The Eye of Love Page 20

  “Jilting you,” he supplied baldly. “That’s right: I’m jilting you.”

  Miranda turned. There was no love in her eyes. There was still incredulity—but of a new sort. She had seen Miss Diver twice, and once no doubt at her smartest …

  “For that thing?”

  “For the lady whose name is Miss Diver,” returned Harry dangerously. “Yes.”

  Miranda drew a long, hissing breath. Her face was very white, but set, not tremulous.

  “Dadda’s right: you are mad,” she said contemptuously. She was bearing herself, in the circumstances, with considerable courage. She still didn’t hazard any more criticism of Miss Diver’s person. “Is that what you were fighting about, Dadda?”

  Mr Joyce nodded miserably. He was feeling extraordinarily tired, and he didn’t like the look in Miranda’s eye.

  “He wanted to horse-whip me,” offered Harry—who still retained some sparks of loyalty.

  “I think he can do better than that—can’t you, Dadda?”

  Mr Joyce sighed.

  “If necessary, daughter. But why talk about it? In the morning, it will all be different,” said Mr Joyce pleadingly. By this time he didn’t know exactly who it was he pled with—he didn’t want his daughter to be jilted, he didn’t want to ruin his friend; he didn’t want to lose his friend. “In the morning, you keep out of the way,” said Mr Joyce earnestly, “and I’ll try again.”

  Undoubtedly he was very tired; but undoubtedly it was the worst thing he could have said. He was so tired, he repeated it.

  “Just you keep out of the way—” repeated Mr Joyce; and precipitated a crisis indeed, as Miranda lost her temper.

  3

  She had lost it once, and recovered it; now she lost it irretrievably. She spoke the irretrievable words.

  “Keep out of the way, I keep out of the way?” cried Miranda furiously. “Why? Because when he sees me Harry feels sick? You think I want to see him? Because I don’t screech and scream you think I’m not disgusted? Let me tell you, Dadda, now I know what tastes he has, it is I who break off our engagement, not Harry! If he was the last man in the world—”

  Quite definitely, Mr Joyce was now pleading with Miranda.

  “Stop!” cried Mr Joyce. “Wait!” (All night, it seemed to him, he had been battering with those two words at ears as deaf as adders’.) “Think, Miranda, for God’s sake think! You are just giving Harry an out! Remember the wedding, all the preparations! How will you look, not getting married, after all this? What will your friends say?”

  But Miranda was struggling with her engagement-ring, forcing it over her knuckle, obviously preparing to hurl it in Harry’s face. Mr Joyce shot out a hand and fielded it just in time. “Give it back to him!” cried Miranda—quite forgetting, the passionate girl, who had paid for it. “I don’t want it! Let him give it to her, how snappy it will look on her skinny finger!” Mr Joyce slipped his two hundred pounds’-worth into a pocket and gamely worried on.

  “What about the wedding-presents, all to be returned? Mrs Grandjean’s beautiful dinner-service—”

  “I don’t want it!” cried Miranda again. She was ready to fling back diamonds, what were dinner-services to her? “And as for what people say—” Here indeed she hesitated, as her father had known, it was the crux; but her temper carried her over it, “They will say I have shown spirit!” cried Miranda defiantly. “My friends didn’t think so much of Harry, I can tell you! They thought he was an old stick-in-the-mud, and that I was throwing myself away!”

  She shot Harry one last disdainful look, and swept from the room.

  4

  The peace was beautiful.

  It had been Miranda’s aim to make peace; at least she left peace behind her.

  Several minutes passed before either man spoke. They were both exhausted; also the peace was too beautiful to spoil. Harry Gibson sank back on the sofa, Mr Joyce in his big leather chair. It was so obviously the moment for a pipe, both got out their pipes. Mr Joyce’s was still raw, but as though in sympathy with the moment it drew better than ever before.

  “You’re getting the hang of it,” said Harry Gibson.

  “I have that new tobacco you said,” explained Mr Joyce.

  Casting his mind back over the recent to-and-fro, he thought Harry hadn’t realised the provenance of the worst slanders on his beloved, and was glad. He was sorry for them now himself.

