Читать книгу The Creators - Sinclair May - Страница 8
IV
ОглавлениеOn the fourteenth day, Tanqueray, completely recovered, went out for a walk. And the first thing he did when he got back was to look at his note-book to see what day of the month it was.
It was the tenth, the tenth of June, the day of the Dog Show. And the memorandum stared him in the face: "Rose Show. Remember to take a holiday."
He looked in the paper. The show began at ten. And here he was at half-past one. And here was Rose, in her old green and brown, bringing in his luncheon.
"Rose," he said severely, "why are you not at the Rose Show?"
Rose lowered her eyes. "I didn't want to go, sir."
"How about the new gown?"
(He remembered it.)
"That don't matter. Aunt's gone instead of me."
"Wearing it? She couldn't. Get into it at once, and leave that confounded cloth alone and go. You've plenty of time."
She repeated that she did not want to go, and went on laying the cloth.
"Why not?" said he.
"I don't want to leave you, sir."
"Do you mean to say you've given up that Dog Show—with Joey in it—for me?"
"Joey isn't in it; and I'd rather be here looking after you."
"I won't be looked after. I insist on your going. Do you hear?"
"Yes, sir, I hear you."
"And you're going?"
"No, sir." She meditated with her head a little on one side; a way she had. "I've got a headache, and—and—and I don't want to go and see them other dogs, sir."
"Oh, that's it, is it? A feeling for Joey?"
But by the turn of head he knew it wasn't. Rose was lying, the little minx.
"But you must go somewhere. You shall go somewhere. You shall go—I say, supposing you go for a drive with me?"
"You mustn't take me for drives, sir."
"Mustn't I?"
"I don't want you to give me drives—or—or anything."
"I see. You are to do all sorts of things for me, and I'm not to be allowed to do anything for you."
She placed his chair for him in silence, and as he seated himself he looked up into her face.
"Do you want to please me, Rose?"
Her face was firm as she looked at him. It was as if she held him in check by the indomitable set of her chin, and the steady light of her eyes. (Where should he be if Rose were to let herself go?)
Her mouth trembled, it protested against these austerities and decisions. It told him dumbly that she did want, very much, to please him; but that she knew her place.
Did she? Did she indeed know her place? Did he know it?
"You're right, Rose. That isn't the way I ought to have put it. Will you do me the honour of going for a drive with me?"
She looked down, troubled and uncertain.
"It can be done, Rose," he said, answering her thoughts. "It can be done. The only thing is, would you like it?"
"Yes, sir, I would like it very much."
"Can you be ready by three o'clock?"
At three she was ready.
She wore the lilac gown she had bought for the Show, and the hat. It had red roses in it.
He did not like her gown. It was trimmed with coarse lace, and he could not bear to see her in anything that was not fine.
"Is anything wrong with my hair?" said Rose.
"No, nothing's wrong with your hair, but I think I like you better in the green and brown——"
"That's only for every day."
"Then I shall like you better every day."
"Why do you like my green and brown dress?"
He looked at her again and suddenly he knew why.
"Because you had it on when I first saw you. I say, would you mind awfully putting it on instead of that thing?"
She did mind, awfully; but she went and put it on. And still there was something wrong with her. It was her hat. It did not go with the green and brown. But he felt that he would be a brute to ask her to take that off, too.
They drove to Hendon and back. They had tea at "Jack Straw's Castle." (Rose's face surrendered to that ecstasy.) And then they strolled over the West Heath and found a hollow where Rose sat down under a birch-tree and Tanqueray stretched himself at her feet.
"Rose," he said suddenly, "do you know what a wood-nymph is?"
"Well," said Rose, "I suppose it's some sort of a little animal."
"Yes, it's a little animal. A delightful little animal."
"Can you catch it and stroke it?"
"No. If you tried it would run away. Besides, you're not allowed to catch it, or to stroke it. The wood-nymph is very strictly preserved."
