Читать книгу Mr Skeffington - Elizabeth von Arnim - Страница 4

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Outside London, beyond the belt of fog that lay thick and black over Harley Street where Fanny had just been, and Charles Street whence she had started, and Paddington whither she was going, it was a beautiful day—clear, frosty, with the bare branches of the wintry trees standing out, each a separate miracle of intricate grace, against a most delicate, blue sky. Larks quivered and trilled. In the little lanes, whose matted grass edges were ribbons of hoar-frost, carters, loading their horses, whistled cheerfully. Housewives sang as they banged mats against the door posts. And the world was so sparkling and so fairylike a place that nobody that morning, in the country, was cross.

Fanny, choking in London, scented what must be going on a few miles away, and felt that if she could get into the sun she might, in spite of everything, manage to calm down. So she had herself driven, on leaving Harley Street, to Paddington, deciding she would there take the first train to anywhere where she could breathe. Breathe, and think. Better, breathe and not think. But, anyhow, breathe.

Certainly she couldn't go home till she had recovered a little. She was much too angry at present to see anybody, or to be able to endure Miss Cartwright's carefully unnoticing face, or the anxious inquiries of Manby. She would send a message to Miss Cartwright to telephone cancelling her engagements for the day, and she would withdraw into solitude, and there sit quiet, and smooth out her ruffled feathers.

They were immensely ruffled. For the first time in her life she had been in the company of a common man, who said straight in her face things she had till then never imagined could be so much as thought about her, and she felt she deserved a little relaxation. Relaxation. Furious as she was, she couldn't help smiling at the word. Even in moments of distress and anger, she was often able to laugh at herself—an endearing trait, said her men friends; and her women friends, while admitting it was endearing and that Fanny was sweet, thought that though she might laugh at one crumpled rose-leaf in her bed, they doubted whether she would laugh much if the whole bed were full of crumpled rose-leaves. It was among the things that had been worrying her lately, the way this faculty of standing aside and watching herself, and being amused by what she saw, seemed to be deserting her. Surely she was taking everything that happened very heavily now? Without much pluck? And didn't this point to a serious deterioration in her character? This, and flying at servants; this, and being so quick with acid adjectives to describe youth.

Job's fault, of course; really all Job's fault. But him she was going to leave behind in London. This one day she was determined to be free of him; and she would spend it in the country, not speaking to a soul, not being spoken to, rid of everybody and everything. Vague longings for pure, cold, solitary things like primroses, and moss, and little leafless coppices, came into her mind, and she wished it weren't still only the seventh of February, and that she could have sat in some earthy, damp-smelling wood, and tied cool primroses into bunches, quite still and quiet.

The trains were late because of the fog, and the first one, leaving forty minutes after it ought to have left, was for Oxford. Oxford would do very well, she thought, taking a ticket. No lonely copses there, but in its ancient gardens she would find silence. Also, she had nothing but pleasant associations connected with Oxford; it was, for instance, entirely free from Job. He wouldn't be there, because he never had been there or anywhere like it, his education—you could read about it in Who's Who—having been private. The man Byles wouldn't be there either, because the last thing that would remind her of him would be evidences of civilization. Dwight—yes, Dwight would be there, but he hadn't yet left off being a pleasant association, and perhaps, after a long day by herself, when it began to get dark she might go to his rooms, and ask to be given muffins—that is, if by that time she were feeling better.

However, she wasn't sure about going to Dwight. Remembering the way Byles had said: "Oh, my poor lady," she thought perhaps she would wait before seeing him, or rather before letting him see her. He had, she knew, the most romantic, poetic notions of her perfections, and possibly, beholding her at this unfavourable moment, might think she was always now going to look like that, and then—

Here Fanny gave herself a little shake, for she was ashamed. That boy. As though it mattered what he might think. No, she wouldn't see him. Let him come to Charles Street and see her. Was she then so really elderly that even an undergraduate at Oxford was of value to her? The next phase, if she didn't take care, would be going to Eton for her adorers; and there slid into her mind, apparently from nowhere, the words, In sickness and in health....

How comfortable, how restful, how safe, she thought, considering them wistfully.

Yes, but what they were talking about was husbands. It was husbands who had to stick to one in sickness as well as in health, in one's wrinkled stages as well as in the tight-skinned ones. Lovers hadn't got to, and wouldn't dream of doing it either, especially not young lovers. They set so high a standard for one when first they fell in love that the exertion of keeping up to it wore one out, and brought on the very condition that frightened them off. Not that she ever had to exert herself yet—oh, well, just a little, perhaps, on Dwight's last visit, when he saw her again for the first time after her illness, and looked at her with such lamentable eyes. She had supposed it was deep, loving sympathy in his eyes. Now she wasn't quite so sure. It might, just as easily, have been another Oh, my poor lady.

