XV.

He was wakened at his club by an attendant who brought in his morning mail and a telegram. The telegram ran:

“_The name of Rimsky Korsakoff’s opera is quote Sadko unquote. Ottercove._”

So it was!

It was a “reply paid” telegram, and Frank scribbled back:--

“_Congratulations. Much relieved. Unspeakably happy. Dickin._”

Among the morning mail was a letter from Eva, bearing an Irish post mark.

“_I am sending you_,” she wrote, “_all my beautiful love, and please send me some money as quick as ever you can. Will tell you reason for it afterwards. Am leaving with de Jones for Paris and Rome etc. end of next week. If you really wish to see me alone we could meet at Holyhead as I am afraid to come to London on account of Daddy and his people who are stuffy and churchy old birds and would get suspicious, darling, if I stayed away too long with you, don’t you see, and if you came to Holyhead I could pretend, you see, I only went to see Aunt Jane etc. in Dublin, don’t you see. Can’t write any more as Postman is outside and screeching for my letter--‘Country Post!’ Accept all my Beautiful Love etc. Also I have a little cat and I have called Him Ferdinand. And don’t forget to meet me Tuesday midnight on the landing stage at Holyhead and arrange everything for our Honeymoon._

_Eva._”

Frank, who hated the idea of arriving empty-handed but, since the sudden stoppage of the Ottercove source did not dispose of the necessary sums, shrank at the thought of Eva’s extravagance. By a happy chance he heard of a draper and milliner in the Edgeware Road who was selling out her business and he went and bought up most of her remaining stock, thinking Eva would be glad to have it. The box he brought with him to Holyhead comprised a corset, eight pairs of crisp calico knickers, a number of strong cotton stockings, a skirt, and a couple of hats. He left the box containing these treasures in the room at the hotel and went out to the pier to meet the boat which, at midnight, a lighted shell out of the dark, suddenly swam up towards him; and on board, waving to him, already stood Eva.

She alighted with a portmanteau, and the boat train took them back into Holyhead Town. “I thought something was sure to happen, and you wouldn’t come,” he said.

“All the village boys,” she said, “came to see me off at the station. ‘Ah!’ they said: ‘Here’s Miss Kerr going off to London!’”

“Did they now?”

“They did.”

“I’ve brought you a present,” he said.

“Where is it?” she asked quickly.

“It’s in the room at the hotel.”

“Is it a ring?”

“No, it’s not a ring.”

“Is it--I mean--jewelry?”

“No--it’s clothes.”

“Clothes?”

“Clothes.”

“I thought you’d like to have them,” he said, opening the box at the hotel.

She took out the things one by one and laid them out on the bed. “H’m! H’m!” she said. “Of course, darling, they’re old, very old.”

“Never been worn,” Frank said, a little stiffly.

“I don’t mean that. I mean old-fashioned. Those two hats, for instance. Nobody wears such hats nowadays.”

“I am sure you’d look very well in them.”

“It’s the fashion when Mummy was a young girl or even earlier.”

“Still,” he said, “they look strong. I don’t see why you shouldn’t wear them.”

“And these stockings--cotton, you know.”

“They look very neat and strong,” he said.

“These knickers”--she held them out--“calico--they scratch.”

“Well,” he said, a little ruffled, “I only wished to please you.”

“I know. But--”

“This bodice,” he said. “I am sure it’s very nice.”

“No one wears corsets now, darling.”

“Well,” he said, evidently hurt, “I am sure I haven’t bought it for myself, and if you don’t want to wear it--”

He went away and lay sulking on his bed. “Gratitude!” he thought. “For all his trouble and expense....”

“I’ll wear them,” she said, coming up to him tenderly. “You know I’d do anything to please you, darling. Let us have no more quarrelling about these clothes, darling; they aren’t worth it.”

“Oh, aren’t they?” he said, rolling over and turning his back to her.

