Arthur took the money from her without a word, tucked it carefully into his breast-pocket, shook her heartily by the hand, and having bestowed much the same kind of farewell upon Armstrong, with a final kick to the boots, he was out into the mist and gone. The two remaining shut the door hurriedly behind him. For an instant his figure shewed dark on the heaving white expanse, then that also vanished, submerged.
For a moment Armstrong did not look at Ape’s-face, nor did he say anything. When he turned to her she was smiling a little with the downward turn of her eyelids which gave something sardonic to her expression.
‘I think that is safe,’ she said with a sigh.
Armstrong shrugged. ‘He might have thanked you,’ he said crossly.
‘I should have been quite startled,’ she returned, ‘no one has ever encouraged them to be polite where I am concerned, you know. It isn’t brotherly, is it?’
‘I don’t know, being a sisterless creature,’ he said, ‘but still I have seen polite brothers—and by that I suppose I mean people with some kind of considerateness.’
‘Consideration,’ she said, ‘is made for things decorative or precious. Only a really unattractive woman sounds all the depths of unkindness, instinctive and intentional.’
‘You are neither young enough nor old enough to be bitter,’ he returned.
‘Am I bitter?’ she answered him. ‘I merely thought my remark a truism.’
She stooped in speaking and picked up the boots, turning them over idly in her hand. The metal tips clanked harshly together. She rubbed one of her fingers along the worn edges and drew it slowly away: there was a dull grey stain upon it. He saw her look upon it ponderingly.
‘Do you see?’ she asked, holding it out towards him.
‘Do I understand?’ he rejoined.
‘The mud on the soles is quite damp, and yet they are locked in a cupboard of which only Aunt Ellen keeps the key.’
‘I do not understand,’ he said. They stood looking perplexedly at one another.
‘Must I put them back again? must I try to disguise the misadventure to the lock? what must I do?’
‘Certainly return them,’ he said.
‘In all my life I have never crossed the threshold of Aunt Ellen’s room.
Must I now?’
‘Certainly,’ said Armstrong, ‘and I will wait here while you do it.’
She was away three minutes, he was measuring the time by his watch, as nature informed him that the hour for lunch was near at hand and he was anxious to be gone: yet at the same moment he had an understanding of the unpleasantness of her task. He felt a proprietary complacence in her since helping in Arthur’s evasion, and the complacence showed itself in the glance which greeted her return. It was plain that Ape’s-face warmed under this sympathy, hybrid though it were. She was shivering a little, and her long fingers clutched tremulously at one another.
‘I think no one will notice that anything has happened,’ she said in a low voice, ‘but oh! it’s such a strange room—so full of furniture, pictures, china, photographs, hangings, books—almost a pawnshop in feeling. There were two terrible stuffed owls that glared at me as I shut the cupboard-door. The cupboard was quite empty, just as Arthur described it, except for those dreadful old garments and the battered old hat. Even the torn skirt felt damp, and the feather hung down from the hat brim like something left out in the night’s dew.’
‘Anyhow, you feel safer now your brother is gone,’ Armstrong concluded benevolently, ‘and after all a damp boot is no great matter. May I call at tea-time?’
‘Please,’ she said; ‘but those boots have been used lately.’
‘You grow imaginative,’ he returned, and went away smiling.
XI
At the Window
ARMSTRONG HAD GROPED his way back to the Drylches through the driving mist-banks, to find his mid-day meal smoking upon the table, and the girl staring out at the grey world beyond the windows.
She did not so much as turn her head when he entered, but continued a tune she was beating out upon the leaded panes with the tips of her finger-nails.
The click of her nails upon the glass sounded unpleasantly prickling and malicious. Her supple figure, black against the grey, swayed to and fro with a sinuous, impatient movement.
Armstrong settled himself in a satisfied manner to carve the hot joint; the comfortable sanity of the thing, the suggestive odour of the savoury gravy established him firmly in his most complacent mood. Now he did not even harbour any wish to fly from the adventurous inclinations of his table-companion.
‘Join me,’ said he, ‘in the one pursuit in which the female creature can keep pace with the male!’
She turned her head round in such a way that only her eyes and the palely shining crown of her head showed over the curve of her shoulder.
There was something secret and rebellious in this concealment of the lower part of her face. She swung a little on one foot, ended her tune with a final and more malicious click of the nail, then came to the table and sat with elbows supporting her chin at the edge of the board. Her narrowed eyes contemplated him in an expressionless and impersonal manner.
‘What an unpleasant thing a meat-eating animal can be,’ she said at last;
‘it deprives him of all sensations and perceptions. . . .’
‘But it raises him to a state of beatitude which enables him to regard all human nature in a true spirit of charity,’ he interrupted her; ‘it makes him genial and conversible, forbearing, tolerant, gracious, a thousand pleasant things, in fact. Please observe how much nicer I am feasting than fasting!’
She smiled at him slowly. ‘Pleasanter to yourself perhaps,’ she seemed to say: aloud she said nothing.
‘Even the little motes of grease that float in the brown beams of the gravy, the smooth curls in the yellow fat, the shy gloss of the crackling skin—all these appeal to a higher and more aesthetic sense.’
