Harriet Hume: A London Fantasy (12 page)

Regent Street was now deserted, save for a runnel of matrons that had trickled down from some terminus to which they had come on excursion tickets, which the railway companies continued to offer out of habitual enterprise and they continued to accept out of habitual thrift, although the destination was now nearly hell. These women looked like ghosts, for the strong light bleached what colour age and this habitual thrift had allowed their skins, their lips, their hair, and shone back from the shiny surfaces of their worn garments. “And indeed,” he thought sadly and kindly, “there is something ghostly about their condition, too. For to be born into an obscure family and not to attain any eminence in one’s lifetime must be to know something as different from full existence as the life of ghosts.” Across the way was one of those blanknesses behind stocky-plank palisades which it is as disconcerting to come upon in a familiar street as it would be to pick up a familiar book and come on the stubs of twenty torn-out pages. “Why the building, whatever it was, must have been pulled down some time from the progress of the work. Have I grown unobservant?” he asked himself in perturbation. “But no! I travel always in the Chimborazi-Mecklenburgh with papers on my knee, or a secretary whom I must instruct, or distinguished company whom I must respect by conversation.” Athwart the emptiness a crane drew its vast diagram, and lifted up a jerking container almost into the face of the Saharan presence, that here, perhaps because of the amount of dust rising from the work, seemed to be clad in yellow like the robe of a Tibetan monk. He watched the tilted shape climb up and up as he sauntered along the empty road, and said to himself, “It is strange I have never been afraid of heights.”

It had been his odd whim to go to his home in Portland Place by the Queen’s Hall side of upper Regent Street, though ’twas the other side that led him more directly. But this he abandoned when he had crossed Oxford Street and found in his path a hushed crowd of the dusty matrons who, because of his important bearing, fell back as he advanced. In a cleared space before a shop-window a tall policeman, his blue eyes glaucous with pity, his red face fish-like because he struggled with tears, stood above one of the matrons who lay stretched on the pavement, her head on a rolled coat. The thick soles of her shoes were turned extravagantly outwards, but sometimes twitched as if to say, “Shall we walk again, or shall we not?” and her breath debated, “Shall I flee? Shall I stay?” so that her pale tongue flickered like an asp’s between her parted lips. The cylinder between her feet and head, where the issue was being decided, was so shapeless that the argument seemed likely to be sluggishly conducted. Two slits on the awning overhead wrote wavering lines of sunlight on the pavement beside her; they recalled candles by a bier. Condorex said to the policeman in a quiet and confident voice, “Has the ambulance been summoned?” The policeman saluted and said, “Yes, Mr. Condorex.” They exchanged a sober, responsible, and quite meaningless nod, and he turned aside. He wished the harsh afternoon light had not painted London the colour of a grave.

Once in Great Portland Street he took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. “But it would not have been terrible had it not been mean,” he told himself. “’Tis meanness that makes life fearful, ay, and death too. If I had just seen a great man struck down by the assassin’s knife I would have felt grief and horror, but not this desire to go down on all fours and vomit like a dog. Death would be different with an Abbey hushed, and the pomp of a public event. There is nothing upon which Fame cannot put a better face.” Presently he wondered why he was walking in such an ungenteel highway when there were turnings that would bring him into the splendid breadth of his own Portland Place; and shuddered at the one he took. It was a narrow street of high houses that ran across Portland Place to some further thoroughfare, and through the crystal lens of the heat it could be seen that not a living thing moved in all its long length. Nothing was there but the hot stones of the houses and the pavement, which looked so nearly white in the strong glare that it was as if their outer surface had been burned away. It was hard to believe that the actual flames as well as light had not been used to cleanse it to this state of barrenness, and the suspicion was increased by the blue mist which floated through the glassy brightness. It recalled to him a highway he had seen in Pompeii, and he was displeased by the comparison. “This is a world that is utterly untempered to those who live in it!” he complained. “This day is far too hot! People are dying of it.” And he himself had begun to perspire far too freely for comfort. “Things can go wrong,” he mourned, “women can die in the street, catastrophe respects no one and is ingenious—”

