But at length Walter George sealed his letter and addressed it to Miss E. Bostock. He wrung Harold’s hand in the highroad, and watched the acetylene flare elope down the hill.
Chapter XI.
Lovers’ Meeting.
“My precious, poor little thing, I felt my heart was breaking when Harold told me the news. Little was I expecting such a shock as I came in late from the bank, where we are doing overtime for the next fortnight. Little did I think you were so near, and in such a condition. I almost broke down completely when Harold told me. I wanted to come at once, but by the time I had had my tea and given Harold a cup it was after eight o’clock, and he said you’d be settling down for the night before I could get to Eakrast. Not wishing to imperil your night’s rest, I have put off coming to my own little angel till tomorrow, but oh, I don’t know how I keep away, for I feel my heart torn for you. I have never had a greater shock than when I heard of your illness. I picture you so small and fragile, with your beautiful baby face, and could kill myself to think of all you have had to suffer. Why these things should be, I don’t know. I only know it shall not happen again if I can help it.
Well, my darling little treasure, Harold is waiting for this, so I must not keep him. What a splendid fellow he is. How thankful I am to heaven that you have his roof to shelter you and his arm to sustain you. He is indeed a man in a thousand, in a million I might say. I shall never be sufficiendy grateful to him for taking care of you at this critical juncture. But when I think of your father I feel that never can the name of father cross my lips to him. He is not my idea of a father, though unfortunately his type is only too common in the world. Why are children given to such men, who are not fit even to have a dog?
Oh, my little child-love, I long to see your flower-face again. If I am not unexpectedly detained I shall be at Eakrast by three o’clock tomorrow, but don’t be anxious if I am a little later. Man proposes, God disposes — unless there is really the devil having a share in the matter, which I believe sincerely there is, otherwise you would not be suffering as you are. I hope the pains are gone, or at least diminished by now. I cannot bear to think of you in agony, and am afraid Mrs Slater may see in my face what I feel.
Well goodbye my own sweetest little kitten and angel. I feel I can’t wait till tomorrow to fold you in my arms and tell you once more how I love you. Oh if we could only unite our perfect love and be as happy as Harold and Fanny. I feel we must risk it very soon, funds or no funds. This kind of thing must not and shall not continue.
With one last kiss from your unhappy lover, and one last hug before you go to sleep I am your own ever-loving Walter George Whiffen.”
Emmie read this effusion once more when she woke in the morning, and was satisfied. It was what she expected, in the agreeable line, and what can woman have more? What can satisfy her better, than to get what she expects? Emmie, moreover, knew what to expect, for she had had various such letters from various authors. Walter George was perhaps the most elegant of her correspondents, though not the lengthiest. She had known one young collier who would run to six pages of his own emotions over her baby face etc. Oh, she knew all about her baby face and “our perfect love.” This same perfect love seemed to pop up like a mushroom, even on the shallow soil of a picture-postcard from the sea-side. Oh, we little know, we trembling fiction-writers, how much perfect love there is in the post at this minute. A penny stamp will carry it about hither and thither like a dust-storm through our epistolary island. For in this democratic age love dare not show his face, even for five minutes, not even to a young tram- conductor, unless in the light of perfection.
So Emmie took her perfect love with her breakfast bacon, and remembered that morning had been at seven some little while back, at which hour God is particularly in His heaven, and that hence, according to Mr Browning, all was well with the world. Like any other school-teacher, she had a number of “repetition” odds and ends of poetry in her stock-cupboard. So why shouldn’t she, as well as some Earl’s daughter, enrich the dip of her bacon with Browning, to borrow Hood’s pun.
The day was fine, and her only problem was whether to get up or not. She would have had no problem if only she had brought her sky-blue woolly dressing jacket along with her. Failing this, how would she manage in a white Shetland shawl of baby’s, and Fanny’s best nighty? She decided she would manage.
The morning was fine. Harold went pelting off on his bicycle to buy a few extra provisions. Emmie had the baby in bed with her, and smelt Fanny’s cakes and pies cooking down below. Dinner was a scratch meal of sausages, and Emmie had an egg instead.
Harold brought her some sprigs of yellow jasmine to put by her bed, and tittivated up the room a bit, according to his and her fancy. Then he left her with her toilet requisites. She was a quick, natty creature. She washed and changed in a few minutes, and did her hair. When Harold tapped, to carry away the wash-water, asking if he could come in, she answered yes, and went on with her job.
She was propped up in bed, with a silver-backed mirror propped facing her, against her knees, and she was most carefully, most judiciously powdering her face and touching up her lips with colour. Harold stood with the pail in his hand and watched her.
“Well if you don’t take the biscuit!” he said.
“Which biscuit?” she said absorbedly. “Hand me the towel.”
And she concentrated once more on her nose, which was her Achilles’ heel, her sore point.
“You fast little madam,” said Harold. His Fanny never “made up.” He wouldn’t have stood it. But he quite liked it in Emmie. And he loved being present during the mysteries of the process.
“Go on,” she said. “I feel so bare and brazen without a whiff of powder on my nose.”
He gave a shout of laughter.
