CHAPTER XXXII
EVE DETERMINES TO LEAVE BOSNIA ROAD
After she had written to John Parfit, Eve kept the promise she had made to Kate Duveen, but qualified her confession by an optimism that took the sting out of the truths that she had to tell. She made light of the Massinger affair, even though she had some bitter things to say about Miss Champion. “One learns to expect certain savageries from the ordinary sort of man, but it shocks one when a woman makes you bear all the responsibility, so that she may not offend a patron. That was the really sordid part of the experience.” She hinted vaguely that someone wanted to marry her, but that she had no intention of marrying. She made light of her illness, and wrote of her financial experiences with cynical gaiety. “My landlady’s face is a barometer that registers the state of my weather. Of late, the mercury has been low. Another woman whom I can manage to pity! Do not think that I am in a parlous and desperate state. I want to go through these experiences. They give one a sense of proportion, and teach one the value of occasional recklessness. We are not half reckless enough, we moderns. We are educated to be too careful. In future, I may contemplate adventures.”
It is probable that John Parfit’s proposal and its psychological effects on her rallied her pride, for she threw off the lethargy of convalescence, and turned anew to meet necessity. John Parfit had answered her letter by return, and he had succeeded in fully living up to his ideal of what was “sport.” “Playing the game,”—that is the phrase that embodies the religion of many such a man as John Parfit.
“Nothing could have made me admire you more than the straight way you have written. Nothing like the truth. It may be bitter, but it’s good physic. Well, I shall be here. Think it over. It’s the afterwards in marriage that counts, not the courting, and I’d do my best to make the afterwards what it should be.
“You’ll let me see you sometimes, won’t you? I shan’t bother you. I’m not a conceited ass, and I’ll wait and take my chance.”
March winds and more sunshine were in evidence, and the weather had a drier and more energetic temper. Eve started out on expeditions. She took two rings, a gold watch, and a coral necklace to a pawnshop in Holloway, and raised three pounds on the transaction. It amused her, tucking the pawn-ticket away in her purse. These last refuges are supposed to have a touch of the melodramatic, but she discovered that expectation had been harder to bear than the reality, and that just as one is disappointed by some eagerly longed for event, so the disaster that one dreads turns out to be a very quiet experience, relieved perhaps by elements of humour.
She paid Mrs. Buss’s weekly bill, and studied the woman’s recovered affability with cynical tolerance. Mrs. Buss still believed her to be on the way towards matrimony, and somehow a woman who is about to be married gains importance, possibly because other women wonder what she will make of that best and most problematical of states.
It is easy to raise money on some article of value, but it is a much harder matter to persuade people to offer money in return for the activities that we call work. Eve went the round of the agencies without discovering anything that could be classed above the level of cheap labour. There seemed to be no demand for artistic ability. At least, she did not chance upon the demand if it happened to exist. Her possibilities seemed to be limited to such posts as lady help or companion, posts that she had banned as the uttermost deeps of slavery. A factory worker was far more free. She could still contemplate sinking some of her pride, and starting life as a shop-girl, a servant, or a waitress.