She smiled at him again, and behind the opaque blue of her eyes he saw some strange thought flicker and go out into shadow once more. He carved her a slice and handed it with an elaborateness of ceremonial that befitted the esteem he half mockingly bestowed upon the occasion. The mockery excused his esteem, otherwise he felt his pleasure would have been blamable; and yet the girl’s smile accused him of poor play-acting, in that it was half earnest. He began to feel the hairs grown grey upon his head, the ponderousness of his body, the loss of elasticity in his ideas, his very talk. Yet it was not an honesty such as Ape’s-face owned which disclosed him to himself, but a covert and elusive secrecy that pondered on its own ends while it observed him.
‘How cheerful this dull day makes you,’ she exclaimed at last, her voice being particularly soft and tinkling, and for that very reason most expressionless. ‘It seems I should have done much better also to have braved the fog and gone upon the downs. Did you break your neck many times?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I know the slope of the road.’
‘Or you might have knocked your brains out against one of the plantation trees,’ she added; ‘that is another end I had forgotten to imagine.’
‘I should hardly attempt anything so hazardous at my time of life,’ he replied. ‘Have you been spending your morning in devising some pleasant or speedy means of escaping from existence?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I have been trying a practical experiment in mental suggestion. Mere theorising is hateful. You men often accuse us women of selfishness, and obstinacy, and other perverted forms of will-power, don’t you? I intend proving that we are the motive-power of all sub-consciousness in the Universe. Wait and see! What I have done this morning will perhaps convince you. It may be that I even found your way home for you through the fog: who knows?’
‘That would have been very obliging of you,’ he returned, ‘but your theory suggests a danger—a fresh danger from your sex: in which case no woman should be left alone unless she is certificated “harmless”. How long must I wait to see the result of
this experiment?’
She laughed at him maliciously. ‘This afternoon, this evening, tomorrow morning, or perhaps next year! But it is great fun,’ she said, ‘and the best of it is that I do not really care if it does not happen.’
‘In that case,’ said Armstrong, ‘I am very glad, for I feel inclined to do a little prophesying on my own account and inform you that the thing will not happen.’
‘Now that comes from Druid-hunting,’ she said; ‘but never mind, the last act crowns the play.’
‘I wonder,’ he returned, ‘if it is really safe to leave you alone all the afternoon to try more experiments?’
‘But I believe my work done already,’ she replied; ‘for your sake I could almost wish it might happen this evening, the result will be so very funny. It may be amusing to write plays, but it is far more amusing to make them happen—off the stage.’
‘For the composer of the plot, no doubt,’ said Armstrong.
‘And the spectators. I am quite public-spirited, for, you see, I invited you to impersonate the audience.’
‘I am greatly privileged,’ he rejoined, and forgot to give himself a second helping. All the time she spoke he was conscious of seeing the thought which lay behind her words; a new angle presented itself for the point of view, but an angle from which he was so little accustomed to do any kind of observation that he could not maintain the position continuously. He felt it adjusting itself, shifting, vanishing, and adjusting itself again, only to go once more through the renewed processes of disappearance.
He became bewildered and uneasy. In outward appearance he showed unmistakable signs of impatience and irritation.
She simply turned and laughed at him.
‘Oh, how you amuse me,’ she said, ‘I just love watching people.’ She rose from the table and returned to her occupation of playing on the window-pane. ‘Do you remember the second play you ever saw?—Knowing what wonders attended the raising of the curtain, waiting in the dark for the stage to light up and the excitement to begin, then the entrance of the first figure, a curious puppet, posturing and strutting preposterously under a hard glare of lamps and observation. It’s the expectancy, the impatience of those first moments I feel now! Oh, go on with your roast beef; it would bring the whole house down to see you. The audience must be first aroused at the stroke of an emotion common to them all; then you can stir them to the rarer and more subtle kinds at will. Do say you like my curtain! As a drop-scene it is inimitable, this curious grey veil with hints of something passing up and down behind. Bon Dieu! and there is not even an orchestra to disturb the illusion. I never found waiting so hard!’
Here she gave a thud upon the glass with both fists, and made her way to the door with the leisurely, panther-like swing of her figure which made every movement a changing posture.
Armstrong did not relish the idea of playing the preluding puppet of her show, and certainly it rendered his meal unappetising—stage-fare could not have proved more distasteful. He sought refuge from the feeling in a pipe and the notes which he had made on the Morton papers. But each time he made a movement he was supremely aware of its outward effect, the motion of his own hand upon the paper had its histrionic value, a something detached, impersonal. This intolerable shifting of observation continued unceasingly until four o’clock, when he started once more for the house under the down.
This time he approached the front door with all formality, and made the usual due demands for Miss Delane. The butler, with true episcopal grace, received and answered his enquiry, and presently he found himself once more on his way to the drawing-room. That the place had not only gripped him, but taken him entirely to itself, was shown in the age-long feeling of familiarity with which he followed his conductor.
The sound of many voices proceeding from behind the door seemed to herald the delights of a tea-party, for the duo-monologue character of the family chatter when alone could never have risen to such an overflow of sound.
