The Eye of Love Page 13

  It was actually to be the sixteenth. Harry Gibson too in his diary had drawn a thick black line, only with more precision.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  1

  Whether Miranda would still have insisted on six bridesmaids, if Mr Joyce hadn’t turned down her plea for a separate establishment, must remain in doubt. She did insist. Strong in Harry’s moral support—intoxicated with the new-found pleasures of friendship—Mr Joyce had been obdurate. So was Miranda now obdurate. She got her way. The result was to bring the wedding as it were much closer, and consequently again to reanimate Harry Gibson in his original, proper character of Miranda’s fiancé, not her father’s sidekick.

  No longer, after dinner, were the two allowed to sit peacefully swapping their papers while Miranda played the piano. Reinforcements of femininity invaded the Knightsbridge flat. Bridesmaids dropped in almost every evening, often bringing their mothers, to finger patterns and discuss styles, debate coronals against Dutch bonnets, nosegays against flower-baskets. (All flowers, for a December wedding, Miranda reminded her Dadda pointedly, would have to be grown. Specially, under glass. Or perhaps flown in from somewhere. What an expense!—but he and Harry would have December …) Marion and Rachel and Denise turned up, whom Mr Gibson could never tell part, also three other maidens less identifiable still—but not the plump brunette with the big diamond, she being already united to her Bobby. (Harry Gibson vaguely regretted her. He remembered her sympathetic glance as a drop of dew in the furnace of the engagement-party.) They were all, moreover, the daughters, and their mothers the wives, of Mr Joyce’s business associates, which made it difficult for him to turn his back on them; only rarely could he and Harry shut themselves up in the study, with the port …

  “Chin-chin,” said Mr Joyce gloomily.

  “Have they even settled on a colour yet?” groaned Harry Gibson.

  “Six young ladies, and six mammas, choosing one dress to suit all six, how should they settle on anything?—Fill your glass, Harry boy,” said Mr Joyce.

  It was perhaps fortunate they were never long uninterrupted: the study had begun to take on rather the character of a speakeasy—one drank up while one could. But sooner rather than later Miranda always ferreted them out, to look at a new pattern of lace brought in by Denise or Marion, or because Mrs Conrad was there, or Madame Grandjean. (They spread over the week with diabolical punctuality, as though on a roster.) And how they chattered! All at once, like a cage of starlings. Even old Mrs Gibson complained at last, asking were they never to have a quiet evening again; and openly encouraged Harry to rebel.

  “What a thing to say, but Miranda will make us all sick of her wedding!” cried Mrs Gibson. “If you do not go so often no one will blame you at all! I have a good mind not to go so often myself!”

  A month or two earlier Harry would have jumped at the absolution; it astonished his mother that he didn’t now. Indeed he longed to. Only loyalty took him back, night after night, into the millinery inferno. But there was a silent appeal in his friend’s eye, a touching gratitude in Mr Joyce’s nightly welcome, which he couldn’t find it in his heart to disappoint.

  “It has to be,” said Mr Joyce, trying for philosophy. “All women are like this before a wedding. Fill your glass, Harry boy.”

  2

  “Would you mind,” asked Martha of Mr Punshon, “if I kept these here?”

  She had her arms full—of drawing-blocks, of boxes of charcoal and boxes of sanguin chalks. Martha had begun to be anxious lest this hoard should be discovered: Dolores rarely entered the attic, which Martha was supposed to keep tidy herself, and when she did wasn’t likely to look under the bed (not being that sort of house-keeper); but someone else, Martha fancied, someone more inquisitive, had been in behind her back. Returning after a Sunday morning in the Gardens, she found her three-legged stool a little displaced: the row of jam-pots on her window-sill, from which last summer’s brew of nasturtium-tonic had long evaporated, just out of alignment—the largest perhaps no more than picked up and set down again; but Martha had a very accurate eye. Mr Phillips, taking a look round the accommodation, believed himself to have left no trace; Martha’s only uncertainty was how to safeguard her supplies in case he came noseying again. After some deliberation, she tore off a sheet or two from each block for current use, hid them under the lining-paper of a drawer, and smuggled the rest round to Mr Punshon’s.