But she came up to him, tenderly, sauntered up to him, lovingly, on tip toe, and overtook him on the other side. “You look funny,” she said.

“Funny?”

“Kind of puzzled.”

“I’ve poured some beer into a glass containing peroxide of hydrogen.” He stood up and looked at her: “Most unusual beer.”

“Your skin, darling.”

“Yes.”

“Against my skin.”

“Is that,” he asked, “why they say that love is only skin deep?”

“Never mind what they say.”

“I don’t mind,” he said, and drew her passionately to himself.

“I like,” she said, “when you begin suddenly to breathe like that--like a steam engine.” A strange look of prepared abandonment came onto her face as she drew herself up to him and closed her eyes.

“Eva, you looked like that then ... on that hill.”

They were awed, breathless. Standing behind her, he clasped her with his sinewy arms, his hands like travelling flames. She threw her head back as his mouth pressed into the warm hollow of her shoulder, burnt her through and through.... He lifted her and carried her, with a simulation of ease, across the room. “There.... And the village boys in Ireland all mad on you. And Ferdinand has all this--and this--and this--all to himself.”

“All for you,” she said.

In the morning he woke up to a mood of warning and sat up. “Ottercove--”

“Yes, darling?”

“Has stopped all my money.”

“He hasn’t!” she cried. And also sat up.

“He has.”

“I wouldn’t have wired to you for money had I known, darling, of Ottercove’s action. He is a walking mountain of impudence!”

“But you needed it all the same for your journey.”

“No, it wasn’t the journey. It was for Charity.”

“Charity?”

“You see, I was asked to go about getting subscriptions for a life-boat saving fund or something and got all sorts of people to put down their names, but neglected to collect the money from them. About £20 in all. So I thought it would be simpler to wire you for it, don’t you see.”

“I see.”

“Couldn’t remember their addresses.”

“So you had no money for the journey?”

“A French lady called Thérèse Lapin, who lives in Dublin, gave me money to go to London with.”

“Whatever for?”

“On a tour of inspection. She has a daughter in London and Madame Lapin has heard in a round-about way that her daughter is living with a married man. So she wants me to take some eggs and butter to her daughter and report to her on my way back whether the daughter lives with a married man or whether she is straight and the rumour has been spread through malice.”

“So you want to go to London?”

“Darling, I must, for I wouldn’t know what to do with the eggs and butter. They’re in the portmanteau.”

The sun now looked into the room, and Eva, sitting up in bed, delicately sipped her chocolate. “And all the time while I was away in Ireland I talked about you to my little cousin Baby, and I said, every time there was a noise outside, that it must be you arriving, and Baby ran out to look and there was no one there. And on Sunday mornings I would say to her: ‘Now if you come to church with me you will see him, for he is surely there, sitting in his pew.’ And, together, we’d tear off to church, talking all the way of your sitting there already, and Baby’s cheeks--she is only twelve, you know--glowing with excitement. ‘Now,’ I’d say to her, ‘you are going to see him.’ And we would both get so excited that I’d forget myself that I was only teasing her.”

“What is your cousin Baby like? Is she nice?”

“She’s like me, only her hair isn’t a bit curly, but quite straight, and she has brown eyes instead of violet ones.”

In the afternoon they sat not far from the sea, and Frank was beginning to snooze. Eva had got him to buy picture postcards and stamps and, sitting beside him, scribbled innumerable postcards.

“To whom all this, Eva?”

“Village friends.”

“Let me see.” Nearly all recipients were men, addressed as “Esquires.” One was a “Mr.” “Hello,” he said, “why is this one a ‘Mr.’ while all the others are ‘Esquires’?”

“Oh,” she said, “it’s good enough for him.”

“It isn’t fair, you know; it’s vulgar to discriminate in these things.”

