I know,” he said; “if I could only help!”
“But you do; you do! Oh, if it were not for my lessons I don’t feel I could go on.”
“Sit down in the arm-chair and smell the violets and let me sing to you. It will do you just as much good as a lesson.”
Why weren’t all men like Mr. Peacock?
“I wrote a poem after the concert last night—just about what I felt. Of course, it wasn’t personal. May I send it to you?”
“Dear lady, I should be only too charmed!”
By the end of the afternoon he was quite tired and lay down on a sofa to rest his voice before dressing. The door of his room was open. He could hear Adrian and his wife talking in the dining-room.
“Do you know what that teapot reminds me of, Mummy? It reminds me of a little sitting-down kitten.”
“Does it, Mr. Absurdity?”
Reginald dozed. The telephone bell woke him.
“Ænone Fell is speaking. Mr. Peacock, I have just heard that you are singing at Lord Timbuck’s to-night. Will you dine with me, and we can go on together afterwards?” And the words of his reply dropped like flowers down the telephone.
“Dear lady, I should be only too charmed.”
What a triumphant evening! The little dinner tête-à-tête with Ænone Fell, the drive to Lord Timbuck’s in her white motor-car, when she thanked him again for the unforgettable joy. Triumph upon triumph! And Lord Timbuck’s champagne simply flowed.
“Have some more champagne, Peacock,” said Lord Timbuck. Peacock, you notice—not Mr. Peacock—but Peacock, as if he were one of them. And wasn’t he? He was an artist. He could sway them all. And wasn’t he teaching them all to escape from life? How he sang! And as he sang, as in a dream he saw their feathers and their flowers and their fans, offered to him, laid before him, like a huge bouquet.
“Have another glass of wine, Peacock.”
“I could have any one I liked by lifting a finger,” thought Peacock, positively staggering home.
But as he let himself into the dark flat his marvellous sense of elation began to ebb away. He turned up the light in the bedroom. His wife lay asleep, squeezed over to her side of the bed. He remembered suddenly how she had said when he had told her he was going out to dinner: “You might have let me know before!” And how he had answered: “Can’t you possibly speak to me without offending against even good manners?” It was incredible, he thought, that she cared so little for him—incredible that she wasn’t interested in the slightest in his triumphs and his artistic career. When so many women in her place would have given their eyes. . . . Yes, he knew it. . . . Why not acknowledge it? . . . And there she lay, an enemy, even in her sleep. . . . Must it ever be thus? he thought, the champagne still working. Ah, if we only were friends, how much I could tell her now! About this evening; even about Timbuck’s manner to me, and all that they said to me and so on and so on. If only I felt that she was here to come back to—that I could confide in her—and so on and so on.
In his emotion he pulled off his evening boot and simply hurled it in the corner. The noise woke his wife with a terrible start. She sat up, pushing back her hair. And he suddenly decided to have one more try to treat her as a friend, to tell her everything, to win her. Down he sat on the side of the bed, and seized one of her hands. But of all those splendid things he had to say, not one could he utter. For some fiendish reason, the only words he could get out were: “Dear lady, I should be so charmed—so charmed!”
SUN AND MOON
IN the afternoon the chairs came, a whole big cart full of little gold ones with their legs in the air. And then the flowers came. When you stared down from the balcony at the people carrying them the flower pots looked like funny awfully nice hats nodding up the path.
Moon thought they were hats. She said: “Look. There’s a man wearing a palm on his head.” But she never knew the difference between real things and not real ones.
There was nobody to look after Sun and Moon. Nurse was helping Annie alter Mother’s dress which was much-too-long-and-tight-under-the-arms and Mother was running all over the house and telephoning Father to be sure not to forget things. She only had time to say: “Out of my way, children!”
They kept out of her way—at any rate Sun did. He did so hate being sent stumping back to the nursery. It didn’t matter about Moon. If she got tangled in people’s legs they only threw her up and shook her till she squeaked. But Sun was too heavy for that. He was so heavy that the fat man who came to dinner on Sundays used to say: “Now, young man, let’s try to lift you.” And then he’d put his thumbs under Sun’s arms and groan and try and give it up at last saying: “He’s a perfect little ton of bricks!”
Nearly all the furniture was taken out of the dining-room. The big piano was put in a corner and then there came a row of flower pots and then there came the goldy chairs. That was for the concert. When Sun looked in a white faced man sat at the piano—not playing, but banging at it and then looking inside. He had a bag of tools on the piano and he had stuck his hat on a statue against the wall. Sometimes he just started to play and then he jumped up again and looked inside. Sun hoped he wasn’t the concert.
But of course the place to be in was the kitchen. There was a man helping in a cap like a blancmange, and their real cook, Minnie, was all red in the face and laughing. Not cross at all. She gave them each an almond finger and lifted them up on to the flour bin so that they could watch the wonderful things she and the man were making for supper. Cook brought in the things and he put them on dishes and trimmed them. Whole fishes, with their heads and eyes and tails still on, he sprinkled with red and green and yellow bits; he made squiggles all over the jellies, he stuck a collar on a ham and put a very thin sort of a fork in it; he dotted almonds and tiny round biscuits on the creams. And more and more things coming.
“Ah, but you haven’t seen the ice pudding,” said Cook. “Come along.” Why was she being so nice, thought Sun as she gave them each a hand. And they looked into the refrigerator.
Oh! Oh! Oh! It was a little house. It was a little pink house with white snow on the roof and green windows and a brown door and stuck in the door there was a nut for a handle.
When Sun saw the nut he felt quite tired and had to lean against Cook.
“Let me touch it. Just let me put my finger on the roof,” said Moon, dancing. She always wanted to touch all the food. Sun didn’t.
“Now, my girl, look sharp with the table,” said Cook as the housemaid came in.
“It’s a picture, Min,” said Nellie. “Come along and have a look.” So they all went into the dining-room. Sun and Moon were almost frightened. They wouldn’t go up to the table at first; they just stood at the door and made eyes at it.
It wasn’t real night yet but the blinds were down in the dining-room and the lights turned on—and all the lights were red roses. Red ribbons and bunches of roses tied up the table at the corners. In the middle was a lake with rose petals floating on it.
“That’s where the ice pudding
