‘Here we are,’ he said, looking vaguely at doors again. ‘We’re in the dress circle.’
An attendant came forward to assist them. They entered rose-lit, heavily-carpeted passages (whose sumptuousness again appalled Ella) and up some stairs into the auditorium. Here they were met by a programme girl, in whom Ella recognized but a gilded and pampered sister in toil, and who guided them to their seats in the second row. For the programme alone sixpence went bang – but Mr. Eccles’ financial ears were deaf to the report. With the utmost calm he handed her the programme as they sat down. She had noticed that he had received practically no change from that pound note, and she marvelled at his wealth. He must be rolling in money. That, or desperately in love. Whatever the answer Mr. Eccles was a man to be reckoned with. Life was full of excitements after all. She noticed, too, that he was looking quite young again in this light.
Now that they were seated peaceably amid the talkative, feminine throng of the audience, the theatre had lost much of its terror and awe-inspiring character, and it was easy to realize that they had not come to see a mass execution of traitors, or a declaration of world war, but an afternoon play whose scenery was wrapped in a very human and prosaic sort of concealment behind a thin drop curtain, and whose coming was announced by the miserable tuning-up and page-turning of an orchestra which had lately had its lunch. But soon this pulled itself together and burst into a swinging march: and Ella’s being throbbed with the joy of expectation.
CHAPTER VII
ABOUT THREE HOURS later, with her entire world transfigured and charged with new meaning, and practically in tears, Ella, scarcely trusting herself to speak, stepped with Mr. Eccles and the rest of the audience out into the street. They turned automatically up towards Cranbourn Street.
‘Well – that was pretty good, wasn’t it,’ said Mr. Eccles, not unmoved himself.
‘It was wonderful,’ said Ella, in so vibrant a tone, that her own transport surprised herself, and she realized that she must not make a fool of herself. But it had been wonderful – there was no other word for it. She had had no idea that such depths of passion and beauty existed, or that she could respond to them in such a way. She felt as though her whole being had suddenly awakened from its apathy, and she could have cried with thankfulness and happiness at the experience.
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Eccles, after another reflective pause. ‘That was well worth the trouble.’
He, being a man, had naturally to restrain himself, but the way in which he said this left no doubt of the fact that he was well-nigh as impressed as herself. He also, then, understood the meaning of beauty and passion – saw things as she did. Her esteem for him rose at once. Indeed, she felt her flood of universal gratitude being diverted towards him, in that he had invented, coaxed her towards, and given her this pleasure from his own pocket. She had been grossly underestimating his value purely as a friend. She was happy to know him.
‘I should think it was worth the trouble,’ she said, ‘I’m sure I’m ever so grateful to you for taking me.’
‘Oh – never mind about that,’ said Mr. Eccles, looking straight ahead. ‘The question is,’ he added with the little thrust of the practical masculine’s chin, ‘where are we going to have tea?’
She had been so engrossed she had not thought about such a thing. But there could have been no more delightful idea. In her state of exaltation she could do with a cup of tea, and it would be all part of the treat. Besides she would be able to get to know him better.
‘Well – that would be nice,’ she said.
‘There’s an Express just round the corner here,’ he said. ‘Do you mind those places?’
‘No. That’ll be fine,’ she said.
‘They’re all right if you just want a cup of tea,’ he said, ‘we’ll settle somewhere nice to go to dinner later.’
Dinner! So he was going to take her to dinner afterwards! And yet she could not say that she was quite unprepared for this – that she had not previously speculated upon what Mr. Eccles had intended to do with her after the show. She had even left her evening free by telling her mother that she might not be along. Nor could she say that she was now in any way dismayed by this turn of events. On the contrary, she was electrified by it, and prepared for anything. The theatre had put her into high spirits which she must work off at all costs. And here was Dinner to hand. Dinner mind you – not supper – not poached egg on toast and a cup of cocoa at Lyons – but authentic Dinner with a plutocrat. Express Dairies were mere makeshifts to such people. She wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they had Wine! So far as she could remember she had never been taken out to dinner in her life. What would Bob think if he knew she was going out to Dinner?
