Jim had taken his risks; she would be taking none. It was not much,
perhaps, but it was enough to give her pause.
In the meantime she continued to ring Jim up frequently on the private
telephone.
It was on the second Saturday afternoon in April that Evie at last
paid her visit. Louie had sent out Rhoda, Jimmy's nurse, for the
afternoon, and was herself setting out with the boy for one of their
precious jaunts. They were half-way down the four flights of stairs
when she heard somebody ascending. She and Evie Jeffries met on the
second landing, where the charwoman ceased to whiten the edges of the
stairs.
It seemed to Louie that Evie Jeffries must have a sort of lucky-bag of
greetings into which to dip. She could hardly have been surprised to
meet Louie on Louie's staircase, but she drew a wrong one for all
that.
"Well, this is a sur--a pleasure!" she cried. "You see, I promised to
come, and here I am! Don't tell me you're just going out!"
"No; we were only going to the South Kensington Museum, and I was in
two minds about it. Come up, won't you?" Louie replied.
At first Evie wouldn't hear of it, but even as she spoke she had
ascended another step. They went upstairs again, and Louie put her key
into the lock. "You'll excuse me a moment, won't you?" she said, as
Evie entered. "In there's my sitting-room."
And she herself, turning along the passage, entered her bedroom and
took that old study of Billy Izzard's from its paper wrappings. She
hung it up on its old nail. If Evie Jeffries wished to see her flat
she should see her flat. Then she returned to the front room that
looked away over the trees and houses to Earls Court.
"So this," said Evie, as she entered, "is your little boy!"
"Yes, that's Jim. Won't you sit down? I'll put the kettle on and we'll
have tea."
She went into the kitchen, filled the tin kettle, and set it on the
gas-ring.
Evie was dressed in an exquisite coat and skirt and an expensive and
wrong hat; silk linings made whispers whenever she moved; but Louie,
who kept her good clothes for the Consolidation, wore the battered old
grey felt hat and long grey coat in which she had passed from studio
to studio. But she knew that Evie envied her her distinction of
motion. Evie's figure was pretty and "stock," charming but with no
surprise--that of a demonstrable beauty. And the acquired tones had
come into her voice again.
"How ripping up here!" she approved. "Such a splendid--view! I wish we
had a view like it in Iddesleigh Gate; but as I told my husband, even
money can't buy a view in London. Delightful! Have you the morning
sun?"
"That's in my bedroom," said Louie. "How did you come--by car?"
"No; I felt that I needed the walk. Really people will be forgetting
how to walk soon. Well, at all events, he's a beautiful boy!"
Louie saw no reason why she should not say, in the simple French which
may more or less be assumed to go with large houses and cars, that she
preferred that the boy himself should not be told so; and then she
went into the kitchen again to smile. She remembered Burnett Minor:
"Voo affectay feele!" she murmured softly. Then she made tea.
"I suppose you're not quite settled yet?" she said, returning with the
tray.
"Settled! Why, it will take us months!" Evie purred.
"Of course. It seems very odd to talk over the telephone, though, to a
place you've never seen. Sugar? Is this place at all like what you
imagined?"
Again came the ready-made answer: "Oh, it's really quite too
delightful!" It was a pity, Louie thought, that Mrs. Jeffries had not
had the advantage of a few minutes' talk with Mrs. Lovenant-Smith
before coming to see her. The Lady-in-Charge at Rainham Parva might
have warned her.
But Louie knew that already her very chairs and mats and brown-papered
walls were silently whispering to Evie Jeffries. She might talk of
Iddesleigh Gate, but she was thinking of nothing less than of
Iddesleigh Gate. Perhaps she had been reassured in the matter of
Jimmy's eyes, which were as blue as Roy's, but her own eyes were
taking in everything for all that. Let them. Louie wondered whether,
did she turn her back for a few minutes, her visitor would question
the child.
"The Amaranth Room?" she presently interrupted Evie's flow to say.
"Have you really a room called that? How lovely it sounds!"
"Nearly fifty feet long, my husband says; why, it has to have three
large fireplaces, as well as the radiators, but of course there's
steam-heat all through the house. It's delicious, not to walk into
cold patches all of a sudden. And all the windows on one side are
double, so that the place is perfectly quiet. You must come some time.
Of course," she took herself up, "our other house was quite a poky
place; my husband never really settled there; but at Iddesleigh Gate,
he says, he can really stretch himself."
Louie meditated for a moment. Then: "What's really been the matter
with him?" she asked. She knew that Evie would probably not believe
she didn't know; for that reason it was better to ask.
But she got no information. It was overstrain, Evie replied lightly,
and then on the top of that he'd slipped one night and caught his head
on the corner of a fender. He'd slipped because he'd been really
fagged out, what with starting the Consolidation and one thing and
another. "But he looks all right now, don't you think?" Evie asked.
"Perfectly, I should say, from the little I see of him."
"Of course you mostly do Sir Julius's work, don't you?"
"Mostly."
"It must be great fun for you, being taken out by Sir Julius
sometimes. My husband told me that."
"Quite amusing."
"Miss Levey was never taken out like that!"
"No? Have you seen her lately?"
