Tussock Land; a Romance of New Zealand and the Commonwealth/Chapter 29
XXIX
King did not return to his lodgings for dinner. A friend met him on the ferry boat and took him off to dine at one of the cafés. It was ten o’clock before he reached his lodgings in Darlinghurst. He had broken away rather impatiently from his friend, on the plea of having some packing to finish. He had calculated an spending his last evening in Australia with Miss Barbara Smith.
When he let himself in there were people in the drawing-room; but she was not among them. He stepped out on to the balcony. He groped in the semi-darkness towards her accustomed chair and found it empty.
He asked the maid for her. He was told that she had gone to bed, “With a bad headache, sir.”
So that was it. These women and their weaknesses! He had been looking forward to an evening with her, the last evening he would be able to spend with her—indeed, he had given up a pleasant evening with his friend in order to see her (indeed, he was very much injured!)—and she had chosen this night of all the nights in the year to have a bad headache!
But a better feeling overcame this momentary disappointment, He stared half-amazed at himself. Had he been through so much and yet was so immovably selfish? The little girl was ill, suffering. As he passed her room, going up stairs, he hesitated. A light came beneath the door, He knocked.
Yes, she was awake. Who was it? Oh!—Yes, she was very sorry, she was hardly ill—just got a bad headache. No, she would be all right in the morning. No, he couldn’t do anything for her. It was most good of him to interest himself, to offer. She would be quite well in the morning. Good-night. In the morning—
King went slowly up ta his room to bed. He was intensely sorry for her. She had so little out of life, and she never complained. So, thinking of her, he went to sleep.
But it was long before Barbara slept. True, she had a headache; but it was a headache of her emotions. All that day she had been fighting herself. Through the long hours of her work, retouching and retouching patiently the features on the negatives of people she had never seen, never cared to see, she had questioned herself unceasingly. She loved King; happily for her there was no doubt of that. She felt dimly that if she let him go now she would let slip the only chance of happiness life held out to her. But what could she do? Did he not love her? All that day she had revolved that question in her mind, and at the close of the day she had convinced herself that he depended on her, cared for her. Sometimes she guessed that he pitied her, and though the thought made her hot with anger and hate, she would not let it go. She ended by clutching at it almost savagely. If he began by pitying her, he might came to— Oh! how she hated herself for the utter humility of her love! She accepted even his pity!
But she loved him, and felt that she could not demand much more from him than a pitying love. It was not the love of which year after year she had fiercely dreamed, but it was all that life had for one of her colourless individuality. And even a pitying love would be so much—from King!
But when he did not return for dinner she grew desperate. She must see him before he left her for ever. Something might happen yet. She could not believe that he did not love her—a little. And she would be content—oh! gratefully and fully content!—with that little. Perhaps he scarcely knew it himself; he would find out only after he had left her, when it was irretrievably too late. Would it be unwomanly of her to tell him, to throw her love, naked and ashamed, at his feet? It was unwomanly, wrong; but not if a woman loved with the greatness of her love. That was her supreme excuse. She felt in every fibre of her being that this hidden great love of hers must find expression. It was a burden too heavy for a woman to bear. Anything—pity, indifference, pitiless laughter—would be better to bear than this suppression of her heart’s keen instincts, this terrible loneliness and solitude of soul.
Then after dinner she went up to the balcony and waited and waited. King would return, would find his way to her side, and then she would shyly tell him her splendid secret. She understood him so well! Surely he would understand? She knew that he would understand. And then—perhaps—surely—inevitably he would take her into his arms and hush her doubts with the words she was so thirsty for.
So she sat patiently waiting for him, and it seemed to her that she sat thus till late into the night. And he did not come. Then she sighed and went up to her bedroom. And there she cried and cried.
But when King knocked at her door—she knew it was his knock; she, thrilling, had recognised his footstep on the stairs—all had suddenly come right. He loved her, then. He had come to tell her so Her head was beginning to throb and throb strangely. Perhaps this was madness; perhaps she was not quite herself, not quite responsible; but she knew that he was in love with her. And it seemed to her that through all that vast turmoil in her throbbing brain that one wondrous fact shone vivid and quiet, like the steady glow of a great beacon. Love had found his way to her at last.
But he was going away. It was too late. He would never see her again.
