Again that nod, ineffably sinister.
"I'm afraid I don't care for either," he said.
"If you will excuse me," she said, indifferently, "I have a little work that I must finish."
She turned to her desk, leaving him to his thoughts. They were not exhilarating. He had maintained a brave front, but inwardly he quailed. Reared in the country, he had developed at an early age a fine, healthy appetite. Once, soon after his arrival in London, he had allowed a dangerous fanatic to persuade him that the secret of health was to go without breakfast. His lunch that day had cost him eight shillings, and only decent shame had kept the figure as low as that. He knew perfectly well that long ere the dawn of day his whole soul would be crying out for cake, squealing frantically for cocoa. Would it not be better to-no, a thousand times no! Death, but not surrender. His self-respect was at stake. Looking back, he saw that his entire relations with this girl had been a series of battles of will. So far, though he had certainly not won, he had not been defeated. He must not be defeated now.
He crossed his legs and sang a gay air under his breath.
"If you wouldn't mind," said the girl, looking up.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Your groaning interrupts my work."
"I was not groaning. I was singing."
"Oh, I'm sorry!"
"Not at all."
Eight bars rest.
Mr. Ferguson, deprived of the solace of song, filled in the time by gazing at the toilers' back-hair. It set in motion a train of thought-an express train bound for the Land of Yesterday. It recalled days in the woods, evenings on the lawn. It recalled sunshine-and storm. Plenty of storm. Minor tempests that burst from a clear sky, apparently without cause, and the great final tornado. There had been cause enough for that. Why was it, mused Mr. Ferguson, that every girl in every country town in every county of England who had ever recited "Curfew shall not ring to-night" well enough to escape lynching at the hands of a rustic audience was seized with the desire to come to London and go on the stage?
He sighed.
"Please don't snort," said a cold voice, from behind the back-hair.
There was a train-wreck in the Land of Yesterday. Mr. Ferguson, the only survivor, limped back into the Present.
The Present had little charm, but at least it was better than the cakeless Future. He fixed his thoughts on it. He wondered how Master Bean was passing the time. Probably doing deep-breathing exercises, or reading a pocket Aristotle.
The girl pushed back her chair and rose.
She went to a small cupboard in the corner of the room, and from it produced in instalments all that goes to make cake and cocoa. She did not speak. Presently, filling Space, there sprang into being an Odour; and as it reached him Mr. Ferguson stiffened in his chair, bracing himself as for a fight to the death. It was more than an odour. It was the soul of the cocoa singing to him. His fingers gripped the arms of the chair. This was the test.
The girl separated a section of cake from the parent body. She caught his eye.
"You had better go," she said. "If you go now it's just possible that I may-but I forgot, you don't like cocoa."
"No," said he, resolutely, "I don't."
She seemed now in the mood for conversation.
"I wonder why you came up here at all," she said.
"There's no reason why you shouldn't know. I came up here because my late office-boy is downstairs."
"Why should that send you up?"
"You've never met him or you wouldn't ask. Have you ever had to face someone who is simply incarnate Saintliness and Disapproval, who-"
"Are you forgetting that I was engaged to you for several weeks?"
He was too startled to be hurt. The idea of himself as a Roland Bean was too new to be assimilated immediately. It called for meditation.
"Was I like that?" he said at last, almost humbly.
"You know you were. Oh, I'm not thinking only about your views on the stage! It was everything. Whatever I did you were there to disapprove like a-like a-like an aunt," she concluded triumphantly. "You were too good for anything. If only you would, just once, have done something wrong, I think I'd have-But you couldn't. You're simply perfect."
A man will remain cool and composed under many charges. Hint that his tastes are criminal, and he will shrug his shoulders. But accuse him of goodness, and you rouse the lion.
Mr. Ferguson's brow darkened.
"As a matter of fact," he said, haughtily, "I was to have had supper with a chorus-girl this very night."
"How very appalling!" said she, languidly.
She sipped her cocoa.
"I suppose you consider that very terrible?" she said.
"For a beginner."
She crumbled her cake. Suddenly she looked up.
"Who is she?" she demanded, fiercely.
"I beg your pardon?" he said, coming out of a pleasant reverie.
"Who is this girl?"
"She-er-her name-her name is Marie-Marie Templeton."
"She seemed to think for a moment.
"That dear old lady?" she said. "I know her quite well."
"What!"
" 'Mother' we used to call her. Have you met her son?"
"Her son?"
"A rather nice-looking man. He plays heavy parts on tour. He's married and has two of the sweetest children. Their grandmother is devoted to them. Hasn't she ever mentioned them to you?"
She poured herself out another cup of cocoa. Conversation again languished.
"I suppose you're very fond of her?" she said at length.
"I'm devoted to her." He paused. "Dear little thing!" he added.
She rose and moved to the door. There was a nasty gleam in her eyes.
"You aren't going?" he said.
"I shall be back in a moment. I'm going to bring your poor little office-boy up here. He must be missing you."
He sprang up, but she had gone. Leaning over the banisters, he heard a door open below, then a short conversation, and finally footsteps climbing the stairs.
It was pitch dark on the landing. He stepped aside, and they passed without seeing him. Master Bean was discoursing easily on cocoa, the processes whereby it was manufactured, and the remarkable distances which natives of Mexico had covered with it as their only food. The door opened, flooding the landing with light, and Mr. Ferguson, stepping from ambush, began to descend the stairs.
The girl came to the banisters.
"Mr. Ferguson!"
He stopped.
"Did you want me?" he asked.
"Are you going back to your office?"
"I am. I hope you will enjoy Bean's society. He has a fund of useful information on all subjects."
He went on. After a while she returned to the room and closed the door.
Mr. Ferguson went into his office and sat down.
There was once a person of the name of Simeon Stylites, who took up a position on top of a pillar and stayed there, having no other engagements for thirty years. Mr. Ferguson, who had read Tennyson's poem on the subject, had until to-night looked upon this as pretty good thing. Reading the lines:
"... thrice ten years,
Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs,
In hunger and in thirsts, fevers and colds,
In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes and cramps,...
Patient on this tall pillar I have borne.
Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow,
he had gathered roughly, as it were, that Simeon had not been comfortable. He had pitied him. But now, sitting in his office-chair, he began to wonder what the man had made such a fuss about. He suspected him of having had a touch of the white feather in him. It was not as if he had not had food. He talked about "hungers and thirsts," but he must have had something to eat, or he could not have stayed the course. Very likely, if the truth were known, there was somebody below who passed him up regular supplies of cake and cocoa.
He began to look on Simeon as an overrated amateur.
Sleep refused to come to him. It got as far as his feet, but no farther. He rose and stamped to restore the circulation.
It was at this point that he definitely condemned Simeon Stylites as a sybaritic fraud.