In the grateful hush that followed, broken only by the regular turning of a page, Harry Gibson sat relaxed. It didn’t hurt him to see old Joyce going through the Gibson books; it even struck him to wish his own parent had been through them more often and as thoroughly, to trace the disastrous results of auction-room quixotry. “It was the pater Joyces should have taught business to!” thought Harry Gibson—and involuntarily, wryly, grinned, as he recalled the fanatic light in the pater’s eye, the St. Vitus jerk of the pater’s catalogue, as any detritus of the Romanoffs came up for sale. The pater had been unteachable …
Miranda sat still for at least five minutes. At least five minutes passed before she began to poke about again. The safe still stood open, to put the books back. Harry Gibson hadn’t time, as Miranda suddenly pounced, to slam its door on her fingers.
“Oh, look what I’ve found!” cried Miranda Joyce.
3
The handkerchief fluttered away as she jumped up, holding the comb aloft in pretty glee. In a last ray of winter sunshine the carved butterfly-spread of tortoiseshell quivered as though with its own life, it looked like a great brown butterfly caught in her hand.
“Put that down!” shouted Harry Gibson.
“Oh, Harry, but why?” cried Miranda. “Isn’t it for me?”
“Put it back!” shouted Harry Gibson.
“I know! It was to be a surprise!” cried Miranda.
“All right, so it was to be a surprise!” shouted Harry recklessly. “Put it back!”
She danced girlishly away from him, still holding the comb tantalisingly above her head. Mr Gibson could have taken it from her by force, but the scene was already violent enough; he was also instinctively aware that some such physical violence was what Miranda wanted to provoke. Even under the eye of her father, thought Harry Gibson with horror, she was ready to jump into a semi-amorous struggle. Luckily Mr Joyce, a man with remarkable powers of concentration, had now found whatever it was he looked for.
“Thank you, Harry boy,” said Mr Joyce. “Miranda, what are you needling him about?”
His daughter at once looked penitent. The mild yet authoritative intervention produced such a drop in the emotional temperature, it was the best thing she could do. She nonetheless sketched a motion of slipping from Harry’s grasp, as she darted to drop the comb under her father’s nose. It happened to fall upon the still-open ledger. Harry Gibson wasn’t a man much given to symbolism, but he saw the two halves of his life meet …
“Harry had a surprise for me, and I found it, and now he doesn’t want me to see,” pouted Miranda.
Mr Joyce picked up the comb and looked at it. In his knowledgeable palm it weighed like a feather—but he examined it with increasing respect.
“Old,” pronounced Mr Joyce. “Fine workmanship. I’d say this was a very old piece indeed. Where did you get it, son?”
Harry Gibson swallowed.
“It just happened to come into my hands …”
“He’s lying!” cried Miranda—turning to vivacity again. “Oh, what a liar my Harry is! He paid a fortune for it, and doesn’t want me to know! Is it my wedding-present, Harry? Oh, Harry, do you see me such a Spanish type?”
“Now I’ll have to buy her a Spanish shawl,” complained Mr Joyce humorously. “Now we’re going to live on Spanish-style chicken and rice.” His eye was still appreciative. “You say it just came into your hands? Then I’m taking on a partner who can teach me something,” said old man Joyce. “Want to tell me how much you really paid for it?”
“With all my life!” Harry Gibson might have answered. “With all my life!” He naturally couldn’t say it. Fortunately his silence could as naturally be taken for that of a lover justifiably chagrined at the surprising, by his beloved, of his surprise for her. Mr Joyce dropped the question, which really interested him, of the comb’s price, and looked at his daughter admonishingly.
“See how a pleasure is spoiled by too much noseying! Let Harry put it back where it belongs, until the proper time. Harry, it should be in a box.”
Still without speaking, Mr Gibson stooped, and picked up his handkerchief, and dropped it over the comb as it lay on the open ledger. He wouldn’t touch it, while he was watched.
“That’s not enough protection,” said Mr Joyce decisively. “Remind me after dinner to-night, and I’ll give you a cigar-box.”