No; at any cost she must prevent that. At first she thought of dressing and going to him, making him come down to the balcony with her—it could not be so late, after all! But no, she could not do that. Yet she had no other opportunity of seeing him. To-morrow at breakfast? Fancy telling a man you loved him at his breakfast! She laughed hysterically,
Ah! she must write. She could trust herself to write. She hastily searched and found some paper and ink and wrote to King. It was a long letter, and in it she laid a heart bare. All the endless monotony of her life, all the chilling sameness of her work, all the long starvation of her heart, all the craving that almost killed her for affection, for sympathy, for love, lay plain and piteously appealing in that letter. She wrote feverishly, racked and tormented by the incessant pain in her head. Her pen flew; but the incoherent torrent of her thoughts outran it. At last she suddenly broke off, and without reading her words closed and addressed the letter.
Then she leant back wearily. The pain in her head was almost gone. Now she could think. She must deliver it immediately, this night. He was not asleep yet. She would go up to his door and push it beneath. She could easily slip upstairs unseen. He would find it in the morning. He would tell her at breakfast.
She crept upstairs with the letter. As her eyes came level with his door she saw that no light came from beneath it. He was asleep.
She bent down and pushed the letter under the door. There seemed little space even for her letter, and she had to manœuvre it beneath the door with some care. She pushed it well out of sight, remembering that it must not be seen by the maid in the morning. Then she crept downstairs and went to bed with a serene heart. She had made her fight for happiness; she had not faltered, she had striven and would abide by her venture. She had given way to her deepest instincts, and therefore was happy. She had been herself.
Next morning she was late down for breakfast. She entered the room in a great trepidation, despite the fact that she had listened in vain for King’s footstep on the stairs. Still, he might be there awaiting her. At that moment she would have given life itself for the privilege of recalling that terrible letter. She must have been mad the night before. She recalled the headache as a pitiable excuse. And yet, now he would know. She was glad of that. His eyes would tell her that he knew. And a sudden, incomprehensible pride surged up into her heart. Her love for him was her shield. He was too strong and too gentle not to reverence her sincerity.
And he was not in the breakfast-room.
She looked at the clock. She had just fifteen minutes to breakfast in. She could not possibly be late for her work. After all, that was the important thing. That was life. All her happiness might hang on a few minutes snatched from the round of her tasks, but she was so wedded to habit, so enslaved by the implacable regularity of her work, that though the thought occurred to her to fling aside responsibility for one day and refuse to go to the studio, a something more puissant than herself forced her back into the accustomed grooves, and she knew that nothing could ever interfere with the important and momentous fact of her invariable punctuality,
She hurried through her meal and rose. King had not come. He must have overslept himself. She left the house, looking back. But perhaps his late arrival was deliberate. He had found her letter and did not care to see her then. He would find it too delicate a matter to discuss in the breakfast-room of a lodging-house. He would come to her workroom and see her there. He would have something to tell, something that she did not fear. He was generous and gentle. At the worst he would only pity her. She was prepared now to accept even that.
King was annoyed that morning on entering the breakfast-room late to find that Barbara had gone. She might have waited to see him the last morning of his stay! However, he would call at her office and say good-bye there. He had hoped to have had a long talk with her, and was deeply disappointed. She was his best friend. And last night she had a bad headache. Dimly a vision came to him of her ill in Sydney, lonely, uncared for. He was glad to find that she had been better that morning.
As he came down to breakfast he had not noticed a little strip of white lying almost invisible by the door, The letter had been pushed almost entirely beneath a strip of carpet.
He had various little important forgotten things to do that morning. After lunch he made his way to the photographic studio where Barbara was employed. It was a garishly-decorated place in George Street. From great frames popular actresses glared from stony eyes or piteously appealed from wide pools of treacly pathos. In the vestibule society women in evening dress, actors with feminine faces, and hard-featured popular preachers stared superciliously into the faces of the public. Upstairs was a drawing-room littered with photographs, and behind the counter was an aggressively beautiful girl, whose face, to his mind, seemed to have been flattened and reduced to immobility by its exposure to innumerable photographic lenses.
She arrogantly informed him he could see Miss Smith, and triumphantly swept him into a bleak apartment to wait for her. There was a heavy smell of chemicals everywhere. A sense of dinginess, of dismal makeshift cheapness pervaded the room. It was in that atmosphere of chemicals, amid this depressing melancholy of the back premises, that Miss Smith went on with her ceaseless painting of the portraits of unknown people, this mechanical beautifying of features that were more beautiful in their captions ugliness, this relentless smoothing away of character from even the few who possessed it in their faces. A sickening of the soul overcame him. It was all so stupid, so unnecessary.