“But if I write ‘Esquire’ to him he’ll go round showing it to all the people in the village, and Daddy might find out I am in Holyhead with you. You don’t know the frightful danger I am in. I must be so very careful, darling, on account of Daddy and his people in Ireland, who are very strict on morals and things. It is a village, and everything, you know, goes round like wild fire. And I only told them I was going down to Dublin to see Aunt Jane and would be back the same day.”

“What awful busybodies!”

“And on board there was a register for anyone who cared to sign his name in it. And I couldn’t help myself, you know, and I signed my name: Miss Eva Kerr. Destination: London, viâ Holyhead.”

“Whatever did you do that for?”

“I couldn’t help myself, darling. Because the register is reprinted in all the local Irish newspapers, you see, and I thought it would be so nice to have all the old fogeys in the village, don’t you see, read it in their evening papers: ‘Ah,’ they’d say: ‘Here is Miss Eva Kerr off to London viâ Holyhead.’ Rather nice, you know, if you know what I mean.”

“Well, here we are in Holyhead. And aren’t we pleased! Or what is your idea of perfect bliss?”

“I like to eat chocolates and as I eat them to think of you, Ferdinand.”

“‘But I feel,’ said Byron,--‘and I feel it bitterly--that a man should not consume his life at the side and on the bosom of a woman, and a stranger; that even the recompense, and it is much, is not enough, and that this Cicisbean existence is to be condemned.’”

“What’s the matter?”

“Don’t know. Don’t feel very well. But you are a nurse; you ought to be able to tell me what is the matter.”

Eva looked very enigmatic. “H’m.... Yes, yes.”

And then, hard up for an answer, she kissed him. She kissed him again and again and, it seemed, would not stop.

To kiss and to be conscious of conferring a favour, to feel ashamed of it, and to wonder when, where, _your_ satisfaction came in--was now his melancholy lot. She was, he felt, shy of him, had always been, fundamentally, shy of him. Only in the taxi on their long drive back to the hotel she let herself go. She wanted that love which he could only feel when he had lost her. Women want it there and then, and men cannot give it till it is too late....

The railway porter, carrying her box of clothes to the London train next morning, looked as though he did not think much of them, anyhow. Frank bought himself a copy of _The Nation & Athenaeum_, and Eva, asked what she wanted to read, said, with some hesitation: “Buy me ... _Home Chat_.” It gave him a pang--a twist of the heart.

She read it stealthily and looked up at him. All the way to London Eva attracted everyone’s attention on account of her unusual hat and dowdy skirt coming down nearly to her heels and keeping off, Frank thought, possible lewd glances at her legs.

Arrived in London, she went straight away to the Dublin lady’s daughter. She had a rattling good time with them, went off for the week-end with them in motor-cars to picnics, races, shows and theatres, attracting great attention by her extraordinary new clothes and the enormous plumed and fruit-clad hats (the married man who shared a flat with Mlle. Lapin visibly seduced by Eva’s charms), and, on passing home through Dublin, she reported nothing to the mother; only said she had forgotten to deliver the eggs and butter, but otherwise had had a rattling good time.

Lord de Jones, whom she had met in London, had given her money to go on a learned errand for him to Edinborough University in connection with their forthcoming mission to the continent. But, after lunching with her lover, she decided she had better spend the day with him.

The day was bright. The shops beckoned invitingly.

“Buy me--”

“You know Lord Ottercove has stopped all my money.”

“Buy me all the same a little book of poetry.”

“What poetry?”

“Any poetry. A little book--to read in bed. It mustn’t be heavy, you know.”

“Well--yes.”

“I saw a nice little book in blue leather in a shop window the other day. I am sure it’s poetry. Buy me that.”

“Anything else?”

“Chocolates. To read in bed and eat and think of you, Ferdinand.”

“Yes.”

“And do send me roses for my birthday.”

“Yes. The fifteenth of this month. I won’t forget.”

She saw him off at the station, but left before the train went to meet de Jones, who had telephoned for her that morning.

“Remember: _roses_. All other flowers, Pilling says, are vulgar.”

She waved to him at the corner, and was gone.