“Oh, Dolf! Do you want me that much?” she whispered.
It seemed to Widgeon that his remark had been misinterpreted. But he could not deny that he wanted her—immediately and urgently. She squirmed under his kisses, turning and twisting to avoid them, yet managing a continuous contact.
“I’m so glad you’re in service, Dolf,” she said.
“Why’s that, baby?”
“It’s helped me not to do nothing wrong. And we couldn’t ever meet downstairs with my hubby around all the time.”
Widgeon held her close.
“As soon as you get a home of your own,” he said, “I’m going to drop in for a cup of tea when you’re alone.”
“No!” she panted. “No! No! Promise me you won’t come, Dolf! Don’t make me do what I didn’t ought!”
“Aren’t we going to see each other any more then?”
“Perhaps. But I don’t know what’ll become of us, Agg and me. I’ll write to you soon. Oh, Dolf, what do you want to make me feel this way for?”
The departure of the Aggs did not leave Widgeon as contented as he expected. True, it was pleasant to stay as long as one liked at the Rising Sun without worrying whether Violet was catching cold on the corner—she had taken a perverse delight in waiting for him whenever it rained—and a relief to talk business to the porter without being distracted by a delicately sloped and heaving bosom—she had breathed swiftly and passionately whenever he came near her. Yet she excited his memory. Her shrinking and giving, her fluttering in and out of his passion like a moth round a lamp, had turned him also into a moth. She wanted making love to good and proper, he said to himself with a shade of brutality. Good and proper.
Widgeon never considered entertaining Violet Agg in his own room while Trimlake was away. He had the greatest horror of introducing a woman into his gentleman’s house. It was more than a point of honor—it was a taboo. As for street corners and public gardens, they did not interest him; they offered sufficient opportunity to get what he wanted from the ordinary pick-up, but not from this damnably appealing Violet. She was so shrinking, drooping, tearful, and passionate that the preliminaries to her surrender tempted him much more than the surrender itself. And in parks and dark alleys preliminaries were necessarily short and coarse.
He found half a dozen excellent reasons why he should not continue to live under the same roof as his gentleman, without admitting to himself the true one. He did not even admit the strong attraction that was drawing him to Mrs. Agg. He cursed her, thrust her out of his mind, and was conscious only of a vague discontent.
“You ain’t been yourself lately, Mr. Widgeon,” said Mrs. Hussey while he was in her kitchen polishing the silver.
He was on excellent terms with the maidservants of the other flats and seldom spent the allowance which Mr. Trimlake made him for his lunch, accepting the hospitality of Mrs. Hussey or some other friendly cook. None of the tenants had any objection to finding Widgeon in his or her kitchen. He was always willing to clean the silver, press a suit, or wait at table, and earned in his spare time an income from tips that averaged over ten shillings a week.
“Same as usual,” answered the manservant. “Same as usual. That’s me.”
“Same as grandma!” declared Mrs. Hussey. “Bless you, Mr. Widgeon! I can tell ’ow you’re feeling by the way you washes up the breakfast things. When there ain’t a good ’earty clatter and the tap don’t run free and easy like, I says to myself—there, I says, Mr. Widgeon got out the wrong side of bed this morning!”
Widgeon laughed. In spite of the formality with which they treated one another, he knew that Mrs. Hussey was just as fond of him as he of her.
“Well, there’s something in what you say, Mrs. Hussey. The truth is, I’ve been thinking.”
“A—ah,” said the cook disapprovingly. “I knew there was summat.”
“There’s times I fair hate service, Mrs. Hussey. It’s not a man’s life.”
“A nice obliging young fellow like you!” she reproached him. “The times I’ve ’eard that! There was the butler in an ’ouse where I was once,—Mr. Soames, ’is name was,—and every month, reg’lar as clockwork, ’e used to say to me: ‘Mrs. ’Ussey,’ he said, ‘if something don’t ’appen soon, I’m going to run away to sea.’”
“And did he?” asked Widgeon, interested.
He knew exactly what Mr. Soames had felt.
