CHAPTER XX—SHE PROPOSES

He had not been allowed to see her. She had been at Orchid Lodge for three days. No one was aware of his special reason for wanting to see her. Not even to his mother had he let fall a hint that Desire was the girl for whose sake he had stayed in America. His thoughtfulness in making inquiries and in sending flowers was attributed to his remembrance of their childhood’s friendship.

“Her bedroom’s a bower already,” Hal told him; “you really mustn’t send her any more just yet.”

“Does she ask about me?” He awaited the answer breathlessly.

“Sometimes. I was telling her only this morning how you’d spent the autumn in New York.”

“Did she say anything?”

“She was interested.”

He could imagine the mischief that had crept into her gray eyes as she had listened to whatever Hal had told her. Why didn’t she send for him?

As far as he could learn, she wasn’t hurt—only shaken. He suspected that Mrs. Sheerug was making her an excuse for a bout of nursing. The house went on tiptoe. The door of the spare-room opened and closed softly.

He had to see her. It was on the golden evening of the fourth day that he waylaid Hal on the stairs. “Would you please give her this note? I’ll wait. There’ll be an answer. I’m sure of it.”

Hal eyed him curiously. Up till now he had been too excited to notice emotion in any one else. For the first time he seemed to become aware of the eagerness with which Teddy mentioned her. He took the note without a word.

For several minutes Teddy waited. They seemed more like hours. From the Park across the river came the ping of tennis and the laughter of girls. A door opened. Mrs. Sheerug’s trotting footsteps were approaching. As she came in sight, she lowered her head and blinked at him above the rims of her spectacles.

“My grand-daughter says she wants to thank you for the flowers. She insists on thanking you herself. I don’t know whether it’s right. She’s in—— She’s an invalid, you know.”

Leaving her to decide this point of etiquette, he hurried along the passage and tapped. He heard her voice and thrilled to the sound. “Now don’t any of you disturb us till I call for you.—Promise?”

As Hal slipped out, he left the door open and nodded. “She’ll see you.”

Pushing aside the tapestry curtain of Absalom, he entered. A breeze was ruffling the curtains. Against the wall outside ivy whispered. The evening glow, pouring across tree-tops, gilded the faded gold of the harp and filled the room with an amber vagueness.

She was sitting up in bed, propped on pillows, with a blue shawl wrapped about her shoulders. She looked such a tiny Desire—such a girl. Her bronze-black hair was braided in a plait and fell in a long coil across the bedclothes. Their eyes met. He halted.

Slowly her face broke into a smile. “I wonder which of us has been the worse.”

He knelt at her side, pressing her hand.

“Which is it, Meester Deek? D’you remember their names? It’s Miss Independence. I wouldn’t kiss it if I were you; it’s an unkind, a scratchy little hand.”

He raised his eyes. “Are you very much hurt?”

She gazed down at him mockingly. “By the accident or by your letter?—By the accident, no. By your letter, yes. I do feel things deeply—I was feeling them more than ordinarily deeply just then. I didn’t like you when you wrote that.”

“But I wrote you so often. I told you how sorry I was. You never answered.”

She crouched her chin against her shoulder. “Shall I tell you the absolute truth? It’s silly of me to give away my secrets; a girl ought always to be a mystery.” Her finger went up to her mouth and her eyes twinkled. “It was because I knew that I was coming to England. I wanted to see how patient you—— You understand?”

He jumped to his feet. “Then you hadn’t chucked me? All the time you were intending to come to me?”

She winked at him. “Perhaps, and perhaps not. It would have depended on my temper and how full I was with other engagements.—No, you’re not to kiss me when I’m in bed; it isn’t done in the best families.”

He drew back from her, laughing. “How good it is to be mocked! And how d’you like your family?” He seated himself on the edge of the bed.

“Not there,” she reproved him; “that isn’t done either. Bring a chair.”

When he had obeyed, she lay back with her face towards him and let him take her hand.

“Meester Deek, it’s very sweet to have a father.”

When he nodded, she shook her head. “You needn’t look so wise. You don’t know anything about it; you’ve had a father always. But to find a father when you’re grown up—that’s what’s so sweet and wonderful.” She fell silent. Then she said, “It’s like having a lover you don’t need to be afraid of. We know nothing unhappy about each other; he’s never had to whip me or be cross with me, the way he would have done if I’d always been his little girl.—You do look funny, Meester Deek; I believe you’re envying me and—and almost crying.”

“It was in this room,” he said, “that I first met your mother. I heard her singing when I was lying in this very bed. She looked like you, Princess; and in fun she asked me to marry her.”

Desire laughed softly. “I haven’t—not even in fun.” Then quickly, to prevent what he was on the point of saying, “I would have liked to have known you, Meester Deek, when you were quite, quite little. You’d never guess what I and my father talk about.”

He had to try. At each fresh suggestion she shook her head.

“About my beautiful mother. Isn’t it wonderful of him to have remembered and remembered? I believe if I wanted, I could help them to marry. Only,” she looked away from him, “that would spoil the romance.”

