Edith Nesbit - Man and Maid

“I think I understand,” she said. But she didn’t.

“And the odd thing is,” he went on, “I’ve never been afraid of the dark since. Perhaps his calling me a coward had something to do with it.”

“I don’t think so,” said she. And she was right. But she would never have understood how, nor why.

“There he goes – isn’t he simply detestable!” She spoke suddenly, after a silence longer than was usual to her; she was tired, and her voice was a note or two above its habitual key. She blushed, a deep pink blush of intense annoyance, as the young man passed down the long platform among the crowd of city men and typewriting girls, patiently waiting for the belated train to allow them to go home from work.

“Oh, do you think he heard? Oh, Molly – I believe he did!”

“Nonsense!” said Molly briskly, “of course he didn’t. And I must say I don’t think he’s so bad. If he didn’t look so sulky he wouldn’t be half bad, really. If his eyebrows weren’t tied up into knots, I believe he’d look quite too frightfully sweet for anything.”

“He’s exactly like that Polish model we had last week. Oh, Molly, he’s coming back again.”

Again he passed the two girls. His expression was certainly not amiable.

“How long have you known him?” Molly asked.

“I don’t know him. I tell you I only see him on the platform at Mill Vale. He and I seem to be the only people – the only decent people – who’ve found out the new station. He goes up by the 9.1 every day, and so do I. And the train’s always late, so we have the platform and the booking office to ourselves. And there we sit, or stand, or walk, morning after morning like two stuck pigs in a trough of silence.”

“Don’t jumble your metaphors, though you very nearly carried it off with the trough, I own. Stuck pigs don’t walk – in troughs, or anywhere else.”

“Well, you know what I mean – ”

“But what do you want the wretched man to do? He can’t speak to you: it wouldn’t be proper – ”

“Proper – why not? We’re human beings, not wild beasts. At least, I’m a human being.”

“And he’s a beast – I see.”

“I wish I were a man,” said Nina. “There he is again. His nose goes up another half inch every time he passes me. What’s he got to be so superior about? If I were a man I’d certainly pass the time of day with a fellow-creature if I were condemned to spend from ten to forty minutes with it six days out of the seven.”

“I expect he’s afraid you’d want to marry him. My brother Cecil says men are always horribly frightened about that.”

“Your brother Cecil!” said Nina scornfully. “Yes; that’s just the sort of thing anybody’s brother Cecil would say. He simply looks down on me because I go third. He only goes second himself, too. Here’s the train – ”

The two Art students climbed into their third-class carriage, and their talk, leaving Nina’s fellow-traveller, washed like a babbling brook about the feet of great rocks, busied itself with the old Italian Masters, painting as a mission, and the aims of Art – presently running through flatter country and lapping round perspective, foreshortening, tones, values high lights and the preposterous lisp of the anatomy lecturer.

Arrived at Mill Vale the Slade students jumped from their carriage to meet a wind that swept grey curtains of rain across the bleak length of the platform.

“And we haven’t so much as a rib of an umbrella between us,” sighed Molly, putting her white handkerchief over the “best” hat which signalised her Saturday to Monday with her friend. “You’re right: that man is a pig. There he goes with an umbrella big enough for all three of us. Oh, it’s too bad! He’s putting it down – he’s running. He runs rather well. He’s exactly like the cast of the Discobolus in the Antique Room.”

“Only his manners have not that repose that stamps the cast. Come on – don’t stand staring after him like that. We’d better run, too.”

“He’ll think we’re running after him. Oh, bother – ”

A moment of indecision, and Nina had turned her skirt over her head, and the two ran home to the little rooms where Nina lived – in the house of an old servant. Nina had no world of relations – she was alone. In the world of Art she had many friends, and in the world of Art she meant to make her mark. For the present she was content to make the tea, and then to set feet on the fender for a cosy evening.

“Did you see him coming out of church?” Nina asked next day. “He looked sulkier than ever.”

“I can’t think why you bother about him,” said the other girl. “He’s not really interesting. What do you call him?”

“Nothing.”

“Why, everything has a name, even a pudding. I made a name for him at once. It is ‘the stranger who might have been observed – ’”

They laughed. After the early dinner they went for a walk. None of your strolls, but a good steady eight miles. Coming home, they met the stranger: and then they talked about him again. For, fair reader, I cannot conceal from you that there are many girls who do think and talk about young men, even when they have not been introduced to them. Not really nice girls like yourself, fair reader – but ordinary, commonplace girls who have not your delicate natures, and who really do sometimes experience a fleeting sensation of interest even in the people whose names they don’t know.

Next morning they saw him at the station. The 9.1 took the bit in its teeth, and instead of being, as usual, the 9.30 something, became merely the 9.23. So for some twenty odd minutes the stranger not only might have been, but was, observed by four bright and critical eyes. I don’t mean that my girls stared, of course. Perhaps you do not know that there are ways of observing strangers other than by the stare direct. He looked sulkier than ever: but he also had eyes. Yet he, too, was far from staring, so far that the indignant Nina broke out in a distracted whisper: “There! you see! I’m not important enough for him even to perceive my existence. I’m always expecting him to walk on me. I wonder whether he’d apologise when he found I wasn’t the station door-mat?”

The stranger shrugged his shoulders all to himself in his second-class carriage when the train had started.

“‘Simply detestable!’ But how one talks prose without knowing it, all along the line! How can I ever have come enough into her line of vision to be distinguished by an epithet! And why this one? Detestable!”

The epithet, however distinguishing, seemed somehow to lack charm.

At Cannon Street Station the stranger looked sulkier than Nina had ever seen him. She said so, adding: “Than I’ve ever seen him? Oh – I’m wandering. He looks sulkier than I’vsquo;ve ever seen any one – sulkier than I’ve ever dreamed possible. Pig – ”

Through the week, painting at the school and black and white work in the evenings filled Nina’s mind to the exclusion even of strangers who might, in more leisured moments, seem worthy of observation. She was aware of the sulky one on platforms, of course, but talking about him to Molly was more amusing somehow than merely thinking of him. When it came to thinking, the real, the earnest things of life – the Sketch Club, the chance of the Melville Nettleship Prize, the intricate hideousness of bones and muscles – took the field and kept it, against strangers and acquaintances alike.

Saturday, turning this week’s scribbled page to the fair, clear page of next week, brought the stranger back to her thoughts, and to eyes now not obscured by close realities.