XV In the Cage | ||
15. XV
She never knew afterwards quite what she had done to settle it, and at the time she only knew that they presently moved, with vagueness, yet with continuity, away from the picture of the lighted vestibule and the quiet stairs and well up the street together. This also must have been in the absence of a definite permission, of anything vulgarly articulate, for that matter, on the part of either; and it was to be, later on, a thing of remembrance and reflexion for her that the limit of what just here for a longish minute passed between them was his taking in her thoroughly successful deprecation, though conveyed without pride or sound or touch, of the idea that she might be, out of the cage, the very shop- girl at large that she hugged the theory she wasn't. Yes, it was strange, she afterwards thought, that so much could have come and gone and yet not
Strolling together slowly in their summer twilight and their empty corner of Mayfair, they found themselves emerge at last opposite to one of the smaller gates of the Park; upon which, without any particular word about it--they were talking so of other things--they crossed the street and went in and sat down on a bench. She had gathered by this time one magnificent hope about him--the hope he would say nothing vulgar. She knew thoroughly what she meant by that; she meant something quite apart from any matter of his being "false." Their bench was not far within; it was near the Park Lane paling and the patchy lamplight and the rumbling cabs and 'buses. A strange emotion had come to her, and she felt indeed excitement within excitement; above all a conscious joy in testing him with chances he didn't take. She had an intense desire he should know the type she really conformed to without her doing anything so low as tell him, and he had surely begun to know it from the moment he didn't seize the
"You were going home?"
"Yes, and I was already rather late. I was going to my supper."
"You haven't had it?"
"No indeed!"
"Then you haven't eaten--?"
He looked of a sudden so extravagantly concerned that she laughed out. "All day? Yes, we do feed once. But that was long ago. So I must presently say good-bye."
"Oh deary me!" he exclaimed with an intonation so droll and yet a touch so light and a distress so marked--a confession of helplessness for such a case, in short, so unrelieved--that she at once felt sure she had made the great difference plain. He looked at her with the kindest eyes and still without saying what she had known he wouldn't. She had known he wouldn't say "Then sup with me!" but the proof of it made her feel as if she had feasted.
"I'm not a bit hungry," she went on.
"Ah you must be, awfully!" he made answer, but settling himself on the bench as if, after all, that needn't interfere with his spending his evening. "I've always quite wanted the chance to thank you for the trouble you so often take for me."
"Yes, I know," she replied; uttering the words with a sense of the situation far deeper than any pretence of not fitting his allusion. She immediately felt him surprised and even a little puzzled at her frank assent; but for herself, the trouble
"The one time you've passed my place?"
"Yes; you can fancy I haven't many minutes to waste. There was a place to-night I had to stop at."
"I see, I see--" he knew already so much about her work. "It must be an awful grind--for a lady."
"It is, but I don't think I groan over it any more than my companions--and you've seen they're not ladies!" She mildly jested, but with an intention. "One gets used to things, and there are employments I should have hated much more." She had the finest
"If you had had another employment," he remarked after a moment, "we might never have become acquainted."
"It's highly probable--and certainly not in the same way." Then, still with her heap of gold in her lap and something of the pride of it in her manner of holding her head, she continued not to move--she only smiled at him. The evening had thickened now; the scattered lamps were red; the Park, all before them, was full of obscure and ambiguous life; there were other couples on other benches whom it was impossible not to see, yet at whom it was impossible to look. "But I've walked so much out of my way with you only just to show you that--that"--with this she paused; it was not after all so easy to express--"that anything you may have thought is perfectly true."
"Oh I've thought a tremendous lot!" her companion laughed. "Do you mind my smoking?"
"Why should I? You always smoke there."
"At your place? Oh yes, but here it's different."
"No," she said as he lighted a cigarette, "that's just what it isn't. It's quite the same."
"Well, then, that's because 'there' it's so wonderful!"
"Then you're conscious of how wonderful it is?" she returned.
He jerked his handsome head in literal protest at a doubt. "Why that's exactly what I mean by my gratitude for all your trouble. It has been just as if you took a particular interest." She only looked at him by way of answer in such sudden headlong embarrassment, as she was quite aware, that while she remained silent he showed himself checked by her expression. "You have--haven't you?--taken a particular interest?"
"Oh a particular interest!" she quavered
XV In the Cage | ||