‘Go on, Cissy.’
‘She is one of those who must be appealed to, at first, by her imagination. She married our father because she thought he was lonely and misunderstood.’
‘I am lonely and misunderstood,’ said Adrian, his eyes flashing with delight.
‘Ah, not twice! She doesn’t like that now.’
I finished my coffee slowly, and then I said,
‘Go to the Clives’ fancy-ball as Tristan.’
Adrian pressed my hand …
At the door of the restaurant we parted, and I drove home through the cool April night, wondering, wondering. Suddenly I thought of my mother – my beautiful sainted mother, who would have loved me, I am convinced, had she lived, with an extraordinary devotion. What would she have said to all this? What would she have thought? I know not why, but a mad reaction seized me. I felt recklessly conscientious. My father! After all, he was my father. I was possessed by passionate scruples. If I went back now to Adrian – if I went back and implored him, supplicated him never to see Laura again!
I felt I could persuade him. I have sufficient personal magnetism to do that, if I make up my mind. After one glance in the looking-glass, I put up my stick and stopped the hansom. I had taken a resolution. I told the man to drive to Adrian’s rooms.
He turned round with a sharp jerk. In another second a brougham passed us – a swift little brougham that I knew. It slackened – it stopped – we passed it – I saw my father. He was getting out at one of the little houses opposite the Brompton Oratory.
‘Turn round again,’ I shouted to the cabman. And he drove me straight home.
Evelyn Sharp
In Dull Brown
‘All the same,’ said Nancy, who was lazily sipping her coffee in bed, ‘brown doesn’t suit you a bit.’
‘No,’ said Jean sadly, ‘and I should not be wearing it at all if my other skirt did not want brushing. Nevertheless, a russet-brown frock demands adventures. The girls in novels always wear russet-brown, whatever their complexion is, and they always have adventures. Now—’
‘Isn’t it time you started?’ asked the gentle voice of her sister. Jean glanced at the clock and said something in English that was not classical.
‘I shall have to take an omnibus. Bother!’ she said, and the heroine of the russet-brown frock made an abrupt and undignified exit.
It was a fine warm morning in November, the sort of day that follows a week of stormy wet weather as though to cheat the unwary into imagining that the spring instead of the winter is on its way. The pavements were still wet from yesterday’s rain, the trees in the park stood stripped by yesterday’s gale; only the sun and the sparrows kept up the illusion that it was never going to rain any more. But the caprices of the atmosphere made no impression on the people who cannot help being out; and Jean, as she made the fourteenth passenger on the top of an omnibus, had a vague feeling of contempt for the other thirteen who were engrossed in their morning papers.
‘Just imagine missing that glorious effect,’ she thought to herself, as they rumbled along the edge of the Green Park where the mist was slowly yielding to the warmth of the sun and allowing itself to be coaxed out of growing into a fog. And almost simultaneously she became as material as the rest, in her annoyance with her neighbour for taking more than his share of the seat.
‘Nice morning!’ he said at that moment, and folded up his Telegraph.
‘Yes,’ said Jean, in a tone that was not encouraging. That the morning was ‘nice’ would never have occurred to her; and it seemed unfair to sacrifice the effect over the Green Park, even for conversational purposes. Then she caught sight of his face, which was a harmless one, and in an ordinary way good-looking, and she accused herself of priggishness, and stared at the unconscious passenger in front, preparatory to cultivating the one at her side.
‘We deserve some compensation for yesterday,’ she continued, more graciously.
‘Yesterday? Oh, it was beastly wet, wasn’t it? I suppose you don’t like wet weather, eh?’ said the man, with a suspicion of familiarity in his tone. Jean frowned a little.
‘That comes of the simple russet gown,’ she thought; ‘of course he thinks I am a little shop-girl.’ But the sun was shining, and life had been very dull lately, and she would be getting down at Piccadilly Circus. Besides, he was little more than a boy, and she liked boys, and there would be no harm in having five minutes’ conversation with this one.
