The Literary Sense/Rounding off a Scene
ROUNDING OFF A SCENE
A SOFT rain was falling. Umbrellas swayed and gleamed in the light of the street lamps. The brightness of the shop windows reflected itself in the muddy mirror of the wet pavements. A miserable night, a dreary night, a night to tempt the wretched to the glimmering Embankment, and thence to the river, hardly wetter or cleaner than the gutters of the London streets. Yet the sight of these same streets was like wine in the veins to a man who drove through them in a hansom piled with Gladstone bags and P. and O. trunks. He leaned over the apron of the hansom and looked eagerly, longingly, lovingly, at every sordid detail: the crowd on the pavement, its haste as intelligible to him as the rush of ants when their hill is disturbed by the spade; the glory and glow of corner public-houses; the shifting dance of the gleaming wet umbrellas. It was England, it was London, it was home—and his heart swelled till he felt it in his throat. After ten years—the dream realised, the longing appeased. London—and all was said.
His cab, delayed by a red newspaper cart, jammed in altercative contact with a dray full of brown barrels, paused in Cannon Street. The eyes that drank in the scene perceived a familiar face watching on the edge of the pavement for a chance to cross the road under the horses' heads—the face of one who ten years ago had been the slightest of acquaintances. Now time and home-longing juggled with memory till the face seemed that of a friend. To meet a friend—this did, indeed, round off the scene of the home-coming. The man in the cab threw back the doors and leapt out. He crossed under the very nose-bag of a stationed dray horse. He wrung the friend—last seen as an acquaintance—by the hand. The friend caught fire at the contact. Any passer-by, who should have been spared a moment for observation by the cares of umbrella and top-hat, had surely said, "Damon and Pythias!" and gone onward smiling in sympathy with friends long severed and at last reunited.
The little scene ended in a cordial invitation from the impromptu Damon, on the pavement, to Pythias, of the cab, to a little dance that evening at Damon's house, out Sydenham way. Pythias accepted with enthusiasm, though at his normal temperature, he was no longer a dancing man. The address was noted, hands clasped again with strenuous cordiality, and Pythias regained his hansom. It set him down at the hotel from which ten years before he had taken cab to Fenchurch Street Station. The menu of his dinner had been running in his head, like a poem, all through the wet shining streets. He ordered, therefore, without hesitation—
Ox-tail Soup.
Boiled Cod and Oyster Sauce.
Roast Beef and Horse-radish.
Boiled Potatoes. Brussels Sprouts.
Cabinet Pudding.
Stilton. Celery.
The cabinet pudding was the waiter's suggestion. Anything that called itself "pudding" would have pleased as well. He dressed hurriedly, and when the soup and the wine card appeared together before him he ordered draught bitter—a pint.
"And bring it in a tankard," said he.
The drive to Sydenham was, if possible, a happier dream than had been the drive from Fenchurch Street to Charing Cross. There were many definite reasons why he should have been glad to be in England, glad to leave behind him the hard work of his Indian life, and to settle down as a landed proprietor. But he did not think definite thoughts. The whole soul and body of the man were filled and suffused by the glow that transfuses the blood of the schoolboy at the end of the term.
The lights, the striped awning, the red carpet of the Sydenham house thrilled and charmed him. Park Lane could have lent them no further grace—Belgrave Square no more subtle witchery. This was England, England, England!
He went in. The house was pretty with lights and flowers. There was music. The soft-carpeted stair seemed air as he trod it. He met his host—was led up to girls in blue and girls in pink, girls in satin and girls in silk-muslin—wrote brief précis of their toilets on his programme. Then he was brought face to face with a tall dark-haired woman in white. His host's voice buzzed in his ears, and he caught only the last words—"old friends." Then he was left staring straight into the eyes of the woman who ten years ago had been the light of his: the woman who had jilted him, his vain longing for whom had been the spur to drive him out of England.
"May I have another?" was all he found to say after the bow, the conventional request, and the scrawling of two programmes.
"Yes," she said, and he took two more.
The girls in pink, and blue, and silk, and satin found him a good but silent dancer. On the opening bars of the eighth waltz he stood before her. Their steps went together like song and tune, just as they had always done. And the touch of her hand on his arm thrilled through him in just the old way. He had, indeed, come home.
There were definite reasons why he should have pleaded a headache or influenza, or any lie, and have gone away before his second dance with her. But the charm of the situation was too great. The whole thing was so complete. On his very first evening in England—to meet her! He did not go, and half-way through their second dance he led her into the little room, soft-curtained, soft-cushioned, soft-lighted, at the bend of the staircase.
