III.
The children, as he approached, were standing before her. David had scratched his finger, and the three were breathlessly examining the wounded hand for traces of the disaster. Brightly Mary was explaining that the place of the wound was over the home of very big drops of “blug,” which could not possibly squeeze out of so tiny a window; when Angela, turning at footsteps, exclaimed: “Oh, dear, oh, dear, what shall we do? Here's Bob!”
Alarm drummed in Mary's heart: fluttered upon her cheeks. She had felt, as she told her George, so certain that from Bob she had now not even acknowledgment to fear, that this deliberate intrusion set her mind bounding into disordered apprehensions—stumbling among them, terrified, out of breath.
When he had raised his hat, bade her good morning, she could but sit dumbly staring at him-questioning, incapable of speech.
It was Angela that answered his salutation: “Oh, why have you come here? You spoil everything.”
“Hook!” said Bob.
David asked: “What's hook?”
“Run away.”
“Why?”
“Because I tell you to.”
“Why?”
Bob exclaimed: “Hasn't mother told you not to say 'Why' like that? Run away and play. I want to speak to Miss Humfray.”
David swallowed the rising interrogation; substituted instead an observant poke: “Miss Humfray doesn't want to speak to you. She hates you.”
The uncompromising directness of these brats, their gross ill-mannerliness, was a matter of which Bob made constant complaint to his mother. The belief that he observed a twitch at the corner of Mary's mouth served further to harden his tones.
He said: “Look here, you run away when I tell you, or I'll see you don't come out here any more.”
“Why?”
Bob swallowed. It was necessary before he spoke to clear his tongue of the emotions that surged upon it.
Angela, in the pause, entreated David: “Oh, don't keep saying 'Why?', David,” and before he could ask the reason she addressed Bob: “We won't go for you. If Miss Humf'ay tells us to go, then we will go.”
Bob looked at Mary. “I only want to speak to you for a minute.”
Amongst the slippery apprehensions in which she had taken flight Mary had struggled to the comfortable rock that Bob's appearance must have been chance, not deliberate—how should he have known where to seek them? Sure ground, too, was made by the belief that it were well to take the apology with which doubtless he had come—well to be on good terms.
Encouraged by these supports, “Shoo!” she cried to her charges. “Don't you hear what your brother asks?”
“Do you want us to go?”
“Oh, shoo! shoo!”
Laughing, they shoo'd.
Bob let them from earshot. “I want to say how sorry I am about Friday night.”
“I have forgotten all that.”
“I want to know that you have forgiven me.”
“I tell you I have forgotten it.”
“That is not enough. You can't have forgotten it.” He took a seat beside her; repeated: “You can't have forgotten it. How can you have forgotten a thing that only happened three days ago?”
“In the sense that I have wiped it out—I do not choose to remember it.”
“Well, I remember it. I cannot forget it. I behaved very badly. I want to know that you forgive me.”
She told him: “Yes, then—oh yes, yes.” His persistence alarmed her, set her again to flight among her apprehensions.
“Not when you say it like that.”
Her breath came in jerks, responsive to the unsteady flutters of her heart. She made an effort for control; for the first time turned to him: “Mr. Chater, please go.”
Her words pricked every force that had him there—desire, obstinacy, wounded vanity.
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
“You happened to be passing—”
“Nothing of the kind,” he told her.
“You have come purposely?” One foothold that seemed safe was proving false.
“Of course. I tell you—why won't you believe me?—that I have been ashamed of myself ever since that night. At the first opportunity I have come straight to tell you so, I ought to be in the City. I could not rest until I had made my apology.”
“Well, you have made it—I don't mean to say that sharply. I think—I think it is very nice of you to be so anxious, and I freely accept your apology. But don't you see that you are harming me by staying here? I beg you to go.”
“How am I harming you? Am I so distasteful to you that you can't bear me near you?”
This was the personal note that of all her apprehensions had given Mary greatest alarm. “Surely you see that you are harming me—I mean hurting me—I mean, yes, getting me into trouble by staying like this with me. Mrs. Chater might have turned me off on Saturday—”
“I spoke for you.”
