Chapter VIII: “I shall be with you at seven o’clock to take you out to dinner. Toby.”

Anne read this note with conflicting feelings. She was very pleased Toby had come back. She was ashamed of their last meeting, and she was above all anxious to have her own way in their present one. Anne was preeminently a feminine woman, that is to say, she had the endurance of an angel, the patience of a saint, the mingled tenderness and flint of a Mother Superior, the unpractical helplessness of a child, the common-sense of a genius, and the unscrupulousness of a rake. She didn’t understand men, she merely knew how to please them. She hadn’t understood Norman, but Norman was not openly masculine, and he had ways of disguising his manliness which made him (for Anne) much easier to deal with. Toby’s masculinity was without disguises. Anne couldn’t imagine what he would feel about going to Madonna di Campiglio. She was afraid of his saying “No” at once, and she was quite sure he would be angry. It was strange how anxious she was to have him go, it wasn’t only to please Norman and Nina; she was surprised to find that she wanted it for herself. She felt that if Toby was there, ostensibly as her friend, it would make her loneliness only an inner thing. She wouldn’t have to feel that Norman and Nina were bothering about her. They could go off without a pang for days together and not have her on their minds. Anne hadn’t wanted, when she first went back to them, to look too poor. But would Toby consent to act as a feather in her cap? She dressed more carefully for Toby that evening than she had ever dressed for him before, and she was relieved to see that her clothes looked as good as new. They were already a year old, and they would have to last a long time because she couldn’t afford new ones. She probably couldn’t afford Norman and Nina’s hotel, though she would go there first for a night, and then pretend to fall in love with something picturesque and cheap the next day. If Toby decided to come with her, there would be a minor awkwardness because Anne intended to travel third class. Up till now Toby hadn’t taken in about her money. She had allowed him to pay for all their excursions together, because she knew that he would have hated not to pay for her, and she was always more anxious to spare other people’s pride than she was to save her own; but the moment would come when she would have to pay for something, and when she would have to choose the cheaper rather than the more expensive thing to pay for, this would shock Toby very much. Anne had always been a person of few, and what she had supposed, were simple tastes; she either took the best of what she wanted, or she went without. She was beginning to realise now that this standard is probably the most expensive one that exists. Even now she could have travelled first class if she could have brought herself to tip less generously, but this was out of the question. If Anne had not been able to pay, and to pay rather extravagantly, for good service, she would have refused to accept it.

She dressed slowly but without hesitation. This was what she knew how to do, but while she was doing it she reflected on her coming interview with Toby much as an inexperienced lion tamer reviews his impending turn with his formidable fellow artist. Anne wished that she had the reckless audacity of Nina. Nina was not feminine. She was impatient of pain and rushed to meet danger. Anne took pain without flinching, but she had danger always on her mind. At seven o’clock Anne gave the last touch to her black lace hat and went down into the hall.

“My dear Toby,” she said, “this is delightful! I am so glad to see you back again, and I think it specially delightful of you to come back.” Her greeting was at once a confession and an apology, and she made it with a warmth that went straight to Toby’s heart. He was very proud of Anne’s appearance, but he wasn’t on this occasion going to show her off. He took her instead to a little restaurant he had been told about in Trastevere. Motors seldom crossed that side of the Tiber, but Toby explained to Anne as they sought out his well-hidden resort that it was the best place in Rome. “It’s not at all swagger,” he explained. “You eat under a trellis and walk through the kitchen—as spotless as a Dutch one—where you pick out your vegetable and point at your cutlet, and have it out with the cook. He’s a splendid person, and if he sees you are worthy of his efforts he won’t let you go far wrong.”

Toby found her a table under thick green leaves. The place was not crowded, it was quiet, leisurely and discriminating. An old man came in and sat in a corner slowly tuning a zither which he put on the table and began to thumb dreamily, as if for his own amusement. The zither is not a highly finished instrument but the old man played on it with surprising tenderness little, silly, quavering tunes, which crept in and out among the leaves, wanderingly, like cow bells over an Alpine pasture. Toby had never enjoyed himself so much in his life. If Anne was still nervous she did not show it. She was a quiet woman without any of the restlessness which makes vivacity fatiguing to the onlooker; and she had at all times that perfect self-possession which comes only to those women who have never been exposed to anything which could ruffle their self-respect. She asked Toby with interest where he had been and what he had done. Toby felt as if he had been away a long time, and had a great deal to tell Anne. He had been to Cori, to Palestrina and to Subiaco. Toby had no sentiments about what he had seen, but he had acquired a good many facts. Anne lulled him with her intimate, impersonal interest, into a perfect serenity. She had a feeling that if she only made him comfortable enough first, he wouldn’t resent being made uncomfortable afterwards; he would hardly know, in fact, that he was being made uncomfortable. The process had often answered excellently with Norman. “What a mercy,” Toby thought to himself, “that Anne isn’t clever, but just quietly and comfortably Anne—the simplest and least calculating woman in the world!”