“Of course not! Why, ’e couldn’t run unless it was to catch the boot boy. And Mr. Soames at sea! ’E was that fond of ’is comforts, ’e was!”
Mrs. Hussey’s broad white apron front heaved up, seeming to fill the little tiled kitchen with such a wave of vital energy that Widgeon involuntarily stepped back. It was all the laugh that she ever allowed herself. One single heave—and then her body rested full and tranquil as the surface of a tidal river after the convulsion of the bore.
“All the same,” he said, “a man does want more freedom than he gets in this job.”
“You couldn’t ’ardly ’ave more, Mr. Widgeon—meaning no offense. And you’ve got a nice room and no call to complain.”
“Nor they haven’t in one of these modern jails,” answered Widgeon.
“You ’ave got it bad, and no mistake! But don’t you go grumbling at service, Mr. Widgeon. There’s them as looks down on it. But it takes all sorts to make a world—that’s what I say.”
“It’d be all right if a man could live out,” he said.
“Live out!” exclaimed Mrs. Hussey, appalled by such extravagance. “’Ave you been listening to Mrs. Agg, Mr. Widgeon?” she added suspiciously.
Widgeon glared. Mrs. Agg had been hidden deep down under several layers of consciousness. Her image was dragged, dangling and naked, to the surface, tearing raggedly through all the inhibitions in its way.
“Mrs. Agg?” he asked, ferociously polishing a dessert spoon. “And what would she have to do with it?”
“Lor’ bless you—’twas only a joke,” pattered Mrs. Hussey, alarmed. “We all says things for fun like, as we don’t ’ardly mean.”
“That’s all right,” Widgeon reassured her. “What did she say now, between friends?”
“Well, it weren’t much,” the cook answered. “She no more than said she was surprised that a young fellow like you didn’t ’ave a home of ’is own. Asking me a heap of questions, she was—whether you didn’t ’ave a young lady and so on. I told her straight: ‘Mrs. Agg,’ I says, ‘I’ve enough to do in my kitchen without watching of Mr. Widgeon.’ She’s a bad lot, she is. I wouldn’t be in Agg’s shoes for much, I wouldn’t!”
“You’ve no call to say that, Mrs. Hussey,” replied Widgeon sharply. “I should have thought you’d be above all the gossip that goes on in this house.”
“And so I am!” answered the cook indignantly. “No one can say as I ever gossips, Mr. Widgeon. I knows what I knows and I keeps it to meself, and if a certain party comes to me and tells me she saw you and Mrs. Agg in the mews I ’aven’t nothing to say against either of you, Mr. Widgeon. I just says it might be Mr. Widgeon or it might not and I’ve got nothing against Vi’let Agg, I says, though if I was to out with what I thought, I’d say if it weren’t Mr. Widgeon it’d be another, I says, and we all know what men are, though what a man could see in a little milk-face what ain’t ’ardly decently dressed and wouldn’t say boo to a goose unless she’d seen it on the pictures, that’s what I don’t understand, I says. But gossip, Mr. Widgeon—I’ll ’ave you know that not a word of gossip ’as ever passed my lips.”
Widgeon wiped the last batch of forks and laid them respectfully in their green baize nest, while Mrs. Hussey recovered her breath.
“Is there anything further I can do for you, Mrs. Hussey?” he asked with cold politeness.
“Not unless you’d care to ’ave a bite to eat with me,” said the cook, cheerfully refusing to take any notice of the sudden c
hill. “There’s ’alf a game pie in the fridge what I’ve kept special for you, Mr. Widgeon.”
“Thank you. Another time, Mrs. Hussey,” he answered. “I have lunched.”
To Widgeon Mrs. Hussey’s remarks were uncalled for and blasphemous. That his tender, virginal Violet should have become the butt of a dozen coarse old women just because of her frightened longing to escape from loneliness and a feckless, drunken husband aroused all the protective instincts in him. He no longer thought of her as an attractive creature to be cautiously avoided. He adored her. She was a defenseless flower dependent utterly on his care for her. Widgeon decided to take a room of his own and let the consequences be what they might.
