MESSALINA OF THE SUBURBS




  _Messalina of the
  Suburbs_  ::  ::   _By
  E. M. DELAFIELD_  ::

  _Author of “Tension,” “The Optimist,” “A
  Reversion to Type,” etc._

  [Illustration]

  _LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO.
  PATERNOSTER ROW_




DEDICATED

TO

M. P. P.


MY DEAR MARGARET,

We have so often agreed that causes are more interesting than the most
dramatic results, that I feel you are the right person to receive the
dedication of my story about Elsie Palmer, in which I have tried to
reconstruct the psychological developments that led, by inexorable
degrees, to the catastrophe of murder. These things are never “bolts
from the blue” in reality, but merely sensational accessories to the
real issue, which lies on that more subtle plane of thought where only
personalities are deserving of dissection.

For what it is worth, I offer you an impression of Elsie Palmer’s
personality.

                                                             E. M. D.

  _August, 1923._




CONTENTS


                              PAGE

  MESSALINA OF THE SUBURBS      11

  THE BOND OF UNION            185

  LOST IN TRANSMISSION         193

  TIME WORKS WONDERS           213

  THE GALLANT LITTLE LADY      223

  THE HOTEL CHILD              235

  IMPASSE                      249

  THE APPEAL                   259

  THE FIRST STONE              269




MESSALINA OF THE SUBURBS




Messalina of the Suburbs




PART I


I

“Elsie, I’ve told you before, I won’t have you going with boys.”

“I don’t, mother.”

“Yes, you do. And don’t contradict. Surely to goodness you’re aware
by this time that it’s the heighth of bad manners to contradict. I’ve
taken trouble enough to try and make a lady of you, I’m sure, and
now all you can do is to contradict your mother, and spend your time
walking the streets with boys.”

“Mother, I never.”

“Now don’t tell lies about it, Elsie. Mother knows perfectly well when
you’re telling a lie, and you don’t take her in by crocodile tears
either, my lady. Don’t let me have to speak to you again about the same
thing, that’s all.”

Elsie began to cry, automatically and without conviction. “I’m sure I
don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do, miss. I mean Johnnie Osborne, and Johnnie Osborne’s
brother, and Stanley Begg and the rest of them. Now, no more of it,
Elsie. Go and give the gurl a hand with washing up the tea-things, and
hurry up.”

Elsie went away, glad that it was so soon over. Sometimes mother went
on for ages. Thank the Lord she was busy to-day, with two new paying
guests coming in. As she went past the drawing-room door Elsie looked
in.

“Hallo, little girl!”

“Hallo, Mr. Roberts! Can’t stay, I’ve to go and help the girl wash up
or something.”

“You’ve been crying!”

“I haven’t, then!” She went further into the room and let him see the
downward droop of her pouting mouth and her wet eyelashes. She had not
cried hard enough to make her nose turn red.

“I say, what a shame! What have they been doing to you?”

“Oh, nothing. Mother’s on the warpath, that’s all. It isn’t anything.”

“How rotten of her! Fancy scolding you! I thought you were always good,
Elsie.”

“And who said you might call me Elsie, if you’ll kindly answer me that,
Mister Impertinence?”

She shook her short, bobbing curls at him and laughed, suddenly
good-tempered.

“You witch! Elsie, shall you miss me a tiny bit when I’m gone?”

“Oh, you’re going, are you?” She pretended to consider. “Let me see,
there’s a single gentleman coming, who’ll have your room, and a married
lady and gentleman for the front bedroom. I don’t really suppose, Mr.
Roberts, there’ll be time to miss you much, with the house full like
that.” She looked innocently up at him.

“Little devil!” he muttered between his teeth, causing her to thrill
slightly, although she maintained her pose of artlessness without a
visible tremor.

“Who’s the bounder who’s going to have my room after to-night?”

“Mis-ter Roberts!” She affected a high key of indignation. “He isn’t
a bounder. You know very well that mother’s awfully particular. She
wouldn’t take anyone without he was a perfect gentleman in _every_ way.
Now I can’t wait another minute. I should get into an awful row if
mother caught me here.”

“What’s the harm? Don’t run away, Elsie. Just tell me this: are you
coming to the pictures to-night--for the last evening?”

“Oh, are you going to take me and Geraldine? I don’t suppose
Geraldine’ll be able to--she’s ill.”

“Can’t we go without her?”

“Mother wouldn’t let me.”

“Well, look here, Elsie--come without telling anyone. Do, just for the
lark. I swear I’ll take the greatest care of you.”

“Oh, how could I? Besides, mother’d want to know where I was.”

“Can’t you say you’re going somewhere with that eternal friend of
yours--that Irene Tidmarsh girl, or whatever her name is?”

“I’ll thank you to remember you’re speaking of a friend of mine, Mr.
Roberts. And the idea of suggesting I should do such a thing as deceive
my mother! Why, I’m surprised at you!”

“Don’t rot, Elsie. Say you’ll come. Slip out after supper, and meet me
at the bottom of the road. There’s a jolly good programme on at the
Palatial.”

“I hope you’ll enjoy the pictures, Mr. Roberts,” said Elsie demurely.
She sidled backwards to the door.

“I shall wait for you--eight o’clock sharp.”

“Don’t catch cold waiting,” she mocked.

“Look here, kid----”

“That’s mother! She’ll skin me alive, if I give her half a chance!” She
flew out into the hall and down the passage to the kitchen.

The servant Nellie was there, and Elsie’s sister Geraldine.

“Where’ve you been, Elsie?”

“With mother. I didn’t know you were here; I thought you were s’posed
to be ill.”

“So I am ill,” returned Geraldine bitterly. “But as you were out,
_someone_ had to do some work.”

Elsie looked critically at her sister. Geraldine did look ill, sallow
and with black rims round her eyes, but then she had something
altogether wrong with her digestion, and often looked like that.

“Bilious again?”

“’M. I think it was that beastly pudding we had last night. I’ve been
awfully sick.”

“Poor wretch!”

Neither of them paid any attention to Nellie Simmons, who went on
plunging and clattering greasy spoons and plates about in the water
that steamed from a chipped enamel basin.

“Can’t you take this rag, Elsie, and wipe a bit, and let me get
upstairs? I’m sure I’m going to be sick again.”

“I suppose I must, then--poor me!”

“Poor you, when you’ve been out since dinner! I should like to know
what for. If it was me, now----Oh, Lord, my head!”

“Well, go on upstairs again. Have you tried the new medicine that
Ireen’s aunt did the testimonial for?”

“Yes, and I don’t believe it’s a bit better than any of the others. I
feel like nothing on earth. I say, where were you all the afternoon?”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” said Elsie, wiping the plates.

“I’m sure I don’t want to know.”

“That’s all right then, we’re both satisfied, because I don’t mean to
tell you.”

Geraldine looked angrily at her sister and walked away, her thin plait
of dark hair flapping limply between her angular, slouching shoulders.

“What is there for supper to-night, Nellie?” said Elsie presently.

“The ’am.”

“Oh, goodness, that old ham! Why can’t we ever have anything _nice_, I
should like to know! And I s’pose the cold tart’s got to be finished
up, and that beastly cold shape?”

“That’s right,” Nellie said laconically.

“Well, there’ll be no cooking to do, that’s one thing.”

“_She_ wants some soup put on, because of the new people, but I’ve left
it all ready. I’m off at six sharp, I can tell you.”

“What’s the hurry, Nellie?” asked Elsie amicably. She saw that Nellie
wanted to be asked, and she felt good-humoured because there was no
cooking to be done, and she could lay the supper and ring the bell
earlier than usual, so as to be able to keep her appointment with Mr.
Roberts.

“I’ve got someone waiting for me, I ’ave,” Nellie said importantly.
“Couldn’t be kept waiting--oh dear, no!”

Elsie looked at the ugly, white-faced Cockney woman, whose teeth
projected, decayed and broken, and round the corners of whose mouth
and nostrils clung clusters of dry pimples, and burst out laughing.

“It’s true!” said Nellie, offended. “And I’m off now.”

She went to dry her chapped hands on the limp and dingy roller-towel
that hung beside the cold-water tap.

Elsie laughed again, partly to tease Nellie Simmons and partly because
it really amused her to think that her own projected diversion with Mr.
Roberts should be parodied by this grotesque Nellie and some unknown,
equally grotesque, companion.

Nellie pulled down her hat and coat from the peg on the kitchen door,
put them on and went away, although it was quarter of an hour before
her time. She knew well enough that none of them would say anything,
Elsie reflected. Girls were too difficult to get hold of, when one took
in guests.

As soon as the side door had slammed behind Nellie, Elsie flew into the
scullery. A broken piece of looking-glass hung there, where she had
nailed it up herself long ago.

She pulled down the thick, dust-coloured wave of hair that fell from a
boyish, left-hand parting, until it lay further across her forehead,
deepening the natural kink in it with her fingers, and loosening the
black ribbon bow that fell over one ear. The soft, flopping curls
fell to her shoulders on either side of her full, childish face. She
rubbed hard at her cheeks for a moment, without producing very much
visible effect on their uniform pale pinkiness, starred all over with
tiny golden freckles. The gold was repeated in her eyelashes and pale
eyebrows, but Elsie’s eyes, to her eternal regret, were neither blue
nor brown. They were something between a dark grey and a light green,
and the clear blue whites of them showed for a space between the iris
and the lower lid.

Her nose was straight and short; her wide mouth, habitually pouting,
possessed a very full underlip and a short, curving upper one. When she
showed her teeth, they were white and even, but rather far apart. The
most salient characteristic of her face was that its high cheek-bones,
and well-rounded cheeks, gave an odd impression of pushing against her
underlids, so that her eyes very often looked half shut, and small.
Elsie saw this in herself, and it made her furious. She called it “a
Japanese doll look.”

She realised that her soft, rounded neck was really beautiful, and was
secretly proud of the opulent curves of her figure; but to other girls
she pretended that she thought herself too fat, although in point of
fact she wore no stays.

She thought with pride that she looked more like eighteen than sixteen
years old, although she was not, and knew that she never would be, very
tall.

Dragging a black velveteen tam-o’-shanter from her pocket, Elsie pulled
it rakishly on over her curls, her fingers quickly and skilfully
pouching the worn material so that it sagged over to one side. The
hands with which she manipulated the tam-o’-shanter were freckled too,
like her face, and of the same uniform soft pink. The fingers were
short, planted very far apart, and broad at the base and inclining to
curve backwards.

She wiped them on the roller-towel, as Nellie Simmons had done, only
far more hurriedly, and then went quietly out at the side door. It
opened straight into a small blind alley, and Elsie ran up it, and into
the road at a corner of which her home was situated. Turning her back
on No. 15, from which she had just emerged, she kept on the same side
of the road, hoping to escape observation even if Mrs. Palmer were to
look out of the window.

Very soon, however, she was obliged to cross the road, and then she
rang the bell of a tall house that was the counterpart of the one she
lived in, and indeed of all the other hundred and eighty yellow-and-red
brick houses in Hillbourne Terrace.

Irene Tidmarsh opened the door, a lanky, big-eyed creature, with two
prominent front teeth and an immense plait of ugly brown hair. Her arms
and legs were thick and shapeless.

“Hallo, Elsie!”

“Hallo, Ireen. Look here, I can’t stay. I only want to ask you if
you’ll swear we’ve been to the pictures together to-night, if anyone
ever asks. Quick! Be a sport, and promise.”

“What’s up?” Irene asked wearily.

“Oh, only my fun. I don’t particularly want mother to know about me
going out to-night, that’s all. If I can say I was with you if I’m
asked, it’ll be all right, only you’ll have to back me up if she
doesn’t believe me.”

“Oh, all right, I don’t care. You’re a caution, Elsie Palmer--you
and your made-up tales. Don’t see much difference between them and
downright lies, sometimes.”

“Well, what am I to do? I can’t ever go anywhere, or have any
amusement, without mother and Geraldine wanting to know all about it,
and if I’ve been behaving myself, and ’cetera and ’cetera.”

“Who is it this time, Elsie?”

“Only this fellow who’s leaving to-morrow, the one that’s been P.G.
with us such a time, you know.”

“Oh, Roberts?”

“’M. Well, so long, dear. Thanks awfully and all that. Ta-ta. Don’t
forget.”

“Ta-ta,” repeated Irene. “You’ll have to tell me all about it on
Sunday, mind.”

“Awright.”

Elsie turned and hurried homeward again, shrugging her shoulders up to
her ears as the wind whistled shrilly down the street.

It was September, and cold.

When she was indoors again, she pulled off her tam-o’-shanter and
stuffed it once more into the pocket of her serge skirt. Then she went
upstairs to the room at the top of the house that she shared with
Geraldine.

“I wish you’d knock.”

“Whatever for? It’s my room as much as yours, isn’t it?” Elsie said
without acrimony.

“Have you been washing up all this time?”

“Nellie went off early.”

“The slut! Whatever for? Did you tell mother?”

“No. It wouldn’t be a bit of good. She won’t say anything to Nellie
just now, whatever she does, with these new people just coming in.”

“Oh, my head!” groaned Geraldine, not attending.

She lay on her bed, her white blouse crumpled, and a machine-made
knitted coat, of shrimp-pink wool, drawn untidily over her shoulders.
Her black Oxford shoes lay on the mat between the two beds, and her
black stockings showed long darns and a hole in either heel.

Elsie began to arrange her hair before the looking-glass in a painted
deal frame that stood on the deal chest-of-drawers. Presently she
pulled a little paper bag from one of the drawers and began to suck
sweets.

“No good offering you any, I suppose?”

“Don’t talk of such a thing. Elsie, I can’t come down to supper
to-night. Do be a dear and bring me up a cup of tea--nice and strong.
I’ve got a sort of craving for hot tea when I’m like this, really I
have.”

“You don’t want much, do you, asking me to carry tea up four flights
of stairs? I’ll see what I can do.” Elsie began to hum, in a small,
rather tuneful little voice. She let her skirt fall round her feet as
she sang and pulled off her blouse, revealing beautifully modelled
breasts and shoulders. Her arms were a little too short, but the
line from breast-bone to knee was unusually good, the legs plump and
shapely, with slender ankles and the instep well arched. She wore serge
knickerbockers and a flimsy under-bodice of yellow cotton voile over a
thick cotton chemise.

“Are you going out _again_?” asked Geraldine in a vexed, feeble voice.

“I may go round and sit with Ireen for a bit, after supper. I think she
wants to go to the pictures, or something.”

“How’s Mr. Tidmarsh?”

“Going to die, I should think, by all accounts,” glibly replied Elsie,
although as a matter of fact she had forgotten to make any enquiry for
Irene’s father, who had for months past been dying from some obscure
and painful internal growth.

“Why doesn’t he go to a hospital?”

“Don’t ask me. Ireen’s always begging him to, but he won’t.”

“Old people are awfully selfish, I think,” said Geraldine thoughtfully.

“Yes, aren’t they? Look, I’m going to put this collar on my Sunday
serge. That ought to smarten it up a bit.”

She pinned the cheap lace round the low-cut V at the neck of an old
navy-blue dress, and fastened it with a blue-stoned brooch in the shape
of a circle. Her throat rose up, fresh and warm and youthful, from the
new adornment.

“Isn’t it time I put my hair up, don’t you think?”

“No. You’re only a kid. I didn’t put mine up till I was eighteen.
Mother wouldn’t let me.”

Elsie dragged a thick grey pilot-cloth coat from behind the curtain
of faded red rep that hung across a row of pegs and constituted the
sisters’ wardrobe, caught up the black tam-o’-shanter again and ran
downstairs.

All the time that she was laying the table in the dining-room, which
was next to the kitchen on the ground floor, Elsie hummed to herself.

The tablecloth was stained in several places, and she arranged the
Britannia-metal forks and spoons, the coarse, heavy plates and the
red glass water-jug so as to cover the spots as much as possible. In
the middle of the table stood a thick fluted green glass with paper
chrysanthemums in it.

Elsie added the cruet, two half-loaves of bread on a wooden platter
with “Bread” carved upon it in raised letters, and put a small red
glass beside each plate. Finally she quickly pleated half a dozen
coloured squares of Japanese paper, and stuck one into each glass.

“Mother!” she called.

“What?” said Mrs. Palmer from the kitchen.

“It’s ready laid.”

“What are you in such a hurry for? Miss M. and Mr. Williams haven’t
turned up yet.”

“Mr. Roberts wants his supper early, I know.”

“You’ve no business to know, then. Well, put the ham on the table and
the cold sweets, and he can go in when he pleases. This is Liberty
Hall, as I call it.”

Elsie carried in the ham, placing the dish on the table beside the
carving-knife and fork that were raised upon a “rest” of electro plate.
The glass dishes containing a flabby pink decoction of cornflour, and
the apple tart, with several slices of pastry gone from the crust, she
laid at the other end of the table.

“Supper’s in, Mr. Roberts,” she cried through the open door of the
drawing-room, but this time she did not go in, and flew back to the
kitchen before Mr. Roberts appeared.

“Geraldine’s asking for tea, mother.”

“There’s a kettle on. She can come and fetch it.”

“I’ll take it up,” Elsie volunteered.

“You’re very obliging, all of a sudden. I’m sure I only wish you and
your sister were more _like_ sisters, the way Aunt Ada and Aunt Gertie
and Mother were. There wasn’t any of this bickering between us girls
that I hear between you and Geraldine.”

“You’ve made up for it later, then,” said Elsie pertly. “The aunts
never come here but they find fault with things, and Aunt Ada cries,
and I’m sure you and Aunt Gertie go at it hammer and tongs.”

“Don’t you dare to speak to me like that, Elsie Palmer,” said her
mother abstractedly. (“Give me a spoon, there’s a good gurl.”) “What
you gurls are coming to, talking so to your own mother, is more than I
can say. What’s at the bottom of all this talk about carrying tea to
Geraldine? What are you going to do about your own supper?”

“Have it in here. I don’t want much, anyway. I’m not hungry. Tea and
bread-and-jam’ll do.”

“Please yourself,” said Mrs. Palmer.

She was a large, shapeless woman, slatternly and without method,
chronically aggrieved because she was a widow with two daughters,
obliged to support herself and them by receiving boarders, whom she
always spoke of as guests.

“Where are these what-you-may-call-’ems--these Williamses--coming
from?” Elsie asked, while she was jerking tea from the bottom of a
cocoa-tin into a broken earthenware tea-pot.

“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,” said her mother.

She had no slightest reason to conceal the little she knew of the new
people who were coming, but it was her habit to reply more or less in
this fashion, semi-snubbing, semi-facetious, whenever either of her
daughters asked a question.

“I’m sure I don’t want to know,” said Elsie, also from habit.

She made the tea, poured out two cups-full and took one upstairs. As
she had expected, the alarm clock on the wash-stand showed it to be
eight o’clock.

Almost directly afterwards, she heard the front door slam.

No. 15 was a narrow, high house, with very steep stairs, but Elsie was
used to them, although she grumbled at the number of times she went up
and down them, and she and Geraldine and Mrs. Palmer all kept numerous
articles of toilet and clothing in the kitchen, so as to save journeys
backwards and forwards.

She now went down once more, and sitting at a corner of the
newspaper-covered kitchen table, drank tea and ate bread-and-jam
deliberately.

“That’s the bell!”

Mrs. Palmer hoisted herself out of her chair, from which she had been
reading the headlines of an illustrated daily paper, commenting on them
half aloud with: “Fancy!... Whatever is the world coming to, is what I
say....”

“That’ll be the Williamses, and about time too. You’ll have to give me
a hand upstairs with the boxes afterwards, Elsie, but I’ll give ’em
supper first.”

She went out into the hall, and Elsie heard the sounds of arrival, and
her mother’s voice saying: “Good evening, you’ve brought us some wet
weather, I’m afraid.... You mustn’t mind me joking, Mrs. Williams, it’s
my way.... Liberty Hall, you’ll find this....”

Elsie ran to the back kitchen, donned the pilot-cloth coat and the
tam-o’-shanter, and slipped out through the side door into the wet
drizzle of a cold autumn evening.

“Ooh!” She turned up the collar of the coat, and pushed her gloveless
hands deep into her pockets as she hurried along the pavement. It shone
wet and dark, giving blurred reflections of the lamps overhead. Every
now and then a tram jerked and clanged its way along the broad suburban
road.

Only a few shops were lit along the road. Most of the buildings on
either side were houses that displayed a brass sign-plate on the door,
or a card with “Apartments” in one of the windows. Right at the end
of the street, a blur of bluish light streamed out from the Palatial
Picture House.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” said young Roberts, reproachfully.
“It’s long after eight.” He wore a light overcoat and he, also, had
turned up his collar as a protection against the rain.

“I had to help mother, of course. And if you want to know, I ought to
be there now.” She laughed up at him provocatively.

“Come on in,” he said, pulling her hand through his arm.


II

This was Elsie’s real life.

Although quite incapable of formulating the thought to herself, she
already knew instinctively that only in her relations with some man
could she find self-expression.

In the course of the past two years she had gradually discovered
that she possessed a power over men that other girls either did not
possess at all, or in a very much lesser degree. From the exercise of
unconscious magnetism, she had by imperceptible degrees passed to a
breathless, intermittent exploitation of her own attractiveness.

She did not know why boys so often wished to kiss her, nor why she
was sometimes followed, or spoken to, in the street, by men. At first
she had thought that she must be growing prettier, but her personal
preference was for dark eyes, a bright colour, and a slim, tall figure,
and she honestly did not admire her own appearance. Moreover, her looks
varied almost from day to day, and very often she seemed plain. She had
never received any instruction in questions of sex, excepting whispered
mis-information from girls at school as to the origin of babies. The
signs of physical development that had come to her early were either
not commented upon except in half-disgusted, half-facetious innuendo
from Geraldine, or else dismissed by Mrs. Palmer curtly:

“Nice gurls don’t think about those things. I’m ashamed of you, Elsie.
You should try and be nice-minded, as mother’s always told her gurls.”

A sort of garbled knowledge came to her after a time, knowledge that
comprised the actual crude facts as to physical union between men and
women, and explained in part certain violent bodily reactions to which
she had been prone almost since childhood.

She had not the least idea whether any other girl in the world ever
felt as she did, and was inclined to believe herself unnatural and
depraved.

This thought hardly ever depressed her. She thought that to remain
technically “a good girl” was all that was required of her, and
admitted no further responsibility.

Geraldine and she quarrelled incessantly. Geraldine, with her poor
physique and constant indispositions, was angrily jealous of Elsie’s
superb health and uninterrupted preoccupation with her own affairs. She
had only just begun to suspect that Elsie was never without a masculine
admirer, and the knowledge, when it became a certainty, would embitter
the relations between them still further on Geraldine’s side.

On Elsie’s side there was no bitterness, only contempt and unmalicious
hostility. She disliked her elder sister, but was incapable of the
mental effort implied by hatred. In the same way, she disliked her
mother, almost without knowing that she did so.

Her home had always been ugly, sordid, and abounding in passionless
discord. Elsie’s real life, which was just beginning to give her the
romance and excitement for which she craved, was lived entirely outside
the walls of No. 15, Hillbourne Terrace.

To-night, as she entered the hot, dark, enervating atmosphere of the
cinema theatre, she thrilled in response to the contrast with the
street outside. When she heard the loud, emphasised rhythm of a waltz
coming from the piano beneath the screen, little shivers of joy ran
through her.

A girl with a tiny electric torch indicated to them a row of seats,
and Elsie pushed her way along until the two empty places at the very
end of the row were reached. It added the last drop to her cup of
satisfaction that she should have only the wall on one side of her.
Human proximity almost always roused her to a vague curiosity and
consciousness, that would have interfered with her full enjoyment of
the evening.

She settled herself in the soft, comfortable seat, slipping her arms
from the sleeves of her coat, and leaning back against it.

Roberts dropped a small box into her lap as he sat down beside her.

“Thanks awfully,” she whispered.

A film was showing, and Elsie became absorbed at once in the
presentment of it, although she had no idea of the story. It came
to an end very soon, and a Topical Budget was shown. Elsie was less
interested, and pulled the string off her box of chocolates.

“Have one?”

“I don’t mind. Thanks.”

“They’re awfully good.” She chewed and sucked blissfully.

“Ooh! Look at that ship! Isn’t it funny?”

“Makes you feel seasick to look at it, doesn’t it?” whispered Roberts,
and she giggled ecstatically.

Words appeared on the screen.

“‘Hearts and Crowns,’ featuring Lallie Carmichael.”

“How lovely!” said Elsie.

The story was complicated, and as most of the characters were Russian,
Elsie did not always remember whether Sergius was the villain or the
lawyer, and if Olga was the name of the “vampire” or of the soubrette.
But the beautiful Lallie Carmichael was the heroine, and a clean-shaven
American the hero. Elsie watched them almost breathlessly, and after a
time it was she herself who was leaning back in the crowded restaurant,
in a very low dress, and waving an ostrich-feather fan, torn between
passion and loyalty. The American hero assumed no definite personality,
other than that which his creator had endowed him. The scenes that she
liked best were those between the two lovers, when they were shown
alone together, and the American made passionate love to the princess.

At the end of the First Part, the lights went up.

Elsie turned her shining eyes and rumpled curls towards her escort.

“It is good, isn’t it?” he said, with a critical air.

“Isn’t it good? Have another sweet?”

“Well, thanks, I don’t mind. Are you enjoying yourself, kiddie?”

“Awfully. I like pictures.”

“What about me? Don’t you like me a little bit too, Elsie, for bringing
you?” His voice had become low and husky.

Still under the emotional influence of the story, the music, and the
relaxation produced by bodily warmth and comfort, she looked at him,
and saw, not the common, rather negligible features of sandy-haired Mr.
Roberts, but the bold, handsome American hero of the film.

“Of course I like you,” she said softly.

“You won’t forget me when I’ve gone?”

“No.”

“You will, Elsie! You’ll let some other fellow take you to the
pictures, and you won’t give me another thought.”

“Of course I shall, you silly! I shall always remember you--you’ve been
awfully sweet to me.”

“Will you write to me?”

“We’ll see about that.”

“Promise.”

“Promises are like pie-crusts, made to be broken.”

“Yours wouldn’t be. I bet anything if you promised a chap something,
you’d stick to it. Now wouldn’t you?”

“I daresay I should,” she murmured, flattered. “Mother says I’ve always
been a terrible one for keeping to what I’ve once said. It’s the way I
am, you know.”

No fleeting suspicion crossed her mind that this was anything but a
true description of herself.

“Elsie, do you know what I should like to do?”

“What, Mr. Roberts?”

“Call me Norman. I should like to make a hell of a lot of money and
come back and marry you.”

“You shouldn’t use those words.”

“I’m in earnest, Elsie.”

“You’re making very free with my name, aren’t you?”

“You don’t mind.”

“No,” she whispered.

“You’re a little darling.”

The lights went out again, and his hand fumbled for hers in the
darkness. Warm and unresisting it lay in his, and presently returned
pressure for pressure.

The story on the screen began to threaten tragedy, and Elsie’s body
became tense with anxiety. She pressed her shoulder hard against that
of Roberts.

He, too, leant towards her, and presently slipped one arm round her
waist. Instantly her senses were awake, and although she continued to
gaze at the screen, she was in reality blissfully preoccupied only with
his embrace, and the sensations it aroused in her.

Intensely desirous that he should not move away, she relaxed her figure
more and more, letting her head rest at last against his shoulder. She
began to wonder whether he would kiss her, and to feel that she wanted
him to do so. As though she had communicated the thought to him, the
man beside her in the obscurity put his disengaged hand under her chin
and tilted her face to his.

She did not resist, and he kissed her, first on her soft cheek and then
on her mouth.

Elsie had been kissed before, roughly and teasingly by boys, and once
or twice, furtively, by an elderly lodger of Mrs. Palmer’s, whose
breath had smelt of whisky.

But the kisses of this young commercial traveller were of an entirely
different quality to these, and the pleasure that she took in them was
new and startling to herself.

“Elsie, d’you love me?” he whispered. “I love you. I think you’re the
sweetest little girl in the whole world.”

Elsie liked the words vaguely, but she did not really want him to talk,
she wanted him to go on kissing her.

“Say--‘I love you, Norman.’”

“I won’t.”

“You must. Why won’t you?”

“It’s so soppy.”

“Elsie!”

She felt that the magnetic current between them had been disturbed, and
made an instinctive, nestling movement against him.

He kissed her again, two or three times.

Reluctantly, Elsie forced herself to the realisation that the film must
soon come to an end, and the lights reappear. She looked at the screen
again, and when the lovers, in magnified presentment, exchanged a long
embrace, responsive vibrations shook her, and she felt all the elation
of conscious and recent initiation.

The lights suddenly flashed out, a moment sooner than she expected
them, and she flung herself across into her own seat, pressing the
backs of her hands against her flushed, burning cheeks and dazzled eyes.

She knew that Norman Roberts was looking at her, but she would not
turn her head and meet his eyes, partly from shyness, and partly from
coquetry.

“Isn’t this the end?” she said, knowing that it was not, but speaking
in order to relieve her sense of embarrassment.

“No, it isn’t over till half-past ten; there’s another forty minutes
yet.” He consulted his wrist-watch elaborately. “I expect they’ll have
a comic to finish up with.”

Elsie sensed constraint in him, too, and in sudden alarm turned and
faced him. As their eyes met, both of them smiled and flushed, and
Roberts slipped his arm under hers and possessed himself of her hand
again.

“Did you like that?” he whispered, bending towards her.

“The picture?”

“You know I don’t mean that.”

She laughed and then nodded.

“Elsie, tell me something truly. Has any other fellow ever kissed you?”

Her first impulse was to lie glibly. Then her natural, instinctive
understanding of the game on which they were engaged, made her laugh
teasingly.

“That’s telling, Mr. Inquisitive.”

“That means they have. I must say, Elsie, that considering you’re only
sixteen, I don’t call that very nice.”

Elsie snatched away her hand. “I get quite enough of that sort of thing
at home, thank you, Mr. Norman Roberts, _Es_quire. There’s no call for
you to interfere in my concerns, that I’m aware of.”

His instant alarm gratified her, although she continued to look
offended, and to sit very upright in her chair.

“Don’t be angry, Elsie. I didn’t mean to offend you, honour bright.
Make it up!”

The pianist began some rattling dance-music and the lights went out
again.

Elsie immediately relaxed her pose, feeling her heart beat more quickly
in mingled doubt and anticipation.

The doubt was resolved almost within the instant. Roberts pulled her
towards him, bringing her face close to his, and whispered:

“Kiss and be friends!”

All the while that the last film was showing, Elsie lay almost in his
arms, seeing nothing at all, conscious only of feeling alive as she had
never felt alive before.

Even when it was all over and they rose to go, that sense of awakened
vitality throbbed within her, and made her unaware of fatigue.

“Follow me,” said Roberts authoritatively, and took his place in front
of her in the gangway. There he waited, meekly and like everybody else,
until the people in front should have moved. But to Elsie there was
masculinity in the shelter of his narrow, drooping shoulders, as he
stood before her in his crumpled light overcoat, every now and then
shifting from one foot to the other.

She followed him step by step, pulling her hair into place under the
tam-o’-shanter, and settling it at its customary rakish angle.

It was no longer raining, and a watery moon showed through a haze.

They dawdled as soon as they were out of the crowd, with linked arms
and clasped hands.

“Swear you’ll write to me, Elsie.”

“All right.”

“Lordy, to think of all we might have done together these three months
I’ve been here, and I’ve never had more than a word with you here and
there!”

“I was at school all the time, till last week.”

“You aren’t going back to school again?”

“No, that’s over, praise be! I’m supposed to be taking up typing and
shorthand, some time, though there’s plenty for two of us to do at
home, _I_ should have said.”

The faint reverberations of a church clock striking came to them.

“Goodness, that’s never eleven o’clock striking! Well, you will get me
into a row and no mistake!”

She began to run, but stopped under a lamp just before No. 15 was in
sight.

He had kept pace with her high-heeled, uneven steps easily, and stopped
beside her.

“Say good-night to me properly, then.”

“How, properly? Good-night, Mr. Roberts, and thank you ever so much.
Oh, and _bonne voyage_ to-morrow, in case I don’t see you. Will that
do?”

“No, it won’t. I want a kiss.”

“You don’t want much, do you?” she began half-heartedly, and looking up
and down the street as she spoke.

It was empty but for themselves.

Roberts caught hold of her and kissed her with violence. Unresisting,
Elsie put back her head and closed her eyes.

“Kiss me--you _shall_ kiss me,” he gasped.

At the sense of constriction that came upon her with the tightened
grasp of his arms, Elsie gave a fluttering, strangled scream and began
to struggle.

“Let me go! You’re hurting me!”

He loosened his hold so abruptly that she nearly fell down.

She began to hurry towards home, moving with the ugly, jerking gait
peculiar to women who walk from the knees.

“Shall I see you to-morrow before I go?” His voice sounded oddly humble
and crestfallen.

“I’ll come to the drawing-room for a minute--no one’s ever there in the
mornings.”

“What time, Elsie? I ought to be off at nine.”

“Oh, before that some time, I expect. I say, you’ve got your key,
haven’t you?”

A sharp misgiving assailed her as he began to fumble in his pockets.

“Yes, all right.” He put it into the lock.

Elsie, relieved, stood on tiptoe and put her arms round his neck.
“Good-night, you dear,” she whispered. “Now don’t begin again. Open the
door and go in first, and if the coast isn’t clear, just cough, and
I’ll wait a bit. I’ll see you to-morrow.”

When he signed to her that the house was quiet, and that she could
safely enter, Elsie slipped past him like a shadow while he felt about
for matches, and flew upstairs. Her mother slept in the back bedroom
on the third floor, and Elsie saw that her door was shut and that no
streak of light showed under it. Satisfied, she went up the next flight
of stairs to the bedroom.

Geraldine, of course, was bound to know of her escapade, but Geraldine
would either believe, or pretend to believe, that Elsie had been with
Irene Tidmarsh, and the two Palmer girls always combined with one
another against the sentimentalised tyranny that Mrs. Palmer called “a
mother’s rights.”

Geraldine was lying in bed, reading a paper novelette by the light of a
candle stuck into an empty medicine bottle that stood on a chair beside
her. She looked sallower than ever now that she had undressed and put
on a white flannelette nightgown with a frill high at the neck and
another one at each wrist.

Her lank hair was rolled up into steel waving-pins. It was one of
Geraldine’s grievances that she should be obliged to go to bed in
curlers every night, while Elsie’s light curls lay loose and ruffled on
her pillow. Sometimes, when they were on friendly terms, she and Elsie
would speculate together as to how the difficulty could be overcome
when Geraldine married, and could no longer go to bed and wake up
“looking a sight.”

She rolled over as Elsie cautiously opened the door. “You’ve come at
last, have you? How did you get in?”

“Mr. Roberts let me in. He knew I’d be late to-night,” said Elsie
calmly, beginning to pull off her clothes.

“You’ve got a nerve, I must say. Mother thinks you were in bed ages
ago. She came up after supper and said you were in the kitchen. She was
in the drawing-room nearly all the evening, doing the polite to the
Williamses.”

“Did she find out that supper hadn’t been cleared away?”

“I suppose she didn’t, or she’d have been up here after you. You’re in
luck, young Elsie.”

“I shall have to go down and do it first thing to-morrow before she’s
down,” said Elsie, yawning.

“Where have you been?”

“Pictures.”

“With Ireen?”

“’M.”

“I shall ask her what they were like, next time I see her,” said
Geraldine significantly.

Elsie pulled the ribbon off her hair without untying it, shuffled her
clothes off on to the floor from beneath a nightgown that was the
counterpart of her sister’s, and dabbed at her face with a sponge
dipped in cold water. She carefully parted her hair on the other side
for the night, and brushed it vigorously for some moments to promote
growth, but the worn bristles of her wooden-backed brush were grey with
dust and thick with ancient “combings.”

At the bedside Elsie knelt down for a few seconds with her face hidden
in her hands, as she had always done, muttered an unthinking formula,
and got into bed.

“You’re very sociable, I must say,” Geraldine exclaimed. “Out half the
night, and not a word to say when you do come up!”

“I thought you had a headache.”

“A lot you care about my headache.”

“I’m going to put the light out now.”

“All right.”

They had always shared a bedroom and never exchanged formal good-nights.

In the dark, a tremendous weariness suddenly came over Elsie. She felt
thankful to be in her warm, narrow bed, and blissfully relived the
evening’s experience.

She found that she could thrill profoundly to the memory of those
ardent moments, and even the bodily lassitude that overwhelmed her held
a certain luxuriousness.

Dimly, and without any conscious analysis, she felt that for the first
time in her sixteen years of life she had glimpsed a reason why she
should exist. It was for _this_ that she had been made.

No thought of the future preoccupied her for a moment. She did not even
regret that Norman Roberts should be going away next day.

“I must get up in good time to-morrow, and get a word with him in the
drawing-room before he’s off,” was her last waking thought.

But she was sleeping profoundly, her head under the bedclothes, when
Mrs. Palmer’s customary bang at the door sounded next morning soon
after six o’clock.

“Wake up, girls.”

“Awright!” Geraldine shouted back sleepily. If one or other of them did
not call out in reply, Mrs. Palmer would come into the room in her grey
dressing-gown and vigorously shake the bed-posts of either bed.

They could hear her heelless slippers flapping away again, and Elsie
reluctantly roused herself.

“I simply must clear that supper-table before mother goes down,” she
thought. Still half asleep, and yawning without restraint, she put on
her thick coat over her nightgown, and ran downstairs with bare feet.

The broken remains of supper, even to Elsie’s indifferent eyes, looked
horrible in the grim morning light.

She huddled everything out on a tray, pushed it out of sight in the
back kitchen, and ran upstairs again, her teeth chattering with cold.

The still warm, tumbled bed was irresistible, and tearing off her coat,
Elsie buried herself in it once more.

She slept through Geraldine’s sketchy, scrambled toilet and muttered
abuse of her sister’s laziness, and did not stir even when her senior,
as the most unpleasant thing she could do, opened her window, which had
been closed all night, and let in the damp, raw, foggy morning air.

Elsie did not stir again until the door was flung open and Geraldine
pulled the bedclothes off her roughly, and said angrily:

“Get up, you lazy little brute! I had to wash all the beastly things
you left over last night, and mother and I had to do the breakfasts,
and see that young Roberts off and everything.”

“Has Roberts gone?”

“Yes, of course he has. It’s past nine, you lazy pig, you----”

“Oh,” said Elsie indifferently, stretching herself.


III

For a little while after Norman Roberts had gone away, Elsie was bored.
She received a letter from him, reproaching her for not having been
downstairs on the morning of his departure, and giving her an address
in Liverpool. He begged her to write to him, and the letter ended with
half a dozen pen-and-ink crosses.

“_That’s for you, Elsie._”

Elsie, who hated writing, collected with some difficulty a pen, ink,
and a coloured picture postcard of the Houses of Parliament.

“Thanks for yours ever so much,” she wrote. “I expect you’re having a
fine old time in Liverpool. All here send kind remembrances.”

Then, because she could not think what else to put, she filled in
the remaining space on the card with two large crosses. “From your’s
sincerely, Elsie.”

Roberts, after an interval, wrote once more, and this letter Elsie
did not answer at all. She was out nearly every evening, walking, or
lounging round the nearest public park, with Irene Tidmarsh, Johnnie
and Arthur Osborne, and Stanley Begg.

Arthur Osborne was nominally Irene’s “friend,” but he, as well as
Johnnie and Stanley, always wanted to walk with Elsie, or to sit next
her at the cinema, and their preference elated her, although the eldest
of the three, Arthur, was only twenty, and not one of them was earning
more than from fifteen to twenty shillings a week.

At last Irene and Elsie quarrelled about Arthur, and Irene, furious,
went to Mrs. Palmer.

“It’s no more than my duty, Mrs. Palmer,” she virtuously declared, “to
let you know the way Elsie goes on. The fellows may laugh and all that,
but they don’t like it, not really. I know my boy doesn’t, for one.”

Mrs. Palmer, on different grounds, was quite as angry as Irene.

She worked herself up, rehearsing to Geraldine all that Irene had said,
and a great deal that she alleged herself to have replied, and she
summoned her two unmarried sisters, Aunt Ada and Aunt Gertie Cookson,
to No. 15.

“What I want,” she explained, “is to give the gurl a _fright_. I’m not
going to have her making herself cheap with young rag-tag-and-bobtail
like those Osborne boys. Why, a pretty gurl like Elsie could get
married, as easily as not, to a fellow with money. Nice enough people
come to this house, I’m sure. It’s on account of the gurls, simply,
that I’ve always been so particular about references and all. I’m sure
many’s the time I could have had the house full but for not liking
the looks of one or two that were ready to pay anything for a front
bedroom. But I’ve always said to myself, ‘No,’ I’ve said, ‘a mother’s
first duty is to her children,’ I’ve said, especially being in the
position of father and mother both, as you might say.”

“I’m sure you’ve always been a wonderful mother, Edie,” said Aunt Ada.

“Well,” Mrs. Palmer conceded, mollified.

When Geraldine came in with the tea-tray to the drawing-room that Mrs.
Palmer was for once able to use, because the Williamses, her only
guests, had a sitting-room of their own, the aunts received her with
marked favour.

“Mother’s helpful girlie!” said Aunt Gertie, as Geraldine put down the
plate of bread-and-butter, the Madeira cake on a glass cake stand, and
another plate of rock-buns.

“Where’s Elsie?” Mrs. Palmer asked significantly.

“Cutting out in the kitchen.”

“Tell her to come along up. She knows your aunties are here.”

“I told her to come, and she made use of a very vulgar expression,”
Geraldine spitefully declared.

“I don’t know what’s come over Elsie, I’m sure,” Mrs. Palmer declared
helplessly. “She’s learnt all these low tricks and manners from that
friend of hers, that Ireen Tidmarsh.”

Mrs. Palmer was very angry with Irene for her revelations, although she
was secretly rather enjoying her younger daughter’s notoriety.

“Get that naughty gurl up from the kitchen directly,” she commanded
Geraldine. “No--wait a minute, I’ll go myself.”

With extraordinary agility she heaved her considerable bulk out of her
low chair and left the room.

“And what have you been doing with yourself lately?” Aunt Gertie
enquired of Geraldine.

She was stout and elderly-looking, with a mouth over-crowded by large
teeth. She was older than Mrs. Palmer, and Aunt Ada was some years
younger than either, and wore, with a sort of permanent smirk, the
remains of an ash-blond prettiness. They were just able, in 1913, to
live in the house at Wimbledon that their father had left them, on
their joint income.

“There’s always heaps to do in the house, I’m sure, Aunt Gertie,” said
Geraldine vaguely. “And I’m not strong enough to go to work anywhere,
really I’m not. Now Elsie’s different. She could do quite well in the
shorthand-typing, but she’s bone idle--that’s what she is. Or there’s
dressmaking--Elsie’s clever with her needle, that I will say for her.”

Mrs. Palmer came back with Elsie behind her. The girl reluctantly laid
her face for a moment against each of the withered ones that bumped
towards her in conventional greeting.

“Hallo, Aunt Gertie. Hallo, Aunt Ada,” she said lifelessly.

Mrs. Palmer began to pour out the tea, and whilst they ate and drank
elegantly, the conversation was allowed to take its course without any
reference to the real point at issue.

“What are these Williamses like, that have got the downstairs
sitting-room, Edie?”

“Oh, they _are_ nice people,” said Mrs. Palmer enthusiastically. “A
solicitor, he is, and only just waiting to find a house. I believe
they’ve ever such a lot of furniture in store. They lived at Putney
before, but it didn’t suit Mrs. Williams. She’s delicate.”

Mrs. Palmer raised her eyebrows and glanced meaningly at the aunts.

Aunt Ada gazed eagerly back at her.

“Go and get some more bread-and-butter, Elsie,” commanded Mrs. Palmer,
and when the girl had left the room she nodded at Aunt Ada.

“You know, Mrs. Williams isn’t very strong just now. She’s been unlucky
before, too--twice, I fancy.”

“But when? Surely you aren’t going to have anything like that _here_?”

“Oh dear, no! I told her it was out of the question, and she quite
understood. It isn’t till April, and they hope to move into their new
house after Christmas. _She_ must be about fifteen years younger than
_he_ is, I imagine.”

“How strange!” said Aunt Gertie.

Both she and Aunt Ada were always intensely interested in any detail
about anybody, whether known or unknown to them personally.

“Rather remarkable, isn’t it, that there should be an event on the
way----” Aunt Ada began.

Mrs. Palmer frowned heavily at her as Elsie came back into the room.
“It’s ever so long since we’ve seen you, as I was just saying,” she
remarked in a loud and artificial voice, making Elsie wish that she had
waited outside the door and listened. She thought that they must have
been talking about her.

After tea was over, they did talk about her. Mrs. Palmer began: “You
can let Geraldine take the tea-things, Elsie. It won’t be the first
time, lately, she’s done your share of helping your poor mother as well
as her own.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” from Aunt Gertie.

“Geraldine’s health isn’t as strong as yours, either. She looks to me
as though she might go into consumption, if you want to know,” said
Aunt Ada.

They looked at Elsie, and she looked sulkily back at them.

It was one of the days on which she was at her plainest. Her face
looked fat and heavy, the high cheek-bones actually seemed to be
pushing her lower lids upwards until her eyes appeared as mere slits.
Her mouth was closed sullenly.

“Elsie’s not been a good gurl lately, and she knows it very well. Her
own mother doesn’t seem to have any influence with her, so perhaps ...”
said Mrs. Palmer to her sisters, but looking at her child, “perhaps
you’ll see what you can do. It’s not a thing I like to talk about,
ever, but we know very well what happens to a gurl who spends her
time larking about the streets with fellows. To think that a child of
mine----”

“What do you do it _for_, Elsie?” enquired Aunt Gertie, in a practical
tone, as though only such shrewdness as hers could have seized at once
upon this vital point.

“Do what?”

“What your poor mother says.”

“She hasn’t said anything, yet.”

“Don’t prevaricate with me, you bad gurl, you,” said Mrs. Palmer
sharply. “You know very well what I mean, and so do others. The tales
that get carried to me about your goings-on! First one fellow, and then
another, and even running after a whipper-snapper that’s already going
with another gurl!”

“This is a bit of Ireen’s work, I suppose,” said Elsie. “I can’t help
it if her boy’s sick of her already, can I? I’m sure I don’t care
anything about Arthur Osborne, or any of them, for that matter.”

The implication that Elsie Palmer, at sixteen and a half, could afford
to distinguish between her admirers, obscurely infuriated the spinster
Aunt Ada.

She began to tremble with wrath, and white dents appeared at the
corners of her mouth and nostrils. “You’re not the first gurl whose
talked that way, and ended by disgracing herself and her family,” she
cried shrilly. “If I were your mother, I’d give you a sound whipping, I
declare to goodness I would.”

Elsie shot a vicious look at her aunt out of the corners of her
slanting eyes. “Are the grapes sour, Aunt Ada?” she asked insolently.

Aunt Ada turned white. “D’you hear that, Edie?” she gasped.

“Yes, I do,” said Mrs. Palmer vigorously, “and I’m not going to put up
with it, not for a single instant. Elsie Palmer, you beg your auntie’s
pardon directly minute.”

“I won’t.”

The vast figure of Mrs. Palmer in her Sunday black frock upreared
itself and stood, weighty and menacing, over her child. She had never
hit either of her daughters since childhood, but neither of them had
ever openly defied her.

“Do as I say.”

“N-no.”

Elsie’s voice quavered, and she burst into tears. Mrs. Palmer let out a
sigh of relief. She knew that she had won.

“Do--as--I--say.”

“I’m sure I’m very sorry, Aunt Ada, if I said what I didn’t ought.”

“It isn’t what you said, dear,” said Aunt Ada untruthfully. “It was the
way you said it.”

There was a silence.

Then Mrs. Palmer pursued her advantage. “You may as well understand,
Elsie, that this isn’t going on. I haven’t got the time, nor yet the
strength, to go chasing after you all day long. I know well enough
you’re not to be trusted--out of the house the minute my back’s the
other way--and coming in at all hours, and always a tale of some sort
to account for where you’ve been. So, my lady, you’ve got to make up
your mind to a different state of things. What’s it to be: a job as a
typewriter, or apprenticed to the millinery? Your kind Aunt Gertie’s
got a friend in the business, and she’s offered to speak for you.”

“I’d rather the typing,” said Elsie sullenly.

“Then you’ll come with me and see about a post to-morrow morning as
ever is,” said Mrs. Palmer. “It’s your own doing. You could have stayed
at home like a lady, helping Mother and Geraldine, if you’d cared to.
But I’m not going to have any gurl of mine getting herself a name the
way you’ve been doing.”

“I suppose I can go now?”

“You can go if you want to,” said Mrs. Palmer, flushed with victory.
“And mind and remember what I’ve said, for I mean every word of it.”

It was only too evident that she did, and Elsie went out of the room
crying angrily. She did not really mind the idea of becoming a typist
in an office or a shop in the very least, but she hated having been
humiliated in front of her aunts and Geraldine.

As she went upstairs, sobbing, she met Mrs. Williams coming down. She
was a gentle, unhealthy-looking woman of about thirty, so thin that
her clothes always looked as though they might drop off her bending,
angular body.

“What’s the matter, dear?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Come into the sitting-room, won’t you, and rest a minute?”

“Well, I don’t mind.”

Elsie reflected that there would probably be a fire in the
sitting-room, and in her own room it was cold, and she knew that the
bed was still unmade.

She followed Mrs. Williams into the sitting-room, where Mr. Williams
sat reading a Sunday illustrated paper.

“Horace, this poor child is quite upset. Give her a seat, dear.”

“It’s all right,” said Elsie, confused.

She had only seen Mr. Williams half a dozen times. He always
breakfasted and went out early, and Elsie, of late, had eaten her
supper in the kitchen. They had met at meal-times on Sundays, but she
had never spoken to him, and thought him elderly and uninteresting.

Mr. Williams was indeed forty-three years old, desiccated and inclined
to baldness, a small, rather paunchy man.

His little, hard grey eyes gleamed on Elsie now from behind his
pince-nez.

“No bad news, I hope?” His voice was dry, and rather formal, with great
precision of utterance.

His wife put her emaciated hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Two heads are
better than one, as they say. Horace and I would be glad to help you,
if we can.”

“It is silly to be upset, like,” said Elsie, sniffing. “Mother and I
had a few words, that’s all, and I’m to get hold of a job. I’m sure I
don’t know why I’m crying. I shall be glad enough to get out of this
place for a bit.”

“Hush, dear! That isn’t a nice way to speak of your home, now is it?
But about this job, now. Horace and I might be able to help you there.”

She hesitated and looked at her husband. “What about the Woolleys,
dear?”

“Yes--ye-es.”

“These are some new acquaintances of ours, and they’ve a lovely house
at Hampstead, but Mrs. Woolley isn’t any too strong, and I know she’s
looking out for someone to help her with the children and all. It
wouldn’t be going to service--nothing at all like that, of course; I
know you wouldn’t think of that, dear--but just be one of the family at
this lovely house of theirs.”

“It isn’t in the country, is it?” Elsie asked suspiciously.

“Oh no, dear, Hampstead I said. Only three-quarters of an hour by ’bus
from town. Don’t you like the country?”

“Too dead-alive.”

“Well, these people that I’m telling you about, this Doctor and Mrs.
Woolley, they’re youngish married people, and most pleasant. Aren’t
they, Horace? And they’ve two sweet kiddies--a boy and a girl. Don’t
you think you’d like me to speak to Mrs. Woolley, now, dear?”

Elsie was not sure. She felt that Mrs. Williams was going too fast. “I
don’t know,” she said ungraciously.

“She’s right,” said Mr. Williams. “We mustn’t be in too great a hurry.
Write to your friend Mrs. Woolley by all means, my dear, and let this
young lady think it over, and have a talk with her mother and sister.
She may not care to live away from home altogether.”

“Horace is always so business-like,” said Mrs. Williams admiringly. “I
expect he’s right, dear. But you’d like me to write, just to see if
there’s any chance, now wouldn’t you?”

“What should I have to do there?”

“Why, just help look after the kiddies. I’m sure you love children, now
don’t you?--and perhaps make a dainty cake or two for afternoon tea, if
Mrs. Woolley’s busy, or do a bit of sewing for her--and keep the doctor
amused in the evening if she has to go up early.”

It was the last item that decided Elsie. “I don’t mind,” she said in
her usual formula of acceptance.

Mrs. Williams was delighted. “I’m going to write off this very
evening,” she exclaimed enthusiastically. “Horace and I have to go out
now, but I shan’t forget. It’ll be a lovely chance for you, dear.”

Elsie rather enjoyed telling her mother and Geraldine that evening that
“Mrs. Williams was wild” to secure her services for a lady friend of
hers, who had a lovely house at Hampstead.

“This Mrs. Woolley is delicate, and she wants a young lady to help her.
Of course, there’s a servant for the work of the house.”

“If she’s counting on you to help her, the same as you’ve helped your
poor mother since you left school, she’s got a disappointment in
store,” said Mrs. Palmer grimly. “I don’t know that I’d let you go,
even if you get the chance.”

In the end, Geraldine, who wanted the top bedroom to herself, and
who thought that Elsie, and the problem of Elsie’s behaviour, were
occupying too much attention, persuaded Mrs. Palmer that it would never
do to offend the Williamses.

“Besides,” she argued, “it’ll be one less to feed here, and we can
easily move her bed into the second-floor back room and use it, if we
want to put up an extra gentleman any time.”

Mrs. Palmer gave in, contingent on a personal interview with Mrs.
Woolley.

This was arranged through Mrs. Williams. She one day ushered into the
dining-room of No. 15 a large, showily-dressed woman, who might have
been any age between thirty-eight and forty-five.

Her rings, and her light, smart dress impressed Elsie, and her
suggestion of paying twenty-five pounds a year for Elsie’s services
satisfied Mrs. Palmer.

“My hubby’s a frightfully busy man,” Mrs. Woolley remarked. “He isn’t
at home a great deal, but he likes me to do everything on the most
liberal scale--always has done--and he said to me, ‘Amy, you’re not
strong,’ he said, ‘even if you have a high colour’--so many people are
deceived by that, Mrs. Palmer--‘and you’ve got to have help. Someone
who can be a bit of a companion to you when I’m out on my rounds or
busy in the surgery, and who you can trust with Gladys and Sonnie.’”

“I’m sure Elsie would like to help you, Mrs. Woolley, and you’ll find
her to be trusted,” Mrs. Palmer replied firmly. “I’ve always brought up
my gurls to be useful, even if they _are_ ladies.”

“She looks young,” said Mrs. Woolley critically.

“She’ll put her hair up before she comes to you. It may be a mother’s
weakness, Mrs. Woolley, but I’m free to confess that Elsie’s my baby,
and I’ve let her keep her curls down perhaps longer than I should.”

Elsie remained demure beneath what she perfectly recognised as a form
of self-hypnotism, rather than conscious humbug, on the part of her
mother.

There was at least no sentimentality in her leave-taking a week later.

“Good-bye, Elsie, and mind and not be up to any of your tricks, now.
Mother’ll expect you on Sunday next.”

“Good-bye, Mother,” said Elsie indifferently.

She had that morning washed her hair, which made it very soft and
fluffy, and had pinned it up in half a dozen fat little sausages at
the back of her head. She was preoccupied with her own appearance, and
with the knowledge that the newly-revealed back of her neck was white
and pretty. She wore a blue serge coat and skirt, a low-cut blouse of
very pale pink figured voile, black shoes and stockings, and a dashing
little hat, round and brimless, with a big black bow that she had
herself added to it on the previous night.

In the Tube railway, a man in the seat opposite to her stared at her
very hard. Elsie looked away, but kept on turning her eyes furtively
towards him, without moving her head. Every time that she did this,
their eyes met.

The man was young, with bold eyes and a wide mouth. Presently he smiled
at her.

Elsie immediately looked down at the toes of her new black shoes,
moving them this way and that as though to catch the light reflected in
their polish.

At Belsize Park Station she got out, carrying her suitcase.

As she passed the youth in the corner, she glanced at him again, then
stepped out of the train and went up the platform without looking
behind her. Although there was a crowd on the platform and in the lift,
and although she never looked round, Elsie could tell that he was
following her.

The feeling that this gave her, half fearful and half delighted, was an
agreeable titilation to her vanity. She had experienced it before, just
as she had often been followed in the street before, but it never lost
its flavour. When she was in the street, she began to walk steadily
along, gazing straight in front of her.

She heard steps on the pavement just behind her, and then the young man
of the train accosted her, raising his hat as he spoke:

“Aren’t you going to give me the pleasure of your acquaintance?” he
suavely enquired.

His voice was very polite, and his eyes looked faintly amused.

“Oh!” Elsie cried in a startled tone. “I don’t think I know you, do I?”

“All the more reason to begin now. Mayn’t I carry that bag for you?”

He took it and they walked on together.

“Perhaps you can tell me where Mortimer Crescent is,” Elsie said primly.

“It will be my proudest privilege to escort you there,” he replied in
mock bombastic tones.

It was a form of persiflage well known to Elsie, and she laughed in
reply. “You _are_ silly, aren’t you?”

“Not at all. Now if you called me cheeky, perhaps....”

“I’ll call you cheeky fast enough. A regular Cheeky Charlie, by the
look of you!”

“I think I was born cheeky,” he agreed complacently. “D’you know what
first made me want to talk to you?”

“What?”

“That pink thing you’ve got on with all the ribbon showing through it.”

He put out his hand and, with a familiar gesture, touched the front of
her blouse just below her collar-bone.

“You mustn’t,” said Elsie, startled.

“Why not?”

“I don’t allow liberties.”

“We’ll have to settle what liberties are, miss. Come for a walk this
evening and we can talk about it.”

“Oh, I couldn’t! I’m just going into a new job.”

She purposely used the word “new,” because she wanted him to think her
experienced and grown-up.

“What can a kiddie like you do?”

“Why, I’m private secretary to a duke, didn’t you know that?”

“Lucky duke! Where does he live?”

“Oh, that’d be telling. This isn’t Mortimer Crescent?”

“It is, very much so indeed, begging your pardon for contradicting a
lady.”

“Well, don’t come any further,” begged Elsie. “Ta-ta, and thanks for
carrying the bag.”

“When do I see you again?”

“I dunno! Never, I should think.”

“Seven o’clock to-night?”

“No, I can’t, really.”

“To-morrow, then? I’ll be outside the Belsize Park station, and we’ll
go on the razzle-dazzle together. I’d like to show you a bit of life.
Seven o’clock, mind.”

“You and your seven o’clock! You’ll be somewhere with your young lady,
I know.”

“Haven’t got one.”

“Wouldn’t she have you?” scoffed Elsie. “No accounting for tastes, is
there?”

“I’ll make you pay for this to-morrow night, you little witch--see if I
don’t!”

Elsie had caught hold of her suitcase, and began to walk away from him.

“Which number are you going to?”

“Eight.”

“I’ll ring the bell for you.”

He did so, rather to her fright and vexation. She urged him in low
tones to go away, but he continued to stand beside her on the doorstep,
laughing at her annoyance, until a capped and aproned maid opened the
door.

Then he lifted his hat, said “Good-night” very politely, and went away.

She never saw him again.




IV


Elsie found the life at 8, Mortimer Crescent, a pleasant contrast to
that of her own home.

Mrs. Woolley herself never came downstairs before half-past nine or
ten o’clock, and then she was very often only partly dressed, wearing
a stained and rumpled silk kimono and a dirty lace-and-ribbon-trimmed
boudoir cap. Elsie’s only duty in the morning was to keep the two
children quiet while their mother slept. This she achieved by the
simple expedient of letting them go to bed so late at night that they
lay like little logs far on into the morning.

Elsie shared a bedroom with Gladys, and Sonnie’s cot was in a
dressing-room opening into theirs.

The children were rather pallid and unwholesome, never quite free from
colds or coughs, and seeming too spiritless even to be naughty. They
went to a kindergarten school from eleven to four o’clock every day,
and Elsie took them there and fetched them away again.

During the daytime she was supposed to dust the dining-room,
drawing-room, and Mrs. Woolley’s bedroom, but she soon found out that
no accumulation of dust, cigarette ends, or actual dirt would ever be
noticed by the mistress of the house.

There was a general servant, who was inclined to resent Elsie’s
presence in the house, and who left very soon after her arrival.
Another one came, and was sent away at the end of a week’s trial
because Mrs. Woolley said she was impertinent, and after an
uncomfortable interim, during which Elsie nominally “did” the cooking,
and they lived upon tinned goods and pressed beef, there came a
short-lived succession of maids who never stayed.

At first, Doctor Woolley was seldom seen by Elsie. He went out early,
and both he and his wife were out nearly every night.

Mrs. Woolley told Elsie that they adored the theatre. Elsie, who adored
it too, had on these occasions, after putting the two children to bed,
to remain sulkily behind while Dr. and Mrs. Woolley, after an early
meal, walked away together to the Underground station. Sometimes Dr.
Woolley was sent for, and could not go, and Mrs. Woolley rang up one
of her friends on the telephone--always another woman--and took her
instead. One evening after this had happened, the doctor returned
unexpectedly early, just as Elsie had finished putting Gladys and
Sonnie to bed.

She was coming downstairs, some needlework in her hands, as the doctor
slammed the hall door behind him. Instantly the prospect of a dreary
evening, probably to be spent in sucking sweets and surreptitiously
looking over everything on Mrs. Woolley’s untidy writing-table,
disappeared.

“Hallo! And how was you to-morrow, Miss Elsie?” cried the doctor
genially.

He was a stout, middle-aged man, jocose and very often foul-mouthed,
with nicotine stains on his fingers and grease spots on his waistcoat.

He affected a manner of speech that Elsie found intensely amusing.

“You and I all on our ownie own, eh? Where’s the missus?--and the kids?”

“The children are in bed, and Mrs. Woolley’s gone to the play with Miss
Smith, Doctor.”

“And haven’t you got a drink of cocoa and a bit of bread for a poor
man, kind lady?”

Elsie burst out laughing. “You’re so silly, I can’t help laughing!”

“‘Silly,’ says she, quite the lady. ‘How’s that?’ says I; to which she
says, ‘Not at all,’ says she, and the same to you and many of them,”
was the doctor’s reply.

Elsie giggled wildly.

“Come along now, tell that slut in the kitchen to stir her stumps and
bring some food to the dining-room. Have you had your supper yet?”

“No, Doctor.”

“Then you and I will make a party-carry, otherwise a _tête-à-tête_,
otherwise a night of it. Run along and I’ll get out something that will
make your hair curl.”

Elsie had heard this formula before, and understood that the doctor
would unlock the door of the tiny wine-cellar and bring out a bottle.

She told the maid to bring supper for Doctor Woolley to the
dining-room, but she herself carried in her own plate and cup and
saucer, knowing that Florrie was quite aware she had already eaten her
evening meal with Mrs. Woolley.

The doctor was drawing the cork out of a bottle as she came into the
room. The electric light was turned on, and the small dining-room, with
drawn red curtains, and the gas-fire burning, was bright and hot.

The doctor ate heavily of cold meat and pickles, prodding with a fork
amongst the mixed contents of the glass jar until he had annexed all
the pickled onions that it contained.

He made Elsie sit down and eat too, but he made no demur to her
assurance that she wasn’t hungry and only wanted some cake and a cup of
cocoa.

At first the doctor gave all his attention to the food and warmth of
which he stood in need, and Elsie felt self-conscious, and as though
she were out of place.

She ceased to answer his occasional facetious interjections, and threw
herself back in her chair, gazing down at her own clasped hands.

Gradually the atmosphere of the room altered, and Elsie’s instinct told
her that the current of magnetism that had never failed her yet was
awakening its inevitable response in the man opposite.

At once she felt confident again, and at her ease.

“I say, why didn’t the missus take you to the theatre when she found I
was busy?” he queried suddenly.

“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose she never thought of such a thing.”

“Wanted someone nearer her own age, eh? You won’t find the ladies
running after someone younger and prettier than themselves, you know.
Too much of a contrast.”

Elsie laughed self-consciously.

“All the better for me, eh? I’m not often allowed to get you all to
myself like this, eh? Ah, when I was a gay young bacheldore things was
different, they was.”

Elsie laughed again, this time in spontaneous tribute to the humour of
wilful mis-pronunciation.

“Now, what about this bottle that you made me get out, eh? Where are
the glasses?”

He found two in the cupboard of the carved walnut sideboard, and poured
a liberal allowance of port from the bottle into each.

“Oh, I couldn’t, Doctor! You must excuse me, really you must. I simply
couldn’t.”

“Oh, couldn’t you, really, awfully, truly couldn’t?” he mimicked in
exaggerated falsetto. “Well, you’ve got to--so that’s _that_!”

“Who says so?”

“I say so. I. _Moi._ ‘_Je_,’ replies I, knowing the language. Come
along now, be a good girl.”

He laid his big coarse hand on hers, and at the contact the familiar
thrill of sensuous excitement and pleasure ran through her.

“Are you going to drink it?” he said masterfully.

“Oh, I suppose I must try it. I’ve never tasted wine before,” Elsie
added truthfully.

“High time you began, then.”

He went back to his place, and drank in long gulps, first saying:

  “Our hands have met--our lips not yet--
  Here’s hoping!”

Elsie sipped at her glass, choked, and put it down again. “How
beastly!” she said, shuddering.

“You’ll get used to it.”

“No, I shan’t, because I’m not going to touch the horrid stuff again.”

“We’ll see about that.”

He came round beside her again, and held her with one arm while he
tried to force the glass to her lips.

Elsie turned her head aside, struggling and laughing.

“You young monkey!” said the doctor, and forced her face upwards with
his free hand.

His breath was in her face, and his inflamed eyes gazing into hers.
Instinctively Elsie ceased to struggle and closed her eyes.

He kissed her mouth violently. “God! You haven’t got much to learn.
Who’s been teaching you?” he asked her roughly.

“Oh, you oughtn’t to have done that,” said Elsie feebly.

“Rubbish! You know I’ve been thinking of nothing else since you’ve been
here.”

He sat down and pulled her on to his knee. “Now tell me all about it,”
he commanded. His manner was no longer facetious, and he had dropped
his jocosities of speech.

“Let me go,” said Elsie.

“Sit still.”

“Suppose someone were to come in?”

“No one will.”

She wriggled a little, half-heartedly, and he gripped her more firmly
round the waist. The scene degenerated into a sort of scrambling orgy
of animalism.

Elsie, although she was frightened, was also exhilarated at the
evidence that she possessed power over a man--and a married man--so
much older than herself.

She knew that if at any moment he became unmanageable, she had only
to threaten to call the servant, and she fully intended to do so as
a last resort. But in the meanwhile there was an odd and breathless
fascination in feeling that she stood so close to a peril in which lay
all the lurking excitement of the unknown.

A sudden wail from the room overhead startled them both.

“That’s Sonnie!” gasped Elsie.

“Oh, blast the kid!”

But he let her go and she flew upstairs, glad, and yet disappointed, at
her release.

She dismissed Sonnie’s nightmare with sharp injunctions not to be
silly, tucked him up and decided to go to her own room and not to
return downstairs.

“That’ll show him,” she murmured, simulating to herself a conventional
indignation.

In reality, she was intensely excited, and she had been tossing about
her bed restlessly for nearly an hour before reaction overtook her, and
she became prey to a strange, baffled feeling of having been cheated of
the climax due to so emotional an episode.

When at last Elsie slept, it was after she had heard Mrs. Woolley come
in and the doctor bolt the hall door and both of them go upstairs to
their bedroom, on the other side of the landing.

Every day now held the potentialities of amorous adventure.

Sometimes Elsie did not see the doctor all day long, sometimes they met
in the evenings, with Mrs. Woolley present, and he talked in the old
facetious style, watching Elsie furtively as she giggled in response.

He very often made excuses for passing things to her at meals, so that
their hands touched, and he pressed her foot under the table with his
big one, or rubbed it up and down her ankle.

There were moments, however, when they were alone together, and then he
pulled her to him and kissed her roughly all over her face and neck,
pushing her abruptly away at the first possibility of interruption.
Once or twice, at the imminent risk of being discovered, he had
snatched hasty and provocative kisses from her lips in a chance
encounter on the stairs, or even behind the shelter of an open door.

The perpetual fear of detection, no less than the tantalising
incompleteness of their relations, was a strain upon Elsie’s nerves,
and she was keyed up to a pitch of unusual sensitiveness when the
inevitable crisis came.

Mrs. Woolley, in a new blue dress that looked too tight under the arms,
had taken the children to a party.

The maid Florrie was out for the afternoon. Elsie, restless and on
edge, terribly wanted an excuse to go down to the surgery. At last she
found one, and after listening at the door to make certain that no
belated patient was with the doctor, she knocked.

“Come in!”

He was sitting at the writing-table, rapidly turning over the leaves of
a big book.

“Elsie!”

“Oh, if you please, Doctor,” she minced, “they’ve all gone out, and
Mrs. Woolley left a message to say if you _could_ go and fetch her and
the children from 85, Lower Park Avenue, about seven o’clock----”

“Stow it, Elsie! D’you mean to say you and I are the only people left
in the place? Where’s that damned slut in the kitchen, eh?”

“It’s Florrie’s afternoon out, Doctor, but----”

“Florrie be damned! Look here, Elsie, this sort of thing can’t go on.”

She backed until she stood against the wall, feeling the warm blood
surge into her face and looking at him through half-closed eyelids.

“What sort of thing?”

“You know very well what I mean. Look at me. D’you think I’m a man?”

He thrust out his chest and doubled up his arms, standing with his
legs wide apart. In spite of his grossness and unwholesome fat, Elsie
thrilled to the suggestion of his masculine strength.

“Yes,” she murmured.

“Well, I tell you no man’s going to stand what you’re making me stand.
Elsie, you little devil! Don’t you know you’re driving me mad? God, if
I could tell you the sort of dreams I get at night, now!”

“About me?” she asked curiously.

“Shut up!” His voice was savage, and she suddenly saw sweat glistening
on his upper lip and round his nose.

Elsie decided to begin to cry. “It frightens me when you shout at me
like that. Perhaps I’d better go,” she said sobbingly.

“No, no, no! I say, what a brute I am! Come here and be comforted,
little girl.”

He sat down heavily in the revolving chair before the writing-table and
held out his hand.

Elsie advanced slowly, without looking at him, until she came within
reach of his arm. Then he caught hold of her and drew her on to his
knee, gripping her tightly until her weight sank against his shoulder.

“Let me kiss all the tears away. What a hound I am to make you cry!
Was’ums very mis’mis?”

He petted and soothed her, kissing the back of her neck and her
dust-coloured curls, murmuring absurd, infantile phrases.

Presently he whispered: “D’you love me?”

Elsie laughed and would not answer, and he struggled with her
playfully, pulling her about, and grasping at her with his big hands.

After the horse-play, she put both arms round his neck and lay still.

“I want to know something,” said Doctor Woolley slowly.

“What’s that?”

“Don’t you know more than a good little girl ought to know?”

“What about?”

“About--life. About being kissed, for instance. I’m not the first, my
girl, not by a long, long way. You’re the sort that begins early, _I_
know.”

“You’ve a nerve!” Elsie ejaculated, not knowing what to say.

“Well, it’s true what I’m saying, isn’t it? I mean, you’ve let fellows
kiss you?”

“Just boys, perhaps.”

“Hasn’t anyone taught you anything besides kissing, eh?”

“Of course not! What do you take me for, I’d like to know? Mother
brought up me and my sister like ladies, let me tell you. Besides, I
don’t know what you’re driving at, I’m sure.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then I’ll show you.”

“No!” screamed Elsie in a sudden, only half-assumed, panic.

She sprang up, but he pulled her back again.

“You silly little fool! You don’t suppose I’d really say or do
anything to frighten you, do you? Why, you’re much too precious.”

He kissed her again and again.

“Tell me one thing, though. You did know what I meant, didn’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

“Of course you did! A girl like you couldn’t help knowing. My God, I
wish I’d known you ten years ago. I wasn’t married then.”

“You oughtn’t to talk like that.”

“Why not? It’s true. Amy’s as cold as ice--not a real woman at all. And
she’s as jealous as the devil. I’ve always wondered why she let anyone
like you come into the house at all. It’s a miracle she hasn’t spotted
us yet.”

“It’d be all up with me being here if she did,” said Elsie shrewdly.

“If you go, I swear I’ll go with you,” said Doctor Woolley, but he said
it without conviction, and Elsie knew it. “Can’t do without you, little
one, at any price, now. But you’ve got to be even sweeter than you’ve
been to me yet.”

Elsie shivered a little, excited and disturbed, and in part genuinely
shocked.

“When will you, Elsie?”

His breath on her neck was hot and hurried.

She jumped off his knee. “Oh, look, it’s getting on for half-past six!
You’ll have to be off.”

“Come back! You haven’t told me what I want to know yet.” He grabbed at
her dress.

“Listen!” cried Elsie.

In the second during which he turned, arrested, she slipped out of the
room.

Her heart was beating very fast, and her face burning.

She half expected him to follow her, but he did not do so; and she was
partly relieved and partly disappointed.

She saw him again at supper, which the Woolleys always called dinner,
and the consciousness between them caused a singular constraint to
pervade the atmosphere. Mrs. Woolley, for the first time, seemed to be
aware of it, and every now and then turned sharp, bulging brown eyes
from her husband to Elsie, compressing her thin lips until they formed
a mere hard line in her red face.

When the meal was finished, she told Elsie to go upstairs and fetch one
of her evening dresses. “I want to see if I can’t smarten it up a bit,”
she explained. “I’m in rags, not fit to be seen.”

“I’ll stand you a new frock, Amy,” said the doctor suddenly. “How much
d’you want, eh?”

“Oh! Why, whatever’s up, Herbert? I’m sure it’s ages since I’ve had a
thing, and I’d be only too delighted----”

She broke off.

“Run up, Elsie, will you? The primrose dress, with the black lace, in
the left-hand corner of my wardrobe....”

Elsie went, envious of the new dress, and at the same time thinking
mockingly of Mrs. Woolley’s mottled skin and the lines that ran from
her heavy nostrils to her sagging chin. Dresses and jewellery ought to
be for girls who were young and pretty, not married women, plain and
stout, like Mrs. Woolley. When Elsie came down again the doctor had
gone, and Mrs. Woolley was in high good humour.

“I’ll get some tulle to-morrow, Elsie, and we can freshen it up round
the neck and sleeves. You’d better rip off all this old stuff. And look
here--you’re handy with your fingers--you can take the lace off and put
it on that old navy blouse of mine, that’s got no collar. You know the
one I mean ... you can drape it a bit....”

Elsie assented rather sulkily.

“Doctor Woolley’s so generous,” said Mrs. Woolley complacently. “He’s
for ever giving me things, me and the children. If you knew more of
the world, Elsie, you’d realise how lucky a woman is when she gets a
hubby like mine who’s never so much as looked at another woman since
he married. Some men aren’t like that, I can tell you. The tales I
could let out, if I cared to, that I’ve heard from some! But if Doctor
Woolley’s manner sometimes puts ideas into people’s heads, why, they’ve
only themselves to blame is what I always say. He wouldn’t give a
thought to anyone but me, not really.”

She looked full at Elsie as she spoke, and Elsie stared back at her.

The girl was puzzled and angry, not feeling certain that she knew
whether Mrs. Woolley really believed her own words, or was using them
to convey an oblique warning.

“If she really imagines that, she must be a fool,” thought Elsie
contemptuously, only to veer round uneasily a moment later to the
conviction that Mrs. Woolley had been talking _at_ her.

It was the latter unpleasant belief that prevailed, without possibility
of mistake, in the course of the next few days. Whenever the doctor was
in the house, Mrs. Woolley made a point of remaining at his side, and
during the hours when he was in the surgery she kept Elsie employed
with the children, every now and then coming to look in on her with
excuses that were always transparently flimsy.

The tension in the atmosphere pervaded the whole house.

At last one afternoon, when Gladys and Sonnie were at school, and Mrs.
Woolley in the drawing-room with an unexpected caller, Elsie and the
doctor met upon the stairs.

She knew that she was looking her worst, strained and overwrought, and
with the odd Japanese aspect of her eyes and cheek-bones intensified.
Even her hair felt limp and unresilient.

She looked at the doctor rather piteously, envisaging to herself her
own unprepossessing appearance, and wishing that she had at least
powdered her face recently.

“Where’s Amy?”

“In the drawing-room, with a lady visitor.”

“Thank God! I’ve been hag-ridden for the last week. What the devil’s
up, Elsie?”

“I don’t know,” she murmured. “At least, I know Mrs. Woolley’s been
horrid to me lately, that’s all.”

“She has, has she?” he muttered furiously. “Here--come in here.”

He drew her into the shelter of the nearest doorway.

“Elsie, I’m mad about you. This sort of thing can’t go on--it’s simply
hell.”

“Oh, hush, someone’ll hear....”

“I don’t care who hears!” But he lowered his voice. “I haven’t had a
kiss from you for days--quick_!_”

Their lips met.

“You dear little girl! Is she being a beast to you?”

Elsie, in his embrace, started violently. “_Someone coming upstairs!_”
she hissed.

He stood motionless to listen, waited a second too long, and then
sharply shut the door.

“Florrie!” Elsie whispered in a frightened voice. “Did she see us?”

“No, no--not a chance. Or, if she did, she only saw me. She won’t think
anything of that.”

“She’s gone upstairs--I must go.”

“No, don’t. I tell you it’s all right. Hang it, Elsie, when am I going
to get a word with you again?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think I shall go home again.” She was half crying.

“Elsie, d’you know Amy’s going out to-morrow night? She’s going to see
her friend, that Williams woman, who’s ill.”

“What, the one that was at mother’s place?”

“Yes--yes--but they’re in their own house now. It’ll take her all the
evening to get there and back, pretty nearly.”

“She won’t go.”

“Yes, she will. I shall tell her I’m going off to a case at Roehampton
or somewhere, and that I shan’t be back till late.”

“Oh, don’t. It simply isn’t safe.”

“It’s quite safe, you little fool. You and me have got to come to an
understanding, I can’t stand this life another minute. Look here, we’ll
go out somewhere together.”

“No, no! That’d be much worse. Sonnie always wakes up, and he’ll scream
himself into a fit if I’m not there, and then Florrie would know----”

“I forgot the kids. Elsie--Gladys sleeps in your room doesn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Elsie, suddenly flushing scarlet.

He laughed abruptly, scanning her face with hungry eyes. “I’ll have a
fire in the surgery. We’ll go down there. Florrie knows better than to
put her foot inside it,” said Doctor Woolley significantly.




V


It was two days later.

Florrie and Mrs. Woolley were talking in the kitchen. Elsie hung about
in the diminutive passage, trying desperately to hear what they were
saying. An awful intuition gripped her that they were talking of her.

Florrie’s voice was indistinct, almost inaudible, but snatched phrases
rose occasionally from the angry monotone that was Mrs. Woolley’s.

“... My innocent children ... turn my back ... the gutter ... don’t you
talk to me ... the gutter ... out of the gutter....”

Elsie tried wildly to persuade herself that Mrs. Woolley was abusing
Florrie. Sometimes she lost her temper with her servants, and shouted
at them.

On the evening that Mrs. Woolley had gone to see her friend Mrs.
Williams, who was reported very ill, Elsie, in her best frock, had
boldly gone into the surgery, where a fire blazed, and there was a
sofa newly piled with cushions. On the table had been placed a bottle
and glasses and a dish of biscuits. Doctor Woolley had locked the door
behind her, in spite of Elsie’s half-meant protests, but at first he
had been entirely jovial, using catch-phrases that had made her laugh,
and drinking heartily.

She herself had begun to feel rather affronted and puzzled at his
aloofness, before it suddenly came to an end.

The remembrance of her own surrender rather bewildered Elsie. She
had never consciously made up her mind to it, but the doctor’s
urgency, her own physical susceptibility, and an underlying, violent
curiosity had proved far too strong for her feeble defences, based
on timidity and on the recollection of certain unexplained, and
less-than-half-understood, arbitrary axioms laid down during her
childhood by her mother.

She supposed that that one half-hour in the surgery had made “a bad
girl” of her, but the aspect of the case that really preoccupied her
was her terror that Mrs. Woolley should have found it out.

She felt sick with fright as the kitchen door opened, and, turning
round, pretended to be looking for something in the housemaid’s closet
under the stairs.

She heard Mrs. Woolley brush past her and go into the drawing-room,
slamming the door violently behind her.

Elsie, her knees shaking, went upstairs to fetch Gladys and Sonnie and
take them to their kindergarten.

She dawdled on the way back, being unwilling to go into the house
again, and alternately hoping and dreading that the doctor would be at
home for the midday meal.

At one o’clock, however, Mrs. Woolley and Elsie sat down without him.

Mrs. Woolley did not speak to Elsie. She kept on looking at her,
and then looking away again. Her hard face was inscrutable, but
Elsie noticed that her hands, manipulating her knife and fork, shook
slightly. The doctor came in before the meal was over, jaunty and
talkative.

“Hallo! Is this Wednesday, or Piccadilly, or what? Which I mean to say
is, has the cold meat stage been passed and the rice pudding come on,
or contrarywise?”

Elsie burst into nervous laughter, the strident sound of which caused
the doctor to glance at her sharply, and Mrs. Woolley said:

“Nonsense, Herbert! The way you talk, sometimes! The girl has got your
meat and vegetables keeping hot in the oven, and I’m sure you haven’t
seen rice pudding at the table for a fortnight. There’s a nice piece of
cheese on the side, too.”

The doctor ate in silence, voraciously, as he always did, and his wife
presently said in a thin, vicious voice:

“Of course, you’ve nothing to say to your wife, Herbert. It’s easy
enough to talk and be amusing with strangers, isn’t it?--but I suppose
it isn’t worth while in your own home.”

“What’s up, Amy?” he growled. He did not look at Elsie, who found
herself fixing apprehensive eyes on him, although she knew it was a
betrayal.

“Why should anything be up, as you call it? But as it isn’t very
amusing for me to sit here all day while you eat, and as I happen to be
rather busy, strange though it may seem, I think I’ll ask you to excuse
me.”

She turned her head towards Elsie, but spoke without looking at her.
“I’ll thank you to come and find that paper pattern for Gladys’s smock.
The child isn’t fit to be seen.”

Mrs. Woolley pushed Elsie out of the room in front of her, making it
obvious that she meant her to have no opportunity of exchanging a look
with the doctor.

Throughout the afternoon she never let the girl out of her sight until
Elsie had actually left the house to go and fetch the two children from
school.

It was abundantly evident that a crisis impended. The atmospheric
tension affected everyone in the house, and Elsie, her nerves on edge,
became frantic.

She said, immediately after supper, that she was tired, and should go
to bed, and Mrs. Woolley laughed, shortly and sarcastically.

Elsie went up to her room and cried hysterically on her bed until
Gladys woke and began to whine enquiries.

It seemed impossible, to Elsie’s inexperience, that the horrors of that
day should repeat themselves, but the next one was Sunday, and brought
its own miseries.

The doctor, who did not go to church as a rule, announced his intention
of accompanying his family, and they set out, a constrained procession:
Gladys, in tight black boots and with fair hair crimped round her
shoulders, holding her father’s hand, Mrs. Woolley, walking just a
little faster than was comfortable for Sonnie’s short legs, clutching
the boy’s hand, and Elsie slouching a pace or two behind, cold and
wretched.

At the bottom of the Crescent they met an elderly couple who often
came to see them, and whom Elsie knew well by name as Mr. and Mrs.
Loman.

The encounter broke up the procession, and caused a readjustment of
places. Mrs. Woolley was at once claimed by the sallow, spectacled Mrs.
Loman, and the children, with shrill acclamations, ran to her husband,
Sonnie’s godfather and the purveyor of many small treats and presents.

The doctor, after a loud and boisterous greeting, boldly joined Elsie,
and both of them dropped behind the others.

“Oh, I’ve wanted so to speak to you!” gasped Elsie.

“Shut up--don’t make a fuss now, there’s a good girl. Keep a cheery
face on you, for God’s sake, or we shall give the show away worse than
we’ve done already.”

Mrs. Woolley turned round. “Herbert, Mrs. Loman is just saying that she
hasn’t set eyes on you for ages. Come and give an account of yourself.”

She spoke in a thin, artificial voice, but her eyes blazed a command at
him.

The doctor stared back at her, insolent security in his manner.
“Thankee, Amy, but I wouldn’t interrupt a ladies’ confab. for the
world. Go on about your sky-blue-purple Sunday-go-to-meeting costumes,
and I’ll keep Elsie company.”

Mrs. Loman laughed and the doctor grinned back at her.

White patches had appeared on the mottled surface of Mrs. Woolley’s
face, but she made no rejoinder.

Doctor Woolley turned to Elsie again, the merriment dropping from his
manner. “That’ll shut her up for a bit,” he said between his teeth.
“Has she been giving you gyp, Elsie?”

“Oh, it’s been awful. I’m certain she’s found out.”

“How?”

“That Florrie, I suppose.”

“Damn Florrie and her mischief-making! Well, kiddie, the fat’s in the
fire. I’m afraid there’s only one thing for it.”

“What?”

“Why--why, my dear child, don’t you see for yourself--you’ll have to
clear out of here. No use waiting for Amy to make a bloody row, now is
there? If you simply say you’re going home again, she won’t have a leg
to stand on. And if it wasn’t for--for the kids, I’d go with you.”

“You wouldn’t,” said Elsie bitterly. “I may be a bit green, but I’m not
green enough to swallow that.”

“Don’t talk like that,” said Doctor Woolley. He slipped his hand under
her arm, and at the contact, jaded and miserable as she was, her pulses
leapt. His fingers squeezed her arm.

“We’ve had some happy times together, little girl, eh?” he murmured in
a sentimental voice. “And don’t you see that when you’re on your own
again we can meet ever so much more freely. I want--you know what I
want, don’t you, Elsie?”

She did not respond. “What _I_ want, is to know what’ll happen to me if
I go back to mother and say I’ve left Mrs. Woolley. You don’t suppose
she, and my sister and my aunts, aren’t going to ask what’s happened,
do you?”

“Well, you can tell them something,” said the doctor impatiently.
“A clever girl like you, Elsie, surely you can think of something.
Besides, everybody knows that a pretty girl doesn’t always hit it off
with a woman older than herself. There’s nothing wonderful in that.
Damnation, they’re stopping!”

“Here we are,” said Elsie.

He withdrew his arm hastily from hers after a final pressure.

Mrs. Woolley and her friend were already standing at the church steps,
and both of them fixed their eyes on Elsie and the doctor as they came
up. Elsie saw Mrs. Woolley touch the other woman’s elbow, and guessed
at, rather than heard, the words coming from between her teeth:

“Look at that, now--_look at that_.”

On Mrs. Loman’s face was an expression of mingled eagerness, curiosity,
and disgust. It was evident that Mrs. Woolley had spoken freely of her
wrongs.

Elsie spent her time in church in wondering whether it would yet be
possible to blunt Mrs. Woolley’s suspicions, or whether she dared face
her mother with a made-up story to account for her return.

She was still young enough to have a furtive dread that her mother must
be omniscient in her regard, and she was afraid that Mrs. Palmer would
somehow guess at her lapse and tax her with it.

Elsie had very often lied to her mother before, but not with any
conspicuous success, and she felt just now strangely shaken and
unnerved, physically and morally.

When they came out of church, the Lomans hospitably pressed their
friends to return with them, share the hot Sunday dinner, and spend
the afternoon. The children were specifically included, but Mrs. Loman
glanced in Elsie’s direction, and then looked back at Mrs. Woolley,
raising her eyebrows.

“You’d better go and see your mother this afternoon,” said Mrs. Woolley
coldly. “Go home first and tell Florrie we shall be out, and she can
lock up the house and go out for a bit herself. Tell her she must be
back by five.”

“All right,” said Elsie lifelessly.

She turned on her heel, when a sudden shout stopped her.

“Post those letters of mine, will you?” said Doctor Woolley very
loudly. “You’ll find them in”--he came nearer to her--“_wait in till
I come_,” he muttered almost inaudibly, and rejoined his wife before
Elsie had taken in the meaning of his words. It came to her afterwards,
and the renewed sense of intrigue very slightly relieved the dull
misery pervading her.

At No. 8, Mortimer Crescent, the hot joint was taken out of the oven
and left to grow cold, but Florrie had made a Yorkshire pudding, and
she and Elsie ate it for their dinner, and added pickles and bread and
cheese and cake to the meal. Very soon afterwards, Florrie announced
that she was going off at once.

“So am I,” said Elsie. “I told _her_ I’d lock up the house. Mind you’re
in by five.”

“That’s as it may be,” haughtily said Florrie, with a venomous glance.
Elsie felt far too tired to quarrel with the maid, as she had often
done before, and when Florrie was actually gone she went upstairs and
lay down on her bed. It was nearly three o’clock before a cautious
sound from below betrayed the return of the doctor.

Elsie rose and automatically glanced at herself in the looking-glass.
One side of her face was flushed, her eyes looked small and
swollen-lidded, and her hair was disordered. She dabbed powder on her
face and pulled her wave of hair further down over her forehead before
going downstairs.

The doctor was hanging up his hat on the crowded hooks that lined one
side of the wall in the tiny entrance lobby.

“Coast clear?”

Elsie nodded.

“Sure?”

“Absolutely.” She held out the key of the house door. “I’ve locked up
at the back.”

“Then I’ll lock up at the front,” said Doctor Woolley, and did so.

“My God, we’re in a bloody mess,” he began, turning round and facing
Elsie.

Desperate, she ran forward and threw herself into his arms,
instinctively seeking the only reassurance she knew, that of physical
contact.

The doctor suddenly buried his face in her hair, then forced her face
upwards and kissed her passionately.

They clung to one another.

At last he released his clasp, only keeping one arm round her waist.

“Where can we go? We’ll have to settle something, and Lord knows when I
shall get another chance of speaking to you, with that hell-cat on the
warpath. I’ve had the deuce and all of a time getting here now, and we
must both clear out of the place before she and the kids get back. Put
on your hat and coat, old girl, and come along.”

“Where to?”

“Where I take you,” said the doctor brusquely.

When she came down again, he hurried her out of the house, locking the
door again behind them, and putting the key under the scraper, where it
was always looked for on Sunday.

“Taxi!”

The doctor hailed a passing taxi and made Elsie get into it.

He gave the address of a hotel in a street of which she had never heard.

“Where are we going to?”

“Somewhere where I can talk to you.”

He passed his arm round her again, and she made no pretence of
resistance, but lay against him, letting him play with her hand and
occasionally bend his head down to kiss her lips.

Elsie had slept very little for the past three nights; she had shed
tears, and she had been subject to a continual nervous strain. By
the time that the taxi stopped she was almost dozing, and it was in
a half-dazed state that she followed Dr. Woolley into the dingy hall
of a high building and, after a very short parley with a stout man in
evening dress, to an upstairs sitting-room.

She asked nothing better than to sink on to the narrow couch in a
corner of the room and let herself be petted and caressed, but after a
time her wearied senses awoke, and told her that the man beside her was
becoming restive and excited.

“Look here, Elsie,” he said finally, “you’re a beguiling little witch,
you are--but we’ve got to come down to hard facts. I’m going to order
you a pick-me-up, and have one myself, and then we can talk about
what’s to be done next. I’ve got to be home again, worse luck, by seven
o’clock. I’m supposed to have had an urgent call to Amy’s friend, Mrs.
Williams. She’s ill enough, poor soul, in all conscience, and I’ll have
to go there before I go home. Now then, what’ll you have?”

“Tea,” said Elsie.

He laughed. “Women are all alike! You can have your tea--poisonous
stuff, tincture of tannin--and I’ll order what I think’s good for you
to go with it. Wait here till I come back.”

He went out, and Elsie, already revived and stimulated, flew to the
spotted and discoloured looking-glass, and took out her pocket-comb to
rearrange her curls.

She actually enjoyed the hot, strong tea when it came, and her spirits
suddenly rose to a boisterous pitch.

They both laughed loudly at the faces that Elsie made over the bottle
that the doctor had obtained, and from which he repeatedly helped
himself and her, and although they kept on telling one another that
they must talk seriously, their hilarity kept on increasing. At last he
began to make violent love to her, and Elsie responded coquettishly,
luring him on by glance and gesture, while her tongue uttered glib
and meaningless protests. Very soon, her flimsy defences gave way
altogether, and she had ceded to him everything that he asked.

Then the inevitable reaction overtook her, and she cried, and called
herself a wicked girl, and finally sank limply into a corner of the
taxi that Dr. Woolley had summoned to the door of the hotel.

He got in beside her. “Buck up, little girl!” he cried urgently.
“You’ll be at No. 8 in no time, and we don’t want Amy asking awkward
questions. Look here, I’ll put you down at the corner of the Crescent,
and you can walk to the house. The air’ll do you good, and besides, we
can’t be seen together. I’m off to that wretched Williams woman, and
I’m not going to be in till late.”

Elsie continued to sob.

“Come, come, come--pull yourself to pieces,” Doctor Woolley tried to
make her laugh. “We’ve not settled anything, but we’ve had our time
together. Ah, a little love is a great thing in a world like this one,
Elsie. Thank you for being so sweet to me, little girl.”

He kissed her hastily, with a perfunctoriness of which she was aware.

When the taxi stopped in the main thoroughfare, a little way before the
turning into Mortimer Crescent, he almost shoved her on to the pavement.

“Don’t forget--you’ve been out ever since dinner-time, and you imagine
me to have been in the buzzim of my family enjoying back chat with the
old Lomans. Don’t say anything about that, though, unless you’re asked.
Tell the man to drive like blazes now, will you?”

Elsie mechanically obeyed.

Then she dragged herself to No. 8. Her ring was answered by Florrie.

The little servant girl was grinning maliciously. “She’s in the d--’s
own temper and all, and you’re going to catch it hot and strong for
leaving her to put the children to bed.”

“Mind your own business, Florrie,” said Elsie, pushing past her.

She affected not to hear the single word that the servant flung at her
back, but it made her wince.

In the bedroom she found Gladys already in bed, wide awake.

“Mother put us to bed. She was awfully cross, and she slapped Sonnie
twice and me once.”

“What for?”

“Oh, because I whined, she said. And she slapped Sonnie when he told
her about Dadda being so funny with you. You didn’t know we _saw_ one
day,” giggled Gladys.

“Saw what?”

“One day when Dadda kissed you and Sonnie and I saw, over the
banisters, and we laughed, but you didn’t hear us.”

“You little viper!” muttered Elsie between her teeth. “I’d like to kill
you, I would.”

Gladys alternately giggled and whined, and Elsie was quite unable to
distinguish whether the child was really malicious or simply amused by
something to which she attached no meaning.

“Anyway, if she’s told her mother, it’s all up,” thought Elsie.

She saw that there was nothing for it but to leave Mortimer Crescent,
and spent a miserable night wondering what to say to her mother and
sister.

At midnight she heard the sound of the doctor’s key in the front door
and his heavy foot on the stairs. He paused outside her door for some
seconds, then she heard him go into his wife’s room.

Elsie tossed about in her narrow bed. Her present dilemma frightened
her, and she had a vague, irrational idea that some awful and horrible
penalty always descended sooner or later upon girls who had done as
she had done. These fears, and her lack of any vivid imagination, had
dulled her emotional susceptibilities, and she scarcely felt regret at
the thought of no longer seeing the doctor. He now stood to her for the
symbol of an assuaged desire, the fulfilment of which had brought about
her present miseries. Nevertheless, at the back of her consciousness
was latent the conviction that never again would she be satisfied with
the clumsy demonstrations and meaningless contacts of her intercourse
with the boys and youths whom she had known at home.

It seemed to her next morning that she was wholly ugly. Her complexion
looked sodden and her eyes were nearly invisible. Her mouth, in some
odd way, seemed to have swollen. No one could have called her pretty,
and to anyone who had seen her in good looks she would have been almost
unrecognisable. Mrs. Woolley, coming downstairs at ten o’clock, eyed
her with a malignant satisfaction.

“Perhaps,” she said, “you won’t be altogether surprised to hear that
I’m going to make some changes. You’d better pack your box, and go home
to your mother, I think.”

“I was going to tell you that I couldn’t stay on here any longer,” said
Elsie swiftly. “The ways of the house aren’t what I’ve been used to,
Mrs. Woolley.”

In a flash, Mrs. Woolley had turned nasty, and Elsie had seen her own
unwisdom.

“Oh, aren’t they indeed? Perhaps you’d be so kind as to tell me what
you are used to--or shall _I_ tell _you_?”

Then she suddenly raised her voice almost to a scream and poured out a
torrent of abuse and invective, and the two children crept in from the
hall and began to cry, and to make faces at Elsie, and demonstrations
of hitting her with their little hands, and the servant Florrie held
the door half open, so that she might see and hear it all.

Elsie screamed back again at Mrs. Woolley, but she had neither the
fluency nor the determination of the older woman, and she was unable to
prevent herself from bursting into tears and sobs.

Finally Mrs. Woolley drove her out of the room, standing at the foot
of the stairs while Elsie ran up to pull on her best hat and coat, and
forbidding the children to follow her.

“Don’t go near her, my pets--she’s a wicked girl, that’s what she
is--not fit to be in the same house as innocent little children. Now
then, out you go, miss, before I send for the police.”

“I’ll go,” said Elsie, shaking from head to foot, “and I’ll never set
foot in your filthy house again. And I’ll send for my trunk and for
every penny you owe me, and I’ll have the law on you for insinuations
on my character.”

Then she dashed out of the house and into the street.


VI

Elsie’s return home caused far less sensation than she had feared. Mrs.
Palmer, indeed, was very angry, but principally at Elsie’s folly in
having come away without her trunk or the money due to her.

When a week had elapsed, and nothing had come from Mortimer Crescent,
Mrs. Palmer declared her intention of going to a solicitor.

“However you could be such a fool, young Elsie--and I don’t half
understand what happened, even now. What was the row about?”

Elsie had decided upon a half-truth. “Oh, she was a jealous old fool,
and couldn’t bear her hubby to look the same side of the room as
anyone else. That’s all it was, really. She spoke to me very rudely, I
consider--in fact she was decidedly insulting--so I simply up and said:
‘Mrs. Woolley,’ I said, ‘that’s not the way I’m accustomed to be spoken
to,’ I said, ‘and what’s more I won’t stand it.’ Quite quietly, I said
it, looking her very straight in the face. ‘I won’t stand it,’ I said,
quite quietly. That did for her. She didn’t know how to take it at all.
But, of course, I wasn’t going to stay in the house a moment after
that, and I simply walked straight upstairs and put on my things and
left her there. She knows what I think of her, though.”

“Yes, and she knows what she thinks of you,” remarked Mrs. Palmer
shrewdly, “and it probably isn’t so far out, either. She may be jealous
as you say--those fleshy women often are, when their figures come to be
a perpetual worry, so to speak--but there’s no smoke without a fire,
and I know you, Elsie Palmer. I suppose this doctor fellow was for
ever giving you sweets and wanting to take you out at nights, and sit
next you in the ’bus coming home, with his wife on the other side of
him as like as not. You were a young fool, let me tell you, to lose a
good place like that for a man who can’t be any use to you. What you
want to look out for is a husband. I shan’t have a minute’s peace about
you till you’re married.”

