The Pest 1

The Pest 1

The Pest

Author: W. Teignmouth (William Teignmouth) Shore

CHAPTER I

 

 

PAVEMENTS and roadway slippery with greasy, black mud; atmosphere yellow

with evil-tasting vapor; a November afternoon in London; evening drawing

on, fog closing down.

 

George Maddison, tall, erect, dark, walked slowly along, his eyes, ever

ready to seize upon any striking effect of color, noting the curious

mingling of lights: the dull yellow overhead, the chilly beams of the

street lamps, the glow and warmth from the shop windows. Few of the

faces he saw were cheerful, almost all wearing that __EXPRESSION__ of

discontent which such dreary circumstances bring to even the most

hardened and experienced Cockneys. For his own part he was well pleased,

having heard that morning of his election as an Associate of the Royal

Academy, a fact that gratified him not as adding anything to his repute,

but as being a compliment to the school of young painters of which he

was the acknowledged leader and ornament: impressionists whose

impressions showed the world to be beautiful; idealists who had the

imagination to see that the ideal is but the better part of the real.

 

Maddison paused before a highly lighted picture-dealer’s window,

glancing with amusement at the conventional prettiness there displayed;

then, turning his back upon it, he looked across the street, debating

whether he should cross over and have some tea at the famous pastry

cook’s. A tall, slight figure of a woman, neatly dressed in black,

caught his attention. Obviously, she too was hesitating over the same

question. In spite of the simplicity and quiet fashion of her black

gown, her air was elegant; her head nicely poised; her shoulders well

held; the lines of her figure graceful, lithe and seductive. Though he

could not see her face he felt certain that she was interesting and

attractive, if not beautiful; also, there was a something wistful and

forlorn about her that appealed to him. Warily stepping through the

slippery mud, he crossed over and stood behind her for a moment, marking

the graceful tendrils of red-gold hair that clustered round the nape of

her neck and the delicate shape and coloring of her ears. As she turned

to move away, she came full face to him, instant recognition springing

into her eyes.

 

“George—!” she exclaimed.

 

“Miss Lewis!”

 

There was immediate and evident constraint on each side, as though the

sudden meeting were half-welcome, half-embarrassing.

 

“Were you going in to tea here?” he asked. “I was. Let me come with you?

It’s an age since we met. It’s horrid and damp out here.”

 

“It is,” she replied, slightly shivering. “Yes, I should like a cup of

tea.”

 

They went through the heavy swing doors, opened for them by a diminutive

boy in buttons, into the long, highly decorated, dimly lighted, discreet

tea room, which lacked its usual crowd. A few couples, in one case two

young men, occupied the cozy corners, to one of the more remote of which

Maddison led the way, and settled himself and his companion in the

comfortable armchairs. He ordered tea and cakes of the pretty,

black-eyed waitress, dainty and demure in the uniform of deep, dull red.

 

“You sigh as if you were tired, Miss Lewis, and glad to rest?” he said,

trying in the dim light to study her __EXPRESSION__.

 

“I am tired and I am glad to rest. It’s very cozy in here. I’ve never

been here before.”

 

She laid her hand upon the arm of the chair next to him and he noticed

that she wore a wedding ring.

 

“I called you Miss Lewis. I see——?”

 

“Yes—I’m married. I don’t suppose you remember much about Larchstone—I

recognized you before you did me; I saw you across the road. But just

possibly you do remember our curate, Mr. Squire—you used to laugh at

him. I’m Mrs. Squire. He’s still a curate, but not any longer in the

country. We live at Kennington; what a world of difference one letter

makes! Kennington—Kensington. Have you ever been in Kennington?”

 

Maddison remembered Edward Squire distinctly: a tall, gaunt enthusiast,

clumsy in mind and in body. He leaned back in his chair as a whirl of

recollections rushed across his mind: the red-roofed, old-fashioned

village of Larchstone; the old-world rector and his daughter, a pretty

slip of a country girl, who had grown into—Mrs. Squire. He remembered

the summer weeks he had spent there, painting in the famous woodlands,

and the half-jesting, half-serious love he had made to the rector’s

daughter. Since then until this afternoon he had not met her, though the

memory of her face, with the searching eyes, had come to him now and

again.

