He rose at last, in excellent humour, pretending to be bankrupt.
“Well, I don’t know,” he said, “I always lose MY money.”
The Hondekoeter, and the misgivings it had given rise to, had faded from his mind.
Winifred and Dartie departing, without the latter having touched on finance, he went up to bed with Emily in an almost cheerful condition; and, having turned his back on her, was soon snoring lightly.
He was awakened by a crash and bumping rumble, as it might be thunder, on the right.
“What on earth’s that, James?” said Emily’s startled voice.
“What?” said James: “Where? Here, where are my slippers?”
“It must be a thunderbolt. Be careful, James.”
For James, in his nightgown, was already standing by the bedside—in the radiance of a night-light, long as a stork. He sniffed loudly.
“D’you smell burning?”
“No,” said Emily.
“Here, give me the candle.”
“Put on this shawl, James. It can’t be burglars; they wouldn’t make such a noise.”
“I don’t know,” muttered James, “I was asleep.” He took the candle from Emily, and shuffled to the door.
“What’s all this?” he said on the landing. By confused candle and night-light he could see a number of white-clothed figures—Rachel, Cicely, and the maid Fifine, in their nightgowns. Soames in his nightshirt, at the head of the stairs, and down below, that fellow Warmson.
The voice of Soames, flat and calm, said:
“It’s the Hondekoeter.”
There, in fact, enormous, at the bottom of the stairs, was the Hondekoeter, fallen on its face. James, holding up his candle, stalked down and stood gazing at it. No one spoke, except Fifine, who said: “La, la!”
Cicely, seized with a fit of giggles, vanished.
Then Soames spoke into the dark well below him, illumined faintly by James’ candle.
“It’s all right, Pater; it won’t be hurt; there was no glass.”
James did not answer, but holding his candle low, returned up the stairs, and without a word went back into his bedroom.
“What was it, James?” said Emily, who had not risen.
“That picture came down with a run—comes of not looking after things yourself. That fellow Warmson! Where’s the eau-de-Cologne?”
He anointed himself, got back into bed, and lay on his back, waiting for Emily to improve the occasion. But all she said was:
“I hope it hasn’t made your head ache, James.”
“No,” said James; and, for some time after she was asleep, he lay with his eyes on the night-light, as if waiting for the Hondekoeter to play him another trick—after he had bought the thing and given it a good home, too!
Next morning, going down to breakfast he passed the picture, which had been lifted, so that it stood slanting, with its back to the stair wall. The white rooster seemed just as much on the point of taking a bath as ever. The feathers floated on their backs, curved like shallops. He passed on into the dining-room.
They were all there, eating eggs and bacon, suspiciously silent.
James helped himself and sat down.
“What are you going to do with it now, James?” said Emily.
“Do with it? Hang it again, of course!”
“Not really, Pater!” said Rachel. “It gave me fits last night.”
“That wall won’t stand it,” said Soames.
“What! It’s a good wall!”
“It really is too big,” said Emily.
“And we none of us like it, Pater,” put in Cicely, “it’s such a monster, and so yellow!”
“Monster, indeed!” said James, and was silent, till suddenly he spluttered:
“What would you have me do with it, then?”
“Send it back; sell it again.”
“I shouldn’t get anything for it.”
“But you said it was a bargain, Pater,” said Cicely.
“So it was!”
There was another silence. James looked sidelong at his son; there was a certain pathos in that glance, as if it were seeking help, but Soames was concentrated above his plate.
“Have it put up in the lumber-room, James,” said Emily, quietly.
James reddened between his whiskers, and his mouth opened; he looked again at his son, but Soames ate on. James turned to his teacup. And there went on within him that which he could not express. It was as if they had asked him: “When is a bargain not a bargain?” and he didn’t know the answer, but they did. A change of epoch, something new-fangled in the air. A man could no longer buy a thing because it was worth more! It was—it was the end of everything. And, suddenly, he mumbled: “Well, have it your own way, then. Throwing money away, I call it!”
After he had gone to the office, the Hondekoeter was conducted to the lumber-room by Warmson, Hunt, and Thomas. There, covered by a dust-sheet to preserve the varnish, it rested twenty-one years, till the death of James in 1901, when it went forth and again came under the hammer. It fetched five pounds, and was bought by a designer of posters, working for a poultry-breeding firm.
CRY OF PEACOCK, 1883
The Ball was over. Soames decided to walk. In the cloak-room, whence he retrieved coat and opera hat, a mirror showed him a white-waistcoated figure still trim, but a half-melted collar, and a brown edging to the gardenia in his button-hole. Hot with a vengeance it had been! And taking a silk handkerchief from his cuff he passed it over his face before putting on his hat.
Down the broad red-carpeted steps where Chinese lanterns had burned out, he passed into the Inner Temple and the dawn. A faint air from the river freshened his face. Half-past three!
Perhaps he had never danced so often as that night—so often and so long. Six times with Irene! Six times with girls of whom he now remembered nothing. Had he danced well—dancing with HER he had been conscious only of her closeness and her scent; and, dancing with those others, only of her circling apart, out of his reach.
