MORTLAKE ROAD
I
On a sunny morning in mid-January Louie Causton went to see, but not
necessarily to be seen by, her father. Captain Cecil Chaffinger
accompanied her. As they walked across Richmond Park they talked.
"You're sure the walk isn't too much for you, Mops?" said the Captain
solicitously.
She pressed his arm. "No, I'm ever so much better for it."
"We could get a cart or something at the Star and Garter, you know."
"I'd much rather walk, Chaff. We can take the train back."
"All right, little Mops."
They walked for a few minutes in silence; then--
"That woman wasn't--wasn't a beast, was she?" Chaff asked.
"Mrs. Leggat?"
"If that's her name. I mean, there was no row?"
"Not the least in the world."
The Captain tugged at his moustache. "H'm! Not like you. Ever leave
anywhere without a row before, Mops?"
Louie laughed a little. "Now you mention it, I don't think I ever
did," she admitted. "But there wasn't a word said. She knew, and I
knew she knew. So I cleared out. That was all. She made me some
beef-tea before I left."
Again they walked in silence.
The daintiest of hoar-frosts lay over the Park; on Putney Heath they
had passed skaters. The keen wind had reddened the Captain's nose, and
Louie could not help smiling as he took out his handkerchief for the
twentieth time. She had remembered Mr. Mackie.
"Ought to have a silk one a day like this," Chaff grunted, blowing
hard. "Makes you perfectly raw.... I say, dear old Mops----"
"What, old boy?"
"Anything _I_ could have done, you know----"
She squeezed his arm again. "I shall be giving you plenty to do
presently. And you say he's not a bad sort."
"Oh----" said the Captain doubtfully.
"Well, you'll take me in, and then wait outside till I've seen for
myself."
But at that Chaff rebelled. "Hanged if I do--dash it all, it's a
public-house! You'll find me in the parlour or whatever it is."
"How old is he?"
"Let me see: he'll be fifty. Yes, he'll be fifty. Your mother's
fifty-four."
"You'll remember your promise, Chaff?"
"About where you are? Oh, I'll be mum as the grave. Don't you forget
yours."
"No. You shall come and see me."
The Captain sighed. His Mops was a strange being. That fool Moone had
taken the wrong way with her, but a better way might have been found
than this. Well, Chaff would have a word or two with Mr. Buck Causton
himself.
They continued their walk.
When Louie had first resolved that she would seek her father, nothing
had seemed more natural. In prospect, the thing had been simplicity
itself. But it was, somehow, less simple now. Indeed, its difficulties
had increased with every step she took. What about Buck? Must he
necessarily make her so very welcome? Suppose, when she made her
announcement, he should shake hands, ask how her mother was, offer her
tea (or whatever publicans did offer ladies), say he had been very
glad to see her, and let her go again? How, in the face of that, could
she say: "I am your daughter; I really don't know why I have come; I
have stayed away a good long time, but here I am, needing friends; why
I need friends I will explain to your wife." Was it not likely that
Buck had had more than enough of her family?
Had Chaff, as they descended to Kingston, once more urged that she was
on a wild-goose chase, as likely as not she would have turned back at
the first word.
They reached Buck's public-house--The Molyneux Arms, near the corner
of Kingston Bridge.
"Well," said Chaff, stopping, "what do we do now, Mops?"
"We go in, I suppose," said Louie. Without pausing, she moved towards the
largest door (there was "Public Bar" written upon it) of an establishment
that, if it lacked the garishness of a modern drinking-palace, was yet
not quite the red-curtained, lattice-windowed, Christmas-number
hostelry of Louie's imaginings. But Chaff, with a "No, not there,"
drew her round the corner to a quieter door, where small bay-trees
stood in green tubs. The step had a brightly polished brass sill and a
thick rubber mat perforated with the name "Molyneux Arms." Beyond the
little vestibule were double doors with cut-glass panels and a
diagonal brass bar on each and a piston for automatic closing at the
top.
"Perhaps you'd better wait here," said Chaff.
"All right," said Louie, now heartily wishing she had not left her new
abode in Mortlake Road, Putney.
With a soft sigh of the piston, the brass-barred doors closed behind
Chaff.
This entrance lay in a short blind alley off the main street, the end
of which seemed to be closed by a stableyard. Somebody over a brick
wall was walking a horse over cobbles, and a man's voice muttered,
"Come up." There was a light clashing of harness, and the same voice
began a soft but strong singing, hoisting itself to the higher notes
as if the interpolated aspirates had been so many stirrups:
"No re-(_h_)est--but the gra-(_h_)ave
For the pi-(_h_)ilgrim of Love!----"
Then a back door opened, and a woman's voice was heard.
"A gentleman to see you, James."
The song ceased. "A what, Susan?" said the man's voice. "Remember----"
"A gentleman--in a top hat," said the second voice.
"You know that travellers sometimes have top hats, Susan," cautioned
the first voice.
"I'm sure it's a gentleman, James----"
"Very well, let us hope you're not mistaken and that you were hooked
up behind. Ask the gentleman to wait a minute."
The voices ceased.
Instinctively Louie had walked to a half-open coach door and had
looked through. She saw a bright little picture. A horse was being
put into a gay yellow trap, and the man who was buckling the harness
had begun to sing again:
"Oryn--thia, my Beloved!----"
All that Louie could see of him was a pair of glossy black boots and a
pair of grey check trousers cut close about the knee. The harness
twinkled; the horse's coat shone in the sun like Mr. Jeffries' hair;
and somebody within the stable was running water into a bucket. Then
the man came round the horse, and she saw him--cropped silver hair,
long dewlapped chin, and a back and shoulders that might have served
Henson's turn yet. And as Louie watched, with no more emotion than if
the scene had been one on a coloured bioscope, he sang again:
"Oryn--thia, my Beloved!----"
Then, as she watched, it came over her for the first time that she had
planned and was performing a suspect thing. She had no right to
inspect this man and then to know him or not to know him, as she
chose. He had no less right to inspect her. She, not he, stood to
gain; cards on the table, then; either she must go away at once,
taking Chaff with her, or else take her courage in both hands without
further spying.