Rose smiled; for though she did not know what a wood-nymph was, she knew that Mr. Tanqueray was looking at her all the time.
"The wood-nymphs always dress in green and brown."
"Like me?"
"Like you. Only they don't wear boots" (Rose hid her boots), "nor yet collars."
"You wouldn't like to see me without a collar."
"I'd like to see you without that hat."
Any difficulty in taking Rose about with him would lie in Rose's hat. He could not say what was wrong with it except that the roses in it were too red and gay for Rose's gravity.
"Would you mind taking it off?"
She took it off and put it in her lap. Surrendered as she was, she could not disobey. The eternal spell was on her.
Tanqueray removed her hat gently and hid it behind him. He laid his hands in her lap. It was deep delight to touch her. She covered his hands with hers. That was all he asked of her and all she thought of giving.
On all occasions which she was prepared for, Rose was the soul of propriety and reserve. But this, the great occasion, had come upon her unaware, and Nature had her will of her. Through Rose she sent out the sign and signal that he waited for. And Rose became the vehicle of that love which Nature fosters and protects; it was visible and tangible, in her eyes, and in her rosy face and in the naïf movements of her hands.
Sudden and swift and fierce his passion came upon him, but he only lay there at her feet, holding her hands, and gazing into her face, dumb, like any lover of her class.
Then Rose lifted her hands from his and spoke.
"What have you done with my hat?"
In that moment he had turned and sat on it.
Deliberately, yet impulsively, and without a twinge of remorse, he had sat on it. But not so that Rose could see him.
"I haven't done anything with it," said he, "I couldn't do anything with a hat like that."
"You've 'idden it somewhere."
He got up slowly, feigning a search, and produced what a minute ago had been Rose's hat.
It was an absurd thing of wire and net, Rose's hat, and it had collapsed irreparably.
"Well, I declare, if you haven't gone and sat on it."
"It looks as if I had. Can you forgive me?"
"Well—if it was an accident."
He looked down upon her tenderly.
"No, Rose, it was not an accident. I couldn't bear that hat."
He put his hand on her arm and raised her to her feet.
"And now," he said, "the only thing we can do is to go and get another one."
They went slowly back, she shamefaced and bareheaded, he leading her by the arm till they found themselves in Heath Street outside a magnificent hat-shop.
Chance took him there, for Rose, interrogated on the subject of hat-shops, was obstinately reticent.
But here, in this temple, in its wonderful window, before a curtain, on a stage, like actors in a gay drama, he saw hats; black hats and white hats; green and blue and rose-coloured hats; hats of all shapes and sizes; airily perched; laid upon velvet; veiled and unveiled; befeathered and beflowered. Hats of a beauty and a splendour before which Rose had stood many a time in awful contemplation, and had hurried past with eyes averted, leaving behind her the impermissible dream.
And now she had a thousand scruples about entering. He had hit, she said, on the most expensive shop in Hampstead. Miss Kentish wouldn't think of buying a hat there. No, she wouldn't have it. He must please, please, Mr. Tanqueray, let her buy herself a plain straw and trim it.
But he seized her by the arm and drew her in. And once in there was no more use resisting, it only made her look foolish.
Reality with its harsh conditions had vanished for a moment. It was like a funny dream to be there, in Madame Rodier's shop, with Mr. Tanqueray looking at her as she tried on innumerable hats, and Madame herself, serving her, putting the hats on the right way, and turning her round and round so that Mr. Tanqueray could observe the effect from every side of her.
Madame talked all the time to Mr. Tanqueray and ignored Rose.
Rose had a mortal longing for a rose-coloured hat, and Madame wouldn't let her have it. Madame, who understood Mr. Tanqueray's thoughts better than if he had expressed them, insisted on a plain black hat with a black feather.
"That's madame's hat, sir," said Madame. "We must keep her very simple."
"We must," said Tanqueray, with fervour. He thought he had never seen anything so enchanting in its simplicity as Rose's face under the broad black brim with its sweeping feather.
