The Eye of Love by Margery Sharp Page B

Harry relies on Miranda’s taste!” cried old Mrs Gibson—faced by his stubborn refusal to look at wallpapers for the new sitting-room. “Whatever Miranda chooses he will think perfect! She will have everything her own way!”
    The single occasion of his expressing an opinion was the night Miranda produced a sample of curtain-stuff. It was rose-pink brocade. “I don’t like the colour,” said Harry Gibson. “But what could be prettier!” protested Joyce. “Blue,” said Harry, at random.
    He spent as much time as possible at the shop. There at least he had the illusion of being still his own master, and it was to a certain extent the truth: Gibsons of Kensington (though as to name sunk without trace, even the door-plate had by now been changed) so benefited by having a Gibson on the premises to act as link between old and new, that old man Joyce left his prospective son-in-law pretty well alone. As the days and weeks passed, Harry began to recover confidence in the security of his office; gradually assembled there one or two objects of special value to him. As the mementos of a ten-year-long romance, they weren’t much. He had no photograph of Dolores—(She had one of him: in uniform. It used to stand on the ermine-cabinet; now it stood beside her bed.)—and no gages d’amour , because for his birthday and at Christmas Dolores always gave him liqueur-chocolates. Since she gave them because he had a passion for them, they were naturally all eaten. Mr Gibson was in fact reduced to a couple of theatre-programmes, a Derby day race-card, marked by Dolores’ hand, and a bottle of anti-rheumatism pills Dolores had merely recommended. He also, one morning, on the pretext that it needed cleaning, brought from home a rather loud checked tweed jacket and hung it on the hook behind the door. It was obviously no nest of erotica that Mr Gibson arranged for himself; but in the office above the show-room, beside his still inviolate safe, he passed the few tolerable hours of his life.
    At least once a day he took out Dolores’ comb, and warmed it back to life between his hands. He had to hang on hard to his Britishness, not to press it to his lips. A sad and ridiculous sight was Harry Gibson—large, stout, fifty years old—holding himself back from mumbling a wafer of tortoiseshell, as a child holds back from sucking a forbidden sweet.
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    Dolores, his Spanish rose, had a good deal more to cherish. She had her King Hal’s pyjamas, also his dressing-gown and bedroom slippers. For several weeks she arranged them each Monday and Thursday night appropriately about the divan. But Martha, who helped make beds, directed too enquiring an eye, and presently Miss Diver laid all away together in her wardrobe drawer. (Sprinkled with pot-pourri; it being obviously impossible to sprinkle underwear with liqueur-chocolates. Again the spirit of the absurd like a poltergeist haunted King Hal and his Spanish rose.) Dolores had also her Harry’s photograph—splendid with two stars on each shoulder-strap. It was the sole object she had moved from the sitting-room, where nothing else was changed by a hair’s-breadth, where in her daily dustings she was careful to replace each object exactly as it stood when Mr Gibson’s eye last fell on it. If Mr Gibson had suddenly walked in again, he would have found no more change than in its mistress’s heart.
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    On one other point besides that of the curtains Harry Gibson stood firm. He insisted on a six-months’ engagement. Considering how smooth was being made his path towards matrimony, the ensuing argument, sustained vicariously, on the bride’s side, by Mrs Gibson and Auntie Bee, was only to be expected: Harry Gibson stood firm. Three months he wouldn’t hear of. “But so well you children know each other already!” protested Mrs Gibson. “And the paper-hangers need only a week!” cried Auntie