 

She watched him as he dreamed. He had changed very little; how

distinctly she had always remembered him; the swarthy, narrow face

framed in heavy black hair, the deep-set black eyes, the thin nose, the

trim pointed beard and mustache hiding the sensual mouth, the tall,

well-knit figure. Far more vividly than he did she recall those summer

months; in her life they had been an outstanding event, an episode

merely in his.

 

“Do you still take three lumps of sugar?” she asked, as she poured out

the tea.

 

“You remember that? Yes, still three, thanks.”

 

“You see, I hadn’t very much to remember in those days.”

 

“It’s five years ago—” he hesitated.

 

“Five this last summer, and a good many things have happened since then.

My father’s dead—three years ago—and I’m a good young curate’s wife.

And you? But I needn’t ask; the newspapers have told me all about you.

Are you still full of enthusiasms?”

 

“I suppose so. I think so, only they’re crystallizing into practices. As

we grow older the brain grows stiff, and we’re not so ready to go

climbing mountains to achieve impossible heights.”

 

“You’ve climbed pretty high. A step higher to-day—A.R.A. Fame, success

and money, that’s a fairly high mountain to have climbed—at least it

looks so to me.”

 

The forlorn tone of her voice confirmed the impression his first sight

of her had made upon him. He looked at her keenly as she sat there with

her eyes fixed upon her tea which she was stirring slowly. She had

become a very lovely woman and a poor curate’s wife.

 

“Lonely?” he asked almost unintentionally.

 

“Did I say lonely?” she asked looking quickly at him. “We were talking

in metaphors. I suppose that way of talking was invented by some one who

didn’t want to blurt out ugly truths.”

 

“Or who fancied that commonplace ideas become uncommon when divorced

from commonplace words.”

 

“It’s strange, isn’t it, sitting here, chatting like old friends—after

all this time? You didn’t answer my question: have you ever been in

Kennington?”

 

“I go down to the Oval now and then to watch the cricket; that’s all I

know about Kennington.”

 

“And that’s nothing. You might as well judge West Kensington by an

Earl’s Court exhibition, or a woman’s nature by her face. I think it

would do you good to see more of Kennington. I can believe that to

anyone who has lived there any other place on earth would seem heaven.”

 

“Heaven?”

 

“Even the other place would be an improvement.”

 

“You’re rather hard on Kennington, aren’t you?”

 

“It’s very hard on _me_! It stifles me. I come up to town—you see, I

speak of coming up to town—every now and then, just to escape from the

horrible atmosphere. There; just to breathe freely for a bit, to look at

the shops, to see faces with some thoughts in them, to escape

from—Kennington.”

 

“And do you escape?”

 

“Not altogether. The atmosphere there is saturating.”

 

“Does your husband like it?”

 

“He doesn’t know anything about it. Souls to save and bodies to feed,

that’s his simple want in life. There are plenty of both in our

neighborhood. I suppose you wouldn’t come down to see us?”

 

“If I may——?”

 

“You may,” she answered, laughing softly, almost to herself, and he

noticed how her smile lit up her whole face for the moment. “You’ll seem

so queer down there.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Just think—but no, you couldn’t realize what I’m laughing at; you’ve

never been in Kennington, and—even more likely—have never seen

yourself as I see you.”

 

Resisting the temptation to ask her in what light she saw him, he in

turn laughed as he looked down into the provocative face turned toward

him.

 

“You’re getting better,” he said.

 

“Yes, thanks; the tea has done me good, and the meeting with you.”

 

She spoke quite frankly.

 

“I’m glad,” he answered, “and glad I was lucky enough to meet you.”

 

“What a pretty, empty phrase,” she said, with a little sigh and a droop

of the corners of her mouth. “Sayings like that are the threepenny bits

of conversation; they’re not worth sixpence, but they’re better than coppers. Now, I must be off.”