The Foolish Lovers Part 49

"But I don't love you," she burst out.

"Well, mebbe you don't. That's understandable!" he admitted.

"And the whole thing's so unusual," she protested.

"What does that matter? If I love you and you get to love me, does it matter about anything else? Have wit, woman, have wit!"

"Don't speak to me like that. You're very abrupt, Mr. MacDermott!..."

"My name's John to you! Now, don't flare up again. You were nice and amenable a minute ago. You can stop like that. You and me are going to marry some time. The sooner the better. All I want you to do now, as you say you don't love me, is to give me a chance to make you love me.

Come out with me for a walk ... or we'll go to a theatre, if you like!

Anyway, let's be friends. I don't know anybody in this town except one man, and him and me's had a row over the head of the _Daily Sensation!_..." "Yes," she interrupted, "you've lost your work through your foolishness. What are you going to do now? It isn't very easy to get work." "I'll get it all right if I want it, I've enough money to keep me easy for a year without doing a hand's turn, and I daresay my mother and my Uncle William 'ud let me have more if I wanted it. I don't want to be on a paper much. I want to write books!" Her interest was restored. "Tell me about the book you've written. Is it printed yet?" she said. He told her of his work, and of the Creams and of Hinde. He told her, too, of his life in Ballyards. "Where do you come from?" he said. "Devons.h.i.+re," she answered. "My father was rector of a village there until he died. Then mother and I lived in Exeter until she died!..." "You're alone then?" he asked. "Yes. My mother had an annuity. That stopped when she died. My cousin ... he's a doctor in Exeter ... settled up her affairs for me, and when everything was arranged, there was just enough money to pay for my secretarial training and keep me for a year. I trained for six months and then I went as a stop-gap to that office where you saw me. I'm in an office in Long Acre now--a motor place!" "And have you no friends here--relations, I mean?" "Some cousins. I don't often see them. And one or two people who knew father and mother!" "You're really alone then ...

like me?" he said. "Yes," she answered. "Yes, I suppose I am!" He leant back in his chair. "It seems like the hand of G.o.d," he said, "bringing the two of us together!" "I wish," she said, "you wouldn't talk about G.o.d so much!"

III

When he went home that evening, he wrote to his mother. _Dear Mother_, he wrote, _I've got acquainted with a girl here called Eleanor Moore, and I've made up my mind I'm going to marry her. She's greatly against it at present, but I daresay she'll change her mind_.... There was more than that in the letter, but it is not necessary to repeat the remainder of it here. He also wrote to Eleanor.

_My dearest_, the letter ran, _I'm looking forward to meeting you again tomorrow night at the same place. I know you said you wouldn't meet me, but I'm hoping you'll change your mind. I'll be waiting for you anyway, and I'll wait till seven o'clock for you.

Remember that, Eleanor! If you don't turn up, it'll be hard for you to sit in comfort and you thinking of me waiting for you. You'll never have the heart to refuse me, will you? We can have our tea together, and then go for a walk or a ride on a 'bus till dinner-time, and then, if you like, after we've had something to eat, we'll go to a theatre.

Don't disappoint me, for I'm terribly in love with you. Yours only, John MacDermott. P. S. Don't be any later than you can help. I hate waiting about for people._

IV

She came, reluctantly so she said, to the bookstall at Charing Cross station, but only to tell him that she could not do as he wished her to do. She would take tea with him for this once, but it was useless to ask her to go for a walk with him or for a 'bus-ride either, and she certainly would not dine with him nor would she go to a theatre. Yet she went for a walk on the Embankment with him, and they paced up and down so long that she saw the force of his argument that she might as well have her dinner in town as go back to her club where the food would be tepid, if not actually cold, by the time she was ready to eat it. She need not go to a theatre unless she wished to do, but he could not help telling her that a great deal of praise had been given to a piece called _Justice_ by a man called Galsworthy.

