‘But I could, I tell you. I could. I know what I want, and I love you. That’s all that matters.’
‘Good Lord,’ said Ella, simply and thoughtfully. For she was genuinely affected, and was unable, for the moment, to have any ulterior thought or keep up any of her defences.
‘You could marry me?’ said Mr. Eccles, eagerly in the darkness. ‘Couldn’t you?’
So touched was she, so bewildered by this uncanny turn in her fortune, so surprised at having brought another human being to such a pass in regard to her, so anxious, from force of habit, to gladly meet and oblige anyone who could be so kind and disinterested, that her first instinct was to say ‘Of course I could.’ But she stopped herself in time, and said, ‘But I don’t know you.’
‘But you will know me. You’ll come to know me. Say you will. Say you will.’
(Say you will know me, she wondered in passing, or say you will marry me?) ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said.
‘But I want you. I must have you. I’m so lonely.’
‘Are you?’ said Ella gently, and, believing him, realized that he was not without the power to move her heart.
‘You don’t think I’m too old, do you?’ he said. ‘You don’t think that, do you?’
‘Of course you’re not too old,’ said Ella. ‘What an absurd idea.’
And she said this with all the greater conviction and strength because she felt grateful to him, in a manner hard to analyse, for his having himself brought forward this lurking but otherwise unmentionable aspect of the matter – for his having had at once the modesty, sincerity and courage to confess its existence. By doing so he put himself at her willing mercy, and as it were in confession absolved himself from the stain which she had thought must always discolour their relationship – that stain being her subtle feeling of resentment at a middle-aged man making love to her because she was less attractive than others, on the basis that second-best matched second-best. Now that he had owned up, and asked her indulgence, she was only too happy to give it. The affair took on a special character of its own, and need not involve any second-bests anywhere.
‘Are you sure?’ he said.
‘Yes, of course I’m sure. You mustn’t think like that.’
‘But I can’t help it. I’m afraid of losing you. You’re so young and beautiful.’
‘Oh, I’m not,’ said Ella, again in the simple, self-betraying way she had when she dropped her defences. For, from whatever quarter it came, it was quite impossible to resist feeling richer and happier after such a compliment, which gratified her, not because she believed remotely in its truth, but because of the astounding possibility that he might – because, in fact, she believed he did – which was the very next best thing to its being true, and which refreshed her famished soul.
‘Oh you are,’ he said. ‘You’re lovely. You know you are.’
Again her heart was unreasonably lifted up, and she wondered what she would be feeling now if it had been the man of her choice saying such things in the darkness. But suppose she allowed him to become the man of her choice, since he was the only one who had ever or who ever would say such things and mean them? To be truly wanted by one man, surely, was as desirable as being admired by many. She believed he might easily win her if he went on like this. Oddly enough, Mr. Eccles as a besieging lover, much as she had formerly dreaded his assuming the rôle, was an infinitely more attractive Mr. Eccles than he was in any other guise.
‘I’m not,’ she said. . . .
‘But you are. You are. Say you love me a little.’
‘Well – ‘
‘You do – don’t you – a little?’
‘Well – I suppose I do,’ said Ella, too weak, and too much under a weird sense of obligation to him for his incomprehensible enthusiasm for her, to withhold a relenting word, and meanly give him nothing in return. Besides she took refuge behind his ‘a little,’ and felt justified in thinking that she had not technically overstepped the truth.
‘Then, you’re going to be mine, aren’t you? You’re going to be mine?’
‘But what would that mean?’ said Ella, compelling herself to one final effort to get matters clear. ‘Would it mean we would be Engaged?’
‘Of course it would. Of course it would. You will, won’t you? Say you will!’
And as Ella did not reply he kissed her once more, and there was a silence.
‘You must!’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘You must!’
And enveloped by the strength of his passion and too feeble to argue any more, Ella was hypnotized into feeling, somehow, that indeed she must, and she again made no attempt to answer, thus implying (to what exactly she still did not know) her consent.