  “They won’t take up much room,” added Martha, unloading, “and if you give me a newspaper I’ll wrap them up out of your way.”

  Mr Punshon examined the pile on his bench with more interest than she welcomed. He appeared quite struck.

  “Good quality,” said Mr Punshon, running his waxy thumb over the topmost block. “That’s worth a bit, that paper is. Chalks in boxes, too. You never bought this little lot out of my two bobs.”

  Martha couldn’t think what explanation to offer, so she offered none, and her silence gave rise to a slight misunderstanding.

  “And you don’t want to keep ’em at home,” mused Mr Punshon. He looked at Martha thoughtfully. “You’ve not been in for a bit of shop-lifting, have you?”

  Martha didn’t tell him the truth, of course, but she managed to convince him, by the extreme earnestness of her denials, that he wasn’t being put in the position of a receiver of stolen goods. (Mr Punshon was ready to do much for Martha, but there he drew the line.) “All right, stow ’em under the Readies,” agreed Mr Punshon at last—and to make amends for his suspicion offered her a dekko at his album of cartoons.

  Martha accepted from reciprocal courtesy. Her friend’s collection, like the Chinese landscapes at the Free Library, had lost their attraction for her. They had hard outlines, but they were too bitty … Even as she turned the pages, Martha’s free hand reached desirously to a stick of charcoal, a stick of sanguin. She had just learnt not to snap them, and as the thick black or red line marched firmly over the paper, experienced such ecstasy that sometimes she forgot to breathe and nearly burst.

  She also forgot to wash.

  “Dirty hands again!” noted Mr Phillips regretfully. “What a dirty little girl!”

  “I’m not,” said Martha.

  “I seem to have heard that before,” said Mr Phillips, with his patient smile. “Your thumb’s quite black.”

  “It’s my skin,” lied Martha wildly.

  “I wonder your Auntie doesn’t give you a smack,” said Mr Phillips. “Telling stories as well!”

  It was said in Miss Diver’s presence, in the kitchen, where Mr Phillips now often came himself to fetch his supper-tray—so anxious he was to spare trouble. Dolores looked from her niece to her lodger unhappily.

  “Martha, don’t be rude.”

  “I’m not,” repeated Martha.

  “At least don’t be rude to your kind Auntie,” admonished Mr Phillips. “After all she’s done for you.”

  3

  Whether Miranda would still have insisted on a honeymoon in the South of France, if Mr Joyce hadn’t insisted on a common establishment, must also remain doubtful. She did insist. There were two good arguments against her—the expense beyond the bridegroom’s means, and that it was unpatriotic to go abroad in the Depression; both she overrode. “Of course it’s Dadda who’ll be paying!” cried Miranda—gaily indeed, but without bothering to wrap the matter up. “I’m not going to let Dadda be stingy! And as for staying at home, everyone knows honeymoons don’t count!”

  Mr Joyce suggested Bournemouth. His reasons were partly selfish, but he saw also that the South of France roused no enthusiasm in Harry, and as usual prepared to back his friend. “On the Riviera, at this time of year, doesn’t it often snow like hell? If you would rather Bournemouth, only say,” urged Mr Joyce. “To Bournemouth I might come myself, for the week-end, to see how you get on. Why not? We could have a nice time,” said Mr Joyce wistfully. He was prepared to back Harry to the limit, and it was he who held the purse-strings. “Or if you would like Scotland, why not Scotland?” prompted Mr J
oyce. “There are hotels there cost the earth, and you could teach me to play golf …”

  Harry remained mute. It wasn’t that the Riviera was any less repugnant to him than Gleneagles—or Gleneagles more repugnant than Bournemouth, or Bournemouth than the Riviera again. The fact was that he couldn’t bring himself to contemplate, he was mentally unable to contemplate, any moment of time beyond the actual wedding-ceremony. A mental shutter slammed down at the holy portal. He could visualise himself (sometimes in nightmare detail, as when his sock-suspenders came undone), up to that very last moment, but no further. He saw himself going in, that is, but not coming out. Sometimes he wondered whether this meant he was going to drop dead on the pavement. The notion was so far from distressing him that he examined the life-line in his palm for confirmation—hoping to see it cut short at fifty. But no, it ploughed on deep and straight as a furrow to what looked like seventy-five at least …

  Evidently someone was going to come out on his feet: Miranda’s husband. As soon as Harry Gibson recognised this, the shutter slammed down.

