Chapter 16

She set her lamp on the floor at the stairhead, and backed, backed from him into the darkness of the room.

XXVI

It was the twenty-seventh of June, Laura's birthday. Tanqueray had proposed that they should celebrate it by a day on Wendover Hill. For the Kiddy's increasing pallor cried piteously for the open air.

Nina was to bring Owen Prothero; and Jane, in Prothero's interests, was to bring Brodrick; and Tanqueray, Laura insisted, was to bring his wife.

Rose had counted the days, the very hours before Laura's birthday. She had plenty to do for once on the morning of the twenty-seventh, making rock cakes and cutting sandwiches and packing them beautifully in a basket. Over-night she had washed and ironed the white blouse she was to wear. The white blouse lay on her bed, wonderful as a thing seen in a happy dream. Rose could hardly permit herself to believe that the dream would come true, and that Tanqueray would really take her.

It all depended on whether Laura could get off. Getting Laura off was the difficulty they encountered every time she had a birthday.

So uncertain was the event that Nina and Prothero called at the house in Albert Street before going on to the station. They found Tanqueray, and Rose in her white blouse, waiting outside on the pavement. They heard that Jane Holland was in there with Laura, bringing pressure to bear on the obstinate Kiddy who was bent on the renunciation of her day.

Jane's voice on the landing called to them to come up-stairs. Without them it was impossible, she said, to get Laura off.

The whole house was helping, in a passionate publicity; for every one in it loved Laura. Mr. Baxter, the landlord, was on the staircase, bringing Laura's boots. The maid of all work was leaning out of the window on the landing, brushing Laura's skirt. A tall girl was standing by the table in the sitting-room. She had a lean, hectic face, and prominent blue eyes under masses of light hair. She was Addy Ranger, the type-writer on the ground-floor, who had come up from her typewriting to see what she could do. She was sewing buttons on Laura's blouse while Jane brought pressure upon Laura. "Of course you're going," Jane was saying. "It's not as if you had a birthday every day."

For Laura still sat at her writing-table, labouring over a paragraph, white lipped and heavy eyed. Shuffling all over the room and round about her was Mr. Gunning. He was pouring out the trouble that had oppressed him for the last four years.

"She won't stop scribbling. It's scribble--scribble--scribble all day long. If I didn't lie awake to stop her she'd be at it all night. I've caught her--in her nightgown. She'll get out of her bed to do it."

"Papa, dear, you know Miss Lempriere and Mr. Prothero?"

His mind adjusted itself instantly to its vision of them. He bowed to each. He was the soul of courtesy and hospitality, and they were his guests; they had come to luncheon.

"Lolly, my dear, have you ordered luncheon?--You must tell Mrs. Baxter to give us a salmon mayonnaise, and a salad and lamb cutlets in aspic. And, Lolly! Tell her to put a bottle of champagne in ice."

For in his blessed state, among the fragments of old splendours that still clung to him, Mr. Gunning had preserved indestructibly his sense of power to offer his friends a bottle of champagne on a suitable occasion, and every occasion now ranked with him as suitable.

"Yes, darling," said Laura, and dashed down a line of her paragraph.

He shuffled feebly toward the door. "I have to see to everything myself," he said. "That child there has no more idea how to order a luncheon than the cat. There should be," he reverted, "lamb cutlets in aspic. I must see to it myself."

He wandered out of the room and in again, driven, by his dream.

"Oh," cried Laura, "somebody else must have my birthday. _I_ can't have it. I must sit tight and finish my paragraph."

"You'll spoil it if you do," said Prothero.

"Besides spoiling everybody's day," said Jane judiciously.

That brought Laura round. She reflected that, if she sat tight from ten that evening till two in the morning, she could save their day.

But first she had to finish her paragraph and then to hide it and lock it up. Then she put the pens and ink on a high shelf out of Mr. Gunning's reach. He had been known to make away with the materials of Lolly's detestable occupation when he got the chance. He attributed to it that mysterious, irritating semblance of poverty in which they moved.

He smiled at her, a happy, innocent smile.

"_That's_ right, _that's_ right. Put it away, my dear, put it away."

