Man and Maid

“Sure they weren’t thistles?”

“Vegetables of some sort. And I said: ‘You’ve dropped your – whatever they were.’ And he just bowed again in a thank-you-very-much-but-I’m-sure-I-don’t-know-what-business-it-is-of-yours sort of way. Do leave that bread alone.”

Molly, lost in the interest of the recital, was crumbling the bread as though the floor of the life-room were the natural haunt of doves and sparrows.

“Well?” she said.

“Well?” said Nina.

“Why ever didn’t you ask him to put the window up, or down, or something? I would have – just to hear if he has a voice.”

“It wouldn’t have been any good. He’d just have bowed again, and I’d had enough bows to last a long time. No: I just said straight out that we were a couple of idiots to sit there gaping at each other with our tongues out, and why on earth shouldn’t we talk?”

“You never did!”

“Or words to that effect, anyhow. And then he said – ”

A long pause.

“What?”

“He told me why he never spoke to strangers.”

“What a slap in the face! You poor – ”

“Oh, he didn’t say it like that, you silly idiot. And it was quite a good reason.”

“What was it?”

No answer.

“Tell me exactly what he said.”

“He said, ‘I – I – I – ’ At any rate, I’m satisfied, and I rather wish we hadn’t called him pigs and beasts, and things like that.”

“Well?”

“That’s all.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me the reason? Oh, very well – you leave it to my guessing? Of course it’s quite evident he’s hopelessly in love with you, and never ventured to speak for fear of betraying his passion. But, encouraged by your advances – ”

“Molly, go on with that arm, and don’t be a vulgar little donkey.”

Molly obeyed. Presently: “Cross-patch,” she said.

“I’m not,” said Nina, “but I want to work, and I like you best when you’re not vulgar.”

“You’re very rude.”

“No: only candid.”

Molly’s wounded pride, besieged by her curiosity, held out for five minutes. Then: “Did you talk to him much?”

“Heaps.”

“All the way down?”

No answer.

“Is he nice?”

Silence.

“Is he clever?”

“I want to work.”

“Well, what I want to know is, and then I’ll let you alone – what did you talk about? Tell me that, and I won’t ask another question.”

“We talked,” said Nina deliberately, taking a clean brush, “we talked about your brother Cecil. No, I shan’t tell you what we said, or why we talked about him, or anything. You’ve had your one question, now shut up.”

“Nina,” said Molly calmly, “if I didn’t like you so much I should hate you.”

“That certainty about the other has always been the foundation of our mutual regard,” said Nina calmly.

Then they laughed, and began to work in earnest.

The next time Molly mentioned the “stranger who might have been observed” Nina laughed, and said: “The subject is forbidden; it makes you vulgar.”

“And you disagreeable.”

“Then it’s best to avoid it. Best for you and best for me.”

“But do you ever see him now?”

“On occasion. He still travels by the 9.1, and I still have the use of my eyes.”

“Does he ever talk to you like he did that Thursday?”

“No – never. And I’m not going to talk about him to you, so it’s no good. Your turn to choose a subject. You won’t? Then it becomes my turn. What a long winter this is! We seem to have taken years to get from November to February!”

The time went more quickly between February and May. It was when the country was wearing its full dress of green and the hawthorn pearls were opening into baby-roses in the hedgerows that it was Nina’s fortune to be put, by the zealous indiscretion of a mistaken porter, into an express train for Beechwood – the wrong station – the wrong line.

The “stranger who might have been observed,” on this occasion was not observed, but observer. He saw and recognised the porter’s error, hesitated a moment, and then leaped into a carriage just behind hers. So that when, after a swift journey made eventful by agonised recognition of the fleeting faces of various stations where she might have changed and caught her own train, Nina reached Beechwood, the stranger’s hand was ready to open the door for her.

“There’s no train for ages,” he said in tones deliberate, almost hesitating. “Shall we walk home? It’s only six miles.”

“But you – aren’t you going somewhere here?”