Before they left Miranda apologised very prettily for making Harry cross, and promised never to mention the comb again—until the proper time. All she begged was that she might have it very very early on the wedding-day, for the florist to fix up with orange-blossom, to wear in her hair.
4
The results of this episode, in the event, were far-reaching beyond expectation upon the destinies of all concerned. Everything that now followed, followed from it. Dolores’ bitterest tears followed, and Harry’s bitterest anguish, and Miranda’s moment of triumph, from this fortuitous bringing to light of the Spanish comb.
Harry Gibson sent it back next day. For the first time, he realised that what he’d borne away as a last gage of love was in fact an object of value; and he could imagine how Dolores might be pressed for money. (Where she herself had picked up the comb, he remembered her once telling him, was in the Caledonian Market; where famous bargains had been picked up before.) After night-long, agonising reflection, in the morning he sent it back, by special-messenger. (Also in Mr Joyce’s cigar-box. Nothing he could find in the way of cardboard offered equal protection.) So the last link was broken, he had nothing left to remember her by, his Spanish rose; and the opening of the package reduced Dolores to despair.
There wasn’t a line of writing with it. Mr Gibson, pen in hand for three hours, at the end of them had written nothing. What good would it do to either of them, to write, “I love you, you are my only love”? Yet what else could he write? So he wrote nothing; and Dolores, opening the package, laid her head down and wept.
PART III
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
1
As the last dislodged pebble unlooses the avalanche—as the last additional straw beats the camel to its knees—so acted upon Dolores’ heart and situation the return of her Spanish comb in a cigar-box.
It had been a symbol of her personality as a Spanish rose. It had been the symbol of the mutual love she and her King Hal bore to each other. When Dolores missed it on the tragic morning after his departure, she still rejoiced to guess it in her lover’s keeping. Thus its return broke her heart.
All her tragedy being shot with absurdity, the cigar-box broke her heart, so to speak, extra. A cigar-box also is a symbol—of carelessly-puffing prosperity. Mr Gibson in his new good fortune, it seemed to Dolores, threw that new good fortune in her face. She was utterly mistaken—down to the detail that even Mr Joyce no longer smoked cigars, having taken to a pipe like Harry; but she could not know, and her last, lingering, foolish spark of hope was quenched.
Once only she set the comb in her coiled hair again, and sat before the mirror perhaps half-an-hour. Her enormous dark eyes stared back at her dolorously; for the first time the meaning of her taken-name occurred to her, she realised vaguely that it meant something sad—an unlucky name perhaps to have chosen? Dolorous were the lines about her mouth, dolorous her hollowing cheeks: King Hal’s Spanish rose had withered indeed. All that remained of her was the flare of carved tortoiseshell, elegant, erect and glossy, mocking the grey in the once-black hair. “Passée,” thought Dolores. “I’m passée …” The tears started under her lids; after she had cried a little she looked worse.
She drew the tortoiseshell from her braids and shut it not in her dressing-table, but in the long wardrobe-drawer, among the potpourri, under Mr Gibson’s dressing-gown. At some future date, she dimly acknowledged, that drawer might have to be emptied; but not yet. The photograph by the bed she also left in place. (Not yet, not yet!)—She looked at it as long as she’d looked at her own reflection; though it was many years since Mr Gibson, save to the eye of love, had much
resembled that martial image, she had no doubt that it was a true and continuing likeness. Only she herself had withered; King Hal could not …
During the following days Mr Phillips noted the change in her with satisfaction. He found her far less uppish, far less lah-di-dah. In fact, for a few days at least she went about as though she’d been beaten. Mr Phillips had no idea what caused this welcome phenomenon, he hadn’t been there when the packet arrived, and put it down to a general coming to her senses. Though subdued, she was evidently trying to please him; and when he tired of seeing her long face, and jocosely told her to cheer up, she smiled.
2
On the Saturday of the same week Miranda took Miss Harris out to lunch.
