenhampton were mercenary, and girls who had been her schoolfellows and knew her age—girls who had no other attraction than their fathers' incomes—had married in their teens. She was not without a lurking fear of being "left on the shelf," as she phrased it; in which misgiving she resembled a multitude of girls who look equally superior to the fear and the phrase. It is, indeed, an unpleasant comment on our method of bringing up the maiden that in the minds of even the most modest girls, the eagerness to marry should precede the wish to marry any man in particular. To the blunter and less refined sensibilities of the male there seems something a little indelicate in this impartial eagerness.
The Professor's intention commended itself to Hilda so warmly, that during the next few days she introduced the subject of the opera more than once. It was not until she had been back from Godstone a week, however, that the growth of the grass to which he had made reference was in any way checked. And then chance was the mower. She had gone but with him, ostensibly to help him to choose a hat, and of a truth to prevent his choosing one, for the years during which man is free to exercise his own judgment about his own clothes are few. As they turned into Market Street, he gave her a nudge, so hard that it hurt her, and waving his hand to a stranger, slackened his pace. The stranger, who had been hurrying past, saw that the elderly bore was accompanied by a bewilderingly pretty girl, and came promptly to a standstill—in his bearing all the deference which a young man can yield to old age under the eyes of beauty.
"Oh, how do you do, Professor Sorrenford?"
"Ah, pleased to meet you again," exclaimed the Professor. "Let me—er—my daughter; Mr. Harris—my daughter."
Vivian made another bow—one far different from the shamefaced bob of the local swains, Hilda thought. It was, indeed, modelled on the obeisance he saw the lovers make to the heroines when he was counting the house in the dress-circle.
"Mr. Harris is a new-comer to the town," said the Professor blandly.
"I am afraid Mr. Harris must find it very dull?" murmured the girl.
The jeune premier was his exemplar still: "It reveals new attractions every day!" he declared. He looked at her significantly. Her eyelids drooped. The father saw nothing but the opera in his desk.—
"Yes, I think, myself, there are many attractions to be found in the place," he said; "though, as an old resident—one of the very oldest residents, in fact—I may be too partial, perhaps. I have been in Beckenhampton now—how many years? I begin to lose count. People will tell you that the name of 'Sorrenford' is as well known here as the name of—ha, ha—the name of the Theatre Royal, itself. Mr. Harris is interested in the Theatre Royal, my dear—the scene of so many of our pleasant evenings."
"Oh, indeed?" She was gently surprised. "You're at the theatre, Mr. Harris?"
"In the front," he said. "I hope we shall give you some pleasanter evenings still under the new régime, Miss Sorrenford. We mean to make the house one of the most go-ahead theatres in the provinces." His tone was bright, inspiriting. He struck her as likely to succeed in anything that he undertook.
"We shall not fail to sample the—er—the bill of fare," said the Professor; "ha, ha, the bill of fare! We shall pay you an early visit. I hope you'll return it. A composer's time is not his own, but we are always glad to see our friends on Sunday nights. If you have nothing better to do one Sunday——"
"I shall be charmed."
"Mr. Harris is busy on week nights like yourself," put in Hilda with a smile.
"To be sure!—like myself. Sunday is really the only day a professional man has a chance to be sociable, isn't it? We have a bond in common. Take us as we are, Mr. Harris. Drop in. Pot luck, and a little music, and a hearty welcome. Now don't forget. Let us be among the first in Beckenhampton to—to make you feel at home in it."
"I shall be charmed," repeated Vivian, gazing undisguised admiration at Hilda. She gave him her hand. He crossed the road victoriously; the father and daughter continued their way to the hatter's.
For some seconds the old man was silent, wrapt in ecstatic reverie. Then he broke out:
"Well? Eh? Not bad—what do you think? Did you notice how glad he was I invited him? He's been asking about me since I saw him; he's been turning the opera over in his mind. That's the plain English of it. Very cordial, but he can't takemein! There's the pounds, shillings, and pence interest underneath, my dear!Isaw through him." He chuckled. "He's nibbling—the business manager is nibbling! It won't be long before he comes, you'll see!... We'd better have a Perrin's for supper next Sunday, my dear, on the chance of his turning up."
Vivian was much pleased to have somewhere to go, and he made no longer delay in presenting himself than he considered that appearances required. Sunday had been dismal enough while he was with a company on tour; here in his new post, without even a game of napoleon on a railway journey to mitigate the tedium, he had found it drearier still. The opportunity for talking to a girl who wasn't a barmaid would have tempted him had the girl been plain; when she was admitted to be the prettiest girl in Beckenhampton—or, as the landlord of the "George" had it, "the belle of our town"—he felt that it was really a matter for rejoicing.
And his host's greeting was as warm as his invitation. Certainly his performance on the 'cello after supper was rather a nuisance, but "the belle" made a delightful picture as an accompanist; and when she sang an entirely new ballad about Dead Days and a Garden, with a tune that a fellow could catch, to take away the taste of the classics commanded by her papa, the visitor felt quite a stir of sentiment.
