He studied her in silence. And his face turned red and his eyes slowly kindled....
“Not that it matters. Vanity is rather futile since the war, isn’t it? But one can’t help minding being a fright....”
“You’re not a fright, little girl,” said Samson Phillips.
And then Nell slipped back inconspicuously into the room, and said it was time to go.
Otto Redbury had rubbed his hands with pleasure when Samson, via Beatrice, had made known his wish for Nell’s attendance at the hospital between three and four on Wednesday afternoon.
“So! it gomes to something, then!” and he inspected Nell before her departure, and gave her five shillings for a taxi, that she might arrive unheated and unruffled. The taxi had stopped at La llorraine’s, to pick up Deb, but this Otto did not know. Deb was very glad to arrive at the hospital unheated and unruffled. And Nell was very glad to spend the stray half-hour walking beside Timothy, whom Deb had notified to be accidentally outside the gates at that hour of the day. This Otto did not know either. Not that he could have gained much by prying on their dialogue, for the pair were still in that stage of dreamy ecstasy which prefers not to speak, in addition to their handicap of excessive shyness.
“Soon, zere vill be a vedding at the Synagogue,” Otto prophesied to Trudchen. But Trudchen, who had lost one of her boys, had no happiness for the moment in either of her girls.
Otto was right in form but not in detail. A wedding did indeed take place on October the 12th, and Nell was bridesmaid; and the bride was given away by her father; and Otto for the look of things had to be coaxed out of the bathroom by his united family, and coaxed into a frock-coat, and coaxed into attendance as a guest. Otto’s soul was very bilious, and he objected to paying for a present, and made several quite snappy and spiteful remarks concerning the folly of men who married a girl whose certificate of chastity bore a black mark and the scrawled name of Mr Cliffe Kennedy....
“Ach, Otto!”
Samson was aware of the enormity of such a choice. Aware, too, that he would have great difficulty with his family, who were still huffy with Deb for having dared to refuse Samson on three previous occasions. So he did an unprecedented thing—he proposed first, and consulted his family afterwards. Perhaps “proposed” is not the term which exactly sets forth his proceedings. He announced to Deb that he was willing to make her his wife—nay, that he considered it his duty to draw her from the gutter back to the pavement. Deb—who in spite of some deep inner scoldings that she was again behaving disgracefully towards Samson, and this time worse even than before—Deb stood before him with eyes downcast and folded hands, meek and wan—and wildly exhilarated by her success. She had, to quote La llorraine: “Made a muff from her chances” so often and so disastrously that a great deal of previous anxiety was inevitable. Anxiety was now allayed. She stood before her master, meek and wan, and exceedingly desirable: Israelite maiden in the slave-market.... Samson kissed her very carefully to show that his respect had suffered no diminishment. (He was so continually showing her this in all sorts of unobtrusive ways that Deb only now realized to what extent her lie of last year had earned his undying censure.) Samson kissed her carefully—and said, “My family will be pleased about this, Deb.”