The Quaint Companions

The bird's plumage gleamed like satin; the little creature was so confident, so fragile, so happy that the hellishness of the thing turned the man's heart sick. He flung his pipe, and the starling flew upward, saved, a second before the stone was hurled. The lad was both aggrieved and contemptuous: viewed as a missile, the pipe argued the man a fool. Then David, who burned to thrash him, explained himself with heat; but the other showed such dull amazement at his indignation, such utter lack of understanding, that wrath gave place to misery in the poet. It even seemed to him, as he moved away, that he had been unjust. A little later in the year cultured men and graceful women would also murder birds for fun. One bird, or another, with a gun, or a stone – ? To the yokel, too, his shame was "sport." The difference in the barbarism was only a difference of class.

David had had enough of the wood. Having recovered his pipe among the ferns, he made his way out, and sauntered back along the high-road. Overtaking a large sack, slung across the shoulder of a small boy, who at close quarters revealed the peaked cap and uniform of a postman, he asked to be directed to Daisymead, and learnt that he had not far to go.

It was a low white house, with stiff white curtains hanging in the windows, and full white roses climbing on the walls. The sight of it disappointed him rather, and it seemed to him to be on the wrong side of the way, though he had never preconceived its situation consciously. A flight of steps led to a white gate and a patch of front-garden wonderfully abloom – a revel of pinks and canterbury-bells, and the velvet of sweetwilliam. He gave a knock, questioning a little how to account for his application, for he saw no card with the familiar London legend, "Furnished Apartments," over the door.

It was opened by a strapping woman, drying her hands on her apron. She was not a peasant – her eyes were alert, her face was mobile; and, though she had grey hair, she bore herself erect. Her gaze widened at him; there was even a tinge of apprehension in it.

"Good morning," he said; "I'm looking for rooms – or for one room if I can't get any more. Have you any to let?"

"Y-e-s," answered the woman, hesitatingly. "Can I see them?"

"Well, I'm not quite sure," she faltered. He understood that it was his appearance that made her doubtful. "I don't know whether – Might I ask 'oo it was that recommended you?"

He pointed airily. "The postman directed me here. I've just come down from town; my luggage is at the station."

"I'm not sure whether my husband 'd care to take in any more people this year. We've got two ladies staying with us already, and If you'll wait a minute I'll see what 'e says about it."

He waited in suspense. She returned after a consultation in the kitchen, her husband with her. Though the man came fully informed of what was wanted, David felt sure that it would be necessary to begin at the beginning again, and in this he wasn't mistaken. The couple stood contemplating him curiously, waiting for him to speak.

"Good morning," he said. "I'm looking for two rooms, or for one room if I can't get any more. Have you any to let?"

"Well, we 'ave got two rooms," admitted the man.

"Can I see them?"

The householder scratched his head. "Well, I don't know," he said slowly. "My wife 'ere she's not quite sure whether she could manage with anybody else this summer. Are you, Emma? There's two ladies staying 'ere now, and it makes a bit o' work for her. Don't it, Emma? You might get a room a bit lower down, very likely. What was it you were wanting?"

"Oh, anything would suit me!" exclaimed David, with an ingratiating smile, and suppressed rage. "I'm not particular at all – only I should have liked to go to a house where I could be sure of being comfortable. Yours looks so pretty, and so clean; it's the only place I've seen round here that I should care to pay much in." He had been struggling to recall their name – trying to see it mentally in one of Bee's letters – and it flashed upon him now. "Cold meat and cleanliness, Mrs. Kemp – It is 'Mrs. Kemp,' I think?" He made her a bow. "Cold meat and cleanliness are worth more than late dinners and – er – " The sentence would not round itself; he forced another smile for climax.

"You might eat off any floor in this 'ouse!" she declared, deciding he was human.

"I'm sure you might," he replied. "In London we don't often see a house like it, I can tell you!"

"You've not been in London long, I suppose?" she said. "You come from abroad, don't you?"

"No, I've lived in London all my life – my business is there. That's why I go to the country when I get a holiday."

"Ah," said Mr. Kemp reflectively, "it's a great place, London – room for all sorts in it!"