  They smoked in grateful silence for some minutes more; but obviously something had to be said on another subject than brands of tobacco. Mr Joyce opened his mouth; but at the thought of all there was to say, closed it again. To reproach Harry with ingratitude, to harrow him with pictures of Miranda languishing in despair—what use now? Besides, Miranda hadn’t looked despairing, as she flounced out; she’d looked furious. Justifiably. Mr Joyce didn’t think Miranda now wanted her beloved back, he thought she wanted him, her Dadda, to ruin her beloved. What was the use of going into that either?

  “It’s milder on the tongue,” said Mr Joyce, experimentally sucking.

  “It’s the mildest I know,” said Harry Gibson. “But ask. They might put you up a special mixture.”

  He too felt there should be more said; but he neither could think what, of any use. He knew he was behaving like a cad, but he’d admitted it already.

  “I’m dashed grateful,” offered Harry Gibson at last.

  “To me?” asked Mr Joyce wryly.

  “To Miranda. I’ve never thought so well of her. And to you too,” said Harry, with his good, loving smile.

  “If I think well of Miranda, if she thinks well of me, in the next few weeks, we shall both be ready for heaven,” sighed Mr Joyce. “What you leave me with, Harry boy!”

  “I’ll give you a tip,” said Harry. “Keep the mind a blank. You’ll be surprised how it helps.”

  He stood up, and began to put on his waistcoat. His pipe wasn’t yet smoked out, but he could wait no longer. Symbolically, it had served its turn: a pipe of peace …

  “Are you going?” asked Mr Joyce foolishly. It was plain that Harry couldn’t stay to be found there in the morning; he was still taken by surprise. “I told your mother I would keep you here,” said Mr Joyce worriedly. “Now at this time of night, where will you go?”

  “Back,” said Harry Gibson.

  5

  They parted, the two friends, on the pavement. Harry had got into his big hairy overcoat, of which the twin hung in the hall; Mr Joyce, helping him on, rubbed a palm over the splendidly masculine fabric and heaved a final sigh.

  “We could have been so cosy, Harry boy!”

  But Mr Gibson shook his head.

  “It wouldn’t have worked,” he said solemnly. “Something terrible would have happened. Don’t ask me what, but it would have been something terrible.”

  This was in the hall. Mr Joyce came down with him—they had to use the service-stairs, the lift had long ceased running—and out on to the pavement. It was about two in the morning, very cold and dark.

  “D’you want me to look in at the shop to-morrow?” Harry asked. “Just to leave things straight?”

  “Perhaps yes,” agreed Mr Joyce. “Turn your collar up.”

  “I’ll tell the girls I’m sacked, then you can tell Miranda.”

  “Thank you, Harry. Leave me your address.”

  “I’ll give it to La Harris.”

  Mr Joyce peered anxiously out at the December night.

  “It’s very dark. How will you go?”

  “I’ll pick up a taxi,” Harry reassured him. “Toodle-oo!”

  6

  Mr Joyce waited till he was out of sight, in the cold, in the dark, then slowly went in and closed the big doors. How different it would all have been, he thought, if he could have made Harry wait till morning! (If he could have made Miranda go back to bed! If Miranda had stayed in bed!) Harry said it wouldn’t have worked out, but what could he mean, something terrible? “Maybe I should keep the mind a blank,” thought Mr Joyce, and wearily set about
remounting the service-stairs.

  He was more tired than he had ever been in his life, he was out on his feet; but back in the flat, though he longed with all his heart to go straight to bed, outside his daughter’s room he paused. He was dead beat; but his daughter was his daughter. “No more punishment can I take to-night!” thought Mr Joyce, pitying himself; but his pity for his daughter was stronger. Suppose Miranda was weeping, lying on her bed sobbing, as she’d sometimes lain and sobbed when she was a little girl? (Usually after a fit of temper, Mr Joyce recalled.) The last thing he felt capable of was consolation, he needed consoling himself. Nonetheless, as his ear detected, within the room, some confused yet continuous sound, he quietly opened the door.

  Miranda wasn’t sobbing, she was telephoning. Flung down across the bed, still in her blue velvet draperies, she fairly throttled the receiver. Whom had she rung up, wondered Mr Joyce, what household had she recklessly disturbed, at two o’clock in the morning? Was it Marion, perhaps, listening in sleepy excitement, or Mrs Gibson in hysterics, or Mr Conrad in a damned bad temper?

  It was evidently Rachel.