‘What?’ she said, having nothing else to say. ‘Are we going to Dinner?’
‘Yes. What’s the matter? You’re free, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. I suppose I am, really. I never thought of it. But haven’t you got to get back?’
‘Me? Where should I have to get back?’
‘Oh – I don’t know. . . .’
‘I’m a bachelor gay, you know,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘And there are advantages.’
‘Yes,’ said Ella, ‘I suppose there are.’
‘Not that it’s all advantages,’ said Mr. Eccles. . . .
‘Isn’t it?’ said Ella.
‘Oh no,’ said Mr. Eccles, and there was a pause. . . .
‘Dear me no,’ added Mr. Eccles, as an emphatic afterthought. . . .
‘Well, I daresay it’s not,’ she said. . . .
Why was he talking about advantages and bachelors? There was something behind it all. There seemed to be something behind everything he said and did. He had the most ulterior manner of any man she knew. Did he want to put an end to bachelordom? Did he want to marry her? She was prepared to believe anything of him.
Further musings of this nature were put an end to by their arrival outside the Express Dairy Restaurant in Great Newport Street. ‘Here we are,’ he said, and held back the door for her.
CHAPTER VIII
IT WAS CROWDED on the ground floor, and so they went downstairs to the basement. This was quiet and almost deserted by customers, and they sat opposite each other at a marble-topped table for four. Before seating himself Mr. Eccles, with some ceremony, indeed minute ostentation, removed his new hat, his scarf, and his overcoat, and placed them in meticulous order one upon the other on the peg on the wall, joining his gloves together and fitting them snugly into the pocket of his overcoat. In this manner Ella was for the first time introduced to Mr. Eccles in the nakedness of his Suit, which was impressive. Impressive because, although it obviously had not actually been bought yesterday, it looked as though it had lately been infected and moved to emulation by the novelty rage begun by the new hat, and had had a kind of thyroid youth injection in the way of Sponging, Cleaning and Pressing. Or so Ella imagined.
A waitress appeared, and after a brief period of argument, pain, and doubt, it was agreed that all they wanted was a pot of tea for two. The waitress went away.
‘Sure you won’t have anything else?’ asked Mr. Eccles.
‘No thanks –’ said Ella. ‘I can never eat anything with tea – can you?’
‘No, I can’t. But I should have thought it’d have been different at your age,’ said Mr. Eccles looking at her.
‘My age?’ said Ella, conscious of his look. ‘Why?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ said Mr. Eccles in a faintly unusual way, thus causing Ella instantly to anticipate that something else was coming. He was a terrific Oh nothinger, and his Oh nothings were certain omens of the utterance of anything but nothings. And his next remark proved her right.
‘I always thought,’ said Mr. Eccles, ‘that you beautiful young people liked to stuff yourself with pastries.’
Beautiful! This was the last straw – the last of all the straws which the camel’s back of her blindness to his tendency had endured so far! Now, surely, there was no mistaking him. She was almost afrai
d of him. If he could say such things at tea-time, what was he going to say and do late at night? Would she be called upon to defend herself? Perhaps this was a mere ‘try-on’ – an elderly ‘Don Juan’ whose habit it was to take barmaids out, whose technique was the theatre and dinner, and who wielded his enormous economic power indiscriminately and unscrupulously. If that was so, she would ‘show’ him of course, but it might not be so.
In the meantime, she had been called both young and beautiful, and unless she was to pass it over, thereby mutely establishing immodest concurrence in his opinion, she had to make some protest. She paused, seeking the right words.
‘Eh? . . .’ said Mr. Eccles. . . .
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I daresay that beautiful young people do.’ (I.e., she was not beautiful.)
‘What?’ said Mr. Eccles, still looking at her. . . .