Suddenly he was aware that Miss Smith had entered the room. She looked more mouse-like than ever in her drab working blouse, but in her eyes was a brightness that seemed strangely out of place in this dismal back room. Her attitude questioned him.
“Well?” she breathed, fluttering.
“I’ve come to say good-bye,” he said. “I did not have the chance of seeing you last night or this morning. I hope the headache has quite gone?”
Her hand had mechanically gone to her head. The room seemed to her to have suddenly darkened. She forced herself to remember that the sun was shining—outside.
“Good-bye? Of course,” she said. “It would have been mean of you to go away without saying good-bye to me.”
“I was looking forward to having a yarn with you last night. I am sorry you weren’t very fit.”
“Oh, but I knew you would call to-day. I was expecting you in the morning.”
She felt ashamed of her weakness. She was repeating words that to her were absolutely meaningless. She felt herself a frightened child waiting same terrible blow, waiting to be found out. But why did he torture her? Why did he not speak out? That was not like him. He was always so considerate. Even if he did not love her. She looked keenly at his face and something told her the terrible truth. He did not love her! But why, why did he not say...?”
“Do you work here?” he asked curiously.
"No; we retouchers have another room, not so pretty a room, but of course it has more light. There are a lot of us, and they always keep me amused by their talk. Do you know—” She felt that at any cost she must talk. If she stopped she would faint or stupidly fall into tears, The suspense of his silence was too hard for her to bear. She must keep talking. “Do you know, the girls all round me seem to lead the funniest lives. They all seem to be acting in melodramas. The things that occur to them are the very things that occur in penny novelettes. They love and hate whole-souledly. They talk of rivals and vengeance and fatal jealousy. They fall in love with pale-faced, interesting-looking gentlemen whom they pass in the street. They are loved by their sweethearts with a passionate abandon, and give details of their love-affairs with a most embarrassing frankness. They have secret enemies who plot evil to their love, and two of the girls have even shown me anonymous letters that they have received from unknown rivals about their ‘boys.’ Real anonymous letters! I thought they only existed in novels. And all the men they meet are either wicked or good, villains or heroes. I wonder whether the penny novelettes and the melodramas are, after all, nearer to real life—the life of their class—or whether they don’t live at all themselves but are mere puppets played upon by the suggestions of the theatre and the magazines—?”
No; she could not go on like that. She must know. She came closer to him. “You know,” she almost whispered, “nobody can overhear us here. If—"
King felt vaguely sorry for her, shut up among those stupid and sentimental girls. Heavens! how out of her element she was here! Why couldn’t she get out of it all? And he would never see her again.
“You’ve been awfully good to me, Barbara,” he said. “I shall never forget your goodness. The sympathy, the kindness—you’ve helped me so much, pulled me up when I—”
She stopped him with a hysterical laugh. Her goodness! He was talking of her sympathy when she was aching with her love for him. How could he be so callous?
“I’ll write and tell you how I’m getting on,” he continued. "And you must write often to me. Don’t hesitate to tell me all your troubles—every one. Often I have seen that you’ve got things on your mind, things that perhaps are the cause of those headaches; but you’re really such a difficult person to sympathise with. You don’t take people into your confidence. I think you are too proud, too restrained. You should let your friends help you; you should let your friends see a little further into your heart, perhaps. Barbara, I shall never forget you. You have been so good to me. Only now I am beginning to see how much you have done for me. But I suppose that is your way; you must be helping someone. It’s the mother-heart that I fancy is in every woman.”
Now the girl’s mind was clear. He would not mention the letter. He did not love her at all. That had been all a mistake. She saw that so vividly now. But he would not say a word to let her see he knew. That was like his chivalry. That was his splendid, superb, glorious way. He would hold her secret in his heart—a sacred thing. No; he would never betray her—not even to his wife. For surely he would marry. Perhaps he would reverence her for her frankness. He always liked her sincerity. No; he would never despise her for her letter. And if he pitied her he would never let her see. And she would have to be content with his pity. Even his pity....
A silence fell. They looked at each other. He was strangely moved by a feeling of the loss to him that this parting would mean. He had not realised how much he had come to depend upon her serene sympathy.
They looked at each other through that silence. Then the same thought leapt to the mind of each.
He was going away, severing for ever his life from hers. They were good friends. Why should he not take her just once into his arms and kiss her on the lips...?
A man’s voice called Miss Smith.
“Oh, I must run!” cried the girl. “That’s the manager. I’ve been talking too long. Good-bye.”
She hurriedly held out her hand. He grasped it.
Then she went quickly back to her retouching.