Walking along the platform at Paddington, that place of so many happy departures, because Conderley, in the days she now thought of as the Conderley Era, much as geologists speak of the Reptilian Age, had been a Lord-in-Waiting, and when his waits were at Windsor she would sometimes go down and spend an afternoon with him, coming back in time for dinner with her arms full of flowers and her eyes all lit up (for say what you will, there's nothing like a lover for making a woman be all lit up)—walking, then, along this platform of memories that dark and foggy morning, she looked, among the other waiting passengers, as a bird of paradise might look who should have strayed into a flock of sparrows. Conspicuous, that is. Very. Her black, as Manby described the soberest of her suits, didn't seem sober at all set beside the clothes of the poor. Inevitably, seeing the House it came from, there was an air about it, and an air, too, about her small black hat, pulled at the precise right angle over one eye. This hat, a most rakish and provocative affair in the eyes of the humble women on the platform, was perfectly plain except for a single scarlet quill sticking out, gaily and brightly, in the gloom, and her eyes, though the reverse of gay, were bright, too, from her recent scrap with Sir Stilton, and her cheeks were still flushed with fury. So that altogether she was a conspicuous figure; and a knot of harassed women, drooping beneath bundles and babies, watched her, half envious and half shocked.

"One of them kept ones," they decided, the most harassed among them remarking to her grim-mouthed neighbour that there seemed a lot to be said for this being kept business.

"Shut up, Mrs. Tombs," rebuked the neighbour.

"Hullo, Fanny," said a man's pleasant voice behind her as the train drew in. "Where on earth are you off to in this beastly fog?" And as she turned, surprised and vexed, for she had no wish to meet anyone she knew, he added, his eyes twinkling all over her, "You're looking very fit this morning. Getting back into your stride, what?"

Instantly she began to revive. There it was at last, after weeks and weeks, the familiar note of admiration. It warmed her like wine; it braced her like a tonic; better than any medicine or advice doctors might give her, was this simple assurance in her cousin's voice and eyes that she was lovely. Bother birthdays, bother Byles, bother Job, thought Fanny, smiling up into the smiling eyes which were so flatteringly and openly taking in every detail of her appearance.

"I'm fresh from a beauty parlour and a doctor," she said, "so if I can't look fit now, when shall I?"

"A doctor, Fanny? My dear girl," said Pontyfridd, taking her arm and walking her across the platform to a suitable carriage—he was her first cousin, as well as her first love when she was still in the schoolroom, and they had always been the greatest friends,—"don't, for God's sake, get into the doctor habit. You've been dosed enough, all those months in the country. Just forget it now, and enjoy yourself. Niggs—" she was his wife,—"is never out of that fellow's house. That fellow in Harley Street. Styles, or some such name."

"Byles," said Fanny.

"Yes, Byles. My heaven, what a name. Do you know him?"

"Do I not?" said Fanny gaily, for suddenly Byles and his hateful talk seemed entirely negligible. Here she was, with her own sort, her own set, her own blood, and oh, it was cosy—so cosy and safe, after the desolation of Byles's presence. "That's why," she laughed up at Pontyfridd, bigger than ever in his fur-lined coat, "I'm off for a day in the country, to try and get over him."

"Splendid, darling. You'll come with me, and we'll get over him together. Wait till his bills begin coming in, though. He needs a lot of getting over then. You'd think my poor small Niggs had more the matter with her than her tiny body possibly had room for. I'm going to Windsor. I've got to see the Office of Works about something at the Castle. We'll lunch together, and you shall tell me what you've got into your little head that has started you off being doctored again. Yes, darling, you're lunching with me to-day," he said as she opened her mouth to speak. "Why it's simply years since we've had a jaunt together."

He helped her into the carriage. "There they go," grumbled Mrs. Tombs, nudging her neighbour. "Getting into a first-class carriage while you and me, just because we're respectable, 'as to go third like 'errings."

"Shut up, Mrs. Tombs," rebuked the neighbour.

Mrs. Tombs, however, declined to shut up. On the contrary, she loudly commented on the rug the gentleman was carefully tucking round the lady's knees. "See that there rug?" she inquired of her embarrassed neighbour. "Solid fur, that is. Do you and me get tucked up in solid fur? Not 'alf, and it's because we're respectable. I tell you, Mrs. W., there's no money in being respectable."

"Now just you 'ush," said the neighbour, shocked.

"Well, I ain't going to. I've 'ushed a lot too much, first and last. 'Ushing don't get you far, no more than being respectable. An' if we could look inside two stomachs in there, I don't mind betting they're both as full as they'll 'old of good fried bacon. You and me ain't got no bacon inside us, 'ave we, an' d'you know why?"

"No, and don't want to," snapped her friend, trying to pull her away.

"Want to or not, you're goin' to 'ear," persisted Mrs. Tombs. "It's because we're respectable. I tell you there's no money in it, and I'm fed up, and I'd chuck it to-morrow and go off with 'im in there or anybody you like to name, if 'e'd give me a good 'ot breakfast first."

"You're a sinful woman, an' I shall 'ave to pray for you," was all her scandalized neighbour could say, making another attempt to pull her away.

"George darling," said Fanny, carefully not looking through the window, and though she couldn't quite hear what the two were saying, unable not to conjecture it was something about herself and her cousin that wasn't quite nice, "do you think that poor thing is—? Do you think she has been—?"

"I hope so," said Pontyfridd, who, being as quick at hearing as he was at seeing, hadn't missed a word. "Poor devil," he added. "This frightful morning is enough to make anyone want to. But I must say it seems a bit early." And on a sudden impulse—he was famous in the family for his sudden impulses,—he opened the door, jumped out, went up to the two women, who looked completely scared, and patted Mrs. Tombs reassuringly on the shoulder.

"You'll miss the train, now," he said pleasantly, "if you stand here gossiping. Both of you go and have a good hot meal in the restaurant car. My guests, you know. I'll tell the attendant. Hurry along—and have lots of bacon with the chicken," he finished, winking at Mrs. W., who, as she said afterwards, could have sunk, and gently pushing Mrs. Tombs, while Mrs. W. pulled, towards the rear of the train.

