Harriet Hume: A London Fantasy (3 page)

Excluding from his tones all hint of apprehension, he asked with an uneasy smile, “Now, Harriet, tell me what made you look so lovely at the door.”

“Do not be apprehensive,” she answered gaily. “It was something lovelier than anything that has ever happened to me before, and something lovelier than has ever happened to you, I will swear.” Yet she was fearful; he knew that from the way her little hand was nuzzling into his palm. Did that not mean that she must be feeling guilty? “You must know,” she continued, “that when I went into the kitchen I found that the big kettle had been left on the hob and had just come to the boil. This meant that I could make tea on the instant; my servant had left out the tray with all prepared; and it was but a matter of five minutes to boil the eggs. I reflected that I would not return to you as I had meant to do if I had had to fill the kettle with cold water, and there had been twenty minutes to wait; for I loathe nothing more than people whisking in and out of rooms. I believed too I could better occupy the few minutes opening new pots of quince and apple jelly, as I remembered that you liked one better than the other, and I knew that you are so amiable that you would pretend whichever I took in was that one, even if it were not; and here you must always have what you like best. Well, I was standing by my kitchen table, putting a knife to the string round the jam-pot, and thinking very tenderly of you as you rested here on my couch, when—when—”

Her fingers were floating towards her brow. He laughed aloud. It was that nonsense again. Well, he had been alarming himself unnecessarily.

“—I had that patch of headache here; and just as I was when we saw those children through those windows, I was in your mind. And because I was in your mind I knew what your body was doing. You were pulling back the curtains—”

He made a grimace that paid himself several compliments. For the smile which was its beginning showed that he was too canny to be deceived, that he realised she could see he had pulled the curtains as soon as she had entered the room, and thereby had been inspired to act her galvanisation and improvise this story; and the insincere attempt to suppress that smile which followed showed him a large-minded and tolerant man who would not be too hard on women for that in them which runs to telling fibs about the occult.

“Yes, truly,” she persisted, with meek bravery, “I could feel that you were pulling back the curtains, and then that you felt a need for rhythm, that you wanted to enjoy a sense of ebb and flow without greatly exerting yourself. I had never before understood why people smoke. There were cigarettes in your case, but you had no matches. You thought of my pretty box on the mantelpiece that I bought at King’s Lynn. You went to it, and lit a match, and thought how much better my small things are than my big ones—”

He pushed back his chair, he made to rise, his hand dragged his collar from his choking throat. The preposterous thing was true, and its truth was not bearable. He saw himself loafing about the room, prying and appraising, and it did not seem to him that one decent thought had passed through his mind. It was not humane to spy upon him so.

Harriet was at his feet, suddenly, like a bird that was on a bush and is on the path. Pressing her body against his knees, and slipping her hand into his, she compelled him to sit down again, and dumbfounded him by lifting a face calm as a primrose with happiness.

“You thought so beautifully about me!” she rejoiced. “You were sorry for me because I am so poor, and you reflected how alike we were in our utter lack of fortune. Ah, dear! I am so grateful to you for that thought. It is so rarely people think how needy I must be, on the little that is all musicians can earn until they are recognised as very great. They think I have no nice things because I am a sloven and do not care. They ask me on visits to their grand houses, where I have to give the servants what I ought to spend on a week’s food. Oh, it was kind of you to have a mind to my poverty! And then you wondered who I am and whence I come. I have often wondered that about you, but since you did not offer to tell me I did not ask. But—yes, I will own that I have been a little hurt because you never asked me about myself. I wanted you to be eager for all of what I was, as well as for all of what I am. So I was happy then, and happy when you remembered that at times you had thought me a princess, and at others a little trollop, for, of course, every woman would like to be both. There are some very enviable effects a trollop can make which are beyond the reach of a princess. Then you looked at my book-case, and marked how I read nothing except the newspapers, and remembered—oh, how flatteringly well!—how I must sit when I read them, because of my poor eyes. And you laughed at me a little, but did not like me any less, because I cannot be interested in anything that does not touch my life, and see nothing as real that does not hold a clue which leads back to me in my little house. It is, as you said, for news of Sir George that I read my paper.

“And then it was that you caught sight of those photographs behind the telephone directory and my turtle-shell tea-caddy. Oh, my love, when you saw them you showed such wisdom, such kind wisdom, though I fear you have bought it dearly! You looked at them furtively, you held the book and the box so that you might slip them back in place on the instant if I returned. Oh, that was right. When people seek complete knowledge of us it is ten to one they do it to find out the perfect place to shoot an arrow; so we acquire a habit of fearing those, who make that search. With this new power I have to read your mind, I know that what you did proceeded from pure love for me, but had I come in unenlightened and you had not taken the precautions that you did, I might have winced. Do not be ashamed! You were acting as, knowing all, I would have you act. Then your eyes dwelt on my mother’s face. You are right, she is more beautiful than I am. But your other thoughts were far too hopeful. There is nothing to be done. Poor darling, she believes each thunderclap to be a Divine warning. Myself”—she looked a little priggishly at her piano—“I would not care to allege that any sound had so simple a meaning. It is sad, for you are right about my father, who breaks the silence of our hills with a tiresomeness that has something their own air of enduring for ever. Then, thinking of her and him, you began to dream a day-dream of going to lonely places in the North and finding splendid women starved by climate and circumstance, like jewels dropped in peat, and redeeming them by coming dark and handsome into their homes by night. Dearest, I was so glad when you thought that, for it showed me how like you are to me! For never, I will now confess to you, have I travelled on the Underground without expecting the ticket-collector to throw aside that pert, snapping metal thing, and pop down on his knees, disclosing himself to be the Prince of Wales who (I admit very oddly) has chosen to find his bride by acting in that capacity, having had from childhood an ambition to marry that woman of the realm who has the smallest hand and the most darned gloves. We are both silly children, and how fortunate it is that we have found each other, so that we can play together without fear of being scorned by the other for our silliness!

