The Literary Sense. E. Nesbit
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The waitress brought the two thick cups of tea, and looked at him with a tepid curiosity. As soon as the two were alone again he leaned his elbows on the marble and spoke.
"Look here, darling, I've got something to tell you, and I hope to God you'll forgive me and stand by me, and try to understand that I love you just the same, and whatever happens I shall always love you."
This preamble sent a shiver of dread down her spine. What had he done—a murder—a bank robbery—married someone else?
It was on the tip of her tongue to say that she would stand by him whatever he had done; but if he had married someone else this would be improper, so she only said, "Well?" and she said it coldly.
"Well—I went to the Simpsons' dance on Tuesday—oh, why weren't you there, Ethel?—and there was a girl in pink, and I danced three or four times with her—she was rather like you, side-face—and then, after supper, in the conservatory, I—I talked nonsense—but only a very little, dear—and she kept looking at me so—as if she expected me to—to—and so I kissed her. And yesterday I had a letter from her, and she seems to expect—to think—and I thought I ought to tell you, darling. Oh, Ethel, do try to forgive me! I haven't answered her letter."
"Well?" she said.
"That's all," said he, miserably stirring his tea.
She drew a deep breath. A shock of unbelievable relief tingled through her. So that was all! What was it, compared with her fears? She almost said, "Never mind, dear. It was hateful of you, and I wish you hadn't, but I know you're sorry, and I'm sorry; but I forgive you, and we'll forget it, and you'll never do it again." But just in time she remembered that nice girls must not take these things too lightly. What opinion would he form of the purity of her mind, the innocence of her soul, if an incident like this failed to shock her deeply? He himself was evidently a prey to the most rending remorse. He had told her of the thing as one tells of a crime. As the confession of a crime she must receive it. How should she know that he had only told her because he feared that she would anyhow hear it through the indiscretion of the girl in pink, or of that other girl in blue who had seen and smiled? How could she guess that he had tuned his confession to the key of what he believed would be an innocent girl's estimate of his misconduct?
Following the tingle of relief came a sharp, sickening pinch of jealousy and mortification. These inspired her.
"I don't wonder you were afraid to tell me," she began. "You don't love me—you've never loved me—I was an idiot to believe you did."
"You know I do," he said; "it was hateful of me—but I couldn't help it."
Those four true words wounded her more than all the rest.
"Couldn't help it? Then how can I ever trust you? Even if we were married I could never be sure you weren't kissing some horrid girl or other. No—it's no use—I can never, never forgive you—and it's all over. And I believed in you so, and trusted you—I thought you were the soul of honour."
He could not say, "And so I am, on the whole," which was what he thought. Her tears were falling hot and fast between face and veil, for she had talked till she was very sorry indeed for herself.
"Forgive me, dear," he said.
Then she rose to the occasion. "Never," she said, her eyes flashing through her tears. "You've deceived me once—you'd do it again! No, it's all over—you've broken my heart and destroyed my faith in human nature. I hope I shall never see you again. Some day you'll understand what you've done, and be sorry!"
"Do you think I'm not sorry now?"
She wished that they were at home, and not in this horrible tea-shop, under the curious eyes of the waitresses. At home she could at least have buried her face in the sofa cushions and resisted all his pleading—at last, perhaps, letting him take one cold passive hand and shower frantic kisses upon it.
He would come to-morrow, however, and then—At present the thing to compass was a dignified parting.
"Good-bye," she said; "I'm going home. And it's good-bye for ever. No—it's only painful for both of us. There's no more to be said; you've betrayed me. I didn't think a decent man could do such things." She was pulling on her gloves. "Go home and gloat over it all! And that poor girl—you've broken her heart too." This really was a master stroke of nobility.
He stood up suddenly. "Do you mean it?" he said, and his tone should have warned her. "Are you really going to throw me over for a thing like this?"
The anger in his eyes frightened her, and the misery of his face wrung her heart; but how could she say—
"No, of course I'm not! I'm only talking as I know good girls ought to talk"?
So she said—
"Yes. Good-bye!"
He stood up suddenly. "Then good-bye," he said, "and may God forgive you as I do!" And he strode down between the marble tables and out by the swing-door. It was a very good exit. At the corner he remembered that he had gone away without paying for the tea, and his natural impulse was to go back and remedy that error. And if he had they would certainly have made it up. But how could he go back to say, "We are parting for ever; but still, I must insist on the sad pleasure of paying for our tea—for the last time"? He checked the silly impulse. What was tea, and the price of tea, in this cataclysmic overthrowing of the Universe? So she waited for him in vain, and at last paid for the tea herself, and went home to wait there—and there, too, in vain, for he never came back to her. He loved her with all his heart, and he, also, had what she had never suspected in him—the literary sense. Therefore he, never dreaming that the literary sense had inspired her too, perceived that to the jilted lover two courses only are possible—suicide or "the front." So he enlisted, and went to South Africa, and he never came home covered with medals and glory, which was rather his idea, to the few simple words of explanation that would have made all straight, and repaid her and him for all the past. Because Destiny is almost without the literary sense, and Destiny carelessly decreed that he should die of enteric in a wretched hut, without so much as hearing a gun fired. Literary to the soul, she has taken no other lover, but mourns him faithfully to this hour. Yet perhaps, after all, that is not because of the literary sense. It may be because she loved him. I think I have not mentioned before that she did love him.
ROUNDING OFF A SCENE
A SOFT rain was falling. Umbrellas swayed and gleamed in the light of the street lamps. The brightness of the shop windows reflected itself in the muddy mirror of the wet pavements. A miserable night, a dreary night, a night to tempt the wretched to the glimmering Embankment, and thence to the river, hardly wetter or cleaner than the gutters of the London streets. Yet the sight of these same streets was like wine in the veins to a man who drove through them in a hansom piled with Gladstone bags and P. and O. trunks. He leaned over the apron of the hansom and looked eagerly, longingly, lovingly, at every sordid detail: the crowd on the pavement, its haste as intelligible to him as the rush of ants when their hill is disturbed by the spade; the glory and glow of corner public-houses; the shifting dance of the gleaming wet umbrellas. It was England, it was London, it was home—and his heart swelled till he felt it in his throat. After ten years—the dream realised, the longing appeased. London—and all was said.
His cab, delayed by a red newspaper cart, jammed in altercative contact with a dray full of brown barrels, paused in Cannon Street. The eyes that drank in the scene perceived a familiar face watching on the edge of the pavement for a chance to cross the road under the horses' heads—the face of one who ten years ago had been the slightest of acquaintances. Now time and home-longing juggled with memory till the face seemed that of a friend. To meet a friend—this did, indeed, round off the scene of the home-coming. The man in the cab threw back the doors and leapt out. He crossed under the very nose-bag of a stationed dray horse. He wrung the friend—last seen as an