Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (58 page)

‘And you wouldn’t let any Pride or anything stand in your way, would you?’ said Mr. Eccles.

There was not the slightest doubt of what he meant now, and she was covered with confusion.

‘Well, I don’t know . . .’ she said, and there was a pause.

‘Besides,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘I might have the Right, mightn’t I?’

The Right? Was this a Proposal? If it was not its equivalent she would like to know what it was! Had the absurd creature already taken it for granted generally, as with the flowers particularly, that she understood his intentions? A Proposal after two short meetings! Unless, of course, it was a Suggestion. He might not have matrimony in his mind, in which case it would be a Suggestion. But she had an extraordinary feeling that it was not a Suggestion.

‘How do you mean?’ she said, looking at the table-cloth.

‘Come now – you know what I mean,’ said Mr. Eccles, looking at her quizzically.

‘No, I don’t. Honestly.’

‘Ah. Come now. You mustn’t pretend you don’t understand that.’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Ella, having to look at him and smile utter innocence and opaqueness, ‘honestly Mr. Eccles.’

‘Mr. Eccles?’ said Mr. Eccles.

But to this there was no sort of reply whatever, and Ella looked giddily at the tablecloth.

‘Eh?’ said Mr. Eccles, and there was no reply to this either.

‘Suppose we try Ernest?’ said Mr. Eccles.

Ernest! She would never bring herself to it! She had completely overlooked this contingency. She had visualized herself in almost every conceivable relationship with Mr. Eccles, but never the preposterous one in which she familiarly called him or thought of him as ‘Ernest.’ He would never be ‘Ernest’ to her. He was too old! However she might grow to like him, grow to love him, even, he was established eternally in her mind as she first knew him, as Mr. Eccles with his new hat.

‘What?’ said Mr. Eccles.

What was she to say? Did he mean that she had got to say ‘Ernest’ straight off? ‘All right, Ernest’ or something like that? She shuddered, and was unable to utter anything.

‘You’ll have to sooner or later, you know,’ said Mr. Eccles.

‘Yes,’ said Ella. ‘I suppose I will.’

And from the coy, soft, confused way in which she was forced to say this, she dared not guess what worlds of maidenly consent Mr. Eccles was reading into her general attitude towards him. That was his way with her. He was always forcing her into positions like this where she had either to snub him or behave coyly; and since she always chose the latter she was always giving him the impression that she was tremulously pleased with, if not definitely seeking out, his advances. In fact as far as her own behaviour went he had every right to conclude that she had been Encouraging him from the word go, and that she was his for the asking. But was
that not what she wanted him to think? For had she not as good as decided that she would marry him if he would have her? She would have to think it all out, but she now believed she had as good as decided that.

‘And would you have any objections,’ said Mr. Eccles, ‘if I returned the compliment?’

‘No,’ said Ella,’ I should like you to.’

‘Ah well, now the air’s clearer, isn’t it,’ said Mr. Eccles, and at this point, as though he had got something off his chest, deliberately changed the atmosphere by switching off on to indifferent topics. This rather disappointed Ella, as she would have given a great deal to have had him in some measure amplify his astounding allusion to a Right, which now seemed scarcely credible, and which she thought she had possibly misheard or misunderstood. But she could not possibly incur the suspicion of Throwing herself at him by making any move to bring the subject up again, and very soon she looked at the clock and saw that it was nearing the time for her to go.

‘This tiresome work of yours – we’ll have to do something about it soon,’ was the only other significant or thought-provoking remark he made at this meeting, which petered out rather miserably at the end. For it was still pelting when they got outside, and Mr. Eccles insisted that he should see her home. But Ella insisted that he should not, and Mr. Eccles compromised by seeing her to her bus – which was the other side of Piccadilly Circus. But this made him rather irritable, because he had lost the credit of taking her home, and soon discovered that he simply wanted to get out of the rain. Also he did not like sharing his umbrella very much. Neither did Ella, because he kept on bringing one of the spokes down on her head. This with a sort of regular springy poke every six paces or so – a maddening penalty habitually inflicted by well-meaning umbrella-sharers, and quite impossible to call attention to. And then they had to wait hours for the bus, which Ella thought stopped further up, but which Mr. Eccles was certain stopped down here all right – but Ella was right (which didn’t make her too popular) and they had to charge up the pavement together, Mr. Eccles frantically explaining
that he would either write or look in in the next two days, and Ella breathlessly welcoming the suggestion but not really concentrating. Then some perfectly meaningless waving, and sign-making through the window, and wondering why the bus didn’t start, etc., – so that by the time it was all through, and Ella was being carried away, instead of savouring the brightening dawn of affection, they might have just had a quarrel with each other.