Miranda hadn’t believed the pretty myth of a surprise wedding-gift for one moment. She knew it to be her own invention. (It was also a credit, in the circumstances, to her wit.) She had successfully taken in both her father and Harry Gibson, but she hadn’t taken in herself. She couldn’t—not before Harry’s last look of all, his look as she’d petitioned, so prettily, to wear the comb among her orange-blossom …
Miranda in fact rightly guessed the Spanish comb to have been the property of Harry’s unknown Past.
He kept it in his safe.
He couldn’t bear to see it handled, or even looked at.
His mother claimed to know how he spent every minute of the day, and this Miranda accepted, especially after making such friends with the showroom; she knew herself how he spent his evenings. She didn’t imagine Harry still saw his Past; but she was certain that he still thought about her, and in a way most offensive to a fiancée’s feelings. Miranda’s jealousy and curiosity, that had never been quietened altogether, now gave her no peace.
It was all very well to say let sleeping dogs lie; that was a man’s point of view.
Miranda didn’t hire detectives. She hadn’t the courage to, without her father’s backing, and Dadda’s earlier lack of sympathy with such a project would scarcely have diminished. On the contrary—Miranda was perfectly aware that at the first hint he would at once begin to defend Harry, cover up for Harry, even warn Harry what was afoot. (“Like two schoolboys!” thought Miranda angrily. “Harry could steal apples, Dadda would keep guard!”) She knew better than to invoke so corrupted an ally; so she took Miss Harris out to lunch.
The latter had no thought of being disloyal. She was too good a sort. But her loyalties were now divided between Gibson and Joyce; moreover she realistically saw Mr Gibson’s marriage as a splendid way out of all his difficulties. She thought Miss Joyce very chic. Miss Harris wasn’t bought by a West End lunch; she simply wanted to do her best for all parties, and fortunately this proved quite straightforward.
“Oh, no, Miss Joyce,” declared Miss Harris, “there’s never been any lady about the place before! Which is why, if I may say so, both Miss Molyneux and me so appreciate you taking an interest—especially you so knowing what is what.”
Miranda accepted the compliment with a friendly smile.
“Of course I take an interest—in my fiancé’s business! But I see I didn’t make myself clear. The person I was thinking of, the person Mrs Gibson mentioned, was someone more like a secretary—an old employee of some sort—we’d like to surprise Mr Gibson by inviting to the wedding …”
“If I may say so again,” said Miss Harris, “Mr Gibson is a very lucky man. I call that a very beautiful thought indeed, Miss Joyce. It just so happens I don’t recall beyond a charlady or two, who really come and go like the wind, anyone at all answering to the description.”
Miss Joyce reflected, while they finished their tripes à la mode de Caen.
“Perhaps somewhere among the old letters,” she mused, “there might be an address?”
“Well, I suppose there might,” said Miss Harris doubtfully. “It’s not exactly in my department. In fact, I don’t know that we keep any old letters at all …” She hesitated; as she said afterward to Miss Molyneux, Miss Joyce was evidently quite set; and it really was a beautiful thought. “I tell you what,” said Miss Harris, “if it’s really got to be a surprise—”
“Oh, but it must!” cried Miranda girlishly.
“—Friday evenings, half-past five to six, the charlady comes in to do the office, so Mr Gibson leaves it open and I stay a little late to put the lock down afterwards. If you care to come in next Friday and look round—”
“What a wonderful idea!” cried Miranda. “Oh, but what would the charwoman think?”
“Pop in as she’s leaving,” said Miss Harris practically. “Which in my experience is nearer a quarter-to. Then I could leave you to put the lock down—couldn’t I, Miss Joyce?”
Miranda ordered Crêpes Suzette. Miss Harris consumed them cheerfully. She hadn’t been bought. Was her suggestion quite straightforward? Well, perhaps not quite, admitted Miss Harris; but she felt certain it could do no harm. Privately, she thought Miss Joyce would be wasting her time. In any case, there could be nothing in Mr Gibson’s office that Joyces hadn’t seen already; the Joyce accountants, in Miss Harris’s recollection, having made a remarkably thorough job.
