Love Lies Dreaming (6 page)

Since I wrote that last paragraph Mrs. Rundle has gone. The flat has been cleaned and polished up to a state of transcendent perfection all ready to impress Mrs. Rundle's successor when she comes on Monday. At least, Constance says it is in a state of perfection. I find it very difficult to see any difference.

At twelve o'clock I heard the two women whispering together outside by study door. Then there was a knock.

“Come in,” I said. Enter Mrs. Rundle.

“I just want to say good-by, sir,” said she.

What the devil was I to say? How does one bid farewell to a retiring charwoman—especially one who knows as much about one as does Mrs. Rundle. Shamefacedly I mumbled something about “the best of luck.” Then, as she turned to go, I dived for my pocketbook.

“Here,” I said, “half a minute.”

My fingers seemed all thumbs as I tugged the thing open and scrabbled for its contents.

“Mind you keep that you yourself. Don't let that husband of yours know you've got it,” I said. Then I dived for the typewriter and started it rattling tremendously, without any paper in it, while Mrs. Rundle
withdrew, defeated in her efforts to thank me. At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that young Tommy Rundle will not go short of bread and butter for a week or two to come.

I don't know how Constance guessed about it. Mrs. Rundle may have told her, or she may have seen the notes in her hand. My own personal opinion is that she listened at the door, for Constance would have no morals at all about a thing like that under those circumstances. If I were to tax her with it she would be perfectly brazen, and admit it too charmingly for me to be able to take any further action.

But she knows, and I think it has counted in my favor. At lunch she was friendlier to me than ever—I had been anticipating that tete-a-tete meal with apprehension. It is a curious sensation to woo one's wife all over again. Somehow I was transported back over nearly five years, to the time when one of Constance's smiles meant a victory—another niche cut in the difficult ascent that lay before me. today Constance smiled at me across the table with a brilliance that dazzled me, just as it used to do in the old days, before I grew spoiled. Constance is delicious and most tantalizingly
inaccessible. She doesn't seem in the least degree to be my wife. I feel much more like a relieved widower making my first advances to number two.

After lunch I gazed regretfully out of the window at the streaming rain.

“Only tennis for you this week-end, my lad,” said Constance.

Our unvoiced arrangement is that I play golf at the club on a Saturday, and tennis with Constance on Sunday. Constance (who has the profoundest contempt for golf) says that that gives me a chance to gossip on Saturday and some healthy exercise on Sunday. There is always unblushing triumph in Constance's demeanor on a wet Saturday.

“If I did the right and proper thing a husband ought to do,” I said (I felt extraordinarily daring at using the word “husband”), “I'd shake you until you said you were sorry I'm missing my golf.”

“Poop!” said Constance, “you wouldn't dare. Besides, it'll do you good to stop at home for once and entertain your wife.”

There was half a look and half a gesture when Constance uttered the word “wife” that made me perfectly
certain that Constance's thoughts had been following the same lines as had my own. She was teasing me. Constance flirts rather nicely.

“Haven't you anything better to do?” I asked, countering. “There's no tennis, I admit. But aren't there any women you want to go and gossip with over the teacups? No young men anxious to console a golf widow?”

The last question actually called forth a blush. Constance only blushes when there is nothing particular to blush about.

“Not today,” said Constance. “If there were, do you think I'd trouble about you?”

I allowed Constance to have the last word. It is the easier plan. I reached for the paper and pretended to read it. It can not be said that I studied it attentively. I was too busy deciding mentally that there was much to be said for the harem system. If there were nobody to interfere, no Mrs. Rundles to make nuisances of themselves, there would not have been the little sting that Constance's last sentence had carried with it—not that she meant anything stinging. For the moment I wanted to be alone with Constance out of the world,
where perhaps there would not be any misunderstandings. A desert island, for instance.

Constance interrupted my meditation.

“You men!” said Constance.

“What have we done now?” I asked, looking up from the paper I had not been reading.