‘Oh nothing,’ ‘Eh?’ ‘What?’ ‘Eh?’ ‘Oh nothing,’ ‘What?’ she was getting rather confused with these incessantly recurring yet mystic exclamations from a shy yet enveloping amorousness. She had thought she had made herself clear, but she would have to say it again.
‘I said,’ said Ella, ‘that no doubt if you are beautiful you do like eating pastries – but if you’re not beautiful it’s a different matter.’ That was clear enough she thought.
‘What?’ said Mr. Eccles.
Unless she was to go on repeating herself until the cows came home, Ella now had but one course open to her – that was, to look at the table and blush. This she did, colouring slowly and evenly under his gaze. Happily, the waitress here made a timely appearance and human thought was submerged for a moment or two in the brusque clatter of china upon marble and itself.
‘Shall I be mother?’ said Ella, and started to pour out the tea. But the episode was not closed.
‘What were you saying about beautiful young people?’ asked Mr. Eccles, as the teapot was yet poised in the air over the first cup.
‘What?’ said Ella. She could do some Whatting too, if she tried. She added, however,’ Do you take sugar?’
‘No, not for me, thanks.’
She passed him his cup and began to pour out her own.
‘You haven’t answered my question yet,’ said Mr. Eccles, stirring his tea.
‘Oh – what’s that?’ said Ella, successfully mimicking a young woman at once absent-minded and intent upon the fulfilment of her feminine duties.
‘I asked you what you were saying about beautiful young people.’
‘Oh,’ said Ella, ‘That. . . .’
She popped two lumps of sugar into her tea, hoping he would help her out by saying something else. But he did not.
‘You mean about beautiful young people liking pastries,’ she said.
‘Yes – that’s right.’
‘Well – what about them?’ She sipped at her tea.
‘Well – that’s what I was asking you.’ Mr. Eccles sipped at his.
‘Well, all I said,’ said Ella, ‘was that no doubt beautiful young people like eating pastries – but that if you’re not beautiful you don’t.’
‘Then what about the beautiful young people that don’t like eating pastries?’ asked Mr. Eccles.
‘How do you mean?’ asked Ella. Apart from everything else, she reflected, what unutterable drivel all this was! By degrees it had been assumed as an axiom that there was a famous universal law which governed beautiful young people on the one hand, and pastries on the other – which rendered each (in some obscure way) complementary to the other to all eternity, and which they were now arguing out with the seriousness of theologians.
‘I said,’ said Mr. Eccles, who was never afraid of repeating himself, ‘what about beautiful young people who don’t like eating pastries?’
‘Oh, well,’ said Ella, completely out of her depth. ‘I don’t know about them.’
‘But you must,’ said Mr. Eccles.
‘What?’ said Ella.
‘You’ve just told me that you yourself don’t like eating pastries.’
Of course she knew really what he was leading up to, and she could evade the issue no longer.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m not beautiful.’ And blushed again.
‘Ah,’ said Mr. Eccles. . . .
That, and no more. Ella was a little disappointed. Having been forced to fish for a compliment, she would have liked to have seen something a little more exciting than ‘Ah’ at the end of her line. However, there was no real doubt of his meaning. Beautiful. She had never dreamed of getting near to being called such a thing in her life. Could he really mean it? With this man there was no telling.
‘That was a wonderful play, wasn’t it?’ she said, changing the subject. ‘I don’t know when I’ve ever enjoyed one so much.’
‘You liked it, did you?’
‘Liked it? I should say I did.’
‘Oh well,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘We’ll have a lot of that.’
She thought she was inured now to the appalling suggestiveness of his casual remarks, but this last one yet had the power to stimulate her to a fury of speculation. Nevertheless, she successfully concealed this, and again changing the subject by telling him she thought that his tea looked too strong, which led to a disinterested discussion on tea in general, she managed thenceforward to keep the conversation on a disinterested basis, until the waitress gave them their check, and it was time to go.