But again Louie got little information. Included in what she did get,
however, was a lie. Evie reported that Miss Levey, now at some Women's
Emancipation League or other with Kitty Windus, had actually been
going to write to Louie to suggest that she, Louie, should apply for
her old place. Louie gave a little nod. Of course Miriam Levey, rather
than own to defeat, would pretend that she had left the Consolidation
of her own accord. Louie rose.
"But perhaps you'd like to see my place?" she said. "Not that I think
you'll find it very amusing. But you can see it if you like."
"I should love it! Is Jimmy coming? Do you know, Jimmy, I've got a
little boy like you, but not nearly as big?"
"Has he got a helmet like mine?" Jimmy demanded.
"No; but I think I shall have to get him one."
"You stay here, Jimmy," said his mother; and she led the way to the
kitchen.
Evie praised the kitchen and its meagre appointments, and was then
shown the bathroom. "It hasn't a crystal bath," Louie said, "but it
does to wash in." She lingered in the bathroom a little; she was
thinking of another bath and certain old jokes about brown-paper
parcels. Then, first showing Evie the bedroom that had been Kitty's,
she passed to her own room at the back.
Against the wall on the left lay Jimmy's bed; her own was across the
room, with its head under the break of the mansard roof. The little
built-out window, from the glass sides of which rows of chimney-pots
could be seen, faced the door, and over the fireplace on the right,
full in the light, hung Billy's study. It was the second thing on
which Evie's eyes rested. Louie was careful not to look at it.
For in that place at any rate she was going to strike; the rest might
fall out afterwards as it would. As she turned away to pat Jimmy's
pillow she was suddenly fighting white; the little creature had come
for it and should have it. And she should have it swiftly and without
warning. Even as Louie had turned her back her heart had given a
leap....
For up to that moment it had been always possible that Jim had not
spoken of his intrusion into Billy's studio that evening; but there
was no doubt now! Jim--or perhaps Billy Izzard--had told her. Probably
Billy. Probably Billy first, and then, seeing she already knew, Jim.
All at once there rushed upon Louie, as she passed from Jimmy's bed to
her own and smoothed the coverlet of that also, what had happened
later that same evening, when her arms had supported a collapsing Jim
in a Swan Walk doorway and she had passionately called him: "Come,
come! Come, come!"
She spoke quietly; quietness was so much more destructive.
"This is where I get the morning sun. But it's very windy. The wind
blew that picture you're looking at down the other day." Then, without
either pause or change of tone: "By the way, that's what you came to
see, isn't it--that and my boy?"
Simultaneously with her blow she was commenting to herself: "That's
good-bye to you, Sir Julius; she'll see I don't come back to the
Consolidation after that; will you have Miss Levey back again, or will
you try her friend Miss Windus? I don't think you'll offer Miss Windus
an--er--increase of wages. As for me, I suppose I can sit again;
nothing matters now. Or there's a plainer way still----"
The next moment she had called sharply: "Go away, Jimmy, till I call
for you! Go and look out of the window for Rhoda!"
Then she turned and faced the woman who had taken two quick, running
steps towards her. Insolently she smiled into her eyes.
"That was it, wasn't it?" she said.
Mrs. Jeffries did not fight white. The blood had thronged to her head
until her very lips seemed swollen; Miss Levey could hardly have
spoken more thickly. She spoke, too, in a passionate ellipsis than
which Louie's own five words did not go more straight to the heart of
the matter.
"Oh, you would if you could--I've known that a long time!" she cried.
"Wouldn't you just--rather! You'd do it if it was only to give _me_
one for myself! _I_ know you."
Louie thought she rather liked her for making a fight of it. She still
smiled. "Then that was it?" she said.
Evie flushed even more deeply. "You didn't suppose I didn't know all
about that absurd meeting, did you?" she said, with a still darker
flush.
"Dear me, no. I've known for weeks that you 'knew'--if we mean the
same thing. Perhaps we don't, though. Anyway, I can quite understand
your wanting to see for yourself. Miss Levey can't tell you
everything."
Evie's inability to speak for mere fury was so evident that Louie,
after watching her for a moment, continued:
"As for that picture, naturally I wanted to keep it. I'm sure you'll
see that for yourself."
Here Evie flamed. "'Naturally!'" she broke out. Louie gave an almost
humorous shrug.
"Well, surely it's natural?"
"Natural!... As if his coming in wasn't the merest accident!"
"Oh, I know that; but what _are_ you here for then? And now that you
_have_ been and seen, what can you possibly do about it?"
Evie's lips seemed as thick as if a bee had stung them. She broke out
again.
"'It!'--I like your 'it,' Miss Causton or Mrs. Causton or whatever you
call yourself!"
Louie coolly smoothed the folds of her blouse. "By 'it,' I mean, of
course, my loving your husband," she said. "As you guessed, I knew
that you knew about that picture. But it's really a much older thing
than that! I don't quite know how old; while you were still engaged to
somebody else--as old as that anyhow. And as it's purely my affair,
and even he can't stop it, I wonder what _you_ can possibly do!--I'm
'Miss' Causton, by the way."
Louie had almost a genius for these last words that could be taken up;
she smiled again as Evie, taking them up, said: "Oh, _are_ you!"
"Well, I don't think I need be longer than I like, but that's neither
here nor there. The important thing at present is whether you were
wise to come to-day or not. I wonder whether you'd let me give you a
piece of advice?"
And that, as Evie still stood speechless with rage, might be described
as the end of the first round. There was a long pause during which the
two women stood looking at one another. Then the second round began,
with a rapid exchange of half sentences.
