Part 9 (1/2)

V

Nothing in the world, on the Sunday afternoon, could have prevented him from going; he was not after all dest.i.tute of three or four such articles of clothing as, if they wouldn't particularly grace the occasion, wouldn't positively dishonour it. That deficiency might have kept him away, but no voice of the spirit, no consideration of pride. It sweetened his impatience in fact--for he fairly felt it a long time to wait--that his pride would really most find its account in his acceptance of these conciliatory steps. From the moment he could put it in that way--that he couldn't refuse to hear what she might have, so very elaborately, to say for herself--he ought certainly to be at his ease; in ill.u.s.tration of which he whistled odd s.n.a.t.c.hes to himself as he hung about on that cloud-dappled autumn Sunday, a mild private minstrelsy that his lips hadn't known since when? The interval of the twenty-four hours, made longer by a night of many more revivals than oblivions, had in fact dragged not a little; in spite of which, however, our extremely brushed-up and trimmed and polished friend knew an unprecedented flutter as he was ushered, at the Royal Hotel, into Miss Cookham's sitting-room. Yes, it was an adventure, and he had never had an adventure in his life; the term, for him, was essentially a term of high appreciation--such as disqualified for that figure, under due criticism, every single pa.s.sage of his past career.

What struck him at the moment as qualifying in the highest degree this actual pa.s.sage was the fact that at no great distance from his hostess in the luxurious room, as he apprehended it, in which the close of day had begun to hang a few shadows, sat a gentleman who rose as she rose, and whose name she at once mentioned to him. He had for Herbert Dodd all the air of a swell, the gentleman--rather red-faced and bald-headed, but moustachioed, waistcoated, necktied to the highest pitch, with an effect of chains and rings, of s.h.i.+ning teeth in a gla.s.sily monocular smile; a wondrous apparition to have been asked to ”meet” him, as in contemporary fiction, or for him to have been asked to meet. ”Captain Roper, Mr.

Herbert Dodd”--their entertainer introduced them, yes; but with a sequel immediately afterward more disconcerting apparently to Captain Roper himself even than to her second and more breathless visitor; a ”Well then, good-bye till the next time,” with a hand thrust straight out, which allowed the personage so addressed no alternative but to lay aside his teacup, even though Herbert saw there was a good deal left in it, and glare about him for his hat. Miss Cookham had had her tea-tray on a small table before her, she had served Captain Roper while waiting for Mr. Dodd; but she simply dismissed him now, with a high sweet unmistakable decision, a knowledge of what she was about, as our hero would have called it, which enlarged at a stroke the latter's view of the number of different things and sorts of things, in the sphere of the manners and ways of those living at their ease, that a social relation would put before one. Captain Roper would have liked to remain, would have liked more tea, but Kate signified in this direct fas.h.i.+on that she had had enough of him. Herbert had seen things, in his walk of life--rough things, plenty; but never things smoothed with that especial smoothness, carried out as it were by the fine form of Captain Roper's own retreat, which included even a bright convulsed leave-taking cognisance of the plain, vague individual, of no l.u.s.tre at all and with the very low-cla.s.s guard of an old silver watch b.u.t.toned away under an ill-made coat, to whom he was sacrificed.

It came to Herbert as he left the place a shade less remarkable--though there was still wonder enough and to spare--that he had been even publicly and designedly sacrificed; exactly so that, as the door closed behind him, Kate Cookham, standing there to wait for it, could seem to say, across the room, to the friend of her youth, only by the expression of her fine eyes: ”There--see what I do for you!” ”For” him--that was the extraordinary thing, and not less so that he was already, within three minutes, after this fas.h.i.+on, taking it in as by the intensity of a new light; a light that was one somehow with this rich inner air of the plush-draped and much-mirrored hotel, where the fire-glow and the approach of evening confirmed together the privacy, and the loose curtains at the wide window were parted for a command of his old lifelong Parade--the field of life so familiar to him from below and in the wind and the wet, but which he had never in all the long years hung over at this vantage.