"Yes," said David. "What lovely roses you have, Mrs. Kemp, and how sweet the pinks smell! What flowers are those in the corner – the high, purple flowers against the wall?"

"Them?" she said. "Lor! I'm a poor one at flowers. What do you call 'em, John?"

"I dunno," said John.

"Well, I don't wonder you think twice about taking lodgers, but I" – he laughed feebly – "I'm a very honest person; I wouldn't steal so much as a leaf."

There was a pause. They all looked at one another.

"What do you say, John?" she murmured. "We might manage to take the young man in, perhaps, eh?"

"You won't find me any trouble if you do. You'll give me a first-rate character when I leave you!" cried David with geniality that exhausted him.

"About rent," said Mr. Kemp. "What did you think of paying?"

"What do you want?"

The couple exchanged anxious glances. Mr. Kemp breathed heavily.

"Well, we have had as much as a pound for those two rooms, for a lady and three children through the summer," he said.

"Of course," added the woman, "for only one person – "

"Call it a pound!" said David, whipping out his purse. "And I suppose it's fairest to pay in advance. My name is Tremlett. I'll just look round, and then I'll go to the station, and get my bag."

And so it was accomplished. The same roof sheltered him and Her! He smiled now naturally in savouring the fact. His little sitting-room was at the back, overlooking the cabbages and a red, rose-bordered path that led to the hennery and the field. Its old-fashioned shabbiness was not without a charm, and, having yielded consent, Mrs. Kemp adopted a solicitous manner with a strong flavour of wondering compassion in it. She still seemed to him in moments to be marvelling silently that he was able to talk her language. When he came in from the station he found that she had brightened his table with a bowl of poppies and elder-blossom. Gathering the poppies had robbed them of their sprightliness, and they hung shrivelled, like pricked airballs, but the delicacy of the elder-blossom was exquisite, and he liked the tone of what she called the old "crock." Because wild-flowers pleased him less in his coat than anywhere else, he put those that he was wearing into a mug preserved on the mantelshelf. On the front of the mug he saw a view described as "Rickmansworth Church from the East," and on the base he saw the inscription "Made in Germany."

His mind began to misgive him about the sister – perhaps she would prove a dragon, in the way? He half hoped that Mrs. Kemp would let fall some particulars when she brought in his chop. She said nothing to the point, however, nor did he hear any voice about the premises to wake sensations. When his dinner was eaten he went out to the path, and threw eager-glances round the field; but the two chairs under the trees were empty, and there was nobody in sight; so he came back and smoked a pipe on the sofa.

A young girl entered with his tea; he judged her rightly to be the Kemps' daughter. She evidently came to ascertain how a mulatto looked, and she was not disinclined to hear one talk. He felt that he was enlarging his circle of acquaintances amazingly; in a day here he had spoken to more people than he addressed at home in a month. From Miss Kemp he learnt in conversation that she had just been getting tea ready for "the ladies" too. She coupled the information with a reference to "one pair of hands"; he waited for her to add the companion phrase about "her head never saving her legs," but she did not.

She was a nice girl, and not uneducated, though she did say "one pair of hands" when she meant "one person"; and when he bewailed the fact that it had begun to rain, and she brought him some novels to pass the time, he was surprised to find what novels she read. However, they entertained him very little. His soul was divided between dejection at the weather and gratitude for her kindness. He was so unused to kindness that the landlady's daughter offering to lend him books seemed to him a tender and a touching thing. The chairs had been brought indoors; the rain rattled on the laurels, and strewed the petals of the roses on the path. Through the long twilight a pair of heavy hands in a neighbouring cottage laboured a hymn – the village pianist always chooses hymns – with mournful persistence. David stood at the window, recognising despondently that "the ladies" would remain in their parlour all the evening. The field of his expectations would be void and profitless – it might even be too wet for them to-morrow.

CHAPTER XVII

But it was not. When he woke, the day was radiant. A guileless sky denied its misdemeanour merrily. Mrs. Kemp, in clattering the china, asked him "how he lay last night." He thanked her, and took a mental note of the locution, inquiring in his turn when the rain had ceased. For answer she snorted "Rain?" and frowned reproof at the sunshine, and he attributed her manner to crops.

