Man and Maid

“No – I – I – I saw the porter put you in – and I thought – at least – anyway you will walk, won’t you?”

They walked. When they reached Beechwood Common, he said: “Won’t you take my arm?” And she took it. Her hands were ungloved; the other hand was full of silver may and bluebells. The sun shot level shafts of gold between the birch trees across the furze and heather.

“How beautiful it is!” she said.

“We’ve known each other three months,” said he.

“But I’ve seen you every day, and we’ve talked for hours and hours in those everlasting trains,” she said, as if in excuse.

“I’ve seen you every day for longer than that; the first time was on the 3rd of October.”

“Fancy remembering that!”

“I have a good memory.”

A silence.

Nina broke it, to say again: “How pretty!” She knew she had said it before, or something like it, but she could think of nothing else – and she wanted to say something.

He put his hand over hers as it lay on his arm. She looked up at him quickly.

“Well?” he said, stopping to look down into her eyes and tightening his clasp on her hand. “Are you sorry you came to Beechwood?”

“No – ”

“Then be glad. My dear, I wish you could ever be as glad as I am.”

Then they walked on, still with his hand on hers.

Nina and Molly sat on a locker swinging their feet and eating their lunch in the Slade corridor next day. Nina was humming softly under her breath.

“What are you so happy for all of a sudden?” Molly asked. “Your sketch-club things are the worst I’ve ever seen, and the Professor was down on you like a hundred of bricks this morning.”

“I’m not happy,” said Nina, turning away what seemed to Molly a new face.

“What is it, then?”

“Nothing. Oh yes – by the way, I’m going to be married.”

“Not really?”

“Check this unflattering display of incredulity – I am.”

“Really and truly? And you never told me a thing. I hate slyness and secretiveness. Nina, who is it? Do I know him?”

Nina named a name.

“Never even heard of him. But where did you meet him? It really is rather deceitful of you.”

“I always meant to tell you, only there was nothing to tell till yesterday except – ”

“Except everything,” said Molly. “Well, tell me now.”

Nina jumped up and shook the bath-bun crumbs off her green muslin pinafore.

“Promise not to be horrid, and I will.”

“I won’t – I promise I won’t.”

“Then it’s – it’s him – the ‘stranger who might’ – you know. And I really should have told you, though there wasn’t anything to tell, only – don’t laugh.”

“I’m not. Can’t you see I’m not? Only what?”

“Well, when I spoke to him that day in the train, I said, ‘Why shouldn’t we talk?’ And he said, ‘I – I – I – be – be – be – because I stammer so.’ And he did. You never heard anything like it. It was awful. He took hours to get out those few words, and I didn’t know where to look. And I felt such a brute because of the things we’d said about him, that I had no sense left; and I told him straight out how I’d wondered he never even said he wondered how late the train was when we were waiting for the 9.1, and I was glad it was stammering and not disagreeableness. And then I said I wasn’t glad he stammered, but so sorry; and he was awfully nice about it, and I told him about that man who cured your brother Cecil of stammering, and he went to him at once: and he’s almost all right now.”

“Good gracious!” said Molly. “Are you sure – but why didn’t he get cured long ago?”

“He had a mother: she stammered frightfully – after the shock of his father’s death, or something, and he got into the way of it from her. And – anyway he didn’t. I think it was so as not to hurt his mother’s feelings, or something. I don’t quite understand. And he said it didn’t seem to matter when she was dead. And he’s an artist. He sells his pictures too, and he teaches. He has a studio in Chelsea.”

“It all sounds a little thin; but if you’re pleased, I’m sure I am.”

“I am,” said Nina.

“But what did he say when he asked you?”

“He didn’t ask me,” said Nina.

“But surely he said he’d loved you since the first moment he saw you?”

Nina had to admit it.

“Then you see I wasn’t such a vulgar little donkey after all.”

“Yes, you were. You hadn’t any business even to think such things, much less say them. Why, even I didn’t dare to think it for – oh – for ever so long. But I’ll forgive it – and if it’s good it shall be a pretty little bridesmaid, it shall.”

“When is it to be?” asked Molly, still adrift in a sea of wonder.

“Oh, quite soon, he says. He says we’re only wasting time by waiting. You see we’re both alone.”

But Molly, looking wistfully at her friend’s transfigured face, perceived sadly that it was she who was alone, not they.

And the thought of the red-haired Pierrot with whom she had danced nine times at the Students’ Fancy Dress dance, an indiscretion hitherto her dearest memory, now offered no solid consolation.

Nina went away, singing softly under her breath. Molly sighed and followed slowly.

IV

RACK AND THUMBSCREW