Martha in Paris Read Online Free PDF Page B

was indeed a party to his self-delusion; the less she said, the sweeter and shyer she appeared to the poor fish.)
    â€œYou’re so defenceless,” added Eric fondly.
    He did everything he could think of to reassure her. A week after their first encounter he invited her to meet his mother.
    â€œI know she’ll like you,” encouraged Eric, “and I’m sure you’ll like her …”
    Only one so besotted could have taken Martha’s answering growl for an expression of timidity. Socially inexperienced or not, Martha could smell boredom. The additional bait of a nice family evening (such as Eric felt sure she must be missing) was again ill-judged. Martha had no more taste for nice family evenings than a Cossack. If it hadn’t been so particularly fine next morning, she’d have consumed her charcuterie in the studio. But the weather was in league with Eric Taylor, and force of habit took her back to the familiar bench.
    â€œMother says next Friday,” reported Eric gladly, “to supper.”
    Thus driven to active self-defence Martha sought, and happily found, what appeared to her an unanswerable objection.
    â€œI get supper. It’s paid for.”
    â€œWhat a careful little thing you are!” exclaimed Eric, affectionately amused. (Also touched: in default of any solid information he pictured Martha’s parents as cultured but indigent—in the Church, perhaps?—so that her time in Paris entailed quite severe financial sacrifice on their part—the mater giving up her subscription to the Lady , the Rev. foregoing a new cassock.)
    â€œAnyway your people won’t be out of pocket,” encouraged Eric, “and I’m sure they wouldn’t object if you asked them.”
    â€œThere isn’t time,” pointed out Martha.
    â€œI didn’t mean you should write—though I really believe you would!” said Eric, touched afresh by such simplicity. “I just meant I’m sure they’d approve.”
    This was naturally a point Martha couldn’t argue, since she had no parents; or if she wasn’t disingenuous enough not to give Dolores and Harry Gibson their place, Eric was probably right. She thought again.
    â€œI’m not supposed to speak English.”
    â€œYou’ve been speaking it to me. ”
    â€œAnd I’m sorry for it,” said Martha gloomily.
    What a tender conscience she had!—and how flattering to Eric’s starveling ego that she’d wounded it for him!
    â€œIf you like, we’ll all talk French,” he promised.
    â€œI might pick up a bad accent,” countered Martha.—Why didn’t she say outright that she wasn’t coming simply because she didn’t want to? Her mistake lay in having entered into argument at all. Martha, perceiving this, was in fact about to rectify the situation, and as forthrightly as possible—the phrase “not if you paid me” actually forming on her tongue—when Eric pressed on.
    â€œAnyway, I’m sure you’d like to see our flat,” he urged. “Mother’s done wonders with it. The bathroom’s just like at home.”
    He spoke more appositely than he knew. As has been said, the one thing that discontented Martha in the rue de Vaugirard was the bath. What with the flakes of enamel adhering to her behind and the water never running quite hot, she hadn’t had a proper lie-down-and-soak in weeks.
    â€œIs it constant hot water?” she asked enviously.
    â€œConstant,” Eric assured her. “Mother had a whole new system put in.”—He wasn’t disconcerted by this new turn to their conversation. Amongst all the other virtues he’d projected on Martha was that of domesticity.
    â€œIs the bath vitreous?” asked Martha.
    â€œIf you mean is it a sort of china, yes,” said Eric. “Pale green.”
    Her defences pierced at last—
    â€œWhat time on Friday?”