“Why?” asked Elsie, rather gratified, and very curious.

“Never you mind why. Because Mother says so, and that’s enough. Now you
can get on your hat and come with me to Mr. Williams’ office and see
what he can do to get this trunk of yours away from that woman. She’s
no lady, as I saw plainly the very first time I ever laid eyes on her.”

On the way to the City, Mrs. Palmer questioned Elsie rather
half-heartedly. “You’ve not been a bad girl in any way while you’ve
been away from Mother, have you?”

“No, of course not. I don’t know what you mean,” Elsie declared, sick
with sudden fright.

“I should hope you didn’t. Because mind, Elsie, any gurl of mine who
disgraced herself wouldn’t get any help from _me_. And though I don’t
object to a bit of fun while a gurl’s young, skylarking may lead to
other things. I hope there’s no need for me to speak any plainer. I’ve
brought you gurls up innocent, and I intend you shall remain so. Not
that Geraldine’s ever given me a moment’s worry.”

“Oh, Geraldine!” Elsie was profoundly relieved at seeing an opportunity
for changing the subject indirectly. “She’s a sheep.”

“You’ve no call to speak like that of your elder sister, miss. I wish
you were half as steady as she is. She’s the one to help her widowed
mother, for all she has such poor health.”

“What do you suppose is the matter with her, Mother?”

“Bile,” said Mrs. Palmer laconically. “Your father was the same, but it
doesn’t matter so much in a man.”

“Why ever not?”

“It doesn’t interfere with his prospects. Now I often think Geraldine
won’t ever get a husband, simply because of the bad colour she
sometimes goes, and the way her breath smells. She can’t help it, poor
gurl.”

Elsie felt contemptuous, rather than compassionate. When they came to
the office, a very young clerk, who stared hard at Elsie, explained
that Mr. Williams was away. He had suffered a family bereavement.

“His wife?” gasped Mrs. Palmer, greatly excited.

“I am sorry to say that Mrs. Williams died yesterday morning. Mr.
Williams was not at the office, and a telephone message came through
later to the head clerk, giving the melancholy intelligence. I believe
Mrs. Williams had been ill for some time.”

“Why, goodness me, we knew her ever so well, my daughter and I! They
stayed with us in the autumn.... Elsie, fancy poor Mrs. Williams dying!”

“Fancy!”

“Would you care to see the head clerk, Mr. Cleaver, madam?” said the
youth politely, still gazing at Elsie.

“Yes, yes, I think I’d better. He may be able to tell us something
more, Elsie,” cried Mrs. Palmer gloatingly.

But when the clerk had gone away to see whether Mr. Cleaver was
disengaged, Mrs. Palmer remarked to her daughter:

“Not that he’ll be able to say much, naturally not. It’s an awkward
subject to enter on at all with a gentleman, poor Mrs. Williams being
in the condition she was.”

“I heard Doctor Woolley say she was very ill.”

“It’s a funny thing, Elsie, but many a time I’ve felt a presentiment
like. I’ve looked at Mrs. Williams, and seen death in her face. And
that Nellie Simmons, she told me she’d had a most peculiar dream about
Mrs. Williams one night. Saw her lying all over blood, she said, and it
quite scared her. I knew then what it meant, though I told Nellie not
to be a silly gurl. But dreams can’t lie, as they say, not if they’re a
certain sort.”

Elsie shuddered, as a thrill of superstitious terror went through her.
Dreams played a large part in her life, and Mrs. Palmer had always
shown her children that she “believed in dreams,” especially in those
of a _macabre_ nature.

The young clerk came back, and took them into a small room where a
bald-headed, pale-faced man sat at a writing-table. Mrs. Palmer’s
delicacy ran no risk of affront from him, for he was monosyllabic on
the subject of Mrs. Williams’ death, and only said that Mr. Williams
would not be back until the following week.

Mrs. Palmer, looking disappointed, launched into a voluble story of
Elsie’s trunk and its non-return.

Mr. Cleaver said that the firm would write a letter to Mrs. Woolley
that evening. He seemed disinclined to enlarge on that, or any other
subject.

“It’s been a great worry, as you can imagine,” Mrs. Palmer said,
reluctant to terminate an interview which was anyhow to cost her money.
“However the girl could have been so silly, I don’t know. But we
mustn’t look for old heads on young shoulders, I suppose.”

“I suppose not.”

For the first time, Mr. Cleaver glanced at Elsie as though he really
saw her. “Your young lady will be looking for another post, no doubt?”

“By-and-by,” said Mrs. Palmer with a sudden languor. “I’m afraid if I
had my way, Mr. Cleaver, I’d keep both my girlies at home with their
mother. And this one’s my baby, too. I really only let her go to that
Mrs. Woolley to oblige poor Mrs. Williams, who was a dear friend of
mine. My daughter has been trained for the shorthand-typing, really,
haven’t you, Elsie?”

“’M.”

“I see. Well, Mrs. Palmer, the letter shall go off to-night, and I am
very much mistaken if the lady does not----”

“Don’t call her a lady, Mr. Cleaver. She’s no----”

Mrs. Palmer had said all this before, and Mr. Cleaver held open the
door for her, and compelled her to pass through it before she had time
to say it all over again.

Elsie and Mrs. Palmer were in the omnibus that was to take them back to
their own suburb very much earlier than they had expected to be.

“I’ll tell you what, we’ll stop at the corner shop and have a wreath
sent in time for the funeral. I’ve got some money on me,” said Mrs.
Palmer.

They chose a wreath and were given a black-edged card upon which Mrs.
Palmer inscribed the address of Mr. Williams and: “With true sympathy
and every kind thought from Mrs. Gerald Palmer, Miss Palmer and Miss
Elsie Palmer.”

“I’d meant to say a few very sharp words to them about introducing
_that_ Mrs. Woolley to me, and persuading me to let you go to her, but
of course, it’ll have to be let drop now. I daresay poor Mrs. Williams
was taken in by the woman herself.”

For two or three days Elsie lounged about at home, obliged by her
mother to help in the house, but spending as much time as she could
with Irene Tidmarsh, whose old father was still living, although
suffering from incurable disease. Sometimes when Elsie and Irene were
gossiping in the dining-room, they would hear the old man roaring with
pain overhead, and then Irene would run up to him, administer a drug,
and come down again looking rather white. A desiccated spinster aunt
made occasional appearances, and took Irene’s place whilst Irene went
to the cinema with Elsie. But Irene never mentioned Arthur Osborne, and
Elsie saw neither him nor his brother.

She told herself that she did not care, and that she was sick of men
and their beastly ways.

She one evening repeated this sentiment to Geraldine, whom she
suspected of disbelieving her version of the quarrel with Mrs. Woolley.

“So you say. I s’pose that’s because there isn’t anyone after you. If
that Begg boy turned up again, or Johnnie Osborne or any of them, you’d
sing quite a different song.”

“You’re jealous,” said Elsie candidly.

Her sister laughed shrilly. “That’s a good one, young Elsie. Me jealous
of a kid like you! I should like to know what for? Why, you’re not even
pretty.”

The taunt enraged Elsie, because she knew that it was true, and that
she was not really pretty. What she did not yet realise was that she
would always be able to make men think her so.

“Your trunk’s come, Elsie,” Mrs. Palmer screamed at the door. “Carter
Paterson brought it, carriage to pay, of _course_. You’d better see
there’s nothing missing out of it.”

Elsie made a perfunctory examination, noticing nothing but that there
was a letter lying just under the newspaper spread over her untidily
packed belongings.

“It’s all right.”

Mrs. Palmer had gone back into the kitchen again, and Elsie, who did
not care what Geraldine thought of her, pulled out the note and read
it. It was from Doctor Woolley, as she had expected.

  “MY OWN DEAR LITTLE GIRLIE,

  “What a rotten world it is, kiddie, and what a shame you being turned
  away like that. Believe me, dear little girlie, if I had been at home
  it would never have happened. Now, Elsie, you and I have had a very
  nice friendship, and I know you will understand what I mean if I say
  that it must come to an end _for the present_. Burn this letter,
  dear, won’t you, and don’t answer it on any account. The letters that
  come for me to this house are not safe from interference, so you see
  what trouble it might make. With all best wishes for your future, and
  thanking you for your sweet friendship, which I shall never forget,

                                                              “Yours,
                                                                    “H.”

“The cad!” said Elsie disgustedly.

She had not really expected Doctor Woolley to write to her at all,
although there had been in her mind a vague anticipation of seeing him
again very soon. But the letter, with its perfunctory endearments and
cautionary injunctions, suddenly made it clear to her that the whole
episode of their relationship was at an end.

“The swine,” said Elsie, although without violent emotion of any kind.

She felt that life, for the moment, was meaningless, but rather from
the familiar and sordid surroundings of her home, and from her own
listlessness and fatigue, than from the defection of Doctor Woolley.

It failed to excite her when a letter arrived for Mrs. Palmer, from
the office of Mr. Williams and written by himself, saying how much he
regretted that Mrs. Woolley, the merest acquaintance of his dear late
wife, should have failed to make Miss Elsie happy in her house. If
Miss Elsie desired to find an appointment in the clerical line, as he
understood, then Mr. Williams would be most happy to make a suggestion.
Could Mrs. Palmer, with Miss Elsie, make it convenient to call at the
office any afternoon that week?

“He may want to take you into his own office, Elsie, as like as not.
He’d feel he ought to do something, I expect, considering they sent you
to those people, those Woolleys, as they call themselves, in the first
place.”

“I’m not sure I want to go into an office, Mother.”

“Now look here, Elsie, let me and you understand one another,” said
Mrs. Palmer with great determination. “I’ve had enough of your wants
and don’t wants, my lady. One word more, and you’ll get a smack-bottom
just exactly as you got when you were in pinafores, and don’t you
forget it. If you think you’re going to live at home, no more use in
the house than a sick headache, and wasting your time running round
with God-knows-who, then I can tell you you’ve never made a bigger
mistake in your life. Off you pop this directly minute, and get on your
hat, and come with me to Mr. Williams. If he’s heard of a job for you,
we’ll get it settled at once.”

“I suppose,” said Geraldine bitterly, “I’ll have to see to the teas and
everything else, while you’re out. It seems to me it’s always Elsie
that’s being thought about, and sent here, and taken there, and the
rest of it.”

“More shame for her,” said Mrs. Palmer sombrely. “I declare to goodness
I don’t know how I’m to face your aunties next time they come here,
unless there’s something been settled about Elsie. I’m sick and tired
of being told I spoil that girl.”

“Whatever job she gets, she’ll be home in a month,” said Geraldine.

“She’ll get something she won’t relish from me if she is,” Mrs. Palmer
retorted. She pinned on her hat and pulled a pair of shiny black kid
gloves out of a drawer in the kitchen dresser.

Elsie, rather sulky and unwilling, was obliged to follow her mother
once more to the dingy office, but it cheered her to see the pleased,
furtive smile on the face of the young clerk who had admitted them
before. It was very evident that he had not forgotten her. Elsie
thought more about him than about the desiccated, wooden-faced little
solicitor, with the crêpe band round his arm, who responded to all Mrs.
Palmer’s voluble condolence with solemn little bows and monosyllables.

Mrs. Palmer was evidently disappointed at extracting from him no
details about his wife’s illness and death, and at last she turned the
subject and began to speak of Elsie’s qualifications as a typist.

“You see, Mr. Williams, I always felt it was waste, her going to be a
kind of mother’s help to that Mrs. Woolley. ‘It’s not what you’ve been
trained for, my dear,’ I said, ‘but still, if you want to, you shall
try it for a bit.’ I’ve always been a one to let my girlies try their
own wings, Mr. Williams. ‘The old home nest is waiting for you when
you’re tired of it,’ is what I always say. You’ve heard mother tell you
that many and many a time, haven’t you, Elsie?”

“Yes,” said Elsie, bored.

She had often heard her mother make the like statements, in order to
impress strangers, and she had no objection to backing her up, since it
was far less trouble to do so than to have a “row” afterwards.

Mr. Williams bowed again. “I am sorry that Miss Elsie was exposed to
unpleasantness of any sort, through an introduction of mine, and I
may add that I entirely agree with you, Mrs. Palmer, in thinking that
the--the domestic duties embarked upon were quite unworthy of her. Now,
I am in want of a confidential clerk in this office.”

Elsie saw her mother’s eyes glistening behind the coarse fibre of her
mended veil, and felt that her fate was sealed.

“Yes, Mr. Williams?”

“If I could persuade you to allow Miss Elsie to come to me.... Nine to
six, and twenty-five shillings a week to begin with. Her duties would
be light, simply to take down, type, and file my personal letters.”

“It would be a very good beginning for her,” said Mrs. Palmer, firmly,
but with no undue enthusiasm. Elsie knew that her mother’s mind was
quite made up, but that she did not want to seem eager in the eyes of
Mr. Williams.

“You’d like to give it a trial, Elsie?”

“I don’t mind,” said Elsie. She met the eyes of Mr. Williams and
managed to smile at him, and for an instant it seemed to her that an
answering pin-point of light appeared behind the pince-nez.

“It would be quite usual,” said Mr. Williams gravely, “for me to give
you a short test. Take this pencil and paper, please, and take this
down.”

He handed Elsie a shorthand pad and a pencil. She took down in
shorthand the brief business letter that he dictated to her, and then,
more nervously, read it aloud, stumbling over the pronunciation of one
or two words, and once substituting one word for another, of which the
shorthand outlines were similar, without any perception of the bearing
of either upon the context.

Mr. Williams corrected her. “It’s always the same,” he told Mrs. Palmer
in a low, rather melancholy voice. “These young people are wonderfully
clever at taking dictation--eighty words a minute, a hundred words a
minute--but you can’t depend upon them to transcribe correctly.”

Mrs. Palmer looked offended. “I’m sure Elsie will tell you that she
wasn’t doing herself justice, Mr. Williams. I’m sure she’s as accurate
as anybody, when she’s not nervous. But if you think she won’t do the
work well enough, of course....”

Mrs. Palmer’s lips were drawn together, and her intonation had become
acidulated.

“Not at all,” said Mr. Williams quietly, “not at all. You misunderstand
my meaning altogether. I have no doubt that Miss Elsie will suit me
very well indeed, when she has fallen into my little routine. What
about next week?”

“Very well,” Mrs. Palmer answered swiftly. “I’ll let her come to you
on Monday morning, Mr. Williams, and I’m very much obliged to you for
thinking of us. It’ll be a relief to me to know Elsie is in a good
post. You see, I’m in the position of both father and mother to my
girlies, and this one’s my baby, as I always say----”

As Mr. Williams opened the door for them he said: “I hope that little
affair about the trunk was satisfactorily concluded? It was perhaps
a shade awkward, having the letter written from this office, in view
of the fact that we were personally acquainted with the parties--but
my head clerk, Mr. Cleaver, could hardly be expected to appreciate
that.... A very worthy man indeed, and an able one, but the finer
shades are rather beyond him. Good morning, Mrs. Palmer--good morning,
Miss Elsie. Nine o’clock on Monday morning, then.”

Mrs. Palmer went away in high spirits, and commented to Elsie and to
Geraldine so enthusiastically upon Elsie’s good fortune, that she began
to believe in it herself.

“Are there any other girls there?” Geraldine asked.

And Elsie said quickly, “Oh dear, no! Both the other clerks are men.”

She began to think that perhaps after all the hours spent in the office
might not be without amusement.

Besides, all sorts of people came to see a solicitor.

Elsie spent the week-end in cutting out and making for herself a blue
crêpe blouse, which she intended to wear on Monday morning. She also
made a pair of black alpaca sleeves, with elastic at the wrist and at
the elbow, to be drawn on over the blouse while she was working.

She put the sleeves, her shorthand pad and pencil, a powder-puff,
mirror, pocket-comb, and a paper-covered novel in a small attaché case
on Monday morning, pulled on the rakish black velvet tam-o’-shanter,
and went off to Mr. Williams’ office.

Her first day there was marked by two discoveries: that Mr. Williams
expected to be called “sir” in office hours, and that the name of the
youth who shared with her a small outer room where clients waited, or
left messages, was Fred Leary.

A high partition of match-boarding separated the waiting-room from
an inner office where Mr. Cleaver sat. And if Elsie and Fred Leary
spoke more than a very few words to one another, Mr. Cleaver would tap
imperatively against the wood with a ruler. He was also apt to walk
noiselessly round the partition and stand there, silently watching
Elsie, if the sound of her typewriter ceased for any undue length of
time.

She learnt from Fred Leary that there had never been a female typist in
the office before, and that Mr. Cleaver had been greatly opposed to the
introduction of one.

“The Old Man always gets his way in the end, though,” said Fred Leary,
alluding to Mr. Williams.

“I knew him before,” Elsie asserted, to give herself importance. “Him
and his wife were in our house for a bit. I knew Mrs. Williams too.”

“They said he led her a life,” remarked Leary.

“What sort of way?”

“Oh, I couldn’t tell a kid like you.”

“What rubbish! As though I didn’t know as much as you, any day.”

He laughed loudly. “Girls always think they know everything, but they
don’t--not unless some fellow has----”

The sharp tap of Mr. Cleaver’s pencil sounded against the matchboard,
and silenced them.

The fact that their conversations had to be more or less clandestine
added zest to them, and although Elsie was not in any way attracted
by young Leary, who was spotty and unwholesome-looking, she several
times went to a cinema with him on Saturday afternoons, and once
to a football match. After the latter entertainment, however, they
quarrelled.

Elsie had disliked the mud, the cold, the noise, the standing about and
the crowds. She had been bored by Leary’s enthusiasm, which was utterly
incomprehensible to her, and secretly annoyed because, of the multitude
of men surrounding her, not one had paid any attention to her, or to
anything but the game and the players.

“I wasn’t struck on that outing of yours,” she remarked critically to
her escort the following Monday morning. “Another time we’ll give the
football matches a miss, thank you.”

Leary’s admiration for Elsie, however, was less strong than his desire
to see a league match, and he offended her by going by himself to the
entertainment that she despised.

Elsie resented his defection less for his own sake than for that of
the excitement that she could only experience through flirtation, and
without which she found her life unbearably tedious.

She had been in the office nearly three months when Mr. Williams asked
her suddenly if she liked the work there.

“I don’t mind it,” said Elsie.

She was in reality perfectly indifferent to it, and merely went through
the day’s routine without active dislike, as without intelligence.

“Now that you are used to our ways,” said Mr. Williams deliberately,
“I think you had better remove your table into my room. The sound of
your machine will not disturb me in the least, and if clients desire a
private interview, you can retire.”

Elsie looked up, astonished, and met her employer’s eyes.

His face was impassive as ever, but there was a faint, covetous gleam
in his fish-like eyes.

Elsie, at once repelled and fascinated, gazed back at him, and felt
her heart beginning to beat faster with a nervous and yet pleasurable
anticipation.


VII

“When do you want to take your holiday, Elsie?”

“I’m not particular.”

“Your mother will want you to get a breath of sea-air, I suppose.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Elsie. “Mother’s not awfully struck on going
away.”

It was late July, and between Elsie and her employer a curious, secret
relationship had been established, at present only symbolised by
occasional furtive touches of his hand on her neck or her dress, and
a continual exchange of glances, steady and compelling on Williams’s
side, and responded to by Elsie almost against her own will.

Her typewriting table had been moved into his office, and she sat there
nearly all day.

He spoke to her very little, but she was now always intensely conscious
of his presence, and of her own effect upon him.

At first she did not understand to what his questions about the
holidays were leading.

Next day, he spoke about them again.

“Shouldn’t you like to go to Brighton--some place like that?”

“Rather.”

“I often run down there myself from Saturday to Monday.”

Mr. Williams looked at her more attentively than ever, and Elsie felt
the blood creep up into her face. She knew that she blushed easily and
deeply, and that men enjoyed seeing her blush.

“That hasn’t got anything to do with me,” she stammered, at once
excited and confused.

“Hasn’t it?”

“Mr. Williams!”

He glanced cautiously at the door, and then lowered his voice. “Look
here, my dear child, I’m old enough to be your father and--and my dear
late wife took quite a fancy to you. Surely you and I understand one
another well enough to take a little holiday jaunt together without
anyone but our two selves being any the wiser.”

Elsie had not really expected the suggestion, and she was startled, but
also triumphant.

“Whatever do you mean, Mr. Williams?”

He smiled, a small, thin-lipped smile, that held a suggestion of
cynical mockery at her transparent pretence.

“Only what I say. I’m a poor, lonely fellow, with a little bit of money
and no one to spend it on, and if I go to a nice hotel for the week-end
I want someone to keep me company. Think over it, Elsie. You quite
understand that I’m not asking anything of you--you’re as safe with me
as if I were your father. Just a pretty face opposite me at meals, and
a smartly dressed little companion to take out for a walk on the front
or to the theatre on Saturday night--that’s all I want.”

“Oh, I daresay,” said Elsie.

His face stiffened, and she felt immediately that she had made a
mistake.

“It’s awfully kind of you to think of such a thing, Mr. Williams, but
I really couldn’t dream of it. Why, I don’t know what mother would
think----”

“Of course, it’s a very conventional world,” said Mr. Williams gravely.
“You and I would know well enough that our little adventure was most
innocent, but we don’t want anyone to think or say otherwise. So I
propose, Elsie, that we should keep it to ourselves. I presume it would
be easy to tell your mother that you were staying with a friend?”

“Well--there’s Ireen Tidmarsh, a young lady I often go with. I could
say I was going to her.”

“Just so. After all, you’re of an age to manage your own affairs.”

Elsie swelled with gratified vanity. She loved to be told that she was
grown up.

“Well, what about the August Bank Holiday week-end? I could meet you at
the booking office at Victoria Station on the Saturday, and we could
travel back together on the Tuesday morning. I’d like to show you
something of life, Elsie.”

He moistened his lips with his tongue as he spoke the words.

Elsie wished desperately that she could feel attracted by him, as
she had been by Doctor Woolley. But Mr. Williams, physically, rather
revolted her.

“Oh, I couldn’t!” she repeated faintly.

He was very patient. “No expense, of course. And if you’d like a
new hat or an evening frock, Elsie, or a pretty set of those silk
things that girls wear underneath, why, I hope you’ll let me have the
privilege of providing them. You can choose what you like and bring me
the bill--only go to a West End shop. Nothing shoddy.”

Elsie was breathless at his munificence, and she longed wildly for the
evening dress, and the silk underwear. Pale pink crêpe....

Perhaps it would be worth it.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t ask me to do anything that wasn’t perfectly
right, Mr. Williams,” she said demurely.

“I am glad you feel that. I’m glad you trust me,” he solemnly replied.

“Of course I do.”

“Then that’s our secret. We need take no one into our confidence,
Elsie, you understand. The arrangement is a perfectly innocent and
natural little pleasure that you and I are going to share, but people
are very often coarse-minded and censorious, and I would not wish to
expose either of us to unpleasant comments. You’ll remember that, and
keep it to yourself?”

“Oh, yes,” said Elsie.

That night as she was going to bed, she critically examined her own
underwear. Her chemise and drawers were coarse, she wore no stays,
and the garters that held up her transparent lisle-thread stockings
were plain bands of grimy white elastic. Her short petticoat was white,
with a torn flounce, and only the camisole, which showed beneath her
transparent blouses, was trimmed with imitation Valenciennes lace and
threaded with papery blue ribbons.

“What you doing, Elsie?” grumbled Geraldine from her bed. “Get into
bed, do; I want to go to sleep.”

“Have you seen those things they sell in sets, Geraldine, in some
of the High Street shops? Sort of silk combinations and a princess
petticoat and nightgown, all to match like?”

“I’ve seen them advertised at sale times, in the illustrateds, and
beastly indecent they are, too. Why, you can see right through that
stuff they’re made of.”

Elsie became very thoughtful.

Her sister’s words had brought before her mind’s eye an involuntary
picture that both startled and repelled her.

“Anyway, the prices are something wicked. What’s up, young Elsie?”

“Nothing. I heard something to-day that set me wondering, that’s all.”

“What?”

“Oh, some girl that wanted a pink silk rig-out, that’s all.”

“You must have some queer friends. No decent girl would wear those
things--only tarts do, unless it’s fine ladies that aren’t any better
than they should be, from what the Society papers say.”

Geraldine, in her curling-pins and her thick nightgown, looked rigidly
virtuous. “Get into bed, do.”

“It’s too hot,” sighed Elsie.

The room was like a furnace, but neither of them would have dreamed of
opening the window after dark.

Elsie tossed and turned about for a long while, unable to sleep. She
visualised herself in new clothes, in evening dress, which she had
never worn, and she thought of the excitement of staying in a big hotel
where there would very likely be a band in the evenings and, of course,
late dinner every night.

If only it had been anyone but Mr. Williams! But then, he was the only
rich man she knew.

“It’s a shame,” thought Elsie, “that I shouldn’t have opportunities
of meeting other men like him, only different. I wish I’d gone in for
manicure--I’d have met all sorts then.”

For a moment she wondered whether her friendship with Williams might
not lead to his introducing her to his wealthy friends, but she was
shrewd enough to perceive that his first preoccupation would be to
keep their connection secret, and that he was of far too cautious a
temperament to risk her meeting with men younger and more attractive
than himself.

Her last waking thought was of the silk set of underclothes, cool and
lovely and transparent against her skin.

The following morning Mr. Williams behaved exactly as usual, and made
no reference whatever to his suggestion of a holiday. Elsie, rather
anxious and affronted, took advantage of a late call from a client to
leave the office at six o’clock exactly, without returning into her
employer’s room to announce her departure as she usually did.

On her way to the crowded Tube station she was followed and accosted
by a strange man. This adventure had become a common one to Elsie, but
a certain recklessness pervaded her that evening, and when he urged
her to come and sit in the park, under the cool of the trees, she went
with him. He was a man of thirty-five or so, with a miserable, haunted,
disease-ravaged face, and he began almost at once to pour out to her
a long story of his wife’s treachery, of which he had just made the
discovery.

“I’ve never looked at another girl,” he kept on saying. “I’ve never
spoken to one the way I’ve spoken to you to-night. But you remind me
of her, in a way, and I knew you’d be all right, and sorry for a poor
devil who’s been fooled.”

Elsie hardly listened to him, but she let him put his arm round her
waist, and as his caresses became more violent and eager, she again
felt that instinctive conviction that it was to such an end that she
had been created. These physical contacts only, brought her to the
fullness of self-expression. At last she realised that her companion
was muttering a request that he might go home with her.

“What do you take me for?” Elsie asked furiously. “I’m a respectable
girl, I am.”

He became maudlin and begged her to forgive him, and she sank back
again into his embrace, appeased at once.

At last, when the park gates were closing, she roused herself and
insisted that if he wanted to go on talking to her they must go
somewhere and have supper.

The man seemed too dazed and wretched to understand her, but when
Elsie, rendered prudent by certain previous experiences, asked whether
he had any money, he drew out a handful of loose silver.

“That’s all right, then,” she said, relieved, and took him to a cheap
and very popular restaurant.

Elsie drank cocoa and ate sweet cakes, and her escort, leaning heavily
on the marble-topped table, continued his low, maundering recitation of
self-pity.

She had very little idea of what he was talking about.

She liked the restaurant and enjoyed her cakes, and the occasional
contact between herself and the unknown man satisfied her for the time
being.

When they left the restaurant, Elsie directed him to the omnibus that
would take her nearest to her own suburb, and they climbed to the top
of it, and sat in close proximity on the narrow seat all through the
long drive.

It was with real difficulty that she tore herself away in the end,
physically roused to a pitch that rapidly amounted to torment. She was
frightened and disgusted by her own sensations, but much less so than
she had been in the days of her technical innocence, before she had
known Doctor Woolley. She decided that she would go to Brighton with
Mr. Williams.

And she would buy the silk underclothes--pink silk--and a real evening
dress, cut low, that should reveal her shoulders and the full contour
of her bust, and perhaps he would give her enough money for a string of
imitation pearl beads as well.

“After all, he can afford to be generous,” Elsie thought complacently.
“An old man like him! I expect I’m a fool to look at him, really.”

She meant that her attraction for men was sufficiently potent to
ensure her ability to cast her spell wherever she chose, but common
sense reminded her that the number of men within her immediate sphere
was limited. Even men who followed her, or addressed her casually in
the street, were mostly of the bank-clerk type, and of her own actual
acquaintance scarcely one reached the level of the professional class
to which Williams belonged.

At Hillbourne Terrace, Elsie found the front door locked, and realised
that it must be late. She understood what had happened. Mrs. Palmer,
angry at her daughter’s tardiness, had probably decided to give her
a fright, and was waiting in her dressing-gown, angry and tired, for
Elsie to try the side door.

“I just won’t, then,” muttered Elsie angrily. “I’ll jolly well go to
Ireen.”

She had seen a light in the house opposite as she came up the street,
and it would not be the first time that she had called on Irene
Tidmarsh for hospitality.

Her friend opened the door in person, and Elsie explained her position,
giving, however, no specific reason for her lateness.

“Come in,” said Irene indifferently. “You can sleep with me if you want
to. I often thank God I’ve no mother.”

The two girls went up to Irene’s large, untidy bedroom in the front of
the house, and began to undress, and Elsie was unable to resist the
topic of the pink silk underclothes that obsessed her imagination.

“Geraldine says only tarts wear them.”

“What does she know about it?” Irene enquired. “Ladies of title wear
them--that Lady Dorothy Anvers, that’s always being photographed, she
goes in for black silk nightgowns--_black_, if you please!”

“I’d rather have pink, a great deal. I think black’d be hideous.”

“Depends on one’s skin, I suppose,” said the sallow Irene thoughtfully.
“Who wants to give you a silk nightie, young Elsie?”

Elsie deliberated. She was not usually communicative about her own
affairs, but the notice of her employer had gratified her vanity, and
she very much desired to boast of it to someone. Irene, at least,
would be safe, and she sometimes offered shrewd pieces of advice that
were not the outcome of experience, of which, by comparison with Elsie
herself, she had little, but of a natural acumen.

Elsie, when the gas had been turned out, and the two girls were lying
in Irene’s bed, after extracting giggling oaths of secrecy, recounted
to Irene the whole story of her adventure with Mr. Williams. She
represented herself as still entirely undecided as to the sincerity of
his assurance that their relationship was to be purely friendly.

“Rats!” was Irene’s unvarnished comment. “It isn’t very likely the old
fool would have told you to get silk nighties and things unless he
meant to see them himself. But I wouldn’t do it, Elsie. It’s too risky.”

“Why, who’s to find out? It isn’t as if his wife was alive,” said
Elsie, with a recollection of the household in Mortimer Crescent.

“I don’t mean that at all. But it’s a beastly risk for you. He’s your
boss, after all. Suppose he gives you the sack, once this week-end
business is over? Men are like that--they get sick of a girl directly
they’ve had their fun, and then they don’t want to be for ever reminded
of it.”

“It’s quite as likely he’d be for ever pestering me to go with him
again,” Elsie declared, not at all desirous of supposing that her
attractions could be provocative of such speedy satiety. “And even if
he did sack me, there are plenty of other jobs going.”

“You young fool! Don’t you see what I mean? Suppose he landed you with
a baby?”

“Oh!” Elsie was startled.

Like a great many other girls of her class and upbringing, although
she possessed a wide and garbled knowledge of sex, she was singularly
unable to trace the links between cause and effect. “A baby,” in this
connection, was to her nothing but an isolated catastrophe, that she
had never particularly connected with the physical relations between a
man and a girl.

“It couldn’t, Ireen.”

“Why not? Of course it could happen. A girl I know got caught, only
luckily she had some sense, and went to one of these doctors that can
stop it for you----”

“Can they?”

“Some can,” said the well-informed Irene. “But mind you, it’s an
expensive business, and a jolly dangerous one. Why, the doctor can be
had up for doing it, I believe. So don’t you go and get yourself into
any mess of that sort, now.”

“I should think not,” murmured Elsie.

“How old did you say this fellow, this Williams, was?”

“I don’t know. About forty or forty-five, or something like that. He
was years older than his wife, and she wasn’t a chicken.”

“And she’s dead, is she?”

“Of course she is. I told you all about that ages ago.”

“I know. Look here, Elsie, I’ve an idea. Why don’t you marry this
fellow?”

“Ireen Tidmarsh, are you dotty or what?”

“I’m giving you jolly good advice, and you’ll be a young fool if you
don’t take it. He’s rich, and you’d have a splendid position, and after
a year or two you’d probably find yourself free to go your own way. He
wouldn’t live for ever, either.”

“Don’t,” said Elsie.

“Well, it’s true. You can bet he’s on the look-out for a second wife
already--widowers of that age always are.”

“He wouldn’t think of marrying me.”

“Only because he can get what he wants without,” said Irene curtly.
“You show him he can’t, and set him thinking a bit. If he’s half as
keen on you as you say he is, anyway, the idea’s bound to cross his
mind.”

Elsie was rather bewildered, and disposed to be incredulous. She was
incapable of having formulated so practical an idea for herself, and it
held for her a sense of unreality. “Anyhow, I couldn’t marry an old man
like that. I don’t even like him.”

“Whoever you marry, young Elsie, you won’t stick to him,” said Irene
cynically. “And if you ask me, the quicker you get a husband the
better.”

“That’s what mother says.”

“She wasn’t born yesterday. Well, do as you like, of course, but
it’s the chance of a lifetime. I’m sure of that. Just hold out for a
month--tell him you couldn’t think of going anywhere with him--and see
if he doesn’t suggest your becoming the second Mrs. Williams.”

“You’re mad, Ireen,” said Elsie, entirely without conviction.

She was in reality very much impressed both by Irene’s worldly
wisdom and by the sudden realisation it had brought to her of the
possibilities latent in Mr. Williams’ admiration.

She disliked having to work, and she knew that marriage was her only
escape from work. To be married very young would be a triumph, and she
thought with malicious satisfaction of how much she would enjoy asking
Aunt Gertie and Aunt Ada to visit her in her own house.

“Well, good-night,” said Irene’s voice in her ear. “I’m going to sleep.
If you want to get over to your place early in the morning, don’t wake
me, that’s all.”

“All right.”

Elsie turned over, gave a fleeting thought to the memory of the man she
had met that evening, and fell asleep almost at once.

The next morning, after huddling on her clothes, and washing her face
very hastily just before putting on her hat over her unbrushed hair,
Elsie crossed the street and went home.

Mrs. Palmer was on the doorstep.

She was very angry.

“How dare you stay out all night like that, you good-for-nothing little
slut? I haven’t closed my eyes for wondering what’d happened to you.
Where have you been?”

“At Ireen’s.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going there?”

“I never thought of it, till I got here and found the door locked.”

“It wasn’t locked till nearly eleven o’clock, miss, and you could have
come in by the side door, as you very well knew. And what were you
doing out till eleven o’clock, I should like to know?”

“Nothing,” said Elsie, beginning to cry.

Her mother promptly boxed her ears. “Elsie Palmer, you’re nothing but
a liar, and you’ll break your widowed mother’s heart and bring her to
disgrace before you’re done. However you’ve managed to grow up what you
are, so particular as I’ve been with the two of you, is more than I can
understand. Tell me this directly minute, who you were with last night?”

Elsie maintained a sullen silence, dodging as her mother aimed another
heavy blow at her.

“I declare you’ll make me lose my temper with you!” said Mrs. Palmer
violently. “Answer me this instant.”

“I went to the cinema.”

“Who took you?”

“That fellow in the office--that Leary boy.”

“Why couldn’t you come in last night and say where you’d been, then?
The fact is, Elsie, you’re telling me a pack of lies, and I know
it perfectly well. You can’t take your mother in, let me tell you,
whatever you may think, I’m sure _I_ don’t know what to do with you. I
sometimes think you’d better go and live with your aunties; you’d find
Aunt Gertie strict enough, I can tell you.”

Elsie knew this to be true, and was fiercely resolved never to put it
to the test.

“What you want is a thorough good whipping,” said Mrs. Palmer, already
absent-minded and preoccupied with preparations for breakfast. “Put
that kettle on, Elsie, and be quick about it. And I give you fair
warning that the very next time I have to speak to you like this--(see
if that’s the girl at the door--it ought to be, by this time)--the very
next time, I’ll make you remember it in a way you won’t enjoy, my lady.”

Mrs. Palmer’s active display of wrath was over, and Elsie knew that she
had nothing to do but to keep out of her mother’s way for the next few
days.

She helped to get the breakfast ready in silence. She was too much used
to similar scenes to feel very much upset by this one; nevertheless it
influenced her in favour of acting upon Irene Tidmarsh’s advice.

She knew very well that it would not be as easy to hoodwink Mrs.
Palmer over a week-end spent out of London as she had pretended to Mr.
Williams. Elsie was still afraid of her mother, and believed that she
might quite well carry out her threat of sending her daughter to live
with the two aunts.

Her chief pang was at relinquishing the thought of the pink silk
underclothes, but she endeavoured to persuade herself that they
might still be hers, when she should be on the point of marrying Mr.
Williams. After all, it would be more satisfactory to own them on those
terms than to be obliged to put them away after two days into hiding,
in some place--and Elsie wondered ruefully what place--where they
should not be spied out by Geraldine.

She went to the office as usual and was a good deal disconcerted when
Fred Leary announced that “the Old Man” had telephoned to say that he
was called away on business, and should not be back for two days.

Elsie, rather afraid that her own determination might weaken, decided
to write to him, sending the letter to his home address.

Her unformed, back-sloping hand, covered one side of a sheet of
notepaper that she bought in the luncheon hour.

  “DEAR MR. WILLIAMS,

  “One line to tell you that I have thought over your very kind
  suggestion about a holiday, but do not feel that I can say yes to
  same. Dear Mr. Williams, it is very kind of you, but I cannot feel it
  would be _right_ of me to do as you ask, and so I must say no, hoping
  you will not be vexed with me. I do want to be a good girl. So no
  more, from

                                               “Your little friend,
                                                               “ELSIE.”




VIII


It took Elsie exactly three months to bring Mr. Williams to the point
predicted by Irene Tidmarsh.

During that time she was quiet, and rather timid, scrupulously exact in
saying “sir” and very careful never to be heard laughing or chattering
with Fred Leary.

Williams at first made no allusion to her note. When at last he spoke
of it, he did so very much in his ordinary manner.

“I was sorry to get your little note the other day, Elsie, and to see
that you don’t quite trust me after all.”

“Oh, but I do,” she stammered.

He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I’m afraid my little friend isn’t
quite as staunch as I fancied. It doesn’t matter. Perhaps some day
you’ll know me better.”

“It wasn’t anything like that. It was just that I--I thought mother
wouldn’t like it,” simpered Elsie. “It didn’t seem to me to be quite
right.”

“It would have been quite right, or I shouldn’t have asked you to do
it,” he replied firmly. “I’m a man of great experience, Elsie, a good
many years older than you are, and you may be quite sure that I should
never mislead you. But I see I made a mistake, you are not old enough
to have the courage to be unconventional.”

He looked hard at her as he spoke, but Elsie’s vanity was not of the
sort to be wounded at the term of which he had made use. She merely
drooped her head and looked submissive.

A month later he asked her, in thinly veiled terms, whether she had yet
changed her mind.

“I shan’t ever change it,” Elsie declared. “I daresay I’ve sometimes
been rather silly, and not as careful as I ought, but I know very well
that it wouldn’t _do_ for me to act the way you suggest. Why, you’d
never respect me the same way again, if I did!”

She felt that the last sentence was a masterpiece. Williams shrugged
his shoulders.

“Come, Elsie, let’s understand one another. You’re not ignorant, a girl
like you must have had half a dozen men after her. And then what about
that doctor fellow--Woolley?”

“What about him?”

“That’s what I’m asking you. Something happened to cause the
unpleasantness between Mrs. Woolley and yourself, and I’ve a very
shrewd suspicion that I know what it was.”

“Then I needn’t tell you,” said Elsie feebly.

“That isn’t the way to speak.”

His low voice was suddenly nasty, and she felt frightened. “I’m sorry.”

“Yes. Don’t do it again, Elsie. How far did Woolley go? That’s what I
want to know.”

“He--he frightened me. He tried to kiss me.”

“And succeeded. Anything else?”

“Mr. _Williams_!”

He gazed at her stonily. “Well,” he said at last, “I’m half inclined to
believe you. How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Seventeen!” he repeated after her, and his accent was covetous. “You
should be very innocent, at seventeen, Elsie--very innocent and very
pure. Now, my dear little late wife, when we were married, although she
was a good deal older than you are, knew nothing whatever. Her husband
had to teach her everything. That’s as it should be, Elsie.”

A certain prurient relish of his own topic, in Williams’ manner,
affected Elsie disagreeably. Neither did she like his reference to Mrs.
Williams.

She was glad that the conversation should at that point be interrupted
by the entrance of the austere Mr. Cleaver.

Suspense was beginning to make her feel very irritable. She now
wanted Williams to propose marriage to her, but had begun to doubt his
ever doing so. He continued to look at her meaningly, and to lay his
rather desiccated hand from time to time on her shoulder, or upon the
thin fabric of her sleeve, with a lingering, caressing touch. Elsie,
however, had inspired too many men to such demonstrations to feel
elated by them, and her employer’s proximity roused in her little or no
physical response.

One day, to her surprise, he brought her a present.

“Open it, Elsie.”

She eagerly lifted the lid of the small cardboard box.

Inside was a large turquoise brooch, shaped like a swallow, with
outspread wings.

She knew instantly that it had belonged to his dead wife, but the
knowledge did not lessen her pleasure at possessing a trinket that she
thought beautiful as well as valuable, nor her triumph that he should
wish to give it to her.

“Oh, I say, how lovely! Do you really mean me to keep it?”

“Yes, really,” Mr. Williams assured her solemnly.

“But I couldn’t! It’s too lovely--I mean to say, really it is!”

“No, it isn’t, Elsie. You must please put it on, and let me have the
pleasure of seeing you wear it.”

“Put it on for me, then,” murmured Elsie, glancing up at him, and then
down again.

He took the ornament from her with hands that fumbled. “Where?”

“Just _here_.”

She indicated the round neck of her transparent blouse, just below the
collar-bone.

He stuck the pin in clumsily enough, and she stifled a little scream
as it pricked her, but remained passive under his slowly-moving,
dry-skinned fingers.

“There! I’m sorry there isn’t a looking-glass, Elsie.”

“Oh, I’ve got one! Don’t look, though!”

She stooped, pulled up her skirt, revealing a plump calf, and in a
flash had pulled out a tiny combined mirror and powder-puff from the
top of her stocking. She had no other pocket.

Williams did not utter a sound. He only kept his pale grey eyes fixed
gleamingly upon her.

“Are you shocked?” Elsie giggled. “I didn’t ought to, I suppose, but
really it’s hard to know what else to do.”

She peeped into the tiny looking-glass. “Isn’t it pretty!”

“_You_ are,” said Williams awkwardly. “How are you going to thank me,
Elsie?”

He always seemed to take pleasure in repeating her name.

“How do you suppose?”

“You know what I’d like.”

He came nearer to her, and put his hands upon her shoulders. Although
Elsie was short, he was very little taller.

She shut her eyes and put her head back, her exposed throat throbbing
visibly. She could feel his breath upon her face, when suddenly she
ducked her head, twisting out of his grasp, and cried wildly:

“No, no! It isn’t right--I oughtn’t to let you! Oh, Mr. Williams, I’d
rather not have the brooch, though it’s lovely. But I can’t be a bad
girl!”

He had taken a step backwards in his disconcerted amazement. “What on
earth----Why, Elsie, you don’t think there’s any harm in a kiss, do
you?”

“I don’t know,” she muttered, half crying. “But you make me feel so--so
helpless, somehow, Mr. Williams.”

Purest instinct was guiding her, but no subtlety of insight could have
better gauged the effect of her implication upon the little solicitor’s
vanity.

He drew himself up, and expanded the narrow width of his chest. “You’re
not frightened of me, little girl, are you?”

“I--I don’t know,” faltered Elsie.

“I can assure you that you needn’t be. Why, I--I--I’m very fond of you,
surely you know that?”

Elsie felt rather scornful of the lameness of his speech. She saw that
he was afraid of his own impulses, and the knowledge encouraged her.

“Here, Mr. Williams,” she said rather tremulously, holding out the
turquoise brooch.

He closed her hand over it. “Keep it. Are you fond of jewellery?”

“Yes, very.”

“It’s natural, at your age. I’d like to give you pretty things, Elsie,
but you mustn’t be such a little prude.”

“Mother always told me that one shouldn’t take a present--not a
valuable present--from a man, without he was a relation or--or
else----” She stopped.

“Or else what?”

“He’d asked one to marry him,” half whispered Elsie.

Williams recoiled so unmistakably that for a sickening instant she was
afraid of having gone too far.

Genuine tears ran down her face, and she did not know what to say.

“Don’t cry,” said the solicitor dryly. “I’d like you to keep the
brooch, and you can thank me in your own time, and your own way.”

“Oh, how good you are!”

She was relieved that he said no more to her that day.

She wore the brooch on the following morning, and fingered it very
often. Williams eyed her complacently.

She began to notice that he was taking some pains with his own
appearance, occasionally wearing a flower in his coat, and discarding
the crêpe band round his arm. She even suspected, from a certain smell
noticeable in the small office, that he was trying the effect of a
hair-dye upon his scanty strands of hair. Elsie mocked him inwardly,
but felt excited and hopeful.

When Williams actually did ask her to marry him, Elsie’s head reeled
with the sudden knowledge of having achieved her end. He had offered to
take her for a walk one Sunday afternoon, and they were primly going
across the Green Park.

To Elsie’s secret astonishment, he had neither put his arm round her
waist nor attempted to direct their steps towards a seat beneath one of
the more distant trees. He simply walked beside her, with short little
steps, every now and then jerking up his chin to pull at his tie, and
saying very little.

Then, suddenly, it came.

“Elsie, perhaps you don’t know that I’ve been thinking a great deal
about you lately.” He cleared his throat. “I--I’ve been glad to see
that you’re a very good girl. Perhaps you’ve not noticed one or two
little tests, as I may call them, that I’ve put you through. We lawyers
learn to be very cautious in dealing with human nature, you know.
And I’m free to admit that I thought very highly of you after--after
thinking it over--for the attitude you took up over that little trip we
were going to take together. Not, mind you, that you weren’t mistaken.
I should never, never have asked you to do anything that wasn’t
perfectly right and good. But your scruples, however unfounded, made a
very favourable impression on me.”

He stopped and cleared his throat again.

Intuition warned Elsie to say nothing.

“A young girl can’t be too particular, Elsie. But I don’t want to give
up our plan--I want my little companion on holidays, as well as on work
days. Elsie,” said Mr. Williams impressively, “I want you to become my
little wife.”

And as she remained speechless, taken aback in spite of all her
previous machinations, he repeated:

“My dear, loving little wife.”

“Oh, Mr. Williams!”

“Call me Horace.”

Elsie very nearly giggled. She felt sure that it would be quite
impossible ever to call Mr. Williams Horace.

“Let’s sit down,” she suggested feebly.

They found two little iron chairs, and Mr. Williams selected them
regardless of their proximity to the public path.

When they sat down, Elsie, really giddy, leant back, but Mr. Williams
bent forward, not looking at her, and poking his stick, which was
between his knees, into the grass at their feet.

“Of course, there is a certain difference in our ages,” he said,
speaking very carefully, “but I do not consider that that would offer
any very insuperable objection to a--a happy married life. And I shall
do my utmost to make you happy, Elsie. My house is sadly in want of a
mistress, and I shall look to you to make it bright again. You will
have a servant, of course, and I will make you an allowance for the
housekeeping, and, of course, I need hardly say that my dear little
wife will look to me for everything that concerns her own expenditure.”

He glanced at her as though expecting her to be dazzled, as indeed she
was.

It occurred to neither of them that Elsie’s acceptance of his proposal
was being tacitly taken for granted without a word from herself. She
wondered if he would mention Mrs. Williams, but he did not do so.

He continued to talk to her of his house, and of the expensive
furniture that she would find in it, and of the fact that she would no
longer have to work.

All these considerations appealed to Elsie herself very strongly, and
she listened to him willingly, although a sense of derision pervaded
her mind at the extraordinary aloofness that her future husband was
displaying.

At last, however, he signed to a taxi as they were leaving the park,
and said that he would take her to have some tea. Almost automatically,
Elsie settled herself against him as soon as the taxi had begun to move.

Rather stiffly, Williams passed his arm round her. His first kiss was
a self-conscious, almost furtive affair that Elsie received on her
upraised chin.

Intensely irritated by his clumsiness, she threw herself on him with
sudden violence, and forced her mouth against his in a long, clinging
pressure.

       *       *       *       *       *

Elsie Palmer was married to Horace Williams at a registrar’s office
rather less than a fortnight later.

Williams had insisted both upon the early date and the quietness
of the wedding. He had refused to allow Elsie to tell her mother
of the marriage until it was accomplished, and a lurking fear of
him, and schoolgirl satisfaction in taking such a step upon her own
responsibility, combined to make her obedient.

Irene Tidmarsh and a man whose name Elsie never learnt, but who
came with Mr. Williams, were witnesses to the marriage. Elsie was
principally conscious that she was looking plain, unaccountably pale
under a new cream-coloured hat and feather, and with her new shoes
hurting her feet. It also occurred to her that she would have preferred
a wedding in church, with wedding-cake and a party to follow it.

She felt inclined to cry, especially when they came out of the dingy
office, after an astonishingly short time spent inside it, and found
that it was raining.