Which was, perhaps, as much as to say that she had already seen and
was willing to risk it.
She passed through the half-open door into the yard.
Yet even as she advanced she had a final cowardice. By a man at any
rate, anything would be forgiven her, and she really had had a long
walk.... There was a bench by the stable door.... But she pulled
herself together. No, not that. She was not faint, only very, very
pale. She continued to advance.
Then Buck looked up, and their eyes met.
They say of a newly born infant that your first impression of facial
resemblance is that to which the child, grown a man, will return. So
perhaps it was for one moment with father and daughter. But, if so, it
passed instantly. Buck made an upward, deferential gesture of his
fore-finger.
"Sha'n't be three minutes, m'm," he said. "Now, Judson, the lady's
here! He's just ready, m'm. A beautiful day!"
Then something in Louie's look seemed to strike him.
"It _is_ for Mrs. Allonby's, m'm, isn't it? For one-fifteen;
one-fifteen Allonby, Richards, seven to-night. You needn't have come;
he'll be there sharp."
Louie was looking steadily at her father. "You've made a mistake," she
said.
"What? Hi, Judson! What's this?"
"I came--I came--with the gentleman who's just asked for you. Don't
you--don't you----" she faltered and stopped.
"But aren't you from Mrs. Allonby's?"
Louie was conscious that she was becoming pitifully flurried. She
could not believe now that she had ever thought this would be an easy
thing to do. And she would have to do it all herself; he had a
handsome, slightly pompous face, but it was not the face of a man who
apprehends things by intuition. She tried again.
"You are Mr. Causton, aren't you?"
"Beg pardon, m'm? You see, one ear----" The Piker had burst the drum
of one of Buck's ears. He inclined his head. "What did you say, m'm?"
Suddenly Louie put one hand on the shaft of the trap and sank half
sitting on the step. The trap dipped. Her pallor was now extreme.
"The gentleman who wishes to see you----" she began again.
"Yes, m'm?"
"I--I came with him----"
"Yes, m'm--aren't you well, m'm?"
"Don't you know me?"
"If it isn't Mrs. Allonby's, one-fifteen----" said Buck.
"His name--the gentleman's name----"
Then, as the horse lifted a foot, she slipped a little on the step.
She might not have fallen, but his old and instinctive muscular
discipline counted for something. Buck had made a remarkably swift
movement, and his arm now supported her. Suddenly she surrendered her
weight to him.
"Here, m'm," said the astonished Buck, "come and set down on the
bench."
Louie turned up entreating eyes. "You can't guess?"
"If it's Richards, seven----"
"The gentleman's name--I came with--is Chaffinger----"
"You said----?"
"Chaffinger."
She was too close to him to notice that he too had suddenly become
white. He still held her, but slowly half a cubic foot of air came
from his chest. Probably with a purely mechanical movement he set her
on her feet. His hand was at his sound ear.
"Will you say it again, m'm?" he said huskily.
Louie did so.
"Cap-Captain Chaffinger, m'm?"
"Oh," Louie choked, "don't call me 'm'm'!"
"You did say Captain Chaffinger?"
Then, leaning limply against the shaft, Louie began to speak low and
rapidly.
"Send me away if you like--perhaps I was stupid to come--but I
wanted--I wanted--I couldn't bear it any longer--I'm all
alone--father! I'm Louie--Louie----"
Only Buck's Maker knows whether even then he fully understood. His
grey eyes were stupidly on her grey eyes. Her voice, as she continued
to mutter broken phrases, possibly lost itself in his deaf ear; but
some other sense informed him that she was telling him that she was
his daughter--his daughter----
And then at one of her phrases, he seemed to come sluggishly to life.
He repeated the phrase after her.
"Putney, m'm? Did you say Putney?" he said.
"Yes, I live there----"
"You live in Putney? Whereabouts in Putney?"
"Mortlake Road."
Buck made another sluggish effort. A quarter of a century and more
before he had said to the Honourable Emily: "_The_ Bible, Miss?" Now
he said to his daughter:
"_The_ Mortlake Road?"
"I suppose so."
"You live there?"
"Yes."
Now Mallard Bois and Trant were more than geographically remote from
Buck. They had the immeasurable remoteness of the Scarisbricks. But
Putney was near. To keep himself in spring and condition, he
frequently walked over to Putney. Putney was a place you could walk
to, and it had streets and houses and a green Tillings' bus. And they
rowed the boat race there. Therefore, while it outraged all Order that
a Scarisbrick should live there, that fact nevertheless brought his
daughter into the same world with himself. For the first time he
looked seeingly at her, and as he looked, there vanished, more quickly
than a finger is snapped, whatever images of her had beguiled his
fancy through the years.
This, then, was she, standing against the shaft with head back, lips
parted, brows entreatingly drawn, her whole pose an appeal.
"Father," she was saying, smiling crookedly through those rare things,
her tears----
Judson came out of the stable. Buck gave him a curt order, and the
trap moved away. Its departure left Louie standing by the little bench
outside the stable door. Buck had taken a step towards her. He was
murmuring something quite ridiculous--something about "strictly for
the gentry." Perhaps he remembered that had his little girl been a
little boy he would have given her instruction for nothing at the
Sparring Academy in Bruton Street.
All in a moment he passed his arm about Louie. Scarisbrick or not, she
was going to be a Causton and his for once--just for once. In an hour
he might be calling her "m'm" again, but just for once--his face was
beautiful.
"That little girl," he said foolishly, holding her with as gentle a
fear as if she had been still in her cradle.
Louie's answer was to faint suddenly on his breast.
* * * * *
But of the Molyneux Arms in a moment. A word about Mortlake Road
first.