"Advice! Thanking you very much for your kindness----"
"Oh, please don't raise your voice; they aren't double windows here."
"Advice is cheap."
"Far from it, believe me."
"You common----"
"Sssh, ssh, ssh! Your husband wasn't above asking my advice----"
"I'll take very good care----"
"Please--there are other people in these flats."
"Well, is noise anything new here?" said Evie grossly.
"Oh, you really shouldn't say those things!"
And again they fell back, as it were, for breath. It was Louie who
presently resumed.
"I don't in the least know why I should want to advise you," she went
on. "I'd no intention of doing so when you came into this room, and to
be frank I still half hope you won't take the advice. But you'll
please yourself about that. It's this. Don't be a little fool. Go
home, and don't tell your husband you've seen me at all. If you do
you'll make a sad mistake. You say advice is cheap; well, this isn't;
it's fearfully dear. It's not the first time I've tried to help you,
and I really haven't strength to do it any more. No, don't try to
think of fresh names to call me either; already you've called me
common and told me that the tenants here are used to hearing angry
wives, and one can have too much of that. So go home, and say nothing
to your husband about where you've been. Believe me, it'll be quite
the best."
It did in truth cost her more, far more, than she had intended to pay.
The greater fool she, she told herself, but--she gave a quick, defiant
glance round the bedroom, as if her eyes sought somebody who dared to
meddle in her affairs. She would be a fool if she wished; who should
stop her? This jealous little scold had fair warning now; let her take
it and go while there was yet time. Louie had all but spoken her
former _fiance's_ name once; with much more provocation she might
forget herself and involve Jim too in a catastrophe of ten little
words; and she wanted to do the sporting thing after all. Let Jim's
wife take her fill of that canvas of Billy's, then, and go. Her eyes
were glued to it now. As she looked Louie exulted; it _had_ been
so--precisely so; not all Evie Jeffries's looking could alter that
fact....
But suddenly, as if even in this gratification and triumph lurked a
peril best avoided, Louie strode to the canvas, took it from its nail,
and set it on the floor by the little fireplace with its face to the
wall. She had felt the tigress stretch again. To put that thing out of
sight was the safest thing to do. She turned to Evie again.
"Please go," she said. ("Yes, mother's coming in a minute, Jimmy.) You
see, he's calling me. Forgive my turning you out like this, but do, do
go, and don't tell your husband where you've been. Good-bye."
But Evie Jeffries seemed to suspect that Louie was merely "coming it
over her" with something indefinable, essential, not to be acquired.
After all it was she, this shabby, grey-eyed woman, who wrote
shorthand for a weekly wage, and herself, Mrs. James Herbert Jeffries,
who lived in the mansion in Iddesleigh Gate. Perhaps she felt herself
challenged; at any rate she plunged her hand into her lucky-bag once
more.
"Oh, there's no need for such a hurry," she said frigidly. "For one
thing, I'm a little particular about who I take my advice from. You
needn't think I don't see you're just shutting me up?"
Louie was almost hushing, soothing. "Then let me shut you up. You've
seen all you came to see; if there's anything else you want to know,
ask me, quite quickly----"
And Louie, in her eagerness to get rid of her and to remove herself
from danger, almost gladly submitted to what Evie said next.
"Oh, of course, if you've--an appointment," she said, with a toss.
"Yes, I've an appointment--you understand," she answered, with a
little shepherding movement of her hands.
But the next moment that too had turned into something else.
"Oh, you little fool!" Louie broke out, suddenly seeing. "You don't
suppose I'm trying to get you out of the way so that I can meet _him_,
do you? Good gracious, woman, he's never set foot in this place in his
life, and I'll see he never does! Perhaps I wanted you to think he
had--I don't know what I thought--with one and another of you I'm
getting almost past thinking--but that's the truth anyway! _Now_ are
you satisfied? Or have you got the idea so thoroughly into your stupid
little head that nothing will shake it? If you're going to spend your
Saturday afternoons going round to every place you think might
possibly----"
But the denial counted for nothing. Evie turned haughtily.
"Who's making the noise now? And why should I believe you? I knew
before I came you'd say that----"
"Oh, how you try me!... I _do_ say that. There's nothing else to say.
Do you think if it was any other way I shouldn't boast of it, to you
or anybody else? Why, how _can_ you know so little of him--not to
speak of myself----"
"You needn't talk as if you hadn't already had the cheek to tell me
you loved him!"
"Did I? Upon my soul, I sometimes don't know whether I do or not! Say
I don't--say I lied--say I sometimes almost hate him as much as I do
you and you me."
"Oh, very likely, the grapes being sour," Evie scoffed.
"Then if they're sour----? What more do you want? Isn't that enough?
And isn't it more than enough that I let you stand there and tell me
so? Oh, I'm doing my best to warn you--you'll make a great mistake if
you make me _try_ to get him!" She stamped. "_Won't_ you go?"
Evie too stamped. "Oh yes, I'll go, and so will you, I promise
you--from Pall Mall----"
"Anything you like--only go----"
But as Evie took a step towards the door a little accident turned
Louie suddenly as white as paper. Billy's study leaned against the
wall; Evie's skirt or foot caught it as she passed; and the canvas
fell. Evie gave a short laugh and pushed it with her shoe.
