Still, there had been nothing else for her, Valentine to do. So there was no call for her to feel humiliated. Even if she had not felt for this man as she did she would have come, and, if he had been very bad, would have stayed.
He had not sent for her! this man who had once proposed love to her and then had gone away without a word and who had never so much as sent her a picture-postcard! Gauche! Haughty! Was there any other word for him? There could not be. Then she ought to feel humiliated. But she did not.
She felt frightened, creeping up the great staircase, and entering a great room. A very great room. All white; again with stains on the walls from which things had been removed. From over the way the houses confronted her, eighteen-centuryishly. But with a touch of gaiety from their red chimney pots … And now she was spying: with her heart in her mouth. She was terribly frightened. This room was inhabited. As if set down in a field, the room being so large, there camped. … A camp-bed for the use of officers, G.S. one, as the saying is. And implements of green canvas, supported on crossed whitewood staves: a chair, a bucket with a rope handle, a washing-basin, a table. The bed was covered over with a flea-bag of brown wool. She was terribly frightened. The further she penetrated the house the more she was at his mercy. She ought to have stayed downstairs. She was spying on him.
These things looked terribly sordid and forlorn. Why did he place them in the centre of the room? Why not against a wall? It is usual to stand the head of a bed against a wall when there is no support for the pillows. Then the pillows do not slip off. She would change. … No, she would not. He had put the bed in the centre of the room because he did not want it to touch walls that had been brushed by the dress of. … You must not think bad things about that woman!
They did not look sordid and forlorn. They looked frugal. And glorious! She bent down and drawing down the flea-bag at the top, kissed the pillows. She would get him linen pillows. You would be able to get linen now. The war was over. All along that immense line men could stand up!
At the head of the room was a dais. A box of square boarding, like the model-throne artists have in studios. Surely she did not receive her guests on a dais: like Royalty. She was capable … You must not. … It was perhaps for a piano. Perhaps she gave concerts. It was used as a library now. A row of calf-bound books stood against the wall on the back edge of the platform. She approached them to see what books he had selected. They must be the books he had read in France. If she could know what books he had read in France she would know what some of his thoughts there had been. She knew he slept between very cheap cotton sheets.
Frugal and glorious. That was he! And he had designed this room to love her in. It was the room she would have asked. … The furnishing … Alcestis never had. … For she, Valentine Wannop, was of frugal mind, too. And his worshipper. Having reflected glory. … Damn it, she was getting soppy. But it was curious how their tastes marched together. He had been neither haughty nor gauche. He had paid her the real compliment. He had said: “Her mind so marches with mine that she will understand.”
The books were indeed a job lot. Their tops ran along against the wall like an ill-arranged range of hills; one was a great folio in calf, the title indented deep and very dim. The others were French novels and little red military text books. She leaned over the dais to read the title of the tall book. She expected it to be Herbert’s Poems or his “Country Parson”. … He ought to be a Country Parson. He never would be now. She was depriving the church of. … Of a Higher Mathematician, really. The title of the book was Vir. Obscur.
Why did she take it that they were going to live together? She had no official knowledge that he wanted to. But they wanted to talk. You can’t talk unless you live together. Her eye, travelling downwards along the dais caught words on paper. They threw themselves up at her from among a disorder of half a dozen typed pages; they were in big, firm, pencilled letters. They stood out because they were pencilled; they were:
A man could stand up on a bleedin’ ’ill!
Her heart stopped. She must be out of condition. She could not stand very well, but there was nothing to lean on to. She had—she didn’t know she had—read also the typed words:
“Mrs. Tietjens is leaving the model cabinet by Barker of Bath which she believes you claim. …”
She looked desperately away from the letter. She did not want to read the letter. She could not move away. She believed she was dying. Joy never kills. … But it. … “fait peur.” “Makes afraid.” Afraid! Afraid! Afraid! There was nothing now between them. It was as if they were already in each others’ arms. For surely the rest of the letter must say that Mrs. Tietjens had removed the furniture. And his comment—amazingly echoing the words she had just thought—was that he could stand up. But