Two houses had been thrown into one to form the establishment at which
Louie had now resided for a week. Officially it was a nursing home;
actually it accepted declared invalids and quite well but unrobust
lodgers alike. Miss Cora Mayville "ran" it; her cousin, Miss Dot
Mayville, was "sister," and from four to eight uniformed nurses came
and went continually. None of them had theories, moral, social, or of
any other description; to them things were as they were. Nurse Meekins
made Louie's bed as who should say, "Helpers of people in trouble do
not go beyond their proper business"; Nurse Chalmers brought her
letters or called her to dinner in the narrowminded spirit of one who
leaves the systematics of charity to others. All were reprehensibly
incurious and shockingly affectionate, and so far was Louie's case
from being peculiar that, in the eyes of the law at any rate, Miss Dot
Mayville was herself twice a parent. Twice (when, from reasons Lord
Moone could have explained, the real parents had refused to do so) she
had signed the birth-certificates of undesired infants. This
irregularity the registrar for the district held perpetually over her
head. She laughed, and held other things over his head in return. They
were engaged to be married.
It was to this retreat that Buck drove Louie back that January
evening, cutting "Richards, seven" without compunction. Poor Chaff had
been sent off soon after lunch; there was somebody else to fetch and
despatch his Mops now. Buck lifted Louie from the trap and rang the
bell of one of the two brass-plated doors. A German youth dressed as a
waiter appeared, and Buck bade him hold the horse. Then he went with
Louie up to her room. He took off her hat and coat for her; he seemed
unable to leave her. He had learned how it was with her.
He had hardly turned a hair at the news. He accepted it as part of the
Scheme of Things. To him also indiscretions were of two
kinds--indiscretions, and the indiscretions of the Scarisbricks. Only
a wistful look had crossed his face; he had hoped Louie's somebody was
a gentleman otherwise than in the top-hat sense of the word; and Louie
had reassured him about that. For the rest, it was not for Buck to
inquire into the private affairs of these great ones. He would as soon
have allowed the young German who held the horse to inquire into his
own.
"That little girl," he said once more, holding her away from him at
the side of her bed.
"And you won't call me 'm'm,' daddy?" Louie laughed.
Buck gave it thought; it was not so simple as it looked. "And you
really took daddy's name?" he asked. He had asked it twenty times
already.
"Of course."
"And told all those young ladies?" (Louie had related the incident of
Burnett Minor and the "Life and Battles.") "All about daddy and the
Piker?"
"Of course!"
Buck found it too wonderful. He enfolded his little girl again.
"But you must go now," Louie said by-an-by.
"But I can come in the morning?"
"Yes. And, daddy----"
"Little girl?"
"You'll be good to poor old Chaff? He's fond of me too."
Buck promised that he would. Had there been none other, the tantrums
of the Honourable Emily were no doubt bond enough between them.
The next morning Buck had to be told that eight o'clock was too early
for a visit, and so, on the next morning again, he did not turn up
until eleven. After that eleven became his accustomed hour. Wet or
fine was the same to him, and he cancelled all afternoon orders for
the trap; his little girl must have the trap at her disposal for a
daily drive. And because his fidelity to the Social Order and their
own professional tolerances amounted in Louie's case to pretty much
the same thing, the nurses one and all fell in love with Buck.
And here, once for all, or at any rate for a long time, a cogent
matter may be dismissed, even as those pagan nurses dismissed it. It
is Louie's conviction of moral guilt as apart from her persuasion of
the practical inconveniences of it. Louie Causton would have been poor
stuff for the hot gospeller to practise upon. There were things she
would have had undone, and that not merely because the consequences
pressed upon her; as they could not be undone, she had begun the tune
and intended to fiddle it out. What she saw fit to hide her historian
hides also. Louie seized what happiness she could, and it served. She
was sorrier for Chaff than she was for herself. She would have been
less happy had she taken Uncle Augustus's way out.
And whether the days were happy or not, at any rate they were
peacefully alike. Breakfast with the nurses, a morning or afternoon
drive with Buck or a walk along the river bank or on Putney Heath,
tea (if they drove) perhaps at Kingston, supper with the nurses again,
and bed--that was the tale of them. She kept her promise to Chaff;
several times he came to see her. Twice he met Buck. At these meetings
the shade of the Honourable Emily almost visibly presided.... Chaff
tried to talk of "Lives and Battles," Buck of the same--it was not for
him to choose topics before his betters. And once, but once only, Buck
brought Mrs. Buck, formerly Susan Emmidge, the chemist's servant at
Mallard Bois. He hooked her up behind himself before they left
Kingston, and Louie did her the same service at the end of the visit.
For the rest, if Louie wanted to see her father's second wife she had
to go to the Molyneux Arms to do so.
II
As the singer of "The Pilgrim of Love" Buck was known far and abroad
up the Thames. It will be believed that he contrived to get an
infinite personal pathos into the song; he also made of it, by means
of those gratuitous aspirates, an affective athletic exercise in
breathing.
"No re-(_h_)est--but the gra-(_h_)ave
For the Pi-(_h_)ilgrim of Love!----"
As he closed his eyes at each soaring, the effect was as if he
inwardly looked back on that remarkable pilgrimage of his own. Bidden
to marry, he had married; bidden to unmarry and to marry again, he had
done so; and at a word from Louie he would have taken up the
pilgrimage once more.
But while Buck exalted the Scarisbricks high above himself, so also
he exalted himself high above all beneath him. He ruled the Molyneux
Arms with a rod of iron. Only mediately and through him would the two
barmaids have dared to address Louie; and his wife's position was
altogether anomalous. It was only because Louie would have it so that
she sat down to tea with them; and, what with her hooks and eyes and
Buck's perpetual admonitions, there was little rest but the grave for
her either. Buck subscribed to the _Almanack de Gotha_ and _Modern
Society_; these were always to hand; but _The Licensed Victuallers'
Gazette_, which he took in the way of business, was kept out of
Louie's way. Mr. Mackie he would have torn from limb to limb. Far more
royalist than the king was Buck; Radicalism was chaos, which word he
pronounced "tchayoss." Of pugilism, save to Chaff, he never spoke.
