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The side door of Miss Emery's shop was in Brick Passage, and not
in the main street, so that a man, even a man of commanding
stature and formidable appearance, might by insinuating himself
into Brick Street, off King Street, and then taking the passage
from the quieter end, arrive at it without attracting too much
attention. This course was adopted by John Hessian. From the
moment when he quitted his own house that Friday evening in June
he had been subject to the delusion that the collective eye of
Bursley was upon him. As a matter of fact, the collective eye of
Bursley is much too large and important to occupy itself
exclusively with a single individual. Bursley is not a village,
and let no one think it. Nevertheless, John was subject to the
delusion.
The shop was shut, as he knew it would be. But the curtained
window of the parlour, between the side-door and the small
shuttered side-window of the shop, gave a strange suggestion of
interesting virgin spotless domesticity within. John cast a
fearful eye on the main thoroughfare. Nobody seemed to be passing.
The chapel-keeper of the Wesleyan Chapel on the opposite side of
Trafalgar Road was refreshing the massive Corinthian portico of
that fane, and paying no regard whatever to the temple of Eros
which Miss Emery's shop had suddenly become.
So John knocked.
'I am a fool!' his thought ran as he knocked.
Because he did not know what he was about. He had won the toss,
and with it the right to approach Annie Emery before his brother.
But what then? Well, he did desire to marry her, quite as much for
herself as for his sister's fortune. But what then? How was he
going to explain the tepidity, the desertion, the long sin against
love of ten years? In short, how was he going to explain the
inexplicable? He could decidedly do nothing that evening except
make a blundering ass of himself. And how soon would Robert have
the right to come along and say HIS say? That point had not been
settled. Points so extremely delicate cannot be settled on a
slate, and he had not dared to broach it viva voce to his younger
brother. He had been too afraid of a rebuff.
He then hoped that Annie's servant would tell him that Annie was
out.
Annie, however, took him at a disadvantage by opening the door
herself.
'Well, MR HESSIAN!' she exclaimed, her face bursting into a swift
and welcoming smile.
'I was just passing,' the donkey in him blundered forth. 'And I
thought--'
However, in fifteen seconds he was on the domestic side of the
sitting-room window, and seated in the antimacassared armchair
between the fire-place and the piano, and Annie had taken his hat
and told him that her servant was out for the evening.
'But I'm disturbing your supper, Miss Emery,' he said. Flurried
though he was, he could not fail to notice the white embroidered
cloth spread diagonally on the table, and the cold meat and the
pastry and the glittering cutlery and crystal thereon.
'Not at all,' she replied. 'You haven't had supper yet, I expect?'
'No,' he said, not thinking.
'It will be nice of you to help me to eat mine,' said she.
'Oh! But really--'
But she got plates and things out of the cupboard below the
bookcase--and there he was! She would take no refusal. It was
wondrous.
'I'm awfully glad I came now,' his thought ran; I'm managing it
rather well.'
And--
'Poor Bob!'
His sole discomfort was that he could not invent a sufficiently
ingenious explanation of his call. You can't tell a woman you've
called to make love to her, and when your previous call happens to
have been ten years ago, some kind of an explanation does seem to
be demanded. Ultimately, as Annie was so very pleased to see him,
so friendly, so feminine, so equal to the occasion, he decided to
let his presence in her abode that night stand as one of those
central facts in existence that need no explanation. And they went
on talking and eating till the dusk deepened and Annie lit the gas
and drew the blind.
He watched her on the sly as she moved about the room. He decided
that she did not appear a day older. There was the same plump,
erect figure, the same neatness, the same fair skin and fair hair,
the same little nose, the same twinkle in the eye--only perhaps
the twinkle in the eye was a trifle less cruel than it used to be.
She was not a day older. (In this he was of course utterly
mistaken; she was ten years older, she was thirty-three, with ten
years of successful commercial experience behind her; she would
never be twenty-three again. Still she was a most desirable woman,
and a woman infinitely beyond his deserts.) Her air of general
capability impressed him. And with that there was mingled a
strange softness, a marvellous hint of a concealed wish to
surrender.... Well, she made him feel big and masculine--in brief,
a man.
He regretted the lost ten years. His present way of life seemed
intolerable to him. The new heaven opened its gate and gave
glimpses of paradise. After all, he felt himself well qualified
for that paradise. He felt that he had all along been a woman's
man, without knowing it.
'By Jove!' his thought ran. 'At this rate I might propose to her
in a week or two.'
And again--
'Poor old Bobbie!'
A quarter of an hour later, in some miraculous manner, they were
more intimate than they had ever been, much more intimate. He
revised his estimate of the time that must elapse before he might
propose to her. In another five minutes he was fighting hard
against a mad impulse to propose to her on the spot. And then the
fight was over, and he had lost. He proposed to her under the
rose-coloured shade of the Welsbach light.
She drew away, as though shot.
And with the rapidity of lightning, in the silence which followed,
he went back to his original criticism of himself, that he was a
fool. Naturally she would request him to leave. She would accuse
him of effrontery.
Her lips trembled. He prepared to rise.
'It's so sudden!' she said.
Bliss! Glory! Celestial joy! Her words were at least equivalent to
an absolution of his effrontery! She would accept! She would
accept! He jumped up and approached her. But she jumped up too and
retreated. He was not to win his prize so easily.
'Please sit down,' she murmured. 'I must think it over,' she said,
apparently mastering herself. 'Shall you be at chapel next Sunday
morning?'
'Yes,' he answered.
'If I am there, and if I am wearing white roses in my hat, it will
mean--' She dropped her eyes.
'Yes?' he queried.
And she nodded.
'And supposing you aren't there?'
'Then the Sunday after,' she said.
He thanked her in his Hessian style.
'I prefer that way of telling you,' she smiled demurely. 'It will
avoid the necessity for another--so much--you understand?...'
'Quite so, quite so!' he agreed. 'I quite understand.'
'And if I DO see those roses,' he went on, 'I shall take upon
myself to drop in for tea, may I?'
She paused.
'In any case, you mustn't speak to me coming out of chapel,
PLEASE.'
As he walked home down Oldcastle Street he said to himself that
the age of miracles was not past; also that, after all, he was not
so old as the tale of his years would mathematically indicate.
Read next: PART III - THE SILENT BROTHERS: CHAPTER III
Read previous: PART III - THE SILENT BROTHERS: CHAPTER I
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