The Misses Mallett (The Bridge Dividing) Part 34

The large policeman had strolled back. He saw the tall young man standing over the bag and thought it would be well to keep an eye on him, but Charles did not notice the policeman. His whole attention was for Henrietta's reappearance. She would come back because she had said she would, but if she did not come alone there would be trouble. He did not, however, expect to see Francis Sales: he gathered that Sales had failed her, and he was sorry. He would have beaten him, somehow; he would have conquered for the first time in his life, and now he felt that his task was going to be too easy. He wished he could have sweated and panted in the doing of it; and when Henrietta returned alone, walking with an angry swiftness, he felt a genuine regret.

'Come along, Charles,' she said briskly. 'Let us have dinner.'

He could see the brightness of her eyes, looking past him; her lips had a fixed smile and he wished she would cry again. 'She is crying inside,' he told himself. He moved forward beside her vaguely. The tenderness of his love for her was like a powerful, warm wave, sweeping over him and making him helpless for the time. He could do nothing against it, he had to be carried with it, but suddenly it receded, leaving him high and dry and unromantically in contact with a lamp-post. His hat had fallen off.

'What are you doing?' Henrietta asked irritably.

He rubbed his head. 'b.u.mped it. I was thinking about you.'

'What were you thinking?' she asked defiantly.

'Oh, well--' he said.

She laughed. 'Charles, you're hopeless.'

'No, I'm not.' He stooped for his hat and picked it up. 'Not,' he repeated strongly. 'Here's the place.' They had turned into a busy street. 'I hope there won't be a band.'

'I hope there will be. I want noises, hideous noises.'

'You're going to get them,' he sighed as he pushed open the swing-door and received in his ears the fierce banging, braying and shrieking of various instruments played in a frenzy by a group of musicians confined, as if for the public safety, in a small gallery at the end of the room. Large and enc.u.mbered by the bag, he stood obstructing the waiters in the pa.s.sage between the tables.

'They're like wild beasts in a cage,' he said in the loud voice of his anger. 'Can you stand it?'

'Oh, yes--yes. Let us sit here, in this corner.' He was ridiculous, she thought, yet to-night, unconscious of any absurdity himself, he had a dignity; he was not so ugly as she had thought; his somewhat protruding eyes had less vacancy, and though his tie was crooked, she was not ashamed of him. Nevertheless, she said as he sat down, 'Charles, I'm going to London to-night. Get a time-table.'

'Soup first,' he said.

'I must go to-night. I can't go back to Radstowe.'

'Did you,' he asked unexpectedly, 'leave a note on your dressing-table?'

'What?' She frowned. 'No, of course not.'

'Oh, well, you can go back. We're going to a concert together. It's quite easy. I told you you were different from everybody else.' And then, remembering Rose's words, he leaned across the table towards her. 'The most beautiful and the best,' he said severely.

'Me?'

'Yes. Here's the soup.'

She drank it, looking at him between the spoonfuls. This was the man who had talked to her by the Monks' Pool. Here was the same detachment he had shown then, and though the act of taking soup was not poetical, though the band blared and the place shone with many lights, she was taken back to that night among the trees, with the water lying darkly at her feet, keeping its own secrets; with the ducks quacking sleepily and unseen, and the water rats diving with a silken splash.

She seemed to be recovering something she had lost because she had disregarded it, something she wanted, not for use but for the sake of possessing and sometimes looking at it.

Sternly she tried not to think of Francis Sales, who had deserted her.

She might have known he would desert her. He had looked at Aunt Rose and she had seen him weaken, yet he had promised. He was that kind of man: he could not say no to her face, but he left her in this city, all alone.

Her lips trembled; she steadied them with difficulty. She was determined not to honour him with so much as a memory or a regret, but there came forbidden recollections of the dance, of the terrace, and of her hands in his. She closed her eyes and a tremor, delicious, horrible, ran through her body. She felt the strength of those brown, muscular hands and she was a.s.sailed by the odour of wind and tobacco that clung to him. He had never said anything worth remembering, but there had been danger and excitement in his presence. There was neither in the neighbourhood of Charles, yet she could not forget his words.

She opened her eyes. 'What was it you said just now?'

'You're the best and most beautiful woman in the world. Your fish is getting cold.'

She ate it without appet.i.te or distaste. 'But, Charles--'

'I know.'

'What?'

'Everything,' he said.

'How?'

He tapped himself, 'Here.'

'I expect you've got it all wrong.'

'Yesterday, perhaps, but not to-day. To-day I know everything.'

'How does it feel?'

'Wonderful,' he replied. They laughed together but, as though with that laughter the door to emotion had been opened, he saw tears start into her eyes. 'No,' he begged, 'there's no need to cry.'

She laughed again. 'I've got to cry some time.'

'When we're going home, then. We're going home in a car.'

'Are we?' she said, pleased as a child. 'But what about London, Charles? I have to go.'

'Not to-night. Here's some chicken.'

'I can't go back.'

'But you haven't left a note.'

'No.'

'Then it's easy. You and I have just been to a concert. You promised me that long ago.'

She uttered no more protests. She ate and drank obediently, glad to be cared for, and when the meal was over she told him gratefully, 'You have been good. You never said another word about the band and it has made even my head ache.'

'And I forgot about it!' He stared at her in amazement. 'I forgot about it! I didn't hear it! Good heavens! But come away quickly before I begin remembering.'

That they might be able to tell the truth, they went to the concert and, standing at the back of the hall stayed there for a little while.

Even for Charles, the music was only a covering for his thoughts.

Henrietta, strangely gentle, was beside him, but he dwelt less on that than on the greater marvel of the new power he felt within himself.

She might laugh at him, she might mock him in the future, but she could not daunt him, and though she might never love him, he had done her service. No one could take that from him. He turned his head and looked down at her, to find her looking up at him, a little puzzled but entirely friendly.

'Oh, Henrietta!' he whispered loudly, transgressing his own law of silence and evoking an indignant hiss from an enthusiastic neighbour.