"God bless the Squire and his relations."
And (Louie thought) God bless this simple-hearted father of hers also.
Buck in the ring had been a better man than Uncle Augustus in the
House of Lords, and Henson would not have looked twice at Chaff.
Granted he was pompous; with a little more pompousness her mother
would have come more creditably out of that old affair. So much for
the Scarisbricks. Already, in January, Louie loved her father; by
March his daily visit was a necessity of her life. She had been right;
her destiny was quite as likely to be bound up with Buck and his
beer-pumps as with anything in that dingy old Business School.
Of the Business School she still thought a good deal, however. She
could not forget the interesting little drama of which she had seen,
as it were, the first act. Somehow, time and distance had simplified
some of its details without diminishing her interest in it, and, as
she walked along the Putney towpath by day, or lay awake in her
white-painted room at night, she wondered that this should be so. By
the brutal logic of events, Rainham Parva should have been nearer to
her than Holborn; but Rainham Parva seemed now disproportionately
remote. Why?
Had the conclusion which persisted in presenting itself not been
impossible, perhaps she would not have faced it so frankly. It was
impossible--manifestly absurd--that Mr. Jeffries should have any hold
on her imagination. Therefore she allowed herself to consider it. No
doubt the fancies which filled her head would pass and be forgotten.
Give them a month, then--two months.
She gave them that, and more. They did not pass. But that, no doubt,
was due to the curious interrupted story. She felt as if she was
reading an interesting serial tale, for the next instalment of which
she was suddenly required to wait another month. She wanted to know
what was going to happen among the fair, perky boy, the girl who
resembled Polly Ross, the lionlike Mr. Jeffries, and that apocryphal
fourth actor in the piece. When she had learned that she would close
the book. In the meantime she occupied herself, as serial readers do,
with guessing.
The spring was advancing towards May when there happened something
that suddenly precipitated her guessings. Buck still came daily, but
she walked more in the back garden of the nursing home now and less on
the heath and on the towpath, and drove, when she did drive, more
slowly. Sometimes on her drives a nurse accompanied her. Her doctor
found her health excellent.
The thing that happened began with Richenda Earle. Some weeks before,
Louie had had a letter from Richenda forwarded from Sutherland Place,
which she had neglected to answer; and Richenda had apparently written
again, this time to her sister. Louie now gathered that Mrs. Leggat
had kept the reason for her disappearance from Mr. Weston, but not
from Richenda. By way of Richenda and Mr. Weston it had now reached
the Business School. A hastily scrawled letter from Kitty Windus
informed Louie of this. Kitty wanted to come and see her.
Well, there was no reason why Kitty should not come. Louie wrote and
told her so.
She came on a Saturday afternoon. It was not urgently necessary that
Louie should have received her in bed, but the recollection of the
spinster's peering eyes held some obscure prompting. Moreover, to
receive Kitty in bed would be an intimation that the call must not be
a long one, and she had arranged its duration with Miss Dot Mayville.
"Miss Windus," Miss Dot announced, and Kitty entered.
She had brought Louie a bunch of violets; that was the first of
several new amenities Louie noticed in her manner. Louie discouraged
the second amenity, which was a shy motion as if to embrace her. And
the third showed when, after a few minutes in which Kitty's fluttered
spirits had become a little calmer (_she_ was not the one to turn her
back on people in trouble, she had said, let others hold up their
heads as they pleased), she wistfully took Louie's hand on the
coverlet. She had cried over Louie a little. Her eyes were still wet.
"Of course--but I don't know whether you've heard--I might have been
just like everybody else, only something else has made an awful
difference too," she said, her eyes downcast.
"Oh? What else?" Louie asked a little offhandedly. She had not wanted
to be wept over.
"Oh, then you haven't heard.... I'm engaged. I've been engaged nearly
two months."
"Really? Then I must congratulate you. Is it a secret who to?"
"No," said Kitty. "It's to Mr. Jeffries."
Slowly Louie sat up. She turned, as if, like Buck, she had been deaf
on one side. "_Who?_" she asked.
"Yes. To Mr. Jeffries. Since early in March. You remember he told
Archie there was somebody?--and," Kitty became suddenly voluble, "I
couldn't believe my ears at first. I'd never dreamed--never dreamed.
And after I'd been such a beast--I don't mean a beast exactly, but
getting at him, you know. I was just as bad as the others--about his
baths and all that. Oh, I did feel ashamed--as mean as mean--oh!" She
choked a little. "I don't mind saying it now, but I'd--I'd begun to be
afraid I should _never_ get off!"
"Yes--no, I mean," Louie murmured, dazed.
"Just fancy, it's being me! That night, when he asked me, I thought I
should have gone clean off it. Sometimes I can hardly believe it yet.
I hadn't a notion--not a notion! And it makes everything perfectly
wonderful, knowing a man's so struck on you, though he _is_ quiet and
don't say much about it. Of course they mean all the more, that sort.
We walk along the streets, but he won't let me stop out late for fear
of tiring me, and he always takes me right to the door, and I'm trying
hard not to be selfish, but it makes me so sorry for other girls who
haven't got off--and perhaps if I sell some of my shares to start us
with we can get married next year--if he gets a permanency, that is."
Louie was still thunderstruck. Mr. Jeffries engaged to--Kitty Windus!
That unnamed personage was--Kitty Windus! She, Louie, was asked to
believe _that_, in the face of all she had seen!
"I am glad," she found herself murmuring again.
"Did _you_ guess?" Kitty asked eagerly. She would have given her ears
to be told that somebody else had guessed.
"No," Louie replied, and added, seeing Kitty's fallen face: "I should
have thought Mr. Merridew. You seemed such great friends."
At that Kitty broke in: "Poor Archie! I said it made one selfish....