"Yes, Papa," said Laura. She took the blouse from Addy Ranger, and she and Jane Holland disappeared with it into a small inner room. From the voices that came to him Prothero gathered that Jane Holland was "buttoning her up the back."

"Don't say," cried Laura, "that it won't meet!"

"Meet? It'll go twice round you. You don't eat enough."

Silence.

"It's no good," he heard Jane Holland say, "not eating. I've tried both."

"I," said Laura in a voice that penetrated, "over-eat. Habitually."

"I must go," said Mr. Gunning, "and find my hat and stick." His idea now was that Laura was going to take him for a walk.

Addy Ranger began to talk to Prothero. He liked Addy. She had an amusing face with a long nose and wide lips, restless and cynical. She confided to him the trouble of her life, the eternal difficulty of finding anywhere a permanent job. Addy's dream was permanence.

Then they talked of Laura.

"Do you know what _her_ dream is?" said Addy. "To be able to afford wine, and chicken, and game and things--for him."

"When you think of her work!" said Nina. "It's charming; it's finished, to a point. How on earth does she do it?"

"She sits up half the night to do it," said Prothero; "when he isn't there."

"And it's killing her," said Addy, who had her back to the door.

Mr. Gunning had come in again and he heard her. He gazed at them with a vague sweetness, not understanding what he heard.

Then Laura ran in among them, in a tremendous hurry. She wasn't ready yet. It was a maddening, protracted agony, getting Laura off. She had forgotten to lock the cupboard where the whisky was (a shilling's worth in a medicine bottle); and poor Papa might find it. Since he had had his sunstroke you couldn't trust him with anything, not even with a jam-pot. Then Addy, at Laura's request, rushed out of the room to find Laura's hat and her handkerchief and her gloves--not the ones with the holes in them. And then Laura looked at her hands.

"Oh," she cried, "_look_ at my poor hands. I can't go like that. I _hate_ an inky woman."

And she dashed out to wash the ink off.

And then the gloves found by Addy had all holes in them. And at that Laura stamped her foot and said, "Damn!"

The odds against Laura's getting off were frightful.

But she was putting on her hat. She was really ready just as Tanqueray's voice was heard calling on the stairs, "You must hurry up if you want to catch that train." And now they had to deal seriously with Mr. Gunning, who stood expectant, holding his hat and stick.

"Good-bye, Papa dear," said she.

"Am I not to come, too?" said Mr. Gunning.

"Not to-day, dear."

She was kissing him while Jane and Nina waited in the open doorway. Their eyes signed to her to be brave and follow them. But Laura lingered.

Prothero looked at Laura, and Mr. Gunning looked at Prothero. His terrible idea had come back to him at the sight of the young man, risen, and standing beside Laura for departure.

"Are you going to take my little girl away from me?" he said.

"Poor little Papa, of course he isn't. I'm going with Jane, and Nina. You know Nina?"

"And who," he cried, "is going to take me for my walk?"

He had her there. She wavered.

"Addy's coming in to give you your tea. You like Addy." (He bowed to Miss Ranger with a supreme courtesy.) "And I'll be back in time to see you in your little bed."

She ran off. Addy Ranger took Mr. Gunning very tenderly by the arm and led him to the stairs to see her go.

Outside on the pavement Tanqueray gave way to irritation.

"If," said he, "it would only please Heaven to take that old gentleman to itself."

"It won't," said Nina.

"How she would hate us if she heard us," said Jane.

"There ought to be somebody to take care of 'im," said Rose, moved to compassion. "'E might go off in a fit any day. She can't be easy when 'e's left."

"He _must_ be left," said Tanqueray with ferocity.

"Here she is," said Jane.

There she was; and there, too, was her family. For, at the sight of Laura running down-stairs with Prothero after her, Mr. Gunning broke loose from Addy's arm and followed her, perilously followed her. Addy was only just in time to draw him back from the hall door as Prothero closed it.

And then little Laura, outside, heard a cry as of a thing trapped, and betrayed, and utterly abandoned.

"I can't go," she cried. "He thinks I'm leaving him--that I'm never coming back. He always thinks it."

"You know," said Nina, "he never thinks anything for more than five minutes."

"I know--but----"

Nina caught her by the shoulder. "You stupid Kiddy, you must forget him when he isn't there."

"But he _is_ there," said Laura. "I can't leave him."

