Tales of two people

“What in the world is the matter?” he asked in a tone of cold surprise.

It was very absurd – she couldn’t stop crying; and from amid her weeping nothing more reasonable, nothing more adequate, nothing less trivial would come than confused murmurs of “My frock, Harold!” “My parasol!” “Oh, my face, my gloves!” He smiled contemptuously. “Don’t you see?” she exclaimed, exhibiting the gloves and parasol.

“See what? Are you crying because the room’s dirty?” He paused and then added, “I’m sorry you think it mean and horrid. Very sorry, Winifred.”

Offence was deep and bitter in his voice; he looked at her with a sort of disgust; she stopped sobbing and regarded him with a gaze in which fright and expectation seemed mingled, as though there were a great peril, and just one thing that might narrowly avert it. But his eyes were very hard. She dried her tears, and then forlornly scrubbed her cheeks again. He watched her with hostile curiosity, appearing to think her a very strange spectacle. Presently he spoke. “I thought you loved me. Oh, I daresay you thought so too till I came into competition with your new frock. I beg pardon – I must add your gloves and your parasol. As for the house, it’s no doubt mean and horrid; we were going to be poor, you see.” He laughed scornfully, as he added, “You might even have had to do a little dusting yourself now and then! Horrible!”

“I just sat there and looked at him.” That was Winifred’s own account of her behaviour. It is not very explicit and leaves room for much conjecture as to what her look said or tried to say. But whatever the message was he did not read it. He was engrossed in his own indignation, readier to hurt than to understand, full of his own wrong, of the mistake he had made, of her extraordinary want of love, of courage, of the high soul. Very likely all this was a natural enough state of mind for him to be in. Justice admits his provocation; the triviality of her spoken excuses gave his anger only too fine an opportunity. He easily persuaded himself that here was a revelation of the real woman, a flash of light that showed her true nature, showing, too, the folly of his delusion about her. Against all this her look and what it asked for had very little chance, and she could find no words that did not aggravate her offence.

“This is really rather a ludicrous scene,” he went on. “Is there any use in prolonging it?” He waited for her to speak, but she was still tongue-tied. “The caretaker needn’t be distressed by seeing the awful effects of her omission to dust the room; but, if you’re composed enough, we might as well go.” He looked round the room. “You’ll be glad to be out of this,” he ended.

“I know what you must think of me,” she burst out, “but – but you don’t understand – you don’t see – ”

“No doubt I’m stupid, but I confess I don’t. At least there’s only one thing I see.” He bowed and waved his hand towards the door. “Shall we go?” he asked.

She led the way downstairs, her skirt again held close and raised clear of her ankles; her care for it was not lost on Harold as he followed her, for she heard him laugh again with an obtrusive bitterness that made his mirth a taunt. The old caretaker waited for them in the passage.

“When’ll you be coming, sir?” she asked.

“I don’t know. It’s not certain we shall come,” said he. “The lady is not much taken with the house.”

“Ah, well!” sighed the old woman resignedly.

For an account of their drive back to the station materials are, again, sadly wanting. “He hardly said a word, and I did nothing but try to get my face clean and my gloves presentable,” was Winifred’s history of their journey. But she remembered – or chose to relate – a little more of what passed while they waited for the train on the platform at Euston. He left her for a few minutes on pretext of smoking a cigarette, and she saw him walking up and down, apparently in thought. Then he came back and sat down beside her. His manner was grave now; to judge by his recorded words, perhaps it was even a little pompous; but when may young men be pompous, if not at such crises as these?

“It’s no use pretending that nothing has happened, Winifred,” he said. “That would be the hollowest pretence, not worthy, I think, of either of us. Perhaps we had better take time to consider our course and – er – our relations to one another.”

“You don’t want to marry me now?” she asked simply.

“I want to do what is best for our happiness,” he replied. “We cannot forget what has happened to-day.”

“I know you would never forget it,” she said.

He did not contradict her; he looked first at his watch, then along the platform for the approach of her train. To admit that he might forget it was impossible to him; in such a case forgetfulness would be a negation of his principles and a slur on his perception. It would also be such a triumph over his vanity and his pride as it did not lie in him to achieve, such a forgiveness as his faults and virtues combined to put beyond the power of his nature. She looked at him; and “I smiled,” she said, not seeming herself to know why she had smiled, but conscious that, in the midst of her woe, some subtly amusing thought about him had come into her mind. She had never been amused at him before; so she, too, was getting some glimmer of a revelation out of the day’s experience – not the awful blaze of light that had flashed on Harold’s eyes, but a dim ray, just enough to give cause to that puzzled smile for which she could not explicitly account.

So they parted, and for persons who have followed the affair at all closely it is hardly necessary to add that they never came together again. This issue was obvious, and Winifred seems to have made up her mind to it that very same evening, for she called her mother into her room (as the good lady passed on the way to bed) and looked up from the task of brushing the grey frock which she had spread out on the sofa.

“I don’t think I shall marry Mr Jackson now, mother,” she said.