“It wouldn’t spoil it Why do you always speak as if——”

She pursed her lips. “It would. Marriage may be very nice, but it doesn’t do to let people know you too well. And then, there’s another reason: Mrs. Sheerug’s a dear, but she doesn’t like my mother.”

“Doesn’t she?” He did his best to make his voice express surprise.

“You know she doesn’t. And she has her doubts about me, too. I can tell that by the way she says, ’My dear, you laugh like your mother,’ as if to laugh like my mother was a crime. She thinks it’s wrong to be gay. I think in her heart she hates my mother.”

Suddenly she sat up. “All from you, and I haven’t thanked you yet!”

He looked round the room; the amber had faded to the silver of twilight. In vases and bowls the flowers he had sent her glimmered like memories and threw out fragrance.

Her fingers nestled closer in his hand. “I’m not good at thanking, but—— Ever since I met you, all along the way there’s been nothing but kindness. What have I given you in return?—Don’t tell me, because it won’t be true.—You can kiss my cheek just once, Meester Deek, if you do it quietly.”

She bent towards him. In that room, where so many things had happened, with the perfumed English dusk steal ing in at the window, she seemed to have become for the first time a part of his real world.

“Shall we tell them, Princess?”

“Tell them?”

“About New York?”

She laid her finger on his lips. “No. It’s the same with me now as it was with you in New York. You never mentioned me in your letters to your mother. Besides, don’t you think it’ll be more exciting if only you and I know it?” Her voice sank. “I’m changed somehow. Perhaps it’s having a father. I want to be good and little. And—and he wouldn’t be proud of me if he knew——”

The door opened. Desire withdrew her hand swiftly. Mrs. Sheerug entered.

“Why, it’s nearly dark!” She struck a match and lit the gas. “I waited for you to call me, and since you didn’t——”

Teddy rose. “I’ve stayed rather long.”

He shook Desire’s hand conventionally. At the door, as he lifted the tapestry to pass out, he glanced back. Mrs. Sheerug was closing the window. Desire kissed the tips of her fingers to him.

It seemed that at last all his dreams were coming true. During the week that followed he spent many hours in the spare-room. She was soon convalescent. Her trunks had been sent from Fluffy’s house and all her pretty, decorative clothes unpacked. Mrs. Sheerug thought them vain and actressy, but the spell of Desire was over her.

“She thinks I’ll come to a bad end,” Desire said. “Perhaps I shall.”

Usually he found her sitting by the window in a filmy peignoir and boudoir-cap. Very often her father was beside her. Hal’s relations with her were peculiarly tender. He was more like a lover than a father. He had changed entirely; there was a brightness in his eyes and an alertness in his step. He seemed to be re-finding her mother in her and to be re-capturing his own lost youth.

Teddy rarely heard any of their conversations. When he appeared, they grew silent. Even if Desire had not told him, he would have guessed that it was of Vashti they had been talking. Presently Hal would make an excuse to leave them. When the door had shut, Desire would slip her hand into his. Demonstrations of affection rarely went beyond that now. The place where they met and the continual possibility of interruption restrained them. There was another reason as far as Teddy was concerned: he realized that in New York he had cheapened his affection by forcing it on her. She told him as much.

“You thought that I was holding back; I wasn’t then, and I’m not now. Only—I hardly know how to put it—the first time you do things they thrill me; after that—— The second kiss is never as good as the first. Every time we repeat something it becomes less important. So you see, if we married, when we could do things always—I think that’s why I never kissed you. I wasn’t holding off; I was saving the best.”

A new frankness sprang up between them. They discussed their problem with a comic air of aloofness. Now that he gave her no opportunities to repulse him, her fits of coldness became more rare. Sometimes she would invite the old intimacies. “Meester Deek, I’m not sure that it’s so much fun being only friends.”

He was amused by her na茂vet茅. “Perhaps it isn’t But don’t let’s spoil things by talking about it. Let’s be sensible.” In these days it was he who said, “Let’s be sensible.” She pouted when he said it, and accused him of strategy. “Be sweet to me, like you were.”

He steeled himself against her coquetry. Until she could tell him that his love was returned, he must not let her feel her power. “When you can do that,” he told her, “we’ll cease to be only friends.”

“And yet I do wish you’d pilfer sometimes.” She clasped her hands against her throat. “I want you, and I don’t want you. I don’t want any. one to have you; but if I had you always to myself, I shouldn’t know what to do with you. You’d be awful strict, I expect” She sighed and sank back in her chair. “It’s such a large order—marriage. I’m so young. A girl mortgages her whole future.”

She always approached these discussions from the angle of doubt. “When it was too late, you might see a girl you liked better.”

He assured her of the impossibility. She shook her head wisely. “It has happened.”