Mr. Trimlake arrived home at six and announced his intention of dining in. As a rule Widgeon disliked cooking for his gentleman. It was not the preparation of food that offended him,—for though he only knew a few simple dishes he made them well and liked them to be enjoyed,—but the washing-up afterwards. Like most amateur cooks he dirtied twice as many pans, saucers, and spoons as the professional, and the more hints and tips he received from Mrs. Hussey and others, the worse was the subsequent mess. On this occasion, however, he was glad to be cook since he could ensure that his gentleman would enjoy a suave after-dinner mood. He had little fear that Trimlake would not agree to his living out. He knew that he was a necessity to his employer.
“Is there anything that you would particularly like, sir?” he asked.
“No, no, Widgeon. I leave it to you.”
“There is very little in the house, sir.”
“I quite understand, Widgeon. The shops are shut. But I could not let you know beforehand and I shall not complain.”
“I hope indeed, sir, that you will have no reason to,” answered Widgeon, professionally horrified by the suggestion.
The only shop open in the neighborhood was a greengrocer’s in a proletarian street that squatted, lively, unashamed, and unnoticeable except from the back windows of a few top floors, among the majestic residences of the upper middle class. Widgeon kept the existence of this invaluable ally to himself and made a mystery of where and how he obtained his last-minute supplies. As Mr. Trimlake never asked but merely appreciated, the mystery stood.
The manservant bought a pound of mushrooms, and then, remembering that a cook on the ground floor had complained of her master’s revolting taste in cheese, borrowed from her a half Camembert that she was sternly consigning to the dustbin. He warmed a bottle of the best claret, and at seven-thirty presented to his gentleman a large omelette, plump with mushrooms, its pale yellow exterior neither fried nor bursting, toast, fruit, and the rescued Camembert sitting upon a lettuce leaf and appetizingly offending the nostrils.
Mr. Trimlake looked up over his glasses at the tray, and longed to ask Widgeon how the devil he had managed such a meal; but, being a shy man, he felt such a question would be an unwarrantable intrusion into his servant’s business. He expressed his good will towards Widgeon by deeds, never by words.
When Widgeon came in to clear away the coffee and observed the benign glances of his gentleman he judged that his moment had come. He picked up the coffee tray so that, by holding some badge of service in his hands, he might appear the more respectful.
“I wonder if I might speak to you a minute, sir?”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Mr. Trimlake, startled. “Of course, Widgeon! Is anything wrong?”
“Oh no, sir! It was merely that I believe I did not mention to you that an aunt of mine passed away recently.”
“Did she indeed?” Mr. Trimlake was momentarily taken aback by the thought that his man possessed any relations—ridiculous, for Widgeon, he remembered, must have been born like everyone else. “A blow, eh? Yes. No doubt.”
“It had been,” said Widgeon, composing his face to a pious melancholy, “expected for some time.”
“Ah. Well. Statistics—but we must all come to it, Widgeon. Our sorrow. Less, of course, than a sudden shock. At least I hope so.”
“Yes, sir. She left me some small pieces of furniture, sir.”
“And very properly,” said Mr. Trimlake vaguely. “Very properly.”
“I also have”—Widgeon cleared his throat, as if apologizing for such a liberty—“a number of books, and I am afraid, sir, that what with one thing and another I am finding my room a little small.”
“Perhaps we could rearrange the flat somehow,” said Mr. Trimlake hastily. “Now if—”
“I could not dream of inconveniencing you, sir,” Widgeon interrupted—he knew quite well that his gentleman was about to offer him the spare room. “I would suggest that if you were to permit me to take a room outside, it might be the solution. Of course I would see that our routine was not interfered with in the least.”
“I hope everything will go on just as at present.”
“You will notice no difference, sir.”
“Well, that’s all right then,” said Trimlake, relieved that nothing worse had come out of this unprecedented scene. “Oh, and by the way,” he added as Widgeon and the coffee tray approached the door, “let me know when you have found a place. I’ll pay half the rent.”
“Thank you very much indeed, sir.”