  He was thus not only indifferent to what lay beyond, he couldn’t even contemplate it; and by no possible means could be brought to side with either Miranda or Mr Joyce. His neutrality was all Miranda needed. She sent for an enormous number of brochures, one from every expensive hotel between Monte Carlo and the Pyrenees, and told all her friends Harry was carrying her south to the sun.

  4

  “Anything the matter with your hand, boy?” asked Mr Joyce.

  Harry had been looking at his palm again. It was becoming a habit. He shook his head.

  “A splinter, I took it out …”

  “My mother could read the hand,” remarked Mr Joyce unexpectedly. “We used to tell her, when we were teasing her, she should go to tell fortunes like an old gypsy-woman, have her palm crossed with silver. How angry she got!” chuckled Mr Joyce—inviting Harry to join in; he often tried to amuse Harry with such humorous little anecdotes. “‘A journey across the ocean!’” mimicked Mr Joyce, pretending to be an old gypsy-woman. “‘Beware a tall handsome stranger!’”

  —Instantly, appallingly, a terrible thing happened. The study dissolved, Mr Joyce vanished, Harry Gibson was back with Dolores on Epsom Downs. More agonisingly still, the vision doubled: the sitting-room in, Alcock Road superimposed itself upon, mingled with, the gypsy booth; at one and the same moment Mr Gibson saw Dolores laughing in the sun and felt her sobbing against his shoulder. “When you were there!” he heard her cry. “My Big Harry, my King Hal!” He shut his eyes; but the vision under his lids was clearer than before. He could see every detail of the little tent, the worn red-and-white canvas and straining guy-ropes, also every detail of the sitting-room from the ermines in the cabinet to the gilt-and-bronze lady. Only the two Doloreses merged into one, she who laughed and she who wept; and again with the greatest precision he saw the separate streaks of hair divided by her comb, the slight down on her upper lip, the knotted fringe of her Spanish shawl. “My Spanish Rose!” cried Mr Gibson’s heart. “I am still your King Hal!” With all his will he tried to project the message to Paddington; with all his being, even more ridiculously, harked for some message in return. All that reached his ears, naturally, was the voice of Mr Joyce.

  To his astonishment, it was no more than kind.

  “Harry boy, you work too hard,” said Mr Joyce. “Just now a minute, you turned quite white. Perhaps the Riviera will do you good after all, in the south, in the sun. Unless it snows there,” added Mr Joyce, still wistful.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  1

  Mr Phillips was no impatient lover. A month, two or three months more might have elapsed before he declared himself, but for an exterior circumstance. It began to be bruited about the office that a position slightly more responsible than his own, at a slightly increased salary, would soon fall vacant in the Midlands; and he was aware that he stood a good chance of being offered it. He would still be better off, however, commanding a house and two lodgers in Alcock Road. Actually Mr Phillips rather regretted this, he didn’t much like London any more than he much liked Miss Diver; but financial considerations, as always with so prudent a man, prevailed. His answer was ready, and it was a refusal. On second thoughts, it struck him as the part of wisdom to be equally ready, if needful, with an acceptance. He didn’t think it would be needful, the last thing he expected was a refusal from Miss Diver; the habit of prudence still led him to register (so to speak) his holding in Alcock Road before dropping out of the running for Brum.

  The tender interview took place in Miss Diver’s sitting-room.

  By this time Mr Phillips was quite at home there. (He had already, for example, a fair notion what everything would fetch, when it was cleared out and made to look respectable.) He didn’t take any special pains with his appearance, he always washed before supper and had cleaned his nails with a bus-ticket on the way home. He relied on his natural advantages.