At that point he stopped, for the very good reason that there had entered the street from a by-lane, and was now walking a few yards ahead of him, a woman with a remarkably neat shape. She did not look to be a lady, for she was clad in a gown of parchment-coloured muslin that was something too free and simple for a person of condition to wear on the street. One might guess her the wife of a jolly waterman, to whom she had at noon delivered his dinner in a striped handkerchief, going to the edge of the wharf and sending her voice through the tiny trumpet of her hands across the bright haze-wreathed waters to the alley among great ships where he sculled. Or it might more probably be, since she was strayed too far from the Thames to let that be likely, that her husband stood all day on a paint-splashed ladder in a pompous room, wielding a white brush to make dingy garlands good as new, and was comforted because she sat below and plied her needle and sometimes sang; and was the more comforted because he did not know that the gaiety of her song proceeded from certain rakish dreams (such as often visit poor men’s pretty wives) of what might have happened had she queened it in such a great house. Yet maybe that for all the informality of her dress she was not of the people at all, but was one of those ladies who will converse with the plumber in their nightgowns and on being rebuked open innocent eyes, and beg it to be noticed what a good family man he looked. In any case she was deliciously made, and at that moment was moulded in the prettiest pose imaginable; for she was holding something to her bosom with her right arm, which gave her right shoulder a lovely, languishing contour, and her left hand was raised to her face, an accident which revealed that she was one of the two women in a thousand who have a dainty elbow. He felt that he had been working too hard of late, that he would get old before his time, did he lose touch with life as he had done of late. But what was she at? Her left hand had dropped and had thrown something small in the gutter, and how she seemed to be searching in whatever it was she carried at her bosom. Now, undeniably, she was popping something into her mouth. Gad! the saucy wench was about to enter Portland Place eating cherries out of a bag. And Gad! she was Harriet Hume.

In a trance he followed her, remembering now that she had been very present in his mind only the night before. About two o’clock in the morning he had dreamed that three very comely women, the colour of weathered sculpture, had sat in his room at a table that was not there, weaving a cable from a heap of pale flowers. It had seemed to him that he was awake when he saw them, that he had raised himself on his elbow to watch them better, and had remained so for some minutes. But on his real awakening he had recalled that these were but figures out of a fairy-tale which had been told him by a woman in a garden; and that the woman was Harriet Hume. At the sudden recollection of her a bitterness like crushed almonds had filled his mouth, his mind. Yet, when he had gone to sleep, he had struggled back to wakefulness only to tell himself that to-morrow he must contrive to pass by the Queen’s Hall and try to find her picture on the hoardings there, as he had used to do when he went more by foot than now; and he had felt as one who promises himself a delight, a comfort.

Now he felt no bitterness at the sight of her, nor could quite recall why he should have done so. They had fallen out on each of their last two meetings, he knew, but he was now a better negotiator than ever, and had long since cozened himself out of an exact remembrance of the issue at fault. The matter fell therefore under the care of that habit of his by which he took for granted that if he had offended anyone he had done it out of policy and had gained an advantage by it, and that it would be both prudent and an exercise in technique were he to be reconciled to them. Moreover he knew a very lively desire to slip close to her and whisper a compliment in her ear; and he had suffered a great depression of his spirit when he had seen her walk before him in such beauty and thought himself debarred from her because he dared not risk his high repute by speaking to strange wenches. And Lord! she was at her tricks again! For she had come to a standstill, and after regarding the area-railings by which she walked with a good deal of seriousness, had hung on one of the spearheads a fine red doublet of cherries, which dangled from it like an ear-ring.

He quickened his step and caught her up, the more easily that as soon as she had done this thing she had apparently been rooted to the ground, and stood like a tableau vivant with her eyes nailed to the spearhead her foolishness had decorated. There was still no one in the street, in front of them, or behind them. The houses seemed asleep. He laid his hand on her waist and asked: “Will you not tell me, Harriet, why you did that?”

