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Love at Second Sight

<h3 id="id00438" style="margin-top: 3em">CHAPTER VII</h3> Madame Frabelle and Bruce arrived at Waterloo in good time for the 11.10 train, which Bruce had discovered in the ABC. They wished to know where it started, but nobody appeared interested in the subject. Guards and porters, of whom they inquired, seemed surprised at their questions and behaved as if they regarded them as signs of vulgar and impertinent curiosity. At Waterloo no-one seems to know when a train is going to start, where it is starting from, or where it is going to. Madame Frabelle unconsciously assumed an air of embarrassment, as though she had no responsibility for the queries and excited manner of her companion. She seemed, indeed, surprised when Bruce asked to see the station-master. Here things came to a head. There was no train for Kingston at 11.10; the one at that hour was the Southampton Express; and it was worse than useless for Bruce and Madame Frabelle. 'Then the ABC and Bradshaw must both be wrong,' said Bruce reproachfully to Madame Frabelle. An idea occurred to that resourceful lady. 'Perhaps the 11.10 was only to start on other days, not on Saturdays.' She turned out to be right. However, they discovered a train at twenty minutes to twelve, which would take them where they wanted, though it was not mentioned, apparently, in any timetable, and could only be discovered by accident by someone who was looking for something else. They hung about the station until it arrived, feeling awkward and uncomfortable, as people do when they have arrived too early for a train. Meanwhile they abused Bradshaw, and discussed the weather. Bruce said how wonderful it was how some people always knew what sort of weather it was going to be. Madame Frabelle, who was getting sufficiently irritable to be epigrammatic, said that she never cared to know what the weather was going to be; the weather in England was generally bad enough when it came without the added misery of knowing about it beforehand. Bruce complained that she was too Continental. He very nearly said that if she didn't like England he wondered she hadn't remained in France, but he stopped himself. At last the train arrived. Bruce had settled his companion with her back to the engine in a corner of a first-class carriage, and placed her rugs in the rack above. As they will on certain days, every little thing went wrong, and the bundle promptly fell off. As she moved to catch it, it tumbled on to her hat, nearly crushing the crown. Unconsciously assuming the expression of a Christian martyr, Madame Frabelle said it didn't matter. Bruce had given her The Gentlewoman, The World, The Field, Punch, and The London Mail to occupy the twenty-five minutes or so while they waited for the train to start. The journey itself was much shorter than this interval. Knowing her varied interests, he felt sure that these journals would pretty well cover the ground, but he was rather surprised, as he took the seat opposite her, to see that she read first, in fact instantly started, with apparent interest, on The London Mail. With a quick glance he saw that she was enjoying 'What Everybody Wants to Know'—'Why the Earl of Blank looked so surprised when he met the pretty little blonde lady who had been said to be the friend of his wife walking in Bond Street with a certain dark gentleman who until now he had always understood to be her bête noire,' and so forth. As an example to her he took up The New Statist and read a serious article. When they arrived it was fine and sunny, and they looked at once for a boat. It had not occurred to him before that there would be any difficulty in getting one. He imagined a smart new boat all ready for him, with fresh, gay cushions, and everything complete and suitable to himself and his companion. He was rather irritated when he found instead that the best they could do for him was to give him a broken-down, battered-looking thing like an old chest, which was to be charged rather heavily for the time they meant to spend on the river. It looked far from safe, but it was all they could do. So they got in. Bruce meant to show his powers as an oarsman. He said Madame Frabelle must steer and asked her to trim the boat. In obedience to his order she sat down with a bang, so heavily that Bruce was nearly shot up into the air. Amiable as she always was, and respectfully devoted as Bruce was to her, he found that being on the river has a mysterious power of bringing out any defects of temper that people have concealed when on dry ground. He said to her: 'Don't do that again. Do you mind?' as politely as he could. She looked up, surprised. 'I beg your pardon, Mr Ottley?' 'Don't do that again.' 'Don't do what? What did I do?' 'Why, I asked you to trim the boat.' 'What did I do? I merely sat down.' He didn't like to say that she shouldn't sit down with a bump, and took his place. 