The dear symbol, nay, the very evidence of so many dreamings, that
poor thing of wasted smiles and sighs and tears, the pearl from the
heart of the oyster-grey----
A kick of her rival's shoe was treatment good enough for it----
It was as if the hives of her own breasts and the heart beneath them
had been trodden on.
Louie stepped slowly forward. "No, stop," she said.
She stood for a moment looking down at the picture; then she spoke
slowly.
"You were quite right to come," she said. "You have reason to be
jealous."
Evie affected not to hear, but she heard. Louie continued:
"A moment ago I told you not to tell him you'd been here. Now I want
you to tell him. He may even be expecting it. You see we have spoken
of it, he and I."
Evie Jeffries seemed about to say something, but "Just one moment,"
said Louie quietly----
She placed the picture against the wall again, face outwards. She did
not display it as a taunt now; it had served its turn. As if Evie's
looks had cheapened it, she no longer wanted it. She stood looking at
it.
"It was the last time I sat," she murmured to herself.
Even that pale shadow of a bridal was to be taken from her.
Well, let it go.
This time it was her own foot that kicked the canvas aside; then like
a flash she turned--Louie at her deadliest.
"I suppose you're aware you've lost him, whether he knows it yet or
not?" she demanded truculently.
Again she was grateful to Evie that she stiffened up against her. Evie
smiled.
"Oh, that way--'whether he knows it or not'--nobody minds _that_ kind
of losing! _That_ wasn't what you were trying to make me believe a few
minutes ago. Thank you very much for the tea, not forgetting the
advice," she went on, "and if I might return the compliment, I should
like to give you a piece of advice too. You say you could get married
if you like; I'd jump at that if I were you! You see, there's your
boy. Quite a well-behaved little fellow he seems--quite a superior
child--and now that I've seen for myself, I'm perfectly satisfied,
thank you!"
"Then," said Louie, advancing, "I'm going to spoil your satisfaction.
Listen to me." Her eyes were like saucers of ice. "You've lost your
husband. I'm not going to tell you how, but I'll tell you how you can
find out. You can tell him what he wouldn't believe when I told
him--that you're jealous. You've reason; ask him what it is. If he
doesn't tell you, he daren't; if he does--ck!--it's all up between
you. Do you suppose," she said slowly, "that _you're_ the kind of
woman men tell things to? You, who can neither trust him nor be
trusted by him? You, who spy on him when his back's turned? You, who
listen while a miserable little Jewess makes mischief for you--for I
guess Miriam Levey sent you here? _You_ think you love him? Look at
me, I say"--she rapped out the words like a command--"listen, and I'll
tell you _my_ idea of loving a man! I've messed my life; if you were
anything but what you are you'd know that if you wanted to hurt me
your way wouldn't be to point at my little boy and look round my
bedroom as if you expected to find pipes and overcoats there! Oh,
that's not the way! The way would be to let me see what a perfect
marriage could be; there might be tears in my eyes then! But what's
this you show me instead? Oh, I know what your marriage is without
telling. It would take you and a woman to make a wife for a man! And
what would mine have been if I hadn't thrown my chance away? What
should I have said if I'd seen what you think you've seen? Listen! I
should have said: 'Go, if you like; find a woman if you can whose
love's like mine; search the earth for her; I give you leave, and I
shall be waiting for you, just the same, when you come back and say
there isn't one!' But had _you_ thought of that? Not you! At a word
you're off, asking whether this and that's true, because you don't
trust him; and so he gives his trust to somebody else! That's what
you've lost--and you don't even miss it, you know so little of love!"
Evie had fallen back against the wall, a little intimidated by her
vehemence. She did not understand, but she seemed to apprehend that
there was something she did not understand. Louie broke out anew.
"_You_ know love! And when and how did you learn it, pray? As you
learned your shorthand and things (oh, you're trying hard to forget
you ever knew them!) at that place in Holborn? Why, you failed in your
petty little examinations there; do you think love's easier? Something
you get out of a text-book and answer a paper on? Your husband might
know if you don't! _He_ knew just what those other lessons were worth,
but he doesn't seem to know that loving has a genius too--that one in
a million has it as a gift and the others mimic it as you're mimicking
people in your dress and talk now! And you call _me_ common--me, who
told your husband long ago what his only, only chance was! Oh, I
mustn't say any more or I shall say everything! And you toss your head
and say: 'Nobody minds that kind of losing!' That's your idea; that's
what you really think! Why, your mind wants a window as badly as that
little dark back room at your Business College.... Oh, it maddens me,
the sheer waste! A necklace of love--pearls--and good gracious, a bit
of cheap glass in the middle of it! Yes, I mean you."
She was walking rapidly up and down; she struck the rail of Jimmy's
cot with her hand as she passed. Evie, cowed, watched her from the
wall. Louie stopped before her.
"What do you _do_ for him?" she said bitterly. "What do you _give_
him? What do you _bear_ for him, suffer for him? Don't whimper--tell
me--you've made pretty free with me--put that handkerchief away and
tell me----"
But instead of putting the handkerchief away, Evie burst into loud
sobs. Louie watched her remorselessly. Tears, of course--no doubt that
was the way she managed Jim----
"That's no good with me," she said harshly. "I want to know what you
do for your husband besides following him about and asking questions
about him."