He read in her distrust the influence of the people among whom her girlhood had been spent, the Vashtis, Fluffys, and Mr. Daks—the slaves of freedom who, having disdained the best in life, used pleasure as a narcotic. He knew that it was not his inconstancy that she dreaded, but the chance that after marriage she herself might be fascinated by some man. The knowledge made him cautious. Nothing that he could say would carry any weight; he would be a defendant witnessing in his own defense. That she was willing to open her mind to him kept him hopeful. It was a step forward.

He brought his mother to see her. When she had gone Desire said, “I know now what you meant when you wanted me to be proud of you. I’d give anything to feel that I was really needed by a man I loved.” And then, “Meester Deek, you never talk to me about your work. Won’t you let me see what you’ve been doing?”

He brought to her the book he had written for her that it might tell her the things which his lips had left unsaid. After she had commenced it, she refused to see him until she had reached the end.

She heard his footsteps in the passage; her eyes were watching before he entered. Her lips moved, but she thought better of it. He drew a chair to her side. “Well?”

She gazed out of the window. “It’s all about us.” Then, with a laughing glance at him, “I don’t know whatever you’d do, if you didn’t have me to write about.”

“I wrote it for you,” he whispered, “so that you might understand.”

She frowned. “And I was in California, having such good times.”

He waited.

“It’s very beautiful.” After an interval she repeated her words, “It’s very beautiful.” Without looking at him, she took his hand. “But it isn’t me. It’s the magic cloak—the girl you’d like me to become. I never shall be like that. If that’s what you think I am, you’ll be disappointed.” She turned to him appealingly. “Meester Deek, you make me frightened. You expect so much; you’re willing to give so much yourself. But I’m cold. I couldn’t return a grand passion. Wouldn’t you be content with less? Couldn’t we be happy if——”

He wanted to lie to her.

“You couldn’t,” she said.

He met her honest eyes. “No, I couldn’t. If—if you feel no passion after all these months, you’d feel less when we were married.”

She nodded sadly. “Yes, it would be the way it was in New York: I’d always be only just allowing you—neither of us could bear that.—So, if I were to tell you that I admired you—admired you more than any man I ever met—and that I was willing to marry you, you wouldn’t?”

“It wouldn’t be fair—wouldn’t be fair to you, Princess.” His voice trembled. “One day you yourself will want more than that.”

She no longer bargained for terms or set up her stage ambitions as a barrier. His restraint proved to her that she was approaching the crisis at which she must either accept or lose him. It was to postpone this crisis that she took advantage of Mrs. Sheerug’s anxiety to prolong her convalescence.

Towards the end of the second week of her visit Teddy got his car out. One day they ran down to Ware, hoping to find the farm. It was as though the country that they had known had vanished with their childhood.

Now that she began to get about, the glaring contrast between her standards and those of Eden Row became more apparent. Her clothes, the things she talked about, even her dancing way of walking pronounced her different. She began to get restless under the censures which she read in Mrs. Sheerug’s eyes.

“And what wouldn’t she say,” she asked Teddy, “if she knew that I’d smoked a cigarette? I do so want to use a little powder—and I daren’t.”

One afternoon when he called, he found the house in commotion. She was packing. Fluffy had been to see her; after she had gone the pent-up storm of criticisms had burst Something had been said about Vashti—what it was he couldn’t learn. He insisted on seeing her. She came down with her face tear-stained and flushed. They walked out into the garden in silence. Where the shrubbery hid them from the house—the shrubbery in which he had first met Alonzo and Mr. Ooze—they sat down.

“Going?”

“Yes.”

“But do you think you ought to?”

“I’m not thinking. I’m angry. Mrs. Sheerug’s a dear; I know that as well as you. But she wants to reform me. She makes me wild when she says, ‘You have your mother’s laugh,’ as though being like my mother damned me. And she said something horrid about Fluffy and about the way I’ve been brought up.”

“Are you going to Fluffy’s now?”

She shook her head. “Fluffy’s leaving for the continent.”

“Then where?”

Suddenly she laughed. “With you, if you like.”

He stared at her incredulously. “With me?”

“Yes.”

He seized her hands, “You mean that you’ll——”

All the hunger to touch and hold her which he had staved off, urged him to passion. She turned her lips aside. He drew her to him, kissing her eyes and hair. He was full of sympathy for the fierceness in her heart; it was right that she should be angry in her mother’s defense.

“You queer Meester Deek, not marry you—I didn’t say that.” She tried to free herself, but he clasped her to him. “You must let me go or I won’t tell you.”

They sat closely, with locked hands.

“I’ve been thinking very carefully what to do. I’m not sure of myself. We need to be more certain of each other.”

“But how? How can we be more certain now you’re going?”

She smiled at his despair. “The honeymoon ought to come first,” she said. “Every marriage ought to be preceded by a honeymoon.” She spoke slowly. “A—a quite proper affair; it would be almost the same as being married. It’s only by being alone that two people have a chance to find each other out If we could do that without quarreling or getting tired—— What do you say? If you don’t say yes, you may never get another chance.”

When she saw him hesitating, she added, “You’re thinking of me. No one need know. We could meet in Paris.”

His last chance! Dared he trust himself?

“What day shall I meet you?” he questioned.