PILLAR TO POST
I
When, in the October of 1896, Louie Causton left Mortlake Road, with
half the nurses of the home waving their handkerchiefs after her, she
went to a house near the Parson's Green end of Wandsworth Bridge Road.
As she left that house before Christmas, going to another one near the
Walham Green Town Hall, there is no need to describe it. Neither need
the Walham Green house be described, since from there she went, in
February 1897, to yet another house, in a street off the Bishops Road,
Fulham. These and other removals did not necessitate the use of a
pantechnicon; a four-wheeler sufficed on each occasion. Louie, the boy
and the nurse went inside; the top was quite big enough for her
belongings. She stuck to the south-western district; at no time did
she move farther east than when she took two rooms in Cheyne Walk,
over a bicycle shop near the Chelsea suspension bridge--which rooms,
by the way, she was forced to leave at an hour's notice, her landlord,
a man of straw, being himself ejected and involving his sub-tenant in
his own catastrophe. She kept to this district because of its nearness
to Kingston and the Molyneux Arms. By the time the boy was nine months
old she was living in Tadema Road, not far from where the Chelsea
power-station now stands.
The nurse whom she had engaged was a link--save for Chaff the only
one--with Trant. She was, indeed, her own old French governess, once
Celeste Martin, now Celeste Farnier and a widow. She was a
Provencale, from Arles. On the death of her husband, which had taken
place while Louie had been still at the home in Mortlake Road, she had
sought out Chaff with a sheaf of testimonials, and by-and-by Louie had
engaged her. She paid her ten shillings a week, on the distinct
understanding that she must not hesitate to accept the first decent
post that offered. It was already plain that, even if Celeste could
have brought herself to leave the little girl to whom she had taught
the order of the personal pronouns in French, her affection for Master
Jim would have haled her back again.
Louie changed her abode so frequently for one reason and another. In
perhaps a third of the cases the landladies to whom she offered
herself as a lodger found reasons for asking her to leave when they
saw that her letters were addressed to "Miss Causton." Then, to save
cab fares, Louie began to make her position plain at the outset.
Sometimes this made a difference, sometimes none. On the whole, London
S.W. showed itself charitable or merely indifferent. By May 1897 she
was at another house in Wandsworth Bridge Road.
She had not refused to accept, easily and as a loan, a sum of money
from Buck; but thrice she had well-nigh quarrelled with Buck because
she would accept it only as a loan. Twice, for the same reason, she
had had tussles with Chaff. But money, until she should find something
settled to do, she must have. No doubt Richenda Earle would have
shaken her head and have pointed out that now Louie not only had the
Scarisbricks behind her, but a prosperous publican also; but Louie,
though she lived as frugally as if she had to earn every penny, did
not see why her boy should go short while there was money to be had.
She took the sensible view of the matter, and borrowed, while walking
her shoes out and answering advertisements for this, that and the
other.
Up to the summer of '97 her occupations had been almost as various as
her addresses. She very soon discovered that her Holborn training was
of little use to her, and she could not (as also she discovered) play
the piano well enough to give lessons. What she dreamed of, of course,
was a comfortable private secretaryship; no young woman is so
ill-trained or so incompetent but she fancies herself good enough for
a private secretaryship. Perhaps Uncle Augustus might have helped her
to one, but she would have nothing to do with Uncle Augustus; and
Chaff was unable to beat up anything of the kind. Buck's proposal,
that she should keep his books, had been the cause of their second
altercation. Common-sense in the matter of borrowing she was prepared
to be; beyond that point she remembered her pride and Richenda's
words. So for the present she was spared the worst of the pinch.
So, in the early part of that year, she was in an A.B.C. cash-desk,
traveller for a History, and saleswoman at an Earls Court
chocolate-stall. Then, in June, she obtained, actually in the face of
considerable competition, a place in the showrooms of a Bond Street
photographer. Perhaps her dresses, of which several still remained,
helped her to this place. She wrote letters, arranged appointments,
answered press and other calls on the telephone, and received sitters.
No doubt some of these knew Uncle Augustus. Robson, of the Board of
Trade (who came one day), would probably know him; so would George
Hastie, Robson's friend and colleague, and perhaps Sir Peregrine
Campbell and others. Some of them, the more sporting sort, might even
know Buck too, for Buck was still a tradition; in short, Louie's own
position amused her immensely. By taking her letters home with her and
leaving a younger assistant in charge, she was frequently able to
leave the showrooms by half-past four and to spend the evenings with
Celeste and her boy. Incidentally, Louie improved her French a good
deal, for Celeste crooned over the boy in French and English
indifferently.... "The darleeng--the lo-ove--the precieux--oh, oh, oh,
mais il existe--il manifeste, le petiot----"; and she would break off
to sing, in a cracked voice, "Le Pont d'Avignon," or some lullaby of
Frederic Mistral. She idolised the infant; when he was put to bed she
did not delay long to follow him, for Louie, who had her work to do
during the day, must not be roused at night; and so Louie frequently
sat alone, writing her letters or wrapped in her own musings. She
received thirty-five shillings a week. Her job had the appearance of a
"permanency." In July she got a "rise" of three shillings a week. She
also got ten days' holiday, the greater part of which she spent in the
company of her father. She was beginning to know what holidays meant
now.
On one of those days she had an unexpected little meeting in Richmond
Park. Celeste and the boy had gone on by train, and she was walking.
The meeting was with a girl called Myrtle Morris, who, when Louie had
kept the confectionery stall at Earls Court, had sold cigarettes at
the stall adjoining. Miss Morris was accompanied by a tall young man;
she stopped to greet Louie, and the young man walked slowly on. Myrtle
asked Louie what she was doing now. Louie told her. "And you?" she
said.
"Oh, I've gone back to my old trade," the girl said, nodding towards
her retreating companion. "Artists' model. That's my present
employer--Izzard."
"Who?" said Louie. The name seemed familiar.
"Billy Izzard. Know him?"
"No," said Louie. But she remembered now where she had heard the name.
"Jolly clever painter," said the model authoritatively. "Nice fellow
too. Shall I call him?"
"Thanks, but I must be getting on," said Louie. "Good-bye."
"So long. Come and look me up some time, won't you? 25 Edith Grove."
"Thank you. Good-bye."
So that was Roy's friend! They had not gone down with the yacht that
had lain under the hill at Rainham Parva. But she had only seen Mr.
Izzard's back. For a moment, but only for a moment, she thought of
Roy; then the sum-total of a long sequence of reveries returned to her
again.
Or rather, the factors that made that total returned. In spite of her
broodings late at night, when her letters were written and Jimmy's
food prepared for the night, she was still unable to cast them up. Had
she been asked to state her relation now to Mr. Jeffries her attempt
would have been something like this:
"It's perfectly absurd, of course. There is no relation--nothing that
can properly be called a relation. How can there be, with a man I
don't see--haven't seen since that queer party? I don't even know
where he is or what he's doing; he may be a commissionaire again for
all I know."
"Yes, but," she now answered herself, as if it had been some form of a
dialogue, "don't forget that other night, at Mortlake Road, after
Kitty'd gone."
She did not forget that night. She had told herself that night that it
was nonsense that she should love Mr. Jeffries. Again she answered
that critical objector within herself.
"But it _is_ nonsense after all! How _can_ I? I suppose I mean that if
things had been different I might have loved him. Moping about a man
you never see is all very well for a schoolgirl for a week or two, but
not for grown women, and mothers at that."
"Then you mean he's just the same to you as Buck and Chaff?" the
dialogue continued, as she walked.
"All I mean is that he might have been more."