"Take your seats, please," shouted the guard, coming along with his green flag.

"Hold on a minute," caned out Pontyfridd. "Let these ladies get to the restaurant car—" and going back into his compartment he slammed the door, re-arranged the rug round Fanny, and asked if she had heard what they said.

"No," said Fanny. "But I think it was rude. What was it?"

"I'll tell you at luncheon," laughed Pontyfridd, settling himself in his corner.

But presently he didn't laugh, and said, for the second time, "Poor devil." And, again presently, he leaned across to her, and asked, "Fanny, do you ever hate yourself?" and when she, smiling at such an odd question, and still being very much the adorable, desirable woman, answered, "No. Ought I to?" he looked at her a moment a little thoughtfully, and offering her his cigarette case said, "Well, well—what a time we take to grow up, don't we."

She hadn't an idea what he meant; but, as it didn't sound very promising, decided not to ask. Besides, there was an expression on his face as if for two pins he might start talking about the European situation—a serious, slightly abstracted expression.

She was a sensible woman—Fanny long had prided herself on being sensible,—and she knew that men sometimes must be serious; but let them, she held, be serious in their offices, or their Cabinet meetings, or their cathedrals, or the House, and not waste precious moments when they are alone with a pretty woman. Everything had its appointed moment. Even the Bible said there was a time for this, and a time for that; while as for the phrase pretty woman, she very well knew it was an under-statement. Always she had been most exquisite. She was simply unable to remember a time when, if she came into a room, there hadn't seemed to be a quick silence, a holding of the breath.

So that naturally she was, till lately, very sure of herself, and just now on the platform, when Pontyfridd's eyes examined her with such obvious pleasure and appreciation, she had been as sure of herself as ever, at once forgetting every one of her recent worries and doubts, while as for Sir Stilton, with his ridiculous, Oh, my poor lady, he might never have existed. Therefore it seemed a pity that George, so generally cheerful and on the spot on occasions like this, should choose suddenly to go grave. It was those two drunks. They had upset him. Which poet was it poor Jim Conderley used to quote, who said he never could really let himself go to being happy because of his dying day, and because women had cancer? Something like that he had said; she couldn't remember the exact words. But as though it helped, not being happy! George was rather like that. The minute he saw anybody poor or cold, he left off being cheerful. If she hadn't been there, he probably would have presented the two women with his fur-lined coat. As it was, he had presented them with a meal, she discovered, on the attendant's appearing and wanting to know if the order was correct.

"You're terribly sweet, George," she said, when the man had gone, laying her hand affectionately for a moment on his knee. "I wish I had thought of that. But I seem to think of things too late always—that sort of thing, I mean."

"My lamb, you'd have created a terrific sensation if you had tried to do anything, and those women would have run like hares. Cold?" he added suddenly, looking at her more attentively.

Now what did he see? wondered Fanny, at once getting deeper into her collar.

By this time the train was well out of the black London fog, and had got into a white mist. An extremely unbecoming hard glare was filling the carriage, from which there seemed no escape except deep in the collar of her coat. Also, the wrath Byles had stirred in her had now died down and with it the brightness of her eyes. Then there had been those women, and George thinking about them instead of about her, and turning serious, which naturally had reacted on her. So that though she managed to go on smiling gaily for a little, her smiles grew fainter as the light grew stronger and he remained thoughtful, and after West Drayton they vanished altogether, because it was there that his eyes suddenly began searching her face, with the result that he asked her if she were cold.

That meant she must be looking pinched. Most unbecoming to look pinched. Flattened nostrils, and things like that.

"Oh no—not a bit," she said quickly, wriggling deeper into her collar.

"Don't you catch cold now, Fanny," he said, leaning across and taking the collar in both hands and drawing it closer round her throat.

So that was it. Those terribly observant eyes had caught sight of what Hélène had declared could be helped enormously; and immediately she made up her mind that nothing would induce her to lunch with him. What? Sit opposite him, probably facing a horrid big plate-glass window, and be obliged to unfasten her coat?

He, having fixed her up, as he imagined, all snug and warm, gave the fur an almost motherly final pat, and said, "You oughtn't to be out a day like this. It's much too freezing for a wispy thing like you. I know what," he went on quickly, "I've got some brandy. I'll give you some. Warm you up," he assured her, pulling out a small flask, and beginning to pour a little into a tiny glass.

"Do I look—so funny?" faltered Fanny.

"Not funny, darling. Never could you look anything but adorable—" well, that was better—"but a bit tired," he said, intent on not spilling the brandy.

Tired. Most unbecoming. Hollow eyes, and things like that. How much she disliked being told that she looked tired; how much she dreaded it. Only too well did she know what it meant when people, full of sympathy, exclaimed, "Fanny darling, how tired you're looking! Don't you think you ought to be in bed?"

"You told me at Paddington I was—" she began; and stopped.

"So you were, at Paddington," he agreed. "Pitch dark there, though, and anybody"—he smiled, as he offered her the little glass,—"can look fit if it's dark enough."

The brandy spilled. Either the train gave a lurch, or she took the glass clumsily, or both; but it was spilled.