Here they sat silent, and he fanned her, and he assured himself once more that she was more beautiful than ever. Her hair, which he had known in short, fluffy curls, lay in soberly waved masses, but it was still bright and dark, like a chestnut fresh from the husk. Her eyes were the same as of old, and her hands. Her mouth only had changed. It was a sad mouth now, in repose—and he had known it so merry. Yet he could not but see that its sadness added to its beauty. The lower lip had been, perhaps, too full, too flexible. It was set now, not in sternness, but in a dignified self-control. He had left a Greuze girl—he found a Madonna of Bellini. Yet those were the lips he had kissed—the eyes that—
The silence had grown to the point of embarrassment. She broke it, with his eyes on her.
"Well," she said, "tell me all about yourself."
"There's nothing much to tell. My cousin's dead, and I'm a full-fledged squire with estates and things. I've done with the gorgeous East, thank God! But you—tell me about yourself."
"What shall I tell you?" She had taken the fan from him, and was furling and unfurling it.
"Tell me"—he repeated the words slowly—"tell me the truth! It's all over—nothing matters now. But I've always been—well—curious. Tell me why you threw me over!"
He yielded, without even the form of a struggle, to the impulse which he only half understood. What he said was true: he had been—well—curious. But it was long since anything alive, save vanity, which is immortal, had felt the sting of that curiosity. But now, sitting beside this beautiful woman who had been so much to him, the desire to bridge over the years, to be once more in relations with her outside the conventionalities of a ball-room, to take part with her in some scene, discreet, yet flavoured by the past with a delicate poignancy, came upon him like a strong man armed. It held him, but through a veil, and he did not see its face. If he had seen it, it would have shocked him very much.
"Tell me," he said softly, "tell me now—at last—"
Still she was silent.
"Tell me," he said again; "why did you do it? How was it you found out so very suddenly and surely that we weren't suited to each other—that was the phrase, wasn't it?"
"Do you really want to know? It's not very amusing, is it—raking out dead fires?"
"Yes, I do want to know. I've wanted it every day since," he said earnestly.
"As you say—it's all ancient history. But you used not to be stupid. Are you sure the real reason never occurred to you?"
"Never! What was it? Yes, I know: the next waltz is beginning. Don't go. Cut him, whoever he is, and stay here and tell me. I think I have a right to ask that of you."
"Oh—rights!" she said. "But it's quite simple. I threw you over, as you call it, because I found out you didn't care for me."
"I—not care for you?"
"Exactly."
"But even so—if you believed it—but how could you? Even so—why not have told me—why not have given me a chance?" His voice trembled.
Hers was firm.
"I was giving you a chance, and I wanted to make sure that you would take it. If I'd just said, 'You don't care for me,' you'd have said, 'Oh, yes I do!' And we should have been just where we were before."
"Then it wasn't that you were tired of me?"
"Oh, no," she said sedately, "it wasn't that!"
"Then you—did you really care for me still, even when you sent back the ring and wouldn't see me, and went to Germany, and wouldn't open my letters, and all the rest of it?"
"Oh, yes!"—she laughed lightly—"I loved you frightfully all that time. It does seem odd now to look back on it, doesn't it? but I nearly broke my heart over you."
"Then why the devil—"
"You mustn't swear," she interrupted; "I never heard you do that before. Is it the Indian climate?"
"Why did you send me away?" he repeated.
"Don't I keep telling you?" Her tone was impatient. "I found out you didn't care, and—and I'd always despised people who kept other people when they wanted to go. And I knew you were too honourable, generous, soft-hearted—what shall I say?—to go for your own sake, so I thought, for your sake, I would make you believe you were to go for mine."
"So you lied to me?"
"Not exactly. We weren't suited—since you didn't love me."
"I didn't love you?" he echoed again.
"And somehow I'd always wanted to do something really noble, and I never had the chance. So I thought if I set you free from a girl you didn't love, and bore the blame myself, it would be rather noble. And so I did it."
"And did the consciousness of your own nobility sustain you comfortably?" The sneer was well sneered.
"Well—not for long," she admitted. "You see, I began to doubt after a while whether it was really my nobleness after all. It began to seem like some part in a play that I'd learned and played—don't you know that sort of dreams where you seem to be reading a book and acting the story in the book at the same time? It was a little like that now and then, and I got rather tired of myself and my nobleness, and I wished I'd just told you, and had it all out with you, and both of us spoken the truth and parted friends. That was what I thought of doing at first. But then it wouldn't have been noble! And I really did want to be noble—just as some people want to paint pictures, or write poems, or climb Alps. Come, take me back to the ball-room. It's cold here in the Past."