“I believe there's only one thing you ever think about.”

“It's good news to hear that there's even one. What is it that we single out for so much honor?”

“Don't try to wriggle out of it that way. You know what I mean. I don't mean just one thing in particular. I mean—I mean one set of things.”

“Well, that's a bit kinder. And this set of things, as you call it, is—?”

“You can sit there with that paper in front of you, staring at it for ten minutes without stopping, and then try to make out you don't know what I'm talking about?”

It was then that I looked at the unopened paper I held before me. The front page at which my eyes had been staring was covered with the advertisements of half a dozen stores. These stores had simultaneously
decided to advertise marvelous values in ladies' underwear, and in consequence, upon the first page there were no fewer than fourteen damsels disporting themselves without their frocks on, while the majority of them had gone at least one stage further.

“Very nice, too,” I said, scanning the ladies a little closer. “If you really want to know, your cynical ascription to me of a prurient desire to inspect ladies' underclothing is entirely at fault. I didn't know it was advertised here until you called my attention to it. As a punishment, I shall give these ladies all the attention their situation warrants.”

Constance sniffed.

“Any excuse,” she said.

“Why,” went on Constance, “I think a man would rather see a girl's underclothes than her legs.”

“I don't see anything wrong about that,” I said—and I don't really. But girls always seem to think it a crime. “I expect the reason is,” I continued, “the reason is that legs usually aren't half as beautiful as the clothes they put them in.”

Constance sniffed again, and I made the amende honorable.

“In fact,” I said, “I only know two that are worthy of their setting.”

“Who's the other one?” demanded Constance.

“I didn't say two women, I said two legs.”

That earned me a smile.

“And my underclothes are rather nice,” said Constance, with babyish gratification.

I continued to gaze meditatively at the ladies on the front page—I had already read the other pages, so that there was no inducement to turn over. Underclothes. Constance. Desert islands. These women in chemises all looked very elegant and care-free. It set one wondering as to whether they could ever be ruffled. Of a certainty even Constance's sleek shingled head is never so neat when she reaches that stage of undressing or dressing. Perhaps if they knew that a man was looking at them they might be more disturbed. That one airily admiring herself in the handglass would probably squeal. And that other, in the Opera Top Combinations with her fingers gracefully resting on her necklace (why the devil should a girl in combination be wearing a necklace?) would dive for cover. The more severe and mature women in the bottom left-hand
corner, who are in some one-or-other's reducing corsets, would probably shatter an intruder with a glance. But under what conceivable circumstances could a man find himself intruding on the privacy of fourteen ladies in their underclothing? It was a knotty point, and one over which I allowed my mind to stray subconsciously. Dreaming of this sort is a habit of mine. I find that the germs of plots come my way on these occasions. Yet at the same time other matters were passing through my mind. Constance. New wooing. Desert islands.

“I must say,” said Constance, “you are entertaining me to perfection.”

That woke me up. I found that I had the plot in my mind. That is the way these things happen. So I told Constance a story.

The dinner dressing bell had rung five minutes before on board the steamer. Now there was frightful panic. The stewards were rushing up and down, beating on the stateroom doors and calling forth the passengers within in desperate haste. Constance and I had not begun to dress yet, and so we were fully clothed when we reached the boat deck. Few of the other passengers
(mainly women) were. The deck was stifling hot; there was a smell of smoke; forward the crew were struggling desperately hard to fight the flames that could be dimly made out in the light of the fierce setting sun.

An English quartermaster fought his way through the mob by our boats, and began to cut loose the cover. Other men struggled with the davits.

(“I've never been on a ship on fire,” I said apologetically to Constance, “so you must forgive me if I'm not up in the technicalities.”)

As I was helping with the boat, the quartermaster muttered to me behind his hand:

“There's oil on board. Barr'ls and barr'ls of it. The old boat will go up like a firework when the fire reaches it. Cap'n's drunk. Get away with the women while there's time.”