“And while you’ve been away,” said this uncalculating woman, “I’ve been missing you so much, Toby, and finding out all the kind and helpful things you did for me (which I’m afraid I had rather taken for granted) while you were here.”

“Nonsense!” said Toby, “there was nothing to find out, but I’m glad you missed me. I always find myself that these foreign places are the better for companionship—of the right kind, of course.”

“Oh, you’re superlatively the right kind,” said Anne smiling. “Look at the meals you order and the places you find! I thought the Trastevere was only a place for beggars, fleas and 13th century mosaics—and see what you’ve found in it!”

“Well, see what I’ve brought to it!” Toby nearly said, but he had nearly said things like this for twenty years, and not said them. It was unfortunate that he was beginning to find it harder than ever to keep such things unsaid.

“Something else has happened while you’ve been away,” Anne went on serenely, “something that has been a great surprise and a great pleasure to me, Toby—only it depends on you a little, how perfect the pleasure can be.” Toby began to peel a pear for her. He peeled it with care and precision, and Anne saw that the peel was all going to come off in one piece.

“Yes,” he said without looking up, “and what is this pleasing surprise? At my age I always expect pleasure and surprise to arrive separately. Pleasure I plan for, surprise generally lays me by the heels.”

Anne hesitated. Her heart beat with a curious instability. She wished that Toby had Norman’s intuitive way of easing off difficult moments, but she knew by experience that Toby left such moments to shift for themselves. “They’ve invited us,” she said a little breathlessly, “Norman and Nina—both of us—to go to them, at Madonna di Campiglio.”

Toby did not look at all concerned. He finished peeling the pear without a break, laid it carefully down, and extracted its core before handing it to her on a plate. Then he said, “And when do you want us to go?”

Now that it was all going to be so easy, an incredible feeling swept over Anne. She suddenly knew that she didn’t want to go at all! It was a thought so contradictory and absurd that she banished it in silence, and with barely a pause, before she answered Toby. “They leave Venice to-morrow. I thought we might join them in a week?”

“Our best way,” said Toby reflectively, “is to go by train to Belluno, and motor through the Dolomites. It’s a good road.” Anne leaned back in her chair. Now that it was safely over she realised what an effort she had made, because she found she was still trembling. The old man with the zither started up a plaintive little dance tune that had no beginning and no end. Toby took another pear, peeled it and began to eat it. “I hope yours was all right,” he said disgustedly. “It’s a peculiar thing, but I’ve never yet peeled two consecutively good pears. They seem to obey the law of life. You pay for your good moment with your bad.”

“Mine was perfect,” said Anne regretfully, “I wish I’d kept some of it for you.” Then she said a little defensively (for after all their going to Madonna di Campiglio was more important than the flavour of pears), “It will be such a good opportunity for you to get to know Nina.”

“Excellent,” said Toby without enthusiasm, “if one does ever get to know a woman on her honeymoon with another man.”

“It isn’t really their honeymoon,” Anne explained, “they’ve had five weeks.”

“Personally,” said Toby, “if I ever get mine, I doubt if you’d see me human again for a year.”

Anne looked at him sympathetically. “I feel, Toby,” she said, “as if it was very stupid and unkind of me never to have guessed that you wanted one.”

“Not at all,” said Toby gruffly, “why should you have known what you weren’t told?”

“I think one ought to feel things, whether one is told them or not,” said Anne gently; “that’s one of the great advantages of not being so shut up in happiness, one does perhaps see and feel things more. Are you quite sure, Toby, that you’ve got, always, to be unhappy?”

“I’m not unhappy now,” said Toby, “but I don’t suppose, taking it by and large, that I shall ever be much happier.”

Anne dismissed this trifling substitution for happiness. That was the way to take sorrow—it was her own way—but it was not the way people express their joy. She thought that Toby, like herself, would probably rather leave the subject alone, so that she went on after a slight pause to deal with the smaller practical difficulty which still remained on her mind. How was she going to manage the railway journey third class? She wasn’t going to travel over Italy at Toby’s expense. She would go with him, unchaperoned, without a murmur, because she would never have dreamed of making a fuss about propriety with a man she trusted, or of going out of her way for half an inch with a man whom she didn’t trust. To have hesitated to go with Toby alone would have seemed to Anne a discourtesy as grave and even as vulgar as a breach of faith.

