“No; not as you value your life. We have only to listen to the choir. Hush, don’t you hear the birds singing the grand spring ‘Te Deum’!”
But after a time she spoke herself.
“Was it all like this on Thursday night—all these delicious scents and sights and sounds cast broadcast, for all who passed to enjoy?”
“I expect so. Why?”
The kindliness in the quizzical grey eyes was amazing, as he sat back, watching her with covert insistence, instead of the spring glories. How the divine spark changes a man for the brief moments when it reigns! Banishing utterly Stock Exchange scandals, convenient heiresses, exacting parties, the merciless claims of the god Mammon. He might have looked just so, years and years ago, before he entered that hard service, and buried all his best under layer upon layer of harsh, deadening, world-wise grasping. Pity that the best is so frail to withstand the onslaught of the demons of power and place—so easily overcome and thrust away probably for ever.
“I was up in Holloway. I suppose you know it? And there was a strong man dying a helpless invalid, and his sister breaking her heart, and a woman from the opposite flat, who said she stood for nothing in the world but a letter of the alphabet. And all round was gloom, and murk, and shabbiness, and hard, pitiless facts. I came home in the tube, and all the passengers seemed to look like lifeless, starved, white-faced mummies. They made me feel frightened. I wondered where joy had fled to.
“And here, was it just like this all the time?... flowers, and sweet scents, and spring, and hopefulness?... And scarcely any one to enjoy it all; while those white-faced, vacant mummies were journeying foolishly to and fro in that stuffy, detestable tube.”
“You shouldn’t go to such places. What have you to do with Holloway, and shabbiness, and starving people? If you belonged to me, I wouldn’t let you go.”
“Of course I have to do with them. We all have. But I don’t know what. And it frightens me. I don’t think I’ve ever felt frightened before. It was like being brought up sharp against a stone wall.”
His lips were suddenly a little stern. Stone walls had to be broken down. That was the use of being strong. One was not frightened; one just got a battering-ram, and forced a passage through. He would tell her soon, but not out here. Not just yet.