“Where are we going to?” said Irene blankly. (“My goodness, Elsie, just
look at your ring! Doesn’t it look queer?) I suppose you’ll take a
taxi?”

Mr. Williams showed no alacrity to fall in with the suggestion, but
after a dubious look round at the grey sky and rain-glistening pavement
he signed with his umbrella to a taxi-cab.

“I suppose we’d better. Can I see you to your ’bus first, or do you
prefer the Tube?” he added to Irene.

Both girls flushed, and looked at one another.

“Aren’t you going to give us lunch, I should like to know?” murmured
Elsie.

“I’m sure if I’m in the way, I’ll take myself off at once, and only
too pleased to do it,” said Irene, her voice very angry. “Please don’t
trouble to see me to the station, Mr. Williams.”

“As you like,” he replied coolly, and held out his hand. “Good-bye,
Miss--er--Tidmarsh. I’m glad to have met you, and I hope we shall have
the pleasure of seeing you in Elsie’s new home one of these days.”

“Oh yes, do come, Ireen!” cried the bride, forgetting her mortification
for a moment. “I’ll run in and see you one of these evenings, and we’ll
settle it.”

“Get in, Elsie. You’re getting wet,” said Mr. Williams, and he pushed
her into the taxi and climbed in after her, leaving Irene Tidmarsh
walking away very quickly in the rain.

“Well, I must say you might have been a bit more civil,” began Elsie,
and then, as she turned her head round to face him, the words died away
on her lips.

“You didn’t think I was going to have a strange girl here, the first
minute alone with _my wife_, did you?” he said thickly. “You little
fool!”

He caught hold of her roughly and kissed her with a vehemence that
startled her. For the first time, Elsie realised something of the
possessive rights that marriage with a man of Williams’ type would
mean. For a frantic instant she was held in the grip of that sense of
irrevocability that even the least imaginative can never wholly escape.

Her panic only endured for a moment.

“Don’t,” she began, as she felt that his embrace had pushed her
over-large hat unbecomingly to one side. She was entirely unwarmed by
passion, unattracted as she was by the man she had married, and chilled
and depressed besides in the raw atmosphere of a pouring wet day in
London.

The first sound of her husband’s voice taught her her lesson.

“There’s no ‘don’t’ about it now, Elsie. You remember that, if you
please. We’re man and wife now, and you’re _mine_ to do as I please
with.”

His voice was at once bullying and gluttonous, and his dry, grasping
hands moved over her with a clutching tenacity that reminded her
sickeningly of a crab that she had once seen in the aquarium.

Elsie was frightened as she had never in her life been frightened
before, and the measure of her terror was that she could not voice it.

She remained absolutely silent, and as nearly as possible motionless,
beneath his unskilled caresses. Williams, however, hardly appeared to
notice her utter lack of responsiveness. He was evidently too much
absorbed in the sudden gratification of his own hitherto suppressed
desires.

Presently Elsie said faintly: “Where are we going to?”

“I thought you’d want some luncheon.”

“I couldn’t touch a morsel,” Elsie declared, shuddering. “Couldn’t
you--couldn’t you take me home?”

“Do you mean Hillbourne Terrace?”

“Yes. I’ve got to tell mother some time to-day, and I’d rather get it
over.”

“Very well,” Williams agreed, with a curious little smile on his thin
lips. “But you mustn’t think of it as being home now, you know, Elsie.
Your home is where I live--where you’re coming back with me to-night.
No more office for my little girl after to-day.”

His short triumphant laugh woke no echo from her.

“Do you want me to come in with you?”

“Of course I do!” said Elsie indignantly. “Why, mother’ll be simply
furious! You don’t suppose I’m going to stand up to her all by myself,
do you?”

“Why should she be furious, Elsie? You’ve not done anything disgraceful
in marrying me.”

His voice was as quiet as ever, but his intonation told her that he was
offended.

“I don’t mean that,” she explained confusedly. “Of course, mother knows
you, and all--it’s only the idea of me having gone and been and done it
all on my own hook; that’ll upset her for a bit. She’s always wanted to
make babies of us, me and Geraldine.”

“You haven’t told your sister anything, have you?”

“No fear. She’s a jealous thing, ever so spiteful, is Geraldine.
You’ll see, she’ll be as nasty as anything when she knows I’m
actually--actually----”

Elsie stopped, giggling.

“Actually what?”

“You know very well.”

“Say it.”

“Actually married, then,” said Elsie, blushing a good deal and with
affected reluctance.

When they arrived at Hillbourne Terrace, and the taxi drew up before
the familiar flight of steps, she began to feel very nervous. She
told herself that she was a married woman, and looked at her new
wedding-ring, but she did not feel in the least like a married woman,
nor independent of Mrs. Palmer’s anger.

Elsie’s mother opened the door herself. “What on earth----Are you ill,
Elsie, coming home in a cab at this hour of the morning? Whatever next!”

“Mr. Williams is here, Mother,” said Elsie, pushing her way into the
dining-room.

Geraldine was there, a check apron, torn and greasy, tied round her
waist, and her hair still in curling-pins.

She was placing clean forks and spoons all round the table.

She looked at her sister with unfriendly surprise. Elsie had worn her
everyday clothes on leaving home that morning, and had changed at
Irene’s house.

“Whatever are you dressed up like that for?” said Geraldine at once.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“I’d like to know where you get the money to pay for your new hats,”
said Geraldine significantly. “First one thing, and then another--I
wonder you don’t sport a tiara, young Elsie.”

“Perhaps I may, before I’ve done.”

Elsie was not really thinking of what she was saying, but was rather
listening to a sound of voices in the hall outside that denoted a
conversation between Williams and Mrs. Palmer.

She could not help hoping that he was breaking the news of their
marriage to her mother. Elsie still felt certain that Mrs. Palmer would
be very angry. It astonished her when her mother came into the room and
kissed her vehemently.

“You sly young monkey, you! Geraldine, has this girl told you what
she’s done?”

“What?”

“Gone and got married! This morning!! To Mr. Horace Williams!!!” Mrs.
Palmer’s voice rose in a positively jubilant crescendo.

“_Married!_” screamed Geraldine. Her face became scarlet, and then grey.

“My little girl, married at seventeen!” said Mrs. Palmer with her head
on one side.

She examined Elsie’s plump hand with its wedding-ring.

Horace Williams stood by, quietly smiling. “Then you’re willing to
trust her to me, Mrs. Palmer? You’ll forgive us for taking you by
surprise, but you see, in all the circumstances, I could hardly--I
naturally preferred--something very quiet. But you and I will have a
little talk about business one of these days, and you’ll find that part
of it all in good order. Elsie will be provided for, whatever happens.”

“So generous,” murmured Mrs. Palmer.

She insisted upon their remaining to dinner, and sent out Nellie
Simmons for a bottle of wine. Elsie, now that she saw that her mother
looked upon her marriage with the elderly solicitor as a triumph, and
that Geraldine was madly jealous of her, became herself excited and
elated.

Williams went to the office in the afternoon, but Elsie remained at
home and packed up all her things.

She made her farewells quite cheerfully when Williams came to fetch
her, still thinking of her mother’s repeated congratulations and
praises.

It came upon her as a shock, as they were driving away, when Williams
observed dryly:

“That’s over, and now there’ll be no need for you to be over here very
often, Elsie, or _vice versa_. You must remember that _my_ house is
your only home, now.”




PART II




I


The European war affected Elsie Williams as much, or as little, as it
affected many other young women. She had been married a little over a
year in August 1914.

She was vaguely alarmed, vaguely thrilled, moved to a great display of
emotional enthusiasm at the sight of a khaki uniform and at the sound
of a military band.

Later on, she sang and hummed “Keep the Home Fires Burning,”
“Tipperary,” and “We _Don’t_ Want to Lose You, but we Think you _Ought_
to Go,” and was voluble and indignant about the difficulties presented
by sugar rations and meat coupons. She resented the air raids over
London, and devoured the newspaper accounts of the damage done by them;
she listened to, and eagerly retailed, anecdotes such as that of the
Angels of Mons, or that of the Belgian child whose hands had been cut
off by German soldiers; and after a period in which she declared that
“everybody” would be ruined, she found herself in possession of more
money than ever before.

Never before had so many clients presented themselves to Messrs.
Williams and Cleaver, and never before had there been so much money
about. Elsie bought herself a fur coat and a great many other things,
and went very often to the cinema, and sometimes to the theatre. She
very soon found, however, that Williams, when he could not take her out
himself, disliked her going with anybody else.

He was willing enough that she should take Irene with her, or her
sister Geraldine, but if she went out with any man, Williams became
coldly, caustically angry, and sooner or later always found an
opportunity for quarrelling with him.

Elsie was bored and angry, contemptuous of his jealousy, but far too
much afraid of him to rebel openly.

She was more and more conscious of having made a mistake in her
marriage, but her regrets were resentful rather than profound, and her
facile nature found consolation in her own social advancement, her
comfortable suburban home, and her tyrannical dominion over a capped
and aproned maid.

She very seldom went to Hillbourne Terrace, and had quarrelled with her
mother when Mrs. Palmer had suggested that it was time she had a baby.

Elsie did not want to have a baby at all. She feared pain and
discomfort almost as much as she did the temporary eclipse of her good
looks, and the thought of a child that should be Horace Williams’s as
well as hers filled her with disgust.

She only spoke of this openly to Irene, and Irene undertook the
purchase of certain drugs which she declared would render impossible
the calamity dreaded by her friend. Elsie thankfully accepted the
offer, and trusted implicitly to the efficacy of the bottles and
packages that Irene bought.

Sometimes Horace declared that he wanted a son, and as time went on his
taunts became less veiled, but Elsie cared little for them so long as
she remained immune from the trial of motherhood.

She spent her days idly, doing very little housework, sometimes making
or mending her own clothes, and often poring for a whole afternoon
over a novel from the circulating library, or an illustrated paper,
whilst she ate innumerable sweets out of little paper bags. She never
remembered anything about the books that she read thus, and sometimes
read the same one a second time without perceiving that she was doing
so until she had nearly finished it.

After a time, Elsie became rather envious of the money that Irene
was making as a munitions worker, and the “good time” that Geraldine
enjoyed in the Government office where she had found a job. Elsie
seriously told her husband that she felt she must go and do some “war
work.”

“You are not in the same position as an unmarried girl, Elsie. You have
other duties. These war jobs are for young women who have nothing else
to do.”

“I don’t see that I’ve got so much to do.”

“If you had children, you would understand that a woman’s sphere is in
her own home.”

“But I haven’t got children,” said Elsie, half under her breath.

“It’s early days to talk like that,” Williams retorted, and his glance
at her was malevolent. “One of these days you’ll have a baby, I hope,
like every other healthy married woman, and neither you nor I nor
anybody else can say how soon that day may come.”

“Well, I suppose till it does come--_if_ it ever does-you’ve no
objection to me doing my bit in regard to this war?”

“I don’t know. What is it you propose to do?”

“Oh, get a job of some kind. Ireen says they’re asking for
shorthand-typists all over the place, and willing to pay for them, too.
I could get into one of these Government shows easily, or I could go in
the V.A.D.s or something, and take a job in a hospital.”

“No,” said Williams decidedly. “No. Out of the question.”

Elsie, who at home had, as a matter of course, surreptitiously
disobeyed every order or prohibition of her mother’s that ran counter
to her own wishes, knew already that she would not disobey her husband.

She was afraid of him.

On the rare occasions when she saw any of her own family, Elsie always
made a great display of her own grandeur and independence. She was
really proud of her little suburban villa, her white-and-gold china,
fumed oak “suite” of drawing-room furniture, “ruby” glasses and plated
cake basket. She was also proud of being Mrs. Williams, and of wearing
a wedding-ring.

Geraldine came to see her once or twice, and then declared herself too
busy at the office to take the long tram journey, and as Elsie hardly
ever went to Hillbourne Terrace, they seldom met. But Irene Tidmarsh
came often to see Elsie.

She came in the daytime, when Williams was at the office, and very
often she and Elsie went to the cinema together in the afternoon. Irene
seemed able to get free time whenever she liked, and she explained this
to Elsie by telling her that the superintendent at the works was a
great friend of hers.

Elsie perfectly understood what this meant, and realised presently that
Irene was never available on Saturdays and Sundays.

The war went on, and Mr. Williams made more and more money, and was
fairly generous to Elsie, although he never gave her an independent
income, but only occasional presents of cash, and instructions that all
her bills should be sent in to him.

He did not rescind his command that she should not attempt any war
work, although, as the months lengthened into years, it seemed fairly
certain that there was to be no family to give Elsie occupation at home.

At twenty-five, Elsie Williams, from sheer boredom, had lost a great
deal of the vitality that had characterised Elsie Palmer, and with it
a certain amount of her remarkable animal magnetism. She was still
attractive to men, but her own susceptibilities had become strangely
blunted and no casual promiscuity would now have power to stir her.

She was aware that life had become uninteresting to her, and accepted
the fact with dull, bewildered, entirely unanalytical resentment.

“I s’pose I’m growing middle-aged,” she said to Irene, giggling without
conviction.

One day, more than a year after the Armistice in November 1918, Irene
Tidmarsh came to Elsie full of excitement.

She had heard of a wonderful crystal-gazer, and wanted to visit her
with Elsie.

Elsie was quite as much excited as Irene. “I’d better take off my
wedding-ring,” she said importantly. “They say they’ll get hold of any
clue, don’t they?”

“This woman isn’t like that,” Irene declared. “She’s what they call a
psychic, really she is. This girl that told me about her, she said it
quite frightened her, the things the woman knew. All sorts of things
about her past, too.”

“I’m not sure I’d like that,” said Elsie, giggling. “I know quite
enough about my past without wanting help. But I must say I’d like to
know what she’s got to say about the future. You know, I mean what’s
going to happen to me.”

“Oh, well, you’re married, my dear. There’s not much else she can tell
you, except whether you’ll have boys or girls.”

“Thank you!” Elsie exclaimed, tossing her head. “None of that truck for
me, thank you. Losing one’s figure and all!”

“You’re right. Anyway, let’s come on, shall we?”

“Come on. I say, Ireen, she’ll see us both together, won’t she?”

“I hope so. I wouldn’t go in to her alone for anything. Swear you won’t
ever repeat anything she says about me, though.”

“I swear. And you won’t either?”

“No.”

The crystal-gazer lived in a street off King’s Road, Chelsea, a long
way down.

A little hunch-backed girl opened the door and asked them to go into
the waiting-room. This was a small, curtained recess off the tiny
hall, and contained two chairs and a rickety table covered with thin,
cheap-looking publications. There were several copies of a psychic
paper and various pamphlets that purported to deal with the occult.

“I’m a bit nervous, aren’t you?” whispered Elsie. She fiddled with her
wedding-ring, and finally took it off and put it in her purse. When
the hunch-backed child appeared at the curtains, both girls screamed
slightly.

“Madame Clara is ready for you,” announced the little girl, in a harsh,
monotonous voice.

She led them up to the first floor, into a room that was carefully
darkened with blue curtains drawn across the windows. They could just
discern a black figure, stout and very upright, sitting on a large
chair in the middle of the room. A round stand set on a single slender
leg was beside her.

Elsie clutched at Irene’s hand in a nervous spasm.

The black figure bowed from the waist without rising. “Do you wish
me to see you both together, ladies?” Her voice was harsh and rather
raucous in tone.

“Yes, please,” said Irene boldly.

“You quite understand that the charge will be the same as for two
separate interviews?”

“Yes.”

The little girl advanced with a small beaded bag. “The fee is payable
in advance, if you please.”

Elsie fumbled in her purse, and pulled out two ten-shilling notes.

“Half a guinea each, if you please, ladies.”

“Irene, have you got two sixpences?” Elsie whispered, agitated.

Irene, by far the more collected of the two, produced a shilling, and
the little girl with the bag went away.

“Will you two ladies be seated? One on either side of the table,
please--not next to one another.”

Elsie made a despairing clutch at Irene’s hand again, but her friend
shook her head, and firmly took her place on the other side of Madame
Clara.

Elsie sank into the remaining chair, and felt that she was trembling
violently. Her nervousness was partly pleasurable excitement, and
partly involuntary reaction to the atmosphere diffused by the dim,
shaded room and the autocratic solemnity of Madame Clara.

A sweet, rather sickly smell was discernible.

The silence affected Elsie so that she wanted to scream.

Her eyes were by this time accustomed to the semi-darkness, and she
could see that Madame Clara was leaning forward, her loose sleeves
falling away from her fat, bare arms, her elbows resting on the little
table, and her hands over her eyes.

Suddenly the woman drew herself upright, and turned towards Irene.

“You, first. You have a stronger personality than your friend. It was
you who brought her here. Do you wish me to look into the crystal for
you?”

“Yes, I do,” gasped Irene.

Elsie wondered from where the crystal would appear, and then she
noticed the faint outline of a globe in front of the seer, on the
little stand.

A thrill of superstitious awe ran through her.

“Make your mind a blank as far as possible, please ... do not think of
the past, the present, or the future ... relax ... relax ... relax....”

Madame Clara’s voice deepened, and she began to speak very slowly and
distinctly, leaning back in her chair, the crystal ball before her eyes.

“Time is an arbitrary division made by man--the crystal will not always
show what is past and what is to come. For instance, I see illness
here--bodily suffering--but I do not know if it has visited you or is
still to come. It may even be the suffering of one near to you....”

She paused for an instant, and Elsie just caught Irene’s smothered
exclamation of “Father!”

“Hush, please,” said the seeress. “The shadow of sickness deepens--it
deepens into the blackness of death. A man--an old man--he is dying.
You will get money from him. Beware of those who seek to flatter
you. You are impressionable, but clear-sighted; impulsive, yet
self-controlled; reserved, but intensely passionate. I see marriage for
you in the future, but with a man somewhat older than yourself. I see
conflict....” She stopped again.

“Perhaps the conflict is already over. You have certainly known
love--passion----”

Elsie, from mingled nervousness and embarrassment, suddenly giggled.

The clairvoyante raised an authoritative hand. “It is impossible for me
to go on if there are resistances,” she said angrily, in the voice that
she had used at first, ugly and rather hoarse.

“Shut up, Elsie!” came sharply from Irene.

Elsie ran her finger-nails into her palms in an endeavour to check the
nervous, spasmodic laughter that threatened to overcome her.

“The current is broken,” said Madame Clara in an indignant voice.

There was a silence.

At last Elsie heard Irene say timidly:

“Won’t you go on, madame?”

“I’m exhausted,” said the medium in a fatigued voice. “You will have to
return to me another day--alone. All that I can say to you now, I have
said. Beware of opals, and of a red-haired man. Your lucky stone is the
turquoise--you should wear light blue, claret colour, and all shades of
yellow, and avoid pinks, reds and purple.”

She stopped.

Elsie, though awestruck, was also vaguely disappointed. It did not seem
to her that she had learnt a great deal about Irene, and the warnings
about colours and precious stones might have come out of any twopenny
booklet off a railway bookstall, such as “What Month Were You Born In?”
or “Character and Fortune Told by Handwriting.”

Then she remembered that she herself had made Madame Clara angry by
laughing, and that the woman had said the current was broken.

“Probably she’s furious,” Elsie thought, “and she won’t tell me as much
as she told Ireen. And she’s got our money, too. What a swindle!”

“What about my friend?” said Irene Tidmarsh. Her voice sounded rather
sulky.

“Your friend is a sceptic,” said the clairvoyante coldly.

“No, really----” Elsie began.

The woman turned towards her so abruptly that she was startled.

She could discern an enormous pair of heavy-looking dark eyes gazing
into hers.

“Make your mind a blank--relax,” said Madame Clara, her tone once more
a commanding one.

Elsie moved uneasily in her chair and fixed her eyes on the crystal.
She could only see it faintly, a glassy spot of uncertain outline.

The seeress bent forward, leaning over the transparent globe. After a
moment or two she began to speak, with the same voice and intonation
that she had made use of in speaking about Irene.

“The crystal reflects all things, but Time is an arbitrary division
made by man--we do not always see what is past, and what is future....
In your case, there is very little past--how young you are!--and
what there is, is all on one plane, the physical. You are magnetic,
extraordinarily magnetic. You have known men--you are married, if
not by man’s law, then by nature’s law--you will know other men. But
you are not awake--your mind is asleep. Nothing is awake but your
senses....”

Elsie’s mouth was dry. She longed to stop the woman but a horrible
fascination kept her silent, tensely listening.

“Now you are bored--satiated. You have repeated the same experience
again and again, young as you are, until it means nothing to you. You
have no outside interests--and you are ceaselessly craving for a new
emotion.”

Abruptly the sibyl dropped on to a dark note.

“It will come. I see love here--love that you have never known yet.
There will be jealousy, intrigue--letters will pass--beware of the
written word----_Ah!_”

The exclamation was so sudden and so piercing that Elsie uttered a
stifled scream. But this time she was not rebuked.

Madame Clara, all at once, was calling out shrilly in a hard voice, an
indescribable blend of horror and excitement in her tone:

“Oh, God--what is it? Look--look, there in the crystal--what have you
done? There’s blood, and worse than blood! Oh, my God, what’s this?
It’s all over England--_you_--they’re talking about _you_----”

Irene Tidmarsh screamed wildly, and Elsie realised that she had sprung
to her feet. She herself was utterly unable to move, wave after wave of
sick terror surging through her as the high, unrecognisable voice of
the clairvoyante screeched and ranted, and then broke horribly.

“It’s blood! My God, get out of here! I won’t see any more--you’re all
over blood!...”

A strange, strangled cry, that Elsie did not recognise as having come
from her own lips, broke across the obscurity, the room surged round
her, she tried to clutch at the table, and felt herself falling heavily.

Elsie Williams had fainted.

She came back to a dazed memory of physical nausea, bewilderment, and
resentment, as she felt herself being unskilfully pulled into a sitting
position.

“Let go,” she muttered, “let me go....”

“She’s coming round! For Heaven’s sake, Elsie ... here, try and get
hold of her....”

She felt herself pulled and propelled to her feet, and even dragged a
few steps by inadequate supporters.

Then she sank down again, invaded by a renewal of deadly sickness,
but she was conscious that they had somehow got her outside the dark,
scented room, and that the door had been slammed behind her.

Very slowly her perceptions cleared, and she realised that Irene was
gripping her on one side, and the little hunch-backed girl holding a
futile hand beneath her elbow on the other.

With an effort, Elsie raised her head.

“Look here, old girl, are you better?” said Irene, low and urgently. “I
want to get out of here as quickly as possible. D’you think you can get
downstairs?”

Elsie, without clearly knowing why, was conscious that she, too, wanted
to get away.

She pulled herself to her feet, shuddering, and staggered down the
stairs, leaning heavily on Irene.

“What happened?”

“Oh, you just turned queer. Don’t think about it. Look here, we’d
better have a taxi, hadn’t we?”

“Yes. I couldn’t walk a step, that’s certain. Why, my knees are shaking
under me.”

“Go and get a taxi,” Irene commanded the hunch-backed child, who went
obediently away.

Elsie sat down on the lowest stair and wiped her wet, cold face with
her handkerchief.

“What made me go off like that, Ireen? That woman said something
beastly, didn’t she?”

“Oh she’s mad, that’s what she is. She suddenly started ranting, and
you got frightened, I suppose--and no wonder. Never mind, you’ll soon
be home now.”

It struck Elsie that Irene was looking at her in a strangely anxious
way, and that she was talking almost at random, as though to obliterate
the impression of what had passed at the _séance_.

Elsie herself could not remember clearly, but there was a lurking
horror at the back of her mind.

“What did she say?” she persisted feebly.

“Here’s the taxi!” cried Irene, in intense relief. “Here, get in,
Elsie. Thank you,” she added to the child. “Don’t wait, I’ll tell the
man where to go.”

She gave the driver Elsie’s address after the little girl had entered
the house again, and then climbed in beside her friend, drawing a long
breath.

“Thank the Lord! We got away pretty quickly, didn’t we? Well, it’s
the last time I’ll meddle with anything of that kind, I swear. I say,
Elsie, had we better stop at a chemist’s and get you something?”

“Yes--no. I don’t care. Ireen, I want to know what that woman said. It
was something awful about _me_, wasn’t it?”

“She had a--kind of fit, I think. I don’t believe she knew what she was
saying--she just screamed out a pack of nonsense. And you gave a yell,
and went down like a log. I can tell you, you’ve pretty nearly scared
the life out of me, young Elsie.”

Irene was indeed oddly white-faced and jerky. Her manner was as
unnatural as was her sudden volubility.

Elsie, still feeling weak and giddy, leant her head back and closed her
eyes. She felt quite unable to make the effort of remembering what had
happened at the clairvoyante’s house, and was moreover instinctively
aware that the recollection, when it did come, would bring dismay and
terror.

She and Irene Tidmarsh did not exchange a word until the taxi stopped.

“Here we are. You’d better pay him, Elsie. I’ll take the Tube from the
corner, and get home in half an hour.”

“Aren’t you coming in with me?” said Elsie, surprised.

“I don’t think I will. I’d rather get straight home.”

“Oh, do!” urged Elsie, half crying. She felt very much shaken. “I’m all
alone; Horace won’t be back till seven, and this has upset me properly.
Besides, I know I shall remember what it was that awful woman said in a
minute, and I’m frightened. You _must_ come in, Ireen.”

“I can’t,” repeated Irene, inexorably. “I ... really, I’d rather not,
Elsie.”

The door opened, and Irene turned rapidly and walked away down the
street.

Elsie tottered into the house.

“I’m ill,” she said abruptly to the servant. “I fainted while I was
out, and I feel like nothing on earth now. I shall go to bed.”

“Yes, ’m. Shall I go for a doctor, ’m?” said the girl zealously.

“No,” said Elsie sharply. “I don’t want a doctor. Telephone to Mr.
Williams at the office, Emma, and ask him to come home early. Say I’m
ill.”

“Yes, ’m.”

Elsie dragged herself upstairs and took off some of her clothes. She
was shivering violently, and presently pulled her blue cotton kimono
round her and slipped into bed. She lay there with closed eyes,
shuddering from time to time, until Emma brought up a cup of strong
tea. Elsie drank it avidly, lay down again and felt revived. Presently
she dozed.

The opening of the door roused her. It was nearly dark, but she knew
that it must be her husband, who never knocked before entering their
joint bedroom.

“What’s all this, Elsie?”

“I felt rotten,” she said wearily. “Turn on the light, Horace.”

He did so, and advanced towards the bed. His face wore an expression of
concern, and he walked on tiptoe.

“I fainted while I was out with Ireen,” Elsie explained, “and I was
simply ages coming to. We came back in a cab, and I must say Ireen’s
awfully selfish. She wouldn’t come in with me, though she must have
seen I wasn’t fit to be left--just turned and walked off. I’m done with
her, after this.”

“Where had you been?” enquired Williams quickly.

“Oh, just out.”

“Where to?”

“I suppose you’ll call me a fool, if I say it was to see one of those
clairvoyante women, someone Ireen had heard of. It was all Ireen’s
doing--she persuaded me to go.”

“Very silly of you both,” said the little solicitor coldly. “Did this
person upset you?”

“Yes. She had a sort of fit, I think, and called out a whole lot of
nonsense, only I can’t remember what it was.” Elsie moved uneasily.

“Where does she live?”

“Why?”

“She ought to be prosecuted for obtaining money under false pretences.
I suppose you gave her money?”

“Oh yes.”

“You’d better give me her name and address and I’ll see that she is
properly dealt with.”

“I’d rather not.”

Horace Williams shrugged his shoulders. “Well, you’d better get up and
come down to supper, hadn’t you? There’s no reason for lying in bed if
you’re not ill.”

“All right,” Elsie agreed sullenly.

Her husband never shouted at her or threatened her, but she was afraid
of him, and of a certain sinister dryness that characterised his manner
when he was displeased.

The dryness was there now.

Elsie spent the evening downstairs. Her husband read the newspaper,
and she turned over the pages of a fashion magazine listlessly. Her
thoughts, unwillingly enough, returned again and again to the scene in
the clairvoyante’s room, but still she could not remember the actual
words screamed out by Madame Clara before she had lost consciousness.
But she remembered quite well other words, that had preceded them.

“You are magnetic ... extraordinarily magnetic.... You are not
awake--your mind is asleep.... Now, you are bored, satiated. You are
ceaselessly craving for a new emotion....”

Elsie reflected how true this was.

She glanced distastefully at her elderly husband.

The bald patch glistened on the top of his head, and he was breathing
heavily as he read his newspaper.

He had always been rather distasteful to her physically, and although
the continuous, degradingly inevitable proximity of married life in
a small suburban villa had hardened her into indifference, Elsie was
still averse from the more intimate aspects of marriage with him.

She wished that she could fall in love, remembering that Madame Clara
had said: “I see love here--love that you have never known yet.”

“That’s bunkum,” thought Elsie. “I’ve been in love heaps of times--I
was in love with that doctor fellow, Woolley. It doesn’t last, that’s
all.”

She hardly ever met any men nowadays, as she resentfully reminded
herself.

The husbands of her married friends were at work all day, and if she
occasionally met them at their wives’ card-parties, they did not
interest her very greatly. Most of the wives distrusted the husbands
and gave them no opportunity for flirtation with other women. And
Horace Williams himself was a jealous man, always suspicious, and never
allowed his young wife to go anywhere with any man but himself.

Elsie had been for a long while in inward revolt against the dullness
of her life. She remembered with longing the old days of her girlhood,
when every walk had been the prelude to adventure, and the casual
kisses of unknown, or scarcely known, men had roused her to rapture.

Nowadays, she knew very well that she would be less easily satisfied.
The apathy that had been creeping over her ever since her marriage
had to a certain extent lessened the force of the animal magnetism by
which she had been able to lure the senses of almost every man she met,
and for the first time she was beginning to have doubts of her own
attractiveness.

Elsie gave a sigh that was almost a groan.

Williams neither stirred nor raised his eyes.

“I think I’ll retire to my little downy,” Elsie murmured, drearily
facetious.

“It’s only a quarter past nine.”

“Oh, well, we lead such a deliriously exciting life that I’d better get
some rest, hadn’t I?” she said ironically. “Just to make up for all the
late nights we have.”

At last her husband put down the paper and looked coldly at her through
his pince-nez. “What is it you want, Elsie? I work hard all day at the
office, and you have plenty of time and money for amusing yourself in
the daytime--and a strange use you seem to make of them, judging by
to-day’s performance. What more do you want?”

“I don’t know. We might go to the pictures sometimes, or to a play. I
hate not having anything to do.”

“That’s the complaint of every woman who hasn’t got children.”

“I can’t help it,” said Elsie angrily.

He said nothing, but continued to fix his eyes upon her, with his most
disagreeable expression.

“Good-night, Horace.”

“I shall come up to bed before you’re asleep,” he said meaningly.

She went out of the room.

The thought crossed her mind, as it had often done before, that she had
made a frightful mistake in marrying Horace Williams.

“I was only eighteen,” she thought, “I ought to have waited. Perhaps
he’ll die.”

As she undressed, Elsie idly imagined a drama of which she herself
would, of course, be the heroine.

Horace would be at the office, as usual, and a telephone message would
come through to say that he was ill--very ill indeed--he was dead.
Everyone would admire the young widow in her black, with her string of
pearl beads.... Horace would leave her quite a lot of money. Elsie knew
that he was rich, although he had never told her his income. She would
stay on in the villa, but people would come and see her--she would go
out and enjoy herself--enjoy life, once more....

Elsie sighed again as she got into bed.

Bored and exhausted, she fell asleep almost at once, to dream vividly.

In her dream, she stood outside a closed door, knowing that something
unspeakably horrid lay beyond it. Terror paralysed her. At last she
pushed at the door, but it would not yield more than an inch or two.
Something was behind it. She looked down and saw a dark stain spreading
round her feet, oozing from beneath the resistant door.

Screaming and sweating, Elsie woke up, and as she did so the
remembrance came back to her in full of everything that the
clairvoyante had said that morning.




II


“Hallo, Elsie!”

“Hallo, Geraldine!”

“You’re quite a stranger, aren’t you? I think it’s about a year since
we had the honour of seeing your majesty last.”

“Well, now I have come, aren’t you going to take the trouble to invite
me to come in?” asked Elsie good-humouredly.

“There’s a visitor of mine in the drawing-room.”

“Who is it? Aunt Ada?”

“No, not Aunt Ada, Miss Smarty. It’s a friend of mine, I tell you, who
I knew at the office during the war.”

“Well, you can introduce me to her, I suppose,” said Elsie carelessly.

She noticed that Geraldine’s hair was not, as it generally was, in
curling-pins, and that she was wearing a new dress, of an unbecoming
shade of emerald green. Geraldine always went wrong over her clothes,
Elsie reflected complacently. She herself wore a new black picture hat,
and it was partly from the desire to show herself in it that she had
come to her old home.

“Where’s mother?”

“Out.”

“What a mercy!”

Elsie walked into the familiar drawing-room, feeling glad that she no
longer lived at Hillbourne Terrace, under her mother’s dominion, and
forced to share a bedroom with the fretful Geraldine.

A young man of two- or three-and-twenty was sitting in the
drawing-room, and rose to his feet as Elsie and Geraldine came in.

“This is my sister, Mrs. Horace Williams. Elsie, this is my friend, Mr.
Morrison,” said Geraldine with pride.

Elsie was immediately conscious of a quickened interest. The young man
was of a type that appealed strongly to her; dark and tall, with very
brown eyes, and a wistful, ingenuous smile that was the more noticeable
because he was clean-shaven.

When they shook hands, she was conscious of the slight, unmistakable
thrill of mutual magnetism.

“I thought I was going to find a young lady in here, when Geraldine
told me she had a friend!” Elsie exclaimed, laughing.

“Sorry I’m a disappointment,” Mr. Morrison replied, also laughing.

“Oh, I didn’t say that. Only my sister doesn’t have gentlemen friends
as a rule,” Elsie declared innocently.

Geraldine’s sallow face flushed. “You don’t know much about it, do
you, considering that we never see you nowadays. I’m not one for
talking much about my own affairs, either, so far as I’m aware. It’s a
misfortune, really, to be as reserved as I am. I often wish I wasn’t!”

It was unprecedented, in Elsie’s experience, to hear Geraldine setting
forth a claim, however obliquely, to be considered interesting. Elsie
looked at her in astonishment.

“She must be gone on this fellow,” she thought, and without the
slightest compunction she immediately put forth all her own powers to
attract Morrison’s notice and admiration to herself.

The task proved to be as easy as it was congenial. In a very little
while, Elsie and young Morrison were talking and joking together, and
it was only an occasional, spasmodic, and quite evidently conscientious
effort from Morrison that from time to time caused Geraldine to be
included in the conversation.

Morrison told Elsie that he travelled for a big firm of silk merchants
in the City, and was very little in London.

“How did you and Geraldine meet, then? I thought you were in the same
office as her during the war,” said Elsie sharply.

“Just for six months I was, and then I got this job in the place of
a man who’d joined up. I was under age for joining up myself, worse
luck,” said the youth.

Then he must be younger than she was herself, Elsie reflected,
surprised. She felt oddly touched by the thought.

She looked at Morrison, and found that he was looking at her with
admiration evident in his dark eyes.

Elsie allowed her eyes to dwell for a second on his before she broke
the momentary silence. “What about tea, Geraldine?”

“All right,” said her sister sulkily. “Where’s the hurry?”

It was already half-past four, but Elsie guessed that Geraldine did not
want to go and fetch the tea and leave her alone with Morrison.

“No hurry, I suppose,” she cried gaily, “but I’m a bit tired, that’s
all, and I thought I’d like a nice cup of tea. It’s a good long way to
come, and the Tube was pretty full.”

“Where did you come from?” Morrison asked eagerly.

She named the suburb. “You must come and look us up one day, Mr.
Morrison. My husband is a solicitor, and he’s always at home on
Saturdays and Sundays. The rest of the week I’m by myself and ever so
lonely,” sighed Elsie.

“I’d love to come. I should--er--like to meet Mr. Williams,” said
Morrison solemnly.

“Here’s Mother!” Geraldine announced sharply, as a door banged
downstairs.

Mrs. Palmer came in, breathing heavily, her hands full of parcels.

“Elsie! Dear me, this _is_ a surprise. Good afternoon, Mr. Morrison,
how are you? Quite well, thank you, but for Anno Domini, that’s all
that’s the matter with me.” She dropped into a chair.

“Where’s tea?”

“I’ll get it up,” said Geraldine.

“Go and give her a hand,” Mrs. Palmer calmly directed young Morrison.
“My gurl is out. They’re all the same, nowadays--always out, never in.”

“_I_ never have any trouble with servants,” Elsie murmured.

She was annoyed that her mother should thus dismiss Morrison, and that
he should meekly prepare to obey her.

He opened the door for Geraldine and went out behind her, and Elsie
heard her sister talking animatedly as they went downstairs.

“What’s come over Geraldine?” she coldly enquired.

“Why should anything have come over her, as you call it? Geraldine’s
a gurl like you are, I’d have you remember, and a very much better
one than you’ve ever been, to her widowed mother. You mind your own
business, Elsie.”

“That’s a nice way to speak to me, when I haven’t been at home for I
don’t know how long.”

“And whose fault has that been?” enquired Mrs. Palmer. “Not but what
I’m always pleased to see you, Elsie, as I’ve told you time and time
again, and Mr. Williams too--Horace, I should say--if he cares to come.
But don’t you go interfering with Geraldine’s friends.”

“Is this fellow a friend of hers?”

“Of course he is. They’ve been going together for some time now.”

“I suppose she’s not engaged?”

“No, she’s not engaged,” Mrs. Palmer reluctantly conceded. “But I’m
free to confess that I hope she will be. This Leslie Morrison is a nice
fellow, as steady as can be.”

Elsie reflected that Leslie was a lovely name.

“Now, Elsie,” said her mother warningly, “I know what you are, and I
give you fair notice that I won’t have any of your goings-on. You’ll
remember that you’re a married woman, if you please, and just behave
yourself. Any of your old tricks, my lady, and I shall drop the hint to
Horace. Him and me knew one another before ever he set eyes on you.”

“All the more reason for not making mischief between us now. He’s
jealous enough as it is, making a fuss of anyone so much as looks the
same side of the room as I happen to be.”

“I don’t blame him,” said Mrs. Palmer curtly. “You’re a caution, you
are, and always have been. I don’t mind telling you that I never was
more thankful in my life than to get you safely married. And don’t you
go casting sheep’s eyes at poor Geraldine’s fellow, for I tell you I
won’t have it.”

Elsie laughed scornfully. She was secretly flattered at the alarm that
was conveyed by Mrs. Palmer’s reiterated cautions.

“What should I want with a boy like him? He must be six years younger
than Geraldine, at the very least.”

“Nothing of the kind. And if he was, it wouldn’t matter. It’s the first
time anyone has looked like business, where Geraldine’s concerned, and
with you off my hands I can afford to make things a bit easy for her.
She’s been a good daughter to me, has Geraldine,” said Mrs. Palmer with
a significant emphasis.

“Well, I’m sure I don’t want to stand in her way,” Elsie declared
contemptuously.

“Anyone less selfish than you are, Elsie, would offer to help things on
a bit. I can’t be for ever asking him here, and he’s not got the money
to take her out a great deal. Why don’t you get them to meet at your
place?”

“Perhaps I will,” said Elsie slowly.

She was rather silent during tea, mentally reviewing her mother’s
suggestion from various angles.

Leslie Morrison definitely attracted her. She asked him how long he was
to remain in London.

“Not long, Mrs. Williams. I’m doing Bristol and Gloucestershire next
week, and then I’m taking my holiday.”

“Where are you going for that?” Mrs. Palmer enquired.

“I haven’t made up my mind. Anywhere near the sea is good enough for
me.”

“My husband and I are thinking of Torquay,” Elsie said. “We’ve been
wondering if you’d care to come along, Geraldine. I suppose Mother
wants to stew on in London, as per usual.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Palmer assented complacently. She looked at her
younger daughter with approval. It was the first time, actually, that
Elsie had ever invited Geraldine to spend a holiday with her.

“Torquay is a first-rate place,” declared Leslie Morrison
enthusiastically. “I was there once on business, and I quite made up my
mind to return one day.”

“Thanks very much, Elsie,” Geraldine said rather coldly. “It’s a long
journey, isn’t it, and I’m a wretched traveller, as you know.”

“Please yourself. Horace wants a thorough change, and we’re sick of
Wales. We’ve been there every year ever since we were married.”

“Come, I don’t suppose that makes much of a total, does it?” Morrison
gallantly remarked, looking at Elsie.

“More than you’d think for, perhaps. I was caught young--eighteen, if
you want to know.”

“Elsie,” said her mother abruptly, “have you been to see your aunties
lately?”

She directed the conversation so that no more personalities were
possible, until Elsie rose and said good-bye.

“Allow me,” said Morrison, as he helped her to put on her coat.

Elsie fumbled for the sleeve-hole until she felt the guiding pressure
of his fingers on her arm.

“Thanks ever so much. Well, good-bye, Mr. Morrison. Let me know if you
come up our way any time.”

“I ... I hope you’re going to let me see you to your ’bus,” he said
rather awkwardly.

“Really, there’s no need--I couldn’t think of troubling you.”

Elsie took no pains to hide that her protest was a purely conventional
one.

“Put on your hat, Geraldine, and go with them. A walk’ll do you good,”
urged Mrs. Palmer.

But Geraldine, as she frequently did, had turned sulky. “I’ve got
something to do upstairs,” she muttered, and disappeared.

It was exactly like Geraldine, Elsie thought, to cut off her nose just
to spite her face. Not that it could have made any difference if she
had succeeded in preventing that brief walk taken by Leslie Morrison
and Elsie Williams.

Elsie knew, beyond any possibility of mistake, the very first moment at
which a spark from her own personality had lit the flame destined to
burn more or less fiercely in that of another.

But this time she experienced an odd excitement that held in it
something new.

She wondered, rather wistfully, whether this was because it was such
a long while since she had had any opportunity of talking to a man
other than her husband or one of his elderly married acquaintances.
Her conversation with Morrison did no more than skirt the edge
of personalities that were implied, rather than spoken. Yet when
they parted Elsie knew, and knew that Morrison knew, that each was
determined to see the other again. She travelled home in a dream,
and hardly heard her husband’s vexed enquiry as to the reason of her
lateness.

Williams had always shown a very strong conviction that it was a wife’s
duty invariably to be at home in time to welcome her husband’s return
from business.

“I’ve been to Hillbourne Terrace.”

“H’m. You’ve made yourself very smart. That hat suits you, Elsie.”

He so seldom paid a compliment that Elsie was astonished, and ran to
look at herself in the mirror over the dining-room sideboard.

It was the hat, was it?

Her full face was softly flushed, and her eyes looked bigger and darker
than usual. Elsie saw her own closed mouth break into an involuntary
smile as she gazed at her reflection. She went up to her room singing
softly.

Two days later Leslie Morrison came to see her.

“I hope you won’t think I’m taking a liberty. Knowing your people so
well, it seemed quite natural, like, to take advantage of your kind
invitation.”

“That’s right,” Elsie encouraged him.

She hardly knew what she was saying, but already their intercourse
seemed to be on a plane where conventional interchanges of words were
unnecessary.

Although it was only the second time they had met, Morrison told her a
great deal about himself, and Elsie listened, with a growing, tremulous
tenderness.

He went away before her husband came in, and Elsie underwent a
momentary, essentially superficial, reaction.

“I’m getting soppy about that boy--that’s what I’m doing! Just
because he’s got a pair of eyes like--like I don’t know what. Him and
Geraldine! It’s too ridiculous. Why, he’s younger even than me.”

She reflected that if Morrison, indeed, had been a year or two older,
he would certainly have kissed her by this time. But it was quite
evident to her that such an idea had never even crossed his mind. He
viewed her with obvious admiration, and with great respect.

The next day Elsie bought a book of poems, about which Morrison had
told her. She read some of them, and it seemed to her that she had a
new understanding of a form of expression which had never made the
least appeal to her before.

“I’m a fool!” Elsie told herself in astonishment, but with an ominous
sensation of strange, new emotions, softer than any she had yet known,
taking possession of her life. She felt that she would like to give
the book to Morrison as a present, but they had made no definite
arrangement for meeting again, and she could not bring herself to send
it by post. Restlessness possessed her.

It was a relief when one evening her husband began to speak of their
summer holiday.

“We can start on Tuesday, like we planned. Cleaver gets back on Monday
morning, and the sooner we get to the sea in this weather, the better.
It won’t last.”

“It might. September can be a ripping month sometimes,” said Elsie
dreamily.

“That’s your experience, is it? Well, it’s not mine. I only hope
we shan’t have a rainy spell as we did last year, and sit in an
everlasting sitting-room without so much as a book to look at.”

Elsie shuddered at the recollection. She and Horace had quarrelled
incessantly throughout their last holiday.

“Is your sister coming with us?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’ll be better than nobody. She’ll be somebody for you to go
with to those picture-houses that you’re so fond of. But it’s a pity
that girl hasn’t got a sensible husband. We might get a decent game of
bridge, then.”

“It’s a pity you haven’t got any men friends,” Elsie retorted. “I never
knew anybody like you for that.”

Williams did not answer, but he turned upon his wife a look, peculiar
to himself, that always vaguely frightened her. It held not only utter
contempt, but something of quiet, unspecified menace.

She hastily spoke again. “Geraldine’s got a--a young fellow that she
thinks is going with her now. A boy called Morrison.”

“Is he coming to Torquay?”

It was Horace Williams’ own matter-of-course tone in making the
suggestion that suddenly filled Elsie with a frantic determination to
see it carried out.

“Yes, most likely he is. So you’ll get your bridge, I daresay, and
there’ll be somebody to take us to the pictures of an evening.”

As Elsie said the words, her heart seemed to herself suddenly to leap
against her side, as though in anticipation of a joy almost too great
to be borne.

She lay awake most of that night, revolving schemes by which Leslie
Morrison could be brought to Torquay without letting Williams know that
it was Elsie who had originated the idea.

Although formerly she had been as much flattered as irritated by her
husband’s suspicious jealousy, it seemed to Elsie now to be of the
utmost importance that he should not look upon Morrison in any other
light than that of Geraldine’s friend. She wondered if she could induce
Geraldine herself to suggest that Morrison should come to Torquay,
but decided that it was unlikely. Finally, after a great deal of
deliberation, Elsie next day wrote a note to the young man:

  “DEAR MR. MORRISON,

  “If not otherwise engaged, we shall be pleased if you will come to
  tea on Saturday afternoon. It will be the last time for some weeks we
  shall be at home, as we go to Torquay on the Tuesday. My sister, Miss
  Palmer, is coming with us. Why not join the party, as you say you
  would like to visit Torquay again?!!!

                                           “Yours sincerely,
                                                        “E. WILLIAMS.”

Elsie thought about this note incessantly after it was written and
posted, and awaited the reply with proportionate excitement.

It came by return of post:

  “MY DEAR MRS. WILLIAMS,

  “Very many thanks indeed for your most kind invitation to tea.
  Unfortunately I am not able to avail myself of it, as am already
  engaged to go to Hillbourne Terrace. The suggestion about me going to
  Torquay is simply great--that is, if you really meant it! I intend
  talking it over with your sister when we meet on Saturday.

  “Believe me, with kind regards,

                                      “Yours very sincerely,
                                                   “LESLIE M. MORRISON.”

Elsie came downstairs earlier than usual in order to conceal her letter
before Williams should ask to see it, as he invariably did with his
wife’s correspondence.

She put it in her pocket, and kept it there all day. On Saturday she
wanted very much to go to Hillbourne Terrace, but Williams was at home,
and on such occasions he never expected his wife to go out except with
him. They spent the afternoon drearily enough, Williams reading the
newspaper, and Elsie pretending to sew, and in reality wholly occupied
with speculations as to how Geraldine would receive Leslie Morrison’s
suggestion.

She felt pretty certain that Mrs. Palmer, at all events, would be in
favour of it. “If only he has the sense to make it sound as if it came
from him, and not from me!” thought Elsie.

She had felt confident of receiving another letter from Morrison before
starting for Torquay, but to her dismay there was no word, either from
him or from Geraldine, and on the eve of departure she still did not
know whether or not her scheme had succeeded. For the first time, she
heartily wished that there had been a telephone in her mother’s house.

On the morning of their journey the weather changed and became
suddenly sultry. The train was crowded and unbearably hot.

Geraldine was to meet them at the station, and the fact that she
arrived late made Horace Williams angry, in his own unpleasant, silent
way. There was only one empty seat in the railway carriage, which
Elsie at once took, and Williams and Geraldine were forced to stand
in the corridor, already strewn with hand baggage and full of heated,
perspiring people.

The train ran from London to Taunton without a stop, and at the end of
two hours Williams forced his way into the carriage and spoke quietly
to his wife.

“Here, Elsie, give me your place for a little while. One of my boots is
hurting, and I can’t stand any longer. Go and take your turn for a bit.”

Elsie joined Geraldine in the corridor without demur. There were
certain tones in Horace Williams’ voice that she had learnt to obey.
Geraldine, her face pallid and shiny with heat, her tight blue cloth
dress looking as though it constricted even her narrow chest and
shoulders, was sitting in an uncomfortable, crouching position on a
roll of rugs.

Both she and Elsie had removed their hats, and while Elsie’s hair
dropped naturally into soft, flattened curls and rings, Geraldine’s
clung damply in straight, short wisps to her neck and forehead, and
she constantly raised her hand to push away, quite ineffectually, a
straggling end that immediately fell down again.

“Hell, I call this,” she remarked shortly, as Elsie, stumbling over
bags and packages and the feet of other passengers, reached her side
and propped herself up against the side of the swaying train.