His father's very ill. We were going on Putney Heath to-day, all four
of us, Archie and Evie and Jeff and me; but Archie had a wire to go
home this morning, poor Archie, and so I'm going to meet the others
by-and-by. But anyway, if anything does happen, he'll be able to get
married as soon as he likes--he's an only son."
At this Louie was even more startled. Mr. Jeffries and the Soames girl
together at that moment! She remembered those irrevocable looks.
"So Mr. Merridew and Miss Soames are engaged, then?" she said.
"Well," Kitty admitted, "it comes to the same thing. They're as good
as. I wish Jeff was coming into a bit, like Archie."
"You say they're here, at Putney, this afternoon?"
"Jeff and Evie? Yes. I'm meeting them at five."
Even as Louie was inwardly predicting that Kitty would not see her Mr.
Jeffries at five, Miss Dot Mayville entered. But Louie did not want
Kitty to go just yet. She wanted to know more of this extraordinary
development of her drama. "May we have some tea?" she asked, and Miss
Dot went out again. Louie lay back on her pillow and frowned at the
foot of her white-painted bed.
"It's very kind of you to give up your afternoon to me," she said
by-and-by.
"Oh, my dear, as if I wouldn't!" Kitty broke out almost reproachfully.
"I keep telling myself I mustn't be selfish, when Jeff and I have
years before us--I'm just beginning to realise it--years--and, oh
dear, here I am, selfish again, talking all about myself and never a
word about you."
But Louie did not want words about herself. She wanted to hear all,
all, about Kitty and Mr. Jeffries. The thing became more incredible
moment by moment.
"I'm sorry about Mr. Merridew's father," she said presently. "I
suppose Miss Soames is very much upset?"
"Frightfully," said Kitty. "But Jeff's looking after her. It was he
who persuaded her to go out this afternoon. It's better for her than
moping indoors."
"Perhaps Mr. Merridew asked him to."
"Oh no. He only got the wire this morning. But it isn't a surprise.
Jeff saw him last night----" She checked herself. She had no gibes
about brown-paper parcels now.
"Well, you'll be quite a courting quartet," said Louie presently, with
a brightness she did not feel.
"Yes; jolly, isn't it? But there, I'm simply _not_ going to talk
about myself one moment longer. I feel a regular beast. But it's only
because I'm so happy. Now let's talk about you. How long are you going
to be here? What sort of people are they? Isn't it fearfully
expensive? Are you frightened?"
The suppressed inquisitive questions and Louie's preoccupied parries
lasted through tea. At a quarter to five Kitty rose. Again Louie found
herself wondering whether Kitty would see her Mr. Jeffries that day.
Kitty bent over her.
"I should like to kiss you, dear, if you'd let me," she said timidly.
"You wouldn't believe what a difference it makes. And I'd love to come
again; I love little babies. Now I must run. I won't say a word to
Miriam Levey; you know what she is--but I simply must learn not to say
those things. Good-bye, dear."
And she was off, waving her skimpy hand from the door.
Louie did not know why her heart should ache already, as at a
premonition--for she had no certitude. Indeed, in all that portion of
her relation to Mr. Jeffries she had no certitude; but she was only a
little less certain on that account. Already she entirely rejected the
figment in which Kitty so pathetically believed. Months before she had
snapped her fingers at his impudent tale of a shadowy _fiancee_; now
she wondered whether he had not been caught in his own trap and found
himself compelled, by mere daily exigencies, to give that shadow
substance--the substance of Kitty. Impossible--and yet the conceivable
alternatives were equally impossible! Incredible that he should have
chosen Kitty for his stalking-horse--yet whom else had there been to
choose? If this really was a putting-upon the Business School, Mr.
Jeffries would see to it that his dupe was as known as his purpose
was secret. That left him three candidates from whom to choose
indifferently--Kitty, Miriam Levey, and herself.
In her indignation she was unconscious of the pink that crept like a
danger signal into her cheeks.
That poor, unconscious, betrayed woman!
Good gracious! It was blackguardly and monstrous! Kitty of all women!
To have "predestined spinster" written large all over you was bad
enough, without being played upon thus and then cast back into
spinsterhood after all! And this new softness of Kitty's, this timid
opening of the heart, this new, awkward unselfishness, these pathetic
little maxims of conduct! The man must be a cur. Deliberately to waken
a heart that was sealed, asleep and not unhappy, and then to leave it
to a pain it must keep for ever--good gracious!
Still ignorant of the tell-tale red in her own cheeks, she found Mr.
Jeffries vile.
But she must be just to Mr. Jeffries. Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps
there was--nay, there must be--something she didn't know. Why, even if
Mr. Jeffries could be so cruel, Kitty herself could hardly be so
blind. Struggle with new magnanimities as she would, jealousy was
native to Kitty, and jealousy has sharp eyes. No, she, Louie herself,
was building a fantastic fabric. It was mere common-sense that Kitty
must be supposed to be capable of looking after herself.
But it was one thing to tell herself that she must suspend her
judgment and another to do it. That theory of hers seemed to unroll
itself brightly and convincingly before her again. She would discard
it when she found one that better explained the known facts. Mr.
Jeffries was with Evie Soames at that moment. Louie's thoughts flew
to Evie Soames.
It was then that she became conscious that her cheeks were hot. It was
then also that she told herself angrily that they were not, and found
them grow hotter still. The hotter they grew the more she denied their
heat. Why should they grow hot? And even granting that they were hot,
wasn't this imposture that was being practised on Kitty enough to make
anybody's cheek hot? That was it. That discovery made, she admitted
the heat--for Kitty's sake. That that great, taciturn, clever man
should be infatuated by that pretty fool she resented--for Kitty's
sake. That his sleek head, bright as the coat of Buck's horse, should
stoop over that empty dark one she found ironically unfit--for Kitty's
sake. She told herself all this, forgetting that she had just set
Kitty's engagement down also as an absurdity. Her indignation would
have been neither more nor less honest had Mr. Jeffries engaged
himself (as according to her theory he might quite well have done) to
Miriam Levey.
