Man and Maid Part 8

Nina drew a deep breath, and said--at least she nearly said: "What a dreadful fog!"

But she stopped. That seemed a dull beginning. If she said that he would think she was commonplace, and she had that sustaining inward consciousness, mercifully vouchsafed even to the dullest of us, of being really rather nice, and not commonplace at all. But what should she say?

If she said anything about the colour of the fog and Turner or Whistler, it might be telling, but it would be of the shop shoppy. If she began about books--the _Spectator_ suggested this--she would stand as a prig confessed. If she spoke of politics she would be an ignorant impostor soon exposed. If----But Nina took out her watch and resolved: "When the little hand gets to the quarter I _will_ speak. Whatever I say, I'll say something."

And when the big hand did get to the quarter Nina did speak.

"Why shouldn't we talk?" she said.

He looked at her; and he seemed to be struggling silently with some emotion too deep for words.

"It's so silly to sit here like mutes," Nina went on hurriedly--a little frightened, now she had begun, but more than a little determined not to be frightened. "If we were at a dance we shouldn't know any more of each other than we do now--and you'd have to talk then. Why shouldn't we now?"

Then the stranger spoke, and at the first sentence Nina understood exactly what reason had decided the stranger that they should not talk.

Yet now they did. If this were a work of fiction I shouldn't dare to pretend that the train took more than two hours to get to Mill Vale. But in a plain record of fact one must speak the truth. The train took exactly two hours and fifty minutes to cover the eleven miles between London and Mill Vale. After that first question and reply Nina and the stranger talked the whole way.

He walked with her to the door of her lodging, and she offered him her hand without that moment of hesitation which would have been natural to any heroine, because she had debated the question of that handshake all the way from the station, and made up her mind just as they reached the church, a stone's throw from her home. When the door closed on her he went slowly back to the churchyard to lay his violets on a grave. Nina saw them there next day when she came out of church. She saw him too, and gave him a bow and a very small smile, and turned away quickly. The bow meant: "You see I'm not going to speak to you. You mustn't think I want to be always talking to you." The smile meant: "But you mustn't think I'm cross. I'm not--only----"

In the hot, stuffy "life-room" at the Slade next day Molly teased with ill-judged bread-crumbs an arm hopelessly ill drawn, and chattered softly to Nina, who in the Sat.u.r.day solitude had drawn her easel behind her friend's "donkey." "It's all very well here when you first come in, but when once you _are_ warm, oh dear, how warm you are! Why do models want such boiling rooms? Why can't they be soaked in alum or myrrh or something to harden their silly skins so that they won't mind a breath of decent air? And I believe the model's deformed--she certainly is from where I am. Oh, look at my arm! I ask you a little--look at the beastly thing. Foreshortened like this it looks like a fillet of veal with a pound of sausages tied on to it for a hand. Oh, my own and only Nina--save the sinking s.h.i.+p!"

"It ought to go more like _that_," Nina said with indicative brush, "and don't keep on rubbing out so fiercely. You'll get paralysed with bread--it's a disease, you know. I heard Tonks telling you so only the other day----"

"It's rather a good phrase: I wonder where he got it? He was rather nice that day," said Molly. "Oh, this arm! It's no good--I believe the model's moved--I tell you I _must_." More bread. Nina re-absorbed in her canvas. "Yours is coming well. What's the matter with you to-day? You're very mousy. Has the 'stranger who might' been scowling more than usual?

Or have you got a headache? I'm sure this atmosphere's enough to make you. Did you see him this morning? Have you fainted at his feet yet?

Has he relented in the matter of umbrellas? I'm sure he can't have pa.s.sed the whole week without some act of grumpiness."

Nina leaned back and looked through half-shut eyes at the model's beautiful form and stupid face.

"I went down in the same carriage with him on Thursday," she said slowly.

"You did? Did he rush into the third cla.s.s, where angels like himself ought to fear to tread?"

"There was a fog. Thirds all full, and seconds too. The guard bundled us both in, and the train started--and it took three or four hours to get down."

"Any one else in the carriage?"

"Not so much as a mouse."

"What _did_ you do?"

"Do? What could I do? We sat in opposite corners as far as we could get from each other, exchanging occasional glances of mutual detestation for about an hour and a half. He knocked me down and walked on me once, and took his hat off very politely and beg-pardoningly, but he never said a word. He didn't even say he thought I was the door-mat. And then some cabbages of his fell off the seat."

"Sure they weren't thistles?"

"Vegetables of some sort. And I said: 'You've dropped your----whatever they were.' And he just bowed again in a thank-you-very-much-but-I'm- sure-I-don't-know-what-business-it-is-of-yours sort of way. Do leave that bread alone."

Molly, lost in the interest of the recital, was crumbling the bread as though the floor of the life-room were the natural haunt of doves and sparrows.

"Well?" she said.

"Well?" said Nina.

"Why ever didn't you ask him to put the window up, or down, or something? I would have--just to hear if he has a voice."

"It wouldn't have been any good. He'd just have bowed again, and I'd had enough bows to last a long time. No: I just said straight out that we were a couple of idiots to sit there gaping at each other with our tongues out, and why on earth shouldn't we talk?"

"You never did!"

"Or words to that effect, anyhow. And then he said----"

A long pause.

"What?"

"He told me why he never spoke to strangers."

"What a slap in the face! You poor----"

"Oh, he didn't say it like _that_, you silly idiot. And it was quite a good reason."

"What was it?"

No answer.

"Tell me exactly what he said."

"He said, 'I--I--I----' At any rate, I'm satisfied, and I rather wish we hadn't called him pigs and beasts, and things like that."

"Well?"

"That's all."

"Aren't you going to tell me the reason? Oh, very well--you leave it to my guessing? Of course it's quite evident he's hopelessly in love with you, and never ventured to speak for fear of betraying his pa.s.sion. But, encouraged by your advances----"

"Molly, go on with that arm, and don't be a vulgar little donkey."

Molly obeyed. Presently: "Cross-patch," she said.

"I'm not," said Nina, "but I want to work, and I like you best when you're not vulgar."

"You're very rude."

"No: only candid."

Molly's wounded pride, besieged by her curiosity, held out for five minutes. Then: "Did you talk to him much?"

"Heaps."

"All the way down?"