Complete Novels of E Nesbit, page 382
“Good night,” she said again.
“Won’t you ask me in?” he said.
“Now?’ said she, anxious and tremulous.
“My foot—” he said; “it’s a long way to Great Ormonde Street.”
Daphne was pitifully anxious not to set at naught the conventions of Bohemia. Perhaps it was “the thing” in Fitzroy Street circles to entertain unexpected callers at half-past ten at night. And when providence sends acquaintances in that sudden way, it is flying in the face of providence to be stiff and silly. But —
“I can’t,” said Daphne. “Doris is asleep — my little sister, you know.”
He looked at the darkness beyond the open door.
“Well, then,” he said, “I’ll sit at the foot of the stairs and rest. May I?”
“Oh — that,” said Daphne.
They went in together. The light from the street dully illumined the hall, and made visible the gray and brown shadows of hall and stairs; the long landing window showed, in squares, the yellowish dusk of London sky at night He let himself down on to the stairs with a sigh of relief.
“It’s the first time I’ve been out,” he said, “I walked farther than I was good for. And then I couldn’t get there in time. And I very much wanted to.
She felt that he had tried to get to the sketch-club.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’m not,” said he. Pause.
And once more she said: “Goodnight.”
“No,” he said, obstinately, “that’s absurd. Sit down on the stairs and we’ll pretend that we’re sitting out a dance. Isn’t the band good?”
“And the floor is excellent,” said she. She had sat down two steps above him.
“Have you been to the play lately?” he asked, as the empty-headed do at dances, ask.
“We went to ‘Man and Superman,”’ she said. “I do think it’s silly.”
“Didn’t you like it? Most young ladies rave over Mr. Bernard Shaw.”
“Oh, it was clever,” said Daphne, “much cleverer than anything I ever saw. But—”
“But?”
“People don’t run after people like that in real life. It’s simply caricature!”
“Don’t they?” said he. “You think all that about the life-force is nonsense?”
“I don’t know,” she said; “anyway, even if it isn’t, people don’t behave like that.”
“I wonder,” said he. “Well. I wonder. You think it’s always the men who do the running?”
“Isn’t it?” said she.
“Yes,” he said, “in books.”
Suddenly, for no reason that she could have given, she wished her stairs clear of him.
“Good night,” she said. “It’s late. I must go.” She rose, and he also rose.
“Do sit down again,” he said. “My foot—”
“I can’t possibly stay,” said she, and stayed. “You’re offended,” said he, “at the idea that perhaps some women do do a little of the running. What a strong esprit de corps there is among women!”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Why, you’re angry, a little, at a quite simple criticism of those other women who resemble you least.”
It was a flat-footed apology for an implication that he ought never to have made.
“I think,” she said, “that I could make a noise exactly like a cab whistle. Shall I try to call a hansom for you? It’s time, isn’t it?”
“Unforgiving,” he murmured.
“I wish,” said she, “that you would talk so that I can understand what you mean — if you do mean anything.”
“Do you?” he said; and even to her ears his voice held the note of danger.
But she was not afraid of danger.
“Yes,” she said.
And instantly danger was a far-off thing, and he was saying humbly:
“Yes, I know I’m very stupid. It’s my foot that’s gone to my head. That s what I want you not to be unforgiving about.”
She wished that she knew him better. For she realized that the circumstances were favourable to an exchange of what Mr. Kipling’s Indians call “real talk.” They were alone. The light was not sufficiently keen to be treacherous, yet it was strong enough to be companionable. The house was quiet, with a quiet that the low murmur of London only accentuated. Once more the memory of his hand came to her, and she hated it for coming. When she said good-bye they would shake hands. Meanwhile there was a silence. It was he who at last broke it.
“By Jove,” he said, “I do wonder how you came to be in this galère. Tell me all about yourself.” Folly only knows what she might have told him. The man was there, the girl was young, and the hour propitious, but even then the stairs creaked to a cautious weight, and Mrs. Delarue close upon the two murmured cumbrous apologies.
