The Eye of Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

are quite right, with such a future before you! My dear Harry, you are going to be so happy!”
    â€œI agree that it’s something not to go bankrupt,” said Harry Gibson.
    With a sudden incautious gesture Mrs Gibson flung up her hands.
    â€œAnd I suppose it’s something not to leave our nice flat! I suppose it’s something not to sell my nice furniture, to buy bread! I suppose it’s something your old mother won’t have to go out as a scrub-woman! Aren’t all these somethings too?”
    â€œAt last you’re being frank with me,” said Harry Gibson. “And of course you are quite right.”
    He got up and went to wash his hands, as he’d always trained himself to do, after any meal, and got his bowler hat and his umbrella, and came back to kiss the mater, before he went off. What pleasure these simple actions had given him year after year! Now he performed them as slowly as possible, not to savour them, but to hold back the day’s events.
    2
    A mile away in Knightsbridge, Mr Joyce also was leaving for the day’s work. He was a small, spare man, half the bulk of Harry Gibson, and so much shorter than his daughter that she had to stoop to kiss his cheek as Aunt Beatrice pecked at him from the other side. Mr Joyce stood passive between them, as he’d learnt to do, in his good custom-built suit and his neat spring overcoat—Miranda always had him tailored in Savile Row—and waited for her to pat down, as she always did, the neat pearl pin in his neat grey tie.
    â€œWhat time do you want me back?” asked Mr Joyce.
    â€œAny time you like, Dadda!” said Miranda gaily. “So long as you don’t come into the drawing-room until you’re fetched!”
    Mr Joyce nodded intelligently, and with a spry step departed for Bond Street. This spryness was something of a trial to Miranda, who worked hard to make her parent look distinguished; even wearing the best Savile Row suit, once in motion Mr Joyce looked chiefly spry. (Miranda had her eye on Harry Gibson’s apparel also: she meant to tone him first down, then up.) To-day, however, she was in no mood to regard anyone with discontent—not even old Beatrice, despite an overnight quarrel about the housekeeping.
    â€œAuntie Bee, why don’t you make us your special goulash? For dinner?”
    â€œDoes Harry like it?” enquired the old woman anxiously.
    â€œOf course he likes it! Make us your mont blanc as well!”
    There was nothing old Beatrice enjoyed more than a field-day in the kitchen. She began her preparations at once, while Miranda kept an appointment at the hairdresser’s.
    3
    The child Martha was just waking up. She had naturally slept late. When at last her appetite roused her, she was pleased to find the little house so still. It gave her a free run of the kitchen, and there were eggs. Breaking three or four into the frying-pan she produced a sort of omelette, unorthodox but satisfying; and finding a pair of kippers set them tails up in a jug of boiling water as a second course. An hour later she felt very comfortable.
    It was only then that she remembered saying good-bye to Mr Gibson. She logically presumed him gone for good. His departure didn’t trouble her, however (she could take Mr Gibson or leave him), except in its effect on Dolores: the aura of adult grief, on the verge of which she had stood the previous night, affected the child Martha as the aura of sickness affects an animal. But though the herd may shun the stricken deer, Martha couldn’t altogether shun Miss Diver, and she hoped extremely that Dolores would soon cheer up.
    In Martha’s experience, what cheered adult females was tea. (Ma Battleaxe in Brixton had been used to brew a dozen cups a day, so cheerless she and her cronies: Martha remembered them huddled round the pot like a coven of witches—Miss Fish and Mrs Hopkinson and Miss Jones—capping tales of wicked lodgers.)