CHAPTER III
Theycan be cold, those nights in April, for spring comes timidly to this little island of ours. I have seen children, like her, peep round a door. There is laughter in their faces; it flows in a silver ripple, quivering shyly on their lips. For one instant they look in on you and then are gone. It is no good your calling. Nothing under Heaven will induce them to come back. Perhaps the next morning at the very same hour the door will open gently, you will see the sudden flash of eager eyes, but never again that day. It were as well you gave up hope of it. And so comes spring in such fashion to us here.
That very morning I had been sitting again in the Park. The sun was of pure white silver in a sky of blue. There was that cool, faint sense of chill about it, too, as when you see the flame of candles freshly lit. The daffodils under the trees lifted high their yellow petals from the grass to try and touch the warmth of it. Yet it only lasted for an hour or two. I looked down at Dandy as a grey cloud sailed up above the trees and hid the sun, and I saw a little wrinkle quiver swiftly up his back.
"Ah, my friend," said I, "I've no doubt you'd like Nature to spoil you. We all do; but, unfortunately, she won't."
I am always making these little reflections aloud to Dandy. It is not that he understands, but they do such a heap of good to me.
By night time that grey cloud had drawn a score of others after it. When I came out of the restaurant after supper the wind was scouring the streets with a shower of rain. As I walked home I thought with gratitude of the fire that I knew was burning in my room. My steps quickened as I pictured to myself the sight of Dandy lying curled in a complete circle upon the hearthrug. What manner of person, I wondered, would rise to his feet from such a comfortable position as that and greet you rapturously upon your entrance, put his hands on your wet coat and say between cavernous yawns and jovial laughter how jolly glad he was to have you back again? Perhaps there was one in the world who would have greeted a man like that.
Clarissa.
Ah, but there would be more than laughter, there would be those uncontrollable tears of gratitude if Clarissa's lover came back to her that night. Perhaps she had not even a fire by which to curl herself into the complete circle of contentment. No doubt at such an hour as that she was fast asleep in her tiny bed—or was she lying awake with eyes set deep into the darkness, listening to the ceaseless driving of the rain upon her window? Wherever she was, whatever doing, I could see the joy, lit radiant in her face, at the sound of his voice.
Then, when I thought of his return, I thought as well of him. The sudden picture of his face came straight into my eyes. I heard his voice. I heard his laughter. My God! thought I, what hopelessness to wait for such a man as that! Surely she knew the worthless kind he was? No, it was more likely she did not. So few, few women do.
"But what law of God or Nature is it," said I to myself, "that makes men treat women so?" Had there been an answer which left one shred of dignity to my back, I might have made it. So far as I could see there was none. "Unless," I thought, "unless it is she asks no better of us and gets but little more."
The words had scarcely entered my mind when I was contradicted flatly to my face. From a doorway as I passed I heard a woman's voice.
"Here, I say."
I stopped, peering into the shadow. A girl was there, sheltering beneath the overhanging portal of the door.
"What is it?" I asked.
Perhaps the tone of genuine inquiry in my voice, no doubt a thousand other things as well, checked her in what she was going to say, for she caught the words and shut her lips upon them.
"What is it?" I asked again.
She screwed up her face into a smile; no doubt to hide the injured dignity in her heart.
"Would you like to give me my cab fare home?" said she.
Now had I received a blow of her hand across my face I should not have felt more surprise. It was so direct an answer to my assumption, to the very question I had put myself but a few steps back. I had assumed that women received the worst from us because they asked no better. Yet what better can a woman ask of any man than charity?
In some awkward effort to explain I have said that life has never reached me—no woman has ever come to me in trouble. But it is more than that—and it is less. I have often wanted a woman to say to me, "Come and buy me a hat." No woman ever has. I have known women whom I would like to have adorned from the top of their dainty heads to the soles of their elegant feet; but either it is that they have husbands who do it for them or there is some ridiculous etiquette which forbids it. It seems I am one of those men of whom a woman asks nothing, another symptom of the disease which I forgot to tell my doctor.
You may imagine, then, what I felt when this girl came out of nowhere and asked me to pay her cab fare home. My hand went straight to my pocket. She might have asked so many things other than that. She might have asked for a new hat. Her own was sodden with rain.
"Well, what is the cab fare?" said I. "Where do you live?"
I said it all in the voice of one who is in two ways about what he is doing. You see, I had to make something to my credit out of the business. She had asked for so very little. Even when she told me it was Bloomsbury way, I felt a sense of disappointment. It might as well have been Highgate or Clapham Junction. But in this world, whether or not it be true that you want little, little it is most surely that you get. How long you get it for is another matter. It did not interest me then.
