Part 34 (2/2)
”If you mean Uncle and Aunt,” she said, ”they wouldn't think of intrudin'. We settled that, me and Uncle. I'd be as happy as the day is long.”
”You're _not_? And the day is very long, is it?”
He kissed her, first on her mouth and then on the lobe of the ear that was next to him.
”Kissin' 's all very well,” said Rose. ”You never kissed me at Hampstead, and you don't know how happy I was there. Doin' things for you.”
”I don't want things done for me.”
”No. I wish you did.”
”And, Rose, I don't want to be bothered with a house; to be tied to a house; to have anything to do with a house.”
”Would it worry you?”
”Abominably. And think of the horrors of moving!”
”I'd move you,” said Rose.
”I couldn't. Look here. It would kill that book. I must have peace. This is a beastly hole, I know, but there's peace in it. You don't know what that d.a.m.ned book _is_.”
She gave up the idea of a house; and seven months after her marriage, she fell into a melancholy.
Sometimes, now, on a fine afternoon, she would go out into the streets and look listlessly through shop-windows at hats and gowns and all the pretty things she would have thought it sin so much as to desire to wear. Where Rose lingered longest was outside those heavenly places where you saw far off a flutter of white in the windows, which turned out to be absurd, tiny, short-waisted frocks and diminutive under-garments, and little heartrending shoes; things of desire, things of impossible dream, to be approached with a sacred dumbness of the heart.
The toy-shops, too, they carried her away in a flight; so that Rose caught herself saying to herself, ”Some day, perhaps, I shall be here buying one of them fur animals, or that there Noah's ark.”
Then, p'raps, she said to her very inmost self, things might be different.
Sometimes she would go up to Hampstead, ridin', as she phrased it, in a bus, to see her Aunt and Uncle and a friend she had, Polly White. Not often; for Rose did not hold with gadding about when you had a husband; besides, she was afraid of Aunt asking her, ”Wot's _'E_ doin'?” (By always referring to Tanqueray as ”'E,” Mrs. Eldred evaded the problem of what she was expected to call the gentleman who had so singularly married her husband's niece.) Most of all Rose dreaded the question, ”Wen is 'E goin' to take a little 'ouse?” For in Rose's world it is somewhat of a reflection on a married man if he is not a householder.
And last time Mrs. Eldred's inquiries had taken a more terrible and searching form. ”Is 'E lookin' for anything to do besides 'Is writin'?”
Rose had said then that no, he needn't, they'd got enough; an answer that brought Mrs. Eldred round to her point again. ”Then why doesn't 'E take a little 'ouse?”
Sometimes Polly White came to tea in Bloomsbury. Very seldom, though, and only when Tanqueray was not there. Rose knew and Polly knew that her friends had to keep away when her husband was about. As for _his_ friends, she had never caught a sight of them.
Then, all of a sudden, when Rose had given up wondering whether things would ever be different, Tanqueray, instead of going up-stairs as usual, sat down and lit a pipe as if he were going to spend the evening with her. Rose did not know whether she would be allowed to talk. He seemed thoughtful, and Rose knew better than to interrupt him when he was thinking.
”Rose,” he said at last, apparently as the result of his meditation, ”a friend of mine wants to call on you to-morrow.”
”To call on _me_?”
”On you, certainly.”
”Shall I have to see him?”
”She, Rose, she. Yes; I think you'll have to see her.”
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