‘I suppose no one does. I wasn’t trying to be particularly original,’ she replied carelessly.
He smiled and glanced at her with more interest. Her identity was beginning to puzzle him.
‘Going to business?’ he asked tentatively.
‘Well, yes, I suppose so. At least, I am going to teach three children all sorts of things they don’t want to learn a bit.’
‘How awfully clever of you!’
The little obvious remark made her laugh. In spite of the humble brown dress that did not suit her, she looked very pretty when she threw back her head and laughed.
‘That is because you have never taught,’ she said; ‘to be a really good teacher you must systematically forget quite half of what you do know. For instance, I can teach German better than anything else in the world, because I know less about it. Perhaps that is why I always won the German prizes at school,’ she added reflectively.
‘You are very paradoxical – or very cynical, which is it?’ asked her neighbour, smiling.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Am I? But did you ever try to teach?’
‘Not I. Gives one the hump, doesn’t it? I should just whack the little beasts when they didn’t work. Don’t you feel like that sometimes?’
‘Clearly you never tried to teach,’ she said, and laughed again.
‘Those are lucky pupils of yours,’ he observed.
‘Why?’ she asked abruptly, and flashed a stern look at him sideways.
‘Oh, because you – seem right on it, don’t you know,’ he answered hastily. The adroitness of his answer pleased her, and she put him down as a gentleman, and felt justified in going a little further.
‘I like teaching, yes,’ she went on gravely. ‘But all the same I am glad that I only teach for my living and can draw for my pleasure. Now whatever made me tell you that I wonder?’
‘It was awfully decent of you to tell me,’ he said; ‘I suppose you thought I should be interested, eh?’
‘I suppose I did,’ she assented, and this time she laughed for no reason whatever.
‘Will you let me say something very personal?’ he asked, waxing bolder. But his tone was still humble, and she felt more kindly towards him now that he evidently knew she was not to be patronised. Besides, she was curious. So she said nothing to dissuade him, and he went on.
‘Why do you look so beastly happy, and all that, don’t you know? Is it because you work so hard?’
‘I look happy!’ she exclaimed. ‘I suppose it is the sun, then, or the jolly day, or – or the feel of everything after the rain. Yes, I suppose it must be that.’
‘I don’t, then. Lots of girls might feel all that and not look as you do. I think it is because you have such a bally lot to do.’
‘I should stop thinking that, if I were you,’ said Jean a little bitterly; ‘I know that is the usual idea about women who work – among those who don’t. They should try it for a time, and see.’
‘I believe you are cynical after all,’ observed her companion. ‘Don’t you like being called happy?’
‘Oh, yes, I like it. But I hate humbug, and it is all nonsense to pretend that working hard for one’s living is rather an amusing thing to do. Because it isn’t, and if it has never been so for a man, why should it be for a woman? If anything, it is worse for women. For one happy hour it gives us two sad ones; it makes us hard – what you call cynical. It builds up our characters at the expense of our hearts. It makes heroines of us and spoils the woman in us. We learn to look the world in the face, and it teaches us to be
prigs. We probe into its realities for the first time, and the disclosure is too much for us. Working hard to get enough bread and butter to eat is a sordid, demoralising thing, and the people who talk cant about it never had to do it themselves. You don’t like the kind of woman who works, you know you don’t!’
The omnibus was slowing at the Circus. Jean stopped suddenly and glanced up at her companion with an amused, half shamefaced look.
‘I am so sorry. You see how objectionable it has made me. Aren’t you glad you will never see me again?’
And before he had time to speak she had slipped away, and the omnibus was turning ruthlessly down Waterloo Place.
‘What deuced odd things women are,’ he reflected, by way of deluding himself into the belief that amusement and not interest was the predominant sensation in his mind. But the next morning saw him waiting carefully in West Kensington for the same City omnibus as before; and when it rumbled on its way to Piccadilly Circus and no one in russet-brown got up to relieve the monotony of black coats and umbrellas round him, he was quite unreasonably disappointed, though he told himself savagely at the same time that of course he had never expected to see her at all.