I
T WAS NEXT
Thursday evening, in the darkness of a secluded bench in Regent’s Park, that Mr. Eccles, with the restrained expenditure of little more than half a dozen Whats, finally planted his standard on the subdued heights of his painful manoeuvrings and self-consciousness, and kissed her. From that moment onward Mr. Eccles was no longer, and was never again, the Mr. Eccles he had been, nor was Ella the Ella. To each other they were both new characters, with new confessions and new reserves, and the contest was removed to a different sort of arena altogether.

Little had occurred up to this moment. He had not seen her on the Saturday or the Sunday, but on Monday she had had tea with him, and again on Tuesday. But on these occasions he had uttered practically nothing of an intimate or paralysing nature. They had merely exchanged a few further confidences. This afternoon he had taken her to the pictures at Madame Tussaud’s in the Marylebone Road, and afterwards to tea at an A.B.C. in Baker Street. He had then suggested a walk in Regent’s Park in the dark. They had no sooner embarked on this than he had mentioned that it was warm enough to sit down, really, and she became fearfully aware that some sort of walk like this had been planned, possibly days ahead, and that she was in for it. His conversation had grown weaker and more pre-occupied every minute as he steered her (without
seeming to steer her) in a definite direction of his own in the darkness, until at last, under some trees, and far away from people, he had said ‘Well, suppose we do sit down?’ and ‘What about here?’ and she had said ‘Right you are – let’s,’ feeling like someone just about to have a tooth drawn and fiercely bracing herself to go through with it.

Having kissed her once, he kissed her again, and got his arm well round her for a bout of indefinite length.

‘You mustn’t,’ said Ella.

‘What?’ said Mr. Eccles, and kissed her again, to which Ella returned ‘You mustn’t,’ to which Mr. Eccles returned ‘What?’ and kissed her again.

‘No, you really mustn’t,’ tried Ella, but the indomitable query came back at her, and the only thing she could do was to wriggle and turn her head the other way.

‘Why mustn’t I?’ said Mr. Eccles.

‘You don’t
want
to,’ said Ella, lamely. But lame as it was there was a method and intention behind what she said in the darkness. Profoundly as she had dreaded it, she had known it would have to come to this sooner or later, and she had nerved herself to see it through. But one thing she had decided. She was not going through with it unless she got something out of it in return – unless she forced him to show something of his hand at last, and give her some impression of what he was up to generally. Things had been going on long enough now, and if she could help it she was not going to remain the patient beast of burden for his gradually heaped innuendoes any more. Hence her apparently lame ‘You don’t
want
to,’ which gave him an opportunity to explain that he did want to, to what extent he wanted to, and possibly, what he was prepared to sacrifice in wanting to. In other words, did he want to marry her?

But Mr. Eccles was not so obliging. To begin with, he naturally said ‘What?’ straight off. And then, when she had repeated herself he merely said ‘But
why
don’t I want to?’

And as this, if the words were to be taken on their surface value, bafflingly implied that he didn’t really want to, and that was asking her the reason why, they were no further ahead.

‘
I
don’t know why you don’t want to,’ said Ella, completely out of her depths, and turning her head away as he resumed the attack.

‘But I do want to,’ said Mr. Eccles.

Well, that was something – though indeed not very useful, it being self-evident that he wanted to, since he was doing it.

‘But
why
do you want to,’ said Ella, in a gentle tone, but inwardly determined to stick to her guns till she had made him surrender his secrets.

‘Because I want to,’ said Mr. Eccles, and contrived to kiss her again.