"Well, suppose you were to hear now that he'd broken off with Kitty,
and--you know--that other were to happen?"
She did know what she meant by "that other." It was the most familiar
of her thoughts. It was what in her heart she was stilly waiting
for--to learn one day that Mr. Jeffries had broken off with Kitty and
had become engaged to Evie Soames. And at that point she always tried
to stop the dialogue. Beyond that point lay something that she vaguely
apprehended might be horrible.
She had no definite reason for supposing this horrible thing to exist.
The horror, indeed, was that it might exist, and to entertain morbid
thoughts about something that merely might exist was neither pleasant
nor wise. But at times she could not forget the promise she had once
made to herself--that if anything unaccountable ever happened to a
certain young man she would know in what quarter to look for the
likely cause of it. And something had happened. Part of what had
happened she had had from Miss Cora; "A lethal chamber--the nasty
little sewer-rat!" Miss Cora had said; and it had happened on the eve
of his wedding to Evie Soames. To commit suicide had been the only
thing to do.
And of course he had committed suicide....
Then that second voice within her tried to speak again. "Remember," it
said, "that this Mr. Jeffries, of whom you can't help thinking when
all's said and done, had suffered innumerable insults from him--you
yourself were dragged into one of them----"
"Quiet!" the other self commanded peremptorily.
"--and as far as that girl you hate's concerned--Evie Soames--if the
reason was good enough for suicide it was good enough for the other
thing."
"What other thing?" Louie, in spite of herself, could not help asking.
"Oh--_you_ know!"
"Do you know what you're saying?" This was an attempt to browbeat the
other Louie.
"Oh, perfectly well! _I_ know myself--you--us--Louie Causton--better
than you do! And I know that lion better! Have you forgotten? Don't
you remember what you thought of him, that if he set his mind on a
thing he'd get it sooner or later, one way or another? Don't you
remember what he said--'I wonder if anybody's ever beaten who doesn't
deserve to be?' They are dangerous men who believe that! And the way's
clear for him now, isn't it? Of course it is! Why, suppose you hear,
first, that he's thrown Kitty Windus over; suppose you hear, next,
that he's forging ahead in his business, whatever it is--you know he's
as ambitious as Satan; then suppose you hear that he's engaged to Evie
Soames--married to her. Suppose you hear all this?"
"Oh, anybody can make up an _a priori_ tale like that!" the other
scoffed.
"Perhaps they can; but what _is_ a murder anyway? Whoever sees one
committed? Don't they hang men on just such _a priori_ tales, as you
call it? Suppose that, rather than let him marry that girl----"
"Oh, stop, stop!" Louie positively shrieked within herself.
She was white. This scene always turned her white. She quickened her
pace, but her ghastly pallor remained unchanged. A hundred times she
had argued it all before, and she knew the conclusion that would
presently come.
It came, the conclusion. That portion of herself that always seemed
resolved to convict Mr. Jeffries of a hideous thing spoke, as it were,
softly, seductively.
"And what then, Louie? What then? Come, don't be afraid of yourself!
You know it in your heart all the time! Roy--you remember--_you_ had
to make the love there; and you want to be _made_ love to, not to make
love. _You_ didn't find Mr. Jeffries a butt and a laughing-stock, you
know. You envied that little chit of a milliner's hand--envied her and
hated her. And she hates you, and always will, because you caught her
in the dark with that other creature. Yes, yes, I know you were
overstrung at that time, and didn't see yourself very clearly, but
look at the thing now--you're calm now. When you saw his eyes, all
full of perils and stratagems and deceits, all for her sake, you know
you longed to have a man do all that for _you_! And when he did that
mad thing with Kitty Windus, you know you wanted a man who would go
even to those lengths for _you_! And you know that when he throws her
over--brutally, heartlessly, without conscience--you'll want a man who'll
be just as brutal and heartless and conscienceless for _you_! You all
want it! You all love a ruthless man! You know it's the men who are the
merciful sex when sex comes into the question; you're only merciful
when it doesn't--just as those stupid men are merciless about the
abstractions you don't care a straw about!... So suppose--suppose----"
"Oh, stop!" Louie besought herself faintly.
"--suppose it turns out as I say! Won't you immediately love him a
little more when poor Kitty's sent about her business? And won't you
love him a little more still when you hear he's engaged to Evie
Soames? And won't you, when you learn that he's been willing to go all
lengths--all lengths--for love, love him past all mending? You will,
you will, you know you will!" The cry rang out almost exultantly.
"But--but--those people--coroners' juries--are supposed to know all
about these things."
"Coroners' juries!... Do you remember his eyes?..."
Beyond that point Louie never got. She usually rose quickly and went
out to post the photographer's letters. There, then, were the elements
of her sum. Sometimes some of them presented themselves, sometimes
others; more and more she shrank from casting the total. And often, to
shake off the hideous, fascinating obsession, she did the most trivial
thing she could think of--went to a drawer and overhauled her
dresses, selecting the one she would wear at the photographer's
showroom on the morrow.
It was in her to turn from the thought of a possible murder to the
shaking out of a crumpled dress.
But she never wore the oyster-grey at the showrooms in Bond Street.
Nevertheless she shook it out frequently, putting it back into the
drawer again.
* * * * *
That day, at the Molyneux Arms, Buck was alternately at his fondest
and at his most tyrannical. The fondness was for Louie and the boy,
the tyranny for everybody else. As Louie entered the little private
parlour (she was not allowed to set foot in the rest of the premises)
she heard loud crowings; they came from Jimmy, and were for the
Pilgrim of Love who held him up at arm's-length in the air; but the
next moment Buck was scolding a barmaid who had had the temerity to
borrow the current number of _Modern Society_ before Louie had seen
it. "Not that I don't make 'em all read it," he said, "but at times
and seasons, and in their proper places; what with all these Radicals
and what not we don't want chayoss coming again! You bring it back
this minute, miss!--'Oryn--thia my Beloved!"
Buck kept his divided humour through tea; then there was another
outburst. This time it was about a letter that had not been given to
Louie immediately.
"And how do _you_ know that it isn't important?" he broke out on his
wife. "Not a word--not a word! I _know_ it is important--all letters
addressed so are important, mind, for the future! Those letters aren't
about the butcher and baker and candlestick-maker, I'll have you
know! Give it to her at once, and let Madermoselle hook up the back,
or your next dress shall fasten down the front, I promise you!...
What, little man! A granddad, eh? 'No re-(_h_)-est--but the
gra-(_h_)-ave----'"
For all Louie was able to guess from the signature, her letter might
have been from butcher, baker and candlestick-maker, all three; the
name--"hers to serve, Frank Hickley"--was unknown to her. But the
single other name that the letter contained was known. It was that of
Kitty Windus. She was laid up somewhere in Vauxhall, and wanted to see
her.
The next morning, in a shabby respectable street off the Vauxhall
Bridge Road, Louie rang a bell beneath which, punched in a strip of
aluminium, was the sign, "F. Hickley, Agent." F. Hickley himself
opened the door. Later Louie learned that he was an agent for his
wife's shopping, boot-cleaning and potato-peeling. Mrs. Hickley was
Kitty's cousin, but the bit she had coming in was not enough to
relieve her of the necessity of keeping a lodging-house. That it was a
lodging-house Louie guessed from the number and variety of hats and
coats that hung in the narrow yellow-painted hall. Mrs. Hickley
appeared from somewhere below; Mr. Hickley, descending again, passed
her on the stairs.
"Are you Miss Causton?" Mrs. Hickley asked.
"Yes. I've had a letter saying Miss Windus was here."