CHAPTER XVIII
‘ITS WONDERFUL, ISN’T IT,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘Just to be strolling arm-in-arm like this.’
They were walking briskly now by the lake in the direction of Clarence Gate, whence they were to emerge for their supper into London, whose lights were now seen glittering, and whose buses and trains could be heard roaring, an entirely furious and disparaging welcome to the surface to divers in its dark parks.
So soon as they had started walking Mr. Eccles had become a different creature – experiencing an influx of all that cheerful sense of manhood and resilience known to overtake gentlemen who have just been kissing young ladies a great deal and for the first time, and holding her arm and becoming loquacious. Ella, having got cold sitting out all that time, was also glad to be moving, and inclined for this reason to reflect his mood in some measure, however doubtful her inner frame of mind.
‘Yes – it is,’ she said, not finding it in her heart to damp his spirits, but her heart sank. It sank firstly because his remark, together with some which had preceded it, were all manifesting a growing air of jubilant proprietorship which, in spite of her late tacit agreement, frightened her more and more every moment; and secondly because, if she did sincerely consent, and if walking thus with him was ‘wonderful,’ as he had assured her it was, then she must have a blind spot about wonder in general, and would never know the wonders of love. For all she felt was a feeling of being no more and no less puzzled and ordinary than she was at any other moment of the day.
‘It changes everything, doesn’t it,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘Love.’
By what subtle and indomitable methods was he now trying to land her with the assumption that she had conceded all? Surely that remark was meant to include her. Did he really believe that she had told him she loved him? Had she conveyed that? She did not know. Certainly she had not contradicted him, and perhaps he had the right to interpret her silence thus. She should not have let him kiss her like that. If only she had had the smallest experience of affairs like this, she would understand the conventions better, and know where she was, and be able to handle the situation.
‘Yes,’ she said, still unable to stop being polite. ‘It does.’ But that only involved her further. There was a silence as they walked briskly along.
‘When did you first Know?’ said Mr. Eccles, suddenly, pressing her arm, and coming a little closer in fond anticipation.
At first she did not get his meaning.
‘Know what, Mr. Eccles?’ she said, innocently.
‘What?’ said Mr. Eccles, in a shocked manner.
‘Know what?’ she repeated, half panic-stricken, for try as she might, she could not, no she could not, bring herself to say it.
‘Know what what?’ said Mr. Eccles, bringing off another clever double, but speaking sternly.
‘Know what, Ernest,’ she said, pumping it up and heaving it out as it were from some hydraulic machinery within her.
‘Ah, that’s better. You can really call me Ernest now, can’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Ella feebly.
‘Call me Ernest in Ernest, eh!’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘That’s rather a good one. I must remember that.’
Oh dear, thought Ella, if that was his idea of a good one, it was a poor outlook for the more frothy side of their pro
posed future as an engaged couple.
‘But you haven’t answered my question yet,’ he said, dismaying Ella, who thought he might have forgotten about this. ‘When did you first Know?’
‘I don’t know, really,’ she said, her voice begging him, if he could but know it, to have mercy on her.
‘But you must know. When did you first know I Cared – eh?’
At this she felt relief, as she had thought at first that he had meant to press her as to when she first knew, i.e. knew she Cared for him.
‘It’s hard to say,’ she said. . . .
‘But you must have had a Feeling. When did you have a Feeling?’
‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘that time in the bar when you asked me to go to a theatre.’
‘What first gave you the Feeling then?’
Impossible to tell him that it had been his absurd new hat which had given her the ‘feeling.’ And was the ‘feeling’ the exact expression? At that time, alas, she would herself have much more readily described it as ‘the creeps.’
‘It must have been the way you looked,’ she said. ‘And when did you first begin to know,’ said Mr. Eccles, with an air of tremulously unfolding her own romance.
‘Ah’. . . said Ella. . . .