"That's not kind," she said, pushing the glass away and leaning back in her corner. It was she herself now who pulled her collar as close as possible round her throat. "No, don't pour out any more. Besides, you've got to get out soon. George, that's the first unkind thing you've said to me in your life."

"Darling, I'd die sooner than hurt a single one of your extremely precious hairs—" had he noticed them too, then, and how thinned out they were?—"but we all know, don't we, that you've been very ill, and aren't nearly as strong yet as you're soon going to be—oh Lord, here's Slough. Come along. The other train's waiting."

But Fanny wouldn't come along. No, she was going to Oxford. No, she had never agreed to lunch. No, she had arranged to go to Oxford, and must stick to it. "You'll miss your train," she said, as he still stood outside the door, trying to persuade her.

"My sweet Fanny, don't be tiresome. Look how the sun's shining. And why on earth you should go to Oxford and waste your time on undergraduates—"

Waste her time? Could he mean that even undergraduates wouldn't now—?

Startled, she looked at him. Nothing after that would make her budge. So he had to go, and as his train moved out of the station and curved away round the Windsor bend, and hers presently went on its different way, she was for a while dejected again, and frightened.

Then she pulled herself together. "You're growing altogether too suspicious and touchy to live," she said aloud; and decided that what she probably needed was a good meal, and that the first thing she did in Oxford would be to go and have one.

Avoiding the bigger hotels, she went to a small one she came across in an obscure street, where she lunched alone, except for one old lady in a dark corner, attended by an ancient waiter. There was a big bright fire, and a sideboard loaded with shining electro-plated empty soup-tureens, and enormous dish-covers which covered nothing, and she thought the food much better than any she got at home.

"Why doesn't Mrs. Denton ever give me this?" she wondered, eating something she didn't know, and liking it very much.

It turned out, on inquiry of the waiter, who seemed slightly surprised at the question, to be part of a beef-steak pudding, and the vegetable, he informed her, again with slight surprise on her praising it too, was cabbage. "Savoy," said the waiter. "Savoy," repeated Fanny, making a mental note, so as not to forget to ask Mrs. Denton whether she knew about it.

After the pudding, there was apple-pie and custard, but that wasn't so good; one would have to be really very hungry, she thought, to like this kind of crust. The coffee, however, was hot and not bad, and she drew her chair up to the fire to drink it, and lit a cigarette, and, being satisfactorily fed, was inclined to smile at herself, after the varied emotions of the night, and of the day, too, as far as it had got, for being able to sit warming her knees at a strange fire in Oxford, in a condition hardly distinguishable from placid.

"It's the pudding," she decided presently. "I'm what Edward would have called slabbed down, or plugged, or some frightful word like that—" Edward having been the one next after Lord Conderley in her life, and as great a contrast to him as the Cainozoic Period was to the Reptilian Age preceding it. Her feelings, she recognized, couldn't have free play while they were entombed in pudding, hence their quiescence. How useful. She mustn't forget to ask Mrs. Denton if she knew how to make it. She might try it when Job began bothering. And gazing into the fire, her thoughts wandered to Edward in his heyday.

Dear Edward. What fun he had been. So completely disrespectful of everything and everybody Conderley had taught her to venerate. He never opened a book; he said poetry gave him a stomach-ache. And once, in the early days, when the Conderley atmosphere still hung about her and she said something about the poet Wordsworth, he called him old Fish Face. This, clearly reprehensibly, had greatly refreshed her. Strange what virtue there is in just change. Darling Edward. He used to look so particularly charming in his grey top-hat at Ascot. Yet that, too, had ended in tears—not the top-hat, though she did briefly wonder how grey top-hats ended, but their happy days together. His tears, too, if you please, this time; Edward, of all people, actually crying. But by then she had got involved with Perry—he was the one who finished by looking patient—and the only decent thing was to say good-bye to Edward. She hoped he had kept well. She didn't mean kept well, though of course she hoped that too, but kept well. He had been so very good-looking. She would really grieve if she thought he had, perhaps, grown fat, and on those hot islands, where he was Governor or something, letting himself go to too much whisky.

Immersed in the past, she sat quietly smoking while the old lady, from her table in the dark corner, watched her with a hostile eye. Old ladies of the class which is regarded as the backbone of England, and all clergymen who didn't know who she was, viewed Fanny at this time with suspicion. She was so very striking, and also ravaged. No good woman is ever, held the clergymen and the old ladies, either striking or ravaged, but especially not ravaged. The truly good woman merely gradually fades, they held. She grows dimmer and dimmer, and more and more like what one's mother used to be.

Fanny, however, at fifty wasn't in the least like anybody's mother, but had become, to look at, the sort of woman from whom clergymen instinctively shrink, and seeing her in a train they would get into another carriage, or meeting her in the street they would gaze, carefully absorbed, at the nearest equivalent to a view. If, though, on the other hand, at a public meeting she was sitting on the platform among archbishops, and her name was on the list of supporters so that they could read and know who she was, their confidence and admiration at once knew no bounds.

"That very beautiful Lady Frances Skeffington was there—you know, the daughter of the Duke of St. Bildads, the unlucky duke whose estate was ruined by having to pay death duties three times within five years," they would tell their wives afterwards. "The Archbishop seemed to take great pleasure in having her sit next to him."

"Wasn't she divorced, or something?"

"My dear, we mustn't judge."