“Don’t you move for me, me dears,” she said. “Hearing voices I didn’t know but what it wasn’t burglars, so I come down to see. Always bold as a lion I was, in the dark, even as a child. Don’t you go to get up, miss. I’ll step up and stay along with the little gell as long as you like. It’s nice an’ cool on the stairs — seems as if you could really get a breaff of fresh air here.”
“No,” said Daphne, who had risen. “I’m going up at once. Good night Mr. Henry.”
And she put out her hand — it would be only an ordinary handshake. It was not a handshake at all. He did not seem to see the hand.
“Good night,” he said. “Thank you for letting me rest here. Mrs. Delarue, you might try to get me a cab.”
Mrs. Delarue came down. Daphne went up. On the first landing she paused and looked down. Would he raise his face to see the last of her? Not he. He was lighting a cigarette. She stood looking down at the pulsating redness of it. There were wheels. Mrs. Delarue’s footsteps.
“‘Ere’s your cab, sir,” she was saying, “and I do feel sorry for the way I come interrupting pleasant company just now. If I’d ‘ad any idea—”
“Mrs. Delarue,” said he, rising stiffly, “if you ever dare to have ideas I will cut you into little pieces and burn you in the studio fire.”
“It’s all right, sir — I didn’t even see what young lady it was, sir. Believe me I didn’t.”
They didn’t teach lying at your school,” said he, “and you haven’t the sense to pick up an education, like some people. I’ve been seeing Miss Carmichael home from the sketch-club, and my foot hurt, so she let me rest. But I don’t choose that any one should know that I’m human. Therefore they’re not to know that my foot hurt. Therefore you’re not to say that you saw me resting here. If I find that you’ve talked I’ll tell every single person I know that you’re a blab, and a dirty worker, and that you take my shirts away to get them washed and don’t bring them back, and that you know where I keep my money and that it’s never the same after you’ve been alone in the room with it, and that you don’t dam my socks. I’ll tell them that you read my letters, and sell my rough sketches to Mrs. Pritchard for sixpence each after you’ve picked them out of the fireplace. I’ll let everyone know that I had eleven handkerchiefs at Easter and now I’ve got three — and that I don’t know where my tea and butter go. I’ll—”
“Lor love you, sir,” interrupted Mrs. Delarue, “you will have your joke. Never was a pleasanter gentleman and that I will say. But it’s eightpence the quarter for the cabman, and the time’s getting on. Let me put my arm around of you and you lean on me.”
“Come on then, my lovely,” said Henry. “Beauty shall help Genius.”
And Daphne was aware, from her vantage above, that help was really needed. The two steps which she saw him take bore the stamp of keen pain. They did not need the label supplied by his voice: “Oh damn it all!” were the last words she heard him speak that night The room on whose roof and skylights the June sun had beaten all day was hot, and sleep was difficult. Once she got up, lighted a candle, looked for and found a dried rose. She looked at it, raised her hand to fling it out into the soft night, and then put it very carefully into its envelope again. She hesitated a moment, and then kissed the rose, with a definite little air of defying the universe to show any reason why she should not kiss it.
“He understood me,” she told herself. “He wasn’t rude and horrid and swearing and cynical. Life’s very hard.”
Life was not hard at all, really. It was soon, to the sisters, an ordered garden, where sudden flowers of gaiety and pleasure sprang up between the vegetable rows of daily duties. Lessons, sewing, house-work, posing for the sketch-club, and for this girl and that The whole “set” of art students seemed to have adopted Doris. Daphne no longer felt for herself, or feared for the child the boredom — she called it by its right name now — of that dreadful second day.
Green Eyes was friendly and helpful, but never again bitterly confiding.
“She is a dear,” Daphne wrote to Columbine. “You ‘d be jealous if you were here. She’s clever, too — does the loveliest designs for art-needlework, and works them too. She doesn’t get paid half enough for it, I think. She stencilled a gorgeous portiere. And the shop sold it for four guineas. And they only gave her thirty shillings — her own design and everything. When are you coming to London? How splendid it would be if you came and stayed somewhere near us. Everyone is most awfully nice to us — except one man. He is older than the others, and they all think a lot of his work — I can’t think why — and look up to him, and are proud if he condescends to come to their studios. I shouldn’t allow him to come to mine if I had one, even if he wanted to most frightfully. He is very rude almost always, though he can be nice enough if he likes.” She paused, then put in “they tell me,” between the “though” and the “he.”
