So I stiffened and bade Society high and low go packing. I would neither seek mine own people, nor allow myself to be sought by Elphin Montgomery's. I enwrapped myself in a fine garment of defiance. My sister Jane, who was harder and more worldly-minded than Agatha, would have had me don a helmet of brass and a breastplate of rhinoceros hide and force my way through reluctant portals; but Agatha agreed with me, clinging, however, to the hope that time would not only reconcile Society to me, but would also reconcile me to Society.
“If the hope comforts you, my dear Agatha,” said I, “by all means cherish it. In the meantime, allow me to observe that the character of Ishmael is eminently suited to the profession of tax-collecting.”
During these early days of my return the one person with whom I had no argument was Lola. She soothed where others scratched, and stimulated where others goaded. The intimacy of my convalescence continued. At first I acquainted her, as far as was reasonably necessary, with my change of fortune, and accepted her offer to find me less expensive quarters. The devoted woman personally inspected every flat in London, with that insistence of which masculine patience is incapable, and eventually decided on a tiny bachelor suite somewhere in the clouds over a block of flats in Victoria Street where the service is included in the rent. Into this I moved with such of my furniture as I withdrew from the auctioneer's hammer, and there I prepared to stay until necessity should drive me to the Bloomsbury boarding-house. I thought I would graduate my descent. Before I moved, however, she came to the Albany for the first and only time to see the splendour I was about to quit. In a modest way it was splendour. My chambers were really a large double flat to the tasteful furnishing of which I had devoted the thought and interest of many years. She went with me through the rooms. The dining-room was all Chippendale, each piece a long-coveted and hunted treasure; the library old oak; the drawing-room a comfortable and cunning medley. There were bits of old china, pieces of tapestry, some rare prints, my choice collection of mezzotints, a picture or two of value—one a Lancret, a very dear possession. And there were my books—once I had a passion for rare bindings. Every thing had to me a personal significance, and I hated the idea of surrender more than I dared to confess even to myself. But I said to Lola:
“Vanity of vanities! All things expensive are vanity!”
Her eyes glistened and she slipped her arm through mine and patted the back of my hand.
“If you talk like that I shall cry and make a fool of myself,” she said in a broken manner.
It is not so much the thing that is done or the thing that is said that matters, but the way of doing or saying it. In the commonplace pat on the hand, in the break in the commonplace words there was something that went straight to my heart. I squeezed her arm and whispered:
“Thank you, dear.”
This sympathy so sure and yet so delicately conveyed was mine for the trouble of mounting the stairs that led to her drawing-room in Cadogan Gardens. She seemed to be watching my heart the whole time, so that without my asking, without my knowledge even, she could touch each sore spot as it appeared, with the healing finger. For herself she made no claims, and because she did not in any way declare herself to be unhappy, I, after the manner of men, took her happiness for granted. For lives there a man who does not believe that an uncomplaining woman has nothing to complain of? It is his masculine prerogative of density. Besides, does not he himself when hurt bellow like a bull? Why, he argues, should not wounded woman do the same? So, when I wanted companionship, I used to sit in the familiar room and make Adolphus, the Chow dog, shoulder arms with the poker, and gossip restfully with Lola, who sprawled in her old languorous, loose-limbed way among the cushions of her easy chair. Gradually my habitual reserve melted from me, and at last I gave her my whole confidence, telling her of my disastrous pursuit of eumoiriety, of Eleanor Faversham, of the attitude of Society, in fact, of most of what I have set down in the preceding pages. She was greatly interested in everything, especially in Eleanor Faversham. She wanted to know the colour of her eyes and hair and how she dressed. Women are odd creatures.
The weeks passed.