This, though, wasn't a public meeting; there was no list of names to guide anybody, and the old lady had to go by appearances. In that place and room they were against Fanny, who presently heard an extremely distinct voice coming out of the corner behind her saying, "I mind smoking."

She was startled, and turned round quickly. She had forgotten the old lady. "I'm so sorry," she said, throwing her cigarette into the fire.

"If you had asked me if I minded I would have told you I did," said the old lady, folding up her table napkin and putting it through a bone ring. "But as you didn't ask me, I must tell you, without being asked, that I do mind. I mind very much."

"I'm so sorry," said Fanny again.

Then there was silence, during which the old lady, from the cover of her corner, studied the sideways view of the small black hat, for Fanny, now aware of her, and feeling it rude to sit with her back turned, had pushed her chair round a little, the curve of the scarlet quill, the tip, if she had known it, of a celebrated nose, and an ear-ring made of a single jewel, which she judged sham.

"One excuses," she was thinking, "a pretty girl for being a pretty girl, because it is not her fault, but an elderly woman can only lay the blame on herself if she manages, by artifices of which she should be ashamed, to seem more or less good-looking. Having had her turn, she should blush to try to go on out of it. Probably this one is here, all painted and dolled up, to see if she can pick up innocent boys."

And she thanked heaven that she herself had no innocent boys liable to be picked up, nor that which must, or should, precede innocent boys, a husband; for husbands too, she understood, were liable to become entangled in predatory female activities.

"Perhaps she'll go now," thought Fanny, who had seen the napkin being put through a ring, and therefore deduced the old lady must be staying in the hotel and liked having the same napkin over again.

She had a great longing for a cigarette, and also a great longing, having had the cigarette, to get out into the sun before the really lovely winter day folded itself away into evening; but as the old lady didn't move, she herself got up, smiled vaguely over her shoulder at her, received no faintest movement of a muscle in return, and went into the passage.

Opposite, there was a door which had Smoking written on it. It opened into a small sitting-room, with another bright fire burning, and going in and drawing up a comfortable chair to the fire, she sat down and again lit a cigarette. But she hadn't been there more than five minutes before the old lady came in, and stood looking at her.

"Am I keeping the fire off you?" asked Fanny after a moment, during which nothing was said, and moving her chair to one side. "Oh, and—" she added with a smile, holding it up, "do you mind my cigarette in here?"

"Certainly I mind it," said the old lady concisely.

"But," Fanny justified herself, "it is written on the door."

"You asked me if I minded, and I have told you."

"Oh, then, of course—"

And this one, too, was thrown into the fire.

The old lady stood in the middle of the room, leaning on her stick. "If I've said it once to the management, I've said it a hundred times," she said irritably, "that the notice on the door ought to be covered up, and 'Private' put instead. This is my sitting-room."

"I'm so sorry," said Fanny, hastily getting out of the chair. "You do see, though, don't you, that it was impossible for me to know?"

"Perhaps I should explain that the room is for my exclusive use so long as no one else is staying in the hotel. Passers-by are not eligible. I imagine you are a passer-by?"

"Yes, but I might take a room for the night and not stay in it, and then become eligible for the sitting-room, couldn't I?' asked Fanny.

"Certainly, if you care to fling money about," said the old lady, looking her up and down as much as to say she wondered whose money. "It seems a great deal to pay, though, for the questionable pleasure of smoking one cigarette."

"I'd have to have several, to make up for it," smiled Fanny.

"Then I should be driven into my bedroom. Not that I am not used to that. So many queer people come to Oxford in term time, and all of them want to smoke in here. The management is most disobliging, and does nothing to stop them. Sometimes it is so disobliging that it almost seems as if it wanted me to go. Yet, as I live here most of the year, I presume I am of value to them. Then there's the repertory theatre, and the whole of that unpleasant gang. They come here too, and make a noise, and still the management does nothing. Much as I dislike cinemas, I must say there's something to be said for them in university cities. At least the absurd creatures, those so-called stars, are fixed to their screens, and can't get off them when the performance is over, and walk about the town obstructing and inciting."

Fanny, during this, was gradually making for the door. She suspected that she was going to be buttonholed. The poor old thing evidently had no one to talk to, and was bursting with things she wanted to say. If she, Fanny, were a really nice, kind woman, she would stay and listen, but she didn't think she could really be nice and kind, so urgent was her wish to get away. Always she had dreaded buttonholers. There was an arch one in a poem Jim used to read aloud, and it was like a nightmare the way he went on and on, not letting the unhappy man he had got hold of, and who was very busy, if she remembered, and in a great hurry, go till he had said his say. This old lady showed signs of being his near relation. She was quite unlike a Lapland night. There was nothing serene and calm about her, and certainly nothing lovely. Something was wrong with that description of old age. The poet who wrote it must have been very young, and couldn't have seen many old ladies. The one before her, she felt uncomfortably, was much more the real thing. Was it possible that she herself would some day be like that? So old, that everybody who was fond of her was dead, and she dragging round hotels because her servants were dead too, and she didn't like new ones? Or, even worse, perhaps be in the clutches of a companion, and the companion, when she was bored and cross, bullying her? Noble, lovely little Fanny, whose life had ringed her round like a wreath of flowers, and all her flanks—odd how Conderley's quotations stuck,—with silken garlands drest; could it really be that to this complexion—his phrase again,—she would come at last?