Evie's hand moved as if for a chair. There was none. She lifted her
head, walked across the room, and fell across Louie's bed. Louie still
watched her unmoved.
"Well?" she demanded again, after a quarter of a minute.
Muffled in the bedclothes, Evie's voice came.
"I give him all--all I--have. You talk as if--as if--I'd no right--to
be on the earth at all."
"Well?"
"Oh, you do--you do! How--how can I give him more--than I've got? Oh,
you think you know, but you don't--you don't know what I've gone
through--you've never had that horrible morning--when I was to have
been married--and I never expected Jeff to propose, but he did----"
"Oh, for goodness' sake, get up!" Louie cried.
"He did--one day--and I said No at first, but he caught hold of me....
And even then I was jealous about Kitty--I know I'm jealous--but he
told me afterwards that I needn't be jealous of poor Kitty because
he'd only done it because he thought he couldn't have me--I know I'm
jealous--it hurts sometimes so that I can only cry and cry----"
Louie hadn't wanted this at all. Again she cried: "Oh, get up!" but
Evie continued to sob.
"And then when Jeff saw you--that night--at Billy's--it was worse than
ever, but I kept it from him. I'm not like you, Louie--it's no good my
telling myself I don't mind--even though I knew it was all an accident
it was like a knife----"
"Oh, don't lie there like that!" Louie muttered.
"And then Miriam Levey reminded me of that thing Archie had said--but
he's dead now--and I know it was absurd, but I did think he liked you.
You've--such ways, you see--I expect you've been a governess or
something in swell houses--I've got to learn them too, now, but Jeff
says I'm really very quick at it----"
Louie was pacing the floor now, but more slowly and with downhung
head. This was the very last thing she had wanted. More than ever she
hated this unresisting piece of pulp; but strike again she could not;
no, not with Evie's soul as it were a naked picture for her to set her
foot upon. And unless she did strike it was now quite, quite final. To
take it lying down! Gladly she would have goaded her into a fresh show
of resistance; contemptuously she would have told her to stand up and
fight; but the child--Louie felt her to be a child, and herself a
faded woman--was merely beyond all decency exposed. Louie only wanted
to cover her up again as quickly as possible--her confessions, her
abjectness, her appalling artlessnesses, her humiliating appeals. She
was beginning to sob once more.
"Oh, don't go on like that; do get up and pull yourself together!"
Louie snapped.
"I do love him--I haven't anything else to give him--except my
life--he could have that--you couldn't give him more than that----"
"I could stop blubbering for him," said Louie curtly, resuming her
walk.
Yes, it was final. Evie had overcome; Louie now backed out of the
whole affair. If Jim liked to tell her of his own accord, well and
good; it still seemed the only way out; but what was the good even
then? Evie Jeffries would no more acquire love as Louie understood it
than she would ever acquire the _nous_ to preside without betrayals at
Jim's table at Iddesleigh Gate. And if Evie had lost Jim, so had
Louie. By her silence she was relinquishing him now. She saw his image
recede, slowly, slowly, as if it had been indeed that ship of her
fancy, outward bound, her own vessel already condemned for breaking
up. Yes, the ship was drawing away. The eyes of her spirit tired of
watching it; surely now she might turn them elsewhere; but no--there
it was still, very small, leaning, no doubt, to a brisk breeze, but
hardly appearing to move.... No, it was not gone even yet; that sudden
anguished searching for it was but a trick of the eyes; it was still
there--a speck----
And it had only needed six words: "James Herbert Jeffries killed
Archie Merridew."
Suddenly Louie herself sank to the floor by Jimmy's cot. Evie heard
her sinking. She rose from the bed and ran to her. But Louie cried
aloud and put up her hand.
"For God's sake don't touch me--go now--and say nothing."
The touch of Evie Jeffries would have been more than she could have
borne.
* * * * *
"Mother, there _is_ a gentleman!"
It was Jimmy's voice outside the door.
Slowly Louie rose to her feet. "Very well," she called shakily; "talk
to him till I come. Please go at once," she added to Evie.
Evie began: "I'm sorry I said----"
"Oh, do you want me to strike you?"
"Can't I--do anything--for you?"
"_Go!_"
She heard the outer door close behind Evie Jeffries. By that time her
eyes were straining at a wide and empty horizon....
VII
Sec._a_
What followed when, after a few minutes during which Louie bathed her
face in the bathroom, she entered her sitting-room again, fell
mercifully flat. Any visit would have been an anti-climax; a visit now
from Roy--it was Roy--was even welcome for that reason. If she must
see him, best get it over.
He was sitting on a rush-seated chair with Jimmy between his knees.
Jimmy was playing with his watch. Save that the rims of his stolid
porcelain-blue eyes were pinkish, as if with suppressed tears, he had
not greatly changed. He wore a braided morning-coat; his silk hat,
stick and gloves lay on another chair. His watch slipped from his
boy's hand and dangled by its chain as he rose. His voice carried
Louie instantly back to the carpenter's shed at Rainham Parva.
"It's me, you see, Louie; here I am, like a bad penny, always turning
up."
Louie spoke listlessly. "How are you? I'll get you some tea."
A minute later, with a "May I come in here?" he had followed her into
the kitchen. He merely got in her way, if she could be said, in her
complete exhaustion, to have a way at all. She was cutting bread and
butter.
"Louie, old girl," he said piteously over the bread-board, "why didn't
you--tell a fellow?"