His pouch was empty. She told him that tobacco could be obtained at the grocer's; so he went across the road presently and bought some at a little shop that proclaimed itself "Renowned for its breakfast-eggs," and "Celebrated for its bacon." As he came out, a woman passed him, laden with a canvas, and a sketching box, a camp-stool, and what looked like a bunch of rods. She was pale and slight. He saw that she was deformed as he hurried by. He didn't take much notice of her.

A chair had been put back in the shade of the boughs, and he waited feverishly where it was well in view. Soon a girl strolled down the path between the roses. She wore a white frock, and had a book in her hand. Her face dazzled him; his heart leapt to greet her. She entered the field, and sat down under the tree. The photograph had come to life. He leant, gazing at her, unnoticed.

CHAPTER XVIII

This was the event of his second day here. This was all. He had seen her; the knowledge sang in his senses. Momentarily he felt that if his visit yielded no more, it would have been bountiful enough. When her glance lighted on him, he read her thought in it, and drew back ashamed. He turned away ashamed, and afraid of seeming to intrude. In town he had dared to picture himself sitting near her, watching her movements, breaking the ice. In Godstone self-consciousness confounded him. She appeared to him unapproachable; he had even been humiliated by her look.

Hilda said to Bee that afternoon: "There's another lodger here; he's a nigger – or something of the sort. Isn't it a nuisance? I wonder the Kemps take that kind of people in, with us in the house!"

"Oh, is he staying here?" said Bee; "I saw him coming out of Peters'. Perhaps he is only down for the week-end. I don't suppose he'll be in our way. If he does make himself objectionable, you had better come out with me in the morning while he stops."

"I think I could keep him at a distance without that," returned Hilda scornfully. "Besides, he would never have the impudence. What horrid luck, though! If it had been a man come to stay here now, it would have been rather nice."

But they had no reason to complain of his being "in their way"; the new lodger did not attempt to scrape acquaintance with them, although in the next two days they often passed him, idling in the garden, or sauntering along the road. He refrained so punctiliously from staring at them, that they were able to steal a few glances themselves. Bee observed that he looked unhappy, and was fond of flowers; and Hilda remarked that he wore a well-cut suit, and had a nice taste in neckties. "Evidently not a common 'nigger,'" she said; "a medical student, or something!" She was not concerned, though it was clear that he had come for longer than the week-end.

On Tuesday she was obliged to acknowledge his existence. It was a stupid incident – to happen with a "nigger." It might as easily have happened with somebody worth meeting; say, with one of the young men who bowled into the station-yard in dog-carts and looked as if they wished they knew her. She had gone out to get a daily paper, and the lodger was in the shop buying foolscap. She was told that the last of the newspapers had just been sold to him. As soon as he heard that, he stammered something about "not depriving" her of it. He stood before her with his straw-hat in one hand, and the paper extended in the other. She thanked him, but said that it really had no interest for her at all. He persisted. She was firm – and left him overwhelmed by his gaucherie in not persuading her to take it.

Ten minutes later – Mrs. Kemp to Miss Hilda Sorrenford: "Mr. Tremlett has done with this paper, so 'e says you can 'ave it now if you like."

Miss Hilda Sorrenford, understanding that the message has suffered in delivery: "Tell Mr. Tremlett I am much obliged to him." And in the evening, when she saw him in the garden, she bowed and said that she thought the weather was a little cooler.

David went back to his foolscap, having discovered that it is sometimes much easier to write poetry about a girl than to talk to her. And already he was reconciled to her voice because it was hers.

Prose was still a crutch that he couldn't afford to drop, and he had hoped to transfer some of an essay from his head to the foolscap by bedtime. His subject was before him, nothing less than an acorn, sprouting a slender stem and a handful of leaves, in a tumbler of water. Spying it in the woods, he had brought it home, and given it honour, to Mrs. Kemp's diversion. He had enthroned it on the table, that little acorn bursting with the ambition to be a tree, and as he sat wondering at it, the slip of a stalk had grown to be gnarled and old, and the bunch of leaves had towered above the centuries. Children came to play beneath it who were chided for forgetting whether Elizabeth or Victoria had reigned first over England in the long ago, and generations of lovers had flitted past its shade, prattling of eternity. The story of the acorn had clamoured in him to be written, but now he was too excited and unhappy to work. Besides, how could he say it all in two or three thousand words? It asked to be a book.

