IV.
The big pink roses of the chintzes and the gold bordered bowls of the black mirrors looked at you rememberingly.
There was a sort of brutality about it. To come here and be happy, to come here in order to be happy, when they were gone; when you had hurt them both so horribly.
"I'm sitting in her chair," she thought.
Richard Nicholson sat, in a purely temporary attitude, by the table in the window. Against the window-pane she could see his side face drawn in a brilliant, furred line of light. His moustache twitched under the shadow of his nose. He was smiling to himself as he wrote the letter to Mamma.
There was a brutality about that, too. She wondered if he had seen old Baxter's pinched mouth and sliding eyes when he took the letter. He was watching him as he went out, waiting for the click of the latch.
"It's all right," he said. "They expect you. They think it's work."
He settled himself (in Mr. Sutcliffe's chair).
"It's the best way," he said. "I want to see you and I don't want to frighten your mother. She is afraid of me."
"No. She's afraid of the whole thing. She wishes it hadn't happened. She's afraid of what'll happen next. I can't make her see that nothing need happen next."
"She's cleverer than you think. She sees that something's got to happen next. I couldn't stand another evening like the last."
"You couldn't," she agreed. "You couldn't possibly."
"We can't exactly go on like—like this, you know."
"Don't let's think about it. Here we are. Now this minute. It's an hour and a half till dinner time. Why, even if I go at nine we've got three hours."
"That's not enough…. You talk as though we could think or not think, as we chose. Even if we left off thinking we should have to go on living. Your mother knows that."
"I don't think she knows more than we do."
"She knows enough to frighten her. She knows what I want…. I want to marry you, Mary."
(This then was what she had been afraid of. But Mamma wouldn't have thought of it.)
"I didn't think you wanted to do that. Why should you?"
"It's the usual thing, isn't it? When you care enough."
"Do you care enough?"
"More than enough. Don't you? … It's no use saying you don't. I know you do."
"Can you tell?"
"Yes."
"Do I go about showing it?"
"No; there hasn't been time. You only began yesterday."
"When? When?"
"In the hotel. When you stopped talking suddenly. And when I gave you your book. You looked as though you wished I hadn't. As though I'd dragged you away from somewhere where you were happy."
"Yes…. If it only began yesterday we can stop it. Stop it before it gets worse."
"I can't. I've been at it longer than that."
"How long?"
"Oh—I don't know. It might have been that first week. After I'd found out that there was peace when you came into the room; and no peace when you went out. When you're there peace oozes out of you and soaks into me all the time."
"Does it feel like that?"
"Just like that."
"But—if it feels like that now, we should spoil it by marrying."
"Oh no we shouldn't."
"Yes…. If it's peace you want. There won't be any peace…. Besides, you don't know. Do you remember telling me about your uncle?"
"What's he got to do with it?"
"And that girl. You said I couldn't have known anything about it…. You said I couldn't even have come in for the sad end of it."
"Well?"
"Well…. I did…. I was the sad end of it…. The girl was me."
"But you told me it wasn't true."
…He had got up. He wanted to stand. To stand up high above you.
"You know," he said, "you told me it wasn't true."
* * * * *
They would have to go through with it. Dining. Drinking coffee. Talking politely; talking intelligently; talking. Villiers de L'Isle Adam, Villiers de L'Isle Adam. "The symbolistes are finished … Do you know Jean Richepin? 'Il était une fois un pauvre gars Qui aimait celle qui ne l'aimait pas'? … 'Le coeur de ta mère pour mon chien.'" He thinks I lied. "You ought to read Henri de Regnier and Remy de Gourmont. You'd like them." … Le coeur de ta mère. He thinks I lied. Goodness knows what he doesn't think.
The end of it would come at nine o'clock.
* * * * *
"Are you still angry?"
He laughed. A dreadful sniffling laugh that came through his nostrils.
"I'm not. If I were I should let you go on thinking I lied. You see, I didn't know it was true. I didn't know I was the girl."
"You didn't know?"
"How could I when he never said a word?"
"I can't understand your not seeing it."
"Would you like me better if I had seen it?"
"N-no…. But I wish you hadn't told me. Why did you?"
"I was only trying to break the shock. You thought I couldn't be old enough to be that girl. I meant you to do a sum in your head: 'If she was that girl and she was seventeen, then she must be thirty-nine now.'"
"Is that what you smashed up our evening for?"
"Yes."
"I shouldn't care if you were fifty-nine. I'm forty-five."
"You're sorry. You're sorry all the same."
"I'm sorry because there's so little time, Mary. Sorry I'm six years older than you…."
Nine o'clock.
She stood up. He turned to her. He made a queer sound. A sound like a deep, tearing sigh.
* * * * *
"If I were twenty I couldn't marry you, because of Mamma. That's one thing. You can't marry Mamma."
"We can talk about your mother afterwards."
"No. Now. There isn't any afterwards. There's only this minute that we're in. And perhaps the next…. You haven't thought what it'll be like. You can't leave London because of your work. I can't leave this place because of Mamma. She'd be miserable in London. I can't leave her. She hasn't anybody but me. I promised my brother I'd look after her…. She'd have to live with me."
"Why not?"
"You couldn't live with her."
"I could, Mary."
"Not you. You said you couldn't stand another evening like yesterday…. All the evenings would be like yesterday…. Please…. Even if there wasn't Mamma, you don't want to marry. If you'd wanted to you'd have done it long ago, instead of waiting till you're forty-five. Think of two people tied up together for life whether they both like it or not. It isn't even as if one of them could be happy. How could you if the other wasn't? Look at the Sutcliffes. Think how he hated it…. And he was a kind, patient man. You know you wouldn't dream of marrying me if you didn't think it was the only possible way."
"Well—isn't it?"
"No. The one impossible way. I'd do anything for you but that….
Anything."
"Would you, Mary? Would you have the courage?"
"It would take infinitely more courage to marry you. We should be risking more. All the beautiful things. If it wasn't for Mamma…. But there is Mamma. So—you see."
She thought: "He hasn't kissed me. He hasn't held me in his arms.
He'll be all right. It won't hurt him."