‘And if I had, she would have avoided me at once. Women are always like that,’ he thought, and just as the reflection shaped itself in his mind he caught a glimpse of Air Street that sent his usual composure to the winds and brought him down the steps at a pace that upset the descent of all the other passengers who had no similar desire to rush in the direction of Air Street.
‘Did yer expect us to take yer to Timbuctoo?’ scoffed the conductor, with the usual contempt of his kind for the passenger who gets into the wrong omnibus. But the victim of his scorn was as regardless of it as of the pink ticket he was grinding into pulp in his hand; and he stood on the pavement with his underlip drawn tightly inwards, until he had regained his customary air of gentlemanly indifference. Then he turned up into Regent Street and made a cross cut through the slums that lie on the borders of Soho.
And as Jean was hastening along Oxford Street, ten minutes later, she met him coming towards her with a superb expression of pleased surprise on his face, which deceived her so completely that she bowed at once and held out her hand to him, although, as she said afterwards to Nancy, ‘he was being most dreadfully unconventional, and I couldn’t help wondering if he would have spoken to me again, if I had worn my new tailor-made gown and looked ordinary.’ At the time she only felt that Oxford Street, even on a damp and muggy morning, was quite a nice place for a walk.
‘Beastly day for you to be out,’ he began, taking away her umbrella and holding his own over her head. To be looked after was a novel experience to Jean, and she found herself half resenting his air of protection.
‘Oh, it’s all right. You get used to it when you have to,’ she said with a short laugh. It was not at all what she wanted to say to him, but the perversity of her nature was uppermost and she had to say it.
‘All the same, it is beastly rough on you,’ he persisted.
‘Why? Some one must do the work,’ she said defiantly.
‘Is it so important, then?’ he asked with a smile that was half a sneer. Jean blushed hotly.
‘It means my living to me,’ she said; and he winced at her unpleasant frankness.
‘You were quite different yesterday, weren’t you?’ he complained gently.
‘You speak as though my being one thing or another ought to depend on your pleasure,’ she retorted; ‘of course, you think like everybody else that a woman is only to be tolerated as long as she is cheerful. How can you be cheerful when the weather is dreary, and you are tired out with yesterday’s work? You don’t know what it is like. You should keep to the women who don’t work; they will always look pretty, and smile sweetly and behave in a domesticated manner.’
‘I don’t think I said anything to provoke all that, did I?’
‘Yes, you did,’ she answered unreasonably. ‘I said – I mean you said, oh never mind! But you do like domesticated women best, don’t you? On your honour now?’
There was no doubt that he did, especially at that moment. But he lied, smilingly, and well.
‘I like all women. But most of all, women like you. Didn’t I tell you yesterday how happy you looked? You are such a rum little girl – oh hang, please forgive me. But without any rotting, I wish you’d tell me what you do want me to say. When I said how jolly you looked, you were offended; and now I pity you for being out in the rain, you don’t like that any better. What am I to do?’
‘I don’t see why you should do anything,’ she said curtly. They had reached the corner of Berners Street, and she came to a standstill. ‘I am glad I met you again,’ she added very quickly, without meeting his eyes. And then she ran down the street, and disappeared inside a doorway.
Tom Unwin stepped into a hansom with two umbrellas and an unsatisfactory impression of the last quarter of an hour. And for the next two mornings he went to the City by train. But the third saw him again in Oxford Street shortly before nine o’clock, and he held a small and elegant umbrella in his hand, although it was a cloudless day, and there was hoar frost beneath the gravel on the wood pavement.
‘How very odd that we should meet again,’ she exclaimed, blushing in spite of the self-possession on which she prided herself.
‘Not so very odd,’ he replied; ‘I believe I am responsible for this meeting.’
‘I feel sure there is a suitable reply to that, but you mustn’t expect me to make it. I am never any good at making suitable replies,’ said Jean; and she laughed as she had done the first time they met.