CHAPTER IX
‘WELL NOW, LET me see . . .’ said Mr. Eccles, as soon as they were outside again. ‘Which is our best way. . . .’
They had agreed upon a little walk in the Park as the next item in their programme; and there they were to ‘decide’ where they were going to have dinner. Mr. Eccles had now resumed all his pieces of clothing one after another, and was looking more like his old self.
‘I think we’d better walk to Piccadilly, and then take a bus along,’ said Mr. Eccles, and this they did.
They said little to each other as they made for Piccadilly. The crowds on the pavements were too thick, and there was too much traffic to wait hours on end for or dash in front of on the roads. And they said less in the bus, which they caught at the top of Waterloo Place, and which was packed inside and out. A seat was found for Ella, but Mr. Eccles was left strap-hanging. For this he kept his head low, in case his new hat should collide with the ceiling, lurched a good deal on the quiet, and put what polish he could upon his dignity by peering and looking back in a critical way out of the window, rather as though London was being partially managed by him, and he had to see that the buildings were in their right places. Ella pretended that she was his assistant, and looked roughly where he looked. He only spoke once, and that was at one of the stops, where a lot of people got out and in. ‘A Veritable Sardine Tin,’ he murmured, leaning over. But Ella did not catch the words. ‘Pardon?’ she said. Mr. Eccles was just about to repeat himself, and had got as far as Veritable, when he was bumped into by a person. He looked sharply round at the bumper and Ella, in order to pretend that nothing had happened, asked him again what he said. ‘A Veritable Sardine Tin,’ repeated Mr. Eccles, but all the spontaneity and gaiety had gone out of the observation. Also he had that glassy look in his eyes, and after having taken another look at the offender he murmured something about Some People. Ella didn’t quite catch what, but knew that when people start calling other people Some, they had nothing nice to say about them. She therefore nodded in an ambiguous manner, which conveyed sympathy with Mr. Eccles, and anger at the person.
By the time they reached the Park, then, a complete, and not very enjoyable hiatus had been made in the flowering process of their friendship, and as they went in by the Wellington Gate, Ella felt as though they had to start all over again. They were walking alongside Rotten Row at a brisk pace, and he was again monosyllabic. She knew by now that he was a very touchy person, and she could see that the Veritable Sardine Tin casualty was still weighing on his mind. She braced herself to entertain him.
‘What part of the world do you li
ve in, then, Mr. Eccles?’ she said, glad to call him ‘Mr. Eccles’ thus, and to begin again on a more formal basis, almost as though she had him across the bar.
‘Well, I’m living over at Chiswick at the moment. But I don’t fancy I shall be there much longer.’
‘Chiswick, eh? That’s a very nice part, isn’t it? I’ve never been there myself.’
‘Oh, yes, it’s all right,’ said Mr. Eccles, and added, in a rather forced way, ‘I have my sister-in-law staying with me at the moment.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Ella, and tried to create some mental picture of Mr. Eccles at home. Chiswick, an ‘infernal girl,’ and a sister-in-law – there was little enough to go on. And what attitude did (or would) sisters-in-law adopt towards new hats and matinées with barmaids?
‘One’s relations can get very trying at times, can’t they?’ said Mr. Eccles.
‘Yes, I should say they can,’ said Ella, a little pleased and flattered that he should have taken her into his confidence so far.
‘But then these Army people are often like that,’ said Mr. Eccles, gazing ahead of him in the feeble light of the Park lamps, ‘so I suppose one shouldn’t complain.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Ella, in an even tone, but knowing inwardly that he had opened the bombardment again with a frightful, devastating shell. Army people! It was impossible to take in all the implications of those words at once. She didn’t quite know what Army People meant: technically privates (like her brother who was killed in the war) were Army people. But from the painful yet unctuous way in which Mr. Eccles had dragged the phrase in, it here obviously covered some remote and haughty area between subalterns and Field Marshals, and left her humbled. So his people were Army People! She wondered (half ironically) that he condescended to speak to her!