At lunch-time on Friday he telephoned to her, and held his breath while he waited, for fear she should be out.
No—there was her voice, her heavenly little coo. ‘Oh, my darling!’ he was within an ace of crying down the thing in his relief. Only just did he manage not to, and as it took him a moment to gulp the word back again she repeated with gentle inquiry—what a perfect telephone voice—‘Yes—who is it?’
‘It’s me. Chris. Look here——’
‘Who?’
‘Chris. Oh, you know. You said you’d call me Chris. Christopher, then. Monckton. Look here, I wish you’d come and dine, will you? To-night? There’s an awfully jolly little restaurant—what? You can’t? Oh, but you must. Why can’t you? What? I can’t hear if you laugh. You’re not going to that thing again? Why, what nonsense. It’s becoming an obsession. We’ll go to it to-morrow night. Why didn’t you go last night? And the night before? No—I want to talk. No—we can’t talk there. No, we must talk. No it isn’t—not at all the same thing. I’ll come and fetch you at half-past seven. Yes but you must. I think I’d better be at your place at seven. You’ll be ready, won’t you? Yes I know—but that can wait till to-morrow night. All right then—seven. I say, it’s simply frightfully ador—nice of you. Hullo—hullo—are you there? They tried to cut us off. Look here—I’d better fetch you a little before seven—say a quarter to—because the place might be crowded. And I say, look here—hullo, hullo—don’t cut us off—oh, damn.’
The last words were addressed to deafness. He hung up the receiver, and snatching at his hat went off to the restaurant, an amusing one that specialised in Spanish dishes and might, he thought, interest her, to choose and secure his table. He then went out and bought some more of the roses she said were quite beautiful, and took them to the head waiter, who was all intelligence, and instructed him to keep them carefully apart in water till a quarter to seven, when they were to be put on his table. Then he went to Wyndham Place to see if Lewes, who was working at economics and sat indoors writing most of the day, would come out and play squash with him, for he couldn’t go back to his office as if it were a day like any other day, and exercise he must have,—violent exercise, or he felt he would burst.
Lewes went. He sighed to himself as he pushed his books aside, seeing in this break-up of his afternoon a further extension of the Cumfrit clutches. Poor Chris. He was in the bliss-stage now, the merest glance at his face showed it; but—Lewes, besides being a highly promising political economist, was also attached to the poets—
Full soon his soul would have her earthly freight,
And widows lie upon him with a weight
Heavy as frost....
Alas, alas, how could he have committed such a profanity? Lewes loathed himself. The woman, of course, goading him,—Mrs. Cumfrit. And his feeling towards a woman who could lower him to parody a beautiful poem became as icily hostile as Adam’s ought to have been to Eve after she had lowered him to the eating of half the apple; instead of which the inexperienced man was weak, and let himself be inveigled into doing that which had ultimately produced himself, Chris, and Mrs. Cumfrit.
Adam and Chris, reflected Lewes, sadly going to the club where they played, and not speaking a word the whole way, were alike in this that they neither of them could do without a woman. And always, whenever there was a woman, trouble began; sooner or later trouble began. Or, if not actual trouble, what a deadly, what a disintegrating dulness.