Or to herself.
She lay, the colour coming and going.
At last she roused herself and sat up. "Pretty thoughts for an
expectant mother!" she muttered. "I'll go downstairs and talk to Dot."
She dressed, and descended to the nurses' sitting-room in the
basement.
Miss Dot and her Registrar were there; they had just come in from a
walk. They were telling of a nightingale they had heard sing near
Queens Mere. "Oh, and we saw your friend again, the one who came to
tea," said Miss Dot, turning to Louie.
Louie pricked up her ears. "Oh? Alone?" she said quickly.
"Yes. Coming down Putney Hill."
"Yes, she said she was going to take a walk," Louie remarked.
But to herself she cried with conviction: "I knew it--I knew it--I
knew it!"
For the rest of the evening she was lost in her own thoughts. Miss
Cora Mayville worked a hand sewing machine; Miss Dot and her Registrar
played bezique at a separate table; other nurses, in print aprons or
cloaked and bonneted, came and went; but Louie sat and gazed into the
fire. When spoken to she smiled mechanically and then resumed her
gazing. There was no more continuity in her thoughts than there was in
the shape of the flames that illumined her grey eyes. Roy appeared in
them for a moment or two--she had seen Roy's name in _The Gazette_ a
week before--and then Roy was supplanted by Burnett Minor. Her old
French governess at Trant popped up for no particular reason, and then
she too gave place to Mr. Mackie. She heard Buck saying again, "That
little girl"--and then came a wrangle between Dot and her Registrar.
In the adjoining kitchen she heard sounds of frying, and then somebody
came in to lay the table for supper. The gas rose and whistled as the
stove in the next room was turned off. The three night nurses came
down. Louie had her gruel where she sat, and at half-past nine went
upstairs again. She got into bed, and dreamed that night that she was
dancing with Mr. Jeffries again at the breaking-up party. Her hand lay
like a willow leaf in his. "_You_ understand," he was saying to her;
"it's no good hiding things from _you_; _you've_ got the key of it
all. It had to be somebody, and you'd left. There was only Kitty for
it. You see what an ignominious thing you escape. Don't tell me how
degrading it is; I know it; but I'd do it a thousand times for the
woman I loved and meant to marry."
Louie knew, in her dream, who that was.
Then she awoke with a start. The street lamp outside, shining through
the venetian blinds, made long bars of light on the walls and ceiling.
The hot-water bottle at her feet was cold. She heard the creaking of
Dot's bed in the little dressing-room adjoining, and the minute
ticking of her watch on the table by her bed-head. But what had woke
her had been the sound of her own reply, in her dream, to Mr.
Jeffries.
"You'll shuffle Kitty off," she had replied, still dancing with him,
"but _I_ should have found a way to keep you."
Then, with a deep sigh, she turned and went to sleep again.
III
Her boy was born towards the end of June. Her mother did not visit
her; instead, she sent a letter the chief characteristic of which was
fright that she had dared even so far to disobey her brother. Louie
understood, and in her dictated reply made allowances. She wondered
whether she should write to Roy also, but in the end did not. The
child was born at three o'clock in the morning; he was hardly six
hours old when Buck arrived. The old champion stood looking down on
his little girl's little boy. It was long before he spoke.
"I wasn't let see you," he said, two big tears rolling down his
cheeks.
"You shall teach him to box, daddy," said Louie, smiling up at him.
But Buck shook his head. "No, no," he said gently--"except just to
take care of himself--when he's fourteen, perhaps--if I'm here.
Swimming, not sparring. They're a queer lot, them in the ring."
"You must go now, Mr. Causton," said Miss Dot.
The boy was thirty hours old when there arrived for him a great case
of toys suitable for a child of four. Buck and Chaff had been round
the toyshops together. Mrs. Buck, disobeying her husband for the only
time in her life, came by stealth with a flannel binder that might
have enwrapped a six-pounds' child; Jim (as Louie had decided to call
him), weighed ten pounds, beef to the heel.
He throve at once, and continued to thrive.
The pair of them were the pride of that pagan Putney Nursing Home.
The first of the two incidents that may be allowed to close this
portion of Louie's story was a second visit by Kitty Windus to Louie.
She came at ten o'clock at night, and only with difficulty obtained
admission. She was allowed ten minutes, on the condition that Louie
was awake. Louie was awake. Kitty neither lifted her veil nor asked to
see the child. There was no trace now of her little maxims of conduct;
she spoke agitatedly, and out of a stinging, jealous pain.
"I've come to ask you something, Miss Causton, and you've got to tell
me," she announced, without preface. "I've a right to know."
"Speak a little lower," said Louie, glancing at the babe. "Sit down
and tell me what it is."
But Kitty would not sit. Incapable of grandeurs of style, she
nevertheless attempted them.
"I don't know whether you happen to be aware what people are saying
about you," she said. Her boat-shaped hat and Inverness cape gave her
a little the appearance of a scanty tree with which some topiary
artist had done his best.
Louie could not help smiling a little; she could have that kind of
thing out with herself without calling in Kitty.
"My dear! Of course I know they might be saying anything!" She drew
her child a little closer to her.
"Suppose we keep the my dears till we've finished talking," said Kitty
coldly. "I mean what they're saying at the Business School."
Louie spoke quietly. "I suppose you mean about me and my boy?"
"Yes, I do mean that, and I've come to ask you to your face; _I'm_ not
the one to beat about the bush! I want to know who----" There was no
need for Kitty to complete the sentence.
"You won't know that," said Louie, more quietly still.
"Ah! perhaps you won't tell me because you daren't?"
"I've not told anybody, and I'm not going to tell you. I'd die first.
Perhaps before we go any further you'll tell me why you want to know?"
"You don't suppose I'd ask you if it wasn't my business, do you?"
Slowly Louie turned her eyes on her. She spoke slowly too. "We should
get on more quickly if you didn't jump so to conclusions," she said.