Louie did not answer. Then Roy chirped up a little, as if something
might now, past all discussion, be taken for granted.
"Well, this settles it," he said. "Clinches it entirely. You know what
I mean."
Louie did know. "Just take the kettle off, will you?" she said.
"So you see that's settled--clinched," said Roy, quite bustling.
"Right you are. The only question now is; how soon can you pack up."
"We'll talk about it presently, if there's anything to say. There
isn't, though. Will you carry the tray in?"
Jimmy ran straight to his knee again. "May I give him some jam?" said
Roy; and then he added to the boy: "Oh, come, don't mess yourself up
with it like that!" Louie remembered his account of the accident with
the centre-board: "Jam and all the lot!" but she did not smile.
"Rhoda will be here in a few minutes, then I'll have a short walk with
you," she said. "I've nothing to say, though."
Presently Rhoda did come in, and Louie put on her hat and old grey
coat. They went out and walked slowly across Eelbrook Common towards
Walham Green. There she told Roy that his return could make no
difference whatever. "Don't talk such stuff, Louie," he said; "sit
down." They sat down on a bench on the side of the common past which
the District Railway runs and talked.
The air rang with the shouts of poorly clad children at their Saturday
afternoon play; the common was a-crawl with urchins. Into Roy's
honest, statue-like eyes tears had come; none came into Louie's. She
only shook her head.
"You're only lacerating me," she said.
"But, Louie----"
"You want to lacerate me?"
"But--the little chap----" Roy said presently, with a gulp. "Will you
tell a fellow how you manage?"
That Louie did not mind doing, more or less. "And now I must go back,"
she said, rising.
"I'll walk back a bit of the way with you. I'm not going to let you go
like this."
At the little drinking-fountain she stopped. "Don't make it harder,"
she said. He had been indicating the rabble of children.
"But look at 'em, poor little beggars!" he said. "Dash it all, I'm not
just blowing off--I _could_ do such lots for him--he could ride--and
shoot--and fish--and I've a corking little pony at grass now." He
mentioned these things one after the other, slowly, as they occurred
to him.
Louie groaned inwardly, but aloud she said: "Please don't come any
farther. Good-bye."
"But I may come again? You see, I jolly well know I could persuade
you."
"N-o----"
"I shall, though--you bet," Roy announced.
She left him, wondering whether it would have made any difference at
all had he, in asking her to marry him, told her once, even once, that
he loved her.
But she did not return home. Instead, she walked past the block of
flats, crossed Putney Bridge, and sought her old Nursing Home in
Mortlake Road. As a drunkard might pant for a drink, so now in her
extremity she wanted to hear gaiety and laughter and talk. Though she
paid for it in prostration afterwards, she felt that without some such
intermission she could never get through the night. And to-morrow was
that dead day, Sunday. Further than that she did not see; beyond the
anodyne of an ordinary human laugh she did not inquire. It seemed to
her a matter of the last moment to herself that Miss Dot and Miss Cora
should be at home; if they were not, she felt that she must walk
straight into a public-house, as a man might, and get herself
something to drink.
But Miss Cora and Miss Dot were at home; they had just come in from a
matinee. They made an onslaught on Louie. Had she seen the piece? Oh,
the funniest thing! They really had had some luck at the theatre at
last! The last time it had been a slum piece, all heartstrings and
gutter-snipes; and the time before that--would Louie believe it!--just
when they had expected to see frocks and dancing and suchlike, the
curtain had gone up on a dentist's parlour! Two half-crowns for seats
in the pit for that! It was almost like paying money to go and see
another Nursing Home!
"But give the poor girl some tea--what are we thinking of!" said Miss
Cora.
"No, thanks--I've given two people tea this afternoon already," said
Louie. "Tell me about the play."
And, both speaking at once, they told her about the play--_such_ a
frock as Ellaline Terriss had worn!--an e-_nor_-mous pink hat, pink
like a rabbit's ear, and a frock, chiffon over pink satin.
Ah! That was better!
"But where's my bonnie boy?" Miss Cora demanded.
"Oh, let's show her the new one, the little Crowley baby!"
The little Crowley baby was brought in....
"May I invite myself to supper?" Louie asked by-and-by.
"Oh, do stop!"
"Then give me some stout or something. I'm not sleeping very well."
"Oh, we'll see that's all right----"
And when, at ten o'clock, Louie left, it was with a sleeping
preparation in her pocket. She took it in bed. It did its work. Half
Sunday had passed when next she awoke.
On the Sunday afternoon she went with Jimmy and Rhoda to Bishops Park;
then, packing them off home, she crossed the bridge again and took the
bus to Buck's. At Buck's she again stayed until ten, and she smiled
as, on the way home again, she remembered the little party to which
Chaff had once taken her, pigtail and all. If Chaff had had a little
party that night she would have invited herself to it; it would have
been something to do. Although it was half-past eleven when she
reached her own door she was not in the least tired; had she not slept
until well after midday? She walked back to Putney Bridge again. There
a man spoke to her. She wondered what he would have said had she
stopped; it would have been amusing to know. She felt that she had not
had enough amusement. She wished she could have gone back to the
Business School in Holborn again. That had been amusing. Mr. Mackie
had been very amusing. One of his songs, he had said, that about the
Gorgonzola Cheese, never failed to create merriment.
