The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories Part 41

The Morfes' house was at the corner of Trafalgar Road and Beech Street.

The cars stopped at that corner in their wild course towards the town and towards Turnhill. A car was just coming. But instead of waiting for it Richard Morfe and Eva Harracles deliberately turned their backs on Trafalgar Road, and hurried side by side down Beech Street. Beech Street is a short street, and ends in a nondescript unlighted waste patch of ground. They arrived in the gloom of this patch, safe from all human inquisitiveness, and then Richard Morfe warmly kissed Eva Harracles in the mathematical centre of those lips of hers. And Eva Harracles showed no resentment of any kind, nor even shame. Yet she had been very carefully brought up. The sight would have interested Bursley immensely; it would have appealed strongly to Bursley's strong sense of the piquant.... That dry old stick d.i.c.k Morfe kissing one of his contraltos in the dark at the bottom end of Beech Street.

"Then you hadn't told her!" murmured Eva Harracles.

"No!" said Richard, with a slight hesitation. "I was just going to begin to tell her when you called."

Another woman might have pouted to learn that her lover had exhibited even a little cowardice in informing his family that he was engaged to be married. But Eva did not pout. She comprehended the situation, and the psychology of the relations between brothers and sisters. (She herself possessed both brothers and sisters.) All the courting had been singularly secret and odd.

"I shall tell her to-morrow morning at breakfast," said Richard, firmly.

"Unless, after all, she isn't gone to bed when I get back."

By a common impulse they now returned towards Trafalgar Road.

"I say," said Richard, "what made you call?"

"I was pa.s.sing," said the beloved. "And somehow I couldn't help it. Of course, I knew it wasn't true about Mr Loggerheads. But I had to think of something."

Richard was in ecstasy; had never been in such ecstasy.

"I say," he said again. "I suppose _you_ didn't put your finger against the pendulum of that clock?"

"Oh, _no_!" she replied with emphasis.

"Well, I'm jolly glad it did stop, anyway," said Richard. "What a lark, eh?"

She agreed that the lark was ideal. They walked down the road till a car should overtake them.

"Do you think she suspects anything?" Eva asked.

"I'll swear she doesn't," said Richard, positively. "It'll be a bit of a startler for the old girl."

"No doubt you've heard," said Eva, haltingly, "that Mr Loggerheads has cast eyes on Mary."

"And do you think there's anything _in_ that?" Richard questioned sharply.

"Well," she said, "I really don't know." Meaning that she decidedly thought that Mary _had_ been encouraging advances from Mr Loggerheads.

"Well," said Richard, superiorly, "you may just take it from me that there's nothing in it at all.... Ha!" He laughed shortly. He knew Mary.

Then they got on a car, and tried to behave as though their being together was a mere accident, as though they had not become engaged to one another within the previous twenty-four hours.

II

Immediately after the departure of Richard Morfe and Eva Harracles, his betrothed, from the front door of the former, Mr Simon Loggerheads arrived at the same front door, and rang thereat, and was a little surprised, and also a little unnerved, when the door opened instantly, as if by magic. Mr Simon Loggerheads said to himself, as he saw the door move on its hinges, that Miss Morfe must have discovered a treasure of a servant who, when she had nothing else to do, spent her time on the inner door-mat waiting to admit possible visitors--even on Friday night.

Nevertheless, Mr Simon Loggerheads regretted that prompt opening, as one regrets the prompt opening of the door of a dentist.

And it was no servant who stood in front of him, under the flickering beam of the lobby-lamp. It was Mary Morfe herself. The simple explanation was that she had just sped her brother and Eva Harracles, and had remained in the lobby for the purpose of ascertaining by means of her finger whether the servant had, as usual, forgotten to dust the tops of the picture-frames.

"Oh!" said Mr Loggerheads, when he saw Mary Morfe. For the cashier of the Bursley branch of the Birmingham and Sheffield Bank it was not a very able speech, but it was all he could accomplish.

And Miss Mary Morfe said:

"Oh!"

She was thirty-eight, and he was quite that (for the Bank mentioned does not elevate its men to the august situation of cashier under less than twenty years' service), and yet they neither of them had enough worldliness to behave in a reasonable manner. Then Miss Morfe, to whom it did at last occur that something must be done, produced an invitation:

"Do come in!" And she added, "Richard has just gone out."

"Oh!" commented Mr Simon Loggerheads again. (After all, it must be admitted that tenors as a cla.s.s have never been noted for their conversational powers.) But he was obviously more at ease, and he went in, and Mary Morfe shut the door. At this very instant her brother and Eva were in secret converse at the back end of Beech Street.