  “Marion and Denise I’ll phone in the morning, they don’t answer!” Mr Joyce heard his daughter finish. “Come round as early as you like, come right after breakfast! Then, my goodness, what you’re all going to hear!”

  Tempestuously as the dawn promised, things might have been worse. Mr Joyce gently closed the door again, and went to bed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  1

  Meanwhile Mr Gibson, like a homing pigeon, was batting his way north.

  It was no smooth passage. He couldn’t find a taxi, there was no other means of transport, he had to walk. Part of the way he ran. More than one policeman on the beat, startled by the sight of so portly a figure breaking into an elephantine trot, considered some arrestive action. Fortunately Mr Gibson didn’t look like a criminal, and no one pursued him; he was allowed to thud by unchallenged. It was fortunate also that he’d had a nap—what a lifetime ago!—in Mr Joyce’s study; he was out of condition to begin with, his lungs were sore before he reached Church Street, at Notting Hill he developed a stitch—he had to go the long way round because the Gardens were shut—at Queen’s Road he almost collapsed before getting his second wind; but he made it. He got there. Long before there was light to distinguish the colour of a curtain, Mr Gibson reached the house in Alcock Road.

  He didn’t knock, or ring. He threw a handful of gravel up at Dolores’ window; and in a moment she leaned forth.

  Like a rose, like a Spanish rose, nodding on its trellis …

  “It’s me, King Hal,” panted Mr Gibson. “I’m back.”

  2

  There are some situations whose very blatancy is their saving grace. What is blatant at least requires no elucidation.

  Such was the situation at 5, Alcock Road, on the morning following the re-possessing by King Hal of his secret garden.

  Though every muscle ached, he was up and visible; and if only dressing-gowned, this added blatancy. (It had been the happiest moment of Mr Gibson’s life when Dolores opened the wardrobe-drawer and showed him his dressing-gown and pyjamas laid up in pot-pourri. What a moment! What a succession of moments! His photograph still by her bed! How could he ever have left her? But he’d come back! O bliss, O incoherence!) When in the morning Mr Gibson appeared in his dressing-gown, Mr Phillips could have no doubt what had happened—incidentally, to himself.

  Mr Gibson didn’t have to throw him out. There was this to be said for Mr Phillips: he knew what was what. Moreover, from a personal point of view, he was scarcely more anxious to marry Miss Diver than had been Harry Gibson to marry Miss Joyce. Mercenary considerations alone had prompted his wooing; and there was still the chance of promotion to Birmingham. Mercenary considerations also ridded Dolores of him that same day. It was Thursday, midweek; and he got out of a whole week’s payment.

  “Since I shall no doubt be requested,” said Mr Phillips pointedly, “to leave without delay, I can hardly be asked for my week?”

  He said it loudly enough for Dolores to overhear; he saw the door from which Mr Gibson had just emerged still ajar. They encountered each other, the two suitors of that Spanish rose, on the landing outside the bathroom—Harry Gibson, as has been said, in his dressing-gown, Mr Phillips neatly accoutred to face the commercial world. He had had an extremely sketchy breakfast—milk and a fragment of cold ham, produced by Martha after he’d had to shout for it. At least it was a warning that the house wasn’t running as usual; when he encountered his supplanter on the landing, Mr Phillips’ shock was accordingly the less. “Wherever he’s been, he’s come back,” thought Mr Phillips telescopically … His second reaction, as he pulled himself together, usefully paralleled Miranda’s: if Miss Diver preferred such a chap to himself—bag-of-bones, bag-of-lard, what difference?—he didn’t think much of her taste …

  However, since the bag-of-lard was presumably well-heeled, Mr Phillips confined himself to irony.

  “Two being company and three none,” added Mr Phillips. “Or shall I stay my week out?”

  “Pack your bags and say where to send ’em,” returned Harry Gibson—glad enough that no physical force was to be needed. For Dolores’ sake he’d have chucked the chap out neck and crop, but every muscle applauded moderation.

  “I’ll collect this evening,” said Mr Phillips resentfully. “I shan’t have any difficulty, finding another billet.”

  “Fine,” agreed Harry Gibson.

  “There’s just a thing or two I’d like to say to my … landlady first,” said Mr Phillips.

  “I’ll tell you something,” said Harry Gibson, forgetting his weariness, “if you annoy her again, I’ll break your bloody neck.”

