Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (57 page)

However, the great thing was that she had not Put him Off, and she saw now how morbid she had been in imagining any such thing. On the contrary he must be pretty Keen, when you came to think about it, writing like that the day after he had left her, and she had a slight feeling of triumph. But what was her immediate line of action? She must put off all other plans and go this afternoon, of course. But what if it was raining? It was raining now, she believed. Yes, she could hear it beating in gusts against the window of the Saloon Lounge. He would never come out in this, and was she to undergo the humiliation of trapesing down there for nothing? Yes. On no account could she risk snubbing his advances or Putting him Off again. She had, as it were, got him back (however little she wanted him), and was not going to have any cause to reproach herself again.

She listened to the rain against the window, in each gust casting gloomy dubiousness over the afternoon, and was surprised to find herself curiously excited about the outcome a few hours hence. Rain often affected her nerves like that, but she might have been in love with him, the way she thought and debated with herself about him. Well, anyway it gave her some sort of interest in life, a secret of her own, something which lifted her on to the hitherto remote plane of those who, as their natural right, always had some such secrets going on behind. Like Bob, for instance. Just as she was thinking this, Bob himself came again into the bar.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘was it a legacy?’

‘What?’ said Ella.

‘The letter,’ said Bob.

‘Oh – that . . .’ said Ella. ‘No. Nothing like that.’

Amazing, the interest which her correspondence seemed to be causing all round! Here was Bob subtly aware that her letter had some kind of significance out of the ordinary rut.

‘Just from a friend,’ added Ella, in a voice which a sensitive listener could interpret as suggesting something a great deal more than a friend, and intended as such, for she enjoyed being the centre of mystery for a change.

M
R. ECCLES HAD
suggested that she should ‘slip out,’ but it was not a question of ‘slipping out’ exactly. It was a question of hanging about in her room, from three o’clock, when she finished work, until it was time to go, nervously watching the rain pouring down, repeatedly and senselessly titivating herself in the grey light, and getting into a state. She had little doubt that she was wasting a useful afternoon, but was determined to stick it out.

In her endeavour not to be too early, she finally misjudged things so that she thought she was going to be too late, and suffered agonies in the bus, remembering his stern warning that he would only wait five minutes. But the clock in the Haymarket, when she reached Coventry Street, informed her that she was five minutes too early, and she entered the Corner House hot but with her mind at rest.

No sooner had she entered the great main hall than she saw him standing there, looking at an imposing display of sausage rolls at the end farthest away from her: and no sooner had she seen him than she saw that he was carrying an enormous bunch of yellow flowers; and no sooner had she seen that, than she realized, with a small proportion of feminine triumph mixed with a large proportion of social terror, that
this affair had not even begun as yet, that the first round on Thursday had been a mere sparring bout, and that in this round, the second, he was going to give her a livelier example of his inexhaustible strength.

Flowers!
Flowers at this stage! And at tea-time in the pelting rain, which, according to his letter, was to have precluded the smallest likelihood of either of them turning up! Only the infinitesimal possibility that the flowers were not intended for her enabled her successfully to feign not to notice them as she greeted him, and so preserve a cool and unembarrassed demeanour.

‘Ah – here you are!’ he said, his body coming to attention and his face lighting as he saw her. ‘You’re nice and early.’

‘Yes. I thought I was going to be late for a moment, though.’ And she smiled and shook his hand, which he just managed to release in time from a rather catastrophic muddle between umbrella, hat and flowers.

‘Where shall we go?’ he said. ‘Downstairs, as before?’

‘Yes. That’d be very nice.’ And they walked towards the marble stairs leading downwards.

They had nothing to say on the way down. Quite apart from everything else, both were suffering from that state of bafflement, dumbness and confusion which at first confronts all persons who meet another with no business in hand or avowed object other than the shyly confessed one of enjoying his or her company. But there was a great deal else to bring awkward silence on these two. In the first place their difficulty in starting polite conversation was rendered no easier by the memory of their last conversation, which had been (incredible as it might seem) up against the railings and in a warm quivering proximity out of the realms of politeness altogether – and in the second place, as Ella realized, there could be no settling down or peace of mind until the trembling crisis of the Flowers had been got over – and that was up to him. She was on the point of saying ‘What lovely flowers you’ve got there!’ or something like that, but thought she had better leave it to him, and wished that he would attack the problem manfully and as soon as possible.