‘But
why
?’ said Ella, grimly holding on.

‘Well – because –’

‘Because what?’ said Ella, still in the same soft, coaxing tone, but seeing to it that she took him up quickly on this vital point, lest he should wander away into his habitual vagueness and mystery.

‘Because I love you,’ said Mr. Eccles, but as she had hardly given him any opportunity to say anything else the technical climax and victory was a hollow one.

However, they were getting ahead slowly.

‘You don’t,’ said Ella.

‘But I do! I do!’ said Mr. Eccles, and held her closer.

‘But how could you?’ said Ella, almost carried away by his enthusiasm, and finding it harder every moment to abide by her resolution to keep him on the track.

‘I don’t know,’ said Mr. Eccles, unintentionally being rather rude. ‘But I do.’

‘I don’t see how you could.’

‘But I do. I do,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘Don’t you love me? Couldn’t you love me?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Ella. ‘I don’t know you well enough, do I?’

‘But what does that matter – if we love each other?’

There he went again – blurring the issue with conventional phrases which still told her absolutely nothing. Again she was tempted to succumb to the tremulous yet loose and
meaningless atmosphere with which he sought to wrap her, but she stuck fast.

‘Yes – but what – ?’ she said, and hesitated, not knowing how she could lead into cold facts without appearing calculating and brazen. ‘But what –’

‘What
what
?’ said Mr. Eccles, achieving the startling feat of bringing two whats down with one stone in the fervour of his amorous catapulting.

‘What would
Happen
?’ said Ella, painfully.

‘What would happen where?’ said Mr. Eccles, becoming logical at an awkward moment.

‘What would happen in
general
?’ tried Ella.

‘What do you mean?’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘I love you.’

What had the fact that he loved her got to do with what she was asking? It was no good – she would never get this man out into the open until she had cast off every rag of her pride and reserve. But she would
not
give in. She boldly contrived a fresh opening from which he might be induced to emerge.

‘I’m not in your Class,’ she said, ‘to begin with.’

‘But what does that matter?’ said Mr. Eccles.

Ella was a little damped by his lightning (and not immaculately courteous) concurrence with the main substance of her humbly propounded objection, but she knew that he was not clever at expressing himself and was perfectly willing to be put in her place so long as they made some headway.

‘But it
does
matter,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t want to –’

‘Wouldn’t want to what?’

‘Well, it just wouldn’t work.’

‘What wouldn’t?’

‘Well –
it
wouldn’t.’

‘What wouldn’t?’

‘Well, you wouldn’t want me
Seriously
,’ said Ella. ‘Would you?’

‘But I do want you. I do want you. I love you. I can’t do without you. I want to kiss you. Let me kiss you,’ said Mr. Eccles, and Ella, letting him kiss her, was taken aback by her first real premonition of the power that was in her hands.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But it isn’t Practicable.’

‘Why isn’t it – if I love you?’

‘Well, what would all your People say, for instance?’

‘What do they matter? I know what I want. I’ve thought it all out.’

‘Have you?’ said Ella, believing they were at last coming to something. ‘What do you want, then?’

‘I want you,’ said this Houdini of the world of conversational commitments, and Ella had to take another breath, as it were, and start again.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But what would we
Be?
’

‘How do you mean – what would we be?’

‘What would we be to each other?’

‘We’d love each other.’

‘Yes – but what would other people think?’

‘What does it matter what they think?’

‘I mean, it’s not as though we’d be Engaged, or anything like that,’ said Ella, feeling dreadfully humiliated at being forced to say any such thing, and waiting breathlessly to see how he would get out of it.

‘Why couldn’t we be Engaged?’

‘But that’s absurd,’ said Ella. ‘If you’re Engaged it means you’re going to be Married some time, or something like that.’ She had not quite the temerity to end the sentence at Married, where the actual sense ended, but had, in her wretched dilemma, to try and qualify it and make it less crude by the addition of ‘some time’ and ‘something like that.’

‘Well – what if we were married,’ said Mr. Eccles, in a tense and perhaps slightly defiant voice, and then minutely lessened the shock for a stunned Ella by adding ‘some time.’