And he was given another whisky-and-soda, and another of the six cigars which the Professor had arranged in a cigar-box that had lain empty for years. Even when "Father" had been persuaded to let Mr. Harris hear "something from the opera" and Mr. Harris began to realise that the garrulous old gentleman wanted more from him than compliments, the evening was not a disappointment; the younger girl was so enchanting, and the atmosphere of a home was such a novelty. It was impossible for Vivian to be sorry he had come, though he perceived that it would be unwise to define the boundaries of his position in the theatre if he wished to come often.
"Do you play or sing yourself, Mr. Harris?" Bee inquired.
"No," he said; "no, I'm not musical." In this musical family he regretted to acknowledge it.
"Sure?" asked Hilda, swinging round on the stool.
"Oh yes, unfortunately—quite sure." He was at the point of adding: "Though I was, brought up in the thick of it all," but to explain that his mother's second husband had been a negro was never agreeable to him. "I'm awfully fond of it, though! I could listen to singing all night. Won't you give us something else? Do, please; don't get up!"
"I really don't know what there is." She ruffled the stack beside her listlessly. "I'm afraid there's nothing else for me to sing."
"Let me help you find something."
"If you can. If you really haven't had enough?"
He went across to her, and they bent their heads over the heap together; and he hung at the piano while she sang another entirely new ballad about Days that were No More, and a Stream.
When she finished he murmured "Thank you," and threw into his manner the suggestion of being too much moved to say anything more lengthy.
"It's rather pretty, isn't it?" she said, lifting her eyes in the candle-light.
"Yes; and your voice——" he sighed expressively.
"Oh!" she looked down again, affording him a good view of her lashes, and stroked the keys. "My voice is really as small as a voice can be."
"I've never heard one that carried me away as yours does. Do you know—I suppose you'll be shocked—but I like the drawing-room ballad—sometimes—nearly as well as the classical things."
"I like them better," she said archly.
"Do you?" He was delighted. "So do I. I hadn't the courage to own that."
"I daren't let my father hear. It would be high treason."
They both laughed. The pretence of having a secret together was quite charming.
"I see there is a concert announced for Thursday fortnight at the Town Hall," remarked the Professor. "Those are pleasures you're unable to enjoy, Mr. Harris, eh? I suppose you can't leave the theatre? But there is a big bill. We shall have some fine artists. We shall have a treat, quite a rare treat."
"Yes," said Vivian. "I know. I'm afraid it'll spoil our Thursday night's house; I wish they had fixed it for another evening. Thursday is our best night in the dress-circle as a rule."
"How lovely it must be," exclaimed Hilda, "to go to the theatre every evening! Though I suppose you get tired of it, too?"
"I should think it was nicer in the country than in London," said Bee, "isn't it? You do see a different piece here every week."
"Yes," he answered. "One gets a change. But I never see a piece right through, you know. There's so much to do in front."
"The business of a theatre," observed the Professor ponderously, "is naturally enormous. The outsider has no conception of the—er—intricacies of theatrical management. These young ladies look at the stage in the limelight, they know nothing of the commercial element of the enterprise. The sea of figures in which the manager wades is to them of course aterra incognita."
Vivian stroked his moustache, and hid a smile.
"Yes, the figures are a bit of a bore," he said. "I was acting manager to a company on tour before I joined Jordan. That was more bother still, you know."
"Acting manager?" said Hilda. "To manage the acting I should have thought was jolly?"
"Oh, I had nothing to do with the stage! 'Acting manager' and 'business manager' mean the same thing."
"How curious!"
"Yes, it is rather odd. No, I had nothing to do with the stage, but there were the journeys to arrange then, and there are always people in a company who grumble at the train call, whatever time it's for. If you take them early they complain because they have to get up so soon; and if you take them late, they say they've never known a tour on which they had to make so many journeys at night. And of course it's always the poor acting manager's fault!"
"Why not take them in the afternoon? Wouldn't that get over the difficulty?"
"Well, you can't travel from Bristol to Yarmouth in an afternoon, and that was one of the journeys we had to make. The train call was for twelve o'clock Saturday night, after the show, and we didn't get into Yarmouth till the next evening. How cross some of them were!"
"So shouldIhave been!"
He tried to look as if he couldn't imagine her cross. "It wasn't very pleasant certainly. At four in the morning we were at a standstill. Black dark. And we had to stick in the station till half-past seven. There was no refreshment room open, of course; we all sat shivering in the train. And it rained. Oh! how it rained! About six o'clock, one of the ladies asked two or three of us into her compartment, and made tea with a little spirit-lamp that she had brought. I think I enjoyed that tea more than any I've ever drunk, but we didn't get a solid meal till we reached Peterborough—three hours more to wait. It had stopped raining by then, and we had roast mutton at an hotel, and yawned at the cathedral."