It was not very crowded below to-day, and they found a table for four in a corner. They sat opposite each other, and Mr. Eccles was thus able to create a private cloakroom for his innumerable accessories out of the chair next door to him, taking some time, as was his custom, to get everything off and comfortably established. When it came to the flowers, however, he paused, as though seeking where to put them, and Ella braced herself for the fatal moment.

‘Why – are these for
me
?’ would be her line, and she felt sure her cue was coming.

But instead ‘Would you like these over there?’ said Mr. Eccles, non-committally, indicating the chair next door to her.

‘Yes. That’s right,’ said Ella, taking them from him in frantic bewilderment as to whether this was her cue or not. On the one hand the words ‘Would you like’ . . . might be taken as implying ownership or quasi-ownership on her part; on the other hand he might be merely politely asking her to accommodate him. She did not herself credit the latter interpretation, but how could she take the risk? She could, however, help him along.

‘What lovely flowers,’ she said.

‘Do you like daffodils?’ said Mr. Eccles.

‘Yes. They’re beautiful. Aren’t they?’ said Ella.

‘Yes, I’m fond of daffodils myself,’ said Mr. Eccles in the tones not of a gallant bestower, but a horticulturist, and leaving her more horribly suspended than ever.

‘Specially with these double buds,’ she said, deciding to throw pure horticulture back at him, until such time as he should master his puerile self-consciousness and stop playing with her.
She
was not going to help him any more.

‘Yes. I rather thought you would like them,’ he said, but the waitress appeared at this moment, and they had to stop to order tea. Thus, when this was done, she had got no nearer to an official confirmation of the gift, and worse (since he was now disingenuously pretending that she had naturally assumed he had given them to her), the whole responsibility was thrown upon her shoulders.

‘What were you saying?’ she tried, when the waitress had gone.

‘What about?’ said Mr. Eccles, absent-mindedly.

‘You were saying something about the flowers, weren’t you?’ said Ella, touching them again.

‘Oh yes. I was saying I was glad you liked them. I thought you would when I got them.’

At last! Not that even this was properly explicit, but if she didn’t take the plunge now they would go on all night.

‘Why,’ she said. ‘They’re not – ?’ And hesitated with an appropriate vision of heaven dawning in her eyes.

‘Not what?’

‘Not for
me
, are they?’

‘Of course they are.’

‘Why, I never
dreamed
. They’re
lovely
.’

‘I never dreamed that you thought anything else.’

‘But they’re
lovely
,’ said Ella. ‘I think that’s sweet of you.’

‘Do you?’ said Mr. Eccles, laughing shyly, and ‘I do,’ said Ella, and there was a very nice atmosphere.

And indeed, now that the flowers were her own, and she could look upon them without embarrassment she saw how lovely (and terribly expensive) they really were, and realized that she adored flowers, and really did think him sweet. And on top of this the orchestra struck up, which softened her heart still more.

‘I’m glad you turned up to-day,’ he said. ‘As I don’t know what I’d have done with them if you hadn’t.’

‘Did you just get them on spec, then?’ she said, almost vaingloriously, and noting among other things how stupendously young he was looking to-day.

‘Yes. I thought I would.’

‘You shouldn’t have, you know. You told me not to come if it was raining.’

‘Ah. We have to take these risks.’

Not only ten years younger, but his approach was so much more graceful. Had she been altogether misjudging this man? If she wasn’t careful she would be thinking of marrying him in a moment – that was to say, not as a remote and ridiculous hypothesis but as a serious and imminent proposition. In fact,
why shouldn’t she marry him? He was wealthy, he was kind, he had every appearance of being her slave, he was even good-looking. Girls of her class in the ordinary way, and that included pretty girls, would Jump at him, as the saying went. Then why should she, who was not pretty, put herself on a plane above pretty girls? She knew by now that she had little enough to expect from life – so what if this man sitting opposite her, by some odd trick of fate was the one destined to make her happy? She must think about this hard when she was alone. In the meantime why not set her face steadfastly towards his good points instead of his bad – why not see to it that she Jumped at him herself while the Jumping was good. She passed a resolution to that effect.