"Will you come up? Don't take too much notice of her, what she says,
especially about tracts; Uncle Arthur's side's liable to it. This
way."
"Is she ill?" Louie asked.
"Not to call ill. She'll go to Margate in a week or two, for the air,
though Margate's too strong for me; Littlehampton's my favourite. And
Bognor. Mind the stair-rod--I must tell Frank to fasten it down."
As Kitty had formerly found Louie, so Louie now found Kitty--in bed.
Her muteness as long as Mrs. Hickley remained in the room seemed
obstinate, _voulu_; the rapid speech into which she broke without
preface when her cousin's step had ceased to sound on the stairs
confirmed some vague impression of secretiveness. Louie was uneasy at
the change in her.
"You're not to talk about it," Kitty said, the words falling one over
the other; "that's what the doctor meant, though of course he didn't
know what it was. And Mr. Folliott too--the Reverend Mr. Folliott of
St. Peters. He gave me the address in Cliftonville, quite the best end
of the town; there's such a lot in a good address, don't you think?
You know Margate?"
"How are you, dear?" said Louie gently. "Yes, your cousin told me you
were going away for a bit."
"Right away," said Kitty. "I can, you see; I haven't got to work if I
don't want to; though I'm not rich, of course. Neither is Annie, but I
don't like to see men doing the housework like Cousin Frank for all
that. I've told Frank so again and again. '_Be_ an agent,' I've said
time after time; 'for typewriters, or mangles, or tea, or anything you
like, but get out of the house; it isn't a man's place.' And it
isn't.... You've heard?" she broke off suddenly to say.
She blinked at Louie. Her neck above her nightgown was hardly more
substantial than that of a chicken; her hands seemed to have become
as veined as a skeleton leaf. Louie took one of them.
"Always running errands and setting the table--it isn't a man's life,"
Kitty continued. "'What does agent _mean_?' I said to him. 'Pull
yourself together and _make_ it mean something, Frank!' I said.
'You're not very big, but you're strong, and you've got your wits
about you,' I said.... You've heard?" she demanded once more.
"Well, tell me how you are," said Louie, patting the thin hand
soothingly.
"But have you heard the news? Glad tidings for all. 'Come unto Me, and
I will give you rest'--that's what we all want--rest; though why they
should print 'Come' in red and 'unto' in green and 'Me' in purple, and
all the letters like twigs, I'm sure I can't tell you, my dear. And
always Oxford frames. I must ask Mr. Folliott. 'Though your sins be as
crimson----'"
"You haven't asked how my little boy is, Kitty," said Louie.
"'Suffer the little children, and forbid them not'--how is he?"
But she did not wait for an answer. She was off again--the doctor, the
Reverend Mr. Folliott, her approaching visit to Margate. And always
she returned to the indignity of a man's doing women's work about the
house. It was in this connection that she suddenly mentioned, in a way
that gave Louie a slight start, the name of Mr. Jeffries.
"I will at least say that for him," she prattled; "I shouldn't have
got sick of the sight of him; out of the house at half-past nine he'd
have been, and that would have been the end of him till six o'clock;
not always bumping into you like Frank. I suppose you know Miss
Levey's there too, at his Company? He's getting on there like
anything. So's Mr. Mackie; you remember Mr. Mackie? He takes the
auction himself now on Mondays and Thursdays; in Oxford Street;
everybody stops as they walk past; he's a caution, is Mr. Mackie, I
can tell you! But of course Jeff"--here she became mysterious, and
nodded once or twice--"Jeff's on the way up--up. It's a different
class of work from Mr. Mackie's; better, as you might say; he's in the
Confidential Exchange Department, Miriam says----"
"How is Miss Levey?" Louie asked, at a loss what else to say.
"Oh, in the pink--but the soul's the chief thing; what shall it profit
a man; and I don't know whether her soul's in the pink. Do you always
_hold_ with the Church of England, Louie?" she asked earnestly.
There was nothing to be made of her. She ran on weakly, irresponsibly,
from trifle to trifle, and it was at Louie's own risk that she gave
her talk any significance at all.... Suddenly she insisted that she
herself had broken the engagement, not he. She spoke of his place in
the Company--it was the Freight and Ballast Company; it appeared to be
a "permanency." He was getting on--on; _he_ wouldn't polish brasses
and take the lodgers' boots to be mended!... As she talked, Louie
looked round the poor, neat little bedroom. It had framed texts and a
picture of a lady shipwrecked in a nightgown; this was entitled
"Simply to Thy Cross I cling." There was a good deal of muslin about,
tied back with flyblown bows.
But suddenly Kitty seemed to remember something. Louie was once more
gently patting the hand on the counterpane when she gave a quick
little clutch and sat up.
"They wrote to you to come, didn't they?" she asked, looking hard at
Louie.
"Yes, dear. I'd have come sooner if I'd known. The letter was sent on
from Mortlake Road. I came as soon as I got it."
"That's all right," said Kitty, nodding mysteriously again. "I want to
talk to you. Is the door shut?"
"Yes; but don't talk. Let me talk to you instead."
"No; there's something I want to say, and I shall forget it if I don't
say it now.... You heard about it, didn't you? I don't mean the glad
tidings for all----"
"Lie down, dear." (Kitty was squatting up in bed.) "Tell me the next
time I come. I'll come again."
"No, I must tell you now. Though Jeff's sins be as scarlet. Of course
you heard about Archie?"
"Hush."
"Of course you'd be down on him; quite right; so was Jeff. Jeff didn't
half give him a talking to, I can tell you! 'Oh, I'll give him a
dressing down,' he said; he was pretending it wasn't much, so as not
to alarm me; but _I_ know him! 'Miss Causton and me?' he said. 'What a
ridiculous idea!' And he made Archie apologise before the whole
school. And now Archie's gone, and they said it was suicide; but what
I can't understand is about Jeff's having that black eye, that very
day. He'd fallen when he was drunk, he said, but Jeff never got drunk.
He said he tripped on the step; but he never _got_ drunk, if you
understand what I mean. Wine is a mocker, isn't it, Louie? But I'm
sure Jeff wasn't drunk. He isn't that kind of man."
Louie herself wondered why she should interpose as quickly and
peremptorily as she did. She wondered, too, why she should do so in
the words she used and in a voice so thin and harsh.
"Oh--of _course_ he was drunk! My father keeps a public-house, so I
ought to know. And they often get black eyes when they're drunk. Let's
talk about something else."
"Well," said Kitty, with her head on one side, "a public-house is as
paying a business as there is, especially in a poor neighbourhood. But
I'd rather have my little bit in tramways. People ought to be careful
how they invest their money; dividends aren't everything; what shall
it profit a man? So you think I needn't worry about Jeff's black eye?"
All at once Louie felt an almost hysterical need to turn Kitty's weak
wanderings into another direction--any other direction. Glibly she
began to improvise.
"It's horrid," she said, her voice a little raised. "I've seen them at
my father's. They get drunk, and fall, and then they get black eyes
quite easily. And," she ran on regardlessly, "they knock themselves
about fearfully! I saw a man in the Harrow Road one night----"
Feverishly she extemporised. To something she had once seen from the
top of a bus she gave colour and circumstance. Kitty was impressed.
"Dear me!" she said.
Then, when the danger, whatever it was, seemed to be averted, Louie
turned, though not much more calmly, to Margate. Kitty was perfectly
docile; Margate or that dangerous other were all the same to her.
Louie had never been to Margate, but she compared Margate with other
places--Bournemouth, Ilfracombe, Scarboro.
"I should like to go to Scarboro," Kitty mused--"Harrogate
too--Harrogate's tremendously toney, isn't it?"
