“What do you mean by playing fast and loose, and being a cad about town?” said Marmaduke angrily.
“I hope youre not going to make a row here in public.”
“No; but I have you where you cant make a row; and I intend to have it out with you once and for all. If you quarrel now, so help me Heaven I’ll never speak to you again!”
“It is you who are quarrelling.”
“Very well,” said Susanna, opening her purse as though the matter were decided. “Waiter.”
“I am going to pay.”
“So you can — for what you had yourself. I dont take dinners from strange men, nor pay for their ices.”
Marmaduke did not reply. He took out his purse determinedly; glanced angrily at her; and muttered, “I never thought you were that sort of woman.”
“What sort of woman?” demanded Susanna, in a tone that made the other occupants of the room turn and stare.
“Never mind,” said Marmaduke. She was about to retort, when she saw him looking into his purse with an expression of dismay. The waiter came. Susanna, instead of attempting to be beforehand in proffering the money, changed her mind, and waited. Marmaduke searched his pockets. Finding nothing, he muttered an imprecation, and, fingering his watch chain, glanced doubtfully at the waiter, who looked stolidly at the tablecloth.
“There,” said Susanna, putting down a sovereign.
Marmaduke looked on helplessly whilst the waiter changed the coin and thanked Susanna for her gratuity. Then he said, “You must let me settle with you for this tonight. Ive left nearly all my cash in the pocket of another waistcoat.”
“You will not have the chance of settling with me, either tonight or any other night. I am done with you.” And she rose and left the restaurant. Marmaduke sat doggedly for quarter of a minute. Then he went out, and ran along Regent Street, anxiously looking from face to face in search of her. At last he saw her walking at a great pace a little distance ahead of him. He made a dash and overtook her.
“Look here, Lalage,” he said, keeping up with her as she walked: “this is all rot. I didnt mean to offend you. I dont know what you mean, or what you want me to do. Dont be so unreasonable.”
No answer.
“I can stand a good deal from you; but it’s too much to be kept at your heels as if I were a beggar or a troublesome dog. Lalage.” She took no notice of him; and he stopped, trying to compose his features, which were distorted by rage. She walked on, turning into Glasshouse Street. When she had gone twenty yards, she heard him striding behind her.
“If you wont stop and talk to me,” he said, “I’ll make you. If anybody interferes with me I’ll smash him into jelly. It would serve you right if I did the same to you.”
He put his hand on her arm; and she instantly turned and struck him across the face, knocking off his hat. He, who a moment before had been excited, red, and almost in tears, was appalled. There was a crowd in a moment; and a cabman drew up close to the kerb with a calm conviction that his hansom would be wanted presently.
“How dare you put your hand on me, you coward?” she exclaimed, with remarkable crispness of utterance and energy of style. “Who are you? I dont know you. Where are the police?” She paused for a reply; and a bracelet, broken by the blow she had given him, dropped on the pavement, and was officiously picked up and handed to her by a battered old woman who shewed in every wrinkle her burning sympathy with Woman turning at bay against Man. Susanna looked at the broken bracelet, and tears of vexation sprang to her eyes. “Look at what youve done!” she cried, holding out the bracelet in her left hand and shewing a scrape which had drawn blood on her right wrist. “For two pins I’d knock your head off!”
Marmaduke, quite out of countenance, and yet sullenly very angry, vacillated for a moment between his conflicting impulses to knock her down and to fly to the utmost ends of the earth. If he had been ten years older he would probably have knocked her down: as it was, he signed to the cabman, who gathered up the reins and held them clear of his fare’s damaged hat with the gratification of a man whose judgment in a delicate matter had just been signally confirmed by events.
As they started, Susanna made a dash at the cab, which was pulled up, amid a shout from the crowd, just in time to prevent an accident. Then, holding on to the rail and standing on the step, she addressed herself to the cabman, and, sacrificing all propriety of language to intensity of vituperation, demanded whether he wanted to run his cab over her body and kill her. He, with undisturbed foresight, answered not a word, but again shifted the reins so as to make way for her bonnet. Acknowledging the attention with one more epithet, she seated herself in the cab, from which Marmaduke at once indignantly rose to escape. But the hardiest Grasmere wrestler, stooping under the hood of a hansom, could not resist a vigorous pull at his coat tails; and Marmaduke was presently back in his seat again, with Susanna clinging to him and half sobbing:
“Oh, Bob, youve killed me. How could you?” Then, with a suspiciously sudden recovery of energy, she screamed “Bijou Theatre. Drive on, will you” up at the cabman, who was looking down through the trapdoor. The horse plunged forward, and, with the jolt, she was fawning on Marmaduke’s arm again, saying, “Dont be brutal to me any more, Bob. I cant bear it. I have enough trouble without your turning on me.”
He was young and green, and too much confused by this time to feel sure that he had not been the aggressor. But he did, on the whole, the wisest thing — folded his arms and sat silent, with his cheeks burning.
“Say something to me,” she said, shaking his arm. “I have nothing to say,” he replied. “I shall leave town for home tonight. I cant shew my face again after this.”
“Home,” she said, in her former contemptuous tone, flinging his arm away. “That means your cousin Constance.”
“Who told you about her?”
“Never mind. You are engaged to her.”
“You lie!”
Susanna was shaken. She looked hard at him, wondering whether he was deceiving her or not. “Look me in the face, Bob,” she said. If he had complied, she would not have believed him. But he treated the challenge with supreme disdain and stared straight ahead, obeying his male instinct, which taught him that the woman, with all the advantages on her side, would nevertheless let him win if he held on. At last she came caressingly to his shoulder again, and said:
“Why didnt you tell me about her yourself?”
“Damn it all,” he exclaimed, violently, “there is nothing to tell! I am not engaged to her: on my oath I am not. My people at home talk about a match between us as if it were a settled thing, though they know I dont care for her. But if you want to have the truth, I cant afford to say that I wont marry her, because I am too hard up to quarrel with the governor, who has set his heart on it. You see, the way I am circumstanced — —”
“Oh, bother your circumstances! Look here, Bob, I dont want you to introduce me to your swell relations; it is not worth my while to waste time on people who cant earn their own living. And never mind your governor: we can get on without him. If you are hard up for money, and he is stingy, you had better get it from me than from the Jews.”
“I couldnt do that,” said Marmaduke, touched. “In fact, I am well enough off. By the bye, I must not forget to pay you for that lunch. But if I ever am hard up, I will come to you. Will that do?”
“Of course: that is what I meant. Confound it, here we are already. You mustnt come in, you would only be in the way. Come tonight after the burlesque, if you like. Youre not angry with me, are you?”
Her breast touched his arm just then; and as if she had released some spring, all his love for her suddenly surged up within him and got the better of him. “Wait — listen,” he said, in a voice half choked with tenderness. “Look here, Lalage: