So far, there had been little to warrant the belief that things were advancing in the direction she desired. He was not much more attentive to Nelly than to any other of the girls; worse still, as she reflected with trepidation, there were many symptoms by which he showed a preference for quite another person.
As for Harry, it was useless for him to conceal from himself any longer the fact that he was by this time head-over-ears in love. The situation offered greater temptations than his strength could withstand. He succumbed—whatever the end might be, he was in love.
If one comes to think of it, this was rather a remarkable result of a descent into the lower regions. One expects to meet in the Home of Dull Ugliness things repellent, coarse; enjoying the freedom of nature, unrestrained, unconventional. Harry found, on the contrary, the sweetness of Eden, a fair garden of delights, in which sat a peerless lady, the Queen of Beauty, a very Venus. All his life, that is, since he had begun to think about love at all, he had stoutly held and strenuously maintained that it was lèse majesté, high treason to love, for a man to throw away—he used to say "throw away"—upon a maiden of low degree the passion which should be offered to a lady—a demoiselle. The position was certainly altered, inasmuch as he was no longer of gentle birth. Therefore, he argued, he would no longer pretend to the hand of a lady. At first he used to make resolutions, as bravely as a board of directors: he would arise and flee to the desert—any place would be a desert without her; he would get out of temptation; he would go back to Piccadilly, and there forget her. Yet he remained; yet every day he sought her again; every day his condition became more hopeless; every day he continued to walk with her, play duets with her, sing with her, dance with her, argue with her, learn from her, teach her, watch over her, and felt the sunshine of her presence, and at meeting and parting touched her fingers.
She was so well educated, he said, strengthening his faith; she was so kindly and considerate; her manners were so perfect; she was so beautiful and graceful; she knew so well how to command, that he was constrained to own that no lady of his acquaintance was, or could be, her superior. To call her a dressmaker was to ennoble and sanctify the whole craft. She should be to that art what Cecilia is to music—its patron saint; she should be to himself—yet, what would be the end? He smiled grimly, thinking that there was no need to speculate on the end, when as yet there had been no beginning. He could not make a beginning. If he ventured on some shy and modest tentative in the direction of—call it an understanding—she froze. She was always on the watch; she seemed to say: "Thus far you may presume, but no farther." What did it mean? Was she really resolved never to receive his advances? Did she dislike him? That could hardly be. Was she watching him? Was she afraid to trust him? That might be. Or was she already engaged to some other fellow—some superior fellow—perhaps with a shop—gracious heavens!—of his own? That might be, though it made him cold to think it possible. Or did she have some past history, some unhappy complication of the affections, which made her as cold as Dian? That, too, might be.
The ordinary young man, thrown into the society of half a dozen working-girls, would have begun to flirt and talk nonsense with all of them together, or with one after the other. Harry was not that kind of young man. There is always, by the blessing of kind Heaven, left unto us a remnant of those who hold woman sacred, and continually praise, worship, and reverence the name of love. He was one of those young men. To flirt with a milliner did not seem a delightful thing to him at any time. And in this case there was another reason why he should not behave in the manner customary to the would-be Don Juan; it was simply foi de gentilhomme; he was tolerated among them all on a kind of unspoken but understood parole. Miss Kennedy received him in confidence that he would not abuse her kindness.
One Sunday afternoon when they were walking together—it was in one of the warm days of last September—in Victoria Park, they had a conversation which led to really important things. There are one or two very pretty walks in that garden, and though the season was late, and the leaves mostly yellow, brown, crimson, or golden, there were still flowers, and the ornamental water was bright, and the path crowded with people who looked happy, because the sun was shining; they had all dined plentifully, with copious beer, and the girls had got on their best things, and the swains were gallant with a flower in the buttonhole and a cigar between the lips. There is, indeed, so little difference between the rich and the poor—can even Hyde Park in the season go beyond the flower and the cigar? In certain tropical lands, the first step in civilization is to buy a mosquito-curtain, though your dusky epidermis is as impervious as a crocodile's to the sting of a mosquito. In this realm of England the first step toward gentility is the twopenny smoke, to which we cling, though it is made of medicated cabbage, though it makes the mouth raw, the tongue sore, the lips cracked, the eyes red, the nerves shaky, and the temper short. Who would not suffer in such a cause?
It began with a remark of Angela's about his continued laziness. He replied, evasively, that he had intended to take a long holiday, in order to look round and consider what was best to be done; that he liked holidays; that he meant to introduce holidays into the next trade dispute; that his holidays enabled him to work a little for Miss Kennedy, without counting his lordship, whose case he had now drawn up; that he was now ready for work whenever, he added airily, work was ready for him; and that he was not, in fact, quite sure that Stepney and its neighborhood would prove the best place for him to work out his life.
"I should think," said Angela, "that it would be as good a place as any you would find in America."
"If you tell me to stay, Miss Kennedy," he replied, with a sudden earnestness, "I will stay."
She instantly froze, and chillingly said that if his interests required him to go, of course he would go.