"Do take your coat off!" Mary suggested to Simon. Simultaneously the servant appeared at the kitchen extremity of the lobby, and Mary thrust her out of sight again with the cold words: "It's all right, Susan."

Mr Loggerheads took his coat off, and Mary Morfe watched him as he did so.

He made a pretty figure. He was something of a dandy. The lapels of the overcoat would have showed that, not to mention the correctly severe necktie. All his clothes, in fact, had "cut and style," even to his boots. In the Five Towns many a young man is a dandy down to the edge of his trousers, but not down to the ground. Mr Loggerheads looked a young man. The tranquillity of his career and the quietude of his tastes had preserved his youthfulness. And, further, he had the air of a successful, solid, much-respected individual. To be a cashier, though worthy, is not to be a nabob, but a bachelor can save a lot out of over twenty years of regular salary. And Mr Loggerheads had saved quite a lot. And he had had opportunities of advantageously investing his savings. Then everybody knew him, and he knew everybody. He handed out gold at least once a week to nearly half the town, and you cannot help venerating a man who makes a practice of handing out gold to you. And he had thrilled thousands with the wistful beauty of his voice in "The Sands of Dee." In a word, Simon Loggerheads was a personage, if not talkative.

They went into the drawing-room. Mary Morfe closed the door gently.

Simon Loggerheads strolled vaguely and self-consciously up to the fireplace, murmuring:

"So he's gone out?"

"Yes," said Mary Morfe, in confirmation of her first statement.

"I'm sorry!" said Simon Loggerheads. A statement which was absolutely contrary to the truth. Simon Loggerheads was deeply relieved and glad that Richard Morfe was out.

The pair, aged slightly under and slightly over forty, seemed to hover for a fraction of a second uncertainly near each other, and then, somehow, mysteriously, Simon Loggerheads had kissed Mary Morfe. She blushed. He blushed. The kiss was repeated. Mary gazed up at him. Mary could scarcely believe that he was hers. She could scarcely believe that on the previous evening he had proposed marriage to her--rather suddenly, so it seemed to her, but delightfully. She could comprehend his conduct no better than her own. They two, staid, settled-down, both of them "old maids," falling in love and behaving like lunatics! Mary, a year ago, would have been ready to prophesy that if ever Simon Loggerheads--at his age!--did marry, he would a.s.suredly marry something young, something ingenuous, something cream-and-rose, and probably something with rich parents. For twenty years Simon Loggerheads had been marked down for capture by the marriageable spinsters and widows, and the mothers with daughters, of Bursley. And he had evaded capture, despite the special temptations to which an after-dinner tenor is necessarily subject. And now Mary Morfe had caught him--caught him, moreover, without having had the slightest intention of catching him.

She was one of the most spinsterish spinsters in the Five Towns; and she had often said things about men and marriage of which the recollection now, as an affianced woman, was very disturbing to her. However, she did not care. She did not understand how Simon Loggerheads had had the wit to perceive that she would be an ideal wife. And she did not care. She did not understand how, as a result of Simon Loggerheads falling in love with her, she had fallen in love with him. And she did not care. She did not care a fig for anything. She _was_ in love with him, and he with her, and she was idiotically joyous, and so was he. And that was all.

On reflection, I have to admit that she did in fact care for one thing.

That one thing was the look on her brother's face when he should learn that she, the faithful sardonic sister, having incomprehensibly become indispensable and all in all to a bank cashier, meant to desert him. She was afraid of that look. She trembled at the fore-vision of it.

Still, Richard had to be informed, and the world had to be informed, for the silken dalliance between Mary and Simon had been conducted with a discretion and a secrecy more than characteristic of their age and dispositions. It had been arranged between the lovers that Simon should call on that Friday evening, when he would be sure to catch Richard in his easy chair, and should, in presence of Mary, bluntly communicate to Richard the blunt fact.

"What's he gone out for? Anything special?" asked Simon.

Mary explained the circ.u.mstances.

"The truth is," she finished, "that girl is just throwing herself at d.i.c.k's head. There's no doubt of it. I never saw such work!"

"Well," said Simon Loggerheads, "of course, you know, there's been a certain amount of talk about them. Some folks say that your brother--er--began--"

"And do you believe that?" demanded Mary.

"I don't know," said Simon. By which he meant diplomatically to convey that he had had a narrow escape of believing it, at any rate.