"Very; all hotels and kursaals and pump rooms and things," averred
Louie, who had never been to Harrogate either.
Then, ten minutes later, she rose. She said good-bye. But even as she
did so she received another start. Kitty had suddenly called in a
sharp, loud voice.
"Was that Annie at the door?"
"No," said Louie, her nerves all on edge. "There's nobody."
"Open the door and look!"
Louie did so. There was nobody. She returned to the bed again. Kitty
was once more squatting up. She still spoke sharply.
"It's all very well to be so cocksure," she said, "but if Annie was to
guess, or Miriam Levey or any of them, it would be all U P, I can tell
you! Or Evie Soames either! I only told you because you're different
and can hold your tongue! The tongue is a little member, so the best
thing people can do is to shut up, you take my tip! And _I_ broke it
off, mind you! There's as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it,
without girls making themselves cheap, and if he ever wants to know
I'll tell him straight--no drunks and black eyes for me! Not that I
don't forgive my enemies; I'm as good at that as the next one; but
when I'm engaged again it'll be to somebody who's TT absolutely,
though he does clean the knives!" Then, dropping her voice again, she
said equably: "Good-bye, dear--you will come again, won't you? I
sha'n't be going for a fortnight--the rooms aren't at liberty
yet--there isn't a sea view, but it isn't a minute from the Ramsgate
tram--you must come and stay with me----"
Louie left her. Downstairs in the hall she had a few words with
Kitty's cousin. She asked when the engagement with Mr. Jeffries had
been broken off, and was told a year ago. Part of the time since then
Kitty had spent with another cousin, Alf Windus, who lived in Kilburn
and played the first fiddle at the Metropolitan in Edgware Road; part
she had spent at Alf's sister-in-law's at Wealdstone; and for the rest
of the time she had been at the Hickleys'. She was only a little
flighty at times, and Mrs. Hickley was too busy, what with breakfasts
at different hours and some liking one thing and some another, to pay
much attention to her. She would have taken her for nothing if she
could, but life was a struggle and business was business, and Mrs.
Hickley had been lucky enough to let her room for the time she would
be away at Margate. If Kitty really had anything to keep from her
cousin, apparently (Louie concluded) she had kept it. Probably Kitty's
condition (Mrs. Hickley added) was a result of the shock of Archie
Merridew's suicide, coinciding with her rupture with Mr. Jeffries.
Beyond that Mrs. Hickley minded her own business--plenty, too,----
"Thank you for coming," she said, opening the door for Louie.
"I shall come again if I may," Louie replied.
Already she knew that she would go again--must go again--though it was
only when she had left the house behind her that she began to ask
herself why. Then followed another dialogue. The critical Louie began
it.
"Well, what did I tell you? His engagement's off, and he's getting on
in his business. I'm right so far, eh?"
"Too right," the other Louie muttered. "Let it rest."
"Will it let you rest--that's the question! Well, what do you want
next--his engagement to Evie Soames?"
"I don't want anything. I've got my boy and my living to earn. That
fills my life."
"Then why are you going to see Kitty again? Come, don't shirk it. You
know why you're going. You're going to----"
"I'm not!"
"You're going to protect him! If that poor creature thinks she
guesses, you're going to tell her the notion's perfectly absurd!
You're going to lie to her! If she has weak fancies, you're going to
see that they're just as wide of the truth as they can be. Do you
still deny what the truth is? After whatever the tale is he's been
telling about drunkenness and a black eye? _Is_ he that kind of man?
_Isn't_ that just as likely as not to be one of his blinds? A man has
to be cunning, you know, to hoodwink a coroner's jury, but somehow he
seems to have done it."
"I don't know anything about it."
"You mean you believe he hasn't done it? Then why are you going to see
Kitty again? Oh, don't pretend to me! I tell you you're going to
protect him. And why are you going to protect him? (Ah, I didn't think
of that before, but I see it now!) You'll love him a little more still
just for that! You'll love him because you have his safety in your
hands. You'll keep it in your hands. Even if you have to take Kitty to
live with you, so that you can watch her every spare moment, you'll
take care she never, never knows. You're planning it now. You're
going to have a right in that man no other woman on earth has, Evie
Soames or anybody else. And you're going to take him from Evie Soames
too, if you can!"
The other attempted irony. "What, me? With my story?"
"You only regret your story because it stands now in your way of
getting him! Would you marry Roy now even if you could gain a kingdom
by it? Why, you wouldn't before, let alone now! What are you going to
see Kitty again for--to-morrow? We shall see! Your nerves are all
a-jump at this moment; you don't feel it safe to leave here even for a
few hours! And another thing. Miriam Levey seems to be at his place,
wherever it is, and you're positively trembling about _that_! While
you're trying to worm things out of Kitty on the one side, she'll be
at the other--_you_ know what she is! So the first thing you'll do
will be to find out exactly what Kitty's got into her head."
But here the normal Louie temporarily triumphed. "What a tale you're
making up!" she laughed. "These things simply do not happen. Actually,
you're trying to force it on me that I love a man simply because he's
committed a----"
"Not simply because----"
"Well, that I'm in love with a man who has committed one. Tell that to
the world, and see how you're laughed at!... Oh no, it's too much.
People don't do it, especially when it's guesswork, pure and
simple----"
So she triumphed. The other Louie held her peace.
But for all that she went to see Kitty again on the morrow.
II
It was an error of judgment that caused Louie to leave the
photographer's in Bond Street. The money she owed to Buck and Chaff
was on her mind; she saw that Richenda Earle had been right; she was
not yet out in the open. She sought to diminish her indebtedness by
finding a better-paid post.
The opportunity presented itself. She obtained, at a salary of three
pounds a week, the coveted secretaryship. Never mind to whom she
became secretary; he is now a renowned author; and Louie was with him
for just a fortnight. At the end of that time he offered to double her
salary. Louie's answer was to walk immediately out of his house. She
had now no job at all.
The story of the pinch shall be passed over lightly. The boy did not
feel it; it was she who tightened her belt. Promising herself that it
was for the last time, she borrowed of Buck, and then removed to Edith
Grove, taking two small rooms in the same house as Myrtle Morris, the
model. But Myrtle had gone for the Christmas season into pantomime,
and as Louie was out all day, and asleep when Myrtle returned at
night, she saw little of her. She would have gone into pantomime too,
but she was too late, and still hoped for something better. Of
necessity Celeste remained with her; Celeste kept the place going with
her needle. This was at the beginning of 1898. February found her
again in a cash-desk, this time at Slater's. The desk had a mirrored
panel in the front of it that extended from the narrow counter to the
floor, and at first Louie wondered why clerks and shop-assistants put
down their money, stood back from the desk, and grinned. Then one
day, when somebody else was inside the box, she noticed the illusion.
The head and shoulders of the girl in the cage appeared to be
continued downwards by the trousers of a man. As she could not afford
to throw up her job, she continued to bear the grins disdainfully.
After her day's work she acquired from Celeste the art of crochet. Her
mats and table-centres and borders for teacloths went in with
Celeste's own work.
Her improved French enabled her to pass, in April, from the cash-desk
at Slater's to one at a foreign restaurant in Soho. She still lived in
Edith Grove. For several weeks that summer she was again at Earls
Court, but with the reopening of the theatres she obtained a place in
the ladies' cloakroom at His Majesty's. One night she helped Miss
Elwell, the daughter of Sir James Elwell of the Treasury, off with her
cloak. She was unrecognised. She wondered how B. Minor was getting on.