“And he swears at his charwoman, and of course no gentleman would do that. I have only seen him four times, and I don’t suppose I shall ever see him again. I cannot see what they see in him or his work. I think it makes him more conceited, because though they daren’t say things to his face because he snubs them so, of course he must know the way they look up to him, and talk about him when he isn’t there. The only person he seems to really like (is that bad grammar? can’t remember) is Claud, the boy that is my cousin. When I first met Claud he told me he should tell me about the girl he was in love with. But he never has. But he is awfully nice. It is just like I think it must be having a brother. And he introduces people to me, and they ask me out, and we do have splendid times. I am going next week to a real dinner-party in Gray’s Inn. The man has been an art student, and a medical student, and a philosophy student, and everything you can think of, so that ne knows all the different sets. And now he has come into a lot of money, and he gives dinner-parties, and gets the very nicest people. And he doesn’t mind about people not being rich. They say he is rather a bore or else very amusing, according as you are feeling at the moment I am making myself a dress on purpose. Green Eyes is helping me. It is only muslin, but she is embroidering the top of it for me with green and gold, and it will be a dream. I wish you could see it Quite a lot of people have told me I am beautiful. Isn’t it nonsense? But I think they only say it for something to say, and you can’t be offended because they say it just as if it was the weather they were talking about. The only one who didn’t was that man, and I did feel offended when he said it. It makes such a difference the way people say things, don’t you think? I think he ought to have a lesson. All the girls admire him frightfully, and he’s not really good looking at all, only very black hair with a hooked nose and a white face and eyes like smoked topazes — or do I mean cairngorms? I wish he would fall in love with me. I’d soon put him in his place. It would be a real pleasure to do it. But he’s not likely to. I believe he hates me, really.
“Everyone loves Doris. She has a heavenly time. She’s always going out to tea. She has lessons with me and I try to make them interesting. Everyone loves her. Even that man kissed her hand and called her princess. Doris is going to tea with the gazelle-lady and Claud is coming to tea with me. It’s quite usual here. Lots of the things people don’t do in books or that people are awfully shocked at if they do, are quite the proper thing in London. I shall try to get him to tell me about the girl he’s in love with. I don’t know how it is, people seem to confide in me. I suppose they have an instinct for the people who would not betray their confidence. It’s three weeks to-day since I eloped with my Dormouse. And I am beginning to feel quite safe. At first I used to live in terror of being found by Aunt Emily and dragged back by the hair to Laburnum Villa. My hair is redder than ever. And that just shows what nonsense people talk. I might be beautiful, I suppose, if my eyes were larger (they are blue enough in all conscience), and my eyebrows black instead of brown, and my eyelashes long, so that they curled and rested on my cheeks. And if my mouth were curved like Cupid’s bow instead of opening square like a pillarbox slit, and if my lips were vermillion instead of a pale sort of Indian red. And if I had quite a different sort of nose. And if my raven hair fell like a straight mantle far below my knees. Instead of which, well — you know what I’m like. But it doesn’t matter if you’re not beautiful so long as people like you, does it?”
“I do wonder why I haven’t been caught. The detectives at Scotland Yard can’t be as clever as in books. And as for Sherlock Holmes, he would have found me out in a day and three-quarters. A day and a half for jaw about his methods, and a quarter of a day for finding me. Sometimes I think that man is really a detective in disguise. He has such an odd way of looking at you. But the aunts haven’t found me, and I am still, and I hope forever, “Your free and happy “DAFFODIL.
“P. S. We are frightfully hard up, but that is only jolly, and a thing for jokes when everyone else is the same. We have to be awfully careful and go without lots of things. Now don’t you dare to send me another present of any sort, birthday or not, for a whole year, because I won’t have it. If you do I’ll send back that dear wicked diamond heart!