She hummed as much as she could remember of the air of it as she
walked, and took two more of Miss Cora's sleeping-tablets before going
to bed.
She found, too, an entirely unexpected amount of amusement at the
Consolidation on the Monday morning. Not that everything was not much
as usual; the routine was the same; but a quite comic spirit seemed to
pervade the whole place. Lacking a Mr. Mackie, Sir Julius, dapper and
perfect in his aplomb, who had thought of asking her to be his
mistress but had found a more profitable use to put her to, seemed
somehow as funny as needs be; she wondered she had not noticed it
before. It happened that Mr. Stonor had to rebuke one of the telephone
girls that morning; there was diversion in the way in which the girl
tossed her dolly-capped head and told him that she would talk to her
"boys" if she liked. Quite right; that was the way to take things, as
a joke. And Mr. Whitlock was portentously funny over a nought or so
that had strayed into a pile of figures; and the glazed screen that
marked Louie's superiority to the other girls in the same room seemed
inanimately funny, and Jim himself was funny, when you came to think
of it, sitting invisible there in his room with people coming and
going all the time, as if the earth would have ceased to revolve on
her axis or the sun have omitted to rise if Jim had not rung bells and
jotted his initials on his bits of paper. And funnier than everything
else was the fact that Louie should be there at all. She laughed
outright when, at nine o'clock that night (she had been kept on
account of some urgent joke or other), she stepped from the
upholstered lift and out into Pall Mall.
Again she wished that Chaff had had a little party somewhere. Jim, she
understood from Mr. Stonor, was giving a party presently, not a little
one, but a large, probably a screamingly funny, one. But its humour
would probably be lost on Jim. Jim did not always see jokes; that was
where Jim had made the mistake; he needed somebody to point them out
to him. His wife, being part of the comedy herself, naturally could
not do so; she cried when she should have laughed; she had no "kick,"
no "buck," in her. It was a pity, for Jim needed these things, and
ought to have married a woman who had them. Well, it was rather late,
but not too late for Louie to go into a shilling gallery somewhere.
To-morrow, if she could get away early, she would go up to Camden Town
and see Billy. Billy was a joke too, spending whole, real days in
making artificial coloured shapes on canvases or solemnly scratching
his copper plates. One of the best things Billy had ever done a woman
had humorously kicked aside with her foot. That showed what these
things were worth in the big, big world. Of course a sense of humour
was really a sense of proportion. The dreadful lack of it showed when
people magnified trifles so. Yes, she would go and see Billy
to-morrow. To-night, the theatre gallery.
She found Billy on the following evening, still etching, the humorous
fellow, but amusingly grave too. Perhaps he had heard, or guessed,
something from Roy. He was dissolving the ground from a plate; Louie
wondered what the curiously sweet-smelling fluid he was using was;
and then she remembered. She had smelt that same smell when Jimmy had
been born--which event also, by the way, had been the consequence of a
lark. She remembered, too, the wonderful, releasing sleep that
heavy-smelling stuff had given her. It might be rather a useful thing
to know where to find that stuff; it was necessary to Louie's
enjoyment of the world and its humour that she should sleep at night.
It struck her as a very happy chance that chloroform should be used in
the practice of etching. She admitted that it was rather a shame to
steal from Billy again, but she felt that she now needed that
wonderful, releasing sleep even more than when Jimmy had been born.
An hour later she left Billy's with the ribbed blue bottle in her
pocket.
The remainder of the week also was gay; so was the next week, though
perhaps with a slightly diminishing gaiety. But the level was restored
again when Roy once more turned up at her flat, again on a Saturday
afternoon. Really she could have laughed, as they say, fit to split.
Roy, who seemed to think that you could ask a woman to marry you
without the--formality, call it--of telling her you loved her! It was
not for Louie to spoil the sport by pointing out the inessential
omission. Not that she hesitated at all now; she had only to think of
how it might have read in the paper: "At Saint So-and-So's, on such
and such a date, by a Reverend Statue, assisted by another Reverend
Effigy, a Tanagra Figure, to a trodden-on Painting by Billy Izzard,"
etc., etc. Oh no. That wasn't loving----
There was no doubt that Roy loved Jimmy, however; and that was perhaps
a little more serious. He had handed in his papers; he could provide
for Jimmy; there was riding, and shooting, and fishing, and the
corking little pony; but ... it was impossible, of course. Jimmy was
Louie's and nobody else's. If Jimmy must play on Saturday afternoons
with the rabble on Eelbrook Common, well, he must; Louie would do all
for him that she could. It was a pity--especially about the pony. It
disturbed Louie a little. It disturbed her, in fact, so much that that
night she remembered something she had forgotten about for ten days
and more--the blue ribbed bottle she had stolen from Billy. But as she
had left it in her drawer at the Consolidation she had to sleep as
best she could without it. Perhaps it was just as well. It was not a
good habit. She wondered whether Billy had missed the bottle; she
would go up again and see, taking that old painting with her. That
would square accounts a little. Certainly it was a shame to loot Billy
like that.
She went up to Billy's with the study. Billy received it absently. And
she was glad that Billy had a code, for he was grave again, and seemed
all but on the point of talking seriously to her, code or none. But it
blew over. He asked her whether she'd noticed him with a bottle of
chloroform one night; he'd lost one; stupid thing to be careless
about; must be somewhere; had Louie seen him with it, cleaning a
plate?----
"No," said Louie.