“You’re a nice one to take on a holiday, I must say,” Elsie retorted,
but without acrimony. She felt that nothing would really matter if she
could once get the assurance that she craved.

“Horace is in a foul temper. He never can stand the hot weather. I’m
sure I hope it’ll be cooler at the sea than what it is here. Have you
brought a new bathing costume, Geraldine?”

“M’m. A blue one, with a decent skirt--not one of those horrible
skin-tight things you see in the picture papers. Improper, I call them.”

“You couldn’t be improper if you tried,” said Elsie cryptically.
“Besides, there’ll be nobody to go in the water with you except me.
Horace never bathes--makes him turn green, or something.”

She eyed her sister carefully as she spoke. Something in the wariness
of Geraldine’s return glance gave her a rising hope.

“I’m sure I wish we were going to have someone we knew there. Horace
would be much easier to keep in a decent temper if he had another man
to go with sometimes.”

Then Geraldine spoke. “That boy Leslie Morrison said something about
coming down one day this week, and spending part of his holiday at
Torquay. He was awfully keen I should go and stay with his mother, near
Bristol, too.”

“Was he? Well, you could do that later,” said Elsie. She was
nearly breathless with triumph, but strove to make her voice sound
matter-of-fact. “But I hope to goodness he will come to Torquay. It’ll
make all the difference to Horace.”

Geraldine sneered. “I daresay you think it’ll make all the difference
to you, too. It’s anything in trousers with you, old girl, whether the
fellow belongs to another girl or not. But I’m not afraid of anything
of that sort while Horace is about. He knows how to keep you in order,
as Mother said.”

“I’ll thank you, and Mother too, to keep your opinion of me till it’s
asked for.” Elsie, however, spoke mechanically.

She had immediately become obsessed by visions of herself and Morrison,
walking, swimming, sitting beside one another on the sands, or in the
intimate closeness and darkness of the picture palace....

“I’ll just tell you this, young Elsie. Leslie Morrison isn’t the sort
of fellow you’ve been used to--not like Johnnie Osborne, and that
truck. And as for carrying on with a married woman--why, he’d be
ashamed to think of such a thing.”

Elsie smiled, and said nothing. She hardly heard what her sister was
saying.

A hand laid upon her shoulder made her jump violently.

“Are you in the moon, Elsie? I’ve been making signs to you for ten
minutes, I should think. It’s more than time we had our sandwiches,”
said Horace Williams querulously.

“Oh, all right.”

By tugging and pulling at piled-up packages, they succeeded in getting
hold of the basket in which Elsie had packed ham sandwiches, seed-cake,
and bananas.

The train sped onwards....




III


The Williamses and Geraldine stayed in a boarding-house that proudly
advertised itself as being situated “right on the front,” and young
Morrison had a room in an apartment house, much cheaper and more
remote, half-way up one of Torquay’s steepest hills. He arranged to
have all his meals except breakfast at the boarding-house.

The weather was very hot, and sunny, and breathless.

Elsie felt as though she had never lived before. Every morning she
came downstairs, her face sunburnt and glowing, but never unbecomingly
freckled, her open-necked, short-sleeved blouses and jumpers
indefinably smart and well put on, her undependable and essentially
variable good looks seeming always to increase.

She was greatly admired in the boarding-house, and Williams for the
first time did not appear to resent this.

He had suddenly become absorbed in a new and obscure digestive
complaint, and would discuss the subject endlessly with his neighbours
at meal-times. An elderly widow without any companion took a fancy to
Geraldine, and as she sometimes gave her presents of clothes, or took
her for a drive, Geraldine always sat next to her at the long table in
the dining-room, and listened to her with a fair pretence of amiability.

Breakfast was a long, hot, abundant meal. The boarding-house knew its
_clientèle_ and catered for it according to the views of business men
who never allowed themselves to eat as much as they would have liked
on week-day mornings during all the rest of the year. Tea and coffee,
eggs and bacon, and fish and sausages were provided, toast and jam and
marmalade and potted meat.

Elsie, who never ate anything but bread-and-butter with jam, and drank
innumerable cups of tea, at her own home, enjoyed the novel fare
because it was novel, and because she had not bought and ordered it
herself, and because she was living in a haze of happiness that made
everything enjoyable.

The prophecy of the clairvoyante had come true. Elsie knew the love
that she had never yet known.

Every morning they went down to the sands and met Leslie Morrison
there. They sat in deck chairs, and ate fruit from paper bags, and
listened to a pierrot entertainment. At midday Elsie and Geraldine ran
back to the boarding-house, undressed, and put on their bathing-suits,
and came back to find Morrison already in the water and Horace Williams
asleep in his deck-chair behind a newspaper.

Elsie’s bathing-dress was blue, trimmed with white braid, and she wore
a rubber cap with a blue-and-red handkerchief knotted over it. Her bare
legs and arms and neck had tanned very slightly; Geraldine’s showed
scarlet patches of sunburn.

As they joined Morrison in the water, both girls always screamed,
clinging to one another’s hands. But once the water was high above
their waists, Elsie, a naturally strong swimmer, struck out boldly,
consciously enjoying the cold water and the exercise of her muscles.
Geraldine, of poor physique and defective circulation, only bobbed up
and down in the shallows, still uttering staccato shrieks.

At first, Elsie and Morrison would keep near her, swimming short
distances, and then returning, or splashing beside her in shallow
water, but sooner or later they would both strike out, swimming side by
side. They spoke very little.

“I say, you swim simply splendidly, Mrs. Williams. Why, I’ve never seen
a girl swim as well as you do.”

“D’you think so? It’s nice, isn’t it?”

“It’s ripping. I’ve never had a holiday like this one--I mean, one that
I’ve enjoyed so much.”

“Neither have I.”

“I hadn’t looked forward to my holiday a bit this year. I never thought
it would be anything like this. I didn’t know that anything in the
world----”

It was always Elsie who suggested that it was time to go back.

“Geraldine’s gone out already. She turns a funny colour if she stays in
too long.”

Once, when they were rather further out than usual, Elsie said that she
was getting tired.

“Put your hand on my shoulder--I’ll help you. Yes, do.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t.”

“Yes, you must.”

“Well, if you are sure you don’t mind....”

“_Mind!_”

His voice was very eloquent, and Elsie was abundantly satisfied.

She laid her hand upon his shoulder, and kept it there after her feet
touched the sandy bottom once more and they were almost out of the
water.

They raced to the bath-towel cloak that she had left under the wall,
and as she put it round her Elsie said, without looking at him and in a
peculiar tone:

“Did you enjoy it?”

“I loved it,” Morrison replied very low, and after a moment he added:

“Better than any of our other bathes.”

Elsie had never before conducted any one of her numerous love-affairs
in a key so reticent, and the very novelty of the experience rendered
it strange and precious.

Subconsciously, they might both be waiting for the spoken word, but on
the surface each was supremely contented in the present.

The presence of Geraldine did not disturb Elsie in the least. Geraldine
had been jealous of her intermittently ever since the days of their
earliest childhood, and her manifestations of temper were always
latent, rather than active. Elsie was used to them, and indifferent to
them.

Besides, Leslie Morrison was always very nice to Geraldine. He
sat between the sisters at the entertainments to which they went
frequently, he gave chocolates and sweets to Geraldine oftener than to
Elsie, and he was always ready to talk of Geraldine’s favourite topic,
the old days in the office.

Only his dark eyes sought Elsie’s face with increasing frequency, his
pleasant young voice altered slightly and indescribably when he found
himself alone with her.

It seemed part of the magic of those enchanted days that Geraldine
should make no scene, Horace Williams appear to perceive nothing.

On Sunday evening a band played in the public gardens. They decided to
go and hear it.

Then Williams developed his mysterious symptoms, and refused to come
out.

“You girls can go with Morrison. I shall take a glass of boiling water
with peppermint,” he declared, “and go to bed. I’m in agony.”

“Would you like me to stay with you?” Elsie asked, her heart sinking.

“No, no, go and enjoy yourself.”

“Perhaps you’ll feel better in a bit, and come and join us,” she
suggested, and thankfully made her escape.

The gardens were lit with Japanese lanterns and crowded with
holiday-makers. Pale frocks and scarves flickered oddly in and out of
the shadows and beyond the bright circle of glaring white light thrown
out from the raised and roofed circular platform of the bandstand.

“No hope of chairs, I suppose,” said Geraldine disconsolately. “We’re
late, thanks to Horace. Just look at the people.”

Morrison volunteered to try and find a seat, and they watched his tall
figure disappear into the throng of people.

“I shall be sick if I have to stand for long, that’s certain,” declared
Geraldine. “I believe the sun was too hot for me this afternoon. My
head’s splitting.”

“Take off your hat, why don’t you?”

Elsie’s own hair was only covered with a blue motor veil, knotted at
either ear, and with floating ends.

“My hair would be all over the place. I like to look tidy, thank you.”

“Please yourself,” said Elsie indifferently. She was absorbed in
watching for the first glimpse of Morrison returning to them.

When she caught sight of him, elbowing his way through the crowd, it
actually seemed to her as though the heart in her body leaped forward
to meet him.

As usual, his eyes sought Elsie’s and held them for an instant before
he turned to Geraldine.

“There’s one chair there. I’ve taken it, and a fellow is kindly keeping
it for me. I thought you and your sister could take it in turns to sit
down.”

“I don’t know....” Geraldine began ungraciously.

“It’s quite a good place, and nice-looking people on either side. The
chap that’s keeping it for us seemed very decent.”

“Oh, go on, Geraldine!” said Elsie. “Hark, they are beginning again.”

The band had struck into a selection from a popular musical comedy.

Leslie Morrison put his arm beneath the girl’s elbow, and they moved
away, Geraldine still grumbling sub-audibly.

Elsie, motionless, waited.

Never before in her life had she known this ecstasy of anticipation, so
poignant as to be almost indistinguishable from pain.

When Leslie came back to her, she thought that she must fall, and
instinctively caught at his arm for support.

Without speaking, he drew her away from the ring of light, into the
deep shadow of a clump of trees. She stumbled against something in the
sudden obscurity, and discerned the low railing that separated the
ornamental shrubs and flower-beds from the crowded gravel paths.

“Come,” said Leslie’s voice in her ear, hoarsely. They stepped together
over the little railing on to the grass. Another few steps, and they
were in an isolation as complete as though a curtain had fallen between
them and the seething mass of talking, laughing, swaying people in the
gardens.

Even the sound of the band only reached them faintly as though from a
great distance.

Leslie Morrison halted abruptly, and they faced one another, their eyes
already accustomed to the semi-darkness.

By an impulse as inevitable as it was irresistible, they were in one
another’s arms.

Neither spoke a word whilst that long throbbing embrace endured.

Through Elsie’s whole being flashed the wordless conviction: “_This_ is
what I’ve been waiting for....”

“Elsie,” whispered the man. “Elsie ... Elsie ... Elsie ... I love you!”

“I love you,” she whispered back again.

They stood clinging to one another, entwined, the hot summer darkness
encompassing them.

“What shall we do?” Morrison murmured at last. “I have no right to say
a word to you, Elsie--I never meant to.”

“What does it matter?” said Elsie recklessly. “Horace and I have never
been happy together. I ought never to have married him. It’s you I
belong to.”

“My darling ... my sweetheart.”

They kissed passionately, again and again.

“What are we going to do?”

Elsie pressed closer and closer against him. “Forget everything, as
long as this holiday lasts, except that we can be together. It’s been
so heavenly, Leslie! We can settle--something--later on, when it’s all
over.”

“I can’t let you go back to that man again. It would drive me mad.”

“Take me away with you,” she whispered.

“Oh, if I could ... if I only could, little girl!”

They spoke as lovers talk, ardently, and tenderly, and with long
silences.

A sudden surging movement, and the distant sound of the National
Anthem, penetrated at last to them through the darkness.

“It’s all over!” Morrison cried, aghast. “Your sister?...”

“I’ll manage her,” said Elsie. “Leslie ... once more....”

Her mouth found his, and then she tore herself out of his arms.

“Come with me.”

Rapidly Elsie found her way to the little pay-desk outside the
enclosure, in which the lights were already being extinguished.

“She’s bound to come out this way.”

They waited, Elsie’s eyes at first dazzled, striving to find her
sister’s form in the crowd. Every fibre of her being was acutely aware
of the presence of Leslie Morrison, standing just behind her, so that
her shoulder touched his breast.

Without turning her head she put out her hand, and felt it clasped in
his and held tightly.

Her senses swam, and it was Geraldine’s own voice that first warned her
of her sister’s approach.

To her relief, Geraldine was talking to a strange young man.

“Good-night,” she said amiably.

“Good-night, and thanks so much for a pleasant evening,” he returned,
raising his soft hat.

Elsie compelled herself to speak. “Have you met a friend?” she
enquired, with simulated interest.

“Hallo! Where have you been, I should like to know? Isn’t it
funny?--that’s a fellow who was at our place for nearly a month during
the war. Belcher, his name is. He was the very one that kept the chair
for me. Did you two get seats somewhere else?”

“Yes,” said Elsie swiftly.

“It was good, wasn’t it--the band I mean? Horace has missed something
by staying at home.”

Geraldine was evidently, and contrary to her wont, in high good humour.

They walked back to the boarding-house, Leslie Morrison between the two
girls, Geraldine openly hanging on to his arm. His other hand was out
of sight in his pocket, Elsie’s warm, soft fingers locked in his.

At the door they parted.

“Good-night and sweet repose,” said Geraldine indifferently, but she
waited for her sister to precede her into the lighted house.

Elsie moved in a dream. It startled her when Geraldine, looking
curiously at her under the glare of the electric light in the hall,
said suddenly:

“What’s the matter with you, Elsie? You look moon-struck, and your
hair’s all over the place, half down your back.”

“Is it?” Elsie put up her hands and pushed up the soft, loose mass
under her veil again. “I’m going to bed,” she said, in a voice that
sounded oddly in her own ears. “Tell Horace, will you? I’ve a splitting
head.”

She felt an unutterable longing to be in the dark, and alone with her
new and overwhelming bliss.

“You’re a nice one, I must say, leaving me alone all the evening, and
then dashing off upstairs the minute we get in. I should think Horace
would find something to say to you----”

Elsie neither heard nor heeded.

She ran upstairs and into the small double bedroom. It contained two
beds, and for the first time since their marriage she and Horace had
occupied separate ones.

To-night Elsie felt that she could never be thankful enough for the
comparative solitude that would enable her to feel herself free again.

She tore off her thin summer clothes, shook down her cloud of hair,
ran across the room in her nightdress to snap off the light, and then
almost threw herself into bed.

In the blessed darkness, Elsie lay with hands clasped over her
throbbing heart, and relived every instant of the evening, thrilling to
a happiness so intense that she felt as though she must die of it.

She was perfectly incapable just then of looking beyond the immediate
present and the glorious certainty of seeing Leslie Morrison again in
the morning.

Although Elsie had been attracted, in a sensual and superficial manner,
by a number of men, she had never in her life loved before, and the
passion for Morrison that had suddenly swept into her life held all the
force of a long repressed element violently and unexpectedly liberated.

Body, soul and spirit, she was obsessed almost to madness by this young
man, several years her junior, whom she had not known a month.

When Horace Williams came up to bed it was nearly midnight, and Elsie,
her face half buried under the sheet, pretended to be asleep.




IV


The love-affair of Elsie Williams and Leslie Morrison swept on its
course, and in the early days of their madness neither of them paused
for an instant to count its possible cost.

It seemed, indeed, as though Fate were deliberately simplifying their
way.

Horace Williams appeared unable to give his attention to anything
beyond his newly-discovered digestive trouble, and remained
constantly indoors through the hottest and finest of the summer days,
experimenting upon himself with drugs, and studying tables of dietetic
values. He questioned Elsie very little as to her movements, taking it
for granted that she, Morrison, and Geraldine formed a trio.

In point of fact, the youth whom Geraldine had met at the Sunday
evening concert, and whom she spoke of as Percy Belcher, now almost
always made a fourth in the party.

Geraldine monopolised him eagerly, and openly showed her triumph at
feeling that she could now afford to relinquish Leslie Morrison.

Elsie and Morrison went swimming together, and lay on the hot,
crowded sands, and dropped behind the others when they all went for
walks, and sat with locked hands and her cheek against his shoulder
in the stifling, thrilling darkness of the picture theatre, watching
together the representation of a love that was never anything but the
reflection of their own, the eternal triumph of a Man and a Woman, pale
representatives on the screen of Elsie Williams and Leslie Morrison.

The golden fortnight drew to its close, and with the end of the Torquay
holiday, it suddenly seemed to Elsie as though the end of the world
must come.

“What are we to do, Leslie?” she gasped.

“I don’t know, darling,” he said miserably.

“You’re going to be in town for a bit?”

“For a little while. They’re sending me off again, pretty soon--abroad
this time.”

“I can’t live without seeing you sometimes. Oh, Les, how can I go back
to the old life with Horace after _this_?”

“Elsie,” said Morrison very low, “would he divorce you if----?”

“Not a hope. It costs money, and he’s too mean. Besides, he’d never do
it if he thought I wanted it. He’s cruel, is Horace.”

“Not to you?”

“He doesn’t knock me about, if that’s what you mean--he knows I
wouldn’t stand it--but of course he doesn’t care for me, or for anybody
but himself. I was told he gave his first a rotten time--anyway, I
know she used to look wretched enough. You know there was a first Mrs.
Williams?”

“No, I didn’t. Of course, I saw he was much older than you. Oh, Elsie,
whatever made you marry him?”

“Oh, I was a fool and I thought I’d like to be married, and get away
from home. I didn’t know what it was going to be like, that’s certain.
Oh, Les, fancy if I was still Elsie Palmer, and you and me could get
married!” She gave a sob.

“Don’t, sweetheart! I’d have asked for your promise, fast enough, if
you’d been free, but I couldn’t marry any girl till I’m earning a bit
more.”

“Don’t you get a good screw, Leslie?”

“Rotten. But I’m jolly lucky to be in a job at all these days, I
suppose.”

“Lucky!” Elsie echoed the word drearily. “You and I aren’t amongst the
lucky ones, boy. I don’t see how things are ever going to come right
for us, without a miracle happens.”

“He--Williams--may ... he may die.”

“Not he!” said Elsie bitterly. “There’s nothing the matter with him.
All this talk about indigestion is stuff and nonsense--just fads he’s
got into his head. There’s nothing wrong with Horace. And it’s always
the ones who aren’t wanted that live on and on. But how am I going to
bear it, after this wonderful time we’ve been having?” She began to cry.

“Elsie, don’t, darling! I’ll think of a way. There must be some way
out.”

Leslie took her in his arms and she forgot everything else.

On the last evening they all went to the theatre together, and it was
there, for the first time seeming awake to the situation, that Horace
Williams, sitting at the end of the row of stalls, suddenly leaned
across Geraldine and looked long and balefully at his wife.

She felt herself changing colour.

Morrison, however, observed nothing. He talked only to Elsie, looked
only at her during the interval, and whilst the play was in progress
and the lights in the theatre lowered, his hand sought and held hers.

“Elsie, we can’t part like this. How can I see you alone?”

“We can’t--not here. But Horace starts at the office again on
Wednesday, and he’s there all day. Come to the house.”

“It means an age without seeing you. Elsie, can I write to you?”

“Yes ... no....” She was startled. “Oh, Les, darling, I’d love your
letters!... But he’d see them. Wait a minute.”

She thought rapidly.

“Address them to the post-office--I’ll call there. He doesn’t know or
care what I do all day, so long as I’m always there in the evenings
when he gets back.”

But Elsie was to find herself mistaken. Her husband, after their return
to the suburban villa, displayed a very unmistakable interest in her
movements during the hours of his absence at work.

He obliged her to give him an account of her day, and took to ringing
her up on the telephone for no acknowledged reason, and always at a
different hour.

At first, Elsie cared little. She and Leslie Morrison met daily, and
on one occasion spent the afternoon in the country together. Elsie
recklessly telephoned to her own house at seven o’clock that evening,
and said that she was with Irene Tidmarsh, and should not come home
that night.

“You must,” said the hollow voice at the other end of the line.

“I can’t. Her father’s awfully ill, and she’s afraid of being left.”

“When shall you be home?”

“To-morrow.”

“I’ll come and fetch you.”

“All right,” said Elsie boldly. “What time?”

There was no answer. Williams had rung off.

Elsie knew, beyond the possibility of mistake, that her husband
suspected her; but in the intense excitement that possessed her she was
conscious of nothing so much as of relief that a crisis should be at
hand.

She spent the night with Leslie Morrison at a tiny hotel in Essex.

Early next morning they travelled back to London, parting at Liverpool
Street station.

“Let me know what happens directly you can, darling,” urged the man.

“I’ll telephone. Anyway, come round as soon as you can get away. _He_
won’t be in before seven.”

“Good-bye, Elsie darling. I’ll never, never forget....”

He left her, joining a hurrying throng of other young men wearing soft
hats and carrying little brown bags, nearly all of them hastening
towards the City.

Elsie proceeded by train and tram to the house of Irene’s father.

Her friend opened the door to her. “Hullo! I thought I should see you.
That hubby of yours is on the warpath.”

“What’s happened?”

“Oh, nothing, thanks to me! Come in, Elsie. Have you had breakfast?”

“I’ve had some tea; I don’t want anything else. Tell me about Horace.”

“Well, Horace, as you call him, saw fit to come round here at eleven
o’clock p.m. last night, and got me out of my virtuous downy by ringing
at the front door bell till I thought the house was on fire. He said
he’d ‘come for’ his wife, if you please!”

“I know. I told him I was going to spend the night at your place,” said
Elsie calmly. “I suppose you didn’t happen to tumble to it, Ireen?”

“I’ve not known you all these years for nothing, old girl,” said Irene,
grinning. “What do you take me for? I told him you were in bed and
asleep, and had been for hours.”

“You’re a real sport, Ireen! How did he take it?”

Irene pursed up her lips and shook her head. “He asked me to tell you
to ring him up first thing this morning. If you ask me, you’re in for
trouble. And p’r’aps now you’ll be so kind as to tell me what it all
means, and why on earth you couldn’t have given me fair warning before
saying you were here. It’s lucky for you I didn’t give the whole show
away on the spot.”

Elsie, habitually ready to discuss any of her love-affairs with Irene,
had told her nothing about Leslie Morrison. But she saw now that a
degree of frankness was inevitable.

Irene listened, sitting on the kitchen table, her shrewd, cynical gaze
fixed upon Elsie. “You’re for it, all right,” she observed dryly. “I
thought directly I saw you after you’d got back from Torquay that there
was something up. But I somehow didn’t think you’d go off the deep end
like that, Elsie. Why, you’re dotty about him!”

“Yes,” said Elsie, “I am.”

“And what do you suppose is going to happen?”

Elsie groaned. “I wish to the Lord that Horace would do the decent
thing, or go West--and let me have a chance of happiness.”

“He won’t,” said Irene. “Well, whatever you do, don’t make a fool of
yourself and run off with this fellow. It simply isn’t worth it, when
he hasn’t got a penny, and not very often when he has.”

“If I thought Horace would divorce me it’d be different,” Elsie said.
She was not listening to Irene at all. “Though even then, I don’t know
what we would live on. Leslie hasn’t anything except his salary, and
that’s tiny, and I’m sure I couldn’t earn a penny if I tried. Mother
wouldn’t help me, either, if I did a thing like that.”

“No more would anybody else. And surely to goodness, Elsie, you’d never
be such a fool. Think what it would mean to be disgraced, and have a
scandal.”

“I wouldn’t mind that with him.”

Irene groaned. “You are far gone! Well, the worse it is while it lasts,
the sooner it’s over. You’ll see sense again one of these days, I
suppose. Meanwhile, you’d better ’phone that husband of yours.”

Elsie’s conversation with Williams over the telephone was brief. She
agreed to come home at midday, and neither made any reference to the
visit of Williams at eleven o’clock on the previous night.

Elsie anticipated a scene with her husband, and felt indifferent to the
prospect. She had not enough imagination to work herself up in advance,
and, moreover, her faculties were entirely occupied with the blissful
expectation of seeing Morrison again that afternoon.

He came some hours after she had arrived home.

Elsie had done some shopping in the morning. With her husband’s money
she had bought a gold-nibbed fountain-pen for Leslie, and had paid for
copies of a photograph of herself.

She had scarcely ever in her life before given anyone a present, and
Leslie Morrison’s ardent thanks, and rapture over the photograph,
caused her the most acute pleasure.

“Darling, it’s lovely, and it’s just you! I shall always carry it about
with me, done up with your dear letters.”

“Don’t keep my letters, Leslie,” said Elsie suddenly.

“Why ever not?”

A sudden recollection had come to her ... “_Beware of the written
word...._”

The medium to whom Irene had once taken her had said that. She had also
said other things; had told Elsie that love would come to her....
Perhaps she really knew....

“I’d rather you didn’t, really,” she said feebly. “Suppose--suppose
Horace ever got hold of them----”

“How could he? Besides, Elsie darling, he’s got to know about us some
time. I wish you’d let me tell him now. I can’t go on like this; it’s
a low-down game coming to a man’s house without his knowledge and--and
making love to his wife.”

“His wife!” said Elsie angrily. “Don’t call me that. I may be his wife
in law, but it’s you that I really belong to.”

“Well, let me have it out with him then,” said Morrison earnestly. “We
don’t know, after all. He may be ready to do the decent thing, and set
you free.”

“I don’t care if you do. I’m pretty sure he guesses.... Horace has
always been jealous, though he’s never had any cause before.”

“He didn’t say anything at Torquay?”

“No, it’s since we got back. He asked me once if you were engaged to
Geraldine, and I said no. And he asked if you meant to come and see
us here, and I told him most likely you would. He didn’t say anything
much, but he hates a man coming near the place, really.”

“I’d far rather have it out with him,” young Morrison repeated. His
face was resolute, and he stood his ground when Elsie, starting
violently, exclaimed:

“I believe that’s Horace now! I can hear his key in the door. He’s
never in at this hour as a rule--the skunk, he’s come to spy on me!”

“Darling, it’s all right!” said Morrison.

He put the photograph away in his breast-pocket with hands that
trembled slightly. Both fixed their eyes on the door as it opened upon
the figure of the little elderly solicitor. His face wore a no more
sardonic expression than was habitual with him, and Elsie could not
deduce from it whether or not he was surprised to see Leslie Morrison.

Neither man made any movement towards shaking hands, but they
greeted one another conventionally, and talked a little, as though
indifferently, of the holiday at Torquay.

Leslie asked whether Mr. Williams was any better in health, and the
solicitor replied coldly:

“No, I am no better. I daresay my case would be a very interesting one,
from the point of view of a doctor. But I am not one to give up, and I
have no doubt that a great many people do not realise there is anything
the matter with me.”

He turned his eyes upon Elsie for a moment as he spoke.

At the same instant, the inevitable thought that had flashed through
her mind at his words caused Elsie to cast a lightning glance towards
Leslie Morrison.

It was that glance that her husband intercepted.




V


They had another evening together before the storm broke.

Morrison took Elsie to a dance.

He issued his invitation boldly, in the presence of Williams, and to
Elsie’s secret astonishment, her husband made no objection to her
acceptance.

She wanted terribly to buy a new dress for the dance, but dared not
risk a reminder to her husband, for fear he should suddenly forbid
her to go. Finally she decided to wear a black dress, covered with
black net, and with black net shoulder-straps. It was not new, but she
had seldom had any occasion for wearing it, and she had enough money
in hand for the housekeeping to enable her to buy a pair of black
artificial silk stockings and slim black satin shoes with high heels.

Round her thick, light hair she tied a black velvet band with a spray
of forget-me-nots worked in blue silk across it, but instinct told her
to leave her full, beautiful throat unadorned by any of the few cheap
ornaments that she possessed. Her smooth skin showed a sort of golden
glow that merged imperceptibly into the warm pallor of her round arms
and the dimpled base of her neck.

Elsie looked for a long while at herself in the glass, rubbed lip-salve
into her already scarlet mouth, and, despite the “Japanesey” effect of
lids that seemed half-closed, wondered at the brilliant light in her
own hazel-grey eyes.

Leslie Morrison came for her, and they left the house together before
Williams arrived from the office.

To both of them it was an unforgettable evening.

Elsie, like all women of her type, was a born dancer. Nevertheless,
before the evening was half over, they had left the crowded hall for a
screened alcove in an upper gallery, where the reiterated refrain of
syncopated airs, and the wistful rhythm of valse-times, reached them
through the haze of ascending cigarette-smoke.

It was three o’clock when they exchanged a last close, passionate
embrace and Elsie, pale, exhausted, with indescribably shining eyes,
crept upstairs to her room, undressed, and lay down noiselessly by the
side of her husband to relive the evening that she had spent with her
lover.

Williams left the house next morning without waking her, but it was
that evening that the inevitable crisis came.

The solicitor returned home nearly two hours before his usual time, and
found Leslie Morrison just preparing to enter the house.

The two men went in together.

Elsie started violently at the sight of her husband, and then laughed
artificially. “Hullo! It’s a case of Oh, what a surprise, isn’t it?
You’re back early, Horace.”

“Yes,” said her husband.

“I hope you’re not too tired after last night,” Morrison began.

“Oh no, thanks! It was fine. Horace, I haven’t told you about the dance
yet. It’s a shame you weren’t there.”

The moment she said the words, Elsie knew that she had made a mistake.

“Yes,” Williams remarked quietly, “you’d have liked me to be there,
wouldn’t you? Well, let me inform you that you aren’t going to any more
dances for the present.”

“Whatever do you mean, Horace?”

“Morrison knows what I mean all right, and so do you, you little ----”
His low, snarling tone gave the effect of spitting the ugly word at her.

Leslie Morrison sprang to his feet. “Look here, sir----”

The solicitor held up his hand. “That’ll do. It’s not for you to adopt
that tone in speaking to me, you know. Please to remember that I’m
Elsie’s husband.”

“Look here,” Morrison began again, “I’m perfectly ready to make a clean
breast of it. I do love Elsie. Her and me were just pals at first, and
then I suppose I didn’t exactly realise where I was drifting. But I’m
free to confess that I lost my head one--one evening a little while
ago--and I told her I loved her.” He glanced at Elsie, as though for a
further cue.

“And of course she told you that she was a pure woman, and a loving
wife, and you must never speak like that again?” sneered Horace
Williams.

“Elsie, don’t let him speak like that.... Tell him!” urged Morrison.

“I don’t need any telling,” Williams retorted smoothly. “She thinks
she’s in love with you, of course.”

“I am in love with Leslie,” said Elsie suddenly. “And if you did the
decent thing, Horace, you’d set me free to marry him. You and me have
never been happy together. I didn’t ever ought to have married you, but
I was a young fool.”

“Understand this, the pair of you,” said the little solicitor clearly
and deliberately. “I shall never set you free, as you call it. You’ve
married me, and you’ve got to stay with me. As for you,” he turned to
Leslie Morrison, “you can leave my house. And understand clearly that I
won’t have you inside it again. And if I catch you speaking to my wife
again, or meeting her, or having anything whatsoever to do with her,
it’ll be the worse for you.”

Morrison took a sudden step forward, his hands clenched, and Elsie
screamed, but Horace Williams stood his ground.

“I’m well within my rights, and you know it,” he declared. “I could
horsewhip you, in fact, and if you were fool enough to bring a case for
assault it’d go against you. _Clear out!_ That’s my last word to you.”

“Will you let Elsie have a divorce?”

“No, I won’t.”

“Will you let her have a legal separation, then? You’ve her own word
for it that she’s not happy with you. I’m not thinking of myself,
but you can’t have the cruelty to keep her tied to you when she’s
miserable. Let her have her freedom.”

For all answer, Williams pointed to the door. The expression of his
face had not altered by a hair’s-breadth.

Morrison turned to Elsie, white and tense. “Elsie, you hear what he
says. What d’you want me to do?”

Elsie had lost her nerve. She began to cry hysterically. Instead of
answering Morrison’s appeal, she turned to her husband.

“Why can’t you let us just be pals, Leslie and me?” she sobbed. “You
bring your horrid, mean jealousy into everything. I s’pose you don’t
grudge me having a friend of my own age, do you?”

Leslie Morrison instantly and loyally followed her lead. “If Elsie is
kind enough to let me be her friend, and--and take her out every now
and then, and that sort of thing, I’m willing to forget what’s just
passed, and simply ask you as man to man if you’ve any objection to us
being, as she says, just pals,” he said steadily enough.

“I have every objection. You young fool, Elsie has just said in so many
words that she’s in love with you. Did you mean that, Elsie, or did you
not?”

Elsie sobbed more and more violently, and her voice rose to an
incoherent screech. “How do I know what I mean or don’t mean, when you
make a row like this? But I’ll tell you this much, anyway, it’s true
what he said; I’m wretched with you, and if you were half a man, you’d
set me free.”

“There, that’s enough,” said Williams. “Going round and round in a
circle won’t help any of us, and you ought to know by this time, Elsie,
that I always mean what I say. You’ll please to remember what you were
when I married you--a little fool of a typist, without a penny, whose
mother kept a boarding-house and was only too glad of the money I gave
her. It doesn’t take a genius to say what would have happened to you if
you hadn’t found a man fool enough to marry you, either.”

“Stop that!” Morrison shouted.

The solicitor blinked at him quietly. “I’ve twice told you to get out
of my house,” he observed. “Don’t make me say it a third time. It’ll be
the worse, if you do--for Elsie.”

“Are you threatening her, you--you brute, you?”

“I object to your friendship with my wife. That’s all--and enough too.
Now go.”

“Oh yes, go!” said Elsie suddenly, breaking into renewed sobs and
tears. “I can’t stand this. You’d better go, Leslie boy, really you
had. I shall do myself in, that’s all.”

“Don’t talk like that----” the youth began frantically, but Williams
opened the door, and stood silently pointing to it.

There was something strangely inexorable in his little, trivial figure
and sinister, passionless expression.

“Elsie,” said Morrison brokenly, “if ever you want me, send for me.
I’ll come!”

He went out of the room, and they heard him go down the stairs and let
himself out at the front door.

“That’s the end of that,” said Williams in a quiet, satisfied voice.
“Stop that howling, Elsie. You didn’t really suppose that I didn’t know
what was going on?”

She sobbed and would not answer.

There was a long silence, and at last Elsie, face downwards on the
sofa, began to feel frightened and curious. She bore it as long as she
could, and then looked up.

Her husband was gazing out of the window, in which a potted aspidistra
stood upon a wicker stand between soiled white curtains.

At the slight movement that she made he turned his head. “Elsie, tell
me. Did you really mean what you said, that you’re in love with that
boy?”

To her incredulous surprise, his voice had become hoarse and almost
maudlin.

“You only said it to make me angry, didn’t you?”

In a flash Elsie saw the wisdom of allowing him at least to pretend to
such a belief. “Perhaps I did,” she said slowly. “Anyway, it’s true
enough that we aren’t particularly happy together, and never have been.
And I meant what I said about a separation, right enough, Horace.”

“You won’t get one,” said Williams, and his voice had become
vicious-sounding once more. “And remember what I’ve said--that fellow
is never to set foot in here again, and you and he are not to meet in
future.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The following morning Elsie went to the High Street post-office and
found there the letter that she had expected.

  “MY OWN DARLING GIRLIE,

  “What is to be done? I can’t tell you, darling, what a hound I felt
  to leave you all alone with that jealous brute yesterday and yet the
  awful thing is that he has the right to you and I have none. Oh,
  Elsie life is hard isn’t it darling? I wish I could take you away but
  that cannot be and it is you that have to bear the brunt of it all
  except that I am in hell knowing what you are going through all the
  time. Perhaps that is not an expression I ought to use to you but you
  must excuse it for I hardly know what I am writing.

  “One of our chaps has gone sick, and they are sending me to the North
  instead of him which means we can’t meet again as I go off to-morrow.
  But write to me darling and tell me what it is best to do now. Would
  it simplify things if we were to be just friends and no more?

  “Cheer up, Elsie perhaps some day things may come right for us--who
  knows? He may die; doesn’t he always say there is something wrong
  with him?

  “A thousand kisses for you, dearie. I have your sweet photo with me
  and love to look at it and re-read your wonderful letters. Write and
  tell me everything, and what you think we had better do. Shall we be
  able to meet when I come back at the end of the month?

  “No more at present, from

                                    “Your own true lover, Leslie,
                                                               “BOY.”

To Elsie, Leslie Morrison’s love-letters were wonderful.

She read and re-read this one, but when she had answered it, she burnt
it.

Certain words of the clairvoyante, whom she had once visited with Irene
Tidmarsh, she had never been able to forget, and of late they had
haunted her anew.

“_Beware of the written word...._”

Elsie burnt all Morrison’s letters to her, and asked him to burn all
those that she wrote him.

Gradually these letters that passed between them grew to be the most
important factor in her life.

Elsie, who had detested writing, now desired nothing so much as to pour
out her soul on paper, and the limitations that she found imposed upon
her through lack of education and the power to express herself made her
angry.

Again and again she asked Morrison in her letters to take her away,
and after a time his steadfast refusals bred in her mind the first
unbearable suspicion that her passion was the greater of the two. Her
letters became wilder and wilder.

Sometimes she threatened suicide, or gave hysterical and entirely
imaginary descriptions of scenes with her husband; sometimes she
expressed a reckless desire for Horace’s death, or asked if she could
“give him something” unspecified. These phrases, to a large extent,
were meaningless, but Elsie frantically hoped by them to impress upon
Morrison the extent of her love for him.

When he got back from the North of England they met surreptitiously.

A certain café in a small street not far from Elsie’s home became their
rendezvous. Sometimes Morrison was able to get there in the middle of
the day, but generally he came at about five o’clock, and they had tea
together. Very occasionally they met early in the afternoon and went
out together.

Each meeting was entirely inconclusive, save in exciting Elsie almost
to frenzy and reducing young Morrison to further depths of despondency.

The months dragged on. Morrison was often away, and then he and Elsie
wrote to one another daily. She was entirely obsessed with the thought
of her lover, and hardly ever saw Irene Tidmarsh, or went to Hillbourne
Terrace. And all the while, Horace Williams said nothing.

He and his wife did not quarrel; indeed, they hardly spoke to one
another, but the atmosphere between them, day by day, was becoming more
heavily charged with mutual hatred and apprehension.




VI


The tension under which Elsie now lived began at last to affect her
health. She slept badly, and was nervous as she had never been before.

Williams watched her without comment--a sinister little figure.
Sometimes, utterly overwrought, Elsie tried to force a scene with him,
but she only once succeeded in making him evince anger.

Strangely reckless, she suddenly suggested that Leslie Morrison should
be invited to lodge in their house, with no slightest expectation that
her husband would entertain such a scheme, but with a wild desire to
provoke him to a scene that should release some of her own pent-up
emotion.

“He’s looking for rooms, Geraldine says,” she declared, “and we’ve a
bedroom to spare, and might as well use it.”

Williams gazed at her incredulously. “Are you aware that I’ve shown
Morrison the door once already?” he asked at last.

“Yes, I’m quite aware of that,” said Elsie, with insolence in her
voice. “I thought you might have got more sense now, that’s all.”

“Listen to me, Elsie. I forbade you to speak to that fellow again--and
by God, if you’ve done so, I’ll see you never forget it!” His face was
livid and he spoke through his clenched teeth.

“I’ll speak to whom I please.”

“Have you been meeting Morrison?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

Elsie felt a curious pleasure and relief in thus mocking at the furious
jealousy that was evident in her husband’s face and manner.

“Answer my question.”

She remained silent.

“Are you and that fellow in love?”

“I’ve answered that before. I told you months ago, when you first
started to insult me, that he was nothing to me.”

“That wasn’t true then--and it isn’t now. Morrison’s in love with you,
damn him, and you’re in love with him!”

“Am I?”

Elsie laughed derisively in the new and uncomprehended realisation that
she was no longer afraid of Horace.

“You little bitch!...”

He caught her by the shoulders and suddenly flung her against the wall.

Elsie screamed, but it was reflex action from the physical shock alone
that made her do so. She was neither frightened nor very much startled.
There was even an odd exhilaration for her in the sudden release of
those pent-up forces that had for so long vibrated tensely between
herself and her husband.

However, her arm and shoulder were bruised, and her whole body
violently jarred. “You’re a coward!” she panted. “Hitting a woman!”

“You drove me to it.... Elsie, get up!... I’m sorry I did that, but
you’re driving me mad. God, if I had that fellow here I’d wring the
life out of him!”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Elsie taunted him. “He’s a great deal stronger than
you are--he’s a man, he is--you’d never dare to touch him. All you can
do is to knock a woman about.”

“That’s a lie! I’ve never touched you before, though there’s many a man
in my place would have beaten you within an inch of your life. I didn’t
know what I was doing just now.”

He took a step towards her, but Elsie pulled herself up from the floor
without appearing to notice the movement. She felt slightly giddy, and
her head ached.

“Aren’t you going to--to forgive me? I oughtn’t to have hit you, I
acknowledge, but you’ve done everything to drive me to it. Elsie, swear
to me that there’s nothing now between you and Morrison.”

“Oh, all right,” she said wearily. “I swear it.” She felt that she no
longer cared what happened in a sudden overwhelming fatigue.

“I don’t believe you,” said Williams bitterly.

Elsie shrugged her shoulders, and turned, moving stiffly, to leave the
room.

“Are you--are you hurt?”

“Yes, of course I am. My shoulder will be black and blue to-morrow, I
should think.”

“Shall I get you anything?” Williams muttered, shamefaced.

She made no answer.

That afternoon Elsie rang up Leslie Morrison on the telephone after her
husband had gone out. “Is that you, Les?”

“Yes. How’s yourself?”

He had told her never to be prodigal of verbal endearments in their
telephone communications, and she knew that he was probably not alone,
but it struck her painfully that his tone was a purely casual one, such
as he might have used to anyone.

“We’ve had an awful scene, boy.”

“What--who?”

“Him--Horace--and me. The same old thing, of course--jealousy. I stood
up to him, and told him I didn’t intend to put up with that sort of
treatment any longer, and I’d never give up anyone I--I liked.”

“I say, Elsie, you were careful, weren’t you?” asked Morrison, his
voice grown anxious.

“Yes, yes, darling, of course I was, for your sake. But Leslie--this is
what happened--he knocked me down.”

There was a smothered exclamation that made her heart leap with sudden
exultation. Of course Leslie cared....

“Elsie--girlie--he didn’t! Are you hurt?”

She could have laughed in pure joy at his sharply-anxious question.

“Nothing bad. Shaken, of course, and I expect there’ll be a bad bruise,
but I can put up with worse than that, you know.”

“You oughtn’t to have to! The hound! I’d like to.... Look here, can’t
we meet?”

“Yes, yes!” she said eagerly. “What about tea? I’ll come to----”

“The same place,” he interrupted quickly, and she understood that he
did not want her to mention the name of the tea-shop that had so often
served them as rendezvous.

“What time?”

“About half-past five. I shan’t get away any earlier.”

“All right, darling. I’ll be there.”

“Sure you’re all right?”

“Yes, quite all right now,” Elsie declared, laughing happily.

“I must go. See you later, then?”

“Yes. Good-bye, boy.”

The answering good-bye came to her faintly over the wires as the final
click warned her that he had hung up the receiver.

Elsie looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. Only three o’clock--two
hours and a quarter before she could think of starting out.

The telephone rang again, and Elsie, with a joyful hope that Morrison
had been unable to resist a further word, snatched at the instrument.

“Hallo, hallo! Who’s there?”

“I am--Horace,” said her husband’s flat, nasal voice. “Look here. How
would you like to go to the play to-night, Elsie?”

“What!” said Elsie, disappointed at not hearing Leslie Morrison’s voice
again, and still dazed from the scene of the morning.

“I said, how would you like to do a theatre to-night? I’ve got tickets
for ‘The Girl on the Pier’--good places--for to-night.”

She understood at last that he was seeking to propitiate her, and to
make up for his violence. “I don’t mind. What time does it start?”

“Half-past eight, but we’d better meet in town somewhere for some food.
I shan’t have time to come home first. What about the Corner House,
at about seven o’clock? That’ll give us plenty of time to go on to
Shaftesbury Avenue afterwards.”

“All right. How many tickets have you got, Horace?”

“Just the two. I thought you and I would go by ourselves and have a
jolly evening,” said the far-away voice rather tremulously.

Elsie laughed drearily as she rang off.

It seemed to her that the time dragged interminably until she could go
upstairs and dress herself for the evening’s outing. She meant to meet
Morrison first and then go on to the Corner House and wait there for
her husband.

Elsie put on a dark blue coat and skirt, with a new pale blue jumper
of artificial silk, and a big black hat with a blue feather. Round her
neck she wore a small black fur.

After her variable wont, she had suddenly recovered her looks, after
the sodden, stupefied ugliness that the morning’s unhappiness had
produced in her. Her eyes seemed more widely opened than usual, her
hair fell into thick curls and rings, and a soft, bright colour lay
under her oddly prominent cheek-bones. She rubbed lip-stick on to her
full, sulkily-cut mouth, and lavishly powdered her straight, beautiful
neck. The glow of excitement and gladness transformed her as she went
out to meet Morrison, slamming the door of the villa behind her.

“Darling!”

“My own dear little girl!” said Leslie, and held both her gloved hands
for a moment in his. “I haven’t been able to think of anything but what
you told me this afternoon. Are we going for a walk, or will you come
in?”

“I’d like to come in and sit down,” said Elsie languidly. “Have you had
tea?”

“No. I’ll order some.”

“Not for me, boy. I’m meeting Horace for a meal in about an hour and a
half. We’re going to the theatre.”

“Have you made it up, then?”

“Oh, I suppose so! He telephoned and said he had these tickets. I
suppose he thought it’d make up, in a way.”

They chose a corner table at the further end of the tea-shop, and Elsie
took off her coat and leant against it as it lay folded over the back
of her chair.

“Where did he hurt you this morning?” said Morrison intently.

She pulled up the loose sleeve of her silk jumper. “Look!”

Her smooth, soft arm was already discoloured all round the elbow and up
to the shoulder.

“It’s worse higher up, only I can’t get at it now to show you.”

“_Damn_ him!” Leslie Morrison muttered between his teeth.

His boyish face was black with an intensity of feeling that Elsie had
seldom seen there of late. It sent a rush of joyful reassurance all
through her.

“Darling, I don’t care about anything while we’ve got each other.”

“But it can’t go on, Elsie. He’s making your life miserable. Isn’t
there any hope of a divorce, or even a separation?”

“He says he never will.”

Elsie spoke slowly. She was revolving a possibility, that she had often
viewed before in her own mind.

“Les, can’t we go away together? I don’t care what happens, or what
people think of me. I’d face anything, with you.”

Even as she spoke, she knew--and one side of her was relieved to
know--that Morrison would negative the suggestion, as he had often done
before.

“Out of the question, darling girl. Think what I’m getting--two
twenty-five a year and no particular prospect of a rise for years to
come. And look at what you’ve been used to!”

“Not before I married.”

“Times were different then. It was before the war. Living has gone up
five hundred per cent. since then, and it’ll be many a long year before
it comes down again. Why, Elsie, we couldn’t even live!”

“I don’t know whether you think I’m living now!” she exclaimed
vehemently. “Existing, I call it. And we shall only be young once,
Leslie, and it seems so hard to waste it all.”

He groaned, and they sat silent for a time, their hands locked together
beneath the table.

“Would you be ready to--to end it all?” she asked suddenly. “I mean for
us to go out together, right out of life?”

“Do you mean suicide?”

“Yes--a suicide pact.”

She fixed her eyes upon him, anxious to believe that he was startled,
and acutely touched, at the lengths to which her love could carry her.
The actual idea behind the word--that of suicide--conveyed very little
to her. Although she believed herself to be fully in earnest, Elsie
never seriously contemplated her own death, nor that of her lover.

She had often thought of Williams’s death as the one possible solution
of their problem, but she had actually never really abandoned the
secret expectation that a way out would be found for herself and
Morrison that would secure their happiness.

She had read of suicide-pacts, and seized upon the idea eagerly as one
more peg upon which to hang the proofs of her passion for Morrison, and
maintain his love, and his interest in herself, at the level of her own
ardour. Although never consciously owning it to herself, Elsie knew
that his love was a lesser one than hers.

Leslie Morrison, now, did not make the passionate response for which
she had hoped. “Don’t talk like that. Oh, Elsie, it is hard, isn’t it?
And you don’t know what it’s like for me to think of that brute making
your life miserable. If only there was anything I could do!... I think
about it till I see red sometimes. Why doesn’t he die?”

“Because we want him to, I suppose,” said Elsie, suddenly listless.
“He’s always talking about his health failing, and things like that,
but I don’t see any sign of it myself. Things will never come right for
us in this world, Leslie.”

“Elsie, I’ll make him get a separation; I swear I will. It’s the only
possible thing. Then at least you’ll be free.”

She noticed that he did not refer to the separation between herself and
her husband as to a means of furthering their own love.

“Haven’t your people ever tried to get your freedom for you?”

“Oh, I’ve nobody much, you know! Only mother and Geraldine, and the old
aunties. They don’t approve of me either--never did.”

“Poor little girl, they don’t understand you!”

“I don’t care while I’ve got you, Leslie.”

They made love to one another, their voices low, until Morrison
reminded Elsie suddenly that it was late.

“You’ll hardly get to the West End by seven now. I’m glad you’re going
to enjoy yourself to-night, anyway.”

“I wish we were going together, Les, just you and I. That’s how it
ought to be. Are we going to meet to-morrow, dearest?”