She was still at His Majesty's at Christmas 1898; but the New Year saw
her at still another place--a Ladies' Turkish Baths, in St. James's.
Buck, angry and disapproving of the whole course of her life, liked
this least of all; massage somehow brought it home to him. But there
was a worse shock still in store for Buck. In the spring of '99 Louie
became an artist's model.
Myrtle Morris introduced her to the profession and to Roy's friend,
Billy Izzard, at the same time. This also was in Edith Grove. Billy
Izzard, whose large, boyish face and loose, shambling figure somehow
gave Louie the impression that he had either grown too quickly or else
not yet filled out, was telling Miss Morris, with a candour entirely
disarming, that for some purpose or other her own form was no good at
all; and Miss Morris asked him why he didn't try the Models' Club. He
snorted.
"Try it? I have tried it; tried everything. Fact of the matter is,
it's like going to a Registry Office for servants; you find the rich
people have snapped up all the best before they get there. Old Henson
gets 'em. He's got the very girl I want; Miss Gale; but I can't pay
what Henson pays. And the rest of you are like that egg--good in
parts."
Louie wondered whether Billy had ever heard her name before; she found
a way of making sure. The talk turned to holiday-places for the coming
summer, and Louie contrived to mention the Somerset coast and the
Bristol Channel. The unsuspecting Billy told her that he had once been
yachting there with a fellow and had had a smash-up. It was amusing.
According to Billy, the other fellow had rather fancied himself as a
patcher-up of broken centre-boards and suchlike, had put in at some
place or other, and had said he'd made the centre-board all right; and
he'd come pretty near drowning the pair of them off a place called
Combe Martin. Luckily they'd been spied by the coastguard, and a boat
had been put out to them. "Rottenest piece of navigation in England,"
Billy grumbled on; "there's a place called the Boiling Pot----" He
described it....
Louie felt a little gush of gratitude towards Roy. He had not
chattered. But of course he would not----
She did not offer at once to sit to Billy; it was a fortnight later
that she screwed up her courage to do so. During that time she thought
the matter out. Perhaps the stark simplicity of the thing attracted
her. No acquirement she was ever likely to possess would greatly
improve her circumstances; it would probably be the same to the end of
the chapter--cash-desk, waitress, Earls Court--Earls Court, mannequin,
and a private secretaryship with an offer of double wages. At two
colleges she had learned little or nothing; she lacked application;
but here was something that quietly brushed acquirements
aside--something that went flagrantly by favour. It was femininity
reduced to its simplest statement. She had no fear of Billy Izzard.
She guessed that to him she would be little more than a more complex
whitewashed cube or cone or pyramid.
She did not even colour when she made her proposal to him....
"But I expect you'll go off to old Henson or some other swell
presently," he sighed, as she stood before him....
And of course Chaff, barring her face that was best suited with a
large shady hat, had given her her testimonial long before.
Buck was furious. The original, genuine Pilgrim of Love had reason
enough to know what happened in studios. Young women of high birth (in
Louie's case it would probably be a young man) began to take their
lunches there, and one day burst into jealous unhappy tears, and after
that the Pilgrimage began. But Louie only laughed at him. She reminded
him that she had reason to regard herself as a pilgrim too. At that
Buck looked hard at her.
"Little woman," he said slowly, "d'you mean--that there is somebody?"
Louie laughed again, but more consciously.
"Once or twice lately," Buck continued, still looking hard at her,
"I've wondered whether there might be----"
"How can there be, daddy?"
"Well, the other isn't befitting," said Buck, shaking his head and
returning to the original point.
"My daddy did it."
"Ah, men's different. For high ladies it--it isn't befitting."
"I'm not a young girl, daddy."
"No." Buck sighed. If he had only known her when she was a young girl!
But the whims of the Scarisbricks were still the Scarisbricks' whims,
and as such above his judgment. "But I want to see this Mr. Izzard,"
he added grimly.
"That you certainly sha'n't," Louie replied promptly. "Fancy your
taking me round everywhere I go!"
"Everywhere?" Buck repeated, alarmed anew.
"Of course. If it's a business it's a business. Why, Mr. Izzard alone
would be--dreadful! It's no good, daddy; you can't change my mind."
He saw that he could not, but he still tried. It only delayed a little
her carrying of her point. In the end--well, she was her mother's
daughter. There was no more to be said.
So she began to make the round of the Chelsea studios, and presently
moved, with Celeste and the boy, to more comfortable quarters in
Lavender Hill, Clapham Junction. This took her farther from her work
in Chelsea, but brought her nearer to the Lambeth and Westminster
Schools of Art, where also she obtained sittings, sometimes during
the day, sometimes in the evenings also. She sat for Billy when Billy
could afford to pay her. "No, no--no tick, Billy," she told him once;
"I don't do this for amusement." Of the boy Billy knew nothing....
Buck, still strongly averse from the whole proceeding, at first
refused to hear her gossip of the day's work; but, as his silence did
not alter matters, little by little he began to come round. Soon they
exchanged experiences quite freely. He told her what Sopley had said
about his deltoid, Henson about his thigh. "You vain old daddy!" she
said, stroking his cheek, "I believe for two pins you'd do it again!"
She took a pleasure in fondly shocking him in the same sort. Sometimes
he mused long. You will admit that it was something to muse over. And
so--well, so Louie, throwing acquirements aside with her clothes,
became, by virtue of her peculiar commodity, economically emancipated.
As female models, women are eminently better than men.
She did fairly well at it. So well did she do that from the three
rooms in Lavender Hill (the third one Celeste's) piece by piece her
landlady's furniture began to disappear. Her own took its place. She
intended, when she had enough of her own, to save the difference in
rent between furnished and unfurnished quarters by taking a small
flat. So her two chests of drawers and her wardrobe were her own; so
were much of her cutlery and bed and table linen; and so, of course,
were Jimmy's various paraphernalia. But she was not ready to leave
yet. The summer of 1900, she thought, would be early enough.
And in one particular at least she was now able to hold up her head.
She still owed money both to Buck and Chaff, but she knew as much
about the struggle for a livelihood as Richenda Earle herself. And
she had not grizzled. Life had not knocked her out. She was her
father's daughter after all.
And yet, once more, she felt herself her mother's daughter too. The
reason, which was not very far to seek, was this:
The earlier stages of that furtive romance that in the end had left
her former husband no Rest but the Grave were known only to Mrs.
Chaffinger herself. Henson had not guessed them; Lord Moone had seen
only the resultant scandal of them. But Louie understood a little now.
She could at least guess what had happened to her mother between her
first setting eyes on the splendid Buck and that final petulant,
pathetic cry: "Oh, that I should have to beg a man to marry me!" By
sympathy she was able now to divine the sighs, the half-acknowledged
longings, the half-shamed daydreams, the revulsions, the sinkings back
again. For Louie now knew something of these things within herself.
Not that there was not harder stuff in Louie. There was. There was,
for example, that sense of proportion which is humour. How could her
thoughts of Mr. Jeffries not be rather preposterous? She found it
difficult sometimes to remember even his personal appearance; she had
well-nigh forgotten his voice; many idle repetitions had dulled the
memory of that odd little thrill she had felt when her hand had lain
in his. True, she remembered these things in a way. She remembered the
tawny bulk of him, the lion's eyes, the gloss of his hair, the
modeless fashion of his speech; but these were mere noted facts, no
more hers than everybody else's. Yet what (she asked herself) had
become of her sense of humour that she should want something of him
that nobody else had? What had happened to her sense of proportion
that she did not forget him as she had forgotten scores of people of
whom she had seen far, far more? And how had it come about that, for
one thought she cast on Roy, Mr. Jeffries had twenty? And why this new
and curious understanding of her mother?