‘I don’t want suitable replies from you,’ he rejoined, just as lightly; ‘tell me what you really think instead.’
‘That it was quite charming of you to come this particular way to the City on this particular morning,’ said Jean demurely. ‘Now, do you know, I should have thought it was ever so much quicker to go along the Strand.’
‘On the contrary, I find it very much quicker when I come along Oxford Street.’
‘At all events, you know how to make suitable replies.’
‘Then you thought that was a suitable reply? Got you there, didn’t I?’ and he laughed, which pleased her immensely, although she pretended to be hurt.
‘Isn’t it queer how one can live two perfectly different lives at the same time?’ she said irrelevantly.
‘Two? I live half a dozen. But let’s hear yours first.’
‘I was only thinking,’ continued Jean, ‘that if the mother of my pupils knew I was walking along Oxford Street with some one I had never been introduced to—’
‘Well?’ he said, as she paused.
‘Oh, well, it isn’t exactly an ordinary thing to do, is it?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, it isn’t, is it?’
‘But must one be ordinary?’
‘People won’t forgive you for being anything else, unless you are in a history book, where you can’t do any harm.’
‘People be hanged! When shall I see you again?’
‘Next time you take a short cut to the City, I suppose. Good-bye.’
‘Stop!’ he cried. And when she did stop, with an air of innocent inquiry on her face, he found he had nothing whatever to say.
‘You – you haven’t told me your name,’ he stammered lamely.
‘Is that all? You needn’t make me any later just for that,’ she exclaimed, turning away again. ‘Besides, you haven’t told me yours,’ she added, over her shoulder.
‘Do you want to know it?’
‘Why, no; it doesn’t matter to me. But I thought you wanted to make some more conversation. Good-bye, again.’
‘Well, I’m hanged! Look here, if I tell you mine, will you tell me yours?’
‘But I don’t mind a bit if you don’t tell me yours.’
‘Will you, though?’
‘Oh, make haste, or else I can’t wait to hear it.’
‘Here you are, th
en. It is – Tom.’
She faced him sternly.
‘Why don’t you go on?’
‘Unwin,’ he added, hastily. ‘Now yours, please.’
But the only answer he got was a mocking smile; and he was again left at the corner of Berners Street with a lady’s umbrella in his hand.
The next morning there was a dull yellow fog, and Jean was in a perverse mood.
‘I think you are very mistaken to walk to business on a day like this, when you might go by train,’ she said, as she reluctantly gave up her books to be carried by him. The fog was making her eyes smart, and she felt cross.
‘But I shall get my reward,’ he said, with elaborate courtesy.
‘Oh, please don’t. The fog is bad enough without allusions to the hymn-book. Besides, I can’t stand being used as a means for somebody else to get into heaven. It is very selfish of me, I suppose, but I don’t like it.’
‘I am afraid you mistake me. I never for a moment associated you with my chances of salvation.’
‘Then why didn’t you?’ she cried indignantly. ‘I should like to know why you come and bother me every morning like this if you think I am as hopelessly bad as all that! I didn’t ask you to come, did I? Please give me my books and let me go.’
‘I think you hopelessly bad? Why, I assure you—’
‘Give me my books. Can’t you see how late I am?’ she said, stamping her foot impetuously. And she seized Bright’s English History and Cornwall’s Geography out of his hand, and left him precipitately, without another word.
‘You are a most unreasonable little girl,’ he exclaimed hotly; and the policeman to whom he said it smiled patiently.
He started with the intention of going by train on the following morning; then he changed his mind, and ran back to take an omnibus. After that he found it was getting late, so he took a cab to Oxford Circus, and then strolled on towards Holborn as though nothing but chance or necessity had brought him there. But, although he walked as far as Berners Street and back again to the Circus, he met no one in a dull brown frock. And he was just as unsuccessful the next morning, and the one after, and at the end of a week he found himself the sad possessor of a slender silk umbrella, a regretful remembrance, and a fresh store of cynicism.
The Penguin Book of the British Short Story, Volume 1 Page 49