“Lunch here, can you? One o’clock. And meanwhile, darling, I’m going
to think hard what I can do to make things better for you. He’s got to
stop leading you this sort of life, anyway, and it’s up to me to find a
way of making him do so. When I think of his knocking you about....”

The blood rushed into his face, and Elsie saw that he had clenched his
hand involuntarily. It was balm to her to realise that she still had
the power of exciting him to a frenzied anxiety on her account.

“He’s hit me before now, you know,” she said suddenly, hardly
realising, and caring not at all, that she was not speaking the truth.

“You never told me. I’ve sometimes wondered....”

“I didn’t mean to say anything about it. I knew it would upset you....
Never mind, darling, I don’t care.”

“But I do. I tell you it’s driving me mad. Oh, what’s the good of
talking when one can’t do anything! Look here, darling, I’m not fit to
talk to you now--and besides, you’ll be frightfully late. I shall see
you to-morrow.”

“One o’clock. Good-night, sweetheart. I wish it was you and me going to
this show to-night. Wouldn’t it be heaven!”

“Indeed it would. But things may come right for us even yet,
darling--don’t give up hope. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye!” she echoed.

Elsie was late for her appointment with her husband, but he did not
complain. He seemed anxious to do everything in his power to conciliate
her, and it was characteristic of their relations together that, as
her fear of his sarcastic petulance vanished, so her contempt for him
increased.

“I got dress-circle places,” said Williams impressively. “I know you
like them.”

The piece, a musical comedy, amused her, and she was pleased at various
glances that were cast upon her by their neighbours in the theatre.
At the back of it all was a warm inward glow that pervaded all her
consciousness at the remembrance of Leslie Morrison’s championship of
her, his assurance that he would “think out a way.”

Perhaps Leslie would make up his mind to take her away. She had asked
him to do so, and he had always refused. Elsie, with an ever-latent
fear that Morrison was already beginning to tire of an attachment that
to her was the one reality in life, told herself passionately that,
with him, she would care nothing for poverty.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” said her husband’s nasal voice.

“Rather. Topping!”

For a minute or two she listened to the comedian on the stage, and was
genuinely amused by his facial contortions and wilful mispronunciations
of polysyllabic words.

“He’s so silly, you can’t help laughing at him,” Elsie declared, wiping
her eyes.

Then she drifted back again into the dream wherein she and Leslie
Morrison figured as sole protagonists, with complete and unexplained
elimination of Horace Williams.

“Look who’s here, Elsie!”

She started violently, convinced against all reason that she would see
Morrison.

“Isn’t that your aunties?”

“So it is,” said Elsie without enthusiasm.

Aunt Ada and Aunt Gertie were making violent signs to her, and in the
interval Horace, still evidently bent upon doing everything possible to
please her, insisted upon going to speak to them, and suggested supper
after the play.

“He is going it,” Elsie reflected dispassionately, not in the least
touched, but a good deal amazed at the lavishness of Horace’s amends.

She was in reality very much bored by the company of the two aunts in
the little restaurant to which they eventually went.

“Why don’t you go and see your poor mother, Elsie?”

“I do see her, Aunt Gertie.”

“Not very often, dear.”

“As often as I’ve time for,” said Elsie curtly.

“Geraldine’s not looking well,” Aunt Ada began next.

“What happened to that young fellow she was supposed to be going with
last year?”

Horace Williams called abruptly for his bill. “It’s after twelve, and
I’ve got to be at work to-morrow, if you ladies haven’t. All good
things must come to an end, you know.”

“It’s been most pleasant, I’m sure,” said Aunt Gertie.

And when Horace had gone to pay the account at the cash-desk, she added
sentimentally to Elsie:

“It’s a real pleasure to have seen you and him together--and so happy.”

“Thanks,” said Elsie sarcastically. “We’re as happy as the day is long,
of course.”

“So you ought to be,” said Aunt Ada very sharply.

They exchanged good-byes outside the restaurant, and Elsie and her
husband went by Tube to their own station.

The long suburban road was almost deserted when they came out into it.

“We’ll go by the Grove, of course,” said Elsie, indicating the narrow
alleyway that eventually merged into their own street, with a high
blank wall upon one side of it and the backs of a rather sordid row of
houses upon the other.

A few leafless plane-trees showed above the top of the wall, and an
occasional tall lamp slightly relieved the gloom of the long, paved
passage-way.

Their footsteps on the stones were clearly audible in the unusual
stillness that belonged both to the deserted locality and to the small
hours of the morning.

“Who’s that?” said Horace so suddenly that Elsie jumped.

Footsteps were hurrying behind them, and they both turned. With a
strange sense of foreknowledge, Elsie saw Leslie Morrison.

The two men stopped dead as they came face to face with one another.
Elsie shrank back against the high yellow brick wall, her eyes fixed
upon Morrison’s ravaged face.

“I couldn’t rest for thinking of it all. I know what happened to-day,
Williams,” he said in a high, strained voice. “It can’t go on. You’re
making Elsie’s life hell. Give her her freedom.”

“Damn you! Who are you to interfere between man and wife?” said
Williams, low and fiercely. “I know what you want, both of you, but you
won’t have it. Elsie’s my wife, and I shan’t let her go.”

“You’ve got to.”

Horace Williams, looking full at the youth, who was shaking from head
to foot with excitement, gave his low, malevolent laugh.

Almost at the same instant Elsie heard her own voice screaming, “Don’t
... don’t...!” and saw the flash of a knife as Morrison raised his arm
and struck again and again.

Williams spun round as though to run, and his eyes, oddly
surprised-looking, glared, straight and unseeing, at Elsie.

Leslie Morrison stabbed at him again in the back.

“What have you done?” sobbed Elsie to Morrison. “Oh, go!”

She saw Morrison dash away up the passage, and at the same moment
Horace Williams took a few steps forward.

“Keep up--I’ll help you!” gasped Elsie.

She thrust her arm beneath his elbow, dimly astonished and relieved to
find that he was walking, when he suddenly lurched heavily against her,
the upper part of his body sagging forward. Then he fell heavily and
lay motionless, blood trickling from his mouth.

Elsie, utterly distraught, and her knees shaking under her, felt her
screams strangled in her throat. A distant figure showed at the near
end of the alley, and she flew, rather than ran, towards the stranger,
calling out in a high, sobbing voice for a doctor--for help.

The woman, elderly and respectable-looking, asked what had happened.

“I don’t know,” said Elsie. A blind horror was upon her, but instinct
warned her to make no definite statement of any kind.

A nightmare confusion followed. The alleyway, from being a silent
and deserted spot, became clamorous with footsteps and voices. Elsie
dimly heard a tall man in evening clothes saying that he was a doctor,
and saw him kneel beside the blood-spattered form huddled upon the
pavement. It was he, and a stalwart policeman, who finally lifted that
which had been Horace Williams on to a hand-ambulance and took it away.

Another man in police uniform took Elsie’s arm, giving her the support
that alone enabled her to move, and helped her to a taxi.

She almost fell into it, weeping hysterically, and he took his place
beside her as a matter of course. In the sick, convulsed terror that
shook her, his stolid presence was an actual relief. She thought that
he was taking her home until he gently explained that she was coming
with him to the police-station.

“We want to get this cleared up, you know, and you can help us by
telling us just what happened.”

A new and more dreadful fear came over her. If Horace was dead someone
would be accused of having killed him. They might suspect her.... Elsie
felt as though she were going mad with the horror of it all.

She began hysterically to scream and cry.




VII


It was still early in the day when Elsie’s mother came to her at the
police-station. Her fat face was white, stained and mottled with tears.

“It seems too bad to be true,” she kept on repeating again and again.
“That’s what I said when I heard about poor Horace: too bad to be true.
And you in this dreadful place, Elsie, and such a state as you’re
in--and no wonder. The whole thing seems too bad to be true.”

“Have they--found anything? Shall I be able to go home soon?” asked
Elsie.

“I don’t know, dearie. They’ve got to find out who killed poor Horace,
you know. Elsie, you’ve always been a sensible girl. You must tell them
all you know, however dreadful to you it is to speak of such things. Or
I’ll tell them for you, if you’d rather just have it out with mother.
Didn’t you see anyone?”

“Someone flew past, and as I turned to speak to Horace, I saw the blood
coming out of his mouth.”

“Who was it flew past?” said Mrs. Palmer.

“I don’t know. It all happened in a flash, like,” said Elsie.

“You and Horace were happy together, weren’t you?”

“Yes, always,” said Elsie stolidly. She had made up her mind not to say
anything else.

“You didn’t quarrel?”

“No, never.”

“You’ll tell them that, won’t you, dearie? The police, I mean.”

“It’s nothing to do with them,” said Elsie childishly.

“Now don’t talk that way. That’s silly. You don’t seem to realise, my
lady, the sort of mess you’re in.”

Mrs. Palmer’s voice rose to stridency as she let her fear and her
temper get the mastery of her attempt at caution.

“My God, Elsie, can’t you see what it means? They may try you for
murder. Murder--the same as the horrid common people in the newspapers.
Who’s to know what happened--you and Horace in that empty street at
one o’clock in the morning, and he gets done in, and whatever you may
say--and mind you, I’ll back you up in it-they’ll get hold of the fact
that you and poor Horace didn’t hit it off together.”

“We were quite happy together.”

“That’s right,” said Mrs. Palmer approvingly. “You stick to that.”

Then she began to cry. “To think it should have come to this! I that
have always held my head high--I don’t know what your aunts will say!
It’ll be an awful shock for them.”

Elsie hardly heard what her mother was saying. Waves of physical
nausea kept on passing over her, and she was conscious of nothing but
thankfulness when an elderly woman in uniform came to her with a cup of
tea, and suggested that she should lie down and get some sleep.

Elsie followed her, scarcely replying to Mrs. Palmer’s voluble farewell
and assurances of her own speedy return.

She could not afterwards have told where it was that she was taken,
but a small, narrow bed awaited her, and she flung herself on to it
and fell almost at once into the trance-like sleep of utter bodily and
mental exhaustion.

The same uniformed woman was waiting for her when she woke, after
several hours, and the sight of her brought back in a sick rush the
horrors of the morning.

“Oh, I must go home!” cried Elsie.

The woman took very little notice of her words, but she conducted her
to a lavatory and helped her to make her toilette.

Cold water and the effects of sleep combined slightly to steady the
wretched Elsie. “I should like to go home at once, please,” she said,
in a voice that she tried in vain to render firm.

“Yes. Well, I daresay your mother will take you away as soon as you’ve
answered a few questions,” said the woman indifferently and quietly.
“They want you downstairs first for a few minutes now.”

“Is Mother there?”

“She’s in the waiting-room. You’ll be able to see her afterwards.”

“_Afterwards?_”

Elsie’s agonised perceptions fastened upon that one word. She sought
with frantic and irrational intensity to pierce the veiled threat that
she felt it to convey.

A man whom she knew to be a police-inspector appeared at an open door,
and the uniformed woman went away.

“Now, Mrs. Williams, I’m afraid we must trouble you for a short
statement,” said the man pleasantly. “Will you follow me, if you
please?”

He moved forward, and Elsie saw into the room that he had just left.

Leslie Morrison was within it.

As their eyes met, it seemed to Elsie that the last shreds of
self-control deserted her, and she screamed on a high and hideous note
words that came incoherently and frenziedly from some power outside
herself.

“Leslie, Leslie! Oh, God, what shall I do? Why did you do it? I didn’t
ever mean you to do it.... I must tell the truth....”

The inspector swung sharply round and gripped her by the arm. “Do you
realise what you’re saying? It is my duty to caution you that anything
you say now may be used in evidence against you.”

Elsie burst into hysterical sobs and tears.

The man pushed her gently into another room where another official and
a young man in plain clothes sat at a table with papers and pens in
front of them.

The interrogatory that followed was conducted with grave suavity by the
senior official, but Elsie was conscious only of a horror of committing
herself.

She said again and again that she and her husband had always been happy
together.

It was a faint relief when at last they came to actual questions of
fact, and she could reply with direct statements to the enquiries as to
her movements on the previous evening.

(O God, was it only last night that she and Horace had gone to the
theatre--only _this morning_ that they had started to walk home from
the Tube station?)

“Mrs. Williams, I want you to tell me in your own words exactly what
happened in the alleyway just before your husband was struck.”

Elsie realised with despair that she must say something.

She was not imaginative, but almost without her own knowledge she had
evolved a sort of account by which, it seemed to her, confusedly, that
she might safeguard herself.

“We were walking along,” she said in a trembling, almost inaudible
voice, “and there wasn’t anybody in sight, and suddenly someone rushed
up from behind and pushed me away from my husband. I was sort of dazed
for a moment--I think I must have been pushed against the wall--and
when I recovered I saw Horace--my husband--struggling with a man. Then
the man ran away.”

“Did you see the man’s face?”

“No,” said Elsie, with ashen lips.

“But you know who it was?”

“It was Leslie Morrison.”

The room reeled before her eyes, and she made an ineffectual clutch at
a chair.

Through a sort of thick fog she heard the official repeating in a low
tone: “It was the man known as Leslie Morrison.”

Then she felt herself fall.

Her mother was with her when she recovered consciousness, and the woman
who had attended to her before, and whom Mrs. Palmer now repeatedly and
volubly addressed as “Matron.”

Elsie looked round her, but the officials were gone. With a groan she
let her head drop backwards again on to the rail of the chair in which
she found herself.

“Come along now, don’t give way. You’re better now,” said the matron
briskly. “Don’t let yourself go, Mrs. Williams.”

“Oh, Elsie, Elsie,” wailed Mrs. Palmer, “whatever will become of us?
Didn’t I always tell you----”

“Give her an arm, Mrs. Palmer, and I’ll take her on the other side, and
we’ll get her into the other room. There’s a nice couch there, and she
can lie down a bit.”

They half led, half dragged Elsie away, the matron exhorting her all
the time with impersonal, professional brightness to pull herself
together.

She was conscious of thankfulness when the woman left her alone with
her mother, although leaving the door open behind her.

Mrs. Palmer instantly bent forward and asked with avidity: “What did
you say to them, Elsie?”

“Let me alone, Mother, for pity’s sake!”

“How can I let you alone, as you call it, you unnatural girl? What a
way to speak to your own mother, on whom you’re bringing sorrow and
shame, and may bring worse yet, if you’re not careful! Now you tell me
this, Elsie Williams, directly this minute: Did you or did you not tell
them that you and Horace were on bad terms together?”

“I said we were quite happy together----”

“Stick to that,” said Mrs. Palmer significantly. “Did anyone know--any
neighbour or anybody--that you quarrelled? He never made a row, or
knocked you about, did he?”

“Only the once,” Elsie said automatically.

She pushed up her sleeve, then shuddered violently as she recalled
that she had last made use of that same gesture in the tea-shop with
Morrison.

“My goodness, did Horace do that? You must have tried him pretty high,
_I_ know. How are you going to account for that bruise, young Elsie?”

“Who’s to know about it?”

“Oh, they’ll find out fast enough! They get to know about everything.
Look here, did you say that you’d been pushed against the wall by
whoever it was who did in poor Horace?”

Elsie nodded, too much stunned even to wonder how her mother had become
possessed of this information.

“Very well, then. Those bruises on your arm are where you fell against
that wall. Don’t forget. I shall say you showed them to me, and told me
about it.”

“Say what--when?” Elsie asked stupidly. “I suppose all this’ll be over
before I’m quite mad, and they’ll let me go home to-day.”

Her mother’s fat face puckered up suddenly, and she began to cry with
loud, gulping sobs. “I don’t know!” she wailed. “I don’t know.”

“But what--what--for Heaven’s sake, Mother, stop that noise, and tell
me what they’re going to do. _What is it?_” almost shrieked Elsie,
striving to fight down the panic that threatened to overwhelm her.

“Don’t you understand, you little fool? (God forgive me for speaking
like that!) Oh, Elsie, I’m afraid--I’m afraid they’ll--they’ll arrest
you--for murder!”

“Don’t use that word!” almost screamed Elsie.

“How can I help it? Murder’s what’s been done, and it lies between
you and that fellow Morrison. Elsie, how far have things gone between
you and him? But there, I needn’t ask. I know you.” Mrs. Palmer wept
convulsively.

She remained with her daughter until late in the afternoon, and twice
during that time Elsie was summoned to a further interrogatory. She
learnt that Morrison’s knife had been found close to the alley, and
that he had been fetched from his office early in the day and taken
away by the police.

It was after her mother had gone away, as the dusk was gathering, that
Elsie Williams and Leslie Morrison were charged together with the
wilful murder of Horace Williams.

       *       *       *       *       *

“For God’s sake, Mrs. Williams, tell me the whole truth!”

Elsie looked dumbly at Mr. Cleaver, too sick with fright to speak.

“Do you understand that you’re in the most frightful danger?”

A sound that just amounted to an interrogation forced its way between
her dry lips.

“You know what the sentence is for anyone found guilty of wilful
murder?”

Elsie screamed and shrank.

Cleaver bent forward, deep dents coming and going at the corners of his
nostrils, his white face working with earnestness. She could see the
sweat shining upon his forehead.

“Try and understand. You will be committed for trial for the murder of
your husband.”

“But Leslie Morrison....”

“He’s in the same boat. His one idea, it seems, is to shield you--to
pay the whole of the penalty himself.”

“It was him who--who....” Elsie’s voice trailed away.

“I know. But who inspired him to do it, Mrs. Williams? I tell you that
nothing but absolute frankness can give you a chance.”

“Shall I be in the witness-box?”

A bewildered idea that she could still make use of her charm to serve
her present cause made Elsie ask the question.

“You will be in the dock,” said Cleaver grimly. “Understand that
everything--your life itself--depends upon your being absolutely
straightforward with me. Don’t conceal anything--don’t attempt to. I
tell you, it’s your one hope.”

Elsie stared and stared at Mr. Cleaver. “I never meant Leslie to do
it!” she cried suddenly and wildly.

“But you knew he was going to?”

“No, no, no!”

“Mrs. Williams, tell me the truth. You and Morrison were madly in love
with one another, and had been for over a year?”

She nodded.

“You knew that your husband would never, in any circumstances, set you
free?”

“Yes. We asked him, begged him to. He--he was very cruel, Mr. Cleaver.”

“You and Morrison would not face open scandal by going away together?”

“It wasn’t that.”

“What was it, then?”

She hesitated, twisting her handkerchief round and round in her fingers.

The solicitor moistened his lips with his tongue. “Your only hope, your
one and only hope in this world, Mrs. Williams, is to speak the truth.
I’m powerless to help you if you won’t be open. Don’t be afraid that
everything you say now will come out in the police-court; it won’t
necessarily be so at all--far from it. But I can judge of nothing
unless I know every single thing.”

“I’ll tell you,” said Elsie, white to the lips.

“Why would you and Morrison not have gone away together? Were you
afraid?”

“We had no money.”

“I see. Morrison’s pay was very small, and you had nothing but what
your husband gave you?”

“Yes.”

“Whereas if you were a widow, you had reason to suppose that Williams
would leave you comfortably provided for?”

“Yes.”

“Did it not occur to you, then, that his death would be a very
convenient solution of the whole problem?”

“Oh yes! How could I help thinking that?”

“You not only thought it, Mrs. Williams, you said it, and you wrote it.”

“I never----” The denial sprang from her quite instinctively.

Mr. Cleaver put up his hand authoritatively. “Wait! Do you remember
a conversation with a friend of yours, Miss Irene Tidmarsh, on the
eighteenth of last October, when you made use of the words, ‘I wish to
the Lord that Horace would do the decent thing or go West, and let me
have a chance of happiness’?”

Elsie was terrified at the precision with which her very words were
quoted and the occasion known. “I can’t remember,” she gasped.

“Mrs. Williams, you _must_ speak the truth. Remember that a great
deal is known already, and banish any idea of false shame from your
mind. This is a question of life and death to you: neither more nor
less. If I know the truth from you, I can advise you as to the line
you must take under cross-examination. Remember that it will be a
terrible ordeal for you, and it’s essential that you should be properly
prepared for it. And weight will be attached, without a doubt, to that
conversation of yours with Miss Tidmarsh.”

“But how will they know about it?” she sobbed, forgetting her previous
denial.

“Miss Tidmarsh will be called as a witness against you,” said Mr.
Cleaver gravely. “We’ve got to account for those words of yours
somehow, and what is more serious still--if anything could be more
serious--we’ve got to keep out of sight, if we can, those damning
letters of yours.”

“What letters?” screamed Elsie, a new and unbearable horror clutching
at her.

“The letters, Mrs. Williams, that you have repeatedly written to Leslie
Morrison during the past months.”

“They’re burnt, they’re burnt!” shrieked Elsie. “He swore he’d burn
them!”

“I wish to God he had, but he never did, Mrs. Williams. Those letters
may form the bulk of the evidence against you. You repeat in them,
again and again, that Williams ill-treated you, made you miserable, and
that you wish he was dead. In one of them occurs the words: ‘He’s ill
now, and taking sleeping draughts. One little mistake in pouring out
the mixture, Leslie, and you and I might be free! I’d do more than that
for our love’s sake, darling.’ Do you understand the awful weight that
those expressions and many, many similar ones would carry with a jury,
Mrs. Williams? We’ve got to put some construction on them other than
the obvious one, if we can’t get a ruling that they’re inadmissible as
evidence, which is what we shall try for. I want to make it very, very
clear to you. Everything depends on your co-operation. Are you fit to
listen to me?”

Elsie was sobbing and writhing.

“Have you any letters whatever from Morrison?” pursued the relentless
voice of the solicitor.

“No.”

“What have you done with them?”

“I burnt them all.”

He looked at her as though doubting her words. “Very few women burn
their love-letters, Mrs. Williams.”

“I was afraid to keep them.”

“For fear of your husband seeing them?”

She hesitated. “Partly.”

In Elsie’s mind was a piercing recollection of the haunting fear that
had obsessed her ever since the scene at the house of Madame Clara, the
medium.

“_Beware of the written word...._”

But she would not give that reason for having destroyed Morrison’s
letters to the solicitor. The strange, undying remnant of vanity that
finds a lurking-place upon the most apparently trivial and unlikely
ground held her back from the truth.

Elsie Williams realised that Mr. Cleaver was in grimmest earnest when
he told her that only the absolute truth could possibly save her; she
was prepared to tell him the truth in spite of her deadly terror and
shame, but she could not bring herself to say that the reason why she
had destroyed the letters of Leslie Morrison was because she could
never forget the words spoken by the clairvoyante whom she had visited.

“I burnt the letters because I had nowhere to keep them, and I was
afraid they might be found,” she repeated, her young face grey and
ravaged.

It was the only particular in which she lied to Mr. Cleaver, and she
did so with blind and irrational persistence.

After the hours that he spent with her, Elsie, physically exhausted,
and psychically strung to a pitch of tension that she had never known
in her life before, was left alone in her cell, face to face with her
own soul.

At first, fragmentary recollections of the past forty-eight hours
obsessed her. She went over and over her conversations with the police
officials, her own replies to Mr. Cleaver, her mother’s hysterical
ejaculations. Then she thought of Leslie Morrison, who had backed
up her statements to the police, and who, when both were arrested
together, had only asked through white lips: “Why her? She was not
aware of my movements.”

But since her own half-unconscious betrayal of him, Elsie’s feeling for
Morrison had undergone an extraordinary revulsion.

It had all turned out so utterly unlike anything that they had ever
planned. It still seemed to Elsie that catastrophe had fallen, a bolt
from the blue, into the midst of their lives without warning. She
still felt that none of it could be true, that she must wake as from a
hideous dream.

When had she had a hideous dream--something about Horace--something
like this?

Dim associations of horror and bewilderment awoke slowly within her,
and brought to her the remembrance of her visit with Irene Tidmarsh
to the woman who had called herself “clairvoyante.” She had talked
in a deep, rather artificial voice about love and intrigue; she had
bade Elsie beware of the written word. And then all of a sudden the
atmosphere had altered, Madame Clara’s voice itself had altered,
horribly, and she had screamed out terrifying words and phrases.
“Blood, and worse than blood ... you’re all over blood! O, my God,
what’s this? It’s all over England--_you_--they’re talking about you.”

Elsie understood. In a flash of searing, anguished intuition she
understood what would happen.

With the appalling rapidity of a vision, there came to her the
realisation of all that would come to pass in the near future.

She knew already that the police-court trial was the almost certain
preliminary to her committal and Morrison’s for trial at the Old
Bailey. _They would be tried for murder._

She and the man who had been her lover would stand in the dock together
as prisoners; lawyers would fight out questions concerning their past
relations; people would give evidence against them--evidence in their
favour; Elsie would in all probability hear her own letters to Leslie
Morrison read aloud in court....

It would be a sensational trial, such as she had often followed with
avidity in the newspapers.

“_It’s all over England--they’re talking about you...._”

But why ... why?...

Elsie Williams’ instant of vision fled from her as suddenly as it had
come, and left her agonisedly and wildly rebellious, bewildered at the
vortex of terror and shame and misery into which it seemed to her that
she had suddenly, without volition of her own, been flung.

She could not trace the imperceptibly-graduated stages that had brought
her to the pass where catastrophe became inevitable. To her, it seemed
that she had swiftly been hurled from security into deadly peril by
some agency as irresistible as it was malignant.

Every now and then realisation came to her, when certain frightful
words sprang into frightful meaning, as they had never done before.

“Murder....”

“Conspiracy ... and incitement to murder....”

“Principal in the second degree....” The police officials had made use
of that expression--so had Mr. Cleaver.

Elsie’s mother had fetched Mr. Cleaver, and had wildly repeated, in
front of Elsie and the lawyer, that she would grudge no expense, not if
it cost her her last penny.

“And the aunties will help, Elsie, they’ve been ever so good--anything
we can get together, says your Aunt Gertie, and her face the colour of
the tablecloth. Mr. Cleaver here will tell us the best man, if it--if
it comes to--to....”

“You could scarcely do better than Sir Cambourne Trevor, Mrs. Palmer,
but his fee, I ought to warn you, is a thousand guineas.”

“A thousand guineas!” Elsie and Mrs. Palmer had screamed together.

And Mr. Cleaver, gaunt and haggard and grey-faced, had made answer:
“It’s her life that will be at stake.”

From time to time, Elsie understood. She knew, at those moments, what
it all meant. There would be no more concealments, everything would be
dragged out into a publicity that could only bring with it dishonour
and shameful notoriety, and hatred, and execration.

And she would have to live through it--to suffer through an ordeal
of vast, incredible magnitude, of which the climax--she knew it in a
prescience that mercifully could not endure--would come in the ghastly
dawn of a prison-yard, beneath the shadow of the scaffold....

Inexorable results would be suffered by herself, and she would never
know how it was that these things had become inevitable--had happened.

  _Dawlish_, 1923.




THE BOND OF UNION




THE BOND OF UNION

(To A. P. D.)


A wide, cushioned seat runs round three sides of the deep fireplace in
Torry Delorian’s library for the admitted reason that Lady Pamela March
likes to face the room when she is talking.

The room, of course, means the audience. Personally, I consider that
she could safely--I mean, without spoiling her picture of herself--make
use of the very word itself. It is so obviously the only one that
applies, when she sits there, smoking one cigarette after another, and
we sit there, smoking one cigarette after another, all listening to
Pamela, playing up to Pamela, and all more or less sexually attracted
by Pamela.

The subconscious mind of Pamela projects on these occasions, I think,
something of this kind:

=“_The girlish figure dominated the room. Magnetism vibrated in every
gesture of the slim hands, every glance from the brilliant eyes, every
modulation of the rather deep voice. She held them all, by sheer force
of personality. The peacock-blue folds of her dress, with its girdle of
barbaric, coloured stones...._”=

The bit about the dress, of course, varies. Sometimes the folds
may be saffron-yellow, and the girdle opalescent, or there is no
girdle at all; and anyhow, in those particulars, the same effect
is never repeated twice. But I imagine that, like all women, she
makes a point to herself of the accoutrements, not realising that
the audience--almost altogether composed of men--attribute the
entire effect to the sheer, smooth slope of her shoulders, the
alluring curves of her mouth, the rich swell of her breasts beneath
semi-transparencies.

The impression that inwardly she is projecting really does reflect
itself on to the minds of most people, I believe.

It is only slightly distorted, even in my own version of it, which runs
something like this:

=“_The girlish figure dominated the room. Animal magnetism vibrated
in every gesture_”= ... and so on--only leaving out the brilliancy of
the eyes and the deepness of the voice, both of them rather cheap
accessories to a pose that really is quite strong enough without
them--to the end:

=“_She held them all, by sheer will-to-dominate._”=

Pamela, being a brilliant talker, prefers always to talk personalities.

Two nights ago, sitting on that cushioned rail that runs round the
fireplace, she recounted an adventure.

“... Only it’s the spiritual adventure that I’m telling all of you.
Because you’ll understand. The other part was all obvious, the danger
and all that. You’ve probably seen it in the papers.”

She was right. It had been lavishly paragraphed, with photograph inset.
Her _flair_ for publicity is unerring.

“Darlings, how I loathe the Press--if I could only tell you! But the
other part of the affair was so utterly wonderful, that it’s swamped
everything else. It was like a revelation.

“You know how essentially super-civilised I am? A man once wrote a poem
about my being like a piece of jade--hard, and brilliant, and polished,
and yet with the unfathomable subtlety and agelessness of the East. My
civilisation is partly temperamental, I suppose, and of course to a
certain extent the result of elaborate education--and then hereditary
as well. Look at Anthony. Could anyone have a more utterly civilised
parent, I ask you? Elma is less poised, of course, but mercifully
for me I’ve managed to inherit my mother’s physique and my father’s
mentality. Like a sensitised plate, isn’t it? It does mean isolation
of soul, and those terrible nerve-storms of mine, but in my heart of
hearts I know it’s worth it.

“Only people are so ghastly. My friends have to rescue me.... You
remember what it was like, Torry, the night that woman assaulted me
at the Embassy, and talked, and talked, and talked. O Christ! it was
all about food, or flannel, or babies--something too utterly indecent,
I know. I sat there, helpless, martyred--and darling Torry came and
rescued me. I shall never forget it, Torry, you sweet, never.

“Now this is what happened the other day. (Why do you allow me to be
discursive, dear people?) You know my car was held up by Sinn Feiners?
I, who adore everything lawless! But it was simply for being Anthony’s
daughter, of course. They hate him so.

“You know how I drive for miles and miles, entirely alone, just so as
to feel the air in my face, and my hands--rather small, really, by
comparison--controlling that great swift machine. Well, I’d got to such
a lonely place that it was like finding God--when suddenly these men
appeared.

“I wasn’t a bit frightened--I never am frightened--but it was horrible,
all the same. And I kept thinking of the people who’d be so sorry if I
were killed, and wondering who’d be the sorriest, and who’d remember
longest.”

=(_She looked round the room, her dark brows raised in an expression
part whimsical, part pathetic._)=

“All this isn’t the adventure, you know, though they took my jewels,
and tied me up to a bench on a sort of heath place. They tied me here,
and here.”

She held out a slim ankle, and extended both wrists.

“Dear hearts, don’t, don’t touch me! I’m so dreadfully on edge
to-night. Nothing to do with the adventure, though. That was altogether
beautiful.

“You see there was another woman on the bench, to whom they’d done
exactly the same thing--only she’d been walking, not driving. They left
us together, and said they’d come back later and shoot us. Terrorism,
of course, but it would be such an ugly way of going out, wouldn’t it?

“She and I looked at one another, tied to either end of that bench,
and in some way that I simply can’t describe, our spirits leapt
together. She, it turned out afterwards, recognised me at once--that’s
the worst of being too weak to refuse sittings when one’s pestered
by every photographer in London--but I hadn’t the least idea who she
was, and don’t care. Bright red hair, quite distinguished-looking, and
altogether rather lovely in a pallid, blanc-de-Ninon way, though no
actual physical charm. But I felt it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d
been a _déclassée_. By the way, what is a _déclassée_?

“This still isn’t the adventure--besides, you know this part already,
all of you--but some of those ruffians came back again, and untied us,
and said we could find our own way home. They’d taken my car, needless
to say. I gave them one of my looks--the sort that means I’m really,
really angry, like when someone kisses me in a clumsy way, or spills
something on my frock--and the men melted, literally melted, away. Then
she and I began to walk, and this is really when the part that matters
started to happen.

“Having come through this shattering episode, and found ourselves
unshot, and alive, it was almost like two disembodied spirits communing
together. We got into the realities straight away. It was far more
wonderful than if one of us had been a man, because then sex must have
come into it, but as it was, each of us laid her whole soul perfectly
bare, in the way one can never do to a man, if he loves one, for fear
it should kill his love, or if he doesn’t love one, for fear it should
make him think he does.

“But as it was, each of us was perfectly fearless, and in a way
perfectly shameless. It was partly violent emotional reaction. You see,
we’d both thought we were facing death.

“She told me that she was utterly miserable. Her husband was a brute,
and her lover had let her down. He’d fallen in love with a girl, a sort
of pure-eyed-baby person, and had just told this woman--who’d been
giving him everything, of course, for years--that he wanted to _se
ranger_ and get married.

“She was nearly out of her mind, that woman. You see, she wasn’t young,
and then some skin treatment she’d been having hadn’t succeeded, and
was helping to break her up. She told me about that, too. Oh, there
was nothing she didn’t say, but she simply didn’t care, we were so
utterly intimate for that fleeting moment. Nobody else in the world
knew, she told me. She’d always tried to avoid scandal, and no one
had ever really known about her _liaison_ with this man. (Women _are_
clever about love.)

“And then I told her every single thing about myself--things that I’d
never dream of breathing in this room, nor you of believing, most
likely. Foul, filthy, hateful things about myself.... I know now why
Catholics go to confession. It releases so much.

“Darlings, words can’t ever describe what it was like. I shall never
forget it, as long as I live, and neither will she.

“We parted, of course, but we both knew that there was a link between
us that nothing could ever break, even though we never met again. It
was too utterly perfect and complete as it was.”

There was a silence, and then someone said, suitably: “Wonderful
Pamela!”

She smiled vaguely, shook her head, and then tragically clasped both
hands to her breast. “Please, a cocktail. I’m so tired. Oh, and what’s
the time? I’m dining with a man at eight, and he’s thrown over a most
important engagement to take me, and he’d be quite capable of getting
angry if I failed him. Sweet, no! Not a quarter past nine! Oh, please,
someone, a car, and take me to the little tiny, tiny French restaurant
in Wardour Street.”

Lady Pamela waved away the cocktail, spilling it, prayed for another
one and drank it, and then wafted away on the wings of little
distressed exclamations and futile, effective gestures of farewell.

That was two nights ago.

This morning I was in Bond Street, and I saw Pamela March in her
father’s car, held up by a block in the traffic.

On the other side of the narrow street another car with a solitary
woman in it passed slowly. I recognised the woman instantly from
Pamela’s description, for she had bright red hair, was quite
distinguished-looking, and altogether rather lovely in a pallid,
blanc-de-Ninon way, and radiated a marked degree of physical charm.

The eyes of the two women who had been as disembodied spirits communing
together met in a long look.

And the expression in each pair of eyes was momentarily identical,
and it was with the same effect of immutable determination that each
simultaneously administered and received the cut direct.

_They knew...._




LOST IN TRANSMISSION




LOST IN TRANSMISSION


I

The Lambes were very rich.

This was all the nicer for Mrs. Lambe, because once upon a time, not
so very long ago, when she was still Maude Gunning, she had been poor.
From the time she was eighteen to the time she was thirty, she had
taught music at the girls’ school in Carlorossa Road. She had gone
to and from her work four days a week all through term time by tram.
Fortunately, the tram took her almost from door to door. She was a bad
walker, owing to corns.

During the school holidays Maude had always tried to find private
pupils, and as she and her father and mother were well known in the big
manufacturing town and its suburbs, and her successes at the L.R.C.M.
examinations were a subject of local pride, she had generally succeeded.

And it was odd to think, as Mrs. Lambe quite often did think, that most
of the large, comfortable, expensive houses to which she had gone--with
a very keen appreciation, on autumn and winter afternoons, of the big
fire blazing in the pupil’s schoolroom or dining-room, as the case
might be--to think that these houses, for the most part, were less
large, comfortable, and expensive than the one of which she was now the
mistress.

Edgar Lambe, when he first met Miss Maude Gunning at a tea-party, was
already a wealthy man, although not as rich as the demand for houses
that sprang up during the war afterwards made him.

At the party, Maude played the piano, and played it very well. Mr.
Lambe, who was naturally musical, asked to be introduced to her. He had
never married, although he was forty years old, and he had recently
made up his mind to look for a wife. Maude attracted him, although she
was neither pretty nor very young.

Three months after their first meeting they were married.

Mr. Lambe bought the largest corner house in Victoria Avenue.

It was, of course, wholly detached from its neighbours. There was a
carriage-sweep in the front, and a long, wide garden at the back, and a
high wall all round. There was a tennis-court, two greenhouses, and a
vegetable garden beyond the flower-garden.

The inside of Melrose was even more magnificent than the outside,
and far more interesting to Mrs. Lambe, who was not very fond of
being out-of-doors, having had a great deal too much of it in her
tram-journeying days. But she had many ideas as to comfort and elegance
indoors, and Edgar was generous with money, and had a standard of his
own--and one that secretly rather scared her--as to the way in which a
house should be “run.”

This standard of Edgar’s was principally applied to lighting, heating,
food and service. The house was fitted with electric light, of course,
and Edgar had had a separate boiler put in for the three bathrooms, so
that it was his favourite boast that if anyone wanted a bath in the
middle of the night, the water would still come out of the tap almost
boiling. There were radiators in all the rooms except the kitchen,
offices and servants’ bedrooms, and hot pipes in the linen-cupboard.

It took Mrs. Lambe a little while to assimilate Edgar’s views as to
meals. She quite understood that these must be served punctually, and
that the plates must be hot--really hot--and that there must always be
a relay of fresh toast towards the end of breakfast; and of course late
dinner every night except Sunday, when it was cold supper. But she did
find it a little bit difficult, just at first, to realise that Edgar
disapproved strongly of twice-cooked meat. At her own home there had
been a weekly joint, which was hot on Sunday, cold on Monday, hashed
on Tuesday, and cottage-pie’d on Wednesday--and sometimes, if it had
been a larger joint than usual, curried on Thursday and turned into
rissoles on Friday.

At Melrose, after one, or at the most two, appearances in the
dining-room, the beef disappeared into the kitchen and was finished
there, while a new joint, or a pair of fowls, took its place on the
upstairs _menu_.

The amount of “butcher’s meat” that came into the house amazed and
disconcerted its mistress, until she found that her servants took it as
a matter of course, and that her husband continually praised her to his
friends as a good manager, and that the monthly bills--which at first
had appalled her--by no means exceeded the sum which he had himself
suggested that he should allow her for the housekeeping.

By the time that Mrs. Lambe had a nursery, with two little girls in it,
and a nurse, and a nursery-maid to wait upon them, she took it quite as
a matter of course that there should be yet a third list of items to
consider in the ordering of meals--weekly chickens, and special dairy
produce, and a regular supply of white fish, for the nursery. This
question of food for the household was, of course, immensely important,
and she gave a great deal of conscientious thought to it, thankful
when the cook suggested a new variety of sweet for the dinner-parties
to which Edgar so much enjoyed inviting his business friends and their
families.

On these occasions he himself selected the wines with the utmost care,
and instructed the two parlour-maids minutely and repeatedly in the
proper formula to be employed with each course.

Mrs. Lambe was always relieved that this great responsibility did not
in any way rest upon her. A mistake, she felt, would be altogether
_too_ terrible.

The parlour-maid and the waitress who always came in for the evening
when the Lambes entertained, never made mistakes.

Mrs. Lambe was very “good” with servants, and never had any difficulty
in finding and keeping thoroughly satisfactory domestics. The little
girls’ nurse, who received far higher wages than any of them except the
cook, was the only one with whom there was sometimes a little trouble.

She occasionally hinted that Ena and Evelyn were rather spoiled, and
inclined to come up to the nursery disposed to be fretful and out of
sorts after too much notice in the drawing-room, and far too many
expensive chocolates from the pink and blue and gilt boxes that were
always being given to them.

Mr. Lambe was a lavish and indulgent father. He thought his
fair-haired, pretty little daughters wonderful, and took the greatest
delight in associating “Dad’s” return from the office with new toys or
“surprises” of sweetmeats.

Mrs. Lambe never had the heart to disappoint him by suggesting that his
munificence was making the little girls rather critical and capricious,
even at six and four years old. Edgar only roared with appreciative
laughter when they told him, seriously and rather crossly, that they
always wanted the chocolates to come from Blakiston’s--which was the
best, and by far the most expensive, confectioner’s in the city. They
did not care for any other kind.

Edgar repeated this story to a great many of his friends, who were
as much amused as he was himself at such an instance of early
discrimination.

Mrs. Lambe was amused herself, and could not help thinking that Ena and
Evelyn were smart and original children.

They were also very pretty; rather pallid, sharp-featured little
things, always beautifully dressed, exactly alike. Neither she nor
Edgar regretted in the very least that neither of them had been a boy.

Every night Maude Lambe, who had been brought up to be thoroughly
religious, knelt at the side of her enormous bed, with its opulent
pink satin duvet, and humbly thanked God for all that He had given
her--Edgar and the children, and Edgar’s wealth and kindness, and her
beautiful, comfortable home.

There was only one fly in the ointment--Aunt Tessie.

Edgar had told her all about Aunt Tessie before they were married. He
had explained that she would live with him always, in spite of the
undeniable fact that she was Not like Other People, and that he would
never allow her to be sent away to an institution, whatever the other
Lambe relations might say.

Aunt Tessie had been very good to him when he was a little boy,
and this Edgar never intended to forget. He had had a very unhappy
childhood, with a mother who drank and a stepfather who beat him. Aunt
Tessie, who had actually made a living for herself in those days out
of painting pictures, had done everything that she could do to induce
them to let little Edgar come and live with her, and when they would
not agree to that, she had still sent him presents and surreptitiously
given him pocket-money, and when he had been sent away to school, she
had come regularly and taken him out, and invited him to her flat
whenever she could. She was the only person who had ever shown him any
affection when he was a child, Edgar had once told his wife.

Maude had been very much touched, and thought it noble of dear Edgar
to remember so faithfully, in his great prosperity, the good old aunt
who had long ceased to be able to paint even bad pictures, and who had
become terribly, almost dangerously, eccentric about ten years earlier.
Edgar had then immediately taken her to live with him, declaring Aunt
Tessie once and for all to be his charge.

All this he had explained to his wife before they were married, and her
generous and even eager acquiescence had met him more than half-way.

Maude, indeed, had been ready to accept Aunt Tessie as her charge, too.
She had felt nothing but a tender compassion for the probably frail,
half-childish invalid, towards whose garrulousness she would never
fail of kindly semi-attention, and to whose bodily weakness every care
should be extended. But Aunt Tessie had turned out not to be that sort
of invalid at all.

To begin with, her physical health was robust and powerful. She was
only fifty-five, and her hair was not grey, but a strong, virulent
auburn.

Her complexion was sanguine, her large, harshly-lined face suffused
with colour and disfigured by swelling, purplish veins.

Her voice was very loud and hoarse, and she laughed with a sound like
a neigh. As for Aunt Tessie’s appetite, it was simply prodigious.
Even had expense been a serious consideration at Melrose, Mrs. Lambe
would never have grudged anyone a hearty meal--she had too often gone
semi-hungry herself for that--but really, Aunt Tessie, with her second
and third helping of beef, and her two glasses of claret, and her frank
eagerness for dessert chocolates, was not decent.

She always had her meals in the dining-room, and it was really on
that account that Ena and Evelyn had their midday dinner upstairs,
and only came downstairs when the starched and mob-capped maids were
handing round coffee. Their mother would have liked them to come to the
dining-room for luncheon, at least on Sundays, but they both hated Aunt
Tessie, and made faces and laughed at each other when she uttered any
of her loud, inconsequent remarks, or pushed her food into her mouth
with her fingers.

Maude, and even Edgar, had tried to persuade Aunt Tessie that it would
be more comfortable for her to have all her meals in the large upstairs
sitting-room that they had given her, but Aunt Tessie had been first
angry and then hurt. They wanted her out of the way, she said angrily,
they were ashamed of her, and did not like her to meet their friends.

Mrs. Lambe could not help thinking that it was rather ungrateful
of Aunt Tessie to say this, after all that had been done for her.
However, they would not vex and disappoint the poor old lady, and so
she continued to appear downstairs, even when there was a party, and to
embarrass and disconcert everybody by her ineptitudes and her uncouth
manners at the dinner-table.


II

By the time the Armistice was signed, Mr. Lambe had become richer than
ever.

He entertained his friends even more often to dinner, and gave them
better wine, although it had always been so good before. He increased
Mrs. Lambe’s allowance for the housekeeping, and frequently gave her
presents of money to be spent upon herself or the little girls. He
would have given Aunt Tessie money too, but she had grown even queerer
in the course of the past year, and it was only too evident that what
had been called her “eccentricity” was now becoming something much more
serious. For the very first time, there was trouble with the maids.

They did not like waiting on Miss Lambe. It was no wonder, either, poor
Mrs. Lambe was forced to admit.

Aunt Tessie was untidy, even dirty, and as the housemaid once pertly
remarked, her bedroom only needed three gold balls over the door. She
kept things to eat upstairs, and scattered crumbs everywhere.

The parlour-maid, speaking for herself and for the housemaid, declared
that it was quite impossible to do the proper work of the house and to
clear up after Miss Lambe as well.

In another moment she would have given notice.... Mrs. Lambe could see
it coming.

Hastily she sent for Emma, the little between-maid, and informed her
that in future she would have the sole care of Miss Lambe’s bedroom and
her sitting-room, and would wait upon her, instead of the housemaid.
She at the same time raised Emma’s wages by two pounds a year, for she
always tried to be very just.

Emma was only seventeen, and a very childish little thing, and Mrs.
Lambe had not expected her to raise any objection to the new scheme;
but it was surprising, although satisfactory, to find that Emma seemed
to be actually pleased by it.

She said “Yes’m,” a good many times, and smiled at her mistress as
though joyfully accepting a form of promotion.

Mrs. Lambe was relieved, the parlour-maid and the housemaid did
not give notice, and even Aunt Tessie--very difficult to please
nowadays--appeared contented and satisfied.

But she was getting worse all the time.

It became more and more embarrassing when visitors came to Melrose.

The old lady always found out when anyone was expected, and the more
people were coming the noisier and more excited she became.

One dreadful Sunday there were guests for luncheon--two of Edgar’s
important clients, and little Ena’s godfather--a rich old bachelor
cousin--and two unmarried ladies, friends of Mrs. Lambe’s maiden days.
She was always very faithful to her friends.

Aunt Tessie actually pranced downstairs and met some of these people
in the hall as they arrived, and greeted them boisterously, and so
incoherently that really they might almost have been excused for
thinking that she had been taking too much to drink.

Mrs. Lambe, hastening downstairs from her own room, could hear it all,
although she could not see it, and it was thus that she afterwards
described it to Edgar.

“So glad--so glad to see you!” shouted Aunt Tessie. “This fine
house--always open, and my nephew is so generous and hospitable. They
take advantage, sometimes--there are bad people about, very bad people.
Sometimes they make attempts ... one’s life isn’t as safe as it looks,
I can assure you....”

She had thrown out such ridiculous and yet sinister hints once or twice
lately. But what _could_ the poor guests think of it all?

They were very polite, and soon saw that the best thing to do was
to ignore Aunt Tessie as far as possible, and pretend not to hear
when she talked, and not to see when she shuffled about the room,
upsetting ornaments here and there, and every now and then whisking
round suddenly to look behind her as though she expected someone or
something to be following her. Once she shouted very loud, “Get out, I
tell you! I can _smell_ the poison from here!...” But after the first
involuntary, startled silence, everyone began simultaneously to talk
again, and very soon after that, luncheon was announced.

Mrs. Lambe saw that her husband, talking to his principal guest and
smiling a great deal, kept on all the time turning an anxious eye
towards Aunt Tessie, and this emboldened her to do what she had never
done before.

She put her hand on the old lady’s arm, and detained her whilst the
others were all going into the dining-room.

“Dear auntie,” she said, speaking low and very gently, “I’m sure you’re
not well. You look so flushed and tired. All these people are really
too much for you. Do let Emma carry your lunch upstairs on a tray and
have it comfortably in your own room.”

But it was of no use.

Aunt Tessie, her looks and her manner stranger than ever, vociferated
an incoherent refusal, mixed up with something about Emma, to whom she
had taken a violent fancy.

“A good girl--the only one you can trust. She never _plots against
people_!” Aunt Tessie shouted, nodding her head with wild emphasis, and
rolling her eyeballs round in their sockets.

Mrs. Lambe could do nothing. She dared not let Aunt Tessie sit next to
any of the visitors, and of course she herself had to have one of the
important clients upon either side of her, but she made Ena and Evelyn,
who were lunching downstairs in honour of the godfather’s presence,
take their places one on each side of their extraordinary old relative.

Evelyn, who was very little, began to whine and protest, but Mrs. Lambe
pretended not to hear. She knew that Evelyn’s attention was always very
easily distracted. She felt much more afraid of Ena, and her heart sank
when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Aunt Tessie officiously
trying to put Ena’s long curls away from her shoulders.

The little girl’s fair, pretty face turned black with scowls in an
instant, and she twitched herself away from the big, heavy, mottled
hand fumbling clumsily at her neck, and sat with her back as nearly as
possible turned to Aunt Tessie.

One couldn’t really blame the poor children for disliking her so
much, but it was very bad for them ... it made them naughty and
ill-mannered....

