When Burlap went to live in Beatrice Gilray’s house, Miss Cobbett’s cup overflowed again. In the first moment of anger she was rash enough to give Beatrice a solemn warning against her tenant. But her disinterested solicitude for Beatrice’s reputation and virginity was too manifestly and uncontrollably tinged with spite against Burlap. The only effect of her admonition was to exasperate Beatrice into sharp retort.
“She’s really insufferable,” Beatrice complained to Burlap afterwards, without, however, detailing all the reasons she had for finding the woman insufferable.
Burlap looked Christ-like. “She’s difficult,” he admitted. “But one’s sorry for her. She’s had a hard life.”
“I don’t see that a hard life excuses anybody from behaving properly,” she rapped out.
“But one has to make allowances,” said Burlap, wagging his head.
“If I were you,” said Beatrice, “I wouldn’t have her in the place; I’d send her away.”
“No, I couldn’t do that,” Burlap answered, speaking slowly and ruminatively, as though the whole discussion were taking place inside himself. “Not in the circumstances.” He smiled a Sodoma smile, subtle, spiritual, and sweet; once more he wagged his dark, romantic head. “The circumstances are rather peculiar.” He went on vaguely, never quite definitely explaining what the rather peculiar circumstances were, and with a kind of diffidence, as though he were reluctant to sing his own praises. Beatrice was left to gather that he had taken and was keeping Miss Cobbett out of charity. She was filled with a mixed feeling of admiration and pity—admiration for his goodness and pity for his helplessness in an ungrateful world.
“All the same,” she said, and she looked fierce, her words were like sharp little mallet taps, “I don’t see why you should let yourself be bullied. I wouldn’t let myself be treated like that.”
From that time forward she took every opportunity of snubbing Miss Cobbett and being rude. Miss Cobbett snapped, snubbed, and was sarcastic in return. In the offices of the Literary World the war was open. Remotely, but not quite impartially, like a god with a prejudice in favour of virtue—virtue being represented in the present case by Beatrice—Burlap hovered mediatingly above the battle.
The episode of Romola Saville gave Miss Cobbett an opportunity for being malicious.
“Did you see those two terrifying poetesses?” she enquired of Beatrice, with a deceptive air of friendliness, the next morning.
Beatrice glanced at her sharply. What was the woman up to? “Which poetesses?” she asked suspiciously.
“Those two formidable middle-aged ladies the editor asked to come and see him under the impression that they were one young one.” She laughed. “Romola Saville. That’s how the poems were signed. It sounded so romantic. And the poems were quite romantic too. But the two authoresses! Oh, my goodness! When I saw the editor in their clutches I really felt quite sorry for him. But after all, he did bring it on himself. If he will write to his lady contributors …”
That evening Beatrice renewed her complaints about Miss Cobbett. The woman was not only tiresome and impertinent—one could put up with that if she did her job properly; she was lazy. Running a paper was a business like any other. One couldn’t afford to do business on a basis of sentimentality. Vaguely, diffidently, Burlap talked again about the peculiar circumstances of the case. Beatrice retorted. There was an argument.
“There’s such a thing as being too kind,” Beatrice sharply concluded.
“Is there?” said Burlap; and his smile was so beautifully and wistfully Franciscan that Beatrice felt herself inwardly melting into tenderness.
“Yes, there is,” she rapped out, feeling more hard and hostile toward Miss Cobbett as she felt more softly and maternally protective toward Burlap. Her tenderness was lined, so to speak, with indignation. When she didn’t want to show her softness, she turned her feelings inside out and was angry. “Poor Denis,” she thought underneath her indignation. “He really needs somebody to look after him. He’s too good.” She spoke aloud. “And you’ve got a shocking cough,” she said reproachfully, with an irrelevance that was only apparent. Being too good, having nobody to look after one, and having a cough—the ideas were logically connected. “What you need,” she went on in the same sharp, commanding tones, “is a good rubbing with camphorated oil and a wad of Thermogen.” She spoke the words almost menacingly, as though she were threatening him with a good beating and a month on bread and water. Her solicitude expressed itself that way; but how tremulously soft it was underneath the surface!
Burlap was only too happy to let her carry out her tender threat. At half-past ten he was lying in bed with an extra hot water bottle. He had drunk a glass of hot milk and honey and was now sucking a soothing lozenge. It was a pity, he was thinking, that she wasn’t younger. Still, she was really amazingly youthful for her age. Her face, her figure—more like twenty-five than thirty-five. He wondered how she’d behave when finally she’d been coaxed past her terrors. There was something very strange about these childish terrors in a grown woman. Half of her was arrested at the age at which Uncle Ben had made his premature experiment. Burlap’s devil grinned at the recollection of her account of the incident.
There was a tap at the door and Beatrice entered carrying the camphorated oil and the Thermogen.
“Here’s the executioner,” said Burlap laughing. “Let me die like a man.” He undid his
