The Foolish Lovers Part 65

"What's the matter!"

"I don't know. At least I ... Oh, I don't know. It may only be imagination!"

He sat down beside her. "Imagination!..." She looked at him very steadily, and he found himself remembering how beautiful he had thought her eyes were that day when he saw her for the first time. They were still very beautiful.

"I'm not sure," she said. "I don't know ... but I ... I think I'm going to have a baby!"

"Holy Smoke!"

"I don't know. I feel so stupid!..."

She had been smiling while she was telling this to him, but now she dismayed him by bursting into tears.

"Eleanor!" he exclaimed, not knowing what to say or to do, and she let herself subside into his arms and lay there, half laughing and half crying.

"I'm being a ... frightful ... fool," she said between sobs, "but I ...

I can't help it!"

They sat together until the dusk had turned to darkness, holding each other and whispering explanations and hopes and fears. A queer sense of responsibility settled upon John, a feeling that he must bear burdens and be glad to bear them. Eleanor seemed to him now to be a very fragile and timid creature, turning instinctively to him for care and protection. Immeasureable love for her surged in his heart. This very dear and gentle girl, so full of courage and yet so full of alarm, had become inexpressibly precious to him. She had come to him in doubt and had entrusted her life to him, not certain that she cared for him sufficiently to be entirely happy with him. He had tried to make her happy, and slowly he had seen her liking for him growing into some sort of affection. Perhaps now she loved him as he loved her. Soon she would be the mother of a child ... his child!... How very extraordinary it seemed! A few months ago, Eleanor and he had been strangers to each other ... and now she was about to bear a child to him!

"I must work hard," he said to himself, and then to her, "Of course, you can't go back to Mr. Crawford. I'll write to my mother and tell her!"

He remembered the commission from Hinde, and while he was telling her of it, the postman delivered a letter from the Herald in which was the invitation card for the ceremony in Westminster Abbey.

She examined it with interest. "But it says Morning Dress must be worn," she exclaimed, pointing to the notice in the corner of the card.

"You haven't got any Morning Dress!"

"Do you think it'll matter?"

"They may not let you in if you go as you are now. You haven't even a silk hat!"

"What shall I do then?" he asked.

"We must think of something. Perhaps Mrs. Townley's husband would lend you his silk hat!" The Townleys were their neighbours. "He hardly ever wears it, and he's about your size!"

"I shouldn't like to ask them!..."

"Oh, I'll ask them all right," Eleanor said.

She left the flat and crossed the staircase to the door of the Townleys' flat, and after a little while, she returned carrying a silk hat that was much in need of ironing.

"She lent it quite willingly," Eleanor said. "She says Mr. Townley's only used it twice. Once when they were married and once at a funeral.

Put it on!" She fixed it on his head. "It doesn't quite fit," she said.

"Perhaps if I were to put some paper inside the band, that would make it sit better!"

She lined the hat with, tissue paper and then, put it on his head again. "That's a lot better," she exclaimed. "Look at yourself in the gla.s.s!"

"I feel an awful fool in it," he murmured, glancing at his reflection in the mirror.

"Oh, well, I suppose all men do feel like fools when they put on silk hats ... at first anyhow ... but it isn't any worse than a bowler hat or one of those awful squash-hats that Socialists wear. Men's hats are hideous whatever shape they are. I don't know what we're to do about a morning coat for you. I didn't like to ask Mrs. Townley to lend her husband's to me!..."

"Good Lord, no! You can't borrow the man's entire wardrobe from him!"

"Your grey flannel trousers might look like ordinary trousers, if we could get a morning-coat for you!" She paused as if she were reflecting on the problem. "I know," she said at last. "It's sure to rain, in the morning. King George is going to the thing, so it's sure to rain. Wear your overcoat ... then you won't need a morning coat ... and the silk hat and your grey flannel trousers and your patent leather boots!..."

"It's a bit of a mixture, isn't it?"

"It won't be noticed. That'll do very nicely! Thank goodness, we've solved that problem! The money will be useful, dearest!"

V

"What luck!" said Eleanor, looking out of the window in the morning.

The sky was grey and the streets were wet and dirty.

John had urged her to stay at home, offering to explain to Mr. Crawford why she was not returning to her employment, but she had insisted that she was well enough now and must treat Mr. Crawford as fairly as he had treated her. "I'll give notice to him at once," she said, "and he can get someone else as soon as possible ... but I can't leave him in the lurch!"

They travelled by Tube to town together, and John went on to Westminster Abbey. He was very early and when he arrived at the entrance nominated on the Invitation Card he found that he was the first arrival. Ten minutes afterwards, a grubby-looking man in a slouch hat ambled up the asphalt path to the narrow door against which John was leaning. "Good morning!" John said, glancing at the slouch hat and the shabby reefer coat and the brown boots. "Have you come to do this ceremony, too?" The man nodded his head. He was very uncommunicative and had a surly look. "But they won't let you in, like that!" said John.

"Won't let me in! Who won't let me in?" the man demanded.

"It says 'Morning Dress to be worn' on the Invitation Card," John answered, showing his card as he spoke.

"That's all bunk.u.m! They'd let me in if I were naked. I'm here to report the performance, not to display my elegance, and these people want the thing reported as much as possible. I don't suppose you know me?"

"No, I don't," said John.

"Well, I'm known as the Funeral Expert in Fleet Street. My paper always sends me out on special occasions to report big funerals. I'm very good at that sort of thing. I seem to have a flair for funerals somehow.

I've never done a show like this before, but if I can only persuade myself to believe that there's a corpse about, I'll do it better than anybody else. I make a specialty of quoting the more literary parts of the Burial Service in my reports!..."

"You won't be able to do that to-day. This isn't a funeral," said John.

"No, but I can quote the hymns if they've got any merit at all.

Otherwise I shall drag in the psalms. Hymns aren't very quotable as a rule. Shocking doggerel most of 'em!..."

They were joined by other reporters, and John observed that he alone among them was wearing a silk hat. He commented on the fact to the Funeral Expert.

"There's only one silk hat in the whole of Fleet Street," the Funeral Expert replied, "and it belongs to the man who specialises in Murders.

He never investigates a murder without wearing his silk hat. He says it's in keeping with the theme!"

The door was opened by a verger and the journalists entered the Abbey and were led up some very narrow and dark and damp stone stairs until at last they emerged on to a rude platform of planks high up in the roof. At one end of the platform a pole had been placed breast-high between two pillars, and against this the journalists were invited to lean. Far below, the ceremony was to take place. John felt giddy as he looked down on the floor of the Cathedral.

"We shan't be able to see anything up here," he said to the Funeral Expert.

"What do you want to see?" was the reply he received. "You've got a programme of the ceremony, haven't you, and an imagination. That's all you need. I suppose you've never done a job of this sort before?"

"No. I'm a beginner!"