“Do you mind,” said Lacrima suddenly, “if I go into your kitchen and make myself a cup of tea? I feel rather exhausted. I expect it is the heat.”
Mr. Quincunx looked intently at her, leaning upon his hoe. He had only once before—on an exceptionally cold winter’s day—allowed the girl to enter the cottage.
He had a vague feeling that if he did so he would in some way commit himself, and be betrayed into a false position. He almost felt as though, if she were once comfortably established there, he would never be able to get her out again! He was nervous, too, about her seeing all his little household peculiarities. If she saw, for instance, how cheaply, how very cheaply, he managed to live, eating no meat and economizing in sugar and butter, she might be encouraged still further in her attempts to persuade him to run away.
He was also strangely reluctant that she should get upon the track of his queer little lonely epicurean pleasures, such as his carefully guarded bottle of Scotch whiskey; his favourite shelf of mystical and Rabelaisian books; his jar of tobacco, with a piece of bread under its lid, to keep the contents moist and cool; his elaborate arrangements for holding draughts out; his polished pewter; his dainty writing-desk with its piled-up, vellum-bound journals, all labelled and laid in order; his queer-coloured oriental slippers; his array of scrupulously scrubbed pots and pans. Mr. Quincunx was extremely unwilling that his lady-love should poke her pretty fingers into all these mysteries.
What he liked, was to live in two distinct worlds: his world of sentiment with Lacrima as its solitary centre, and his world of sacramental epicurism with his kitchen-fire as its solitary centre. He was extremely unwilling that the several circumferences of these centres should intersect one another. Both were equally necessary to him. When days passed without a visit from his friend he became miserably depressed. But he saw no reason for any inartistic attempt to unite these two spheres of interest. A psychologist who defined Mr. Quincunx’s temper as the temper of a hermit would have been far astray. He was profoundly dependent on human sympathy. But he liked human sympathy that kept its place. He did not like human society. Perhaps of all well-known psychological types, the type of the philosopher Rousseau was the one to which he most nearly approximated. And yet, had he possessed children, Mr. Quincunx would certainly never have been persuaded to leave them at the foundling hospital. He would have lived apart from them, but he would never have parted with them. He was really a domestic sentimentalist, who loved the exquisite sensation of being alone with his own thoughts.
With all this in mind, one need feel no particular surprise that the response he gave to Lacrima’s sudden request was a somewhat reluctant one. However, he did respond; and opening the cottage-doors for her, ushered her into the kitchen and put the kettle on the fire.
It puzzled him a little that she should feel no embarrassment at being alone with him in this secluded place! In the depths of his heart—like many philosophers—Mr. Quincunx, in spite of his anarchistic theories, possessed no slight vein of conventional timidity. He did not realize this in the least. Women, according to his cynical code, were the sole props of conventionality. Without women, there would be no such thing in the world. But now, brought face to face with the reckless detachment of a woman fighting for her living soul, he felt confused, uncomfortable, and disconcerted.
Lacrima waited in patient passivity, too exhausted to make any further mental or moral effort, while her friend made the tea and cut the bread-and-butter.
As soon as she had partaken of these things, her exhaustion gave place to a delicious sense—the first she had known for many weeks—of peaceful and happy security. She put far away, into the remote background of her mind, all melancholy and tragic thoughts, and gave herself up to the peacefulness of the moment. The hands of Mr. Quincunx’s clock pointed to half-past six. She had therefore a clear thirty minutes left, before she need set out on her return walk, in order to have time to dress for dinner.
“I wonder if your Miss Gladys,” remarked Lacrima’s host, lighting a cigarette as he sipped his tea, “will marry the Honourable Mr. Ilminster after all, or whistle him down the wind, and make up to our American friend? I notice that Dangelis is already considerably absorbed in her.”