Between her eyes and Prothero's there passed a look of eternal patience and despair. Rose saw it. She saw how it was with them, and she saw what she could do. She turned back to the door.

"You go," she said. "I'll stay with him."

From the set of her little chin you saw that protest and argument were useless.

"I can take care of him," she said. "I know how."

And as she said it there came into her face a soft flame of joy. For Tanqueray was looking at her, and smiling as he used to smile in the days when he adored her. He was thinking in this moment how adorable she was.

"You may as well let her," he said. "She isn't happy if she can't take care of somebody."

And, as they wondered at her, the door opened and closed again on Rose and her white blouse.

XXVII

They found Brodrick waiting for them at the station. Imperturbable, on the platform, he seemed to be holding in leash the Wendover train whose engines were throbbing for flight.

Prothero suffered, painfully, the inevitable introduction. Tanqueray had told him that if he still wanted work on the papers Brodrick was his man. Brodrick had an idea. On the long hill-road going up from Wendover station Prothero, at Tanqueray's suggestion, tried to make himself as civil as possible to Miss Holland.

Tentatively and with infinite precautions Jane laid before him Brodrick's idea. The War Correspondent of the "Morning Telegraph" was coming home invalided from Manchuria. She understood that his place would be offered to Mr. Prothero. Would he care to take it?

He did not answer.

She merely laid the idea before him to look at. He must weigh, she said, the dangers and the risks. From the expression of his face she gathered that these were the last things he would weigh.

And yet he hesitated. She looked at him. His eyes were following the movements of Laura Gunning where, well in front of them, the marvellous Kiddy, in the first wildness of her release from paragraphs, darted and plunged and leaped into the hedges.

Jane allowed some moments to lapse before she spoke again. The war, she said, would not last for ever; and if he took this berth, it would lead almost certainly to a regular job on the "Telegraph" at home.

He saw all that, he said, and he was profoundly grateful. His eyes, as they turned to her, showed for a moment a film of tears. Then they wandered from her.

He asked if he might think it over and let her know.

"When," she said, "can you let me know?"

"I think," he said, "probably, before the end of the day."

The day was drawing to its end when the group drifted and divided. Brodrick, still imperturbable, took possession of Jane, and Prothero, with his long swinging stride, set off in pursuit of the darting Laura.

Tanqueray, thus left behind with Nina, watched him as he went.

"He's off, Nina. Bolted." His eyes smiled at her, suave, deprecating, delighted eyes and recklessly observant.

"So has Jane," said Nina, with her dangerous irony.

Apart from them and from their irony, Prothero was at last alone with Laura on the top of Wendover Hill. She had ceased to dart and to plunge.

He found for her a hidden place on the green slope, under a tree, and there he stretched himself at her side.

"Do you know," he said, "this is the first time I've seen you out of doors."

"So it is," said she in a strange, even voice.

She drew off her gloves and held out the palms of her hands as if she were bathing them in the pure air. Her face was turned from him and lifted; her nostrils widened; her lips parted; her small breasts heaved; she drank the air like water. To his eyes she was the white image of mortal thirst.

"Is it absolutely necessary for you to live in Camden Town?" he said.

She sat up very straight and stared steadily in front of her, as if she faced, unafraid, the invincible necessity.

"It is. Absolutely." She explained that Baxter, her landlord, had been an old servant of Papa's, and that _the_ important thing was to be with people who would be nice to him and not mind, she said, his little ways.

He sighed.

"Do you know what I should do with you if I could have my way? I should turn you into a green garden and keep you there from nine in the morning till nine at night. I should make you walk a mile with me twice a day--not too fast. All the rest of the time you should lie on a couch on a lawn, with a great rose-bush at your head and a bed of violets at your feet. I should bring you something nice to eat every two hours."

"And how much work do you suppose I should get through?"

"Work? You wouldn't do _any_ work for a year at least--if I had my way."

"It's a beautiful dream," said she. She closed her eyes, but whether to shut the dream out or to keep it in he could not say.

"I don't want," she said presently, "to lie on a couch in a garden with roses at my head and violets at my feet, as if I were dead. You don't know how tre--_mend_--ously alive I am."

"I know," he said, "how tremendously alive you'd be if I had my way--if you were happy."

