Pelham Wodehouse - The Little Nugget

My resentment deepened. Fate had played me a wanton trick. Cynthia trusted me. If I were weak, I should not be the only one to suffer. And something told me that I should be weak. How could I hope to be strong, tortured by the thousand memories which the sight of her would bring back to me?

But I would fight, I told myself. I would not yield easily. I promised that to my self-respect, and was rewarded with a certain glow of excitement. I felt defiant. I wanted to test myself at once.

My opportunity came after breakfast. She was standing on the gravel in front of the house, almost, in fact, on the spot where we had met the night before. She looked up as she heard my step, and I saw that her chin had that determined tilt which, in the days of our engagement, I had noticed often without attaching any particular significance to it. Heavens, what a ghastly lump of complacency I must have been in those days! A child, I thought, if he were not wrapped up in the contemplation of his own magnificence, could read its meaning.

It meant war, and I was glad of it. I wanted war.

'Good morning,' I said.

'Good morning.'

There was a pause. I took the opportunity to collect my thoughts.

I looked at her curiously. Five years had left their mark on her, but entirely for the good. She had an air of quiet strength which I had never noticed in her before. It may have been there in the old days, but I did not think so. It was, I felt certain, a later development. She gave the impression of having been through much and of being sure of herself.

In appearance she had changed amazingly little. She looked as small and slight and trim as ever she had done. She was a little paler, I thought, and the Irish eyes were older and a shade harder; but that was all.

I awoke with a start to the fact that I was staring at her. A slight flush had crept into her pale cheeks.

'Don't!' she said suddenly, with a little gesture of irritation.

The word and the gesture killed, as if they had been a blow, a kind of sentimental tenderness which had been stealing over me.

'What are you doing here?' I asked.

She was silent.

'Please don't think I want to pry into your affairs,' I said viciously. 'I was only interested in the coincidence that we should meet here like this.'

She turned to me impulsively. Her face had lost its hard look.

'Oh, Peter,' she said, 'I'm sorry. I am sorry.'

It was my chance, and I snatched at it with a lack of chivalry which I regretted almost immediately. But I was feeling bitter, and bitterness makes a man do cheap things.

'Sorry?' I said, politely puzzled. 'Why?'

She looked taken aback, as I hoped she would.

'For—for what happened.'

'My dear Audrey! Anybody would have made the same mistake. I don't wonder you took me for a burglar.'

'I didn't mean that. I meant—five years ago.'

I laughed. I was not feeling like laughter at the moment, but I did my best, and had the satisfaction of seeing that it jarred upon her.

'Surely you're not worrying yourself about that?' I said. I laughed again. Very jovial and debonair I was that winter morning.

The brief moment in which we might have softened towards each other was over. There was a glitter in her blue eyes which told me that it was once more war between us.

'I thought you would get over it,' she said.

'Well,' I said, 'I was only twenty-five. One's heart doesn't break at twenty-five.'

'I don't think yours would ever be likely to break, Peter.'

'Is that a compliment, or otherwise?'

'You would probably think it a compliment. I meant that you were not human enough to be heart-broken.'

'So that's your idea of a compliment!'

'I said I thought it was probably yours.'

'I must have been a curious sort of man five years ago, if I gave you that impression.'

'You were.'

She spoke in a meditative voice, as if, across the years, she were idly inspecting some strange species of insect. The attitude annoyed me. I could look, myself, with a detached eye at the man I had once been, but I still retained a sort of affection for him, and I felt piqued.

'I suppose you looked on me as a kind of ogre in those days?' I said.

'I suppose I did.'

There was a pause.

'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings,' she said. And that was the most galling part of it. Mine was an attitude of studied offensiveness. I did want to hurt her feelings. But hers, it seemed to me, was no pose. She really had had—and, I suppose, still retained—a genuine horror of me. The struggle was unequal.

'You were very kind,' she went on, 'sometimes—when you happened to think of it.'

Considered as the best she could find to say of me, it was not an eulogy.

'Well,' I said, 'we needn't discuss what I was or did five years ago. Whatever I was or did, you escaped. Let's think of the present. What are we going to do about this?'

'You think the situation's embarrassing?'

'I do.'

'One of us ought to go, I suppose,' she said doubtfully.

'Exactly.'

'Well, I can't go.'

'Nor can I.'

'I have business here.'

'Obviously, so have I.'

'It's absolutely necessary that I should be here.'

'And that I should.'

She considered me for a moment.

'Mrs Attwell told me that you were one of the assistant-masters at the school.'

'I am acting as assistant-master. I am supposed to be learning the business.'

She hesitated.

'Why?' she said.

'Why not?'

'But—but—you used to be very well off.'

'I'm better off now. I'm working.'

She was silent for a moment.

'Of course it's impossible for you to leave. You couldn't, could you?'

'No.'

'I can't either.'

'Then I suppose we must face the embarrassment.'

'But why must it be embarrassing? You said yourself you had—got over it.'

'Absolutely. I am engaged to be married.'

She gave a little start. She drew a pattern on the gravel with her foot before she spoke.

'I congratulate you,' she said at last.

'Thank you.'

'I hope you will be very happy.'

'I'm sure I shall.'

She relapsed into silence. It occurred to me that, having posted her thoroughly in my affairs, I was entitled to ask about hers.

'How in the world did you come to be here?' I said.

'It's rather a long story. After my husband died—'

'Oh!' I exclaimed, startled.

'Yes; he died three years ago.'

She spoke in a level voice, with a ring of hardness in it, for which I was to learn the true reason later. At the time it seemed to me due to resentment at having to speak of the man she had loved to me, whom she disliked, and my bitterness increased.

'I have been looking after myself for a long time.'

'In England?'

'In America. We went to New York directly we—directly I had written to you. I have been in America ever since. I only returned to England a few weeks ago.'

'But what brought you to Sanstead?'

'Some years ago I got to know Mr Ford, the father of the little boy who is at the school. He recommended me to Mr Abney, who wanted somebody to help with the school.'

'And you are dependent on your work? I mean—forgive me if I am personal—Mr Sheridan did not—'

'He left no money at all.'

'Who was he?' I burst out. I felt that the subject of the dead man was one which it was painful for her to talk about, at any rate to me; but the Sheridan mystery had vexed me for five years, and I thirsted to know something of this man who had dynamited my life without ever appearing in it.

'He was an artist, a friend of my father.'

I wanted to hear more. I wanted to know what he looked like, how he spoke, how he compared with me in a thousand ways; but it was plain that she would not willingly be communicative about him; and, with a feeling of resentment, I gave her her way and suppressed my curiosity.