Rose had to wear the hat going home. Tanqueray carried the old one in a paper parcel.
At the gate of the corner house he paused and looked at his watch.
"We've half-an-hour yet before we need go in. I want to talk to you."
He led her through the willows, and up the green slope opposite the house. There was a bench on the top, and he made her sit on it beside him.
"I suppose," he said, "you think that when we go in I shall let you wait on me, and it'll be just the same as it was before?"
"Yes, sir. Just the same."
"It won't, Rose, it can't. You may wait on me to-night, but I shall go away to-morrow."
She turned her face to him, it was dumb with its trouble.
"Oh no—no, sir—don't go away."
"I must. But before I go, I want to ask you if you'll be my wife——"
The hands she held clasped in her lap gripped each other tight. Her mouth was set.
"I'm asking you now, Rose. To be my wife. My wife," he repeated fiercely, as if he repelled with violence a contrary suggestion.
"I can't be your wife, sir," she said.
"Why not?"
"Because," she said simply, "I'm not a lady."
At that Tanqueray cried, "Ah," as if she had hurt him.
"No, sir, I'm not, and you mustn't think of it."
"I shall think of nothing else, and talk of nothing else, until you say yes."
She shook her little head; and from the set of her chin he was aware of the extreme decision of her character.
He refrained from any speech. His hand sought hers, for he remembered how, just now, she had unbent at the holding of her hand.
But she drew it gently away.
"No," said she. "I look at it sensible. I can see how it is. You've been ill, and you're upset, and you don't know what you're doin'—sir."
"I do—madam."
She smiled and drew back her smile as she had drawn back her head. She was all for withdrawal.
Tanqueray in his attempt had let go the parcel that he held. She seized it in a practical, business-like manner which had the perfect touch of finality. Then she rose and went back to the house, and he followed her, still pleading, still protesting. But Rose made herself more than ever deaf and dumb. When he held the gate open for her she saw her advantage, darted in, and vanished (his divinity!) down the area steps.
She went up-stairs to her little garret, and there, first of all, she looked at herself in the glass. Her face was strange to her under the black hat with its sweeping feather. She shook her head severely at the person in the glass. She made her take off the hat with the feather and put it by with that veneration which attends the disposal of a best hat. The other one, the one with the roses, she patted and pulled and caressed affectionately, till she had got it back into something of the shape it had been, to serve for second best. Then she wished she had left it as it was.
She loved them both, the new one because he had given it her, and the old one because he had sat on it.
Finally she smoothed her hair to an extreme sleekness, put on a clean apron and went down-stairs.
In the evening she appeared to Tanqueray, punctual and subservient, wearing the same air of reticence and distance with which she had waited on him first. He was to see, it seemed to say, that she was only little Rose Eldred, his servant, to whom it was not proper that he should speak.
But he did speak. He put his back to the door she would have escaped by, and kept her prisoned there, utterly in his power.
Rose, thus besieged, delivered her ultimatum.
"Well," she said, "you take a year to think it over sensible."
"A year?"
"A year. And if you're in the same mind then as you are now, p'raps I won't say no."
"A year? But in a year I may be dead."
"You come to me," said Rose, "if you're dyin'."
"And you'll have me then?" he said savagely.
"Yes. I'll 'ave you then."
But, though all night Tanqueray by turns raged and languished, it was Rose who, in the morning, looked about to die. Not that he saw her. He never saw her all that day. And at evening he listened in vain for her call at the gate, her salutation to the night: "Min—Min—Minny! Puss—Puss—Puss!"
For in the afternoon Rose left the house, attended by her uncle, who carried by its cord her little trunk.
In her going forth she wore a clean white linen gown. She wore, not the Hat, nor yet the sad thing that Tanqueray had sat on, but a little black bonnet, close as a cap, with a black velvet bow in the front, and black velvet strings tied beneath her chin.
It was the dress she had worn when she was nurse in a gentleman's family.