The old lady, who now had assumed for Fanny the shape of things to come, was arranging herself in what was evidently her special chair, which was also the one Fanny, decidedly unlucky that day, had sat in, and was welling up in it formlessly. "Why doesn't she go?" she was thinking. "I want my nap."

But Fanny, in spite of the fear of being buttonholed, hesitated, because of the picture in her mind of what, if she went away, she would be leaving behind the shut door—the silence of the dingy hotel-room, empty except for that lonely figure by the fire, and for weeks, for months, for several more years perhaps, there the figure would be sitting in that same silence, except during occasional brief incursions of the repertory gang, and except from time to time for an argument, evidently embittered, with the management. And she thought, "Some day I shall be sitting too like that, when I've quarrelled with the companion—" adding, her better nature getting the upper hand, "I expect I ought to stay with the poor old thing really, and let her talk. George would. Look how kind he was to those women at Paddington. Why, he even patted them."

But her better nature, being as yet undeveloped—"What a time we take to grow up," George had said in the train, struck by something he missed in her,—didn't keep the upper hand long. The sun out in the street was shining too brightly, the room, facing north, with its dingy old contents, was too tomb-like. Of course it was quite true that some day she herself might be sitting alone in just such conditions, but meanwhile—

Meanwhile, she fled. "No good taking time and tombs by the forelock," she thought, pulling open the door, and with a quick good-bye going out into the passage.

Upon which the old lady said, "Thank goodness," settled herself comfortably in her chair, and at once went to sleep.

How beautiful it was outside, in the frosty stillness of the winter afternoon.

Fanny stood a moment on the edge of the pavement, drawing in deep breaths of clear, cold purity, and ridding her clothes of what she felt was the smell of mortality. Here, in these streets, there was nothing but youth, living, vital, energetic, absurd, adorable youth, with all its extremes of happiness and heartbreaks. Just as in that room she had left there had seemed to hang a smell of mortality, so out here there seemed to be a smell of new milk. How angry the young men would be, she thought amused, if she told them they made her think of milk. But they did. Pailfuls of frothing, sweet new milk everywhere; everywhere groups of thick-haired—especially she noticed the lovely thickness of their hair,—shining-faced, red-with-the-cold, cheerful young men.

"This is marvellous," said Fanny to herself, forgetting Byles, forgetting George, forgetting Job, and lifting her face up to the sun. "Really I am very glad I came."

Some pailfuls of new milk passing on the pavement—she begged their pardon, she meant young men—looked shyly at her for a moment, instantly hiding, under the cloak of good manners, their admiration and interest. It was certainly interest, and she hoped it was admiration, but of that she couldn't be quite sure, standing as she was with her face in the full light of the sun. Nice, after all, to be admired by these pleasant boys; so nice, that for her own satisfaction she would decide that they did admire her, even if it wasn't true.

Her intention had been to walk in the garden of St. John's, but this was rather far, and so long had she lingered over the pudding and the old lady that in another hour the sun would have set, and gates would begin to be shut. So she went to the New College gardens instead, for she was only a few yards off from the little curly street that leads to the main entrance. She had no need to ask the way, because this was Dwight's college, and sometimes she had lunched in his rooms, and knew well the little street, the lovely garden, and the quiet path at the end, with a high wall on one side and a screen of trees on the other, up and down which, after luncheon, she and Dwight would pace. He, in this seclusion, was able freely to illustrate his worship by gesticulations suited to his words—he was taking modern languages, and had a great choice of words,—while she listened to the rooks, whose cawings from a child had fascinated her, as they loved and quarrelled among their nests in the ancient elms. And Dwight would say that her lunching with him was an honour which would encircle his rooms in a nimbus for ever, and that they would shine now down the ages—"Oh Dwight, what a long time. Look at that rook—do you think it is being angry or affectionate?"—with her refulgence, or radiance, or something; probably refulgence, for he preferred the bigger-mouthed words.

This was the great difficulty about Dwight—always, the minute she was with him, she became absent-minded. Couldn't fix her attention; simply couldn't. Why, even when he was practically on his knees in Charles Street, telling her she was the most beautiful thing on God's earth, though she liked it very much with one half of her, the other half was wondering if Miss Cartwright had remembered to ring up Harrods about cleaning the chair covers.

She knew this was hard on Dwight, who was really a very dear boy, and extremely good-looking, and whose devotion was just then particularly welcome and reassuring, but what could she do? Mend her ways? Yes, she would seriously try to do that; and meanwhile how pleasant it was walking along what he called their path, without him. She and the rooks were very good company; it was a perfect moment of the afternoon; and she could think of him boxed up and examined with wide-awake affection and sympathy, because she wasn't being lulled into absent-mindedness by his unceasing and curiously monotonous flow of eloquence.

Well, it was easy enough to like being alone in Oxford, she said to herself, going through the iron gates into the garden, for here the memories were all recent, and harmless and unhurtful. How different from the ones which would have wrung her heart if she had gone to Cambridge! But she couldn't have gone to Cambridge. She hadn't been there for years and years. For it was there that her dear only brother had been, the person on earth she had most loved; and during his few weeks at Trinity, before the war started and he joined up and was immediately killed, she had spent each Saturday and Sunday there, sleeping at the Bull and having all her meals, even breakfast, in his little nest of rooms at the top of a ladder-like wooden staircase in Neville's Court.