It had come to this, then? There seemed no doubt now that he had read everything he could read into her silence, and was presuming that she was up to the neck in it with him.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘Perhaps,’ she said, flying to her own retreat, semi-flirtatiousness, ‘I didn’t ever know.’
‘Ah – you’re playing with me now,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘You love to play with me, don’t you?’
She could yet marvel at the blithe effrontery with which he took it on himself to write and produce her entire psychology and rôle in this light drama of bashful love, but she had no weapon with which she could meet him, and thought it best to play the game his way.
‘Do I,’ she said, for all the world as though roguishly confessing that she did.
‘Don’t you just!’ said Mr. Eccles, delightedly expanding her trait. ‘Nothing gives you so much pleasure.’
‘Does it?’ she said, in the same way, and this was too much for him.
‘You little Puss!’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘You make me want to Squeeze you!’
Ella’s soul went faint. Puss! Squeeze! If he had searched through the entire awful vocabulary of archness he could not have alighted upon two expressions which nauseated her more. She might have stood Puss by itself – saucy, elephantine, fatuous as it was. But Squeeze! Squeeze in conjunction with Puss! Squeeze – the grossest, pawkiest, most ignominious of all ignominious epithets in the realms of sensuous playfulness! She would have to run away from him in a moment.
‘You mustn’t,’ she said, meaning it sincerely, indeed, for she was beside herself with shame.
‘Mustn’t I?’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘You little Puss!’ And instead of taking her protest to mean what it did mean, that he must not use such expressions, he disgustingly interpreted it as a coy injunction not to commit the criminal act of Sqeezing itself. For she suddenly felt his fingers tightening defiantly around her arm muscles, and apprehended with anguish that he had stepped from loathsome fancy to reality – that she was in fact Being Squeezed!
‘What?’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘Mustn’t I? What? What?’
‘Oo – don’t,’ said Ella. ‘You’ll hurt my arm.’
‘You little Tease,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘I can be a Tease as well as you, you know.’
Tease! Another horrible expression somehow. The very way it rhymed with Squeeze seemed to put it in a low category, and made it contribute to the naughty, nudging atmosphere he was so assiduous in creating. She felt she must make some sort of stand.
‘You’re in a gay mood to-night, aren’t you?’ she said, and she had enough courage to allow a definite proportion of irony to enter her tone.
‘Ah – but then I’m a gay fellow,’ said Mr. Eccles, swimmingly impervious, Ella noticed, to her irony (he had the hide of a rhinoceros, among other things); and he added ‘And there’s been enough to make me gay to-night, hasn’t there?’
‘Has there?’ she said, and seeing with relief that they had now reached Clarence Gate, and were coming out into the busy traffic of Baker Street, where it would be impossible to keep up this excruciating tête-à-tête, she relented with ‘I suppose there was.’
‘You darling,’ he said (if only he had made do with that throughout!) ‘Do you know what we’re going to do now?’
‘What?’
‘We’re going to have a little something to celebrate,’ he said.
And because she could read practically every thought going on in his silly head about five seconds or so before he uttered it she did not have to hear his dashingly suggestive ‘I do like Bubbly – don’t you?’ (as he steered her across the traffic to a public-house standing conveniently over the way) to be apprized of the next trick up his sleeve – the fact that they were about to drink champagne.
CHAPTER XIX
IT WAS ALL very well to talk about celebrating, thought Ella, as they entered a large, bright and rather crowded Saloon Bar – but what exactly were they celebrating? Their Engagement?
As there was no waiter he had himself to go to the bar to get the drinks, and while he was gone she had time to ponder this matter. Was she Engaged to him or not? She still had no idea, and her doubt arose not only from her inability to gather whether she had been understood to have given her consent to such an arrangement, but also from her lack of absolute certainty as to whether he had made any such proposal. ‘Of course we would,’ he had said, and ‘You must! – you must! –’ but so far as she could remember the atmosphere had never entirely freed itself from something remotely conditional lurking in those Woulds and Musts, and at no point had the explicit given its charter to the implicit. It never did with Mr. Eccles, but it was awkward to be going about London with a gentleman to whom you did not know whether you were Engaged or not. Awkwarder still if you presumed you were when you weren’t.
