In this "setting me a scale of living" Pepper was aided and abetted by Pettinger, for if the candlesticks of the one meant the extravagance of candles, so did the two great china bowls of the other a constant expenditure of money on flowers. The only immediate profit I had of any of these magnificences was a plentiful supply of firewood. The cases they all came in, when knocked to pieces, made quite a respectable stack of timber.
There were only a couple more wedding presents that I need particularise. The first of these puzzled us for a long time. It came by letter post, a small, soft parcel addressed to Evie, containing a crochet-bordered teacloth; and except for an "L." written on a blank card, there was no indication of who the sender might be. Then I remembered Miss Levey.
"Of course--how stupid not to think of it!" said Evie. "I'll write her a note at once, and you can give it to her to-morrow."
But that very evening, before the note was posted, Miss Levey's present came, a pair of chimney ornaments--bronzed Arabs taming mettlesome steeds--brought by a young man who might have been either a cousin or a pawnbroker's assistant.
And as an explicit note accompanied the Arabs, the crochet teacloth remained unaccounted for.
And so the days slipped by. I was now unfit for anything until I should be married, and Evie was as restless as myself. A great shyness now began to come over her at times, leaving her, perhaps in the middle of a conversation, with never a word to say; and I understood, and secretly exulted. She bloomed indeed at those moments....
Let me, without losing any more time, come to the eve of my wedding and the last night I spent in my bachelor rooms.
I paced for long up and down my empty room that night. I had put on a pair of soft slippers, for the room was immediately above a dormitory where a number of shop-girls who "lived in" slept; and the light of my single candle was reflected in one or other of the squares of my naked windows as I walked. Then I threw up one of the sashes, and looked out among my terra-cotta Satans and festoons.
It was a marbled night of velvet black and iron grey, the two hues so mysteriously counterchanged that you could have fancied either to be the cloud and the other the abyss beyond until a star peeped out to tell you of your mistake. It was very still, and must have been very late, for down the road a mechanical sweeper was dragging along with a hiss of bristles. I watched it, but not out of sight, for before it had disappeared my eyes had wandered from it and were not looking at anything in particular.