Poor Mrs. Lambe could only give half her attention to her guests, and
she saw that Edgar, too, underneath his geniality and his urgent and
repeated invitations that everyone should have more food and more wine,
was anxious and ill at ease.

Every now and then Aunt Tessie’s strident tones rose above all the
other sounds in the big, hot dining-room.

“Not any more--no. They put things into one’s food sometimes, and then
they think one doesn’t notice. But the one who waits on me--Emma, her
name is--she’s all right. You can trust her.”

Aunt Tessie’s words, no less than her emphasis on Emma’s
trustworthiness, would of course be noticed, and bitterly resented,
by the other two servants, waiting deftly and quietly at the table.
But neither of them moved a muscle, even when she went on to something
worse.

“Never put any confidence in upper servants,” declared Aunt Tessie,
leaning across the table and almost shouting. “They may be civil
enough, but they plot and plan behind people’s backs. There’s cases in
the newspapers very often ... it’s ... it’s murder, really, you know.
They call it accidental, but sometimes it’s poisoning. One can’t be too
auspicious--suspicious, I should say.”

She paused to laugh vacantly at her own slip of the tongue, and to let
her eyes rove all over the table as though in search of something.

Mr. Lambe clumsily wrenched at the conversation: “Talking about
newspaper reports, that was a curious case in Staffordshire....”

The visitors seconded him gamely, and Aunt Tessie’s voice was overborne
and heard again only in snatches.

Mrs. Lambe, however, was very much upset, and she ordered coffee to be
brought to the drawing-room so as to make a move as soon as possible.

Things were a little better in the drawing-room. Ena and Evelyn were
soon screaming and romping round Ena’s godfather, and one of Maude’s
humble friends, perhaps feeling that she owed her something in return
for the splendid luncheon and lavish hospitality, sat in the bow-window
with Aunt Tessie and kept her away from the rest of the room. This was
a great relief, although it led to an uncomfortable moment when the
party was breaking up, and Aunt Tessie, vehemently taking leave of her
kind companion, actually caught up a little gilt trifle from Maude’s
knick-knack shelf and tried to press it upon her acceptance.

Miss Mason was very tactful, pretending with rather an embarrassed look
to accept the impossible gift, and secretly slipping it on to a table
near the door as she went out.

Aunt Tessie did not see, but Maude did. She was nearly crying by the
time it was all over and everyone had gone away. The children had been
sent upstairs again, and Aunt Tessie’s heavy footsteps had taken her to
her own part of the house.

Curiously enough, she and Edgar hardly spoke to one another about the
disastrous subject, but Maude Lambe knew very well that he now, as well
as she, fully realised the discomfort and humiliation entailed upon the
whole household by his too-generous treatment of Aunt Tessie.


III

Soon it was no longer possible to pretend that Aunt Tessie was not
getting worse and worse. Her constant, irrelevant allusions to plots,
and poisonings, and wicked people, had become a fixed delusion.

She really thought that everyone at Melrose was conspiring against her
life, and she would allow no one, except Emma, to do anything for her.

It was a mercy, Mrs. Lambe often told herself, that Emma was such a
good little thing. She was so willing, and never seemed to grudge the
time and trouble that she was obliged to spend over cleaning Aunt
Tessie’s apartments and tidying up after her. She would even listen,
respectfully and yet compassionately, to Aunt Tessie’s long, rambling
denunciations and accusations.

“Poor old lady!” Maude once overheard Emma saying to another servant.
“She’s a lady just the same, for all she’s gone queer, and I behaves
towards her like I would to any other lady, that’s all.”

“Funny kind of a lady that makes a face at a servant, as she did at me
this morning.”

“She never done that to me, nor nothing the least like it,” said Emma
stoutly.

It was only too true that Aunt Tessie was very rude to all the maids
except Emma, and sometimes to Edgar and Maude as well. As she grew
worse, she seemed to forget all their kindness and generosity, and to
look upon them as being her enemies.

Mrs. Lambe would not let the little girls go near her any more, and
the nurse had orders to keep them away from Miss Lambe “until she grew
better.”

Aunt Tessie, however, did not grow better.

The doctor, an old friend of Edgar Lambe’s, advised them to have a
nurse for her, if they were still determined to keep her on at Melrose,
instead of sending her to one of the many excellent establishments that
he could have recommended.

“Nothing in the least like an institution or--or asylum. Simply
a nursing home where Miss Lambe would have entire freedom and
every possible comfort, but would yet receive the constant medical
supervision that her unfortunate condition renders necessary.”

But Edgar Lambe remained obstinate. Aunt Tessie had been very good to
him in the past, and he had always said that she should be his special
charge. He would not send her away to any nursing home, however highly
recommended.

He was, however, quite willing that a professional nurse should be
installed at Melrose. The expense, he said, was nothing, if it would
make things easier for Maude and be of advantage to Aunt Tessie.

The presence of Nurse Alberta certainly fulfilled both these
requirements.

She was an intelligent, pleasant-looking woman of five- or
six-and-thirty, with none of the pretensions so often associated
with her class. She had meals with Aunt Tessie, in the latter’s big,
comfortable sitting-room, and slept in a little room adjoining hers.
Both of them were waited upon by Emma.

Aunt Tessie nowadays made no difficulty about not coming to the
dining-room. Her crazy old mind had fastened upon the idea of poison,
and Emma and Nurse Alberta were the only people from whom she would
accept food or drink.

The nurse told Emma, with whom she became quite friendly by dint of
constant association, that the “persecution mania” was a very common
symptom amongst those who were mentally deranged.

“They always think that everybody’s against them,” she declared
cheerfully, “even those who do most for them. Look at this poor old
lady, for instance! She thinks Mr. and Mrs. Lambe are plotting against
her, and I’m sure they’re goodness itself to her, and have been for
years, I should think. No expense grudged, and everything done to make
her comfortable. Why, most people would have had an own mother sent
away by this time and put under restraint--and Miss Lambe is only an
aunt. No real relation at all, as you may say, to Mrs. Lambe. Really, I
do think Mrs. Lambe’s behaved wonderfully, and I’m sure she finds it a
strain.”

Nurse Alberta was quite right. Mrs. Lambe did find the presence of Aunt
Tessie in the house a great strain, even now.

In her heart, she was terribly afraid that the old aunt, who had so
rapidly passed from one distressing stage to another, might suddenly
become a real danger to those around her.

She thought of Ena and Evelyn and shuddered. Very often, she woke in
the night and crept out to the landing, trembling, to listen at the
night-nursery door.

One day, when Nurse Alberta had been in the house for some time, Mrs.
Lambe felt so wretched and so much unstrung by her state of now chronic
nervousness, that she detained the doctor after his habitual visit to
Aunt Tessie, and timidly spoke to him of her own symptoms.

He listened very attentively, asked her several questions, and finally
made a suggestion which Mrs. Lambe saw at once ought to have occurred
to her earlier.

She was going to have another child.

It was over five years since Evelyn’s birth, and she had somehow never
expected to have any more babies, but both Mr. and Mrs. Lambe were
honestly pleased.

They hoped for a son.

It was this discovery that led to the modification of Edgar Lambe’s
views about Aunt Tessie. Obviously, the presence of the unfortunate old
lady subjected Maude to a continual strain that might easily become
more and more severe as time went on.

The doctor, privately consulted by Mr. Lambe, admitted that in his
opinion it was not quite fair on Mrs. Lambe, in her condition, to keep
the aggressive, turbulent invalid in the house with her. And it wasn’t
as if Aunt Tessie herself really benefited by it, either. She was far
past appreciating any kindness or attention shown to her now. Her _idée
fixe_ was that everyone at Melrose excepting poor little Emma, the
maid, was plotting against her in some way, and seeking to poison her.

Mr. Lambe listened, nodding his head, his red, heavy-jowled face
puckered with distress. It went against the grain with him to
invalidate the boast of years--that Aunt Tessie should always share his
home--and yet in his heart he felt that the doctor was right.

Aunt Tessie was past minding or knowing, poor soul--and Maude and their
unborn son must come first.

When once he had fairly made up his mind to it, Edgar Lambe could not
help feeling a certain relief. He, too, in his own way, had suffered on
those dreadful occasions when Aunt Tessie had insisted upon appearing
downstairs, and had made his friends and his family uncomfortable by
her strange, noisy eccentricity. Even nowadays his daily visit to her
room was a miserable affair. It gave her no pleasure now to see the
nephew for whom she had once done so much, and who had done so much for
her in return. She classed him with her imaginary enemies.

It was very difficult for Edgar Lambe, who was not at all an
imaginative man, not to feel irrationally wounded by those wild
accusations of enmity. He could scarcely be brought to understand that
poor Aunt Tessie’s floods of foolish vituperation had, in themselves,
no meaning at all.

“But she was always devoted to me,” he said, half resentfully and half
piteously. “I can’t make it out at all. You’d think that even now she’d
be able to--to distinguish a bit between me and the wretched cook or
charwoman. But no, she abuses us all alike, and seems to think we’re
all in league to do her in.”

“It’s part of her illness, Mr. Lambe,” said Nurse Alberta soothingly.
“You know, she really is quite cracky, poor old lady.”

The “arrangements,” as the doctor called them, were made as speedily
as possible, since they were naturally distressing to everybody, and
Mr. and Mrs. Lambe went themselves to see Aunt Tessie’s new quarters,
and to talk to the charming lady at the head of the establishment, and
get special permission for Nurse Alberta, to whom Aunt Tessie was used,
to take her there and remain with her for some time until she grew
accustomed to it all.

“Fires in her room, of course, and any extras that she may fancy,” said
Mr. Lambe impressively. “Expense is of no consideration at all. I shall
send round a comfortable couch for the sitting-room this afternoon.”

He did so, and Mrs. Lambe added two or three fat cushions, and a
decorated lampshade and waste-paper basket, such as she liked in her
own drawing-room.

When Aunt Tessie was told that she was going away from Melrose for a
time, she was delighted.

“Then I can relish my food again,” she said rather coarsely.

“There’s never any knowing what they’re all up to here.”

That remained her attitude up to the very last. She dumped them all
together as objects of her aggrieved resentment. Edgar, Maude, the two
little girls, the impassive, well-behaved servants.

But when she said good-bye to Emma the night before she was to go away,
Aunt Tessie squeezed her hand hard, and gave her some money and several
ornaments and little trinkets from her own possessions.

Soft-hearted Emma cried, and hurried away to the sitting-room to find
Nurse Alberta. “I just can’t bear to listen to her, poor old lady,
saying I’m the only one as never tried to do her a mischief,” she
sobbed.

“You’re a silly girl to take on so,” said the nurse good-naturedly.
“Why, she’ll be ever so well looked after where she’s going, and
there’s good money being spent on her comforts, I can tell you, and Mr.
Lambe won’t let that be wasted. It isn’t like some poor looneys, that
get put away and not a soul of their own people ever goes near them to
see how they’re getting on. She’ll be kept an eye on, you may be very
sure, and it’ll be best for all parties to have her under another roof,
really it will.”

“Oh yes, I know!” said Emma.

“It isn’t even as if she wanted to stay, you know, Emma. She’s turned
dead against them, like cases of her sort often do. Look at the way she
spoke to you about your being the only one that didn’t want to poison
her, or some such rubbish.”

There was a pause.

“Nurse,” said Emma suddenly, “do mad people _know_ as they’re mad?”

“They say not,” indifferently returned Nurse Alberta, biting a thread
off her piece of needlework. “Why, Emma?”

“Because--well, me and Cook got to talking last night about poor Miss
Lambe, and--I can’t say it how I mean,” Emma rambled on confusedly,
“but Cook would have it that people as go off their heads--well, they
_are_ off their heads. They don’t look at anything like we do any
more--it’s sort of all upside down to them. But I didn’t think it was
like that--well, at any rate not with Miss Lambe.”

“Why not?” said Nurse Alberta.

She looked interested and Emma was encouraged.

“I thought, perhaps,” she said timidly, “that the inside of her poor
mind is still like everybody’s else’s, in a way, only she can’t get the
thoughts to come out right. And I thought, perhaps, that when she said
all that about them wanting to poison her, it was only her--her mad
sort of way of saying that she’d felt, all along, they really wanted
her to go away. And that would be why she said I was the only person
that she was safe with. Because I never did want her to go away. The
master and mistress and the young ladies may have felt like that. Of
course, it’s been ever so trying for them, I know, having her here
like that--and the girls downstairs, they wanted her to go. But I never
did, and I wondered if perhaps that was what she sort of felt, only she
couldn’t explain it right, and so it came out that way--in all her talk
about being poisoned, and that.”

Emma stopped and looked rather wistfully at the nurse.

“You’ll think I’m balmy myself, talking like that. And I can’t explain
what I mean a bit well. It’s not as if I’d been educated like you----”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Nurse Alberta, smiling. “I think I understand
what you mean, Emma. According to your notion, the poor old lady feels
and thinks pretty much the same as we do, but she’s lost the trick of
communicating her feelings and her thoughts. They--they get lost in
transmission, so to say.”

“You do put it well, Nurse!” said Emma admiringly.

Nurse Alberta looked gratified. “I don’t know,” she said modestly. But
she was herself rather pleased by the sound of the phrase that she had
used, and could not resist repeating it.

“It’s a bit far-fetched, perhaps, but there’s certainly something in
what you say, Emma,” she observed, biting off another thread. “Lost in
transmission--that’s the idea--lost in transmission!”




TIME WORKS WONDERS




TIME WORKS WONDERS


I

“You funny little thing!” he said patronisingly.

Adela resented the term violently, but because he was the only man who
had ever attempted to talk personalities with her, she accepted it
smilingly.

“I must read some of those books of yours. Tell me what the names are.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter! Never mind about my books,” she said hurriedly.

Adela could not imagine Willoughby reading anybody’s books, unless
definitely of that class which deals with a fictitious Secret Service
or the intrigues of an imaginary kingdom.

Her own books were small masterpieces of psychology, subtly ironical. A
shudder, half-humorous, half-despairing, came over her at the idea of
Hal Willoughby, bored and mystified, ploughing his way through one of
her books.

“Never mind about my books,” she repeated. “I’d rather you thought of
me as a girl than as a writer.”

She felt wildly daring in so speaking, partly because she had called
herself a girl, although she was thirty, and partly because it was
the first time that she had ever attempted what she supposed to be a
flirtation.

Her reputation for cleverness had always been so great and so terrible
that young men had never dared to approach her.

She supposed that must be the reason for their aloofness, since she had
always been passably pretty; and even now, by artificial light, she
looked five years younger than she was.

Her hair and her colouring were charming in a subdued and unvivid
way, her features straight and very clean-cut. She hardly realised
how much too thin were the lips of her tiny mouth, how intense and
over-prominent her large hazel eyes.

“I never can imagine how anybody can write a book,” said Willoughby.

Adela moved uneasily. She could tell what was coming.

“Do you think of a plot first, or do you just make it up as you go
along?”

“It all depends.”

She made the meaningless reply that had so often served her before.

“I should never know what to make the people say next. Aren’t
conversations awfully difficult?”

“Sometimes.”

“I suppose you are always on the look-out for people to put into your
books--under invented names, of course.”

“I don’t think I am.”

“Oh, but I expect you are! I expect really you sit there, taking it all
in, you know.”

Why did people always think it necessary to talk to her like this?

“You ought to write a play. They say it pays like fun.”

“But, you see, I’m not a dramatist.”

“Oh, rubbish! If you’re clever enough to write books, of course you
could write a play. I should, if I were you--really I should.” His
voice was charged with encouragement.

“No, I couldn’t. Don’t let’s talk about that.”

“Why not? I want to hear about these books of yours. I’ve never met a
literary lady before.”

It was of no use. He would not talk to her as she was almost sure
that he would have talked to any other woman in the room, given those
distant sounds of music from the ballroom, that hazy moonlight above
the bench beneath the syringa-bushes.

Adela grimly sacrificed her art, perjuring her soul away. “I expect
you think it’s very funny of me to write books,” she said, desperately
adapting her vocabulary to his own. “I really do it mostly--a good
deal--because it brings in money.” She tried to laugh, and hated
herself for the artificiality of the sound.

“I suppose girls are always glad of extra pocket-money,” he assented
indifferently.

A girl--that was how he thought of her.

She was pleased at that, but she struggled for a more serious
recognition of her capabilities, too. “It’s not only pocket-money. I
can really get a living from my writing, though I’m always at home with
my mother. But I could be independent to-morrow if I liked.”

“Oh, come now!” The words might have expressed remonstrance,
incredulity, astonishment.

“The advance royalty--that’s the money the publishers give me in
advance--on my last book was two hundred pounds,” she said calmly.

She had never gone away to work, never had to pay for her food or for
a roof over her head, never tried her strength or the strength of her
resources in the struggle for livelihood amongst unsupported women.

Two hundred pounds for her year’s work was a large sum, with no calls
upon it.

Willoughby repeated after her: “Two hundred pounds! I say! You don’t
expect me to believe you get that just for writing a story?”

“Yes.” She was uncertain of the reason for his disbelief, and even
whether he really did disbelieve her.

“But was it a serious book, or just a novel?” He really sounded
perplexed.

“Oh, ‘just a novel’!” she said bitterly.

“Good Lord! How many do you write in a year?”

“That last one took me over a year. My first one I worked at, on and
off, for five years.”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter to you, taking your time, but it would
be quite worth scribbling them off one after the other, if you can
get money like that without working for it, so to speak,” said Hal
Willoughby.

He fingered his thick, fair moustache, and Adela looked up at him
furtively in the moonlight.

He was very big and good-looking; and when she danced with him, and met
his full, bold gaze, Adela could almost forget about such conversations
between them as the present one.

Besides, he had not always talked like this. Once he had pretended not
to know what colour her eyes were, and once he had told her about his
life in India. She wished intensely that the conversation now would
shift to some such topic.

The moonlight and the heavy scent of the syringa seemed to mock her.

“And what are your books about?” said Willoughby laboriously. “Love,
I suppose?” He broke into a roar of laughter. “Does the heroine fall
fainting into the hero’s arms in the last chapter, eh? That’s the
style, isn’t it?”

Adela stood up, trembling. “I think I want to go in now, please.
The--the dance must be finished now.”

He stood up also. “But I say! What’s the matter? You’re not ratty,
are you?” He pulled unceremoniously at the prim velvet ribbons that
hung from her waist. “Sit down again. Don’t you know I’m going away
to-morrow? You might be a little bit nice to me, I do think.”

“I didn’t know you wanted me to be,” she said swiftly.

He laughed, and pulled her on to the bench again.

Adela’s mother, with whom she always lived, had told her very often
that men never really respected a woman who let them “take liberties.”
Adela, never before put to the test, recklessly determined to disregard
the parental axiom.

When Willoughby caught hold of her chilly little ringless hand, she
made no movement of withdrawal.

He looked down at her and laughed again. “What an odd little thing you
are! I don’t believe you’ve ever been kissed, have you?”

She was silent.

“Has anybody ever made love to you, now?”

“Yes,” she said defiantly and untruly.

He laughed quite openly, and declared, “I don’t believe it!”

Still laughing, he put his hand under her chin, tilting up her face,
and kissed her.


II

Hal Willoughby’s careless parting kiss remained the only one that Adela
was destined to receive.

For ten years more she lived with her mother, and heard her say proudly
to other mothers, coming with the news of Mollie’s engagement, or
Dolly’s beautiful new baby:

“Ah, I still keep my Adela, I’m glad to say. She’s almost too
fastidious, I sometimes think. She’s never made herself cheap with
anyone. And then there’s her writing, too.”

Adela had slowly been making a name for herself, but her great success
only came after her mother’s death. A long novel, at which she had been
working for several years, made her reputation in the world of letters.

She had inherited money from her mother, and her books brought her in
more.

Adela was able to indulge in artistic necessities.

It became imperative that she should retire, whenever she wanted
to write, to a Yorkshire moor with an atmosphere of ruggedness and
strength, and very few trees.

So many journalists, so many fellow-writers, such a number of the
new-born coterie that “followed the Adela Alston method” had inquired
so earnestly in what peculiar setting Adela found it necessary to
enshrine her inspiration, that the need of the Yorkshire moor had
suddenly sprung, full-grown, into being.

She built a two-roomed cottage, engaged a caretaker, and wrote in a
small summer-house, wearing knickerbockers and sandals, and smoking
violently. This was in the summer. In the winter, inspiration was
obliged to content itself with Hampstead, and Adela had to wear shoes
and stockings and a skirt.

At forty she had gained greatly in assurance, and knew herself for the
leading spirit in a small group of intensely modern women writers, by
whom she was devoutly worshipped.

Adela became accustomed to being the person who was listened to, in the
society of her fellows.

They were not only interested in her work, but deeply, intensely
interested in herself.

“You know almost too much of human nature, Adela. It’s not decent.”

Adela enjoyed being told that.

“I’ve seen all sorts in my time,” she said musingly.

It would no longer have pleased her to be thought younger than she was.
On the contrary, she was apt to emphasise in herself the aspect of a
full maturity.

“That last study of yours is simply magnificent. Dear, I don’t wonder
you’ve never chosen to marry. No man’s vanity could survive your
insight.”

A newcomer to the group leant forward eagerly. Her characteristic was
lack of self-restraint, which she acclaimed in herself as fearlessness.

“But you’ve known the great realities--you’ve known passion,” she urged
foolishly. “You could never write as you do, otherwise.”

Adela gazed at her new disciple from under drooping eyelids. “I am not
ashamed of it,” she said quietly. “I am proud of it.”

The girl nodded with grotesque, unconscious vehemence.

The two other women-friends of Adela who were present, exchanged a
meaning look with one another. Each had heard Adela’s story before,
had shown loyal pride and understanding. There was no need of further
demonstration from them. Adela was looking at the girl.

“There was one man in my life,” she said low and deeply. “There is
never more than one--that counts. And a woman who has never loved,
never been loved, never met her mate--has never lived.”

The room was tensely silent.

“It was more than ten years ago, and I have outlived the poignancy of
it. I have never seen him since--I never shall. But I make no secret of
having known fulfilment.”

Her voice was low and rich with intense enjoyment of her own effect.

“Even now, though, when all the storm and stress is long, long
past--it’s odd, but the scent of a syringa in bloom can still hurt me.
You see--I was swept right off my feet.”

She paused before concluding with the words that she had unconsciously
learnt by heart, so significantly did they always round off her
retrospect.

“I had waited for him all my life. He asked everything, and I
gave--everything.”

“Ah!”

“You splendid woman!”

Adela leant back again, her large eyes gazing abstractedly into the
past, full of a brooding satisfaction. Her lips exhaled a sound that
was barely audible.

“Hal Willoughby!”

       *       *       *       *       *

Time works wonders.




THE GALLANT LITTLE LADY




THE GALLANT LITTLE LADY


I

“I hope you are using all your influence to prevent the marriage?” said
Clyde, in the impersonal tone that he always adopted when speaking to
his wife of her only daughter.

“Why, Charles? They’re madly in love.”

“That is why,” said Sir Charles.

“What do you mean?”

Lady Clyde had not the slightest desire to know what her husband meant,
and had already made up her mind that she disagreed with it root and
branch, so she said, “What do you mean?” in a tone of indignation, and
not one of enquiry, and gave him no time to answer.

“Richard is a gentleman, he’s earning a very good salary, and he adores
Rita. The only possible objection is their having to live in the East,
but everyone says the Malay States are quite healthy, and she’s very
strong, thank heaven. If she’s plucky enough to face it, I don’t see
how _we_ can object.”

“My objection has nothing to do with their living in the Malay States.
It is simply concerned with the fact that they will have nothing
whatever to depend upon except Richard Lambourne’s salary. He is a
young man, he has saved nothing, and he has no expectations from
anybody.”

“Rita has her own small income.”

“It might keep them from starvation, certainly, but it wouldn’t be
enough for a family.”

“No one expects it to be. Richard will save if he has a wife,
naturally, and he hopes to become a part owner of the rubber estate,
later on. After all, it’s very creditable for a man of his age to have
been made general manager already.”

“Very.”

“Then what have you against him?”

“Nothing at all,” said Sir Charles mildly.

“A minute ago you were telling me how you hoped I should use my
influence to prevent this marriage. If you have nothing against him,
why shouldn’t they marry?”

“Perhaps I have ‘something against’ Rita, as you express it.”

“Rita is only your step-daughter, Charles, and I know very well that
your own children----”

“_Our_ own children----”

“That they come first, and always have. But I have an unprejudiced
eye,” said Lady Clyde warmly, “and I don’t pretend that Rita isn’t
a greater deal cleverer, prettier, and more attractive than all the
others put together. And as for talking of having anything against her,
it’s the sheerest nonsense, as even you must know.”

Sir Charles looked at his wife with an expression which she had long
ago summed up, not inaptly, as “Charles looking as though he couldn’t
decide if one were worth explaining the alphabet to or not.” On this
occasion, Sir Charles appeared to decide in favour of the modicum of
intelligence required.

“My case is simply this, Catherine. If Richard Lambourne and Rita marry
now, they are entirely dependent upon Richard’s job. Say he loses it,
or loses his health--which amounts to the same thing--or falls off his
horse and breaks his neck, Rita may be left with a child, or children,
and nothing whatever to live on except a yearly sum which she has
hitherto spent upon her clothes, largely supplemented by presents from
you.”

“As though Rita wouldn’t always have a welcome from me, and as though I
wouldn’t share my last crust with her!”

“On the contrary, I should expect you to divide your last crust
into equal parts between Rita and your four other children,” said
Sir Charles with coldness. “But apart from last crusts, which is a
rhetorical way of speaking, you had better understand once and for all,
my dear Catherine, that my sons and daughter are not to be sacrificed
to Rita. If she marries this man, he must keep her. This house is her
home, and has been so for twenty years or so, but once she is married,
it ceases to be her home. I am sorry if I hurt your feelings, but if
Rita is to take the risk of marriage with a man who has nothing to
depend on but what he can earn for himself, she had better understand
exactly what she is doing. Personally, I consider her entirely unfitted
to take such a risk.”

“She is more than ready to take any risk. You are perfectly incapable
of understanding Rita, Charles, and what a generous, ardent nature she
has. And she is very, very much in love, for the first time in her
life. You know as well as I do that plenty of people have wanted to
marry Rita, and I think it’s wonderful that she should have refused so
many offers, to give herself to a man who isn’t rich, simply because
she loves him.”

“You look upon it as being decided, then?”

“Of course I do. She is absolutely determined to marry him and go out
with him at once. I can’t refuse my consent--and I shan’t--and they’re
not dependent upon yours, Charles.”

She looked at him with a rather nervous defiance, but Sir Charles said
with great calm:

“Certainly they’re not. I shall therefore consider the subject closed,
so far as my objections go.”

He kept his word, as he invariably did.

The wedding of Rita and Richard took place six weeks later.

Rita was little and very pretty, with big dark eyes, a pathetic baby
face, and, in rather quaint contrast, a very erect little figure and a
decided bearing.

Unlike her stepfather, the majority of her friends and relations fully
realised the beautiful recklessness of Rita’s love-match.

“A very gallant little lady!” said an old friend of Lady Clyde’s, and
she reversed an opinion which she had hitherto held as to his senility.
He used the same phrase, which had evidently caught his ancient fancy,
when the bride was making her farewells, and it oddly suited her
appearance, in a velvet dress and a three-cornered hat with a long
plume, vaguely recalling pictures of cavalier heroines.

“So she’s marrying all for love, and going eight thousand miles away
from home!” said Rita’s aged admirer. “None of your mercenary, modern,
ideas there. A gallant little lady, I call her.”


II

The same phrase was repeated, and by many people, when Rita and Richard
Lambourne came home again, three years later. The great rubber slump
had come, and Richard had lost his job. He said that he hoped to find
something to do in England.

“Professional men of all classes are hoping exactly the same thing at
the present moment, all over the country,” said Sir Charles Clyde.

The Lambournes stayed with the Clydes for a little while, then they and
their baby and their nurse moved into a tiny house on the outskirts of
a large neighbouring town, and then it was that such a number of people
took to making use of the apt descriptive phrase first employed when
Rita married.

Many of them had known her in her girlhood, the spoilt and favoured
child of Lady Clyde, at home in her stepfather’s house.

They could fully appreciate the contrast with her present position.

Richard could not find any work, although he answered advertisements
and wrote to influential friends. He was not a strong man, and very
soon showed signs of great discouragement and anxiety.

Rita, on the contrary, was always cheerful, and discussed the situation
very frankly, laughing merrily at her own struggle with unaccustomed
privations.

“It’s so lucky I’ve got a little money that my own father left me.
By managing very, very carefully, we’re living on that. Poor Richard
hadn’t a penny beyond his salary, and now of course that’s all
gone--poor darling!”

She was drolly confidential with her numerous friends.

“It’s so funny to have to think before I take a second helping of
pudding, even, and yet I suppose I really ought to. But I don’t think
I’ve got a very large appetite, have I, Richard?”

“No, you haven’t.”

“What a good thing!” She laughed as she spoke, but Richard remained
unsmiling and miserable, and gradually it became evident to Rita’s
friends that one of Rita’s trials was her husband’s inability to face
their position with a gallant laugh, as she did.

As time went on, and there appeared to be no hope of a salary for
Richard, she sent away the little girl’s nurse.

“I think I ought to be able to manage. Lots of poor women have to, only
it’s a great pity I was brought up to play the piano, and dance, and
play tennis, instead of learning to cook. One somehow never thought of
it’s being necessary.”

“It oughtn’t to be necessary now,” said Richard violently, “if you’d
married a fellow with money, or brains enough to make some.”

“Why, I might have been a millionairess, if I’d married the first man
that ever proposed to me,” she said brightly. “Doesn’t it seem odd?”

He made no answer.

“D’you know, darling, I saw a really lovely jumper in Colson’s window
to-day. It was real old rose, the colour that suits me. It was one of
the sale things and marked down to half a guinea. I had a frightful
struggle--it is such ages since I had anything new. I wouldn’t even
let myself go into the shop, though I had to get some things for baby.
I went somewhere else. I felt I couldn’t bear to come out of Colson’s
without that jumper. It was so lovely--and really marvellously cheap.
It’s been haunting me ever since.”

“Surely we can find half a guinea,” said Richard, his face flushing.

“Richard!” She gave a little laughing scream. “Why, I work out every
penny of my income on paper before I spend it, and do you know what’s
left over for my clothes, when I’ve paid the wages and the rent, and
rates and taxes, and the housekeeping books? Just--exactly--five pounds
a year!”

She held up five fingers, laughing.

“I know.”

“I can’t believe that I once spent five pounds a year, or thereabouts,
on gloves, but I suppose I did. I don’t really know how I could manage
now, if mummie didn’t still give me so many presents.”

She looked at him with her head on one side, rather like a very pretty
squirrel.

“I do manage rather well, don’t I, dear? I have to work pretty hard,
you know.”

“Of course you manage well,” he said ungraciously. He hardly ever
encouraged her with praise nowadays, although she was doing wonders.
He only gave way to violent outbreaks of despair and self-reproach,
when she assured him that she could do without things that she had had
all her life, and that she wasn’t really so _very_ tired after two bad
nights with the baby.

“Isn’t it lucky I’m so strong?” she sometimes asked her friends. “I do
a lot of the housework myself, you know, because we can only afford one
servant, of course, and she’s a rough sort of girl. It was so funny at
first, I couldn’t understand that class of servant at all. At home,
of course, the maids were all quite different. Ellen means very well,
really, though I’ve had to learn cooking, so as to do a certain amount
myself. Will you forgive me now, if I run to see that Richard’s supper
is all right--not burning?”

She tripped away, still laughing, in spite of the tired lines that were
beginning to show beneath her sparkling dark eyes.

“Rita is too wonderful, poor darling!” said Lady Clyde. “As she says
herself, she’s never in her life been used to poverty. And look at the
way she makes the best of things! You know they’re living on her tiny
little income, that she manages too wonderfully for words. You can’t
say _now_, Charles, as I remember you once did, that Rita, of all
people, wasn’t fitted to take the risk of poverty.”

Whether Sir Charles could, or could not, have repeated his axiom, was
not destined to be made clear, for he said nothing at all.

He did, however, make many attempts to find a job for Richard, and
went to see the originator of the phrase that described Richard’s
wife so well--“a gallant little lady”--who was connected with some
highly-remunerative business.

The old man shook his head.

“I’m on the point of retiring, Sir Charles. Times are bad, though I’ve
made my pile, but it was done by hard work at one job all my life. I’ll
see if there’s anything for your--stepson, is it?”

“He is no relation of mine,” said Sir Charles very distinctly. “He
married my wife’s only daughter by her first husband. He is now obliged
to live upon her--very small--fortune.”

“I’ve heard something of that. Poor little lady--she’s doing wonders, I
hear. Well, well, I’ll see if they’ve anything to offer the lad, but we
don’t want men without experience these days, you know. But I’d like to
do something, for the sake of that gallant little lady.”


III

“Richard dear, I _would_ like to ask mummie and Sir Charles to
dinner--supper, I mean--one night. I’ve got a little cash in hand, so
I shouldn’t feel too extravagant. You know I got rather more than I
expected, for the sale of that old bracelet of mine.”

Richard did know, because Rita had told him this already, quite
gleefully, although admitting that the bracelet had been a legacy from
a specially beloved grandmother, and that it cost her a pang to let it
go.

“I loathe your selling your jewellery. It makes me feel such a cad
for having got you into this mess, though God knows I never foresaw
anything like this. Rita, _must_ you do these things?”

She looked at him with a face of piteous, childlike surprise. “Oh,
aren’t you _at all_ pleased that we’ve got an extra pound or two,
Richard? I’m sure you’ve no idea what a difference it makes.”

He groaned impatiently.

“Of course, if you think I’ve no right to suggest entertaining
_any_body, even on a tiny scale, now we’re so poor, I won’t do it. It
was silly of me, I daresay, but I haven’t really properly got used
not to having an occasional little party, I suppose. It’s all right,
Richard darling. Never mind.”

She smiled bravely.

“Rita, I shall go mad if I can’t find a job, and take you out of this
sort of thing,” said Richard, and he began to pace up and down the
little room.

When Lady Clyde and her husband did come to dinner, Rita told her
mother privately that poor darling Richard was becoming almost
hysterical sometimes. It did make things so much, much harder when one
was doing all one could to keep up under the strain, and be always
bright and ready to make the best of it.

“No one can say you’re not doing that, my dearest child,” said her
mother.

Tears of mingled admiration and compassion rose to her eyes when Rita
apologised gaily for the poverty of the fare, when she corrected
herself every time that she mentioned the word dinner instead of
supper, and when she laughingly excused herself for having to run away
and help with the washing-up, because the servant now was only a daily
one, and went home early.

“It seemed so funny at first, mummy, and I was always ringing the bell
and expecting it to be answered, like when I used to ring for Cooper or
Ellis or Mary, at home. I really can’t believe that I had a maid all
for myself, just to do my hair and keep my clothes tidy, not so very
long ago.”

“What a plucky little thing she is!” said her mother in a choked voice.

She glanced resentfully at Richard, who sat silent, moody and haggard,
without endorsing her tribute to his wife in any way.

He looked very ill, but Lady Clyde at the moment could only realise to
what straits he had brought Rita, and with what surly unresponsiveness
he seemed to confront her courageous acceptance of poverty.

Lady Clyde asked her husband that night if he could not, as man to man,
give Richard Lambourne a hint that his ungracious attitude to his wife,
whilst living on her money, was the final crown of the wrongs that he
had done her.

“I was going to suggest, personally, that you should give Rita a hint,”
said Sir Charles.

“Rita! Why, when I think of that poor child’s gallantry----”

“Exactly. My own impression is that a very little more of it will drive
Lambourne into a mad-house, or worse.”

Sir Charles spoke in his usual level accents, and Lady Clyde did not
attempt to attach any meaning to his words. Neither did they recur to
her when Richard Lambourne disproved her assertion that he had placed
the crown upon the wrongs done to his wife, by the final ignominy of
suicide.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Coward, coward!” sobbed Lady Clyde. “Can you deny that he was a
coward, Charles?”

“No. Richard was a coward,” said Sir Charles gravely.

“After all that poor little Rita had done!”

“And said,” added Sir Charles, not flippantly, and half under his
breath.

The old magnate who had admired Rita at her wedding made use of almost
the same words as Lady Clyde.

“After all that his wife had done, and was doing, to quit like that,
and leave her to face the life he’d brought her to! What a _brute_!”

A little while afterwards he proposed to Rita, diffident, in spite of
his wealth, because of the great difference in their ages.

She accepted him, and this time it was Sir Charles, looking at the
bridegroom’s bald head and infirm gait beside the pretty bride at the
quiet wedding, who repeated to himself the old man’s catchword, with an
ironical emphasis of his own:

“A _very_ gallant little lady.”




THE HOTEL CHILD




THE HOTEL CHILD

(TO Y. DE LA P.)


I

The first time that I saw her was in Rome. I was governess to the
children at the British Embassy, and every morning before breakfast I
took them out into the Borghese Gardens.

They were very good, insignificant little children, and never gave
me any trouble. Whilst they played tame little games between the
grey-green olive trees, I used to watch the more amusing Italian
children in the Gardens, the biggest groups consisting of pupils from
the great white Convento dell’ Assunzione, on the corner of the Pincio.

But the little girl in whom I took the greatest interest was always by
herself. An enormous grey limousine would leave her at the entrance
to the Gardens, and fetch her away again at the end of an hour.
Sometimes the limousine, which was always empty except for a liveried
chauffeur, appeared to have forgotten her, and then I was obliged to
take my children away, leaving her serious and solitary, and quite
undisconcerted, sitting on her bench. I judged her to be about eight
years old, and the child of rich people. Her white embroidered dresses,
far too elaborate, were expensive, and she always wore white shoes and
stockings.

At first, her nationality puzzled me. Her quite straight hair was
black, cropped short round her beautifully shaped little head in a
fashion that was then very unusual, and her lashes were as long and
as black as those of any Roman-born child. But her grave eyes were
of a deep grey, and her skin, fine and colourless. Perhaps she was
scarcely pretty, but her poise, her erect gracefulness, above all,
her unmistakable air of breeding, made her remarkable. It was that
air of aristocracy that made me feel sure that, in spite of her
independence, she was not American. One gets to know, after seven years
spent in the best families. The American children are well-drilled,
well-dressed, well-behaved--sometimes--but they never achieve that look
of distinction. Some of the French ones have it, but then those are
the children of the old Catholic families, and so they are poor, and
generally badly dressed. On the whole, it is to be seen amongst the
English as often as anywhere--and then, it is almost always accompanied
by the expression that denotes, to an experienced governess, either
stupidity or adenoids--and sometimes, indeed, both.

My little aristocrat of the Borghese Gardens spoke Italian perfectly. I
heard her greet the chauffeur when he came for her, and those were the
times when she was most childlike. The man very often let her take the
wheel, after he had started the car, and I used to watch, not without
misgivings, the great car sliding away, with the small erect figure
in the driving-seat, her straight black fringe blowing back from her
forehead, her tiny hands gripping the big wheel.

My charges, it need hardly be said, might never speak to strange
children, but one day the unknown little girl restored to me a toy that
one of them had dropped the day before.

“I found it, after you’d gone,” she said very politely and distinctly.

I knew then that she must be English, at least in part.

My children were playing at a distance, and after thanking her for
returning the plaything, I sat down on the stone bench that she had
made her own.

After an instant’s hesitation, she sat down there, too.

We entered into conversation.

I asked whether she lived in Rome.

“No. My papa is here on business for a little while, and then we are
going to Paris again.”

“Your home is in Paris, then?”

She looked rather puzzled. “I don’t know Paris well,” she observed
apologetically. “We were only there once before, when mama was with
us. It was a nice hotel, I thought, but noisy. This one--the Grand--is
better. Have you been much in Paris?”

“Not since I was at school there. My French was acquired in Paris,” I
added, automatically.

One says that kind of thing so often, to please the parents.

“Mademoiselle aime parler francais, hein?” she enquired, with a little
smile.

Her French was as perfect as her Italian, or her English; and it was
evidently natural to her to speak either language.

“Are you English?” I could not refrain from asking her.

“My papa is Italian--mama was half English, and half French.”

Was? Then her mother must be dead. That would account for the empty
limousine, and the strange independence of the child.

“Mama is in New York, now, we think,” she remarked. “I am to join her
when I am ten; that was arranged for, in the deed of separation.”

“Separation?” said I.

“There is no divorce in Italy,” said the little creature, shrugging her
shoulders. “Papa is a Catholic, though not, of course _pratiquant_.
They have been separated since I was seven.”

“Then who--who----” I wanted to ask who looked after her, but such a
form of words seemed singularly inappropriate. “Who looks after your
papa’s house?” I found at last.

“We are in hotels, most of the time, papa and I, and my maid, Carlotta,
but in the holidays--_les grandes vacances_--we go to the country
somewhere--_villegiatura_--and there is a lady then, always.”

Her grave eyes looked at me. “A different one,” she explained, “each
time.”

Her very complete understanding of the status held by the “ladies” was
implicit in her manner, but that struck me less poignantly than did her
philosophical acceptance of all that they stood for.

The grey limousine came into sight, and she made an amiable little sign
to the chauffeur.

“I must go now. It doesn’t _do_ to keep the _auto_ waiting.”

In her grave little voice, was all the circumspection of the child that
has learnt to fend for itself, that knows by experience that it will
only be tolerated so long as it gives no trouble, runs counter to no
prejudices, is guilty of no indiscretions.

“It has been so pleasant to talk to someone English. Good-bye Miss----?”

Her little pause was exactly that of a grown-up person, before an
unknown or unremembered name. And what precocity of discernment had
told her that “Miss” was the suitable prefix?

“Miss Arbell,” said I. “Tell me your name before you go.”

“Laura di san Marzano.”

She pronounced Laura in the Italian way--_Lah-o-ra_.

When I held out my hand, she kissed it, as Italian children do, and
after she had climbed to the driving-seat, she waved to me, before
turning the grey car down the hill.

I looked for her every morning after that, but she never came to the
Borghese Gardens again.


II

The second time that I saw Laura di san Marzano was nearly four years
afterwards, in the hall of the Majestic Hotel, at Lucerne.

I had thought of her, at intervals, and had no difficulty in
recognising her, in spite of the difference between eight years old and
twelve.

She was tall and very slim, and the set of her dark head on her
straight shoulders was just the same. Her black hair now fell in a long
plait to her waist, but she still wore the straight, short fringe that
suited her du Maurier profile.

It was late afternoon--tea-time, and the hall was full of people, and
noisy.

Laura sat motionless, but somehow, one felt, very attentive, beside a
beautifully-gowned and jewelled and painted woman, who was talking to
half a dozen men.

Mama?

She looked very young to have a child of Laura’s age.

Then I saw that Laura’s green silk frock was absurdly short, and made
in a babyish style, that matched the huge bow of green satin ribbon
unnecessarily fastened over one ear.

My pupil, a nearly grown-up one, was late, and as I waited for her, I
watched Laura.

Presently our eyes met. At once recognition leapt into hers, and she
smiled at me, and bowed.

I returned the salutation--with infinitely less grace, as I knew in my
middle-class British self-consciousness--and wondered whether she would
come and speak to me.

Later on she did so, when the group round mama was at its noisiest.

“How do you do, Miss Arbell?” There was not the faintest hesitation
over my name. “I used to see you often in the Borghese Gardens, in
Rome, and once we talked together. I hope you remember?”

“I remember very well,” said I, “but I am surprised at your doing so.
You were so very young then, and you must have met so many people
since.”

“I never forget people,” said Laura simply.

“You left Rome suddenly, didn’t you?” I continued. “I was there for
nearly a month after our meeting, but I never saw you in the gardens
again.”

Laura shook her head slightly.

“I can’t remember,” she admitted. “Very likely we left suddenly. One
does that so often. The management of the hotel becomes intolerable, or
tiresome acquaintances appear--and then the simplest thing is to pack
up and go elsewhere.”

She spoke so evidently from experience that one could but accept her
strange, rootless, attitude as part of her natural equipment.

We talked for a little while, and she told me, or I deduced, that since
the Roman days she had been a great deal in Paris--(“I adore the Opera
there, but the theatres not much”)--and then in New York, with mama.
She was to spend the next few years with mama.

Where?

Laura’s shoulders indicated the faintest of shrugs. Anywhere. Mama
liked New York as well as most places, but personally Laura thought
that the rooms in the hotels there were always too hot. They went to
London a good deal. Delightful--she smiled at me politely--but one
missed the sunshine. Her point of view, inevitably, was one of great
sophistication. It did not, to my mind, detract from her charm, which
had never been of a direct, childlike kind, but rather of a description
so subtle that amongst the many it might easily pass for mere oddity.

“I hope we shall meet again,” she said to me, when a certain nervous
movement in the group of mama’s admirers had culminated in the
detachment of a tall, fair youth, who was coming now towards Laura
herself.

“I am afraid that I leave here to-morrow. My pupil and I are on our way
to rejoin her parents in Italy.”

“We may be gone ourselves to-morrow. I meant for later on--any time,
anywhere.” She smiled charmingly, but her unchildlike eyes remained
serious and rather weary.

I heard the fair youth say something to her, with a burst of
meaningless laughter. She did not laugh in return, but her clear,
well-bred little voice was raised to a sympathetic tone of interest.

“Mama likes an olive in hers, always, but for me I prefer a sweet
Martini--with _two_ cherries, if you please.”

       *       *       *       *       *

I saw Laura twice again before leaving Lucerne, but we did not speak to
one another.

The first time, at seven o’clock the evening of that same day, was in
one of the gigantic hotel corridors, on the first floor, where I was
waiting for the lift that was to take me to the fifth.

The hotel hairdresser, in a white coat, with an immense head of curled
and discoloured yellow hair, stood before a shut bedroom door. It flew
open suddenly, and then closed sharply behind Laura di san Marzano.

“Vous voila donc! Eh bien, il est trop tard.”

Her voice was ice, her face scornful and unbelieving as she listened to
the man’s torrent of excuses for his tardiness.

“Assez,” said Laura. “Madame est fort mécontente. Elle ne veut plus de
vous.”

“Mademoiselle----”

“C’est inutile. Madame se passera de vous.”

And as the hairdresser turned away, grumbling and disconcerted, she
added superbly:

“J’arrangerai la chose. Soyez exacte demain. Mais pour ce soir, c’est
moi qui coifferai madame.”

Much later in the evening, when I had long ago despatched my pupil to
the bedroom opening out of mine, I returned for a moment to the hot and
strident lounge in order to make certain enquiries at the office.

Mama was in a white wicker armchair, with crimson and orange cushions
overflowing upon either side of it, and showing up the elaborate waves
of her hair, as black as Laura’s own. The paint that I had seen on her
face earlier in the day was now concentrated into one scarlet curve
upon her mouth, her white lace dress was held up by narrow black velvet
straps cutting across the opulent creaminess of her shoulders, and the
electric light above her head had fastened upon the diamond butterfly
bows of her satin shoes, so that they winked and flashed right across
the hall.

One hardly saw--certainly did not distinguish--the figures that
composed her numerous entourage, but the prevailing black and
whiteness, the glitter of continually raised small glasses, gave a
general impression of unrelieved masculinity.

Laura sat beside her mother, on an upright chair. She was dressed in
rose colour, a frock even shorter than the green one that I had seen
before. Her straight hair had been somehow persuaded into a semblance
of long curls; the green silk bow over her left ear had been replaced
by a pink one with fringed ends.

She did not see me. Her eyes, indeed, were glazed with fatigue, and
every now and then her head fell forwards and was jerked upwards again.

The hall was unendurably hot with a breathless, artificial heat, and
the orchestra was playing an American rag-time that every now and then
succeeded in out-sounding the medley of raised voices and high-pitched
laughter and clinking glasses.

It was long after eleven o’clock.

As I looked at Laura, I saw that her slim, silk-clad legs were swinging
gently to and fro between the bars of the high-backed chair. Her feet,
in bronze-coloured dancing slippers, could not quite reach the floor.

For the first time, I saw her as the child she really was--the
efficient, helpless, cosmopolitan, traditionless, hotel child.


III

It is a far cry from the family of a British Ambassador--collectively
distinguished, if individually dull--and the blue wonders of Italy, to
an English Girls’ School and the grey horrors of an east coast town.

The post that I filled temporarily at Lundeen School was not one that
I should have considered, but for personal and family reasons of
convenience. They are long since past, and matter nothing to the story.

But it was at Lundeen School that I saw Laura di san Marzano for the
third and last time.

It was the most inappropriate setting imaginable.

She was left there by mama, in mid-term, because a continental doctor
had declared that she needed bracing air and companionship of her own
age, and also--this I learnt later, quite incidentally, from Laura
herself--because mama and a _cher ami_ had suddenly planned a visit to
Monte Carlo for the express purpose of visiting the Casino, to which
Laura, being under twenty-one, could not have been admitted.

Laura, as the hotel child, had been pathetic, but her dignity had been
safeguarded, if not actually enhanced, by the kaleidescopic background
of her surroundings.

At school, she was pitiful--and out of place. The girls, without ill
nature, despised her from the first.

She arrived amongst them in the short, fanciful, ultra-picturesque
silk frocks and infantile bows of hair ribbon that I had seen her wear
abroad. Those unimaginative, untravelled English schoolgirls had seen
no one like her before, and what they did not know, by experience or
by tradition, they distrusted and disliked.

Lundeen School made demands upon the pupils’ _physiques_, upon their
powers of conformity, and upon each one’s capacity for assimilating
wholesale a universally applied system.

Laura di san Marzano had no chance at all.