  Dolores, on the other hand, as always now that Mr Phillips regularly took tea with her, was in evening beauty—hair assiduously arranged, make-up immaculate; for she felt she owed it to King Hal’s rose to appear thus distinguished in a lodger’s eye. In point of fact, Mr Phillips preferred her looking as he’d once seen her beside the dust-bin. Dolores had been wrong in thinking her appearance then unremarked: Mr Phillips had remarked it in detail, from the smears on her apron to the smudges on her cheek, and far from being put off was heartened. Most women, in Mr Phillips’ experience, looked like that first thing, and he was far more at ease with the dishevelled than with the lah-di-dah. Dolores’ impulse to hide herself was still correct: it was the memory of her dishevelment by the dust-bin that made her approachable to him now.

  “Another cup, Mr Phillips?” offered Dolores.

  “Thank you, as it comes,” replied Mr Phillips; and added, “I don’t know whether it’s struck you, as it has me, that we get along very nicely.”

  2

  It has been said that every woman, for however fleeting a moment, considers every man she encounters in the light of a possible husband. This wasn’t true of Dolores and Mr Phillips. Even during the last period of something approaching intimacy, her emotions were too fully preoccupied with the past. But now in a single flash of intuition she made up for lost time, and knew at once that Mr Phillips was about to propose. She was startled, but positive. Naturally she didn’t show it.

  “In fact, in many ways,” proceeded Mr Phillips methodically, “we suit. Neither of us, for instance, is as young as we once were. I may say I am forty-seven.”

  He paused a moment.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll ever see—well, thirty—again?”

  Dolores shook her head. She was unaware that Mr Phillips had offered a compliment. Indeed, she was altogether unaware: her emotions included surprise, a slight uneasiness, a slight expectancy; but no gratification. The notion that Mr Phillips was conferring any sort of favour, had it entered her head, would have struck Miss Diver as simply fantastic. She hadn’t yet uttered a word; but her silence didn’t appear to embarrass him; he expected at this stage, it appeared, only attention.

  “My position in the Insurance world may not be showy,” continued Mr Phillips, “but it’s safe; and I qualify regularly for a bonus. As to my general character and habits, you know all about them. You can take my word for it I’ve no encumbrances, but ask any questions you like. I,” said Mr Phillips pointedly, “shall not.”

  At last Dolores stirred. The deliberate flow of his speech (as from an agenda) had almost mesmerised her, but those last words pricked.

  “I don’t think either of us need ask any questions, Mr Phillips!” she said sharply.

  “As I say, I don’t,” agreed Mr Phillips, “though some men would.”

  “Because I don’t care to continue this conversation, Mr Phillips!”

  He regarded her with slight impatience—only slight.

  “That’s daft,” he pointed out. “I can see you’re a bit overcome. It’s
only natural. But I may as well finish now I’m started. For instance,” continued Mr Phillips, before Dolores could speak again, “naturally you wouldn’t want to leave this house of yours. Well, neither should I. With another lodger or two we could be very snug. Which brings me to another point. Martha. I don’t say she isn’t your niece—”

  “Stop,” ordered Dolores.

  She had been sitting motionless so long, she was too stiff to spring to her feet; but she rose not without dignity, and to Mr Phillips’ surprise in anger. What had he said to offend her? To make her stalk to the door like a tragedy-queen? Mr Phillips hastily checked over his proposals—and saw at least an omission.

  “Here, wait a bit!” cried Mr Phillips. “I’m ready to marry you!”

  3

  Miss Diver paused. However ill-put, however undesired, a proposal in form is something no woman can entirely ignore. Even a refusal must be put into words—however cold.

  “Then you had better forget the idea, Mr Phillips,” said Dolores coldly.

  “Perhaps I started off on the wrong foot,” admitted Mr Phillips, “cutting out the frills. I took you for a reasonable woman.”

  “I am a reasonable woman, Mr Phillips.”

  “Then think it over,” urged Mr Phillips, “and you’ll see you’d be far better off with a man like me to look after you.”

  At last, at the eleventh hour, he had said something that touched her.