The Little Nugget Part 25

'Right eye.'

'Right eye. They came up to us, and you--'

'Gave them chocolates.'

I sank back slowly in my chair.

'You've got a wonderful memory,' I said.

She bent over the fire without speaking. The rain rattled on the window.

'So you still like my playing, Peter?'

'I like it better than ever; there's something in it now that I don't believe there used to be. I can't describe it--something--'

'I think it's knowledge, Peter,' she said quietly. 'Experience.

I'm five years older than I was when I used to play to you before, and I've seen a good deal in those five years. It may not be altogether pleasant seeing life, but--well, it makes you play the piano better. Experience goes in at the heart and comes out at the finger-tips.'

It seemed to me that she spoke a little bitterly.

'Have you had a bad time, Audrey, these last years?' I said.

'Pretty bad.'

'I'm sorry.'

'I'm not--altogether. I've learned a lot.'

She was silent again, her eyes fixed on the fire.

'What are you thinking about?' I said.

'Oh, a great many things.'

'Pleasant?'

'Mixed. The last thing I thought about was pleasant. That was, that I am very lucky to be doing the work I am doing now. Compared with some of the things I have done--'

She shivered.

'I wish you would tell me about those years, Audrey,' I said.

'What were some of the things you did?'

She leaned back in her chair and shaded her face from the fire with a newspaper. Her eyes were in the shadow.

'Well, let me see. I was a nurse for some time at the Lafayette Hospital in New York.'

'That's hard work?'

'Horribly hard. I had to give it up after a while. But--it teaches you.... You learn.... You learn--all sorts of things. Realities.

How much of your own trouble is imagination. You get real trouble in a hospital. You get it thrown at you.'

I said nothing. I was feeling--I don't know why--a little uncomfortable, a little at a disadvantage, as one feels in the presence of some one bigger than oneself.

'Then I was a waitress.'

'A waitress?'

'I tell you I did everything. I was a waitress, and a very bad one. I broke plates. I muddled orders. Finally I was very rude to a customer and I went on to try something else. I forget what came next. I think it was the stage. I travelled for a year with a touring company. That was hard work, too, but I liked it. After that came dressmaking, which was harder and which I hated. And then I had my first stroke of real luck.'

'What was that?'

'I met Mr Ford.'

'How did that happen?'

'You wouldn't remember a Miss Vanderley, an American girl who was over in London five or six years ago? My father taught her painting. She was very rich, but she was wild at that time to be Bohemian. I think that's why she chose Father as a teacher. Well, she was always at the studio, and we became great friends, and one day, after all these things I have been telling you of, I thought I would write to her, and see if she could not find me something to do. She was a _dear_.' Her voice trembled, and she lowered the newspaper till her whole face was hidden. 'She wanted me to come to their home and live on her for ever, but I couldn't have that. I told her I must work. So she sent me to Mr Ford, whom the Vanderleys knew very well, and I became Ogden's governess.'

'Great Scott!' I cried. 'What!'

She laughed rather shakily.

'I don't think I was a very good governess. I knew next to nothing. I ought to have been having a governess myself. But I managed somehow.'

'But Ogden?' I said. 'That little fiend, didn't he worry the life out of you?'

'Oh, I had luck there again. He happened to take a mild liking to me, and he was as good as gold--for him; that's to say, if I didn't interfere with him too much, and I didn't. I was horribly weak; he let me alone. It was the happiest time I had had for ages.'

'And when he came here, you came too, as a sort of ex-governess, to continue exerting your moral influence over him?'

She laughed.

'More or less that.'

We sat in silence for a while, and then she put into words the thought which was in both our minds.

'How odd it seems, you and I sitting together chatting like this, Peter, after all--all these years.'

'Like a dream!'

'Just like a dream ... I'm so glad.... You don't know how I've hated myself sometimes for--for--'

'Audrey! You mustn't talk like that. Don't let's think of it.

Besides, it was my fault.'

She shook her head.

'Well, put it that we didn't understand one another.'