She asked herself these questions behind the grilles of her
cash-desks, behind the counters of her Earls Court stalls, posing or
crocheting on her model thrones, riding backwards and forwards to her
sittings or what not on the tops of omnibuses. Usually she answered
herself more or less like this:
"It looks very much as if I was making of him what he seems to have
made of that Soames girl--a sort of _idee fixe_; if I were to fall
really in love now, I suppose I shouldn't think any more about him.
Luckily it doesn't matter; it's my own affair. Good gracious, suppose
he knew! He'd think me as imbecile as I am!--There I go again!" (This
probably, some minutes later.) "Suppose I _had_ met him earlier, and
things _had_ been different--what about it? What's the good of
remembering all that now? Well, it puts the time on down this beastly
Kennington Lane.... Thank goodness I'm not likely to come across him;
I can't help thinking something would happen if I did.... Poor
mother!" she usually ended inconsequentially, "I suppose she'd be
about my age. I'm turned thirty--thirty-one in fact--shall have to
stop counting soon. Time you stopped counting when it occurs to you
that your mother had dreams just as silly as yours----"
And so, whether this Mr. Jeffries meant much or little to her, he did
not mean so much but that any trivial near occurrence--a cold of young
Jimmy's, a cold of her own that prevented her from sitting for a day
or two, or a fall in the crochet-market--put Mr. Jeffries and the wild
and tangled ideas that seemed to cloak his image temporarily quite out
of her thoughts.
* * * * *
When early in the year 1900 she got regular sittings for a time with
an artist who lived in St. John's Wood, she never went up or down
Tottenham Court Road in the Victoria bus without half expecting to run
across Evie Soames, who lived in Woburn Place. Because she did not
meet her, she concluded that very likely she lived there no longer.
But, late on a windy afternoon in March, at about the time when the
street lamps were being lighted, she did meet her.
It was opposite the Adam and Eve, in Euston Road, and on either of the
two women's parts there was a curious momentary hesitation. If Evie
Soames still lived in Woburn Place and was going home, the first bus
that came would do for her, and Louie had already seen her glance as
it approached; but as it happened, that bus was the Victoria bus for
which Louie herself was waiting. Louie spoke; it seemed to her that
not to speak would be to apologise, by silence, for that episode in
her career that had brought Kitty Windus in haste to the Nursing Home
in Mortlake Road. A large parcel she was carrying gave her an excuse
not to shake hands.
"How do you do?" she said.
Something, she could not have told what, had instantly drawn her eyes
to the girl's attire. Evie Soames was wearing a black jacket and black
fur cap, but the wind, turning the jacket aside, showed the narrow
black and white stripes of the blouse beneath.
"Oh--fancy meeting you!" Evie said, turning her dark eyes as if she
had only that moment seen Louie. There was something in her manner
that Louie interpreted as meaning, "Very well, if I've got to be
cordial I'll _be_ cordial!" "Are you going by this bus?" she added.
"Yes."
"Oh! Where are you living now--Putney?"
It may be that Louie met any slight the last word might have conveyed
half-way and more. She replied, a little shortly: "No, Lavender Hill;
I change at Victoria. After you----"
"Oh no--after you!"
Louie ascended; they couldn't stand on the kerb discussing points of
precedence. "Let's go in front," Evie said, "and then men won't smoke
on us," and they settled down.
"Well," Evie said, adjusting the apron, "and how are _you_?"
"Thank you," said Louie, "perfectly well."
"There's room for your parcel here. Such ages since we met! Let me
see, when was it?"
They discussed when it was, and then, "And have you seen Kitty Windus
lately?" Evie asked.
Since her first visit to the Hickleys' Louie had seen Kitty perhaps
half-a-dozen times in all, not oftener. Kitty had been to Margate,
thence to Whetstone, and after that to Alf Windus the violinist's.
Louie had simply not been able to see her oftener; she had had far too
much to do. And, after all, nothing (the nothing of Louie's fears and
fancies) seemed to have happened. Except to herself (Louie guessed)
Kitty made no mysterious allusions to black eyes. She was merely
puzzled, pathetic, harmless. She had not that perilous thing, a
preconceived theory into which events had a fulfilling way of dropping
of themselves. So Louie replied to Evie Soames in a tone as casual as
her own:
"Oh yes, I've seen her several times. Of course you heard that her
engagement to Mr. Jeffries was broken off?"
"Oh yes," said Evie, looking straight in front of her.
"Have you seen her, then?"
"Oh no. But of course Mr. Jeffries himself would know, wouldn't
he?--that is, if you call it breaking off when a person just
disappears without saying where she is or anything about it. Don't
bother to unbutton; I have some pennies----"
But Louie also had pennies. "Any more fares?" the conductor called,
and then went downstairs again. The two women fell into a silence. The
early lamplight came and went on their faces as the bus jogged on.
Presently the silence seemed to have taken almost the character of a
contest as to who should speak next, with either resolved that it
should not be herself. Louie knew perfectly well what was the matter.
Miss Soames might speak glancingly of Mortlake Road and offer to pay
her bus fares, but really she hated Louie because of Louie's discovery
in the old ledger-room on that examination day that now seemed so long
ago. The girl seemed to be still in some sort of half mourning--but
Louie did not want to think much of that and all that it might mean.
Rather desperately, she strove to forget that she had ever had a
theory about what might have driven Evie Soames into black and of
what might happen when she went into colours again. She must, she told
herself sharply, have a hideous mind ever to have thought these
things. Indeed, she was so short with herself about it that,
relinquishing the contest of silence, she again made the small
immediate thing banish the large shadowy one behind.
"Do you ever see Miriam Levey nowadays?" she asked suddenly.
"No," Evie replied. At any rate she had not been the first to speak.
"Oh? But aren't she and Mr. Jeffries at the same place now?"
"Yes, I believe they are--in fact, I know they are. I suppose Kitty
told you?"
"Yes."
"Poor Kitty! But let me see: was Miriam at the office when Kitty came
to Mortlake Road? I thought it was after that she went."
"I've seen Kitty more than once," said Louie, compressing her lips.
The bus was slowing down opposite the Oxford.
"Ah, yes, you said so. Well, remember me to her when you see her
again, won't you? I get down here. I hope you'll get your parcel home
all right; it's rather a large one, isn't it? Good-bye."
As Evie Soames's figure was lost in the crowd that jostled in the
lights of the Horse Shoe Louie did not look round. She was too angry.
"Good gracious!" she exclaimed, "the insupportable little creature!
Why, I never looked at one of my mother's housemaids so! _De haut en
bas_--her to me! But I did catch you that day, Miss Polly Ross, and
you know it!"
But as the bus moved southwards again, she was trying once more to
forget that white stripe in Evie Soames's dress. She did not want to
think that anything had suddenly seemed to come a stride nearer. And
she would now rather not have been told, what apparently was the fact,
that, whether frequently or not, Evie Soames did see Mr. Jeffries.