“And we are not so silly either,” she continued gravely, “for indeed we are marvellous, and should be able to command marvellous things! Yes, all the things you imagined when you looked at yourself in the mirror should come true! That fame, that power over the people, that house with the pillars and the pediments, and a park with the wooded knoll in it from which one can see five counties—there is no reason why you should not have them all! Indeed you do deserve them, for thinking of another human being as you thought of me just after that! Oh, Arnold, I stood in my kitchen and could not believe that I could have inspired such sentiments! I felt proud and humble, and I cried a little, and I longed to give you a present that would not be just a present but would be appropriate to you, would be a present specially designed to please that quality in you which I find so pleasing; and lo! in that thought I found my mind meeting yours. You were thinking the very same thing about me! At that I picked up my tray and told myself to stop day-dreaming; but as I came along the passage I knew that I would find you standing by the mantelpiece, and that I would see in your face that you had been all overthrown and disturbed by the kindness of your feeling for me. I said aloud, ‘Nonsense, he will be on the couch where I left him, and he will be drowsed and indifferent.’ And then my tray pushed open the door—and oh, Arnold! Arnold!”

Her voice trilled up like a bird’s, her face soared to the level of his face for kisses. He delayed only for a minute to gasp. “It is true. Every word is true! And it is a miracle!” before he clipped her to him and embraced her as if they were being swept off the solid earth by a tide of prodigiousness. There was an added marvel in feeling under his hand her heartbeat which showed that though her spirit was so marvellously transcending all ordinary human limitations, she nevertheless kept as faithful a bond with fact as the tick of a clock. Dizzied, he tried to recall himself to order, the world to order. He jerked back in his chair and loosened her arms. “Harriet!” he protested, “this cannot be!”

“It is,” she meekly claimed.

“But, my love, this is the real world! Over on that table I see the horrid form which has been sent you by the Income Tax Commissioners. The things are not compatible. Such miracles of thought cannot occur!”

“But have I not told you what you were thinking?” she answered calmly. “And can there be any other test?”

“Yes, you are right!” he cried. “That is the only test, and you have satisfied it; and, in the satisfying of it, have given me such good news about my soul. For I have believed it only a lair of monsters, and you have shown it to be a scene where a sylph may wander, and not take fright.” Again he drew her to him; and they remained very close, until he drew apart, took her hands in his, and gazed very reverently on her face.

“You are right,” she said pertly, “it is odd that I look so like a doll when I have qualities above the ruck of dolls.”

He bit his lip. “Do not laugh at me!” he begged, and asked very solemnly, “Harriet, how do you do this thing?”

“Are you so greatly interested in how it is done?” she asked carelessly, playing with his cravat. “To me what is done seems more interesting than the doing of it. But I suppose,” she said, swinging herself down from his knee, “that it belongs to this order of happening.” She tripped to her piano, uncovered the keyboard, and retreated again until she stood with her back against the wall. For a minute or two she breathed so deeply that it seemed likely to go hard with the seams of her little bodice, while intention made her face remote from him; and then, in a voice far lower than her usual, she began to recite:

I have a garden of my own,

But so with roses overgrown

And lilies, that you would it guess

To be a little wilderness;

And all the springtime of the year …

The moment provided a triple occupation for Arnold Condorex; for he was delirious at having the extremes of love and strangeness revealed to him in an afternoon with such heavenly lightness and benignity; and he was reflecting how remarkable it was that her skin, the billows of her skirt, and the glossy varnished wall behind her, were within but a tone or two of each other in colour, yet presented a spectacle in which the eye could dwell with a sense of the most abundant variousness; and he was embarrassed as he always was when he heard anyone repeating poetry, since his lack of memory for words prevented him from ever recognising it, and his pride made him itch to say he did. But he was snatched from all these occupations by his half-horrified perception that from the unattended keyboard of the piano, whose mistress stood ten feet away, was coming music. Not melody, to be sure, but a progression that corresponded with the line of her voice, echoing clearly enough each note she dwelt on for any space or with any richness. The sound was less brisk than that which a finger evokes by striking a key. Rather was it as if some inhabiting spirit of the instrument had resolved no longer to tolerate the age-old conditions by which human virtuosity steals all the credit of its tunefulness, and was essaying to make its music by itself, and found its new art difficult. But that it made a sound could not be gainsaid. He made an uneasy exclamation.

“No, indeed,” laughed Harriet, leaning against the wall and flinging wide her arms in laughter, “this is no speciality of the house. Any piano will answer any voice that speaks to it deeply enough. There are cords in my throat, and cords in my piano. Set the air shaking with strong enough pulses, and both cords will shake alike. I … I imagine that something of the same order explains our private marvel.” Though her eyelids drooped, she would not let them have their way, but tilted her head back, so that under them she could still regard him steadily. Since a blush would spread, she covered her cheeks with her hands and spoke bravely between them: “We have been shaken by the same pulse, and it was not a weak one.”

He was at her side. Taking her in his arms, he whispered, “Did I not tell you all the time that was miraculous?”

Gently she evaded him, putting up a hand between their lips, but only that she might ask him, a little piteously: “But you, my dear, can you not read my thoughts at all?”

Smiling at the idea that such things could be hoped of him, he shook his head.

Her eyes were mournful. “I have so strange a feeling that you could … if you would … but let that pass!” She sighed, and let him utterly enfold her.

“Oh, we must always——!” he groaned.