She was still sitting up, nursing her knees, and staring straight in front of her at nothing.

"You don't know what it's like," she said; "the unbearable pathos of Papa."

"It's your pathos that's unbearable."

"Oh don't! Don't be nice to me. I shall hate you if you're nice to me." She paused, staring. "I was unkind to him yesterday. I see how pathetic he is, and yet I'm unkind. I snap like a little devil. You don't know what a devil, what a detestable little devil I can be."

She turned to him, sparing herself no pain in her confession.

"I was cruel to him. It's horrible, like being cruel to a child." The horror of it was in her stare.

"It's your nerves," he said; "it's because you're always frightened." He seemed to meditate before he spoke again. "How are you going on?"

"You see how."

"I do indeed. It's unbearable to think of your having to endure these things. And I have to stand by and see you at the end of your tether, hurt and frightened, and to know that I can do nothing for you. If I could have my way you would never be hurt or frightened any more."

As he spoke something gave way in her. It felt like a sudden weakening and collapse of her will, drawing her heart with it.

"But," he went on, "as I can't have my way, the next best thing is--to stand by you."

She struggled as against physical faintness, struggled successfully.

"Since I can't take you out of it," he said, "I shall come and live in Camden Town too."

"You couldn't live in Camden Town."

"I can live anywhere I choose. I shouldn't _see_ Camden Town."

"You couldn't," she insisted. "And if you could I wouldn't let you."

"Why not?"

"Be_cause_--it wouldn't do."

He smiled.

"It would be all right. I should get a room near you and look after your father."

"It wouldn't do," she said again. "I couldn't let you."

"I can do anything I choose. Your little hands can't stop me."

She looked at him gravely. "Why do you choose it?"

"Because I can choose nothing else."

"Ah, why are you so good to me?"

"Be_cause_"--he mocked her absurd intonation.

"Don't tell me. It's because you _are_ good. You can't help it."

"No; I can't help it."

"But--" she objected, "I'm so horrid. I don't believe in God and I say damn when I'm angry."

"I heard you."

"You said yourself I wanted violets to sweeten me and hammers to soften me--you think I'm so bitter and so hard."

"You know what I think of you. And you know," he said, "that I love you."

"You mustn't," she whispered. "It's no good."

He seemed not to have heard her. "And some day," he said, "I shall marry you. I'd marry you to-morrow if I'd enough money to buy a hat with."

"It's no use loving me. You can't marry me."

"I know I can't. But it makes no difference."

"No difference?"

"Not to me."

"If you could," she said, "I wouldn't let you. It would only be one misery more."

"How do you know what it would be?"

"I won't even let you love me. That's misery too."

"You don't know what it is."

"I do know, and I don't want any more of it. I've been hurt with it."

With a low cry of pity and pain he took her in his arms and held her to him.

She writhed and struggled in his clasp. "Don't," she cried, "don't touch me. Let me alone. I can't bear it."

He turned her face to his to find the truth in her eyes. "And yet," he said, "you love me."

"No, no. It's no use," she reiterated; "it's no use. I won't have it. I won't let you love me."

"You can't stop me."

"I can stop you torturing me!"

She was freed from his arms now. She sat up. Her small face was sullen and defiant in its expression of indomitable will.

"Of course," he said, "you can stop me touching you. But it makes no difference. I shall go on caring for you. It's no use struggling and crying against that."

"I shall go on struggling."

"Go on as long as you like. It doesn't matter. I can wait."

She rose. "Come," she said. "It's time to be going back."

He obeyed her. When they reached the rise on the station road they turned and waited for the others to come up with them. They looked back. Their hill was on their left, to their right was the great plain, grey with mist. They stood silent, oppressed by their sense of a sad and sudden beauty. Then with the others they swung down the road to the station.

Before the end of the day Brodrick heard that his offer was accepted.

XXVIII

It was Tanqueray who took Laura home that night. Prothero parted from her at the station and walked southwards with Nina Lempriere.

"Why didn't you go with her?" she said.

"I couldn't have let you walk home by yourself."

"As if I wasn't always by myself."

Her voice defied, almost repelled him; but her face turned to him with its involuntary surrender.