“P. P. S. Even if Scotland Yard does find me I shall simply refuse to live with the aunts and appeal to Uncle Hamley. And I hope I shall be able to go to him before they do find me. I must get on with my white dress now. I do wonder why detectives are Such idiots. But I’m jolly glad they are. — D.”
Scotland Yard may sometimes deserve such epithets. But in this case it had not deserved them. Its failure to discover Daphne did not arise from any lack of skill on its part, but was rooted in a simple fact for which it was not responsible. Scotland Yard had never been asked to find her.
Cousin Jane, in the first bewildered shock of Daphne’s disappearance, would have run straight to the police-station, but Aunt Emily controlled all such hasty action with a firm hand.
“No,” she said, “we’ll just quietly make inquiries among the tradespeople. You just mark my words, we shall have my lady back again in a day or two with her mouth full of humble pie. She’ll be sorry enough before she’s done.”
“Leave her alone and she’ll come home,” said Uncle Harold, gaily.
“But suppose something happens to her?” suggested Cousin Simpshall.
“Nothing will. With the child,” said Aunt Emily, “and she hasn’t got enough money to go on with for long. Now you see how wise I was to insist on just moderate pocket-money. We’d better all put our bonnets on and go out at once. Tactful inquiries, remember. As if she was later than we expected and that was all. Harold will put out your cloth-topped boots for you, in your study — and I should wear your purple muffler. These spring days are very deceptive.”
Cousin Henrietta and Cousin Jane, left alone, looked at each other.
“I believe she’s run back to school.” said Cousin Henrietta, calmly.
“If Cousin Emily doesn’t tell the police I shall,” said Cousin Jane in tears. “Poor dear pretty young thing — all alone in London. And one hears such dreadful stories.”
“When you remember what her mother was,” said Cousin Henrietta, in tones full of sinister meaning, “I agree with you that she wants looking after.”
“Her mother was very generous and impulsive, if you mean that,” said Cousin Jane, roused to a show of spirit. “And I must ask you not to speak against her to me. And if no one else goes to the police I shall.”
“Well, wait till to-morrow,” said Cousin Simpshall. “I dare say she’ll be back by night.”
By night Daphne had not returned, but Cousin Simpshall had had a little talk with Aunt Emily. And after that breakfast at which Mr. St. Hilary’s letter had been opened and discussed Aunt Emily had a little talk with Cousin Jane. Aunt Emily, it seemed, had now heard from Daphne and was satisfied that she was safe. “And don’t you say a word to anyone,” said she. “She’ll come back in time. We mustn’t have a scandal. I dare say if she’s in a proper frame of mind I shall consent to overlook her conduct this once. But if your Uncle Hamley heard of it he’d never forgive her, never.”
“No. I see,” said Cousin Jane, meekly—”but, oh, you think she’s quite safe, don’t you?
“I know it,” said Mrs. Veale, “and that ought to be enough for you, Jane.”
“It is,” said Cousin Jane; “if you say so, Emily, of course it’s all right. I didn’t know she’d written.”
“It’s just a silly, girlish freak,” said Aunt Emily, who, though not an habitual liar, had had enough practice in lying to perform the trick with the automatic ease of an expert, “but Uncle Hamley would be so angry. We must try to shield her.”
“That s very kind of you,” said Jane, in such blank astonishment that Aunt Emily needed some self-control not to stamp her foot at her; “but oughtn’t we to try to see her and—”
“Nonsense,” she said. “Go and put out the clean pillow-cases and don’t interfere. And don’t worry. You ought to know by this time that I always know best.”
“Yes, I know,” said Cousin Jane.
It was easy to say don’t worry. But it was not the worrying only. It was the missing, day by day, of the bright presence of youth in that house stuffy with the breath of age — imprisoned behind windows of double glass. When you have nothing left in your life of beauty or gaiety — when you nave, indeed, never had but the most exiguous scrapings of either, your heart is apt to turn, with a passion that youth neither understands nor appreciates, to those who, in their youth, have both in full measure.