But what if he had no idea of marrying anybody? What if he made a practice of taking barmaids out and was a wicked rake?

‘Are you so used to it, then?’ she said, half to stimulate herself in the process of Jumping by flirting with him, and half to see if she could betray him into throwing any light on the latter query.

‘Good heavens, no!’ he said. ‘Sadly the other way, believe me.’

‘Really?’ said Ella, and looking at him, she found herself believing him.

‘I’m not at all the sort that hangs around stage doors, I can assure you,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘Do I look it?’

‘No, I suppose you don’t,’ said Ella. . . .

‘In fact,’ continued Mr. Eccles, ‘I’ve never taken a chorus girl out in my life, so far as I can remember.’

‘Haven’t you?’ she said, amused that he should be trying to fool her by pretending casually to glance down the corridors of memory in this matter – for somehow the association of Mr. Eccles with chorus girls and stage doors was too damned silly for words. But she saw that, in his old-fashioned way, he was using chorus girls as mere conventional symbols of dalliance and irregular goings-on, and she was pleased to learn of his austerity.

‘Not that I’m not Broadminded,’ said Mr. Eccles. . . .

‘No,’ said Ella. . . .

‘Or that one hasn’t had one’s
Feelings
. . . .’ added Mr. Eccles ambiguously. . . .

‘No,’ said Ella, with a rather sinister sensation of Mr. Eccles’ mind expanding sensitively and rather too rapidly in front of her, so that she might have to change her opinion concerning his austerity.

‘In one’s time,’ said Mr. Eccles, and she was glad to be back in history.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘But I think the Younger Generation’s gone Absolutely Mad. Don’t you?’

‘Yes. I certainly do,’ said Ella.

‘I mean they stop at nothing, do they?’

‘No, they don’t,’ said Ella.

‘I came across an appalling case – just the other day.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Ella.

‘Young Girl . . .’ said Mr. Eccles, with a gesture, as though there was no need to say any more.

‘Really?’ said Ella, as though this
was
bad.

‘Well – whatever I
did
,’ said Mr. Eccles, drawing lines on the table-cloth with a fork, ‘I’d never be the
first
– like
that
young gentleman.’

The way in which Mr. Eccles said this rather suggested that he had spent half his career being the second, third, fourth, etc., all over the globe, and Ella saw that he was at pains to appear in her eyes as a man of the world. For all that, she was unable to believe any such thing of him. On the contrary there was a transparency and inexperience about him which belied it on all sides. In fact she was not sure that, if he but knew it, this was not the principal charm of his character for her – for an ounce of helplessness could win her where a ton of boastfulness might fail, and the more she saw of him the more helpless he seemed to be.

Their tea now came, and they got on to other topics. Before long he asked her what she had been doing with herself since he last saw her, and she told him she had been to see her mother.

‘Oh yes?’ said Mr. Eccles, rather as though he knew her well. ‘How’s she?’

‘Not too well, I’m afraid,’ said Ella.

‘Oh dear. How’s that?’

Ella did not feel able to enter into any explanation of the fiend in human shape, so said ‘Oh just too much to do, I suppose.’

‘Couldn’t we help her in some way?’ said Mr. Eccles, with uncanny enthusiasm.

‘Well, that’s kind of you to suggest it,’ she said, wondering what on earth he meant. ‘But I don’t see what one can do.’

‘Well, a little help of a certain sort’s worth a pound of pity, isn’t it,’ said Mr. Eccles, and set Ella puzzling again. Whatever was he up to now? What fresh reserves was he bringing up? Was she mistaken, or was he suggesting that he should aid her mother financially? There was something in his tone which scarcely left her in doubt that this was what he meant to convey. And what if things so turned out that he was in a position to do this? Supposing he married her and she and her mother lived happily ever after? This was all very bewildering, and had an air of being too good to be true.