Only fourteen days and fourteen nights—until her closeness and her scent should be for ever his! She should be nearly home by now, with that stepmother of hers, in the hansom cab wherein he had placed them. How Irene detested that woman, and no wonder! For Soames knew well enough that to ‘that woman’s’ wish to get her stepdaughter married, so that she might marry again herself, he had owed his own chances these past eighteen months.
From the hall, bright with colour and dark gleaming wood, he moved slowly into half-lit stillness haunted by the drawl of a waltz fading as he went. And, inhaling long breaths of air grass-scented by the Temple Gardens, Soames stripped off his gloves, thin, black-stitched, of lavender hue.
Irene loved dancing! It would not be good form to dance with one’s wife! Would that prevent him? No, by Jove!
By a rambler rose-bush in a tub and a Chinese lantern still alight—last splash of colour in the grey of dawn—he turned, past one dim lamp at the corner of Middle Temple Lane, down to the Embankment, and Cleopatra’s Needle. Cleopatra! A bad lot! If she’d been alive now, they’d have cut her in Rotten Row, and run her in for suicide; and there was her needle and herself a great figure of romance—like those other bad lots, Helen of Troy, Semiramis, Mary Queen of Scots—because—because she had felt in her veins what he felt now! Grand passion, no grander than his own! Well, they would never make HIM a figure of romance! And Soames grinned.
He walked half-conscious, a sensation about his ribs, as though his soul were bathing in a scent of sweet briar. All was empty of sound—no footsteps, and no wheels—empty, foliaged, broad, the grey river coming to colour as the sun trembled to the horizon. All waiting for the one idea of the whole world—heat. And Soames, with his one idea, walked fast. Her window! Surely the light in that window would not yet be out! If, for a moment of fresh air, she drew aside the blind, he might still see her, unseen himself, behind some lamp-post, in some doorway—see her as he had never seen her yet, as soon he would see her every night and every morning. And with that thought racing through him he almost ran past each paling lamp, past Big Ben and the Abbey, slowly creeping to colossal life from its roof down, into Victoria Street, past his own rooms to the corner of the street where she was staying. There he stopped, his heart beating. He must take care! She mustn’t see him. She was strange, she was fitful—she mightn’t like it—she wouldn’t like it. He edged along the far side of the empty street. Dared he go further? Surely she could not mind if he walked swiftly past. Fourth house now—first window on the second floor! And by a lamp-post he halted peering up. Open—yes—and the curtains half drawn back to cool the room before she slept! Dared he? Suppose she saw him stealing by, stealing on her when she thought herself alone, unseen? Yet, if she saw him, would it not prove to her once more how that she was his one thought, one prize, and one desire? Could she mind that? In truth—he did not know, and he stood there, waiting. She must come to close the curtains against the brightening daylight. If only she had for him the feeling he had for her, then, indeed, she could not mind—she would be glad, and their gaze would cling together across this empty London street, eerie in its silence with not a cat to mark the meeting of their eyes. Blotted against the lamp-post he stayed unmoving, aching for a sight of her. With his coat he blotted the whiteness of his shirt-front, took off his hat and crushed it to him. Now he was any stray early idler with cheek against lamp-post and no face visible, any returning reveller. But his eye close to the lamp-post’s iron moved not from that blank oblong where the curtain stirred feebly in the dawn breeze. And, then he trembled. A white arm from the elbow up had slid into his view, and on the hand of it he saw her face resting, looking straight up over the roof opposite at the brightening sky. With a sort of passion he screwed his eyes to slits that he might see the expression on her face. But he could not—too far, far as she always was, as she must not, should not always be. Of what was she thinking? Of him? Of those little fleecy clouds passing from the west? Of the cooling air? Of herself? Of what? Joined with the lamp-post he stood, still as the dead, for if she caught sight of its thickened base she would vanish. Her neck, her hair looped back were mixed into the folds of curtain—just the arm round and white he saw, just the oval of her lifted face, so still that he held his breath there, a hundred feet away. And then—the sparrows cheeped, all the sky brightened. He saw her rise; for a second saw her nightgowned figure, her hands reach up, the long white arms, and the screening curtains close. A sensation as of madness stirred in his limbs, he sprang away, and, muffling his footsteps, fled back to Victoria Street. There he turned not towards his rooms, but away from them: Paradise deferred! He could not sleep. He walked at a great rate. A policeman stared at him, an early dust-cart passed, the thick horse clop-clopping out the only sound in all the town. Soames turned up towards Hyde Park. This early world of silent streets was to him unaccustomed, as he himself, under this obsession, would be to all who knew and saw him daily, self-contained, diligent, a flat citizen. In Knightsbridge a belated hansom, with a dim couple, fled jingling by, another and another. Soames walked west to where the house, which he with her would inhabit, stood bright with its fresh paint, and a board with a builder’s name. In the garnishing thereof he and she had been more conjoined than ever yet, and he gazed at the little house with gratitude, and a sort of awe. Twelve hours ago he had paid the decorator’s bill. And in that house he would live with HER—incredible! It looked like a dream in this early light—that whole small long square of houses like a dream of his future, her future, strange and unlived.