Mrs Petheram looked at her daughter and at her daughter’s gown.

“You’d better tell me more about it to-morrow. You look tired to-night, dear,” she replied.

But Winifred never told her any more – in the first place, because the family was too delighted with the fact to care one straw about how it had come to pass, and, in the second place, on the more important ground that the thing was really too small, too trivial, and too absurd to bear telling – at least to the family. To me, for some reason or other, Winifred did tell it, or some of it – enough, anyhow, to enable me, with the help of a few touches of imagination, to conjecture how it occurred.

“Don’t you think it was very absurd?” she asked at the end of her story. We were sitting by the yew hedge, near the library windows, looking across the flower beds to the meadow; it was a beautiful day, and the old place was charming. “Because,” she added, “I did love him, you know; and it seems a small thing to separate about, doesn’t it?”

“If he had behaved differently – ” I began.

“I don’t see how he could be expected to,” she murmured.

“You expected him to,” I said firmly. She turned to me with an appearance of interest, as though I might be able to interpret to her something that had been causing her puzzle. “Or you wouldn’t have looked at him as you say you did – or smiled at him, as you admit you did. But you were wrong to expect him to, because he’s not that kind of man.”

“What kind of man?”

“The kind of man to catch you in his arms, smother you in kisses (allow me the old phrase), tell you that he understood all you felt, knew all you were giving up, realised the great thing you were doing for him.”

Winifred was listening. I went on with my imaginary scene of romantic fervour.

“That when he contrasted that mean little place with the beauties you were accustomed to, with the beauties which were right and proper for you, when he saw your daintiness soiled by that dust, that gown whose hem he would willingly – ”

“He needn’t say quite as much as that,” interrupted Winifred, smiling a little.

“Well, or words to that effect,” said I. “That when he did all this and saw all this, you know, he loved you more, and knew that you loved him more than he had dared to dream, with a deeper love, a love that gave up for him all that you loved next best and second only to him; that after seeing your tears he would never doubt again that you would face all trials and all troubles with him at your side – Don’t you think, if he’d said something of that kind, accompanying his words with the appropriate actions – ” I paused.

“Well?” asked Winifred.

“Don’t you think you might have been living in that horrid little house now, instead of being about to contract an alliance with Sir Barton Amesbury?”

“How do you know I shall do that?” she cried.

“It needs,” I observed modestly, “little skill to discern the approach of the inevitable.” I looked at her thoughtful face and at her eyes; they had their old look of wondering in them. “Don’t you think that if he’d treated the situation in that way – ?” I asked.

“Perhaps,” she said softly. “But he wouldn’t think of all that. He was such an Idealist.”

I really do not know why she applied that term to him at that moment, except that he used to apply it to himself at many moments. But since it seemed to her to explain his conduct, there is no need to quarrel with the epithet.

“And I hope,” said I, “that the grey frock wasn’t irretrievably ruined?”

“I’ve never worn it again,” she murmured.

So I suppose it was ruined – unless she has some other reason. But she would be right to treat it differently from other frocks; it must mean a good deal to her, although it failed to mean anything except its own pretty self to Mr Jackson.

FOREORDAINED

“I DON’T say,” observed the Colonel, “that limited liability companies haven’t great advantages. In fact, I’m a director myself – it’s a big grocery – and draw three hundred a year – a very welcome addition to my half-pay – and, for all I know, I may supply some of you fellows with your morning bacon. If I do, it just exemplifies the point I was about to make; which is this – When it comes to limited companies, you never know who anybody is. I could tell you a little story to illustrate that; it’s rather a sad one, though.”

The club smoking-room was cheerfully lighted, the fire burned brightly, we each had a cigar and a drink. We intimated to the Colonel that we felt in a position to endure a touch of tragedy.

“It’s some years ago now,” he said, “but it affected me considerably at the time. Do any of you go to Stretchley’s for your clothes?”

Three of us shook our heads wistfully. The fourth – a young man, and a new member, whom none of us knew, but who had a legal look about him and wore admirable trousers of a delicate grey – answered the Colonel’s question in the affirmative.

“If I may say so, you and Stretchley do one another credit, sir,” said the Colonel, with an approving glance at the new member’s trousers. “And I needn’t tell you that Stretchley’s have few equals – and no superiors. When you say Stretchley’s, you say everything. I have never gone to them myself: partly because I couldn’t afford it, more perhaps from motives of delicacy – from consideration for poor George Langhorn’s feelings. He has always preferred not to act professionally for his personal friends, even though he lost money in consequence.”

“How does George Langhorn come in?” I ventured to ask.

“He is Stretchley’s, to all intents and purposes. It’s a small family company. The business was founded by George’s maternal grandfather, and carried to greatness by his mother’s brother, Fred Stretchley, whom I used to see at Brighton years ago. Fred made it into a company, but of course kept the bulk of the shares to himself, besides the entire control; and when he died he left all he had to George, on condition – mark you, on condition – that George remained in the business, and in active control of it. He did that because he knew that George hated it, and, at the same time, had a wonderful turn for it.”