“I was going to cut some asparagus for your dinner. The first of the season.” And she waited eagerly: Richard had always praised her for the excellence of her asparagus.
He nodded.
“By the bye, leave out some sandwiches to-night, Caroline. I may be late coming back. I’m taking Hetty to the theatre.”
Aunt Carrie coloured and her heart sank from her faded tussore blouse right into her old cracked gardening boots. She answered in a tremulous voice:
“Yes, Richard.” Then she went out to the garden.
But she cut her asparagus with an uneasy mind. Coming on top of Arthur’s misfortune — it was like Aunt Carrie to soften his prison sentence to this ambiguity — the situation between Hetty and Richard distressed her frightfully. Richard, of course, was beyond reproach. But Aunt Carrie was not so sure about Hetty now; she viewed with misgiving these recent presents; at times Aunt Carrie almost hated Hetty.
All that evening Aunt Carrie worried and worried and would not go to bed until Richard should return.
It was, in fact, nearly eleven when Barras came back to the Law. And Hetty came with him. He had suggested that they take the cool drive together, after the heat of the theatre. Bartley would drive her home later.
They entered the drawing-room in good spirits.
“I can’t stay, you know,” Hetty declared brightly. She took the cigarette he offered her and perched on the arm of a chair, her legs crossed, one neat ankle swinging.
“You’ll have a sandwich?” he suggested with a sheepish smile. And he went into the dining-room to find the tray Aunt Carrie had prepared.
There was no doubt about it, he was reluctant to let her go. He did not ask himself why. He had always held himself a moral man, mechanically content to satisfy his physical needs at the legitimate fount of love upstairs. But since the disaster he was different. The state of tension in which he lived had accelerated his functions, infused a fever through his blood. He was experiencing the Indian summer of his ductless glands. Sometimes the sense of his own physical well-being was extraordinary. It is true that once or twice he had experienced a sharp attack of giddiness, almost of vertigo, which had made him reel and clutch at the nearest article of furniture to save himself from falling. But this, he knew, was nothing, nothing whatever; he had never felt better in his life.
He went back into the drawing-room.
“Here you are, my dear.”
She accepted a chicken sandwich in silence.
“You’re very quiet all of a sudden,” he observed, after several side glances towards her small, appealing profile.
“Am I?” she answered, averting her eyes.
The fixed admiration in his face made her suddenly uneasy. It was impossible not to realise the change in him. For some weeks past, indeed, his manner, attentions and repeated presents had suggested the possibility of a climax approaching, and this did not suit Hetty at all. She did not like it. She wanted to keep on receiving the advantages without giving anything in exchange. To begin with, Hetty was, in her own phrase, a good girl. Actually she had no morality; she was pure by design, saved from sin by the marketable value of her virginity. Her fixed idea was to make a good match, a marriage which would give her money and position, and to this end she knew perfectly how important it was to maintain her maiden state. This was easy, for though her effect was aphrodisiac, in herself she had no sexual impulses — Laura, her sister, had received the double supply. At the outset Barras’s attentions had flattered and soothed her. Arthur’s imprisonment had fallen as a dreadful blow upon her vanity, removing Arthur at one stroke from her pleasant plannings for the future. She could never marry him now, never, never. It was natural for her to accept Barras’s sympathy; the mere fact of being seen with him in public helped tremendously to “save her face”; they were united against a weakling who had wretchedly let them down.
The drawing-room was lit by several of the new shaded lamps, which cast soft pools of light upon the carpet and left the ceiling mysterious and dark.
“How pretty!” she exclaimed, arising and moving towards the shades and fingering their fringes. Then she turned brightly.
“Why don’t you smoke a cigar?”
She had the idea that he would be safer if engaged with a cigar.
“I don’t want a cigar,” he replied ponderously, his eyes dwelling on her face.
She laughed lightly, as if he had made a joke, and remarked:
“I’ll have another cigarette then.”
When he had lit her cigarette she moved over to the gramophone and set Violet Lorraine to sing: If you were the only girl in the world.
“I’m having tea with Dick Purves and his sister at Dilley’s to-morrow,” she remarked inconsequently.
His face altered. He had now reached the stage of jealousy; he detested this young Purves. Flight-Lieutenant Dick Purves, the comparatively undistinguished companion of Hetty’s childhood, was now the hero of the hour. During the last air raid upon the North-East counties he had flown solo above the wind-driven Zeppelin and released the bomb out of the high darkness which had brought down the dirigible in flames. Tynecastle had gone mad about Dick Purves; it was rumoured he was to have the V.C., and in the meantime he had only to show himself in a restaurant to be greeted by wild demonstrations of hero-worship.
All this recurred to Barras and he said quite sulkily:
“You seem to do a good deal of running after this Purves fellow.”
“Oh no,” she protested. “You know I don’t. It’s just that he’s so much in demand just now. You know what I mean. Everyone’ll be looking at our table and envying us. It makes the party quite exciting.”
He moved impatiently, seeing the vapidly handsome youth with his baby blue eyes, the flaxen hair parted in the middle and plastered smooth as wax upon his head, the conceited smile playing about his lips as he smoked his cigarette and continually looked round in search of admiration. He smothered his irritation with difficulty. He had returned to the settee, flushed and breathing rather thickly. And in a moment he said:
“Come and sit here, Hetty.”
“I like moving about,” she replied airily, “after sitting in the theatre.”
“But I want you to sit beside me.”
A pause. She saw that it was impossible to refuse without seriously offending him, and unwillingly she came over and sat down on the far corner of the settee.
“You’re bullying me to-night,” she said.
“Am I?”
She nodded her head archly, at least, she tried to be arch again, but it was not very successful. She was too conscious of his presence beside her, his congested face, thick-set shoulders, even the fleshy creases of his waistcoat.
“You like the bracelet I gave you?” he asked at length, fingering the thin platinum strip on her wrist.
“Oh yes,” she said quickly. “You spoil me, really you do.”
“I’m a pretty rich man,” he said. “I can give you a number of things.” He was extremely clumsy and inexperienced: his emotion mastered him, almost choked him.
“You’ve always been kind to me,” she said, casting down her eyes.
He reached up to take her hand, but just then the gramophone stopped, and with the sense of being saved she jumped up and went to the machine.
“I’ll play the other side,” she remarked, and started the record.
He watched her heavily from under his brows with that fixed and vaguely ogling smile. His breathing was more difficult than ever, his under lip protruded.
“It’s pretty, that,” she went on, “terribly smart and catchy.”
She snapped her fingers to the time, resolved not to be led back to the settee again, moving about to the rhythm of the music. But as she passed him, he stretched out suddenly, caught her thin wrist and drew her on to his knees.