I looked up and down the street.
"You won't find the fare so difficult to get as the cab," said I. The whole street was empty. She peered out of the shadow, and I could see she must be wet to the skin.
"Look here," I continued, "come under this umbrella. I live just here. You'd better sit indoors while I get them to whistle for a 'taxi.'"
She stood quite still for a moment and stared at me. A foolish thing to do. Women behave ridiculously at times. It was the only obvious thing to suggest, and yet she gazed at me as though I could not possibly be aware of what I was saying. I was aware.
"Be good enough to come under this umbrella," I repeated, severely. Then she obeyed.
As we walked along in silence to my door, I began to see myself that there were two aspects to the case. I had forgotten for the moment my man. He would be waiting up for me. He always does. There are little things, and Moxon knows how to do them. I have come to believe he likes it. But would he like this?
"Oh, Moxon be damned," said I, and, of course, I must have said it out loud, for she asked me sympathetically who Moxon was.
"He looks after me," I replied.
I think that must have almost confirmed the opinion in her that I was not quite sane; that Moxon, indeed, was my keeper, for she drew away a little till I laughed and explained.
"You're a swell, then?" she said. She said it with conviction. She said it as a question too.
"If you'll tell me what you mean by that," said I, "I'll tell you if you're right."
Whereupon for a few moments she was silent, but when I prompted her for an answer, she said,
"A swell's a swell."
"Then certainly the description doesn't apply to me," I replied, and, taking out the latchkey, I opened my door.
At first she hesitated to come in, but I took her arm. The sleeve of her dress was drenched.
"You mustn't stay outside," said I. "Just come and wait in my sitting-room while Moxon gets a 'taxi.' He won't be long."
The moment I opened the door, there, sure enough, was Dandy to his feet, but at the sight of my visitor he arrested all motion and glared. At this time of night I was his personal belonging. He had me to himself. There was no doubt he resented this intrusion of another person, and when he realized it was a woman, his contempt was wonderful. With just a glance at me, he turned round and stared into the fire. I never saw reproach so clearly drawn in the outline of a dog's back before.
"This is just a foretaste," thought I, "of what we shall get from Moxon," and I rang the bell.
When I turned round, she was looking all about the room with a silent wonder in her eyes. It is comfortable, I know. I have been told that. But no one has ever surveyed it with such an expression in their eyes as she had then. I felt almost ashamed of myself for calling it my own; for in that look I seemed to see all the dull, cheap finery of her own squalid little rooms in Bloomsbury.
"The world is hard on women," I said to myself, and again the name of Clarissa came like an echo into my thoughts. Clarissa in her little gown of canary-colored satin.
I was just going to ask her more about herself when she forestalled me.
"Do you live here alone?" she asked.
I nodded my head.
"All this to yourself?"
I nodded again.
"Aren't you lonely?"
I felt quite grateful for Moxon's entrance. He opened the door, and the look of astonishment that leapt into his face was ludicrous to behold.
"I beg pardon, sir," he said quickly.
"I rang," said I. "I want you to whistle for a 'taxi' for this lady. She's been caught in the rain outside."
He went out obediently, closing the door. Another moment and we heard his whistle blowing violently in the street.
"Is that Moxon?" she asked, when he had gone.
"It is."
"What's he think of you bringing me in here?"
"I shouldn't attempt to say," said I. "Moxon's mind is one of the riddles I shall never solve. Sometimes I feel inclined to believe that he never thinks at all."
She sat silent for a moment or two staring at the fire, and then suddenly looked up quickly at me.
"Why did you bring me in here?" she asked.
It came to my lips to give some irrelevant answer. Why should I tell her? Would she understand it if I did? But then there flashed across my mind the belief I always hold that above all creatures women are gifted with understanding, and I told her of the story I had just heard.
"And what's that to do with me?" she asked.
"Nothing," I replied, "and everything. One woman in trouble is the whole world of women in distress. What I have to complain of is that they never come to me. You did. That's why I brought you in here. If this child in Ireland were to appeal to me—"
"How can she?"
"That's true," said I, "she doesn't know me."
She looked at me queerly—deedily is the word—and, almost in a whisper, she asked, "Why don't you go to her?"
I leant back in my chair and laughed.
"What, become a Don Quixote!" said I. "Go out and tilt at windmills, try to pose knight-errant to a child who's lost her heart to some one else! What's the good of saving any woman from her own infatuation? She'll only hate you for it."
She looked me strangely in the face.
"She'll thank you for it one day," she said, and there were whole years of terror in her voice.
Suddenly, then, I saw things different, and at that moment came Moxon into the room.
"The 'taxi' for the lady," said he.