Fennel and Rue Part 18

"Didn't you expect me to keep my promise?"

"But I was afraid I had put a stumbling-block in the way."

"Oh, I found I could turn the consciousness you created in me into literary material, and so I was rather eager to go. I have got a point for my new story out of it. I shall have my fellow suffer all I didn't suffer in meeting the girl he knows his mother wants him to marry. I got on very well with those ladies. Mrs. Andrews is the mother of innocence, but she isn't innocence. She managed to talk of my story without asking about the person who wanted to antic.i.p.ate the conclusion. That was what you call complex. She was insincere; it was the only thing she wanted to talk about."

"I don't believe it, Philip. But what did Miss Andrews talk about?"

"Well, she is rather an optimistic conscience. She talked about books and plays that some people do not think are quite proper. I have a notion that, where the point involved isn't a fact of her own experience, she is not very severe about it. You think that would be quite safe for me?"

"Philip, I don't like your making fun of her!"

"Oh, she wasn't insipid; she was only limpid. I really like her, and, as for reverencing her, of course I feel that in a way she is sacred." He added, after a breath, "Too sacred. We none of us can expect to marry Eve before the Fall now; perhaps we have got over wanting to."

"You are very perverse, my dear. But you will get over that."

"Don't take away my last defence, mother."

Verrian began to go rather regularly to the Andrews house, or, at least, he was accused of doing it by Miss Macroyd when, very irregularly, he went one day to see her. "How did you know it?" he asked.

"I didn't say I knew it. I only wished to know it. Now I am satisfied.

I met another friend of yours on Sunday." She paused for him to ask who; but he did not ask. "I see you are dying to know what friend: Mr.

Bushwick."

"Oh, he's a good-fellow. I wonder I don't run across him."

"Perhaps that's because you never call on Miss Shirley." Miss Macroyd waited for this to take effect, but he kept a glacial surface towards her, and she went on:

"They were walking together in the park at noon. I suppose they had been to church together."

Verrian manifested no more than a polite interest in the fact. He managed so well that he confirmed Miss Macroyd in a tacit conjecture.

She went on: "Miss Shirley was looking quite blooming for her. But so was he, for that matter. Why don't you ask if they inquired for you?"

"I thought you would tell me without."

"I will tell you if he did. He was very cordial in his inquiries; and I had to pretend, to gratify him, that you were very well. I implied that you came here every Tuesday, but your Thursdays were dedicated to Miss Andrews."

"You are a clever woman, Miss Macroyd. I should never have thought of so much to say on such an uninteresting subject. And Miss Shirley showed no curiosity?"

"Ah, she is a clever woman, too. She showed the prettiest kind of curiosity--so perfectly managed. She has a studio--I don't know just how she puts it to use--with a painter girl in one of those studio apartment houses on the West Side: The Veronese, I believe. You must go and see her; I'll let you have next Tuesday off; Tuesday's her day, too."

"You are generosity itself, Miss Macroyd."

"Yes, there's nothing mean about me," she returned, in slang rather older than she ordinarily used. "If you're not here next Tuesday I shall know where you are."

"Then I must take a good many Tuesdays off, unless I want to give myself away."

"Oh, don't do that, Mr. Verrian! Please! Or else I can't let you have any Tuesday off."

XXI.

Upon the whole, Verrian thought he would go to see Miss Shirley the next Tuesday, but he did not say so to Miss Macroyd. Now that he knew where the girl was, all the peculiar interest she had inspired in him renewed itself. It was so vivid that he could not pay his usual Thursday call at Miss Andrews's, and it filled his mind to the exclusion of the new story he had begun to write. He loafed his mornings away at his club, and he lunched there, leaving his mother to lunch alone, and was dreamily preoccupied in the evenings which he spent at home, sitting at his desk, with the paper before him, unable to coax the thoughts from his brain to its alluring blank, but restive under any attempts of hers to talk with him.

In his desperation he would have gone to the theatre, but the fact that the a.s.s who rightfully called himself Verrian was playing at one of them blocked his way, through his indignation, to all of them. By Sat.u.r.day afternoon the tedious time had to be done something with, and he decided to go and see what the a.s.s was like.

He went early, and found himself in the end seat of a long row of many rows of women, who were prolonging the time of keeping their hats on till custom obliged them to take them off. He gave so much notice to the woman next him as to see that she was deeply veiled as well as widely hatted, and then he lapsed into a dreary muse, which was broken by the first strains of the overture. Then he diverted himself by looking round at all those ranks of women lifting their arms to take out them hat-pins and dropping them to pin their hats to the seat-backs in front of them, or to secure them somehow in their laps. Upon the whole, he thought the manoeuvre graceful and pleasing; he imagined a consolation in it for the women, who, if they were forced by public opinion to put off their charming hats, would know how charmingly they did it. Each turned a little, either her body or her head, and looked in any case out of the corner of her eyes; and he was phrasing it all for a scene in his story, when he looked round at his neighbor to see how she had managed, or was managing, with her veil. At the same moment she looked at him, and their eyes met.

"Mr. Verrian!"

"Miss Shirley!"

The stress of their voices fell upon different parts of the sentences they uttered, but did not commit either of them to a special role.

"How very strange we should meet here!" she said, with pleasure in her voice. "Do you know, I have been wanting to come all winter to see this man, on account of his name? And to think that I should meet the other Mr. Verrian as soon as I yielded to the temptation."

"I have just yielded myself," Verrian said. "I hope you don't feel punished for yielding."

"Oh, dear, no! It seems a reward."

She did not say why it seemed so, and he suggested, "The privilege of comparing the histrionic and the literary Verrian?"

"Could there be any comparison?" she came back, gayly.

"I don't know. I haven't seen the histrionic Verrian yet."

They were laughing when the curtain rose, and the histrionic Verrian had his innings for a long, long first act. When the curtain fell she turned to the literary Verrian and said, "Well?"

"He lasted a good while," Verrian returned.

"Yes. Didn't he?" She looked at the little watch in her wristlet. "A whole hour! Do you know, Mr. Verrian, I am going to seem very rude. I am going to leave you to settle this question of superiority; I know you'll be impartial. I have an appointment--with the dressmaker, to be specific--at half-past four, and it's half-past three now, and I couldn't well leave in the middle of the next act. So I will say good-bye now--"

"Don't!" he entreated. "I couldn't bear to be left alone with this dreadful double of mine. Let me go out with you."

"Can I accept such self-sacrifice? Well!"

She had put on her hat and risen, and he now stepped out of his place to let her pa.s.s and then followed her. At the street entrance he suggested, "A hansom, or a simple trolley?"

"I don't know," she murmured, meditatively, looking up the street as if that would settle it. "If it's only half-past three now, I should have time to get home more naturally."

"Oh! And will you let me walk with you?"

"Why, if you're going that way."

"I will say when I know which way it is."

They started on their walk so blithely that they did not sadden in the retrospect of their joint experiences at Mrs. Westangle's. By the time they reached the park gate at Columbus Circle they had come so distinctly to the end of their retrospect that she made an offer of letting him leave her, a very tacit offer, but unmistakable, if he chose to take it. He interpreted her hesitation as he chose. "No," he said, "it won't be any longer if we go up through the park."