'If you like,' she said graciously, 'I'll relieve you there, presently.' 'How do you mean—relieve me?' 'I mean I'll row—I'll sit in the stern—row!' 'Perhaps you've forgotten the names of the different parts of a boat. Madame Frabelle?' 'Oh, I think not, Mr Ottley. It's a good while since I was on the river, but it's not the sort of thing one forgets, and I'm supposed to have rather a good memory.' 'I'm sure you have—a wonderful memory—still, where I'm sitting is not the stern.' There was a somewhat sulky silence. They admired the scenery of the river. Madame Frabelle said she loved the distant glimpses of the grey old palace of the Tudors, and asked him if he could imagine what it was like when it was gay all day with the clanking of steel and prancing horses and things. 'How I love Hampton Court!' she said. 'It looks so quiet and peaceful. I think I should like to live there. Think of the evenings in that wonderful old place, with its panelled walls, and the echo of feet that are no longer there, down the cold, stone corridors—' Bruce gave a slight laugh. 'Echo of feet that are no longer there? But how could that be? Dear me, how poetical you are, Madame Frabelle!' 'I mean the imaginary echo.' 'Imaginary—ah, yes. You're very imaginative, aren't you, Madame Frabelle? Well, I don't know whether it's imagination or not, but, do you know, I fancy that queer feeling of mine seems to be coming on again.' 'What queer feeling?' 'I told you about it, and you were very sympathetic the other night, before dinner. A kind of emptiness in the feet, and a hollowness in the head, the feeling almost, but not quite, of faintness.' 'It's nearly two o'clock. Perhaps you're hungry,' said Madame Frabelle. Bruce thought this was not fair, putting all the hunger on to him, as if she had never felt anything so prosaic. Madame Frabelle always behaved as if she were superior to the weaknesses of hunger or sleep, and denied ever suffering from either. 'It may be. I had no breakfast,' said Bruce untruthfully, as though it were necessary to apologise for requiring food to sustain life. 'Nor did I,' said Madame Frabelle hastily. 'Well, don't you feel that you would like a little lunch?' 'Oh no—oh dear, no. Still, I dare say some food would do you good, Mr Ottley—keep you up. I'll come and watch you.' 'But you must have something too.' 'Must I? Oh, very well, just to keep you company.' They got out very briskly, and, leaving their battered-looking coffin (called ironically the Belle of the River), they walked with quick steps to the nearest hotel. Here they found a selection of large, raw-looking cold beef, damp, tired-looking ham, bread, cheese, celery, and dessert in the form of dry apples, oranges, and Brazil nuts that had long left their native land. Bruce decided that the right thing to drink was shandy-gaff, but, to keep up her Continental reputation, Madame Frabelle said she would like a little light wine of the country. 'Red, white, or blue?' asked Bruce, whose spirits were rising. She laughed very heartily, and decided on a little red. They had an adequate, if not exquisite, lunch, then Madame Frabelle said she would like to go over Hampton Court. A tedious guide offered to go with them, but Madame Frabelle said she knew all about the place better than he did, so they wandered through the beautiful old palace. 'Oh, to think of King Charles II's beauties living there—those lovely, languid ladies—how charming they were!' exclaimed Madame Frabelle. 'They wore very low dresses,' said Bruce, who felt rather sleepy and stupid, and as if he didn't quite know what he was saying. Madame Frabelle modestly looked away from the pictures. 'How exquisite the garden is.' He agreed, and they went out and sat, somewhat awkwardly, on an uncomfortable stone seat. There was a delicious half-hour of real summer sun—'One of those April days that seem a forecast of June,' as Madame Frabelle said. 'How much better it is to be here in the beautiful fresh air than squeezed into a stuffy theatre,' remarked Bruce, who was really feeling a shade jealous of Edith for seeing the revue that he had wished to see. 'Yes, indeed. There's nothing like England, I think,' she said rather irrelevantly. 'How exactly our tastes agree.' 'Do they?' Her hand was on the edge of the seat. Somehow or other Bruce's had gone over it. She didn't appear to notice it. 'What small hands you have!' he remarked. 'Oh no! I take sixes,' said the lady, whose size was really three-quarters more than that. He insisted on looking at the grey suède glove, and then examined her rings. 'I suppose these rings have—er—associations for you, Madame Frabelle?' 'Ah!' she said, shaking her head. 'This one—yes, this one—the sapphire recalls old memories.' She sighed; she had bought it in the Brompton Road. 'A present from your husband, I suppose?' said Bruce, with a tinge of bitterness. 