“I like that,” he said.
“It’s a fact though. I feel as uncomfortable without a bit of powder as if I’d forgot to put my stockings on.”
“Well it never struck me in that light before. We live and learn. I bet you think other women barefaced hussies, if they don’t powder.”
“They are. They don’t know how to make the best of themselves, and then they show the cheek of the Old Lad.”
She put her head sideways, screwed her mouth a little, and carefully, very carefully put on a stroke of rouge.
“You think it improves you, do you?” he asked, standing with the pail in his hand, and watching curiously.
“Why,” she said, not taking her eyes off the mirror. “What do you think yourself?”
“Me? Nay, I’m no judge.”
“Oh well, now you’ve said it. People who are no judge generally do the judging.”
He felt pinched in his conscience.
“Ay, well — I think I like the genuine article best,” he said walking away.
“Go on, you’re no judge,” she said coldly.
She finished her toilet, disposed her shawl carefully, and proceeded to the last task of polishing her nails. She looked at her hands. How beautiful they had become whilst she was in bed: how white and smooth! What lovely little hands she had! She thought to herself she had never seen such beautiful hands on anybody else. She looked at them, and polished her small finger-nails with consummate satisfaction. Then she tried her rings first on one finger and then on another, and thought the bits of gold and colour showed up the loveliness of the skin. She enjoyed herself for half an hour, fiddling with her own hands and admiring them and wondering over their superiority to all other hands.
We feel bound to show our spite by saying her hands were rather meaningless in their prettiness.
While thus engaged she heard a loud prrring — prring of a bicycle bell outside in the road. Heavens! And it was only a quarter to four. She hastily dropped her scissors into the little drawer, and took the sevenpenny copy of the Girl of the Limberlost into one hand, and her best hanky in the other. So equipped, and framed behind by the linen and crochet-edging of one of Fanny’s best pillow-slips, she was prepa
red.
She heard voices, and heavy feet on the stairs. It was her Childe Rolande to the dark tower come, ushered up by Harold.
She looked for him as he came through the doorway, and he looked for her as he crossed the threshold. Never was so mutual a greeting of tender faces. He was carrying a bunch of pheasant’s-eye narcissus and mimosa: luckily it was Saturday, and he could get them at the shop.
“Hello old thing!” sounded his overcharged voice.
“Hello!” her deep, significant brevity.
And he bent over the bed, and she put her arms round his shoulders, and they silendy kissed, and Harold in the doorway felt how beautiful and how right it was. We only wish there might be a few more ands, to prolong the scene indefinitely.
But Walter George slowly disengaged himself and stood up, whilst she gazed upward at him. His hair was beautifully brushed and parted at the side, and he looked down at her. Their looks indeed were locked. He silendy laid the flowers at her side, and sank down on one knee beside the bed. But the bed was rather high, and if he kneeled right down he was below the emotional and dramatic level. So he could only sink down on one poised foot, like a worshipper making his deep reverence before the altar, in a Catholic church, and staying balanced low on one toe. It was rather a gymnastic feat. But then what did Walter George do his Sandow exercises for in the morning, if not to fit him for these perfect motions.
So he springily half-kneeled beside the bed, and kept his face at the true barometric level of tenderness. His one arm was placed lightly around her, his other gently held her little wrist. She lay rather sideways, propped on her pillows, and they looked into each other’s eyes. If Harold had not been there to spectate they would have done just the same for their own benefit. Their faces were near to one another, they gazed deep into each other’s eyes. Worlds passed between them, as goes without saying.
“Are you poorly, my love?” asked Walter George Whiffen, in a tone so exquisitely adjusted to the emotional level as to bring tears to the eyes.
“Getting better,” she murmured, and Harold thought that never, never would he have thought Emmie’s little voice could be so rich with tenderness.
He was turning to steal away, feeling he could no longer intrude in the sacred scene, and the two dramatists were just feeling disappointed that he was going, when fate caused a rift in the lute.
Fanny, like a scientific school-teacher, polished her bedroom floors. The mat on which Childe Rolande was so springily poised on one foot slid back under the pressure of the same foot, so his face went floundering in the bed. And when, holding the side of the bed, he tried to rise on the same original foot, the mat again wasn’t having any, so his head ducked down like an ass shaking flies off its ears. When at last he scrambled to his feet he was red in the face, and Emmie had turned and lifted the beautiful flowers between her hands.
“I tell our Fanny we shall be breaking our necks on these floors before we’ve done,” said Harold, pouring his ever- ready spikenard.
“Don’t they smell lovely!” said Emmie, holding up the flowers to the nose of Walter George.
“They aren’t too strong for you, are they?”
“They might be at night.”
“Should I put them in water for you?” interrupted Harold.
“Ay, do my dear,” said Emmie benevolently to him.
And he went away for a jar, pleased as a dog with two tails. When the flowers were arranged, he spoke for the last time.
“You don’t feel this room cold, do you, Walter George?”
“Not a bit,” said Walter George.
“Then I’ll go and see what Fanny is doing.”