"I don't know what your conclusions are, but you seem to have made
your mind up about something. If you'll change your tone I'll talk to
you; if you won't, I won't."
At that Kitty began to sob. She had to lift her veil in order to put a
wisp of wet handkerchief to her eyes. But she changed her tone.
"I only want to know," she said. "And I don't want to know if it isn't
my business. But I _have_ seen him look at you, and he _did_ dance
with you, and when they said----"
"Who said?" Louie interrupted; but she had already made a guess. "And
said what?"
"Jeff, of course," Kitty replied. "Miriam Levey noticed him looking at
you first, but after that I saw for myself. And you did dance with
him. I might forgive him, but I'd never, never forgive _you_."
Louie suddenly put a question. Apparently it was for nothing less
preposterous than that question that Kitty was here.
"One moment," she said. "Do you mean there's something about Mr.
Jeffries and myself you want to know?"
"Yes; and I mean to know," Kitty snapped.
"And that's all?"
"Enough, _I_ should say!"
"Please hear me out. In fact"--Louie paused for a moment and then
rapped out sharply--"you want to know whether my lover was Mr.
Jeffries?"
"That'll do to be going on with," said Kitty sullenly.
"Then I'll tell you if you'll tell me who said he was."
"I don't see what that's got to do with it, but I'll tell you if you
like. Archie Merridew said so. There!"
Archie Merridew!--But Louie restrained her gasp. "Thank you," she
said. "May I ask whether you've asked Mr. Jeffries? _He_ might be in a
position to know, you know."
"No, I haven't."
"But evidently you've seen something in his manner that would make it
not quite impossible?"
"I tell you, you've danced with him, and he's looked at you in a sort
of way--more than once, Miriam says--and you're trying to shuffle out
of the question," said Kitty, her suspicions aflame again.
"Oh, I'll answer the question! If it had been he"--she glanced at the
little head under her breast--"I'd tell you in a minute--for my baby's
sake, you see. But it was not; and you might have saved yourself a
journey if you'd gone to him first. And now please tell me a little
more."
Kitty still looked at her suspiciously. "You said you'd die sooner
than tell," she cried quaveringly.
"You mean you don't believe me? Well, I can't make you. If I told you
the truth you'd just think I'd made up a name."
"It _was_ somebody else?" cried Kitty eagerly.
If it wasn't Mr. Jeffries, naturally--there was the child----
"Oh, I _want_ to believe you!" Kitty suddenly broke out.
Louie laughed desperately. "Well, my dear, you may. If it was so, I
suppose you'd get it out of me. It isn't, that's all. And now I think
I've a right to know exactly what this Mr. Merridew has been saying."
Kitty looked hard at her for one moment longer, and then sank on her
knees by the side of the bed. She had no choice but to believe. She
broke into a torrent of words, low-spoken, not to rouse the child.
Louie heard them, amazed. Slowly her incredulity turned into contempt.
The horrid little beast! But, after all, she was not surprised. It was
all in his character. Perhaps he had been drunk; perhaps it was merely
a fancy-stationery idea of humour. Not that she minded a straw; she
laughed; she supposed she was there to have stones thrown at her; it
was merely a little annoying that they were not thrown straighter. She
could picture the over-pocket-monied little bounder, measuring all
pecks out of his own bushel, leaning up against a bar somewhere,
probably too fuddled to distinguish his own humorous fancy from a
story of life with names given, and believing it himself by the time
he had repeated it once or twice.
The little worm!
"But," she said presently, disgustedly smiling, "_you_ remember when I
came to the School, and that I asked _you_ who Mr. Jeffries was----"
"Of course!" said Kitty, suddenly entirely believing. "How absurd! But
oh, I do love him so."
Louie mused.
"And he--Mr. Jeffries--knows nothing about this, you say?" she asked
presently.
"No. He thinks something's wrong. He's been teaching at the School,
you know, and of course he must have wondered what was the matter all
this last week."
"It's a week since Mr. Merridew--did me this favour?"
"Yes. But perhaps Jeff thought----" She checked herself.
"What? I think I ought to know what Mr. Jeffries may have thought."
Kitty hesitated, and then, with a little burst, told her. It was
curious. It appeared that Mr. Jeffries had been very hard up indeed,
so hard up that, quite recently, he had actually had to take a
position as a commissionaire. It was known, and possibly he had set
any oddities of behaviour towards himself down to that.
A commissionaire! Louie was astounded.
"And aren't you going to tell him?" she managed to get out.
"I must, the very next time I see him."
"You mean to-morrow?"
"I don't know. You see"--Kitty hesitated again--"he's left the School.
Practically been dismissed. He's got some work at Bedford now."
"Dismissed on account of this?"
"I expect so."
"And now, of course, you've got to tell him that you believed this?"
Kitty dropped her head on the bed. She gave a little moan. "I don't
know how I shall ever do it!" she groaned in the bedclothes.
Louie considered herself entitled to agree that it wouldn't be easy.
Presently Kitty rose. She crossed to Louie's mirror and adjusted the
boat-shaped hat. Then she came back to the bedside again and craned
her head forward.
"May I see the baby?" she asked.
"Another time, I think," said Louie, her lips compressed.
Kitty left.
Louie's mind was in a whirl. At her request, Kitty had turned out the
gas before leaving, and only a nightlight glimmered on the little
invalid's table. She gazed at it. So she too had been haled into the
drama!
On the young fancy stationer she wasted never a thought, either of
indignation or of anything else; but Kitty--Evie Soames--Mr.
Jeffries--Roy--herself!--What a nightmare--what a pantomime! What an
incredible genius this Mr. Jeffries seemed to have for getting himself
into complications and dragging other people after him! It might well
have puzzled anybody--anybody who had not the key of the puzzle--to
know which among them all he really had honoured with his choice! Only
Miss Levey seemed to be immune. Surely, for the sake of completeness,
he could have found a way of dragging her in too!
Louie had to hold her key exceedingly firmly in order to retain even
that lunatic theory that seemed to be the truth.