The parcel she was taking home contained a dress; she had been sitting
in it; but it was not the oyster-grey. The old oyster-grey, too,
served to bring her nearer to her mother and that weak flicker of
romance long ago in Henson's studio. Not for worlds would she have had
Celeste see the idiotic looks she sometimes gave that dress in which
she had danced with Mr. Jeffries. And sometimes she would suddenly
toss it aside, roughly, anyhow. She was not seventeen (she would tell
herself), to moon over a flower a man had given her or a dance
programme on which he had scrawled his name. She was a woman of turned
thirty-one (she rubbed it in), with her living to earn and an
illegitimate son to provide for.... But sometimes she was very wistful
too. She had never (she sighed) really been a girl of seventeen at
all; looking back, she saw that she had missed that. She blamed
nobody; no doubt she had been unruly, ill-conditioned, unmanageable;
still, she had missed that. The thought always sent her off into her
reveries again; and then, how differently, how much more admirably,
she was able to plan everything to herself! Over and over again she
built it all up, unbuilt it again, rearranged it, played with it. Had
she, as a girl of seventeen, met Mr. Jeffries--had this circumstance
been different, that particular not been the same--had she nursed no
grudge against her mother--had it been Mr. Jeffries, not Roy, with
whom she had kicked her long legs during the vacations at Mallard
Bois--had she, in a word, had the arranging of the world herself and
the choosing of the places she and he were to occupy in it----
"Bosh!" she usually cut herself abruptly off. "I shall be afraid of
turning a corner soon for fear of walking into the gentleman! What
shall I take in for supper?"
* * * * *
She did not know yet--indeed it was only some months later that she
learned it, but it is set down here--that already, at a Langham
Exhibition, Billy Izzard had one day seen a big stranger standing
before one of his sketches, had gone up and spoken to him, and had
liked the fellow--had liked his hewn slab of a face with the yellow
eyes in it so much that presently, having an old sketch he was never
likely to sell, he had given it to him. But Billy would at any time
rather give away a sketch to somebody he liked than sell one to
somebody he didn't like, and he still set, moreover, less than their
real value on those paintings of flowers that he "knocked off" in a
couple of keen and nervous hours. One of these sketches, by the way,
Louie herself coveted--a straggle of violets, a few white ones among
them, in a lustre bowl; and she offered a certain number of sittings
in exchange for it--another elementary example of the transaction in
kind. But Billy shook his head. He wanted that for a wedding present
for a fellow, he said. He'd give Louie another some time--after he'd
found another studio. He was sick of Chelsea; when a fellow got to
know the cracks in the flagstones it was time he moved. He thought of
going up north somewhere, Camden Town or Hampstead or St. John's
Wood--better air. So Louie could make up her mind to the bus-rides,
or else move too. He wasn't going to let Henson get hold of her.
But Louie still delayed to move from Lavender Hill.
III
Louie's adventures, as she continued to sit, would fill a book: but
not this book. Her sittings were the accidents of her life; her real
life she reckoned from Sunday to Sunday. Sundays were the blest days
she devoted to Jimmy.
He was now nearly four years old, and (as Celeste continued
delightedly to exult) "existed" and "manifested" indeed. Louie herself
gave him her bath before she set out of a morning; she did so in a
waterproof and little else--why, the splashed condition of the
wall-paper in the poky little bathroom explained. It was the same old
waterproof she had worn at Rainham Parva. Buck's admiration of the
boy's chest and limbs was merely fatuous; he himself was teaching him
to swim at the Public Baths. He had announced to Louie, with a great
show of harshness, that the money she was fool enough to refuse, the
boy would have the benefit of; that at least was something she
couldn't prevent, he informed her, and though Louie scolded fondly
back, it was a weight off her mind. Chaff, the other grandfather, came
occasionally on Sundays; he came, for example, on the Sunday after the
opening of the Royal Academy. He brought a catalogue with him, and,
taking Louie into a corner, desired her to mark the numbers for which
she had sat. Whether the poor old fellow meditated the buying of them
all up, or what else, there was no telling. Her sittings, too, were
"just like Mops." Perhaps that was more than some of the pictures
were.
But it is not true, as has been reported, that for Henson's last
picture, "Resurgam," Buck Causton and his daughter posed together.
Buck never posed after his first marriage. Louie only posed for Henson
once, and that was in wet drapery. She caught a pretty cold in
consequence. She exulted in that cold; it gave her three whole days
with little Jimmy. They played with tops and balls and soldiers on the
floor. The boy wanted an ensign's uniform, like that of the fourth
Lord Moone in the miniature, and Chaff bought him a dragoon's helmet
and cuirass. Buck laughed because the cuirass was already too small;
and then he sighed. Perhaps he remembered the suit of armour of Big
Hugo at Mallard Bois.
Well, if a little money was all that was necessary, the boy could be
put into the army by-an-by.
And so things might have gone on had they been destined to do so; but
into Louie's life of busy sitting and foolish dreaming and Sunday's
rompings with her boy, there came a disruptive force. Kitty Windus
brought it on a Sunday morning in early June.
Celeste was reading a story to Jimmy when she walked in; Louie was
putting the last touches to a piece of crochet; and all three were
awaiting Buck's arrival with the trap--he was going to take them to
Hampton Court. She entered unannounced, and, to Louie's way of
thinking, would have been better in bed. Her face seemed unusually
small and thin; she spoke in a high, painful voice.
"Louie, I want to see you--quick----"
It was as if Louie too caught an instant alarm. Hurriedly she dropped
her just-finished crochet and rose.
"What's the matter?" she asked quickly. "Come into my bedroom."
In the quite prettily furnished little bedroom Kitty began to walk
rapidly to and fro. Once or twice she turned her looks to the
brown-papered walls, as if she expected to find texts there; for the
rest the blinking little eyes roved ceaselessly at about knee-height
from the floor. Then she stopped before Louie.
"They're getting married in a fortnight," she cried harshly,
accusingly.
There is no need for Louie to ask who, nor did she know what instinct
again, as before, bade her take up a definite attitude without a
moment's delay. She only felt in her very bones that delay would be
perilous, and that not the shade of an expression must cross her face
that was not natural and unsurprised.
"Yes, of course; didn't you know?" she said quietly. "Mr. Jeffries and
Evie Soames, you mean?"
Again Kitty made that painful little sound--_a bouche fermee_. "You
knew?" she cried.
A simple lie would not have availed; this was so obvious that Louie
lied deliberately, circumstantially and at length.
"Yes, of course I knew. Of course I did. Do you mean to say you
didn't? I made certain you did; I was going to write to you. In about
a fortnight, isn't it? I'm--I'm giving them a wedding present;
it's--it's that piece of crochet you saw me doing. It isn't much, but
these things don't go by value; it's the intention. What are you going
to give them?"
She almost blushed for the lameness of it. As a matter of fact, she
had intended that piece of crochet for the new flat, when she should
take it; but to soothe Kitty now was of more importance than crochet
for new flats. She watched her covertly, anxiously.
"How did you know?" Kitty flashed out, again stopping in her walk.
"Sit down, dear; sit on the edge of my bed; I'm sure you're tired. How
did I know? Why, I saw Evie herself. I saw her on a bus one day in
Tottenham Court Road. It was near the Adam and Eve. And--I say,
Kitty"--dropping her voice confidentially, she made an appeal to
Kitty's hunger for gossip--anything for a diversion--"I doubt if
they'll have too much to live on--it takes a tidy bit to get married
on--and I don't suppose she has any shares to sell."
But Kitty did not seem to hear. She flashed out again.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"My _dear_! I made sure you'd heard it from Miriam Levey. And I wasn't
sure where you were; you move about so, you know. I wonder what Miriam
will give them! Something far more expensive than mine, I expect. And
you ought to give them something too, Kitty. What's done's done, you
know, and after all, lots of engagements are----"
But once more Kitty flashed out. "Oh, _I_ shall give him a bottle of
arnica, or whatever it is, for black eyes!"
Louie laughed almost hysterically at the joke. The tension was getting
almost too much for her. "Oh, come, he isn't a wife-beater yet!" she
protested.