No sooner said than done. As the cover was stripped off the boat was filled up with women, half of them hysterical. Constance was the last woman to climb in.

“One more,” said the quartermaster. He caught my eye. “Hop in,” he said, “they'd better have a man with 'em.”

I tumbled in, and even as I did so the boat swung out and went away with a run. We cast off the falls, and there we were, adrift on the Indian Ocean—Constance, fourteen other women, and myself.

(“But don't any of the crew go on board the boats?” asked Constance.

“Don't be hypercritical,” I said. “I haven't had time to get the details right yet. I'll swot up some good reason for that when I get a chance. Just let me tell my story.”)

Adrift on the Indian Ocean—and no sooner had we parted company from the ship than the sun sank with tropical rapidity into the sea, and we were left with only the stars, reflected in black and oily water.

It was a cold, uncomfortable night that we passed. It was pitch dark, the women were frightened, we could not even sort ourselves out. But Constance cuddled up comfortably to me in the stern sheets, and we managed to get through till the dawn.

When daylight came there was immediate need to discover whether the steamer or any other boats from it were in sight. There was nothing visible at all on the wide circle of the horizon. Anxiously though we peered
round we could see nothing to raise any hope in our bosoms at all.

“The more need to take stock of our own resources,” said I, naturally assuming the command.

(“Don't grin like that,” I said to Constance. “Of course I would take command over fifteen women.”)

So we called a census and examined stores. Fifteen women and one man; the man fully clothed and one woman also—Constance. The other in light attire. Three who looked the eldest wore Reducing Corsets, and were the quietest of the lot—I suppose that they were incapable of being other than quiet seeing how reduced they were. Three others were in combinations—Opera Top, Low Neck, and High Neck. Opera Top wore, in addition, a rather nice jade necklace. Low Neck still clasped the hand-mirror which she had held while we were scrambling round the boat; the fact that she had retained it all this time was pretty definite proof of her fright and hysteria. The others—

(“Half a minute,” said I, reaching for the paper again.)

—wore Chemise, Chemise Length Vests, Envelope Chemise, and Chemise and Knickers, all save one, who
wore a Bath Robe and, from the manner in which she clutched it about her, nothing else.

And they
were
a hopeless lot. They were long and thin, not to say weedy, with hardly a trace of figure (save for the Reducing Corsets, and they hadn't very much, thanks to the corsets) and they sat about the boat in elegant and hopeless attitudes incapable of doing anything.

“The first thing I do,” said I, “is to see what stores we have.”

For half a moment the women brightened up at the mention of the word “stores,” but when they saw what I was referring to they promptly lost interest again, continuing to flop round in elegant attitudes while I crawled round the boat going over the supplies. “We've got three days' food and water,” I announced at length. “It'll be share and share alike on strict rations until we reach land or are picked up.”

“I'm
so
hungry already,” wailed the eldest Reducing Corset.

She was just the sort of woman who would be hungry; probably she had been banting lately or something.

“All right,” I said, “we can have a bit of a meal now, if you like.”

I began to share out minute rations of biscuit.

“Here, half a minute,” I said, “we aren't going to give rations to people who will only waste them as soon as they get them.”

Among most of the women, at the sight of food, there were displayed evident symptoms of such a possibility. There is a good big ground swell in the Indian Ocean, and it is excessively noticeable in a small boat. We were shooting up and down very uncomfortably. In less time than it takes to tell, now that we were able to appreciate our position, nearly every one of those weedy women were hanging desperately over the side of the boat. And the weeping, and the wailing, and the helplessness!

These women all had voices as weedy and languid and generally useless as themselves. They wailed and they wept and they lamented their fates in voices like the cooing of pigeons. But even while they hung over the side Bath Robe still kept her garment clutched about her, and the Chemise Vests kept pulling the lower extremities of their garments down when their writhings
threatened to send them higher than was discreet. They were very, very decent, were those women.