The child who “never forgot people” could not remember her
multiplication table, and although she spoke perfectly at least three
languages besides English, she had never learnt syntax, nor read a line
of any history. She had seen the Guitrys play in Paris--(and from her
crisp appreciations and criticisms I deduced that no finest _nuance_ of
their art had been lost upon her)--but she had memorized no standard
selections from the poets. And she did not know how to learn.

No one, not even the head mistress, was very much disturbed by Laura’s
educational deficiencies, because it was so evident from the first that
her stay amongst us would only be a very temporary affair.

Mama would certainly swoop down again, probably without warning, and
resume Laura as suddenly as she had discarded her.

That was how mama always did things, one felt sure.

Laura herself, although evidently aware of her shortcomings, accepted
them with a grave, but unexaggerated, regret. She seemed, quite without
arrogance, to know that, even educationally, there were other standards
than those of Lundeen, and that her connection with these latter was
after all merely transitory.

What really distressed her, and shocked her too, I think, was the
attitude of the other girls.

Compared with the hotel child, there was only one word that adequately
described these daughters of so many excellent English homes--and that
word was _uncivilised_.

They played unbeautiful games violently, they spoke in hideous slang,
they were rudest when they intended to be most friendly.

Towards Laura di san Marzano, indeed, they did not wish nor attempt to
display friendliness. They were simply contemptuous.

And I saw that the hotel child minded that, both from pride and from
ultra-developed social instinct.

My work was entirely amongst the elder girls, and I saw very little
of Laura during her brief stay, but towards the end of it, something
happened. The rumour arose and spread like wild-fire, even to reaching
the Common Room of the teaching staff, that Laura di san Marzano was in
disgrace with her fellows for cheating over an examination paper.

The tradition of Lundeen was that of the public-school code. Cribbing
was permissible: ‘copying’ or peeping at the questions set for an
examination, was impossible.

They were already prejudiced against her; the accusation was accepted
on the instant by her contemporaries.

The Prefectorial system was in full force at Lundeen, and in any case,
I could not have made the affair my business. But it so happened that
I was present when Laura uttered what I believe to have been her one
and only specific denial of the charge against her. I came unexpectedly
into the room, and saw the semi-circle of self-righteous inexpressive,
young faces that confronted Laura, who stood, rather pale and with her
head held proudly high, and spoke very softly and clearly.

“I didn’t cheat. Those who thought they saw me, made a mistake. You are
being very unjust and cruel, all of you.”

She was looking the head of her class straight in the eyes as she
spoke, and the girl, giving her back look for look, made a sound that
unmistakably expressed contemptuous incredulity.

“What is all this?” said I sharply.

They were taken aback, all of them. There was an instant of confused
silence, and it was, after all, only the hotel child who possessed
enough of _savoir faire_ to reply to me.

“Miss Arbell,” she said courteously, “it was a--a necessary
conversation. It is over now.”

She crossed the length of the room, very composedly, and went out
quietly.

Her ostracism, after that, was complete. It lasted for a week, and
then, just as one had always surmised would happen, mama, in sables and
violets, drove up in a blue Lanchester car, and said that she and Laura
(who looked so much stronger and better for the change) would at once
go straight to Paris, give themselves enough time to find some clothes,
and sail for New York the following week.

The hotel child, her face radiant, came to find me and say good-bye to
me. She was incapable, for all mama’s imperious haste, of forgetting or
omitting the courtesy.

“Do you actually leave this evening?” I asked her.

Mama had been even more impetuous than I had anticipated.

“Yes. I need never see any of _them_ again.”

“It has been an experience, at least,” I reminded her.

“Yes--but----” she shrugged her shoulders.

“Expensively bought?” I suggested. And, since she was leaving, I
thought that I might add: “At least, my dear, you have kept your
colours flying. These last days have been very trying, I am afraid, but
you come out of them better than our friends of the Fourth Form, to my
thinking.”

“Thank you,” said Laura. She looked at me with her grave,
straightforward eyes.

“It would have been much easier, though, if only I really _hadn’t_
cheated.”

       *       *       *       *       *

There is a postscript to the story of the hotel child. A very few years
later I heard of her marriage to the Prince d’Armaillh’ac-Ambry, the
representative of the noblest, and one of the wealthiest, of French
families. I believe that they live almost entirely on his estates in
Brittany, and that the Princess interests herself personally in the
numerous peasantry around them.

Her two children, a boy and a girl, are brought up in great simplicity,
and to the strictest and most orthodox Catholicism.




IMPASSE




IMPASSE

(TO S.M.A.)


Two, three, five Dedicated Virgins. They stood before their Reverend
Mother, ponderous black folds of serge sweeping the boards round each
flat-soled pair of black list slippers.

“The orphans must go to the dentist,” said Reverend Mother, mournfully,
yet with determination. “Here we are in a Protestant country. We must
adapt ourselves to the conditions of our exile. The orphans will have
to be taken to the dentist’s house.”

The nuns looked at one another, and at Reverend Mother, and solemnly
nodded.

It was an innovation, but if Reverend Mother said so, it must be right.

“Sister Clara and Sister Dominic, you will take three orphans to the
dentist to-morrow.”

Sister Clara drew herself up a little. Her throat swelled beneath the
white swathings that bound her head and neck, and her double chin
momentarily became three.

“Yes, Mother dear,” she said proudly.

Her Irish voice was rich and deep, compared with the thin, nasal tones
of the Frenchwomen.

“Shall I order a cab for them, Mother?”

That was Sister Caroline, the _sœur econome_.

“No, no. They must walk ... holy poverty.... You will put on the heavy
travelling veils, Sisters, and the big cloaks, just the same as for a
journey.”

The heat of that would be stifling, in this weather and on foot! An
unmortified thought.... Sister Clara stuck a pin in her sleeve. She
would remember to confess a slight yielding to sensuality of thought.

There had been similar yieldings, once or twice, within the last year.

“Yes, Mother dear. Sister Dominic’ll sit in the waiting-room with two
of the dear orphans, and I’ll be looking after the one that’s in with
the dentist. I’ll not take an eye off of her, on any pretext whatever.
I quite understand, Mother dear, that’s the way it’ll be. Make your
mind easy.”

One had to be knowing, and careful, going out into the world.

There was a sense of adventure in setting out, the additional veil
hanging swart, and straight, and heavy, pulling a little so that one’s
head jerked slightly backwards every now and then.

Sister Dominic held a stout umbrella in one black-cotton-gloved
hand, whilst the other one grasped the wrist of the youngest orphan.
The other two orphans, obscured in blue serge and hard, dark, straw
hat-brims, each held on to a fold of Sister Clara’s habit.

One thing, Reverend Mother had promised that the community should
recite the Litany of Loretto after office just as they did to ensure
anyone from the convent a safe journey.

So they’d be protected, even scurrying, a row of five, holding on to
one another, across the streets, in front of those frightful honking
motor-cars, that looked like they’d take the heads off of you, give
them a chance.

“This’ll be it, Dominic dear. No. 3.”

A maid in a cap and apron to open the door--and the smartness of her!
All grey-and-white, and showing her shape the way a modest convent-bred
girl would never have done.

And the waiting-room, with a carpet, and padded chairs, and a fine
pot-plant--putting worldly ideas into the orphans’ heads, as likely as
not. As for the pictures and books on the table....

“Don’t be casting your eyes about that way, children dear. Sit quiet
now. Dominic, the hats’ll have to come off of them, we may be sure of
that. We’ll pile them this way, on the chair, and you’ll keep an eye
on them, for fear someone else’ll be coming in and perhaps making off
with them. It’s not as though we were in a good Catholic country.”

The hats of the orphans were stacked upon a chair, and Sister Dominic
sat upon the edge of another chair, facing them. She held her umbrella.

“If he does well by the children, the sisters’ll go to him. The
Infirmarian says there’s some of them with teeth in a terrible state.”

Sister Clara’s tongue sought familiar cavities, and her hand went to
the particular fold of serge sleeve in which were imbedded two large
pins, one of which was taken out at the end of meals, and replaced
after use in the exact same place, so as to save making a fresh hole.

“If you’ll step this way, Sister----”

Mother of Mercy! What a start she’d got! It was the man himself, and
smiling, too, standing holding the door open. Awfully young-looking,
with dark eyes that might have been Irish, and a queer white coat on
him.

And the gentleness of him, when he’d got the orphan into that chair of
his! She’d only to stir, and him stopping the machine, and saying, with
that smile, that he was afraid it was hurting her.

As if one didn’t go to the dentist to be hurt, and the pain to be
offered up for all Reverend Mother’s intentions!

Look at the hands of him!

She watched them, moving softly and skilfully. Presently he talked to
her, at first friendly, joking, little questions, then at more length,
telling about himself. He was a stranger in the town, too.

“It’ll be the grand thing for you, if Reverend Mother sends the orphans
regularly. I’ll put in a good word for you,” she ventured, and he
looked at her, screwing-up his eyes, and laughing.

She’d not spoken to any man, not counting the good holy priests which
was a different thing altogether, for many years.

But if they were all like this, where would be the harm in them at all?
She’d make the orphans start a novena for his conversion to the Faith,
that very night.

“Now the next child, please.”

He spent half an hour on each orphan, and the last one, he said, would
have to come again.

“I’ll be bringing her along.”

He entered the appointment in a little book.

“I’ve no secretary, you see, Sister--can’t afford one yet!” and then he
shook hands with her. “Good-bye.”

The feel of his hand was just what she’d imagined it’d be, gentle, and
yet strong. There were funny little dark hairs all down the back of it
and along the wrist. And although it was such a hot day, the palm of
him was cool and dry.

Sister Dominic spoke to her, humbly, on the way home.

“Well, you’re a wonderful woman of the world, Sister Clara dear,
getting us all safe there and back and talking to the man just as
though it was the gardener at dear old Noisy-le-Grand. It won’t be so
hard, next time, if Reverend Mother sends us again.”

Reverend Mother did send them again, with relays of orphans, and then
Sister Clara alone, with old Mother Seraphina who spoke no English and
whose cheap _râtelier_ appeared to need endless adjustments.

And he was always kind, and he always smiled, with that screwing-up of
his eyes, and talked to Sister Clara.

One day she said that she had toothache, and received Reverend Mother’s
leave to make an appointment for herself after Mother Seraphina’s
session. She had, for days, been devoured by an intense curiosity to
know what it would feel like to have those hands hovering about one’s
face. Once, he had had to put his arm right round the back of Mother
Seraphina’s old head....

“No, it’s not hurting me at all, at all.” She smiled up at him; a smile
that she felt to be beatific, half-hypnotised.

“Would you like to see what I’ve been doing?”

“I would.”

“There--on the left--that big molar----”

He put a little mirror into her hands. And she that hadn’t looked in a
glass, hardly, since the day of her final vows, twelve years ago!

Gracious, what a colour she had! Plum-colour, that was her face. And
the smile that had felt beatific, looking foolish and uncertain, as
though she were ashamed of something. The glass turned dim as her heavy
breathing struck it.

Would she perhaps have been breathing into his face that way all the
time, and she never thinking of such a thing?

The face in the glass looked redder than ever. Mother of Mercy, this
weather! The heat of it! And the holy habit no less than five smelly
thicknesses of serge, and not wearing thin yet, though on the back of
her year in and year out.

“That’s the last stopping, Sister. I shan’t have to trouble you again.”

“Amn’t I to come to you any more then?”

“It won’t be necessary. What I’ve done should last you for a long
while. But if you have pain, come to me at once. Any time.”

What’d it be like, at all, not seeing him any more? Could it be that
she’d become inordinately attached, the way the Imitation said was so
wrong? And to a man, too.

She was a wicked creature, not worthy of the holy vocation.

“Is there nothing more needs doing?”

“Nothing at all. You have excellent teeth, Sister. There’ll be no more
trouble, now those fillings are in.”

The smile he gave her! So that one hardly heard what he was saying....

“If the Reverend Mother wants anyone else seen to, I shall be very
pleased to do what I can. Good-bye, Sister. I should like to have
persuaded you that there’s plenty of good work to be done outside, too.
Take a capable woman like yourself, now. It seems a shame you should be
shutting yourself up inside four walls. Why, you--you might have been
my secretary, if I could only afford to have one!”

That was a grand laugh of his, it made one want to laugh too, only that
one might start crying somehow.

It seemed there’d be nothing left to look forward to in the whole world
after the shake of the hand meaning good-bye. There was still that....

It was the queer way to feel entirely, and her forty years old.

Touching the hand of him for the last time, and it strong and yet
gentle at one and the same time, quite different to the hand of any
woman....

It was over now, and one hurried away, scared that old Seraphina’d see
something strange in the face of one.

“Will any more of the sisters be going to him, Mother Seraphina?”

“No.”

“Nor any of the dear children?”

“No.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Mother of Mercy, there was no sleeping in this heat! But it wasn’t the
heat. It was the way one was fretting and crying after what couldn’t
be. Though what for couldn’t it be, when he’d said himself that it was
a sin and a shame for the like of her to be shut up inside four walls,
and himself wanting a secretary and not able to pay one? There’d be
some glad enough to work for him without any pay.

Day after day it went on, and night after night, till the pain in one’s
head was past bearing, and still there was no getting to sleep.

The things one thought of!

There was the door, giving right on to the street, and then only a bit
of a walk, and oneself knowing every step of the way, and then the
sight of him, and the feel of those hands of his--it was that would put
everything right, and take the spell off of one.

On the hottest night of all, Sister Clara made up her mind. She’d break
her holy vows, that were already broken in the heart of her, and go
back into the world.

In the morning she dressed and went downstairs.

She’d not be taking anything with her. After Mass the nuns’d be going
to the refectory, and they’d not be missing her for awhile, and they
keeping the custody of the eyes the way the Holy Rule enjoined.

Oh, it was the fine nun she was, to talk about the Holy Rule.

The door was unlocked. Once outside on the pavement, there was nothing
to do but pull it to again.

The slam of it!

There’d be no getting in again now, without a great ringing of the
bell, and the portress coming to answer it, and the giving of scandal
to the whole of them.

If it hadn’t been for that slam of the door....

The weather had broken. It wasn’t hot any more, but raw and chilly.

The way he’d laugh, and look at you, so interested in any little thing
you said! It was wonderful.

What time did people in the world get up and start their day? Later
than this, no doubt. But there’d be the waiting-room, where she’d sat
with Sister Dominic and the orphans that first time of all. (Maybe
she’d never set eyes on Dominic again.)

What for did that maid of his take so long to come to the door?

But it wasn’t the maid who opened the door at last.

It was a person in a blue apron, with a man’s cap pulled down over her
eyes, and her sleeves rolled up, and a bucket with a mop in it at her
down-at-heel feet.

“’E ain’t come yet. Won’t be ’ere, not for a hower, but if it’s the
toothache, you can come in and wait.”

“Does he not live here, then?”

“Ho no,’e don’t live ’ere. But ’e comes reg’lar, and ’e’ll be along
by-and-by. You go in and sit down. You won’t mind me going on with the
cleaning-up? Turned cold all of a sudden, ain’t it?”

The rolled-back carpet in the waiting-room, the chairs piled, seat
against seat, round the walls, the broom that presently chased into all
the corners, made it seem colder.

It grew colder and colder as the hour went by.

That was the sound of a key in the lock outside.

“’Morning, Mrs. Hatch. A nasty change in the weather, isn’t it?”

Mumble, mumble, mumble.

“Oh Lord, already!”

He came into the room where Sister Clara shuddered and cowered inside
her folds of enveloping black serge.

Look at the face of him! Different, somehow.

You could see how he felt the sudden chilliness in the air, and he was
rubbing his hands together, hard. They were different, too--all mottled
with cold.

“You in pain, Sister?”

“I--I’ve come.”

“M’m? I don’t attend to anyone till nine o’clock, you know, as a rule,
but if it’s a question of pain.... Well, what can I do for you? By the
look of you, it’s an abscess, isn’t it?”




THE APPEAL




THE APPEAL


This isn’t a story. It’s an attempt at reconstruction. Given my
knowledge of the principals--Mary Jarvis, and her mother, Mrs. St.
Luth--I think I can do it.

Mary Jarvis was my mother, and Mrs. St. Luth, of course, my
grandmother. Thank god, I’m a modern and can look at them
impersonally--judge each on her own merits, as it were.

My mother and my grandmother made scenes as other women make jumpers.
It was their form of self-expression. I imagine--although I never knew
for certain--that it was my father’s inability to maintain himself _à
la hauteur_, in the perennial melodrama that was my mother’s idea of
life, that led to my grandmother being invited to live with them.

She came when I, their only child, had barely reached the stage of
exchanging my baby frills for first knickerbockers. (I am certain,
although I don’t remember it, that my mother wept and said she felt
that she had lost her baby for ever.)

Already my parents were unhappy together. Mary--I call her so here for
convenience, but she would never have tolerated it in reality--Mary,
although really affectionate and impressionable, was fundamentally
insincere, with herself and with everybody else. She lived entirely on
the emotional plane, and when genuine emotions were not forthcoming
she faked them by instinct. Her mother, who belonged to the same
type, although with more strength of character, and far less capacity
for affection, had always played up to her. They had their violent
disputes and violent reconciliations--neither could have been happy
without--but they did respect one another’s poses.

But my father never played up.

He couldn’t. Worse still, if he could have done so, he wouldn’t--on
principle.

Again I can’t remember, but I can imagine, almost to the point of
certainty, short and searing passages between my parents.

“Robert, I want you not to ask me to play the piano to-night.”

(He so seldom gave her an opening, that she had to force them.)

“Off colour?”

“It isn’t that. I heard to-day that Mrs. Thorndyke’s child is dead.
It--it upset me.”

“But you didn’t know the child.”

“I know Katherine Thorndyke.”

“You’ve met her once or twice, I remember. And didn’t we hear that if
the poor child had lived, it must have been an idiot?”

Probably, at that stage, my mother burst into tears. She’d been heading
for that, of course, although she didn’t know it consciously. But my
father did, and had made her aware that he did, in a rather brutal
fashion.

That was the way they reacted on one another.

It was better, after grandmother came. Curiously enough, my
father liked her, although she and Mary had so many of the same
characteristics. But I think he regarded her as a sort of lightning
conductor.

For Mary herself, however, it was different. Like so many people who
manufacture continual unhappiness for themselves, she had a frantic
craving for happiness, and an irrational conviction that happiness was
her due.

She told me herself, long afterwards, that she never had any thought of
infidelity towards my father, nor did she ever meet any man who could
or would have caused her to break her marriage vows. But--and this she
didn’t tell me, it’s part of the reconstruction--she was constantly
obsessed by a vague and romantic expectation of some such encounter.
I imagine that she could not believe the world to have been created
without a special application to her yearnings.

And then undoubtedly the nervous wear and tear that she imposed
upon herself, and upon us all, told on her spirits. Her scenes with
grandmother, although they may have served as a safety-valve, were too
frequent. They may also have served to throw into painful contrast her
husband’s stolid opposition to any form of emotional stimulus.

However that may be, grandmother had formed part of our household for
rather less than a year, when Mary suddenly ran away.

It was, I suppose, the only dramatic thing that she could think of, in
a wet and dreary February, and I have no doubt at all that she did it
on impulse. That is to say, she gave herself time to write an immensely
long letter to my father--in which perhaps she set forth that view of
herself which he never gave her adequate opportunity for putting into
words--but she gave herself no time to pack up her things. She simply
took her dressing-case, and I am sure that that was mostly filled with
photographs in folding frames, and packets of letters tied up with
ribbon, and little manuals of devotion heavily underscored in several
places.

Then she walked out of the house, and to the station, and eventually
got to Assisi. And they traced her there almost at once, partly because
she took no pains to cover up her tracks, and partly because my
grandmother--who understood the processes of her mind--found a copy of
a Life of St. Francis on the drawing-room sofa, face downwards, with
one page all blistered, as though tears had fallen upon it.

My father, for his part, found the long letter that no doubt told him
how little he had understood a sensitive nature, and possibly to what
point their life together had become intolerable.

And this had the strange effect of making him resolve, and declare
aloud, that nothing would induce him to try and get her back again.
There must have been a stormy scene between him and my grandmother,
who had all the conventionally moral instincts of her day, and was
genuinely shocked and disturbed at her daughter’s abrupt and violent
casting off of her obvious responsibilities.

“For the child’s sake, at least, Robert ...” she must have repeated
many times.

(Neither she nor my mother ever understood the futility of repeating,
again and again, words which had already failed of their appeal.)

“A child whose mother can leave him, at four years old, is better
without her.”

“It was madness, Robert, but you know she’s not a wicked woman--my poor
Mary. If you go and bring her back now, no one will ever know what has
happened, and you can start a new life together, and try again.”

“It would be useless.”

“Don’t, don’t say that.” The tears must have been pouring down her old
face by that time. “Oh, Robert, give her another chance. This will have
been a lesson to her--won’t you forgive her and take her back?”

Well, in the end she prevailed to a certain extent--that is to say,
my father would not seek out the culprit himself, but he would allow
grandmother to do so, and if she brought Mary home again properly
repentant he would not refuse to receive her and give her the “chance”
of starting their married life afresh. “For the boy’s sake.”

My grandmother must have repeated that phrase a hundred times at least,
and it was certainly her _pièce de resistance_ in the scene at Assisi
with Mary.

I’ve had a version of that scene from each one of them, and on the
whole the accounts tally, although of course each viewed it--as they
viewed everything--exclusively from the personal angle.

My mother saw only a young, beautiful, misunderstood woman, goaded to
frenzy in the grip of an uncongenial marriage, taking a desperate step
in search of freedom. And then, even stronger and more touching in her
relinquishment, finding the courage, for love of her child, to return
to the house of bondage.

And my grandmother, with equal inevitability, saw only a sorrow-worn
woman, no longer young (but infinitely interesting), courageously
undertaking a solitary journey, on a mission that should restore
sanctity to a shattered home. And even as her urgent plea had shaken
Robert’s defences, so her eloquence, her boundless influence and
unfaltering understanding, must prevail with the slighter, more trivial
personality of her daughter. The achievement of persuading Mary to
return to her husband and child was, my grandmother told me, the
ultimate justification of her existence, in her own eyes.

As a matter of fact, I doubt if she, any more than the rest of us, felt
her existence to be in any need of justification whatsoever--but she
was addicted to phrases, and this one at least served as an indication
to the magnitude of her effort.

For Mary did not capitulate without a struggle. And it is in the
details of that struggle that my reconstruction work comes in, for
although each of the protagonists has quoted to me whole sentences,
and even speeches, of brilliant oratory from herself and inadequate
rejoinder from the other, I do not believe either of them. Accuracy,
with that type, can never co-exist with emotion--and emotion, real or
imaginary, is never absent.

But this, I imagine, is more or less what took place in the
sitting-room of the tiny _albergo_ at Assisi:

“I’ve come to fetch you home, my child. You shall never hear one word
of reproach--Robert only wants to begin again--a new life.”

“Never, mother. It’s impossible. I’ve borne too much. I can’t ever go
back to it. I must live my own life.”

(Probably Mary had been reading _The Doll’s House_. People were
discovering Ibsen in those days.)

“Mary, it’s not five years since you and Robert were married, in the
little country church at home, by our dear old vicar, who held you at
the font when I took you, a tiny baby, to be christened.”

It may have been at this stage that Mary began to cry. Anyway, I’m
certain that my grandmother did. Any allusions, however irrelevant, to
little country churches at home, and Mary as a tiny baby, were always
apt to bring the tears to her eyes--and I’m sure that neither of them
had thought for an instant of steadying their nerves by sitting down to
a solid meal. So that tears must have been easier, even, than usual.

“Robert doesn’t understand me--he never will.”

“Darling, don’t you remember your early days together? The little
things--little jokes, and allusions, and happinesses shared together?
Does one ever forget?”

“_No._”

Mary sobbed. “But I can’t go back to him.”

I think that here, if my grandmother gave her a chance, she probably
did make one--or part of one--of the speeches that she long afterwards
quoted to me.

She was intensely unhappy. Robert did not understand her, and she could
not live in an unsympathetic atmosphere. She should go mad. All that
she had ever asked of life was peace, beautiful surroundings, and the
ideal companion.... If she went back to Robert now, after having found
courage to make the break, it would be a repetition of the misery that
had broken her heart during the past three years.

(The hearts of my mother and grandmother both suffered innumerable
breakages throughout their lives, neither of them ever seeming aware of
the physiological absurdity of the expression.)

“It’s braver to stay away than to go back and try and patch up
something that can never be anything but a failure,” quavered Mary,
with a momentary flash of insight.

But of course grandmother couldn’t leave it at that. She had the
justification of her own existence to think of, for one thing. I am
quite sure that a fortuitous street-musician, rendering “Santa Lucia”
or “Silver Threads Amongst the Gold” in the distance, would have broken
down Mary’s frail barrier of honest thought, and have materially
assisted my grandmother to her victory. Accessories were so absolutely
essentials, to them both.

But so far as I know, grandmother had to win on points, as it were, and
received no extraneous help in the shape of sentimental appeals from
without.

She made her supreme effort.

“For the boy’s sake, Mary ... your little, little boy. Is he to be
motherless?”

“Wouldn’t Robert let me have him?”

“No, my dear. How could he? I myself--the mother that bore you, Mary--I
couldn’t think it right that a woman who had deliberately deserted her
husband and home should have the care of a little, innocent child.”

“Oh, my baby!”

She sobbed and cried, but she had not yet capitulated. Grandmother,
however, had gauged pretty accurately the force of the baby-_motif_.

“Before I came away, on my long, lonely journey,” she said slowly, “I
went up to the nursery, to say good-bye to Bobbie. He had on his blue
overall--the one you embroidered for him last summer, Mary--was it only
last summer?--and he was playing with his engine, on the nursery floor,
his dear, round face was so solemn....”

“Oh, don’t--don’t----”

But grandmother, the tears streaming from her eyes, relentlessly
continued: “Darling, his big blue eyes looked up at me, and his little
voice asked: ‘_Where’s Mummie?_’”

Did grandmother’s--even grandmother’s--conscience misgive her, at the
quotation? That it was verbally correct, I have no doubt--but what of
the intonation?

My grandmother’s poignant rendering of “_Where’s Mummie?_” no doubt
contained all the pathetic appeal of bewildered and deserted childhood
throughout the ages....

But mine--the original “_Where’s Mummie?_...” I have no recollection of
it, of course, but I do remember myself at four years old--a stolid,
rather cynical child, utterly independent by temperament, and reacting
strongly even then against a perpetually emotional atmosphere. And
one knows the way in which small children utter those conventional
enquiries which they unconsciously know to be expected of them ... the
soft, impersonal indifference of the tone, the immediate re-absorption,
without waiting for a reply, in the engrossing occupation of the
moment....

Mary held out for a little while longer, but the heart went out of her
resistance after the pitiful sound of that “_Where’s Mummie?_” as my
grandmother rendered it.

She gave in “for the boy’s sake.”

And my grandmother had justified her existence.

They travelled home together, and Mary averted anti-climax by quite a
real nervous breakdown, that overtook her after she got home, before my
father had had time to forgive her in so many words.

So they began again--literally.

It wasn’t, in fact, possible for them to be happy together, and
they never were so. I grew up in the midst of scenes, tears, and
intermittent periods of reconciliation. There was no stability about my
childhood; and no reality. Undoubtedly I was the victim--far more so
than my father, who presently sought and found consolation elsewhere,
or than Mary, whom he thus provided with a perfectly legitimate
grievance that lasted her until he died, fifteen years later. After
that, she was able gradually to forget that there had ever been
unhappiness between them, and to assume the identity of a heart-broken
widow.

Mrs. St. Luth, my grandmother, lived to be very old.

“But useless old woman though I am, God gave me the opportunity of
justifying my existence, when He let me bring a mother home to her
little child....”

I wonder.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thank god, I’m a modern.




THE FIRST STONE




THE FIRST STONE

A PLAY IN ONE ACT


_Characters_:

  MRS. LLOYD-EVANS } _Members of the local Welfare
  MRS. BALLANTYNE  }    Committee_
  MRS. AKERS       }
  MISS MILLER        _Secretary to the Committee._


SCENE

_A committee-room on the top floor of a house in a small provincial
town. Back of the stage, centre, there is a door, opening inwards on
to the stage. To the right of the door, a few pegs are on the wall for
hanging coats, etc. Right of the stage, is a good-sized window, showing
distant views of chimney-pots outside. Left of the stage, a small
gas-fire burns. Near it, a table and chairs have been formally arranged
for the meeting._

_The whole atmosphere of the room is cold and dreary. Time: a winter
afternoon in 1917._

_Miss Miller discovered. She is cold and tired-looking, mechanically
arranging blotting-paper, etc. on the table._

_Mrs. Ballantyne enters. She is prosperous-looking and clad in warm
furs, and is out of breath from ascending the stairs._

MISS MILLER: Good afternoon, Mrs. Ballantyne.

MRS. BALLANTYNE (_out of breath_): Good afternoon. Oh dear, those
stairs! I’m out of breath.

MISS MILLER: They are trying, aren’t they? Four flights!

MRS. BALLANTYNE: Oh, you oughtn’t to find them trying, at your age.
Tell me, have you any idea why we’ve all been asked to come here
to-day, Miss Miller? It’s not the day for our regular meeting, at all.

MISS MILLER: No, I’ve got the notice for that all ready to send out as
usual. This is a special meeting that Mrs. Lloyd-Evans is calling. She
only sent me a note about it last night, telling me to get the room
ready.

MRS. BALLANTYNE: She wrote to me too, but she didn’t say what it was
all about. I suppose she’ll have written to Mrs. Akers, as well.

MISS MILLER: Here they are.

(_Enter Mrs. Lloyd-Evans and Mrs. Akers. Mrs. Lloyd-Evans is mysterious
and melancholy, and Mrs. Akers lively and full of undisguised
curiosity. Both wear heavy coats, furs, etc. They shake hands with Mrs.
Ballantyne, and nod and say how d’ye do to Miss Miller. Whilst they
talk they loosen or take off their wraps, and place them on the pegs
near the door._)

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS (_to Mrs. Ballantyne_): How d’ye do. We’re all a
little before our time, I think, but then as I always say, it’s
better to be too early than too late. (_This she says with an air of
originality._)

MRS. BALLANTYNE: Of course, the minute I got your note I quite saw that
something must have happened, or you wouldn’t have asked us to come out
in this dreadful cold, _and_ up those awful stairs. I do think, when
we’re doing the whole of this Welfare Committee business gratuitously,
that they might have found us a room on the ground floor. Isn’t there
any hope of getting better premises?

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: They pretend that any accommodation is difficult to
find nowadays, but I should like to know why some building shouldn’t
be done? What I always say is, that there wouldn’t be half this
unemployment trouble, if people were given _work_.

MRS. BALLANTYNE (_bored_): Yes, indeed.

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: It’s just Bolshevism, you know, all this talk of
unemployment. There’s always work for those who are willing to work.
Now I can’t help thinking it would put a stop to all this labour
unrest, if they could only send a few of the leaders to _Russia_, to
show them what Bolshevism has resulted in, there.

Mrs. Ballantyne: Yes, of course. It really would be a lesson. (_She
is arranging her dress, etc., as she speaks, and tidying herself at a
little pocket-mirror._)

MRS. AKERS (_seating herself, to Mrs. Lloyd-Evans_): Well, I’m all
agog to know what’s happened. Your note was most mysterious. What’s
been happening at the School? Really, the present generation is the
limit--always giving trouble. It seems to have come in with bobbed hair.

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: Girls are often very artful.

MRS. AKERS: Well, we ought to be able to cope with the artfulness of
mere schoolgirls, surely. Now do let’s sit down and get to business.

MRS. BALLANTYNE (_to Mrs. Lloyd-Evans_): As you see, I haven’t brought
my daughter. I’m sure it was very thoughtful of you to warn me in your
note, but I gather it means that we have something--painful--to discuss?

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: One hardly likes to put things into words--but your
Phyllis is a young girl, after all, and I always feel there ought to be
something _sacred_ about a young girl.

MRS. BALLANTYNE: I had to pretend to Phyllis that you wanted to speak
about some very dull question of finance. It was deceiving her,
perhaps, but I _do_ so agree with you about how one ought to treat
young girls as something _sacred_, as you say. So I told her the whole
thing was going to be very formal, and only members of the actual
Committee allowed to be present. I’m afraid it was rather in the nature
of a pious fraud.

(_They all laugh, and draw slightly closer together_.)

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: Before we begin, I should like to say that this must
all be in absolute confidence.

MRS. BALLANTYNE (_looking at Miss Miller_): Excuse me a moment. (_She
whispers to Mrs. Lloyd-Evans. The other ladies try to hear what is
said, and at the same time to look as though they were doing nothing of
the sort._)

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS (_aloud_): I am sure Miss Miller will be discreet.
Charity sometimes forces one to face very painful things, and one must
be brave and hear about various tragedies that one would far prefer
never to mention at all. (_Pause._) One hardly knows how to word
certain things. (_Pause._)

MRS. BALLANTYNE: Really, if it’s anything of _that_ sort, I think we
ought to ask Miss Miller to leave us. (_Aside_): she’s only a girl.

MRS. AKERS (_eagerly_): _That_ sort? What sort?

MRS. BALLANTYNE: Well, you know what I mean. But I’m sure I hope I’m
mistaken.

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: I’m afraid you’re not, Mrs. Ballantyne.

MRS. AKERS: Call a spade a spade. Is it the usual thing?

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: I should be sorry to call it the _usual_ thing. But
I’m afraid that’s what it is.

MRS. AKERS: I’ve worked in a district, and my husband has a large
medical practice amongst poor people. I suppose some girl has got into
trouble?

(_Mrs. Lloyd-Evans bows her head in assent, and once more all three
ladies draw their chairs closer together. Miss Miller covers her face
with her hands for a moment._) _From now onwards, the three ladies are
all much more animated, and full of barely-disguised enjoyment of a
subject which they all regard as a delicate one._

MRS. BALLANTYNE: We’re all married women here, and I think we can
discuss this better without Miss Miller.

MISS MILLER (_quickly, and with suppressed agitation_): If it’s a
formal meeting, you’ll want the minutes entered.

MRS. AKERS: Yes. She’d better stay.

MRS. BALLANTYNE (_aside to Mrs. Akers_): I don’t agree. I’m the mother
of a girl myself, as you know, and to me girlhood is _sacred_. We have
a most painful subject to discuss.

MISS MILLER: Please let me stay. I--I might help.

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: How could _you_ help, Miss Miller? And even if you
could, it would be most unsuitable in an unmarried girl like yourself.
Please wait in the next room until we call you to take down the results
of the conference.

(_Exit Miss Miller, and shuts the door._)

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: I don’t know that I altogether like that girl. Rather
horrid of her to be so curious, wasn’t it?

MRS. BALLANTYNE: Any young woman with a _nice_ mind would have been
only too thankful to be spared the embarrassment of staying in the
room while such a thing was being discussed. (_Her tone changes to
eagerness._) Well, this is too dreadful! Which of the girls is it?

MRS. AKERS: I’m certain it’s one of those twins! They really are
pretty--you know what I mean, pretty _for_ that class. Which of them is
it?

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: It’s nothing to do with the twins. (Though I daresay
it’ll be them next--one never knows, when once this sort of thing
begins.) No, it’s the girl from London, the daughter of that widowed
Mrs. Smith who has been taking in washing in West Street.

MRS. AKERS: Fanny!

MRS. BALLANTYNE: That child! But she can’t be more than sixteen.

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: Fifteen. But one knows what London girls are, at any
age.

MRS. AKERS: How did you find out? Is it absolutely certain?

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: Absolutely. It ought to have been found out months
ago, if the girl hadn’t been so artful. Even her mother says she had no
idea, till just the other day.

MRS. AKERS (_decidedly_): That’s impossible.

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: She pitched a long yarn about the girl herself not
having known what was happening. They pretend it came to light by
accident, through something Fanny said to her mother, which made her
suspicious.

MRS. AKERS (_eagerly_): What was that? If we’re to help at all, we’d
better know everything.

(_Mrs. Lloyd-Evans whispers to her, and Mrs. Akers whispers in her turn
to Mrs. Ballantyne._)

MRS. BALLANTYNE: And when do they expect----

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: In three months’ time, actually.

(_The members of the Committee, in silence, make rapid movements upon
their fingers, in evident calculation._)

MRS. AKERS: Then it must have happened after they got down here, that’s
clear.

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: I think it’s much more likely it was in London.
There’d just be time. Londoners are always immoral. Besides, as I said
to her, _in our town these things don’t happen_.

MRS. BALLANTYNE: How did they take it?

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: The girl herself seems absolutely callous. I couldn’t
get a word out of her. The mother says she hasn’t been able to, either,
and she’s been trying to force her to tell her when it happened. The
grandmother was there, as well, and you know what an odious old woman
_she_ is. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if she’d been in the plot the
whole time.

MRS. BALLANTYNE: When did all this conversation take place, if I may
ask?

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: Only yesterday. I happened to go in there, and found
the mother in tears, so of course I got the whole story out of her. I
felt it was a question for the Welfare Committee--married women, like
ourselves--and I’ve done absolutely nothing, except ask Dr. Akers to
see the girl and make certain.

MRS. AKERS: Well! He’s never said a word to _me_ about it. I must say,
he was out late last night and early this morning, but I do think he
ought to have given me a hint.

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: Gentlemen are so odd, about anything to do with
their business. I’ve often noticed it. One has to probe for _hours_,
sometimes, to get the simplest piece of information.

MRS. AKERS: Look here, we shall have to settle something. Of course the
girl must go away.

THE OTHERS: Of course.

MRS. AKERS: The question is, where?

MRS. BALLANTYNE: Surely some Sisterhood would take her in.

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: One doesn’t want to be hard on her. I told the mother
that we should discuss it all quietly amongst ourselves before settling
anything.

MRS. BALLANTYNE: _I_ think we ought to send for the girl, and see if
we can get anything out of her. Of course, it would be very trying
and dreadful, but I’m sure that’s what we ought to do. I, for one,
shouldn’t shrink from it.

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: You wouldn’t get a word out of her. They were all in
league together, it seemed to me. Thoroughly artful and determined to
stick together, I thought them, all three of them.

MRS. AKERS: I can’t see why the grandmother should have any say in the
matter at all. Pray what has _she_ to do with it?

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: She talked a great deal of nonsense about wanting to
keep Fanny at home. As I said to her, if keeping Fanny at home results
in _this_ sort of thing, then the sooner Fanny goes away from home the
better. She was thoroughly nonplussed at that, as you may imagine, and
couldn’t answer anything at all, though of course she chattered away,
but I took not the slightest notice.

MRS. BALLANTYNE: But, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, do you mean to say that they
won’t tell who the man is?

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: The girl won’t say a word. As I said to her myself,
it _must_ have been somebody in London before they came away, and it’s
no use telling me it happened here, because I simply shan’t believe it.

MRS. AKERS: Well, what about a Home, or some other place where the girl
could go till it’s all over? It had better be as far away from here as
possible, of course.

THE OTHER TWO AS BEFORE: Oh, of course.

MRS. AKERS: I have two or three addresses of that kind--one place is
near London.

MRS. BALLANTYNE: The very thing. I’d gladly take her up myself, if
necessary. She’s very young and one doesn’t want to be hard on her.
What line are the mother and grandmother taking up?

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: The mother cried a good deal, and said how ashamed
she was that the girl should make such a return for all that’s been
done for them down here. People have been very kind about employing
her--I’ve sent washing there myself. (She charges less than the
steam-laundry.) She was thoroughly upset, and one could have managed
_her_ all right. It’s the grandmother that’s so impossible, and the
girl looks as though she could be thoroughly obstinate. I’m bound to
say she was looking very ill, so one didn’t want to frighten her.

MRS. AKERS: Well, that doesn’t apply to the old woman. She must be
squashed. Leave the grandmother to me if necessary. If there’s any
difficulty about their letting Fanny go, I can say we shall inform
the police. These people are perfectly ignorant of the law, and would
probably believe anything. (_She laughs in a slightly shamefaced,
way._) After all, it’s for the girl’s own good.

MRS. BALLANTYNE: Certainly, and besides, for their own sake they want
to avoid exposure. The mother can be told that the Committee is taking
the whole expense and trouble off her hands, and she’ll be only too
thankful to let the girl go. She can come back when it’s all over, and
if they’re careful, people needn’t know anything about it.

MRS. BALLANTYNE: But what will happen--when----

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: What?

MRS. BALLANTYNE: What will be done with the--with the little----

MRS. AKERS: The _results_, you mean?

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: Oh, the baby. In these sad cases, one almost hopes
that it may not live, dreadful though it sounds to say such a thing.

MRS. AKERS: My husband tells me that in his experience, illegitimate
children are often particularly strong and healthy infants.

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: God’s ways are not our ways.

MRS. AKERS (_to Mrs. Ballantyne_): But in this case, of course, the
child will be taken away the minute it’s born, and the mother will
probably never set eyes on it at all. It’s taken to some Institution
where they look after it, and that gives the mother a chance of living
it down. Especially when she’s so young.

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: The grandmother said something about the baby, as she
called it, but of course I stopped that at once. They can hardly earn
enough to keep themselves, as it is, and if there was any question
of Fanny being allowed to keep the child, it would simply amount, as
I told her, to putting a premium upon immorality. Of course, if one
knew who the man was, pressure could be brought to bear on him, but I
don’t believe for an instant that it’s a case of the girl having been
seduced. She’s probably a thorough little bad lot. Quite likely she
doesn’t know who the father is. I’m told that some of these London
girls are frightfully--promiscuous.

MRS. AKERS: I don’t know how to believe that--at fifteen! I’m afraid it
may have been somebody down here, you know.

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: Oh please don’t suggest such a thing. It’s the last
thing we want to have established. Just think of the talk! As it is,
if we don’t press the question, we can get the girl away quietly and
nothing be known about it.

MRS. BALLANTYNE: You think we shan’t get anything out of her?

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: Nothing, nor her mother either, according to her own
account. The old grandmother began some story about an assault having
perhaps been made on the girl, and she too frightened to tell; but as
I said, if that sort of thing was new to her, a girl’s first impulse
would be to rush to her mother with the story, and if she didn’t, it
only showed that she thought nothing of it.

MRS. AKERS (_thoughtfully_): I wonder if _I_ could get anything out of
her? I’ve a very good mind to go home that way. One dreads having to
deal with this sort of sad case, but after all, it’s charity. I could
put the old grandmother into her place once and for all, as you say
she’s disposed to be tiresome, and make Fanny herself understand that
we only want to help her. After all, we’ve all read our Bible, I hope:
“Which amongst you shall cast the first stone?”

MRS. BALLANTYNE: As the mother of a girl myself, I was wondering if _I_
ought not to talk to Fanny, perhaps. Goodness knows, it’s a miserable
affair, but the world is what it is, and it’s no use _shrinking_ from
these things.

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS (_displeased_): As it was I who made this very sad and
perplexing discovery, I think I had better be the person to see the
business through. Naturally, one consults the Committee, but I can’t
help feeling that there had better be only one intermediary between the
Committee and the girl’s family. It’s more business-like, and one must
be business-like.

MRS. BALLANTYNE: Oh, certainly!

MRS. AKERS: But this isn’t an official meeting, is it? We’ve had no
notes taken, or anything. And we haven’t passed any resolution. Now, I
should like to propose that I write to-night to St. Mary Magdalene’s
Home and try and arrange to get Fanny taken in there as soon as
possible, and kept till after the birth of the child.

MRS. BALLANTYNE: I second that.

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: Proposed and seconded. Those in favour--(_they each
lift up a hand_). Those against.... Carried unanimously, I think.

MRS. AKERS: Now, is there anything more we can do?

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: I don’t think so. If there are any further
developments, I will let you know, of course. I mean, if one can get
any admission out of the girl, for instance. She seemed to me perfectly
stolid and bewildered, but one doesn’t want to risk upsetting her,
naturally. It would be extremely annoying if anything happened before
we can get her away.

MRS. BALLANTYNE: What did they say about her health? Is she all right?

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: Perfectly all right. Why shouldn’t she be--a young,
healthy girl like that!

MRS. AKERS: After all, it’s nature.

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: I don’t call it nature at all, at fifteen. I call
it _sin_. (_Rises, and goes to put on her coat. The other two remain
seated._)

MRS. BALLANTYNE (_shuddering_): Fifteen! Just think of it! My Phyllis
is only two years older. Thank heaven, I’ve been able to keep her as
innocent as a baby. She knows _nothing_--absolutely nothing.

MRS. AKERS: Innocence is such a safeguard.

MRS. BALLANTYNE: What I shall tell her about this meeting, I really
don’t know. Unfortunately, she knew where I was coming, and I shall
have to invent something to tell her in case she asks any questions
about it, as she’s certain to do. Luckily, I think she trusts me
absolutely.

MRS. AKERS: Come home to tea with me, dear Mrs. Ballantyne. It will
help to take both our minds off the whole sad subject.

MRS. BALLANTYNE: How very kind of you! I should love to. We must try
and forget all about it for the time being.

MRS. AKERS: I can’t help wondering how Fanny could have managed to
deceive her mother for so long.

MRS. BALLANTYNE: I must say, I should have thought any woman with eyes
in her head----

MRS. AKERS: Yes, and besides, why didn’t the girl, if she was a
respectable girl, go _straight_ to her mother when----

(_Mrs. Akers and Mrs. Ballantyne, lean across the table, talking busily
about Fanny’s behaviour, both at once. Meanwhile Mrs. Lloyd-Evans,
who has now got her furs on, stands as though listening to some sound
outside the door, unnoticed by the other two. She tiptoes rapidly to
the door and flings it open. Miss Miller is crouching outside, having
evidently been listening. One side of her face is scarlet where it has
been pressed to the door, the other white. She rises awkwardly as the
door opens, but not before they have all seen her._)

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS: I _thought_ so!

MISS MILLER (_wildly_): What did you think, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans? That I’ve
been listening at the door? So I have! That I’ve overheard all your
charitable plans for Fanny Smith and her illegitimate child? So I have!

MRS. AKERS: You should be ashamed of yourself.

MRS. BALLANTYNE: What’s the meaning of this?

MISS MILLER: I’ll tell you. You said just now that the world is what it
is--there’s no use in shrinking from things--shrinking from them! Ha,
ha, ha! (_she laughs hysterically_). You’re a great deal more likely to
jump at them. But if you want to have my explanation, you shall have it.

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS (_pointing to the door_): Miss Miller, leave the room.

(_Miss Miller looks at her, still laughing, then turns the key in the
door, shutting and locking it._)

MISS MILLER: I shan’t leave the room, nor you either, till you’ve heard
what I’ve got to say.

MRS. AKERS: Good heavens, she’s mad!

MRS. LLOYD-EVANS (_advancing resolutely_): Give me that key this moment
(_putting out her hand for it_).

(_Miss Miller, too quick for her, dashes to the window, throwing up the
sash, and flings out the key. During the rest of the scene she stands
with her back to the open window, while the three other women are
grouped together behind the table, at the further side of the room._)

MISS MILLER (_her voice has grown cunning, and bitterly and vehemently
ironical both at once. She gives the impression of dementia_): _I_
knew what you were going to talk about. _She_ (_pointing to Mrs.
Akers_) gave it away when she said it must be “the usual thing.” Of
course I listened, to hear what you’d do for Fanny--poor Fanny, who’s
going to bring a little baby into the world, and who’s been ill and
terrified and unhappy, all these months. And you (_to Mrs. Lloyd-Evans,
bitter mockery in her tone_) found it out, and you asked these other
kind, charitable, rich ladies to come and meet you here, so that you
could all talk it over, and make plans about Fanny. (_Suddenly and
viciously_): And oh, how you all _enjoyed_ it--didn’t you--telling each
other how painful it was, and how sad, and how you could hardly put it
into words!

(_Fiercely_): Why, you nearly scratched one another’s eyes out for the
fun of going to Fanny’s mother, and “putting the old grandmother into
her place” and putting Fanny through the Third Degree, nagging and
nagging at her to _tell_, so that you could hear more shocking details,
and come and gloat over them.

(_Mimicking_): “Oh, but we want to help her,” and “girlhood is so
_sacred_.” (_To Mrs. Ballantyne_): Yes, you said that several times,
didn’t you, you who are so thankful that your girl _trusts_ you--so
that when you cheat her and tell little lies for her own good, the poor
little fool swallows it. She won’t always swallow it, you know--she’ll
find you out one day. Just like I’ve found out, what charity means and
what’s done to girls who sin and get found out. I had to know, you see,
because--I’ve done what Fanny did----

(_The women cry out, below their breath._)

MISS MILLER: You needn’t be frightened--it isn’t anyone down here.
That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it--that it may all end up tamely
after all, with a hasty marriage, and nothing left to talk about!
You’d like to hustle me away, like Fanny, to somewhere that will take
your money, and make you feel all nice and glowing and charitable--and
where they’ll “take away the baby, and the mother probably never sets
eyes on it at all.” To be allowed to keep it, would “put a premium on
immorality” wouldn’t it? Ha, ha, ha! I’ve been frightened all these
weeks, but I’m not frightened any more now. Something went snap inside
my head, I think, all in a minute, while I was listening to all of
you. I’d thought of appealing to you, you see--such kind ladies, all
given over to works of charity! If you’re the _charitable_ (_laughing
wildly_) what would _other_ people say? No, no, no--I’ll not be like
Fanny, I’ve thought of a better plan than any of yours!

(_She springs on to the sill of the open window. Mrs. Akers cries “Stop
her!” and they dash forward, but the table impedes them, and Miss
Miller, still laughing, throws herself out._

_The curtain falls as Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, screaming, pulls at the locked
door, and the other two women throw themselves against the window and
look downwards._)


THE END


PRINTED BY THE ANCHOR PRESS, LTD., TIPTREE, ESSEX, ENGLAND.




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