第76章

When she got near the park-gate,she heard the click of the latch.

He was there,then,in the darkness of the wood,and had seen her!

'You are good and early,'he said out of the dark.'Was everything all right?'

'Perfectly easy.'

He shut the gate quietly after her,and made a spot of light on the dark ground,showing the pallid flowers still standing there open in the night.They went on apart,in silence.

'Are you sure you didn't hurt yourself this morning with that chair?'

she asked.

'No,no!'

'When you had that pneumonia,what did it do to you?'

'Oh nothing!it left my heart not so strong and the lungs not so elastic.

But it always does that.'

'And you ought not to make violent physical efforts?'

'Not often.'

She plodded on in an angry silence.

'Did you hate Clifford?'she said at last.

'Hate him,no!I've met too many like him to upset myself hating him.

I know beforehand I don't care for his sort,and I let it go at that.'

'What is his sort?'

'Nay,you know better than I do.The sort of youngish gentleman a bit like a lady,and no balls.'

'What balls?'

'Balls!A man's balls!'

She pondered this.

'But is it a question of that?'she said,a little annoyed.

'You say a man's got no brain,when he's a fool:and no heart,when he's mean;and no stomach when he's a funker.And when he's got none of that spunky wild bit of a man in him,you say he's got no balls.When he's a sort of tame.'

She pondered this.

'And is Clifford tame?'she asked.

'Tame,and nasty with it:like most such fellows,when you come up against 'em.'

'And do you think you're not tame?'

'Maybe not quite!'

At length she saw in the distance a yellow light.

She stood still.

'There is a light!'she said.

'I always leave a light in the house,'he said.

She went on again at his side,but not touching him,wondering why she was going with him at all.

He unlocked,and they went in,he bolting the door behind them.As if it were a prison,she thought!The kettle was singing by the red fire,there were cups on the table.

She sat in the wooden arm-chair by the fire.It was warm after the chill outside.

'I'll take off my shoes,they are wet,'she said.

She sat with her stockinged feet on the bright steel fender.He went to the pantry,bringing food:bread and butter and pressed tongue.She was warm:she took off her coat.He hung it on the door.

'Shall you have cocoa or tea or coffee to drink?'he asked.

'I don't think I want anything,'she said,looking at the table.'But you eat.'

'Nay,I don't care about it.I'll just feed the dog.'

He tramped with a quiet inevitability over the brick floor,putting food for the dog in a brown bowl.The spaniel looked up at him anxiously.

'Ay,this is thy supper,tha nedna look as if tha wouldna get it!'he said.

He set the bowl on the stairfoot mat,and sat himself on a chair by the wall,to take off his leggings and boots.The dog instead of eating,came to him again,and sat looking up at him,troubled.

He slowly unbuckled his leggings.The dog edged a little nearer.

'What's amiss wi'thee then?Art upset because there's somebody else here?Tha'rt a female,tha art!Go an'eat thy supper.'

He put his hand on her head,and the bitch leaned her head sideways against him.He slowly,softly pulled the long silky ear.

'There!'he said.'There!Go an'eat thy supper!Go!'

He tilted his chair towards the pot on the mat,and the dog meekly went,and fell to eating.

'Do you like dogs?'Connie asked him.

'No,not really.They're too tame and clinging.'

He had taken off his leggings and was unlacing his heavy boots.Connie had turned from the fire.How bare the little room was!Yet over his head on the wall hung a hideous enlarged photograph of a young married couple,apparently him and a bold-faced young woman,no doubt his wife.

'Is that you?'Connie asked him.

He twisted and looked at the enlargement above his head.

'Ay!Taken just afore we was married,when I was twenty-one.'He looked at it impassively.

'Do you like it?'Connie asked him.

'Like it?No!I never liked the thing.But she fixed it all up to have it done,like.'

He returned to pulling off his boots.

'If you don't like it,why do you keep it hanging there?Perhaps your wife would like to have it,'she said.

He looked up at her with a sudden grin.

'She carted off iverything as was worth taking from th''ouse,'he said.

'But she left that !'

'Then why do you keep it?for sentimental reasons?'

'Nay,I niver look at it.I hardly knowed it wor theer.It's bin theer sin'we come to this place.'

'Why don't you burn it?'she said.

He twisted round again and looked at the enlarged photograph.It was framed in a brown-and-gilt frame,hideous.It showed a clean-shaven,alert,very young-looking man in a rather high collar,and a somewhat plump,bold young woman with hair fluffed out and crimped,and wearing a dark satin blouse.

'It wouldn't be a bad idea,would it?'he said.

He had pulled off his boots,and put on a pair of slippers.He stood up on the chair,and lifted down the photograph.It left a big pale place on the greenish wall-paper.

'No use dusting it now,'he said,setting the thing against the wall.

He went to the scullery,and returned with hammer and pincers.Sitting where he had sat before,he started to tear off the back-paper from the big frame,and to pull out the sprigs that held the backboard in position,working with the immediate quiet absorption that was characteristic of him.

He soon had the nails out:then he pulled out the backboards,then the enlargement itself,in its solid white mount.He looked at the photograph with amusement.

'Shows me for what I was,a young curate,and her for what she was,a bully,'he said.'The prig and the bully!'

'Let me look!'said Connie.

He did look indeed very clean-shaven and very clean altogether,one of the clean young men of twenty years ago.But even in the photograph his eyes were alert and dauntless.And the woman was not altogether a bully,though her jowl was heavy.There was a touch of appeal in her.

'One never should keep these things,'said Connie.'That one shouldn't!

One should never have them made!'