Vividly, as she went into the New College gardens, and for no reason that she could discover, the memory of that brief, acutely happy tune came back to her. She was nearly ten years older than he was, and there was nothing she wouldn't have done for him. Indeed, there was nothing she didn't do, for it was because of him, though this she never breathed, that she had married Job.

The spectacularly rich Mr. Skeffington, who had an extraordinary gift for growing richer, was a wonderful parti for a penniless girl, she had always felt. Just as Bach could do what he liked with a collection of little black symbols, forming them as he chose into this or that immortal fugue, so could Job do what he liked with money. It came dancing into his pockets at a glance—a very different glance from the sort of dog-like glances she knew, for these other glances, familiar to his fellow-financiers, were hard as steel and alert and concentrated as a hawk's. He had an unerring instinct for attracting money, and, having attracted it, for manipulating it with the easy mastery of genius. Invariably he bought at the exact right moment, and sold at the exact right moment; and in private life he was generous, and kind, and affectionate, and devoted—an ideal son-in-law for a ruined duke, who, when he lost him as a relation through the divorce, grieved genuinely, and not merely because his wealth had been a godsend.

"Must you, Fanny my dear? Must you really?" the old man had asked. "Don't you think, if you tried very hard, you might perhaps—?"

Fanny shook her head. "Not seven," she answered. "Besides, it's a habit now, and after a bit there'll probably be seventy. Would you have me forgive seventy?"

No; the old man wouldn't have her forgive seventy.

Trippington was at a preparatory school when Fanny got engaged, and she went down to see him there and tell him herself, before anyone else knew.

"What—that Jew?" he exclaimed horrified. "But, Fan—you can't."

"Can't I? You'll see. He's a very nice man. Terribly kind. Much the kindest of anybody we know, and much the—the nicest, really."

"But—think of his nose."

"I do. I've thought of it a great deal. And I've come to the conclusion noses aren't everything."

"Aren't they, just. You wait till you have to start the day every morning with his wagging at you over the bacon."

"There won't be any bacon. I shall be a Jew too, and they don't have bacon."

"You a Jew too?" he exclaimed, this time completely overwhelmed. "Oh, but, Fanny—you can't."

Then she put her arm round him, and began to kiss him, but he pushed her away, and sat gripping his head in both hands.

"Now Trippy, little sweet," she said, leaning over him and giving him a butterfly-kiss with her eyelashes in the hope of making him smile, "don't be silly and throw cold water on my lovely plans. Be a good brother and give me your blessing—please, darling."

But Trippington, taking no notice of these blandishments, only said, "It's bloody,"—and immediately afterwards, looking suddenly distraught, announced that he must go out of the room a minute, because he was going to be sick.

And now he, for whose sake she had married Job, so that the thousands of acres her father had had to mortgage could be freed from debt and handed over to him, when he came to inherit, in the condition his ancestors knew, had long ago vanished out of her life, and Job, who freed the inheritance, had vanished too—Trippy for ever, behind the clanking gates of death, and Job for ever too, of course, but differently for ever. In his case she could still get at him if she wanted to, still invite him, if she wanted to, according to Sir Stilton's grotesque suggestion, to dinner; while Trippy—ah, but wasn't her darling Trippy, after all, lucky, never to have to grow old? Wasn't it a happy thing, in these days of apparently swiftly approaching horror, to know that he at least, her precious brother, was for ever safe?

Lost in these thoughts, she had by this time reached the secluded path, having walked, with the grace which made her movements so agreeable to watch, the length of the broad herbaceous border beneath the shelter of the great grey wall, and two dons, who were arguing about Pythagoras in an upper chamber overlooking the garden, paused to observe her progress.

"Who is that?" said one, hastily adjusting his spectacles.

"I don't know," said the other, hastily adjusting his. "But judging from what can be seen of the lady, I should say she was attractive."

"Well, we can't see much. And women seen from the back are often different from women seen from the front. I mean, more attractive."

"True, true. Which would you rather?"

"Both," said the other. "Now, about Pythagoras—"

Continuing along the path, Fanny came to the bend where it curved round behind the rook-filled trees, and gradually, much narrowed, returned on the south side of the garden to the iron gates again. At this bend there was a seat, and on the seat, in spite of the frostiness of the afternoon in that sunless spot, were a young man and a girl, absorbed in kissing each other; in fact, they were locked in each other's arms. Such honest kissing Fanny had never seen, so whole-hearted, so vigorous. The girl's cap had fallen off, and lay unnoticed on the ground. Her thick dark curls, wildly ruffled up, were the only bit of head to be seen. So much preoccupied were they, so dusky was the shrub-screened comer, and so light of foot the slender, not to say emaciated, Fanny, that she was upon them before either they or she knew it. Almost she tripped over their carelessly-flung-out and forgotten feet, and greatly startled and embarrassed, besides being really sorry to have disturbed what was, after all, one of the most interesting moments of life, she stammered something apologetic, and with bowed head and eyes discreetly lowered was hastening on, when the two made the mistake rabbits make, and instead of remaining motionless and interlocked, hurriedly disentangled themselves; and one of them was Dwight.

"Oh," he said, scrambling to his feet, instinctively pulling his scarf straight and passing his hand over his hair. His face was scarlet.

"Oh," said Fanny, pausing, for once in her life unable to deal with a social situation.

The girl, whose face too was scarlet—but that was from the violence of the kissing,—sat where she was, her curls in an immense disorder (enviable creature, thought Fanny even at this juncture, to have so much hair that when it was in disorder the disorder was immense), staring, half abashed and half defiant, at the obviously grand lady who seemed to know Dwight.