'Ah!' she answered. She thought he was getting a little sentimental, too early in the day, and, with an effort at energy, she said: 'Let's go back to the river.' They went back, and now Bruce began to show off his rowing powers. He had not practised for a long time, and didn't get along very quickly. She admired his athletic talents, as though he had been a winner of the Diamond Sculls. 'If I'd stuck to it, you know,' he said, rather apologetically, 'I'd have done well in the rowing line. At one time—a good while ago—I thought of going in for Henley, in the Regatta, you know. But with that beastly Foreign Office one can't keep up anything of that sort.' 'I suppose not.' 'My muscle,' said Bruce, sticking out his arm, and hitting it rather hard, 'is fairly good, you know. Not bad for a London man who never has any practice.' 'No indeed.' 'My arm was about seventeen inches round just below the elbow at one time,' Bruce said, 'a few years ago.' 'Just fancy! Splendid!' said Madame Frabelle, who remembered that her waist was not much more a good while ago. He told her a good many anecdotes of his prowess in the past, until tea-time. Madame Frabelle depended greatly on tea; anything else she could do without. But a cup of tea in the afternoon was necessary to her well-being, and her animation. She became rather drowsy and absent by four o'clock. Bruce again suggested their landing and leaving the Belle of the River, as they had not thought of bringing a tea-basket. After tea, which was a great success, they became very cheery and jolly. They went for a walk and then back to their boat. This was the happiest time of the day. When they reached the station, about half-past six, they found a disagreeable crowd, pushing, screaming, and singing martial songs. As they got into their first-class carriage about a dozen third-class passengers sprang in, just as the train started. Bruce was furious, but nothing could be done, and the journey back to town was taken with Madame Frabelle very nearly pushed on to his knee by a rude young man who practically sat on hers, smoking a bad cigarette in her face. They tacitly agreed to say nothing about this, and got home in time for dinner, declaring the day to have been a great success. Bruce had really enjoyed it. Madame Frabelle said she had; though she had a certain little tenderness, half of a motherly kind, for Bruce, she far preferred his society in a comfortable house. She didn't really think he was the ideal companion for the open air. And he was struck, as he had often been before, by her curious way of contradicting herself in conversation. She took any side and argued in favour of it so long as it was striking or romantic. At one moment she would say with the greatest earnestness, for instance, that divorce should not be allowed. Marriage should be for ever, or not at all. At another moment she would argue in favour of that absurd contradiction in terms known as free love, forgetting that she had completely changed round since earlier in the conversation. This was irritating, but he was still impressed with her infallibility, and Edith remarked more every day how curious that infallibility was, and how safe it was to trust. Whenever Madame Frabelle knew that something was going to happen, it didn't, and whenever she had an intuition that something was going to occur, then it was pretty safe. It never would. In the same way she had only to look at a person to see them as they were not. This was so invariable it was really very convenient to have her in the house, for whatever she said was always wrong. One had merely to go by contraries and her prophecies were most useful. 'It's been jolly for you,' Bruce said to Edith, 'having a ripping time in town while I'm taking your visitors about to show them England.' 'You wouldn't have cared for the theatre,' she said. 'But, fancy, I met Aylmer's son there—Aylmer Ross, you know. Aylmer himself is at the front. They have taken their old house again. He means to come back there.' 'Well, I really can't help it,' said Bruce rather fretfully. 'I should be at the front if it weren't for my neurotic heart. The doctor wouldn't hear of passing me—at least one wouldn't. Any fellow who would have done so would be—not a careful man. However, I don't know that it wouldn't have been just as good to die for my country, and get some glory, as to die of heart trouble here.' He sighed. 'Oh no, you won't,' said Edith reassuringly; 'you look the picture of health.' 'I've got a bit of sunburn, I think,' said Bruce, popping up to look in the glass. 'Funny how I do catch the sun. I asked Dr Pollock about it one day.' 'Really—did you consult him about your sunburn?' 'Yes. What are you smiling at, He said it's caused by the extreme delicacy of the mucous membrane; nothing to be anxious about.' 'I don't think I am anxious; not particularly. And don't worry, my dear boy; it's very becoming,' said Edith. Bruce patted her head, and gave her a kiss, smiling. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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