As he returned, smiling and bright as ever, with two medium-sized glasses of draught champagne she smiled back and decided that she really must get it out of him. But as he now had to take off his hat, his coat, his scarf, and his gloves, in the leisurely and methodical succession to which she had become used (it was rather like watching a surgeon getting ready for an operation), it was some time before the decks were clear for renewed discussion. At last, however, he lifted his glass and she lifted hers.
‘Well, here’s to –’ he began, and paused (maddeningly, for her problem would be solved if he would but tell her to what they were drinking), ‘What shall we say?’
‘I don’t know quite,’ she said, ostensibly jocular, actually grimly questioning.
‘Well, just to both of us in general, then,’ he said, and they both drank. ‘I suppose we’re not Engaged until I’ve given you a ring.’
Then they were Engaged! So taken aback was she by this sudden confirmation and its vast implications, that she again forgot herself.
‘But Mr. Eccles –’ she said, not knowing what she was going to follow it with.
‘Mr. Who?’
‘Ernest,’ she said, correcting herself again by use of hydraulic machinery, but unable to go any further.
‘Ah – I love to hear you say “Ernest” – just like that,’ said Mr. Eccles, imperturbably mistaking the deep groaning of the machinery for the ringing throb of awakened passion. ‘Well – what have you to say to your – “Ernest”?’
‘But we can’t be just engaged – just like that – can we?’
‘Can’t we?’ said Mr. Eccles, taking more wine. ‘I can. Why can’t we? Are you ashamed of it?’
‘No – it’s not I’m ashamed. It’s just –’
‘I’m not. I want to tell the whole world, myself. And I’m going to.’
‘What?’ said Ella.
‘The whole world,’ Mr. Eccles went on, ‘that I’m en
gaged to the most beautiful girl in the world. How about that?’
And as Ella’s blood was now freezing as she realized that the ‘whole world’ would undoubtedly include ‘The Midnight Bell,’ Bob, the Governor and everybody, and that unless she could stop him he would be in the bar in the rôle of her fiancé (fiancé!) blandly broadcasting his and her shame to the whole world (for, however much she had got used to the idea, she was still too near her first emotions not to have a deep underlying sense of shame in this inexplicable affair), and that therefore before she knew where she was she would be being Congratulated (Congratulated!) and committed publicly and eternally to this stranger, and that her mother would Find Out, and so on and so forth – as Ella was realizing all these things at one stroke, she made no attempt to reply, but gazed at him as though fascinated.
‘Shout it from the housetops!’ said Mr. Eccles.
‘Oh no,’ said Ella, panic overcoming all else. ‘I don’t think we’d better do that.’
And then, seeing that his enthusiasm for publicity was intended with the utmost benevolence, deriving purely from his good-natured desire to ‘show’ her that he was not ashamed to declare generally that a man of his standing and wealth was going to marry a barmaid, she felt that she could not return kindness with affront, and risk Wounding him, and added (fatally, as she saw a moment after), ‘Let’s keep it Secret.’
‘What? Keep it secret? Why should we want to keep it secret?’
‘Oh – I don’t know. I’d like it to be a Secret.’
‘Would you then?’ said Mr. Eccles, suddenly putting out his hand under the table, and touching her knee. ‘Very well – it shall be a Secret. Our Secret – eh?’
‘Yes – that’s right,’ said Ella, but of course she had really got herself into the soup for good and all now, for in admitting, nay, stressing, the existence of a Secret between them, she had moved from tacit to articulate consent, and had pledged herself beyond honourable recall. Good Heavens! – how had it all happened, and what was she to do now? She wished he would take his hand away from her knee. His very touch proclaimed a sort of new Secretive sense of ownership.