Could it be his mother? She had heard rich American ladies were terribly smart. And if it was his mother, wouldn't the fat be rather in the fire? But from both the lady's expression and Dwight's, it looked as if the fat were already in the fire—yet what had she done, except enjoy herself and help Dwight to enjoy himself? What was wrong with a little enjoyment?

She pulled Dwight's sleeve. "If it's your mother, you'd better introduce me," she said in a whisper; but they were all three so close together that whispering was no good as an instrument of tact.

"Do, Dwight," said Fanny, really very sorry for him.

Dwight mumbled something. Neither Fanny nor the girl was any the wiser. Miss Parker, Perkins, Parbury, Partington, it sounded like, something beginning with Par, and fizzling out in confusion; while the girl only caught the single monosyllable Skeff. But Skeff was enough to show her that it wasn't Dwight's mother, unless she had married again. Perhaps his aunt, then; though she really didn't know why, if it were only an aunt, he should look so much upset.

Then there was handshaking The girl, getting up for this ceremony, showed herself as a dumpy little thing, very round in a yellow knitted jumper, tight-skinned indeed, thought Fanny, who, beholding her straightened out and unfolded, was sorrier than ever for Dwight. How much that poor boy must have suffered from her own exiguousness, and her marked avoidance of letting him come too close—no closer, in fact, than sometimes, before her illness, when there was still enough of it, being allowed to touch her hair. This little plump thing, bursting with young ripeness through her jumper, was real substantial flesh and blood, intensely alive, almost audibly crackling with vigour; and Fanny, looking at her, felt as if her own bones were hardly covered enough for decency, and that she was nothing but a pale ghost wandered from the rapidly cooling past, strayed into a richly warm generation to which she in no way belonged. Nor did she, confronted by the girl's abounding youth, even resent being taken for Dwight's mother. She easily might have been his mother. It would be the natural conclusion for that evidently lively young brain to come to. Besides, she was too completely sorry for him, standing there defenceless, all his fine words and eloquence silenced, to resent anything.

But she hadn't a notion what to do next. Dwight evidently hadn't a notion either. In the face of what she had seen, and they both knew she had seen, conversation on ordinary lines would be a mockery. Graciousness, too, on her part, could only further prostrate poor Dwight; while as for suggesting everyday things, such as their coming and having tea with her at the Mitre or somewhere, to sit having tea with him under the circumstances would be a mockery, and a most subtle torture for the unhappy young man.

It was the girl who solved the problem. Not liking the look on either of their faces, and having no mind to be mixed up in a row just when she had been enjoying herself so much, she stooped quickly, snatched her cap, clapped it on her head with the gay indifference of a child as to whether it were straight or crooked, and said, "Well, so long. I must be trotting home to get tea for mother—" and nodding a "Good afternoon, Mrs. Skeff," to Fanny, and to Dwight a jaunty "See you this evening, p'raps—" with bounding little footsteps, buttoning her jacket as she went, she hurried away.

Without her, though it couldn't be said there was relief, there was at least change, the situation, however, still remaining in the category of that which must be worse before it can be better.

"I'm so sorry, Dwight," was all Fanny could think of to say, after a painful silence, as they walked slowly back the way she had come. "I mean—"

But what did she mean? She meant, she supposed, for interrupting, for blundering in on him.

Dwight, who such a few minutes before had been one enormous throb of very delicious and satisfactory love, now had only a single wish, and that was never to feel, see, think of, or hear about love again. "That's all right," he said, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the ground, his feet sulkily kicking up the gravel at the edge of the path.

An inadequate reply. Still, was there any reply, she asked herself, the unfortunate boy could make which would be adequate?

"You needn't come with me, you know," she said, after another painful silence. "Not if you'd rather—if there's anything else—"

But as everything she began to say at once landed her in fresh difficulties, she stopped.

"That's all right," he said a second time; again inadequate, and again sulkily kicking up the gravel.

Alas, poor Dwight—all his eloquent words gone dumb, at the very moment when she, for the first time in his company, wasn't absent-minded.

From their upper chamber the two dons, seeing her reappearing on the path below, hastily adjusted their spectacles again. This time she was coming towards them, and they were gratified to observe that she was as attractive turned frontways as she had been turned the other way; or seemed to be, at that distance, to their short-sighted, Greek-strained eyes. Indeed, she seemed more than attractive—she seemed definitely beautiful, and very like their idea of Helen of Troy.

With alacrity they thrust Pythagoras out of their conversation, and concentrated on the approaching lady.

"I imagined she wouldn't be long without an escort," said the slightly older one of the two.

"It's that American—the Rhodes boy," said the slightly younger one, peering.

"What an odd place to go and fetch him out of—those bushes at the end of the garden."

"As if he were the infant Moses."

"And she a king's daughter."

"Which she easily might be—or a daughter of the gods."

"Curious, though, that our prize boy doesn't seem to be enjoying himself."

"No—does he. Slouching along."

"Yes. As though he were sulky."

"Yes, positively hang-dog. Amazing. Si jeunesse savait—"

"Ah. Yes, indeed. Ah. Well. Now about that theory of yours—"

For the couple having disappeared beneath the window, short of stretching themselves out of it to watch, which would have been unseemly, there was nothing for it but to get on with Pythagoras.