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Widdowson was in extreme discomfort, partly due to the fact that he had no dress clothes to put on; for far from anticipating or desiring any such intercourse in Guernsey, he had never thought of packing an evening suit. Had he known Mrs. Cosgrave this uneasiness would have been spared him.
He gazed out of the window, half his mind busy planning what he and Rufus Cosgrave would do when they met at the corner of the street, but he could not help understanding what was so obvious, and there were moments when sheer interest swept him off his feet, and even Rufus was forgotten. He took an audacious pleasure, too, in leaping suddenly over the heads of the whole class to the first place.
By position you're a little suburban nobody, who was pushed out to West Africa to become a third-rate little trader. You've survived, and you've got a little money to burn. To you it seems a fortune. But it won't pay this woman's cigarette bills. She makes you ridiculous." "I am ridiculous," Cosgrave interrupted patiently. "I always have been, you know. I expect I always shall be.
"Things move either too slowly or too quickly for old people. He does realize that I make quite a good story as I stand, but he wants the finishing touches the King clasping me by the hand, or kissing me on both cheeks, or whatever he thinks happens on those occasions and wedding bells as a grand finale." "The place seems to have grown shabby," Cosgrave said. "Or perhaps it's only me." "Oh, no.
But I wish you liked her, all the same. P'raps you do, only you won't own up. She liked you, you know. Fact is, it was she sent me along to dig you out." At that Stonehouse was caught up sharply out of his indifference. He flushed and thrust his hands into his pockets to prevent them from clenching themselves in absurd resentment. "What do you mean?" Cosgrave nodded.
In her mysterious way she had found something she liked in Connie Edwards, with her awful hat and her outrageous, three-inch heels and her common prettiness. Cosgrave obviously was crazy about her. He seemed to cling to her because she had an insatiable hunger for the things he couldn't afford. One could see that he had tried to model himself to her taste. He wore a gardenia and a spotted tie.
With other advanced and energetic men of his profession he stood committed to a new enterprise the creation of a private hospital, which was to be a model to the hospitals of the world and he had no time to waste on a fool who wanted to ruin himself. But though he never thought of Cosgrave, he could not altogether forget him.
Rufus Cosgrave stood up shyly in his place. Had he been dressed a shade less perfectly and resisted the gardenia in his button-hole, he would have been better disguised. As it was, there could be no mistaking a little fellow from the suburbs who had got into bad company.
Good-bye, Monsieur le docteur. You scare me stiff. But I like you. Nest time I 'ave ze tummy-ache I ring you up. "I shouldn't if I were you." "Why? You give me poison, p'raps?" "I might," he said. So Rufus Cosgrave disappeared, like an insignificant chip of wood sucked into a whirlpool, and this time Stonehouse made no attempt to plunge in after him.
It was as though by some trick she changed the whole aspect of things so that they became simply comic scenes in a jolly, improper French farce. "And now I 'ope you see 'ow funny that is. And please take Monsieur Cosgrave away and keep 'im away. I don't ask no better." His anger revived against her. And it was a thing apart from Cosgrave altogether a bitter personal anger.
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