“It was then that she looked up at me from the fire, and she smiled without fear for the first time. ‘If I wasn’t so unhappy,’ she said, ‘this would be like a romance, wouldn’t it?’
“Romance! Funny. It was you saying the word romance just now, chief, that brought this story back to me.”
I squashed my cigarette in the ashtray.
“Well, go on,” he said, “it’s not finished yet, is it?”
“That was the finish of the romance,” I said.
“How d’you mean?” he said. “Did she go back to Shropshire?”
I laughed. “That girl never saw Shropshire in her life,” I told him. “I woke late the next morning and she had gone, of course. So had my pocketbook with all my worldly goods.”
He stared at me in amazement.
“Good Lord!” He whistled, blowing out his cheeks. “Then you mean to say she was deceiving you the whole time? There wasn’t a word of truth in her story?”
“Not a word!”
“But didn’t you put the police on her track; didn’t you do something; make some effort?”
I shook my head. “Even if they had found her, I doubt if I could have legitimately retrieved my worldly goods.”
“You mean you suspected her story before you left Lyons?” he asked.
“No,” I said, “I didn’t suspect her once.”
“I don’t understand,” he said; “if she was nothing but a common swindler, why not inform the police?”
I sighed wearily. “You see, chief, the point is I didn’t walk the streets all night like a little gentleman, nor did I sleep on the sitting-room sofa. …”
For a few minutes we sat in silence. He looked thoughtful, he stroked his chin. “You were a damn fool, and that’s all there is to it,” he said. “Ever go back to Wardour Street?”
“No,” I answered, “never before and never again. My only visit.”
“Extraordinary how you were so easily mistaken,” he said. “I can spot that type of girl a mile off. Of course, it’s the sort of thing to make you steer clear of women, I agree.
“But they’re not all like that, my dear fellow—not all.” He smiled.
“Sometimes you find a really genuine case of a young unsophisticated girl, with no money, let down by some blackguard.”
“For instance?” I enquired.
“As a matter of fact, | was thinking of my own girl,” he confessed, “the girl who has consented to become my wife this afternoon. When I met her six weeks ago she was quite new to London. Left an orphan suddenly, poor kid, without a bean. Very good family—she’s shown me letters and photos and things. She was making a wretched living as a typist in Birmingham, and her swine of an employer made love to her. She ran away, scared to death. Thank God I came along. Someone would have got hold of her. First time I met her she had twisted her ankle going down that filthy moving stairway on the Piccadilly tube. However, that’s not the point.” He broke off in the middle of his speech and called for the bill. “If you could see her,” he began again. “She’s the loviest thing.”
Into his eyes crept that blue suffused haze of the man who has not yet loved but will have loved by midnight.
“I guess I’m the happiest man alive,” he said, “she’s far too good for me.” The bill was paid, we rose and walked from the room.
“Tell you what,” he said, “come and see us off by the four o’clock train at Victoria. The good old Christmas spirit, eh?”
And because I was idle, because I was bored, because there was no reason to do it at all, I consented.
“I’ll be there,” I said.
I remember taking the tube to Victoria, and, not finding a seat, swaying from side to side, clinging to a strap.
I remember standing in a queue to buy a platform ticket, and being jostled by a crowd of pushing, feverish people. I remember walking senselessly up and down a platform peering into the windows of first class carriages, yelled at by porters. I remember wondering why I had come at all. Then suddenly I saw him, his big, red, cheerful face smiling at me from behind the closed window of a Pullman car. He put up his hand and waved, shouting something through the glass I could not hear. He turned and moved down the car, coming to the open door, at the entrance.
“Thought you’d given us the miss,” he shouted, “good boy—turned up after all.”
He pulled the girl forward, laughing self-consciously, scarlet with pride and satisfaction.
“Here’s the bride,” he said, “I want you two to be great friends. Show yourself, my darling.” I stood motionless with my hat in my hands.
“A happy Christmas to you,” I said. She leant from the window staring at me. Her husband gazed at us both with a quick, puzzled frown.
“I say, have you two met before?” he said. Then she laughed affectionately, and putting her arms round his neck she flung into the air her silly little gesture of bravado, mistress of the situation, but speaking without forethought, reckless, a shade too soon. The guard waved his little green flag.
“But, of course, I know your face,” she said, didn’t we run up against each other once in Wardour Street?
Colophon
Short Fiction
was published between and by
Daphne du Maurier.
This ebook was transcribed and produced in for
Standard Ebooks
by
Lukas Bystricky,
and is based on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Still Life with a Book, a Glass and a Bottle,
a painting completed in by
Vilhelm Lundstrøm.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and