He edged himself in beside her with a sudden protective movement, so that his shoulders shielded her from the contact of the passers by. But the pace he set was terrific.

"You've no idea, Owen, how odd you look careering through the streets."

"Not odder than you, do I? _You_ ought to be swinging up a mountain-side, or sitting under an oak-tree. That's how I used to see you."

"Do you remember?"

"I remember the first time I ever saw you, fifteen years ago. I'd gone up the mountain through the wood, looking for wild cats. I was beating my way up through the undergrowth when I came on you. You were above me, hanging by your arms from an oak-tree, swinging yourself from the upper ledge down on to the track. Your hair--you had lots of hair, all tawny--some of it was caught up by the branches, some of it hung over your eyes. They gleamed through it, all round and startled, and there were green lights in them. You dropped at my feet and dashed down the mountain. I had found my wild cat."

"I remember. You frightened me. Your eyes were so queer."

"Not queerer than yours, Nina. Yours had all the enchantment and all the terror of the mountains in them."

"And yours--yours had the terror and the enchantment of a spirit, a human spirit lost in a dream. A beautiful and dreadful dream. I'd forgotten; and now I remember. You look like that now."

"That's your fault, Nina. You make me remember my old dreams."

"Owen," she said, "don't you want to get away? Don't these walls press on you and hurt you?"

They were passing down a side-street, between rows of bare houses, houses with iron shutters and doors closed on the dingy secrets, the mean mysteries of trade; houses of high and solitary lights where some naked window-square hung golden in a wall greyer than the night.

"Not they," he said. "I've lost that sense. Look there--you and I could go slap through all that, and it wouldn't even close over us; it would simply disappear."

They had come into the lighted Strand. A monstrous hotel rose before them, its masonry pale, insubstantial in the twilight, a delicate framework for its piled and serried squares of light. It showed like a hollow bastion, filled with insurgent fire, flung up to heaven. The buildings on either side of it were mere extensions of its dominion.

"Your sense is a sense I haven't got," said she.

"I lose it sometimes. But it always comes back."

"Isn't it--horrible?"

"No," he said. "It isn't."

They plunged down a steep side-street off the Strand, and turned on to their terrace. He let her in with his latchkey and followed her up-stairs. He stopped at her landing.

"May I come in?" he said. "Or is it too late?"

"It isn't late at all," said she. And he followed her into the room.

He did not see the seat she offered him, but stood leaning his shoulders against the chimney-piece. She knew that he had something to say to her that must be said instantly or not at all. And yet he kept silence. Whatever it was that he had to say it was not an easy thing.

"You'd like some coffee?" she said curtly, by way of breaking his dumb and dangerous mood.

He roused himself almost irritably.

"Thanks, no. Don't bother about it."

She left him and went into the inner room to make it. She was afraid of him; afraid of what she might have to hear. She had the sense of things approaching, of separation, of the snapping of the tense thread of time that bound them for her moment. It was as if she could spin it out by interposing between the moment and its end a series of insignificant acts.

Through the open doors she saw him as he turned and wandered to the bookcase and stood there, apparently absorbed. You would have said that he had come in to look for a book, and that when he had found what he wanted he would go. She saw him take her book, "Tales of the Marches," from its shelf and open it.

She became aware of this as she was about to lift the kettle from the gas-ring burning on the hearth. Her thin sleeve swept the ring. She was stooping, but her face was still raised; her eyes were fixed on Prothero, held by what they saw. The small blue jets of the ring flickered and ran together and soared as her sleeve caught them. Nina made no sound. Prothero turned and saw her standing there by the hearth, motionless, her right arm wrapped in flame.

He leaped to her, and held her tight with her arm against his breast, and beat out the fire with his hands. He dressed the burn and bandaged it with cool, professional dexterity, trembling a little, taking pain from her pain.

"Why didn't you call out?" he said.

"I didn't want you to know."

"You'd have been burnt sooner?"

He had slung her arm in a scarf; and, as he tied the knot on her shoulder, his face was brought close to hers. She turned her head and her eyes met his.

"I'd have let my whole body burn," she whispered, "sooner than hurt--your hands."

His hands dropped from her shoulder. He thrust them into his pockets out of her sight.

She followed him into the outer room, struggling against her sense of his recoil.