“Oh, but you must let me have it by Thursday at the latest, please.”
The fitter sighed: “I will do my best.”
“I shall rely on you. Mrs. Stephen Dallison, 76, The Old Square.”
Going downstairs she thought: “That poor girl looked very tired; it's a shame they give them such long hours!” and she passed into the street.
A voice said timidly behind her: “Westminister, marm?”
“That's the poor old creature,” thought Cecilia Dallison, “whose nose is so unpleasant. I don't really think I—” and she felt for a penny in her little bag. Standing beside the “poor old creature” was a woman clothed in worn but neat black clothes, and an ancient toque which had once known a better head. The wan remains of a little bit of fur lay round her throat. She had a thin face, not without refinement, mild, very clear brown eyes, and a twist of smooth black hair. Beside her was a skimpy little boy, and in her arms a baby. Mrs. Dallison held out two-pence for the paper, but it was at the woman that she looked.
“Oh, Mrs. Hughs,” she said, “we've been expecting you to hem the curtains!”
The woman slightly pressed the baby.
“I am very sorry, ma'am. I knew I was expected, but I've had such trouble.”
Cecilia winced. “Oh, really?”
“Yes, m'm; it's my husband.”
“Oh, dear!” Cecilia murmured. “But why didn't you come to us?”
“I didn't feel up to it, ma'am; I didn't really—”
A tear ran down her cheek, and was caught in a furrow near the mouth.
Mrs. Dallison said hurriedly: “Yes, yes; I'm very sorry.”
“This old gentleman, Mr. Creed, lives in the same house with us, and he is going to speak to my husband.”
The old man wagged his head on its lean stalk of neck.
“He ought to know better than be'ave 'imself so disrespectable,” he said.
Cecilia looked at him, and murmured: “I hope he won't turn on you!”
The old man shuffled his feet.
“I likes to live at peace with everybody. I shall have the police to 'im if he misdemeans hisself with me! … Westminister, sir?” And, screening his mouth from Mrs. Dallison, he added in a loud whisper: “Execution of the Shoreditch murderer!”
Cecilia felt suddenly as though the world were listening to her conversation with these two rather seedy persons.
“I don't really know what I can do for you, Mrs. Hughs. I'll speak to Mr. Dallison, and to Mr. Hilary too.”
“Yes, ma'am; thank you, ma'am.”
With a smile which seemed to deprecate its own appearance, Cecilia grasped her skirts and crossed the road. “I hope I wasn't unsympathetic,” she thought, looking back at the three figures on the edge of the pavement—the old man with his papers, and his discoloured nose thrust upwards under iron-rimmed spectacles; the seamstress in her black dress; the skimpy little boy. Neither speaking nor moving, they were looking out before them at the traffic; and something in Cecilia revolted at this sight. It was lifeless, hopeless, unaesthetic.
“What can one do,” she thought, “for women like Mrs. Hughs, who always look like that? And that poor old man! I suppose I oughtn't to have bought that dress, but Stephen is tired of this.”
She turned out of the main street into a road preserved from commoner forms of traffic, and stopped at a long low house half hidden behind the trees of its front garden.
It was the residence of Hilary Dallison, her husband's brother, and himself the husband of Bianca, her own sister.
The queer conceit came to Cecilia that it resembled Hilary. Its look was kindly and uncertain; its colour a palish tan; the eyebrows of its windows rather straight than arched, and those deep-set eyes, the windows, twinkled hospitably; it had, as it were, a sparse moustache and beard of creepers, and dark marks here and there, like the lines and shadows on the faces of those who think too much. Beside it, and apart, though connected by a passage, a studio stood, and about that studio—of white rough-cast, with a black oak door, and peacock-blue paint—was something a little hard and fugitive, well suited to Bianca, who used it, indeed, to paint in. It seemed to stand, with its eyes on the house, shrinking defiantly from too close company, as though it could not entirely give itself to anything. Cecilia, who often worried over the relations between her sister and her brother-in-law, suddenly felt how fitting and symbolical this was.
But, mistrusting inspirations, which, experience told her, committed one too much, she walked quickly up the stone-flagged pathway to the door. Lying in the porch was a little moonlight-coloured lady bulldog, of toy breed, who gazed up with eyes like agates, delicately waving her bell-rope tail, as it was her habit to do towards everyone, for she had been handed down clearer and paler with each generation, till she had at last lost all the peculiar virtues of dogs that bait the bull.
Speaking the word “Miranda!” Mrs. Stephen Dallison tried to pat this daughter of the house. The little bulldog withdrew from her caress, being also unaccustomed to commit herself. …
Mondays were Blanca's “days,” and Cecilia made her way towards the studio. It was a large high room, full of people.
Motionless, by himself, close to the door, stood an old man, very thin and rather bent, with silvery hair, and a thin silvery beard grasped in his transparent fingers. He was dressed in a suit of smoke-grey cottage tweed, which smelt of peat, and an Oxford shirt, whose collar, ceasing prematurely, exposed a lean brown neck; his trousers, too, ended very soon, and showed light socks. In his attitude there was something suggestive of the patience and determination of a mule. At Cecilia's approach he raised his eyes. It was at once apparent why, in so full a room, he was standing alone. Those blue eyes looked as if he were about to utter a prophetic statement.
“They have been speaking to me of an execution,” he said.
Cecilia made a nervous movement.
“Yes, Father?”
“To take life,” went on the old man in a voice which, though charged with strong emotion, seemed to be speaking to itself, “was the chief mark of the insensate barbarism still prevailing in those days. It sprang from that most irreligious fetish, the belief in the permanence of the individual ego after death. From the worship of that fetish had come all the sorrows of the human race.”
Cecilia, with an involuntary quiver of her little bag, said:
“Father, how can you?”
“They did not stop to love each other in this life; they were so sure they had all eternity to do it in. The doctrine was an invention to enable men to act like dogs with clear consciences. Love could never come to full fruition till it was destroyed.”
Cecilia looked hastily round; no one had heard. She moved a little sideways, and became merged in another group. Her father's lips continued moving. He had resumed the patient attitude which so slightly suggested mules. A voice behind her said: “I do think your father is such an interesting man, Mrs. Dallison.”
Cecilia turned and saw a woman of middle height, with her hair done in the early Italian fashion, and very small, dark, lively eyes, which looked as though her love of living would keep her busy each minute of her day and all the minutes that she could occupy of everybody else's days.
“Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace? Oh! how do you do? I've been meaning to come and see you for quite a long time, but I know you're always so busy.”
With doubting eyes, half friendly and half defensive, as though chaffing to prevent herself from being chaffed, Cecilia looked at Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, whom she had met several times