“I believe it’s a beautiful journey,” she said after a pause; “I think you must miss not speaking Italian when it comes to travelling. My great delight is to travel third class with the peasants themselves.” Toby gave her one of his queer sharp glances, then he ordered coffee. “It’s not only,” Anne went on with increasing skill, “their charming manners, the way they produce garlic out of carpet bags, and drink wine with their heads tilted like Apollos—but they make such friends with one and give one such valuable information. I often pity the ordinary English traveller who will go by himself in a stuffy first.” “Do you, Anne?” asked Toby. “Sweltering in the heat in a third class carriage in Italy hardly seems to me a position to envy. Have you made many lasting and valuable friendships by this practice?” Anne felt herself colouring under Toby’s mocking eyes. He needn’t have looked at her as if he was paying her out for something. “I hope,” he added, “that you won’t mind deferring your search for friendship for another occasion, as I intend to take two first class tickets to Belluno, where we shall pick up the car, unless you have a more feasible objection to this method of travelling, or dislike cleanliness in a travelling companion? I may not have the charm of an Italian peasant, but I can procure you plenty of information.”

“Of course,” said Anne quietly, “I much prefer travelling with you, but I see you are going to make me say what I don’t want to have to say. I simply can’t afford to travel very grandly, and I’m not going to let you pay for my travels. After all, Toby, I’ve been good about money, haven’t I? I’ve let you pay for everything else.”

Anne had no idea that this would make Toby furious. He gave the hovering waiter a look that drove him into the kitchen like a scourge, and even checked the plaintive tones of the old man with the zither. “May I ask you to tell me,” he asked Anne in icy tones, “as an old friend of your parents and of Norman’s, what your present income is?”

“Oh, Toby!” she cried, “as if I wouldn’t tell you because you are mine!”

“Your friend!” he said bitterly, “when you fence me off from your concerns as if I were a stranger! A man can stand a good deal, Anne, if he has to, but I’m damned if I’m going to stand your penury!”

“It’s exactly the kind of income,” said Anne reassuringly, “that I like. Before the war people were rich on half of it. They——”

“Look here, Anne,” interrupted Toby, “I’ll shake you if you don’t tell me at once how little it is!”

“Two hundred a year,” Anne admitted desperately. There was a long silence. Anne believed that Toby’s odd and sudden fury had dropped. She did not know that he was taking it in slowly and permanently, with every breath he drew. “I wouldn’t take any more from Norman,” she explained timidly, “because he only makes fifteen hundred a year and Nina is very delicate. I want them, you see, most awfully, to have children, and it’s difficult to bring up even two children on much less than that nowadays. I can manage beautifully by myself. Ordinarily, of course, I shan’t travel, but I had savings for this time abroad. There isn’t really anything to make a fuss about.”

“No, of course not,” said Toby drily. “How much did that black filmy thing you’ve got on cost, and the lace hat and those shoes? D’you suppose because a man isn’t married he doesn’t know what a woman spends on her clothes? You are a good manager, Anne, but if you tell me that you spent less than two hundred a year on yours, I shan’t believe you!”

“Oh yes, I did _then_,” agreed Anne impatiently, “one dresses for one’s position. But don’t you see I haven’t got a position now, so that I shan’t need to dress for it?”

Toby said “Waiter,” and the Maître d’Hôtel appeared as if shot from a catapult. “The account,” said Toby grimly, then he turned with a touch of the same restrained violence to Anne. “You’ll go first class with me to Belluno anyhow,” he said. “What on earth do your people say?”

“It doesn’t matter what they say,” Anne replied wearily. “If one began to care about that, where would one be? You shall pay for my ticket this time if you like—but it’s silly to make such a fuss about what one minds, for oneself, least.”

“I’m sorry, Anne,” said Toby in a gentler voice. “You see, I only make a fuss about what I can help. It isn’t any use making a fuss about what I can’t help, is it?”

Anne gave him her eyes again. They had the steady cheerfulness, which perhaps of all her expressions cut him sharpest and closest to the heart. “But after all,” she said, “there really isn’t anything at all to make a fuss about, is there? I am particularly lucky in many ways. I can’t tell you how glad I am you are coming to Madonna di Campiglio. It just makes all the difference.”