“Yes.” The words choked her, but she spoke them—“I am grateful to you for that. But if she found me talking to you again—especially if she knew you came here to see me, she would send me away at once. She told me so.”
“How is she to know?”
“The children—”
“I'll take care of that.”
“You can't prevent it. In any case—”
Bob said bitterly: “In any case! Yes, that's it. In any case you hate the sight of me.”
She cried: “Oh, why will you speak like that? I mean that in any case it is not right. I promised.”
Bob laughed. “If that's all, it is all right. You didn't promise for me.”
“It makes no difference. You say you are sorry—I believe you are sorry. You can only show it one way. Mr. Chater, please leave me alone.”
Her pretty appeal was fatal to her desire. It enhanced her graces. In both phrase and tone it was different from similar request in the petulant mouths of those ladies amongst whom Bob purchased his way. Dissatisfied, they would have said “Oh, chuck it! Do!” But “Mr. Chater, please leave me alone!”—that had the effect of moving Mr. Chater a degree closer along the seat.
He said: “You shan't have cause to blame me. Look here, you haven't asked me to explain my conduct on Friday.”
“I don't wish you to.”
“Don't you want to know?”
She shook her head.
“Aren't you curious?” His voice was low with a note of intensity. This was love-making, as he knew the pursuit.
He went on: “I'm sure you're curious. Look here, I'm going to tell you.”
“I'm going,” she said; made to rise.
He caught her hand where it lay on her lap; pressed her down. “You're not. If you do I shall follow—but I won't let you,” and he pressed again in advertisement.
Now she was alarmed—not for the result of this interview, but for its very present perils. Fear strangled her voice, but she said, “Let me go.”
“You must hear me, then.”
“I wish to go.”
“You must stay to hear me.” He believed a fierce assault would now win the heights. He released her hand; but she was still his prisoner, and he leant towards her averted head.
“I'm going to tell you why I behaved like that that night. It was because I could not contain myself any longer. You had always been so icy to me; kept me at arm's-length, barely let me speak to you; and all the time I was burning to tell you that I loved you—there, you know it now. On that night you were still cold when you might have been only barely civil and I could have contained myself. But you would not give me a word, and at last all that was in me for you burst out and I could not hold myself. It was unkind; it was frightening to you, perhaps; but was it a crime?—is it a crime to love?”
His flow checked, waiting an impulse from her.
She was but capable of a little “Oh!”—the crest of a gasp.
He misread her emotion. “Has it all been pretence, your keeping me from you like this? I believe it has. But now that you know you will be kind. Tell me. Speak.”
Encouraged by her silence he took her hand.
That touch acted as a cold blast upon her fevered emotions. Now she was calm.
She shook off his hand. “Have you done?”
The tone more than the question warned him.
“Well?” he said; sullen wrath gathering.
“Well, never speak to me again.”
“You won't be friends?”
“Friends! With you!”
Her meaning—that he had lost—stung him; her tone—that she despised him—was a finger in the wound.
He gripped her arm. “You little fool! How are you going to choose? If I want to be friends with you, how are you going to stop it? By God, if you want to be enemies it will be the worse for you. If I can't be friends with you at home, I'll get you turned out and I'll make you be friends outside.”
She was trying to twist her arm from his grasp.
He gripped closer. “No, I don't mean that. I love you—that's why I talk so when you rebuff me. I'll not hurt you. We shall—I will be friends.”
His right arm held her. He slipped his left around her, drew her to him, and with his lips had brushed her cheek before she was aware of his intention.
The insult swept her free of every thought but its memory. By a sudden motion she slipped from his grasp and to her feet; faced him.
“You beast!” she cried. “You beast!”
He half rose; made a half grab at her.
She stepped back a pace; something in her action reminded him of that stinging blow she had dealt him in the library; he dropped back to his seat and she turned and fled up the path whither Angela and David had toddled.