How clumsy he had been in the shop, stuttering and blundering like a schoolboy; how absurd in the garden, with his fatuous mono-syllable! Why couldn't he disguise his shyness? he had disguised it well enough from the landlady when he paid her compliments on the doorstep; nobody would have suspected how turbulent his nerves were then. At the time he had been proud of his fluency – are not shy people always proud of being fluent, even when they hear themselves saying things they don't mean? – now he remembered it wistfully, jealous of himself. And his letters! his letters mocked him. To write to a girl like that, and be tongue-tied in her presence. The thing was laughable.

But he had learnt her name at last, for when he made Mrs. Kemp his messenger, she had said: "Oh! you mean Miss 'Ilda."

Estimated by emotion it was ages before it happened, before their relations advanced beyond "good-morning," or "good-evening," with a platitude dropped in passing, and a commonplace returned with the lifting of his hat. Yes, estimated by emotion it was ages before it happened, but according to the almanac he had been here exactly nine days. She was under the same tree, in the same chair. He had seen her settle herself there half an hour ago, and for half an hour he had been questioning how she would receive him if he joined her. What should he say first; could he give to the indulgence a sufficiently casual air; in fine, what sort of figure would he cut?

He ruffled his manuscript irresolutely. In a yard close by somebody was hammering at a fence. It appeared to him that somebody began to hammer at a fence as often as he tried to work. There was no possibility of his writing even if he made another attempt, and inclination pulled him hard towards the field. He gathered the papers up, and put them cautiously away, as a criminal removes clues.

When he gained the path, she had risen from the chair, and was running bareheaded in his direction. He did not for an instant see more than that, more than that she was running; and he wondered. Then he saw her face, and her voice reached him, and he realised that she was running for help.

So they ran towards each other for five, perhaps ten seconds, she as if pursued, and he seeking the cause.

"A wasp," she panted, "in my hair! A wasp! Get it out!"

"A wasp?" Why must one always echo in emergencies? He called himself a fool. "Don't be frightened. Keep still. I'll get it out in a minute."

"Quick, quick!" she said, pulling at her hair frantically; "I shall go mad!"

"Keep still," he repeated. "Take your hands down – it'll sting you."

He could hear the angry buzzing of the thing, but it was entangled, hidden, and her hair dizzied him. She found the diffidence of his touches exasperating.

"Take the pins out," she cried; "yes, yes, take them out. Oh! not like that, be quick!"

Her impatience showed his breathlessness the way. He fought reverence down, and tore them out as fast as she. Her hair rained over his hands, and swept his arms. The wasp gave a last buzz venomously. "Oh, thank you so much! I hope, I do hope, you aren't stung?" she said.

"Stung?" He was faint, shaken by a hurricane of new and strange emotion. "It's all right, thanks."

"I've given you a lot of trouble," she said apologetically. "It was silly of me to make such a fuss, I suppose; but I can't tell you what it felt like."

"I can imagine."

"I've always been afraid it would happen one day; the place swarms with them, doesn't it?"

"They come from the shops across the road," he said.

He was being stupid; he felt it. His little minute of authority was over, and he was self-conscious again.

She began to pick up the hairpins from the grass. David stooped too. As she looked at his hands she thought of the service they had rendered, and shuddered slightly. Absorbed, he watched her lift her hair, and twist it in a hasty coil, and stab it thrice with unconcern. In "The People of the Dream Street" there is a line that was born at this moment, though it was not written till long afterwards.

"You have been staying here for some time, haven't you?" he blurted.

"Yes, nearly a month," she said.

"How pretty it is!"

"Isn't it? We came here for my sister's work – she paints, you know."

"Yes, I know; I saw her before I saw you, though I didn't know she was your sister then. She seems to work hard – I mean she is out a great deal."

"Yes, it's just the sort of country she likes; I think she's sorry we're going. She talks about coming back in the autumn to make some more studies here."

"You're going?" he said blankly. "Are you? When?"