Mebbe she would like to see it. She was not to imagine that he was forcing her to go to the theatre.... And so she went, and they sat together in the pit, hearing with difficulty because of the horrible acoustics of the Duke of York's Theatre; and when the play was over, he had to comfort her, for the fate of Falder had pained her. They climbed on to the top of a 'bus at Oxford Circus and were carried along Oxford Street to the Bayswater Road. They sat close together on the back seat of the 'bus, with a waterproofed ap.r.o.n over their knees because the night was damp and chilly; and as the 'bus drove along to Marble Arch they did not speak. The rain had ceased to fall before they quitted the theatre, but the streets were still wet, and John found himself again realising their beauty. Trees and hills and rivers in the country and flowers and young animals were beautiful, but until this moment he had never known that wet pavements and wooden or macadamised roads were beautiful, too, when the lamps were lit and the cold grey gleam of electric arcs or the soft, yellow, reluctant light of gas lamps fell upon them. He could see a long wet gleam stretching far ahead of him, past the Marble Arch and the darkness of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens into a region of which he knew nothing; and as he contemplated that loveliness, he remembered that the sight of tramlines s.h.i.+ning at night had unaccountably moved him more than once. Once, at Ballyards, he had stood still for a few moments to look at the railway track glistening in the suns.h.i.+ne, and he remembered how puzzled he had been when, in some magazine, he had read a complaint of trains, that they marred the beauty of the fields. He had seen trains a long way off, moving towards him and sending up puffs of thick white smoke that trailed into thin strips of blown cloud, and had waited until the silence of the distant engine, broken once or twice by a shrill, sharp whistle, had become a stupendous noise, and the great machine, masterfully hauling its carriages behind it, had galloped past him, roaring and cheering and sending the debris swirling tempestuously about it! ... The sight of a train going at a great speed had always seemed to him to be a wonderful thing, but now he realised that it was more than wonderful, that it was actually beautiful.... He turned his head a little and looked past Eleanor to the Park. Little vague yellow lights flickered through the trees, all filmy with the evening mists, and he could smell the rich odour of wet earth. He looked at Eleanor and as he did so, they both smiled, and he realised that suddenly affection for him had come to life in her. Beneath the protection of the waterproofed ap.r.o.n, his hand sought for hers and held it. Half-heartedly she tried to withdraw her fingers from his grasp, but he would not let them go, and so she did not persist in her effort.

"Look!" he said, snuggling closer to her.

She turned towards the Park, and then, after a little while, turned back again. "I've always loved the Park," she said. "It's the most friendly thing in London!"

He urged his love for her again. He had seen affection for him in her eyes and had felt that her hand was not being firmly withdrawn from his.

"No, no," she protested, "don't let's talk about it any more. I don't love you!..."

"Well, marry me anyhow!"

Backwards and forwards their arguments pa.s.sed, returning always to that point: _But I don't love you! Well, marry me anyhow!..._

He took her to the door of her club, and for a while, they stood at the foot of the steps talking of the play they had seen that evening and of his love for her.

"It's no good," she said, trying to leave him, but unable to do so because he had taken hold of her hand and would not release it.

"Don't go in yet," he pleaded. "Wait a wee while longer!"

"What's the use?" she exclaimed.

"You'll meet me again to-morrow?..."

"I can't meet you _every _night!"

"Why not?" he demanded. "Tell me why not!"

"Well... well, because I can't. It's ridiculous. You're so absurd. You keep on saying the same thing over and over... and it's so silly. If I were in love with you, I might go out with you every evening, but!..."

"Do you like me!"

"I don't know. I... I suppose I must or I wouldn't go out with you at all. Really, I'm sorry for you!..."

"Well, if you're sorry for me, come out with me tomorrow night. We'll have our dinner in town again!"

"No, no! Don't you understand, Mr. MacDermott!..."

"John, John, John!" he said.

"I can't call you by your Christian name!..."

"Why not? I call you by yours, don't I?"

"Yes, but you oughtn't to. I've asked you not to call me Eleanor, but it doesn't seem to be any good asking you to do anything that you don't want to do. But even you must understand that I can't let you take me out every evening. I can't let you pay for things!..."

"Oh," he said, as if his mind were illuminated. "Is that your trouble?

We can soon settle that. If you won't let me pay for things, pay for them yourself ... only let me be with you when you're doing it. You have to have food, haven't you? Well, so have I. We have no friends in London that matter to us, and you like me ... you admitted it yourself ... and I love you ... so why shouldn't we have our meals together even, if you do pay for your own food?"

"Of course, it sounds all right as you put it," she answered, "but it isn't all right. I can't explain things. I don't know how to explain them, but I know about them all the same. And I know it isn't all right. You'll begin to think I'm in love with you!..."

"I hope you will be, but you'll never be certain unless you see me fair and often. You'll come again to-morrow, won't you?"

"Oh, good-night," she said impatiently, suddenly breaking from him.

"You're like a baby. You think you've only got to keep on asking for things and people will get tired of saying 'No!' I won't go out with you again. You make me feel tired and cross!..."

"Well, if you won't meet me to-morrow night, will you meet me the next night?"

"No!"

"Then will you stay a wee while longer now?"

She turned on the top step and looked at him, and he saw with joy that the anger had gone out of her eyes and that she was smiling at him.

"You really are!..." she said, and then she stopped. He waited for her to go on, but she shrugged her shoulders and said only, "I don't know!

It simply isn't any good talking to you!"

He went up the steps and stood beside her and took hold of her hand.

"Let me kiss you, Eleanor," he said.

She started away from him. "No, of course I won't!"

"Just once!"