  He spoke (to Dolores, listening behind her door) in the very accents of a King. To Mr Phillips they were the accents of a bully; but he took a look at Harry Gibson’s big frame, larded with fat as it was, and recognised that half a week’s lodging was the most he could get away with.

  “I’ll be back to-night with a taxi,” said Mr Phillips sulkily. “I’m still not sure I couldn’t get damages …”

  Martha did more good than she knew by at that moment joining them; she put an end to what might have been a very nasty moment. Martha had heard Mr Gibson’s voice from the kitchen, and came pounding up the stairs to welcome him back—not with any exuberance of affection, not with much surprise—as she hadn’t been particularly surprised when he left—but with genuine welcome. Like Dolores, she trusted him to put things right: he was putting things right already; Mr Phillips’ last words, familiar from the days of Ma Battleaxe, fell like music on her ear … She looked at Mr Gibson regardfully, and for the first time in their acquaintance pushed her hand up through his arm.

  Harry Gibson stared down at her, and cleared his throat.

  “Hey, Martha! Where’s Mary?”

  “In the Bible,” replied Martha.

  “Best place for her,” said Mr Gibson.

  With an exasperated mumble Mr Phillips pushed past them to the stairs. Martha turned round and watched him put on his hat in the hall, and noted for the last time how his head from the back looked like a can stuck on a pole, and watched the door shut behind him. Then she stumped into his room, and staggered back with the suitcase he kept his spare underwear in, and heaved it over the banisters.

  3

  Later that morning Mr Gibson went off to Kensington. He returned, in the evening, early. Dolores had steak for him. In the near future, she recognised, they might starve together, but the prospect held no terrors for her, and in the meantime she feasted her King. (Martha looked no further than her plate; Martha stuffed without a care.) In Miss Diver’s hair gleamed the Spanish comb again, she wore the jumper made from her Spanish shawl, than which Mr Gibson had never seen anything more exquisite, and after dinner he put a new bulb in the bowl of glass fruit. Dolores’ eyes filled with tears as she watched; that morning they’d spent barely ten minutes in the sitting-room, but he�
�d noticed, her Big Harry, when she tried and failed to make the fruits light up for him, and remembered to buy a bulb …

  Tender was their talk in that variegated, jujube-coloured light. Mr Gibson’s every moment of agony, during the past six months, was laid bare before his love; the explanation of how he’d felt forced to return her comb reduced Dolores again to happy tears. “As if I’d ever have sold it, ever!” she wept. “You might have had to!” groaned Harry Gibson. “You had to take that chap as a lodger—and what came of that? Don’t tell me he wasn’t after you! You might have married him!” cried Harry Gibson—clutching her jealously back to his bosom. This wasn’t an altogether distressing moment, for Dolores. With whatever repugnance, she might indeed have wedded Mr Phillips, and now that the danger had passed it wasn’t in feminine nature not to present him in the most favourable light possible.

  “He was very kind, Harry. After you’d gone—”

  “Say no more, don’t break my heart!” cried Mr Gibson. “Haven’t I come back?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  1

  Precariously still upon the sea of delight rode the bark of their bliss. In their Garden of Love Divine grew spiritual fruits only, and Mr Gibson (to say nothing of Martha) had a large corporeal appetite. Dolores’ small bank account was running out, the lease of the little house was running out, more uneasily, each day, Harry scanned the lists of Situations Vacant in every paper at the Free Library. It was well for all of them that Mr Joyce couldn’t endure to think of his friend starving.

  For that was what he really feared it might come to—and Miranda was certain of it. “Of course he’ll starve!” she told all her friends, with a humorous grimace; and indeed did her best to make this likely by a neat piece of dove-tailing in the eagerly-awaited revelations. Dadda had found out something really awful about poor Harry, whispered Miranda, to Rachel and Marion and Denise—who would undoubtedly pass the word back to their fathers; Miranda didn’t know exactly what—but hadn’t Dadda sacked him out of hand?—and then it was that she’d jumped at the chance of freeing herself from such an old stick-in-the-mud, whom she’d only accepted in the first place because Dadda was so set on it. This double libel Mr Joyce bore with patience: though he didn’t care for being branded as either a harsh parent or a poor judge of character he felt Miranda in the circumstances entitled to do the best she could for herself; and recognised with pleasure that in the character of a girl who could have got married, but chose not to, she was on to a very nice thing.