"But he will be, that man!" Kitty cried aloud with frightening
vehemence. "He'd do anything--anything--much he cares! Did you know I
got lost the other night? In Lincolns Inn Fields; policemen coming up
to me, if you please, and asking me where I lived! Much he cares! I
believe it was her all the time--he never wanted me at all, and as
soon as Archie's out of the way he goes and marries her! Miriam Levey
herself says she can't help thinking it's funny--and I can't think
what _your_ game is either, to be going on as if it wasn't! I'll tell
you what _I_ think, if you want to know----"
"Hush, hush, hush!" came from Louie. She had her arms about Kitty.
"Perhaps you're right, dear; he was cruel to you! And"--she rushed
into another extemporisation--"I don't know that I would give him a
present, after all. If one can't forgive an injury one can't, and it's
no good pretending. He did wrong you, and perhaps he oughtn't to be
let off, after all. I won't send him one either."
She said it because it was better to confine Kitty to her own wrongs
than to allow her to approach a number of frightening unknown
possibilities that began with black eyes. And apparently she
succeeded. Kitty fell back on her own injury, and became a little
calmer.
"Oh," she said cunningly, "but you'd have to send yours, and Miriam
Levey'd have to send hers too--then, don't you see, I should be the
only one who didn't, and he'd notice it! I just hope he does notice
it. Serve him right. I wasn't as hard up for a fellow as all that--I
carried on with a fellow at that breaking-up party. I did--you ask Mr.
Mackie.... You _do_ think Jeff never intended to marry me at all,
don't you, Louie?" She peered curiously at Louie.
Well, better that, Louie thought. "I don't think he meant to for a
single moment," she replied.
"Oh, the _rotter_. Come on, let's send your present now. We'll show
him!..."
She was quite eager about it; but Louie kept her in the bedroom a
little longer. Kitty began to speak of texts again. Again she wondered
why "Come" was written in green and "Unto" in red and "Me" in purple,
and why all texts had Oxford frames. "You haven't any, I see," she
said, glancing again round the brown-papered walls. "You ought to have
'Remember thy Creator,' you know, Louie; it always reminds you, you
see. What's this?"
It was one of Billy Izzard's etchings. Kitty examined it with her head
a little on one side.
"It's very nice, whatever it is," she conceded; "but where's the other
one? I always think pictures look better in pairs. But you can get odd
ones cheap sometimes; Mr. Mackie had a great sale of Art Engravings
one day in one of those Oxford Street places--you can hear his voice
right across the street--and _he_ said they were cheap because they
weren't pairs, but they'd do splendidly for the middle of anywhere,
like over a mantelpiece. And what a nice looking-glass! Really, you're
quite comfortable here!"
She seemed to have forgotten all about Mr. Jeffries again. She walked
round Louie's bedroom, bestowing encomiums and preening herself on her
own pound a week.
At midday Buck came, but Louie did not join the party; she sent
Celeste and Jimmy, and herself stayed with Kitty. She hoped Kitty
would not stay long; she wanted to lie down and think--think. Nor did
Kitty stay very long; but before she went she returned to the subject
of the crochet. She wanted the article--it was a teacloth--sent
immediately; she would run out and post it herself, she said; and
_then_, when he got presents from Miriam and Louie and none from
herself, _that_ would be rather a nasty one for Mr. Jeffries!
"Do pack it up. _I'll_ show him I'm not to be trampled on like the
dirt under his feet!" she persisted vindictively; and another approach
to the subject of black eyes caused Louie to yield hurriedly. She
folded the cloth and found a piece of brown paper; Kitty did not
notice that she enclosed no message.
But suddenly Louie had an odd little hesitation. She knew it to be
ridiculous and a sentimentality, but while she did not want to send a
particular message, she yet did not want to send the teacloth entirely
without one. The opportunity for the little secret luxury would
probably not occur again.... Kitty was condescendingly appraising her
furniture again; on the mantelpiece lay a piece of blank card; it
seemed to be there almost for a purpose, and furtively Louie took it.
She scrawled an "L" upon it and slipped it into the parcel.
A few minutes later Kitty left, taking the wedding present with her.
Left at last alone, Louie once more went into her bedroom and threw
herself on her bed. She lay with her hands clasped behind her head,
her gaze now resting on Billy's etching, now straying idly over the
brown-papered walls.
So they were to be married. And after that?
Well, she thought that on the whole she was glad. The curtain was
about to fall on that drama that had begun at the Business School in
Holborn, and so there would be an end of _that_.... What now? What
about those fancy pictures with which she had beguiled herself as she
had ridden on buses and trams and worked at her crochet during the
rests? What about those half-whispered, nonsensical conversations?
What about those drowsy, secret quarters of an hour out of which she
had come with slight starts to smile at herself? They were to be
married. What next?
The answer came as if for months it had been merely awaiting her
pleasure. It was as plain as day that she could now have as much of
these as ever she pleased. For what it was worth, the freedom of her
cuckoo-cloud-land was about to be definitely made over to her. Because
nothing else was hers, that was all the more hers.... Kitty's tidings
brought it so sharply home to her that she forgot that those sweet
hours of licence were no new thing. She forgot that it was no new
thing to walk, in fancy, the woods of Mallard Bois and the lanes of
Rainham Parva with him by her side, no new thing to call his name down
the remembered glades--"Jim!" (not, as others called him, "Jeff"). She
forgot that it was old and outworn already; she saw in it only newness
and liberty and delight. A Jim of sorts was now hers, ineluctably and
for ever--a Jim who did not fool predestined spinsters--a Jim who
would know better than blunder into a blind and stupid marriage--a Jim
whose relentless hand had not--had not--had not----
But here, as she paused, the colour that had made her cheeks rosy
ebbed as if a brush loaded with white had been passed over them. His
ruthless hand had--had--almost certainly had----
It was as if, in her fancy, a prison bell had tolled and a black flag
had been run up in the morning breeze----
He was certainly a murderer; over the threshold of that hideous fact
she must step before she could enter her palace of insubstantial
delights. Stained she must take even the phantom of his hand, or not
at all. Suppose the joy were to leave her, but the horror to remain?
She closed her eyes.
But she opened them again. She faced it. Say he was--that; what then?
The joy and the horror were fatally one. A man capable of
all--all--even of that--and her lover! Oh, the moment the shudder had
passed the worst was over! He had killed; yes, but for a cause! He had
been horribly to be feared; yes, but without the dread of him too she
would not have had the whole of him, and she wanted the whole of him.
_Not_ kill, with such a reason? Withhold death, with something
approaching that was worse than death? Oh, Louie knew all about that;
Miss Cora had told her....
A murder? There were things by the side of which a murder, once you
had made up your mind to it, was a trifle!
* * * * *
Are women so? Is it so that they will place their soft hands, like
willow-leaves, in those other hands that may be black with dreadful
work, red with destruction, yet, seeing less than man and more than
man, they care not? Is it so that they will set their lips, as if for
a kiss, against the mouth of war itself with its ten thousand deaths?
It seems to be so. Their loved ones, when they die, do not do so of
fevers and shattered tissues, but of their own clear and trusted
heroism. "Go," they say to the next one, even to the little Jimmy,
"go--and come back if you may--and, though wooden props keep you
together, you shall be beautiful to the mother who bore you--to the
wife whose task it must be to take you to pieces and put you together
again--to the woman who, because of her own heavenly dreaming, cannot
think of the fiend you were in that hour when the call sounded and you
dropped the point of your lance to the charge."
* * * * *
But one thing was clear: her dreams must remain dreams. If she would
keep what was left her, she must never, never, never see him now!