Man and Maid Part 10

Nina jumped up and shook the bath-bun crumbs off her green muslin pinafore.

"Promise not to be horrid, and I will."

"I won't--I promise I won't."

"Then it's--it's him--the 'stranger who might'--you know. And I really should have told you, though there wasn't anything to tell, only--don't laugh."

"I'm not. Can't you see I'm not? Only what?"

"Well, when I spoke to him that day in the train, I said, 'Why shouldn't we talk?' And he said, 'I--I--I--be--be--be--because I stammer so.' And he _did_. You never heard anything like it. It was awful. He took hours to get out those few words, and I didn't know where to look. And I felt such a brute because of the things we'd said about him, that I had no sense left; and I told him straight out how I'd wondered he never even said he wondered how late the train was when we were waiting for the 9.1, and I was glad it was stammering and not disagreeableness. And then I said I wasn't glad he stammered, but so sorry; and he was awfully nice about it, and I told him about that man who cured your brother Cecil of stammering, and he went to him at once: and he's almost all right now."

"Good gracious!" said Molly. "Are you sure--but why didn't he get cured long ago?"

"He had a mother: she stammered frightfully--after the shock of his father's death, or something, and he got into the way of it from her.

And--anyway he didn't. I think it was so as not to hurt his mother's feelings, or something. I don't quite understand. And he said it didn't seem to matter when she was dead. And he's an artist. He sells his pictures too, and he teaches. He has a studio in Chelsea."

"It all sounds a little thin; but if you're pleased, I'm sure I am."

"I am," said Nina.

"But what did he say when he asked you?"

"He didn't ask me," said Nina.

"But surely he said he'd loved you since the first moment he saw you?"

Nina had to admit it.

"Then you see I wasn't such a vulgar little donkey after all."

"Yes, you were. You hadn't any business even to _think_ such things, much less say them. Why, even _I_ didn't dare to think it for--oh--for ever so long. But I'll forgive it--and if it's good it shall be a pretty little bridesmaid, it shall."

"When is it to be?" asked Molly, still adrift in a sea of wonder.

"Oh, quite soon, he says. He says we're only wasting time by waiting.

You see we're both alone."

But Molly, looking wistfully at her friend's transfigured face, perceived sadly that it was she who was alone, not they.

And the thought of the red-haired Pierrot with whom she had danced nine times at the Students' Fancy Dress dance, an indiscretion hitherto her dearest memory, now offered no solid consolation.

Nina went away, singing softly under her breath. Molly sighed and followed slowly.

IV

RACK AND THUMBSCREW

Her eyelids were red and swollen, her brown hair, flattened out of its pretty curves, clung closely to her head. Ink stained her hands, and there was even a bluish smear of it on her wrist. A tray with tea-things stood among the litter of ma.n.u.script on her table. The tea-pot had only cold tea-leaves in it; the bread and b.u.t.ter was untouched.

She put down the pen, and went to the window. The rose-tint of the sunset was reflected on the bank of mist and smoke beyond the river.

Above, where the sky was pale and clear, a star or two twinkled contentedly.

She stamped her foot.

Already the beautiful garments of the evening mist, with veiled lights in the folds of it, was embroidered spa.r.s.ely with the early litten lamps of impatient workers, and as she gazed, the embroidery was enriched by more and more yellow and white and orange--the string of jewels along the embankment, the face of the church clock.

She turned from the window to the room, and lighted her own lamp, for the room was now deeply dusk. It was a large, low, pleasant room. It had always seemed pleasant to her through the five years in which she had worked, and played, and laughed, and cried there. Now she wondered why she had not always hated it.

The stairs creaked. The knocker spoke. She caught her head in both hands.

"My G.o.d!" she said, "this is too much!"

Yet she went to the door.

"Oh--it's only you," she said, and, with no other greeting, walked back into the room, and sat down at the table.

The newcomer was left to close the outer door, and to follow at her own pleasure. The newcomer was another girl, younger, prettier, smarter. She turned her head sidewise, like a little bird, and looked at her friend with very bright eyes. Then she looked round the room.

"My dear Jane," she said, "whatever have you been doing to yourself?"

"Nothing," said her dear Jane very sulkily.

"Oh, if genius burns--your stairs are devilish--but if you'd rather I went away----"

"No, don't go, Milly. I'm perfectly mad." She jumped up and waved her outstretched arms over the ma.s.s of papers on the table. "Look at all this--three days' work--rot--abject rot! I wish I was dead. I was wondering just now whether it would hurt much if one leaned too far out of the window--and---- No, I didn't do it--as you see."

"What's the matter?" asked the other prosaically.

"Nothing. That's just it. I'm perfectly well--at least I was--only now I'm all trembly with drink." She pointed to the tea-cups. "It's the chance of my life, and I can't take it. I can't work: my brain's like batter. And everything depends on my idiot brain--it has done for these five years. That's what's so awful. It all depends on me--and I'm going all to pieces."

"I told you so!" rejoined the other. "You would stay in town all the summer and autumn, slaving away. I knew you'd break down, and now you've done it."

"I've slaved for five years, and I've never broken down before."

"Well, you have now. Go away at once. Take a holiday. You'll work like Shakespeare and Michelangelo after it."

"But I _can't_--that's just it. It's those stories for the _Monthly Mult.i.tude_; I'm doing a series. I'm behind _now_: and if I don't get it done this week, they'll stop the series. It's what I've been working for all these years. It's the best chance I've ever had, and it's come _now_, when I can't do it. Your father's a doctor: isn't there any medicine you can take to make your head more like a head and less like a suet pudding?"

"Look here," said Milly, "I really came in to ask you to come away with us at Whitsuntide; but you ought to go away _now_. Just go to our cottage at Lymchurch. There's a dear old girl in the village--Mrs Beale--she'll look after you. It's a glorious place for work. Father did reams down there. You'll do your stuff there right enough. This is only Monday. Go to-morrow."

"Did he? I will. Oh yes, I will. I'll go to-night, if there's a train."

"No, you don't, my dear lunatic. You are now going to wash your face and do your hair, and take me out to dinner--a real eighteenpenny dinner at Roches. I'll stand treat."

It was after dinner, as the two girls waited for Milly's omnibus, that the word of the evening was spoken.