3
Until Friday was longer than Miranda wanted to wait; but she had no choice. In the interval she behaved rather discreetly with Harry, and kept her word about never mentioning the comb to him again. She didn’t mention it to anyone—obviously: or why should old Mrs Gibson have been so surprised, at the latest alterations to the wedding-array?
“Can you imagine what Miranda has thought of now?” demanded old Mrs Gibson of her son. “For instead of a veil?”
“No,” said Harry.
They were at the breakfast-table. Since they dined so regularly in Knightbridge, breakfast had become more than ever the time for any intimate conversation, and Mr Gibson regretted it. It had been bad enough to start the day on reminiscences of Moscow: to start on his approaching nuptials was far worse. “No,” said Harry Gibson, repressively …
“She wants to wear—but you would never guess!”
“Am I trying to?” asked Harry Gibson.
“A mantilla!” proclaimed his mother. “Now I ask you! A white mantilla! Which might look I admit very nice, very unusual—but with the beautiful Honiton, so Buy British, already ordered! ‘What foolishness!’ I said at once. ‘Are you a Spanish girl?’ I asked. ‘Is my Harry a Spanish boy? Do you go to bull-fights?’ Yet she is now quite set on a mantilla!”
Obviously Miranda had kept her word. What she would say on the wedding-morn, when no Spanish comb arrived to be twined with orange-blossom, Mr Gibson refused to imagine. It was only by keeping the strictest hold on his imagination that he managed to retain any sanity at all.
4
“So what has Miranda thought of now?” demanded Mr Joyce, that night in the study. “A mantilla!”
“I know,” said Harry Gibson. “The mater told me.”
“Also the bridesmaids are to wear mantillas! Those girls will look like dust-sheets on hangers.”
“Their mothers will stop it,” said Harry Gibson, perceiving a ray of hope.
“You forget who is paying,” retorted Mr Joyce. “I am the chappie who is paying. All dresses are the gift of the bride’s father. So Miranda has her way. But this is all your work, Harry boy, buying Miranda that Spanish comb.”
Harry Gibson splashed more port into his glass. It was a comparatively quiet night, only Rachel or it might be Denise in the drawing-room, no mothers: Mr Joyce reached companionably for the decanter in turn.
“You still don’t want to tell me how much you paid for it? Okay, okay!” said Mr Joyce good-naturedly. “But don’t go back to the same shop, son, unless they come cheaper by the half-dozen!”
—How inevitably the spirit of the grotesque intervened! leaving not even the most sacred emblem unfingered! To Harry, Dolores’ comb had always been something unique, he thought of it as the only one in the world, a rarity as singular as precious; was he now to go out and buy half-a-dozen, cheap, a job-lot?
“For the bridesmaids,” explained Mr Joyce, chuckling. “Your gift to the bridesmaids, Harry boy! To be the hooks on top of the hangers!”
5
In Alcock Road no less bridal-thoughts hovered. It struck Mr Phillips as a good time, while his intended was so down in the mouth, to jockey things along a bit. Nothing had as yet happened about the Midlands post, but something might at any moment; and though, as has been said, he felt little doubt as to his ultimate success as a wooer, he felt also that it was time to jockey things along.
“See here,” said Mr Phillips, “I’m not to be kept hanging about for ever. I made a fair, I may say very fair proposition, and I want an answer. Make your mind up.”
Even as the plea of an impatient suitor, the locution was rough. Dolores, remembering how she couldn’t possibly manage without a Regular, swallowed her pride and hedged. She had in any case little pride left.
“I’ve only known you such a short time, Mr Phillips …”
“The name’s Arnold,” said Mr Phillips. “Call me Arn.”
She subdued her tongue to it.
“Arn, then … I haven’t known you more than a few months, have I?”
“Fare farther and fare worse,” suggested Mr Phillips jocosely. “You know what I’m going to call you? Dot. The other’s too daft.”
“I haven’t asked you—” began Dolores—and broke off helplessly. How could she stop him calling her Dot, if he wanted to? Unless she gave him notice, as she didn’t dare? It was in any case less unendurable than hearing “Dolores” perpetually on his lips …
The Eye of Love Page 15
