The Little Nugget Part 20

I laughed. I was not feeling like laughter at the moment, but I did my best, and had the satisfaction of seeing that it jarred upon her.

'Surely you're not worrying yourself about that?' I said. I laughed again. Very jovial and debonair I was that winter morning.

The brief moment in which we might have softened towards each other was over. There was a glitter in her blue eyes which told me that it was once more war between us.

'I thought you would get over it,' she said.

'Well,' I said, 'I was only twenty-five. One's heart doesn't break at twenty-five.'

'I don't think yours would ever be likely to break, Peter.'

'Is that a compliment, or otherwise?'

'You would probably think it a compliment. I meant that you were not human enough to be heart-broken.'

'So that's your idea of a compliment!'

'I said I thought it was probably yours.'

'I must have been a curious sort of man five years ago, if I gave you that impression.'

'You were.'

She spoke in a meditative voice, as if, across the years, she were idly inspecting some strange species of insect. The att.i.tude annoyed me. I could look, myself, with a detached eye at the man I had once been, but I still retained a sort of affection for him, and I felt piqued.

'I suppose you looked on me as a kind of ogre in those days?' I said.

'I suppose I did.'

There was a pause.

'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings,' she said. And that was the most galling part of it. Mine was an att.i.tude of studied offensiveness. I did want to hurt her feelings. But hers, it seemed to me, was no pose. She really had had--and, I suppose, still retained--a genuine horror of me. The struggle was unequal.

'You were very kind,' she went on, 'sometimes--when you happened to think of it.'

Considered as the best she could find to say of me, it was not an eulogy.

'Well,' I said, 'we needn't discuss what I was or did five years ago. Whatever I was or did, you escaped. Let's think of the present. What are we going to do about this?'

'You think the situation's embarra.s.sing?'

'I do.'

'One of us ought to go, I suppose,' she said doubtfully.

'Exactly.'

'Well, I can't go.'

'Nor can I.'

'I have business here.'

'Obviously, so have I.'

'It's absolutely necessary that I should be here.'

'And that I should.'

She considered me for a moment.

'Mrs Attwell told me that you were one of the a.s.sistant-masters at the school.'

'I am acting as a.s.sistant-master. I am supposed to be learning the business.'

She hesitated.

'Why?' she said.

'Why not?'

'But--but--you used to be very well off.'

'I'm better off now. I'm working.'

She was silent for a moment.

'Of course it's impossible for you to leave. You couldn't, could you?'

'No.'

'I can't either.'

'Then I suppose we must face the embarra.s.sment.'

'But why must it be embarra.s.sing? You said yourself you had--got over it.'

'Absolutely. I am engaged to be married.'

She gave a little start. She drew a pattern on the gravel with her foot before she spoke.

'I congratulate you,' she said at last.

'Thank you.'

'I hope you will be very happy.'

'I'm sure I shall.'