She was trembling violently. “Because,” she forced through her chattering teeth, keeping her eyes fixed on the pendant cherries, “to-day I read an article in
The Times
—and had a deal of trouble spelling out the hard words—which told how a Parsee gentleman, turning his subtlety to work on plants, has discovered they, too, are not exempt from this ailment named consciousness. And if plants, why not sticks, and stones, and metal? And if so, what a life of drudgery they lead, how confined by us to the grooves of the uses we find for them! So I thought I would admit one area-rail to the high human pleasure of feeling finer than its neighbours….” her voice died.

“Are you then the same dear fool as ever?” he enquired tenderly. And then, as the distress of her bearing came home to him, he exclaimed with compunction, “But how I have startled you! Did you not hear me coming?”

She did but raise her eyebrows, and smile faintly.

“My dear,” he continued in great concern, “we are both very foolish to be walking abroad in this great heat. Will you not come to my house, which is just across the way, and rest yourself?” He added to himself. “I must guard over myself, lest I am indiscreet, for my fidelity to Ginevra is part of my legend, and these things never stay hidden. But I believe I will find pleasure in admiring the delicious thing I once possessed. Indeed I was very fortunate! I had forgotten the perfection of her bosom,”

Till then she had kept her face turned from him, and because of that and of the deep brim of her poke-bonnet, he had seen little of it save the lobe of her ear and the tip of her nose. But now she offered herself fully to his eyes. Decidedly she was not looking her best, for heat and weariness had printed shadows under her eyes and round her mouth, which lay on her fine skin like watermarks on paper; and certainly she had not painted, and perhaps not even powdered, since the morning. She lowered her lids and let him gaze. “Ah, the poor doxy!” he thought pitifully. “Is it not shameful that so lovely a creature should not have a maid to help her rise at leisure, and a carriage to take her on her ways, and money enough to give her all she wants without toiling for it! I will take her home, and set her in a big chair, and I will give her tea. ’Tis a miracle, the effect of tea on females. But how like an angel she is looking now!” For she had opened her eyes and was regarding him with the most loving smile.

“Come, take my arm,” he said; and thought, “I know not what my butler and my footmen will say when they open the door and see her standing in this muslin gown. I hope they will not think she is a light-o’-love I have gathered on the pavements. But it would be a pretty thing if a man cannot take home an old friend for fear of his manservants.” She slipped her arm in his, and squeezed it very affectionately. He bade her lean on him, and chided her for venturing forth on such a day of bludgeoning heat, while he was wondering: “Why did we quarrel? Why, surely ’twas on account of some singular gift she seemed to have, which was nothing less than true second sight, so far as could be seen. Ay, she told me I would marry Ginevra before we had ever met, I remember. But why should we have quarrelled over that?” He shook his head blandly. “I cannot call the circumstances to mind.” But suddenly eagerness pierced him so that he gripped her arm. “Would she read my future to-day, I wonder? I cannot recollect how she did it. With tea-leaves? In a crystal? I think not. We were standing in Kensington Gardens chatting when she told me about Ginevra—”

But Harriet had come to a standstill again, and her eyes were set on a taxi-cab that was coming towards them. “I think ’twould be better if I went straight home,” she mewed.

“Why, Harriet, have you taken a dislike to me that you have changed your mind?” he exclaimed, and within he mourned: “She is not coming, she will not read my future, and God knows one would fain learn one’s future when one is throwing all overboard for the sake of principle! Things go wrong. They go wrong most pitifully. That woman was dying where she lay in Oxford Circus.” He shuddered, Harriet was standing in front of him, sending a very grave look up into his face. “My dear, we are very nearly at my door, you had better come in,” he told her, and groaned inwardly. “Leaving the future on one side, what shall I do if she does not come in with me! The time will never go by until it is six!”

At that a hammer struck in his brow; and he knew it would strike so every minute of the next two hours that he was alone and undistracted.