A lamp had been lighted in the room, but the curtains were still left undrawn and the unpleasant duel of aggressive artificial illumination and natural light dimmed, clashed about the occupants of the room in a distracting contrast of hues and colour. It gave once more that feeling of double vision which had already proved itself so distasteful to him. He could have looked at the scene from both points of view separately perhaps, but this segment of two angles in which both parts were contained and equal in value disturbed him beyond the strain of irritation.
Besides Miss Delane, Mr Delane-Morton, and Ape’s-face there were now two elderly ladies of uncertain age, and one might almost have said uncertain sex, a younger woman, and a man of Armstrong’s own age. They were dispersed about the room in various attitudes of eating. The talk still circled round the weather and bade fair to flow in that direction for some time; it had engulfed everyone except Ape’s-face, who seemed isolated in the middle of both room and conversation by a mutual conspiracy of active neglect. Words wreathed themselves over and about her, but they never touched her at any point; it was like a lasso in the hand of skilled players, but in this instance the aim was to miss rather than to hit. All the same it was baiting of a sort and kind that would not have disgraced the more savage instincts of our ancestors. He remembered a time in his childhood when, playing with his ball, a troop of grown-up folk came and took it from him, tossing it above his head from hand to hand in a wide circle; whilst he, below them, ran helplessly from one to the other trying to catch the stolen thing as it flew. The agony of the attained, now unattainable, the distortion of one’s own invention, or the forcible appropriation of one’s own right—all these had been part of his pain: and again he saw it repeated in the treatment to which the party of strangers subjected Ape’s-face. He raged inwardly, impotently. The conversation was of that smoothly-rolling kind which affords no hand-grip, no foothold, and may be heard in every other man’s house: it is so smooth indeed that it cannot be turned.
Seeing there was no help to be expected Armstrong resigned himself to such patience as he possessed and an observation of the company. In so doing he became aware of a certain strangeness—in the manner of the host and hostess which grew with every minute. Aunt Ellen, usually so meticulous in her attentions, showed a certain vagueness of glance which directed itself towards a point in the room which no one seemed to occupy and from whence no sound proceeded. Once or twice she addressed a pressing invitation for the partaking of more food or tea to the air, to which the rest of the party replied as with one voice, no one being certain for whom it was meant. Mr Delane-Morton, usually so mild and persuasive in tone, embarked upon a bitter tirade against pet-dogs, from which no amount of neighbourly assent could deter him; every subject seemed to contain a hidden reference to the grievous topic which no one but himself would have observed. He became almost abusive finally, and because every one took his remarks in perfect forbearance and cordiality of agreement he seemed to glower and become more pointed still. As there was no apparent reason for this obstinate attack on the canine species his guests gradually shewed signs of uneasiness and a preparedness to retire from the battlefield. Armstrong greeted these signs with relief. A dispersal of the party now began to take place, Mr Delane-Morton, Godfrey, Ape’s-face all drifting away in the tracks of the departing until only Armstrong and Aunt Ellen were left alone in the room. Aunt Ellen sighed.
‘Dear, dear,’ she said, ‘why, I wonder, do people always bring their dullest friends to call upon one? I really think there should be a law passed against the exchange of bores—the unfair exchange I mean, of course: for if I had a dull guest to entertain I should certainly have taken her to see the ——s’ and she mentioned the name of the departed, ‘then I should have no reason to complain of their bringing that exceedingly dull and unpleasing-looking little frump of a woman. Did you notice how impossible it was to get a word out of her? The four ——s I could have endured, but that woman made one too many: and how could they squeeze five people into that very small brougham?’
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Armstrong felt perplexed: he had only counted four strangers in the room.
‘Did she go before I arrived?’ he asked.
‘No, she was there all the time, unfortunately. I refer to the little old lady who sat over against the fireplace opposite me, and only shook her head whenever I asked her to have more tea or more cake. Extraordinarily bad manners I call it. People who stare at one should talk in order to excuse their extreme of attention.’
‘ I really did not notice her,’ said Armstrong, more and more bewildered.
‘Her unpleasant face disturbed me also. Her eyes were so hungry: they would have devoured me willingly, I assure you; and yet they were curiously vacant and dim, more like glass marbles than living eyes. I was quite thankful when she departed with the other four. I really do think they should not take a woman like that about with them.’
‘Really, really,’ cried Mr Delane-Morton, entering at this moment, ‘it is quite intolerable—this new-fangled craze for every woman in the kingdom to carry a pet about with her. I cannot conceive what the country is coming to! Such extravagance! Such folly! At least let me open the windows, my dear Ellen; the unpleasant odour of the beast still seems to pervade the room.’ He bustled across to the windows overlooking the downs, and at once let in a powerful stream of fog.
‘My dear John,’ cried the old lady, ‘I think you must be a trifle perturbed this afternoon, for I cannot imagine to what animal you refer: and if there is any unpleasant odour in the room I am certain it is due to the scent that unpleasant friend of the —s’ used. Just the sort of thing a woman of that kind would inflict upon one.’
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