§ 10
All this was somewhat premature.
As yet he had not spoken a word save what was easily compatible with disinterested friendship. He had treated her many times with such curtness and incivility that it seemed absurd on the face of it to imagine that he could love her. And yet there was in her that strange instinct which told her that he did.
After her return from Cambridge she began to wonder when she should see him again. Since she had left Mrs. Carbass and had taken the cottage at High Wood, he had been a moderately frequent visitor. He liked the situation of “Elm Cottage,” he liked to sit in a deck-chair on the lawn and watch the sun dipping down over the roofs of Upton Rising. The æsthetic pleasure made him talkative and companionable. In the summer time she would open the windows and play Debussy on the baby grand piano she had bought. She had furnished the interior in masculine taste. There were great brown leather armchairs of the kind common enough in clubs, and innumerable facilities for smoking (she was not a great smoker herself), and a general atmosphere of freedom and geniality. She had bought an expensive club-fender with leather seats at either end and a leather rail, because she had noticed that at his own house he liked to sit with his back to the flames. The front room was really very comfortable and cosy, though she was lost when she sat in either of the two great armchairs.
There was no particular business reason why he should see her, yet for several nights after his return to Upton Rising she expected him to come. She laid in a stock of his favourite cigarettes: she diligently learned a little known and mathematical work of Bach because she knew he would appreciate it. But he did not come. Then she had a spell of concerts which kept her in town until nearly midnight: he did not come to see her after the performance, as he sometimes did, so that she did not know if he had been among the audience or not. She knew that he had returned from Cambridge, and she knew that an abstruse work on sociology was occupying a good deal of his time and attention. Yet it seemed strange that he did not visit her. Their farewell on Cambridge platform was already past history, and she sometimes found it hard to believe it had taken place at all. She wanted further proof that it was no delusion. She felt that every day made that incident more isolated, more inconsistent, more meaningless. And in another sense every day was adding to its tremendous significance.
A fortnight passed and still he did not come. She did not want to go and see him. She wanted him to come and see her. She made a vow: I am not going to see him; I am going to wait till he comes to see me: if he doesn’t want to, he needn’t. And she was glad when a concert or other engagement kept her busy in the evenings, for the temptation to break her vow was strong if she were alone at “Elm Cottage.”
On Christmas Day the temptation was overmastering. An offer from a Scotch concert agency had come by post that morning, and she found it easy to persuade herself that she had to visit him to talk it over.
Snow was falling through the skeleton trees on the Ridgeway as she approached “Claremont.” Through the window of the front room she could catch the glow of leaping flames. That indicated that he was at home. He had no relatives and no friends of the kind that would share Christmas Day with him. Besides, he was quite impervious to the Christmas type of sentimentality. Yet possibly he would be pleased to see her.
She found him sitting on the club-fender with the fire behind him. He was reading long proof-slips. As she entered he merely glanced up casually.
“Come in,” he drawled, and went on correcting until he had finished the slip.
There are no words to convey how deeply that annoyed her.
“Well,” he began, when the last marginal correction had been inserted, “and how are you getting on?”
“All right,” she asserted, with some pique. Then, in a spitefully troubled tone: “What have you been doing with yourself since you came back from Cambridge?”
He pointed to the litter of proof-slips on the floor.
“Working,” he replied.
“I half expected you’d come and see me,” she remarked tentatively.
“So did I,” he replied quietly, “but I didn’t after all....”
“What d’you mean?”
“I mean I half thought I might visit you. I really didn’t know....”
“I suppose you didn’t want to.”
“On the contrary, I wanted to very much. That was just why I didn’t.”
“I don’t quite——”
“Listen. Did I ever tell you that I detest worms?”
“No, but what——?”
“Well, I do. I can’t stand them at any price.”
“Nor can I, but how——”
“Listen. When I was a tiny boy it used to send me almost into hysterics if I touched one, even by accident. Well, when I grew older, I used to despise myself for being so weak-minded. I used to gather all the worms I could find, fat juicy ones, you know, with red bellies, put them all into one single writhing heap and run my fingers through the lot! My flesh crept with the loathsomeness of it: I was often sick and gasping with horror after I had done it. But it gave me confidence, because it taught me I wasn’t at the mercy of arbitrary feelings. It showed me that I had myself under iron control....”
“Well?”
“Since I returned from Cambridge I have wanted to see you so often and so intensely that it seemed to me a capital opportunity for finding out if that iron control had at all relaxed.... I am pleased to say that it has not done so.”
“But you wanted to see me?”
“I did.”
“Then what on earth was there to keep you from coming to visit me?”
“Nothing at all except this—my own desire to be complete master of myself—greater even than my desire to see you.”
“Why did you want to see me?”
“I could think of no sensible reason for desiring to see you, and that was why I decided not to.”
“Are you glad I have come now?”
“No. I am sorry. You have interrupted my work.”
“Have I? Thanks for telling me. Then I’ll go——”
“Your going would not alter the fact that my work has been interrupted. I shall do no more work to-day, whether you go or not. I—I”—his voice became thick with anger, or scorn, or some complex combination of the two—“I have—been—spiritually interrupted!”
She took off her thick furs and muff.
“I’m going to stay,” she said quietly, “and we’re going to have tea and then go for a walk. I think you and your arguments are very silly.”
It was immensely significant, that final sentence of hers. Before, she would never have dared to say such a thing to him. But now she felt he was in some strange way delivered into her power: she was not afraid of treating him like a baby. The truth was, he was no longer a god to her. And her task was, if possible, to strip from him the last remnants of his divinity. His strange conversation she had but half understood: but it immensely reassured her as to this subtle and mysterious power she possessed over him. But she divined that her task was difficult: she feared an explosion that would be catastrophic. The atmosphere was too tense for either comfort or safety: she would have to lower the temperature. And all the time her own heart was a raging furnace within her.
“Mrs. Tebbutt is out,” he said gruffly. “I’m hanged if I know where anything is. I was going to go out to tea at Mason’s.” (Mason’s was the café in the Bockley High Street.)
“How like a man not to know where anything is!” she commented lightly, removing her hat. “Never mind, I’ll soon find out. And you’ll be saved the trouble of going to Mason’s.”
She discovered it was absurdly easy to treat him like a baby.
She found crockery and food without much difficulty, and while she was making tea he followed her about from room to room, chatting quite genially. His surliness seemed to vanish entirely: he became charmingly urbane. Evidently her method of treatment bad been completely successful. The tension of the atmosphere had been very much lowered, and he seemed quite schoolboyish in his amateur assistance at what he called “indoor picnicking.” As she emerged from cupboards carrying cups and plates and fancy cakes he looked at her very much as if she were a species of conjurer.
They behaved just like a couple of jolly companions as they sat round the fire and had tea.