Now the perfect lovers were left together, and tenderness fairly smoked in the room. They kissed, and held each other in their arms, and felt superlative. Walter George had been wise enough to take a chair, abandoning that kneeling curtsey- ing-knight posture. So he was at liberty to take Emmie right in his arms, without fear of the ground giving way beneath him. And he folded her to his bosom, and felt he was shielding her from the blasts of fate. Soft, warm, tender little bud of love, she would unfold in the greenhouse of his bosom. Soft, warm, tender through her thin nighty, she sent the blood to his head till he seemed to fly with her through dizzy space, to dare the terrors of the illimitable. Warm, and tender, and yielding, she made him so wildly sure of his desire for her that his manliness was now beyond question. He was a man among men henceforth, and would not be abashed before any of the old stagers. Heaven save and bless us, how badly he did but want her, and what a pleasure it was to be so sure of the fact.
“I tell you what,” he said. “We’ll get married and risk it.”
“Risk what?”
“Why everything. We will, shall we. I can’t stand it any longer.”
“But what about everybody?” said Emmie.
“Everybody can go to hell.”
And here we say, as Napoleon said of Goethe:
“Voila un homme.”
He held her in his arms. And this was serious spooning. This was actual love-making, to develop into marriage. It was cuddly rather than spoony: the real thing, and they knew it. Ah, when two hearts mean business, what a different affair it is from when they only flutter for sport! From the budding passion in the Eakrast bedroom many a firm cauliflower would blossom, in after days, many a Sunday dinner would ripen into fruit.
The lovers were very cosy, murmuring their little conversation between their kisses. The course of their true-love was as plain as a pike-staff. It led to a little house in a new street, and an allotment garden not far off. And the way thither, with kisses and the little plannings, was as sweet as if it had led to some detached villa, or even to one of the stately homes of England. It is all the same in the end: safe as houses, as the saying goes. Emmie was now taking the right turning, such as you have taken, gentle reader, you who sit in your comfortable home with this book on your knee. Give her then your blessing, for she hardly needs it any more, and play a tune for her on the piano.
“The cottage homes of England How thick they crowd the land.”
Or if that isn’t good enough for you:
“The stately homes of England Are furnished like a dream.”
Play the tune, and let that be your portion, for you are not going to take any part in the burning bliss of buying the furniture, or the tragedy of the wedding-presents.
“There’s a little grey home in the west.”
Pleasantly the hours passed. The party gathered for a common chat in Emmie’s bedroom before supper. The table was laid downstairs, and there was polony as well as cheese and cocoa, all waiting invitingly: the cocoa still in its tin, but standing at attention on the table. The clock ticked, the baby was in bed, the kitchen was a cosy feast, if only they would come down and tackle it. The clock struck ten.
And still the party in the bedroom did not break up. Still the supper waited below. Emmie was making her droll speeches, Harold was exercising his dry wit, and the high- school boy was laughing out loud, and Fanny was saying: “Oh my word, what about baby?” Whereupon they all lifted a listening ear.
Chapter XII.
The Interloper.
In one of these moments of strained attention a motor-cycle was heard slowly pulsing down the road outside. It came to a stop. The strength of its white lights showed under the bedroom blind, in spite of Emmie’s lamp. She knew at once what it was, and restraint came over her.
In another minute there was the crunching of a footstep on the path below, and a loud knock at the back door. The company in the bedroom looked at one another in consternation, even affright. Harold summoned his master-of-the- house courage and went downstairs. The three in the bedroom listened with beating hearts.
“Is this Mr Wagstaff’s?”
“Yes.”
“Is Miss Bostock here?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see her?”
“She’s in bed.”
“Ay, her mother told me she was bad. Is sh
e asleep?”
“No, she’s not asleep.”
“Can I speak to her a minute?”
“Who is it?”
“Gilbert Noon.”
“Oh! Is it anything particular?”
“No. But I just want to speak to her. Just tell her, will you?”
Harold was so flustered he went upstairs and said:
“Gilbert Noon wants to see Emmie.”
Childe Rolande and Fanny stood open-mouthed.
“All right, let him come up then,” said Emmie sharply.
“Should I?” said Harold.
“Don’t look so ormin’. Let him come up,” repeated Emmie in the same sharp tone.
Harold looked at her strangely, looked round the room in bewilderment. They listened while he went downstairs. Gilbert still stood outside in the dark.
“Shall you come up?” said Harold.
And after a moment.
“There’s the stairfoot here. Let me get a candle.”
“I can see,” said the bass voice.
The light of the little bedroom lamp showed on the landing at the top of the stairs.
Heavy feet were ascending. Emmie gathered her shawl on her breast. Gilbert appeared in his rubber overalls in the doorway, his face cold-looking, his hair on end after having taken his cap off.
“Good-evening,” he said, standing back in the doorway at the sight of the company.
“Do you know Mr Whiffen, Mr Noon?” said Emmie sharply. “My elect, so to speak.”
Gilbert shook hands with Childe Rolande, then with Fanny, whom he knew slightly, and then with Harold, to whom he was now introduced. Harold had gone rather stiff and solemn, like an actor in a play.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 277