”He's an acquaintance, but a bore,” his hostess explained in respect to Captain Roper. ”He turned up yesterday, but I didn't invite him, and I had said to him before you came in that I was expecting a gentleman with whom I should wish to be alone. I go quite straight at my idea that way, as a rule; but you know,” she now strikingly went on, ”how straight I go. And he had had,” she added, ”his tea.”

Dodd had been looking all round--had taken in, with the rest, the brightness, the distinguished elegance, as he supposed it, of the tea-service with which she was dealing and the variously tinted appeal of certain savoury edibles on plates. ”Oh but he _hadn't_ had his tea!”

he heard himself the next moment earnestly reply; which speech had at once betrayed, he was then quickly aware, the candour of his interest, the unsophisticated state that had survived so many troubles. If he was so interested how could he be proud, and if he was proud how could he be so interested?

He had made her at any rate laugh outright, and was further conscious, for this, both that it was the first time of that since their new meeting, and that it didn't affect him as harsh. It affected him, however, as free, for she replied at once, still smiling and as a part of it: ”Oh, I think we shall get on!”

This told him he had made some difference for her, shown her the way, or something like it, that she hadn't been sure of yesterday; which moreover wasn't what he had intended--he had come armed for showing her nothing; so that after she had gone on with the same gain of gaiety, ”You must at any rate comfortably have yours,” there was but one answer for him to make.

His eyes played again over the tea-things--they seemed strangely to help him; but he didn't sit down.

”I've come, as you see--but I've come, please, to understand; and if you require to be alone with me, and if I break bread with you, it seems to me I should first know exactly where I am and to what you suppose I so commit myself.” He had thought it out and over and over, particularly the turn about breaking bread; though perhaps he didn't give it, in her presence--this was impossible, her presence altered so many things--quite the full sound or the weight he had planned.

But it had none the less come to his aid--it had made her perfectly grave. ”You commit yourself to nothing. You're perfectly free. It's only I who commit myself.”

On which, while she stood there as if all handsomely and deferentially waiting for him to consider and decide, he would have been naturally moved to ask her what she committed herself then _to_--so moved, that is, if he hadn't, before saying it, thought more sharply still of something better. ”Oh, that's another thing.”

”Yes, that's another thing,” Kate Cookham returned. To which she added, ”So _now_ won't you sit down?” He sank with deliberation into the seat from which Captain Roper had risen; she went back to her own and while she did so spoke again. ”I'm _not_ free. At least,” she said over her tea-tray, ”I'm free only for this.”

Everything was there before them and around them, everything ma.s.sive and s.h.i.+ning, so that he had instinctively fallen back in his chair as for the wondering, the resigned acceptance of it; where her last words stirred in him a sense of odd deprecation. Only for ”that”? ”That” was everything, at this moment, to his long inanition, and the effect, as if she had suddenly and perversely mocked him, was to press the spring of a protest. ”Isn't 'this' then riches?”

”Riches?” she smiled over, handing him his cup--for she had triumphed in having struck from him a question.

”I mean haven't you a lot of money?” He didn't care now that it was out; his cup was in his hand, and what was that but proved interest? He had succ.u.mbed to the social relation.

”Yes, I've money. Of course you wonder--but I've wanted you to wonder.

It was to make you take that in that I came. So now you know,” she said, leaning back where she faced him, but in a straighter chair and with her arms closely folded, after a fas.h.i.+on characteristic of her, as for some control of her nerves.

”You came to show you've money?”

”That's one of the things. Not a lot--not even very much. But enough,”

said Kate Cookham.

”Enough? I should think so!” he again couldn't help a bit crudely exhaling.

”Enough for what I wanted. I don't always live like this--not at all.

But I came to the best hotel on purpose. I wanted to show you I could.

Now,” she asked, ”do you understand?”

”Understand?” He only gaped.