course there was one question that had been at the back of my mind all this time. I hated it.
“Have you any money?”
“Yes, I have twenty pounds—here,” and she put her hand on her breast. I bowed. It was great deal more than I had expected.
“And what are your plans?”
Yes, I know. My question was the most clumsy, the most idiotic one I could have put. She had been so tame, so confiding, letting me, at any rate spiritually speaking, hold her tiny quivering body in one hand and stroke her furry head—and now, I’d thrown her away. Oh, I could have kicked myself.
She stood up. “I have no plans. But—it’s very late. You must go now, please.”
How could I get her back? I wanted her back. I swear I was not acting then.
“Do feel that I am your friend,” I cried. “You will let me come to-morrow, early? You will let me look after you a little—take care of you a little? You’ll use me just as you think fit?”
I succeeded. She came out of her hole . . . timid . . . but she came out.
“Yes, you’re very kind. Yes. Do come to-morrow. I shall be glad. It makes things rather difficult because—” and again I clasped her boyish hand—“je ne parle pas français.”
Not until I was half-way down the boulevard did it come over me—the full force of it.
Why, they were suffering . . . those two . . . really suffering. I have seen two people suffer as I don’t suppose I ever shall again. . . .
Of course you know what to expect. You anticipate, fully, what I am going to write. It wouldn’t be me, otherwise.
I never went near the place again.
Yes, I still owe that considerable amount for lunches and dinners, but that’s beside the mark. It’s vulgar to mention it in the same breath with the fact that I never saw Mouse again.
Naturally, I intended to. Started out—got to the door—wrote and tore up letters—did all those things. But I simply could not make the final effort.
Even now I don’t fully understand why. Of course I knew that I couldn’t have kept it up. That had a great deal to do with it. But you would have thought, putting it at its lowest, curiosity couldn’t have kept my fox-terrier nose away . . .
Je ne parle pas français. That was her swan song for me.
But how she makes me break my rule. Oh, you’ve seen for yourself, but I could give you countless examples.
. . . Evenings, when I sit in some gloomy café, and an automatic piano starts playing a “mouse” tune (there are dozens of tunes that evoke just her) I begin to dream things like . . .
A little house on the edge of the sea, somewhere far, far away. A girl outside in a frock rather like Red Indian women wear, hailing a light, barefoot boy who runs up from the beach.
“What have you got?”
“A fish.” I smile and give it to her.
. . . The same girl, the same boy, different costumes—sitting at an open window, eating fruit and leaning out and laughing.
“All the wild strawberries are for you, Mouse. I won’t touch one.”
. . . A wet night. They are going home together under an umbrella. They stop on the door to press their wet cheeks together.
And so on and so on until some dirty old gallant comes up to my table and sits opposite and begins to grimace and yap. Until I hear myself saying: “But I’ve got the little girl for you, mon vieux. So little . . . so tiny.” I kiss the tips of my fingers and lay them upon my heart. “I give you my word of honour as a gentleman, a writer, serious, young, and extremely interested in modern English literature.”
I must go. I must go. I reach down my coat and hat. Madame knows me. “You haven’t dined yet?” she smiles.
“No, not yet, Madame.”
THE WIND BLOWS
SUDDENLY—dreadfully—she wakes up. What has happened? Something dreadful has happened. No—nothing has happened. It is only the wind shaking the house, rattling the windows, banging a piece of iron on the roof and making her bed tremble. Leaves flutter past the window, up and away; down in the avenue a whole newspaper wags in the air like a lost kite and falls, spiked on a pine tree. It is cold. Summer is over—it is autumn—everything is ugly. The carts rattle by, swinging from side to side; two Chinamen lollop along under their wooden yokes with the straining vegetable baskets—their pigtails and blue blouses fly out in the wind. A white dog on three legs yelps past the gate. It is all over! What is? Oh, everything! And she begins to plait her hair with shaking fingers, not daring to look in the glass. Mother is talking to grandmother in the hall.
“A perfect idiot! Imagine leaving anything out on the line in weather like this. . . . Now my best little Teneriffe-work teacloth is simply in ribbons. What is that extraordinary smell? It’s the porridge burning. Oh, heavens—this wind!”
She has a music lesson at ten o’clock. At the thought the minor movement of the Beethoven begins to play in her head, the trills long and terrible like little rolling drums. . . . Marie Swainson runs into the garden next door to pick the “chrysanths” before they are ruined. Her skirt flies up above her waist; she tries to beat it down, to tuck it between her legs while she stoops, but it is no use—up it flies. All the trees and bushes beat about her. She picks as quickly as she can but she is quite distracted. She doesn’t mind what she does—she pulls the plants up by the roots and bends and twists them, stamping her foot and swearing.
“For heaven’s sake keep the front door shut! Go round to the back,” shouts someone. And then she hears Bogey:
“Mother, you’re wanted on the telephone. Telephone, Mother. It’s the butcher.”
How hideous life is—revolting, simply revolting. . . . And now her hat-elastic’s snapped. Of course it would. She’ll wear her old tam and slip out the back way. But Mother has seen.
“Matilda. Matilda. Come back im-me-diately! What on earth have you got on your head? It looks like a tea cosy. And why have you got that mane of hair on your forehead.”
“I can’t come back. Mother. I’ll be late for my lesson.”
“Come back immediately!”
She won’t. She won’t. She hates Mother. “Go to hell,” she shouts, running down the road.
In waves, in clouds, in big round whirls the dust comes stinging, and with it little bits of straw and chaff and manure. There is a loud roaring sound from the trees in the gardens, and standing at the bottom of the road outside Mr. Bullen’s gate she can hear the sea sob: “Ah! . . . Ah! . . . Ah-h!” But Mr. Bullen’s drawing-room is as quiet as a cave. The windows are closed, the blinds half pulled, and she is not late. The-girl-before-her has just started playing MacDowell’s