Widgeon had a twinge of conscience, since Mr. Trimlake’s ever-ready generosity had been called forth by a lie. But one couldn’t go to one’s gentleman and say straight out that one needed a woman from time to time. Or at least to some gentlemen perhaps one could. But certainly not to this. Widgeon was well aware that Mr. Trimlake had led a severely celibate existence ever since he had been with him, both inside and outside the flat. He did not deliberately avoid women, but their track never entered the precise orbit of his London life. Failing accidents, and unless some marriageable daughter of a fellow clubman decided that comfort and a well-groomed actuary in his late forties were well worth grabbing before the end of her last season, Mr. Trimlake was likely to remain celibate.
For a week after the Aggs had left, Widgeon had no communication with the pale and shrinking companion of his thoughts. Then he received a rose-pink envelope with gold deckle edges, into which Mrs. Agg had inserted about a teaspoonful of black narcissus perfume and a message, written in loudly discreet block capitals, that she missed he knew who, and would call for a letter at the Baker Street Post Office on Monday. Widgeon, not to be outdone, bought a manly sheet of thick parchment with envelope to match and replied that he would be outside the Dominion Theatre at two o’clock on Saturday. He felt a fine sense of independent manhood in putting off their reunion to the end of the week. He had finished with those teasing back-street meetings once and for all.
A place of his own was hard to find, however. There were chauffeurs’ rooms in various mews, but they were noisy and had little privacy. There were plenty of lodgings in and about the street where his greengrocer lived, but, after years spent in modern flats, his taste was trained to comfort. Being himself, in his motive for taking a room, removed from the limitations of a solid social stratum, he was led against his will and by the logical forces that govern the housing of any community into Bohemia. Widgeon was puzzled by this local world. At one moment he was walking down a street of dirty little brown brick houses with iron railings in front of them; at the next moment, for no apparent reason, the same dirty little brown brick houses were sporting nasturtiums in window boxes, and their railings, doors, and drainpipes had blossomed into the gayety of cheap paint.
One of these residences of the idle poor exhibited in the window a notice of “Studio to Rent.” Widgeon misread it as Study, and since the word connoted a pleasantly masculine room where one left the whiskey and sandwiches he rang the bell. The door was opened by an angular woman whose peasant blouse and strings of beads vainly demanded a rounded bosom on which to rest. She disappointed him by referring to the room as a studio, but it turned out to be neither studio nor study; it was a plain room, built out into
the back yard, with a gas fire, running water, and a moderately private entrance down a passage which he would share, the landlady explained, with the tenant of another studio that had been carved out of the former kitchen and pantry.
In spite of a feeling that his respectability was somehow compromised, Widgeon took the place at a rent of fifteen shillings a week; that included the essential furniture, a grey carpet, and curtaining of magenta sponge cloth. For five pounds he bought at the Rising Sun—where everyone either had or knew someone who had an honest perquisite waiting to be turned into cash—bed linen, a radio, and an old luxurious club chair. On the Friday evening, having seen his gentleman off for the week end, he settled into his new room and was surprised to find himself enjoying his ownership as much as his anticipation of future favors from Mrs. Agg.
He slept soundly, breakfasted at his own expense,—a conscious extravagance,—and walked over to Mr. Trimlake’s flat. He felt it his duty to turn up, though there was nothing to do; as a sop to conscience he unnecessarily pressed a suit. His continually recurring thoughts of Violet Agg had a sensual beauty that shook him. He had never experienced a similar sensation; his idyllic loves of boyhood had not been so directly connected with the mechanism of his own body, and his later philanderings had been affairs either of money or of opportunity—passing adventures in the various houses where he had begun his service and the buildings where Mr. Trimlake had rented flats. This sense of conquest over a girl who gave so vivid an impression of aching yet fearing to be conquered was entirely new. He paced across London to his meeting with her in an ecstasy of desire, single-minded as that of an animal seeking its mate over half a county.
He had waited ten minutes outside the cinema before he caught sight of Violet standing by a pillar a little behind him. She was twisting a crepe-de-Chine handkerchief between her fingers and staring with frightened, tearful eyes at the passers-by. Her pose was touching. He was overwhelmed by pity for her defenselessness.
The Salvation of Pisco Gabar and Other Stories Page 9