By dint of holding fast, however, the theory still stood the strain.
Evie Soames and Mr. Jeffries were still the central figures of the
piece. Kitty was still the stalking-horse behind which, for whatever
reasons, he machinated. She herself was still merely dragged in at the
whim of a vicious little scoundrel over whose tongue whisky and
calumnies ran indifferently, and this little beast was still engaged,
or all but engaged, to Evie Soames. Yes, the triangle re-established
itself. Kitty and herself were no more than imported complications.
The big man and the red-waistcoated youth were still the protagonists,
and they faced one another over the stupid little head of Evie Soames.
And yet Louie, lying with her boy at her breast and blinking at the
nightlight, refused to class herself with the superfluous Kitty. She
did not see herself in a "walking on" part. Though she made her entry
late, something told her that she would have a word to say--or else it
was a botched and mangled piece indeed. Of life itself as a botched
and mangled piece she had no conception; though she kept her thoughts
of Him locked within her own breast, it was still the bed of them that
there _was_ an Artist over all. But for a false start she would have
been on the stage now, and she would have given a voice to that
pitiful part of poor Kitty's. Say she had not left that Holborn School
when she did--she remembered that breaking-up dance--had one more
opportunity like that been given to her----
Then in the darkness she coloured violently. She had realised her own
thoughts. This was as much as to say that she would have accepted
Kitty's role--would have consented to be an understudy--would, like
other understudies, have ousted the principal in time--would have
topped the bill with a man the latest of whose mysterious activities
was that he had been a commissionaire----
She loved, or was on the point of loving, Mr. Jeffries----
"Nonsense!" she ridiculed herself.
But nonsense or not, it was stronger than all her efforts to think
about something else. Perhaps it was her own false start that set her
wondering, and ever returning to her wonder, whether he had not made
one too. He seemed to have set up the figure of Evie Soames in his own
imagination, and probably had not looked at Evie Soames as she
actually was since. He seemed to have his full share of that masculine
vanity which will have nothing to do with the compromise by which the
world jogs on; his rapt, lion's eyes might see visions afar off, and
he would not as much as know that his shins were black and raw with
the bruises of the hard facts among which he stumbled. Little as Louie
knew of him, she thought she knew that. Lucky Evie Soames, who might
be as stupid as the mud beneath her feet, yet in one man's blind,
far-seeing eyes could do no wrong!
But of course it was nonsense that Louie should have to recognise Evie
Soames for her rival.
Yet, on one other point, as she lay with the babe at her breast and
her eyes fixed on the little flame of the nightlight, she was already
prepared to make a wager with herself. Her theory was still only a
theory; she could not prove it; but it could prove itself. It would
work out or it would not work out; if it worked out--well, Louie was a
woman, and no woman hesitates for a single moment to put on the mantle
of the prophet. Indeed, she had prophesied long before. "Circumstances
are strong," this Mr. Jeffries who had since been a commissionaire had
admitted when she had danced with him, "but is anybody ever beaten
unless they deserve to be?" And he had taken his failure in the
examination as a sign that he ought not to have gone in for it, and
had refused to enter again. Yes, the earthenware vessel was on the
point of collision with the one of bronze, and which would break the
months or the weeks or the days would show. Kitty must not think that
it availed a predestined spinster anything that she got engaged; Mr.
Jeffries would never marry Kitty.
And if Louie herself had returned to the Business School after
Christmas----
Her dream of how she had danced with him, and he had said "_You_
understand," and she had replied, "_I_ should have found a way to keep
you," returned vividly to her----
She would have found a way.
Then she remembered that which even then had stood between.
Excitedly she clutched her boy to her--he woke with the pressure, and
gave a little croaking cry.
This, then, was the first of the two things that remained to be told
about this part of Louie's story.
For the second of them she had neither years nor months to wait, but a
bare fortnight. A very few words will tell it.
One evening after the boy had been put to bed she went down into the
nurses' parlour and helped Dot and Nurse Chalmers to overhaul the
blouses in which the doctors operated. Besides themselves, only Miss
Cora was present; she was reading an evening paper. Louie saw her
purse her lips and then throw the paper away. Presently Louie, tossing
a patched blouse aside, reached for the paper.
A few minutes later Miss Cora, with a "Why, what's the matter?"
started forward and bent over her. Louie had gone deathly white.
"It's nothing--I shall be all right presently," she muttered, her eyes
closed.
Miss Cora took the paper. The page at which she herself had last
looked was still uppermost. It contained an account of a suicide.
"What is it, dear?" Miss Cora asked again. "Not that?" She pointed to
the paragraph. Indeed, there was little else of interest on the page.
"I shall be all right in a minute," Louie murmured again.
There was nothing remarkable about the suicide. A young man had hanged
himself behind his bedroom door, and a verdict in accordance with the
evidence (which, it was suggested, was largely medical) had been
returned. He had left a letter for his mother, precisely like almost
every other such letter, and parts of it were quoted. The young man's
name was Archie Merridew. He was to have been married on the morrow.
"Is that it?" Miss Cora asked again.
Louie nodded.
"Did you know him?"
Louie made no reply.
They are experienced women at nursing homes; especially about
suppressed medical evidence they are able to draw conclusions. The
next morning a few rapid guarded words passed between Louie and Miss
Cora. The effect of them was to give Louie a sudden feeling of nausea.
Miss Cora's whispered explanation seemed only too probable. That also
was all in his character.
"That's it, you may be sure," said Miss Cora. "They ought to be
lethal-chambered, nasty little sewer-rats; one of 'em's saved them the
trouble at any rate. Did you know the girl he was going to marry too?"
"Yes," said Louie.
"Well, she's had an escape. But don't think about it. You have your
own little boy. Come into the garden till your father comes and then
have a nice long drive. Shall we wrap Jimmy up and let him go with
you?"
That, then, was the second thing; but already Louie had heard a
prophetical whisper in her soul.