But how could he let the curtain be rung down on a scene half finished, and so good a scene?
"Ah, no! tell me," he said, laying his hand on hers; "why did you think I didn't love you?"
"I knew it. Do you remember the last time you came to see me? We quarrelled—we were always quarrelling—but we always made it up. That day we made it up as usual, but you were still a little bit angry when you went away. And then I cried like a fool. And then you came back, and—you remember—"
"Go on," he said. He had bridged the ten years, and the scene was going splendidly. "Go on; you must go on."
"You came and knelt down by me," she said cheerfully. "It was as good as a play—you took me in your arms and told me you couldn't bear to leave me with the slightest cloud between us. You called me your heart's dearest, I remember—a phrase you'd never used before—and you said such heaps of pretty things to me! And at last, when you had to go, you swore we should never quarrel again—and that came true, didn't it?"
"Ah, but why?"
"Well, as you went out I saw you pick up your gloves off the table, and I knew—"
"Knew what?"
"Why, that it was the gloves you had come back for and not me—only when you saw me crying you were sorry for me, and determined to do your duty whatever it cost you. Don't! What's the matter?"
He had caught her wrists in his hands and was scowling angrily at her.
"Good God! was that all? I did come back for you. I never thought of the damned gloves. I don't remember them. If I did pick them up, it must have been mechanically and without noticing. And you ruined my life for that?"
He was genuinely angry; he was back in the past, where he had a right to be angry with her. Her eyes grew soft.
"Do you mean to say that I was wrong—that it was all my fault—that you did love me?"
"Love you?" he said roughly, throwing her hands from him; "of course I loved you—I shall always love you. I've never left off loving you. It was you who didn't love me. It was all your fault."
He leaned his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands. He was breathing quickly. The scene had swept him along in its quickening flow. He shut his eyes, and tried to catch at something to steady himself—some rope by which he could pull himself to land again. Suddenly an arm was laid on his neck, a face laid against his face. Lips touched his hand, and her voice, incredibly softened and tuned to the key of their love's overture, spoke—
"Oh, forgive me, dear, forgive me! If you love me still—it's too good to be true—but if you do—ah, you do!—forgive me, and we can forget it all! Dear, forgive me! I love you so!"
He was quite still, quite silent.
"Can't you forgive me?" she began again. He suddenly stood up.
"I'm married," he said. He drew a long breath and went on hurriedly, standing before her, but not looking at her. "I can't ask you to forgive me—I shall never forgive myself."
"It doesn't matter," she said, and she laughed; "I—I wasn't serious. I saw you were trying to play the old comedy, and I thought I had better play up to you. If I'd known you were married—but it was only your glove, and we're such old acquaintances! There's another dance beginning. Please go—I've no doubt my partner will find me."
He bowed, gave her one glance, and went. Halfway down the stairs he turned and came back. She was still sitting as he had left her. The angry eyes she raised to him were full of tears. She looked as she had looked ten years before, when he had come back to her, and the cursed gloves had spoiled everything. He hated himself. Why had he played with fire and raised this ghost to vex her? It had been such pretty fire, and such a beautiful ghost. But she had been hurt—he had hurt her. She would blame herself now for that old past; as for the new past, so lately the present, it would not bear thinking of.
The scene must be rounded off somehow. He had let her wound her pride, her self-respect. He must heal them. The light touch would be best.
"Look here," he said, "I just wanted to tell you that I knew you weren't serious just now. As you say, it was nothing between two such old friends. And—and—" He sought about for some further consolation. Ill-inspired, with the touch of her lips still on his hand, he said, "And about the gloves. Don't blame yourself about that. It was not your fault. You were perfectly right. It was the gloves I came back for."
He left her then, and next day journeyed to Scotland to rejoin his wife, of whom he was, by habit, moderately fond. He still keeps the white glove she kissed, and at first reproached himself whenever he looked at it. But now he only sentimentalises over it now and then, if he happens to be a little under the weather. He feels that his foolish behaviour at that Sydenham dance was almost atoned for by the nobility with which he lied to spare her, the light, delicate touch with which he rounded off the scene.
He certainly did round it off. By a few short, easy words he accomplished three things. He destroyed an ideal of himself which she had cherished for years; he killed a pale bud of hope which she had loved to nurse—the hope that perhaps in that old past it had been she who was to blame, and not he, whom she loved; he trampled in the mud the living rose which would have bloomed her life long, the belief that he had loved, did love her—the living rose that would have had magic to quench the fire of shame kindled by that unasked kiss, a fire that frets for ever like hell-fire, burning, but not consuming, her self-respect.
He did, without doubt, round off the scene.