‘And what do all the great words come to in the end, but that?-I love you-I am at rest with you-I have come home.’
There was such a stillness in the room that Miss Twitterton thought it must be empty. She crept down softly, stair by stair, afraid lest Bunter should hear her. The door was ajar and she pushed it open inch by inch. The lamp had been moved, so that she found herself in darkness-but the room was not empty, after all. On the far side, framed in the glowing circle of the lamplight, the two figures were bright and motionless as a picture-the dark woman in a dress like flame, with her arms locked about the man’s bowed shoulders and his golden head in her lap. They were so quiet that even the great ruby on, her left hand shone steadily without a twinkle. Miss Twitterton, turned to stone, dared neither advance nor retreat.
‘Dear.’ The word was no more than a whisper, spoken without a movement. ‘My heart’s heart. My own dear lover and husband.’ The locked hands must have tightened their hold, for the red stone flashed sudden fire. ‘You are mine, you are mine, all mine.’
The head came up at that and his voice caught the triumph id sent it back in a mounting wave:
‘Yours. Such as I am, yours. With all my faults, all my follies, yours utterly and for ever. While this poor, passionate, mountebank body has hands to hold you and lips to say, I love you-’
‘Oh!’ cried Miss Twitterton, with a great strangling sob, ‘I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it!’ The little scene broke like a bubble. The chief actor leapt to his feet and said very distinctly: ‘Damn and blast!’
Harriet got up. The sudden shattering of her ecstatic mood and a swift, defensive anger for Peter’s sake made her tone sharper than she knew. ‘Who is it? What are you doing there?’ She stepped out of the pool of light and peered into the dusk. ‘Miss Twitterton?’
Miss Twitterton, incapable of speech and terrified beyond conception, went on choking hysterically. A voice from the direction of the fireplace said grimly:
‘I knew I should make a bloody fool of myself.’
‘Something’s happened,’ said Harriet, more gently, putting out a reassuring hand. Miss Twitterton found her voice:
‘Oh, forgive me-I didn’t know-I never meant-’ The remembrance of her own misery got the upper hand of her alarm. ‘Oh, I’m so dreadfully unhappy.’
‘I think,’ said Peter, ‘I had better see about decanting the port.’
He retreated quickly and quietly, without waiting to shut the door. But the ominous words had penetrated to Miss Twitter-ton’s consciousness. A new terror checked her tears in mid-flow.
‘Oh, dear, oh, dear! The port wine! Now he’ll be angry again.’
‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Harriet, completely bewildered.
‘What has gone wrong? What is it all about?’
Miss Twitterton shuddered. A cry of ‘Bunter!’ in the passage warned her that the crisis was imminent.
‘Mrs Ruddle has done something dreadful to the port wine.’
‘Oh, my poor Peter!’ said Harriet. She listened anxiously. Bunter’s voice now, subdued to a long, explanatory mumble.
‘Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear!’ moaned Miss Twitterton,
‘But what can the woman have done?’
Miss Twitterton really was not sure.
‘I believe she’s shaken the bottle,’ she faltered. ‘Oh!’
A loud yelp of anguish rent the air within. Peter’s voice lilted to a waiclass="underline"
‘What! all my pretty chickens and their dam?’
The last word sounded to Miss Twitterton painfully like an oath. ‘O-o-oh! I do hope he won’t be violent.’
‘Violent?’ said Harriet, half amused and half angry. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so.’
But alarm is infectious, and much-tried men have been known to vent their exasperation upon their servants. The two women clung together, waiting for the explosion.
‘Well,’ said the distant voice, ‘all I can say is, Bunter, don’t let it happen again… All right… Good God, man, you needn’t tell me that… of course you didn’t… We’d better go and view the bodies.’
The sounds died away, and the women breathed more freely. The dreadful menace of male violence lifted its shadow from the house.
‘Well!’ said Harriet, ‘that wasn’t so bad after all… My dear Miss Twitterton, what is the matter? You’re trembling all over… Surely, surely you didn’t really think Peter was going to-to throw things about or anything, did you? Come and sit down by the fire. Your hands are like ice.’
Miss Twitterton allowed herself to be led to the settle.
‘I’m sorry-it was silly of me. But… I’m always so terrified of… gentlemen being angry… and… and… after all, they’re all men, aren’t they?… and men are so horrible!’
The end of the sentence came out in a shuddering burst. Harriet realised that there was more here than poor Uncle William or a couple of dozen of port.
‘Dear Miss Twitterton, what is the trouble? Can I help?
Has somebody been horrible to you?’
Sympathy was too much for Miss Twitterton. She clutched at the kindly hands. ‘Oh, my lady, my lady-I’m ashamed to tell you. He said such dreadful things to me. Oh, please forgive me!’
‘Who did?’ asked Harriet, sitting down beside her.
‘Frank. Terrible things… And I know I’m a little older than he is-and I suppose I’ve been very foolish-but he did say he was fond of me.’
‘Frank Crutchley?’
‘Yes-and it wasn’t my fault about Uncle’s money. We were going to be married-only we were waiting for the forty pounds and my own little savings that Uncle borrowed. And they’re all gone now and no money to come from Uncle and now he says he hates the sight of me, and-and I do love him so!’
‘I am so sorry,’ said Harriet, helplessly. What else was there to be said? The thing was ludicrous and abominable.
‘He-he-he called me an old hen!’ That was the almost unspeakable thing; and when it was out Miss Twitterton went on more easily. ‘He was so angry about my savings-but I never thought of asking Uncle for a receipt.’
‘Oh, my dear!’
‘I was so happy-thinking we were going to be married as soon as he could get the garage started-only we didn’t tell anybody, because, you see, I was a little bit older than him, though of course I was in a better position. But he was working up and making himself quite superior-’
How fatal, thought Harriet, how fatal! Aloud she said:
‘My dear, if he treats you like that he’s not superior at all. He’s not fit to clean your shoes.’
Peter was singing:
‘Que donnerez-vous, belle,
Pour avoir votre ami?
Que donnerez-vous, belle,
Pour avoir votre ami?’
(He seems to have got over it, thought Harriet)
‘And he’s so handsome… We used to meet in the churchyard-there’s a nice seat there. Nobody comes that way in the evenings… I let him kiss me…’
“Je donnerais Versailles,
Paris et Saint Denis!’
‘… and now he hates me… I don’t know what to do… I shall go and drown myself. Nobody knows what I’ve done for Frank…’
‘Aupres de ma blonde
Qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon.
Aupres de ma blonde
Qu’il fait bon dormir!’
‘Oh, Peter,’ said Harriet in an exasperated undertone. She rose and shut the door upon this heartless exhibition. Miss Twitterton, exhausted by her own emotions, sat weeping quietly in a corner of the settle. Harriet was conscious of a whole series of emotions, arranged in layers like a Neapolitan ice.
What on earth am I to do with her?…
He is singing songs in the French language…
And it must be nearly dinner-time…