"Our month is up the day after to-morrow; we only came for a month."

There was the slightest pause, while he cursed himself for wasted weeks.

"And you," he asked, "do you paint too?"

"I? Oh no." She smiled her foolish smile, complacent in the consciousness of youth and a profile. His eyes allayed her misgivings about her hair. "I don't do anything; I'm quite ordinary," she said.

David smiled with her. There was a fascination in pretending to know nothing of her mind when he believed he knew so much.

"It's original to be ordinary now that everybody is a genius."

"Is everybody a genius?" She looked a shade vacant. "Perhaps you live in London? Our home is in Beckenhampton; in the provinces, I am afraid, we are rather out of it."

"Oh, one can be quite as much out of it in London. What can be more 'provincial' than the life of the average Londoner? He goes to his business after breakfast, and he goes back to his villa after tea. The few friends he makes are, naturally, in the same groove, and talk about the same things. Why," he went on, overjoyed to have found his tongue, "he has no more acquaintance with artistic London, or political London, or fashionable London than the people with businesses and villas in the other towns. I don't understand the average Londoner's idea that, because his own particular hencoop is in the capital, he must have a wider range of vision than all the other hens in the kingdom; I don't know what it's based on. One would suppose that the sight of the General Post Office from the top of a bus every day converted people into a kind of intellectual aristocracy. The suburbs snigger at the provinces, and Bloomsbury sneers at the suburbs, and the truth is that, outside a few exclusive circles, Londoners get all their knowledge of London from the newspapers – which the provincials are reading at the same time."

She was not interested in the subject; it struck her only as a strange one for him to discuss.

"I suppose so," she said. "Still in London one sees things and one can get books to read. It's as difficult to get a new book in Beckenhampton as it is to get cream in the country."

"Is that difficult?" he asked, thinking of Keats's "tight little fairy."

"Oh, you don't know the country very well. Try! They look at you amazed when you ask for it." She laughed. "Last year when we went away we took a new American tinned thing in the shape of a breakfast food with us. I forget what it was called; a sort of porridge. They told you on the tin that it was to be eaten with cream. Carelessly, 'cream'! I believe in America cream isn't a curiosity. Our efforts to get threepennyworth! There was only one place for miles round where there was the slightest chance of it – a dairy belonging to a great lady who supplied the public with milk as a favour. I don't mean that she didn't take their money, but that the customers had to call for the milk and carry it away. We used to go there two or three times a week and kow-tow to a consequential dairy woman. We almost thought at first she must be the great lady, but when she accepted our tips we concluded she wasn't. She unbent so far as to promise 'to try to manage it for us one morning.' After about a fortnight we reckoned it would have cost us two shillings by the time it was 'managed.' I daresay it would have cost more, but we decided that we couldn't afford the price of threepennyworth of cream in the country, and we never got any. I can't say I'm very fond of the country on the whole."

"Why, I imagined you loved it. That is" – he corrected himself hastily – "you've the air of being so contented out here."

"Have I? Oh, I do gush about it sometimes, but" – she shrugged her shoulders – "country walks are rather tiresome after you've got used to them, don't you think so?"

He hesitated. "I think they must have been pleasanter before bicycles were invented," he said; "it's difficult to enjoy a stroll along a country lane when you have to keep skipping into a hedge to save yourself from being cut in halves. Men who drive realise their responsibility, but every counter-jumper seems to ride a bicycle, and the cad in power is always dangerous. The most exasperating thing about the country to me is the blindness and deafness of the people to all the beauties round them. I'll except Mr. Kemp because I've discovered that he notices the birds – they steal his grain, and he shoots them – but I've been trying to learn the names of the wild-flowers ever since I've been here, and it's impossible; one might as well inquire at Bethnal Green."

"I didn't know that," she said; "I haven't tried to find out. But certainly everybody is very stupid."

There was a moment's silence. His glance wandered, and reverted to her. She made a delightful picture; she was as lovely a philistine as ever looked to the main chance with the gaze of a goddess, and for him she had the magic of letters that she had never written, the seduction of thoughts that she had never known. He would not admit to himself that a shade of disappointment was clouding his mood.