"Well, it may turn up. Thanks for the canvas. To tell you the truth I
rather wanted it. Merely as painting it's--_knuk_!" Billy made a
delectable little foreign gesture.
"I'm no judge of things as painting," said Louie. "And--I
say--Billy----"
"What?"
"I don't know that I haven't changed my mind about not sitting--if you
asked me very nicely----"
But Billy looked gravely at her again. "Oh, it doesn't matter. I'd
rather you didn't. I think I can manage. You'd do far better----"
He looked hard at her, but the code held.
"To do what?" said Louie.
"Well, not to sit," said Billy, turning away.
Louie felt ridiculously touched; nevertheless, much as she liked his
loyalty, she wasn't going to talk about Roy. "Thanks, Bill," she said
simply. "You're a good sort." And there the matter dropped. Neither
for Billy nor for anybody else did she ever sit again.
It seemed strange that so slight a thing as an indisposition of Mr.
Stonor should obscure the mock-sun of Louie's gaiety as if a vapour
had crept across it; but so it was. Occasionally urgent messages were
taken to Iddesleigh Gate at night; usually Mr. Stonor took them; but
one day Mr. Stonor left at lunch-time and did not come back that day.
Sir Julius himself, who had had dinner sent in that night from a
restaurant, sent for Louie and gave her certain papers and
instructions. As soon as she learned the errand she asked whether
nobody else could go instead. She invented an improbable engagement.
"I'm sorry," Sir Julius said, "but I want Whitlock--I shall have to
wait here myself till you come back. If you could go, and give them to
Mr. Jeffries himself--nobody else----" That was as near as Sir Julius
ever came to a direct command.
So, as Evie Jeffries had seen Louie's home, Louie was now to see hers.
She went reluctantly, by bus, changing at the bottom of Park Lane.
For days she had not seen Jim; she did not want to see him now.
Therefore, though go she must, she would not sit down; she would not
lift her veil; she would be in and out of his house again as quickly
as ever she could. She passed the Marble Arch, and at Lancaster Gate
got down and walked. She reached Jim's vast and tomblike house.
At the word "Consolidation" the man who opened the door said: "This
way, please," and led her along a low-lighted hall, round a staircase
the outspread double wings of which resembled some huge alighting
architectural bird, and along a narrower passage to the library. At
the touch of a switch the room broke into a softly masked glow of
light. "Please to sit down," said the servant; but Louie stood by the
great writing-table, looking towards the door. Evie had taken stock of
her dwelling; Louie looked only towards the door of Jim's library.
Then, as the door was opened, she pushed up her veil after all. Jim
came in.
He placed a chair for her; she still refused to sit. She continued to
stand even when it appeared that the papers she had brought would
require some examination. As she stood, a bell, not unlike that of a
muffled telephone, sounded for a moment and then ceased. It was
followed by a tap on the door.
"Come in," said Jim, without looking up.
Evie Jeffries entered, dressed as if for a State ball.
Even had Louie not seen her face, the touch of her hand would have
told her what had happened. Evie was back again exactly where she had
been; the only difference was that she now hated Louie the more that
she had abased herself before her. Many times on that other Saturday
afternoon Louie had begged Evie to go; now she longed to fly herself.
After another minute Jim put it into her power to do so. He rose and
returned the signed papers.
"Thank you," he said, and added, turning to Evie, "I don't know
whether Miss Causton's had supper?"
Evie's face lighted up as artificially as if there too a switch had
turned up masked lights.
"Yes; won't you let me have them lay a tray for you, 'Miss' Causton?
It won't be any trouble," she said.
"No, thank you," said Louie. "Please don't come to the door, Mr.
Jeffries."
He came, however.
"Good-night," he said, as the door was held open for her to pass out.
"Good-night," said Louie.
She remembered afterwards that she noticed, out in Oxford Street
again, a sandwichman bearing an illuminated board with the
announcement of some concert or entertainment upon it. Pasted across
the device was a strip of paper with the words "To night" upon it. The
date was the sixteenth of May. At midday on the day following, Louie,
coming out of Mr. Whitlock's room, saw Jim advancing as if to come in.
He saw her, stared hard at her for a moment, paused irresolutely, and
then turned abruptly and walked away again. She watched his back,
shaped like a church-door, but bowed as if with a load too great for
him, disappear in the direction of his own room. He had made no
attempt to conceal the deliberate avoidance. She half expected, though
she knew not why, that he would send for her presently. He did not.
She was infinitely glad. Something, she was perfectly sure, had
happened between him and his wife. It was the first time he had not
sought her aid. Had he, now that it was too late, told her? Had he
realised that it was too late to tell her? Had he, realising this,
determined to take his last risk and to tell her nevertheless? Or had
something happened that had at last unsealed his eyes so that he now
saw with a clearness as merciless as that of Louie herself?
Louie could not tell. She only saw his face again, the face of a man
suddenly old as he realised his defeat, and his disappearing back,
hunched under a burden that was crushing him at the last.
Sec._b_
"If I were you, Miss Causton, I should leave early to-night," said Mr.
Whitlock that afternoon.
Louie looked up inquiringly from her desk.
"Oh, if you _want_ to make it a matter of conscience! But Mr. Jeffries
is giving a party to-night, and both Sir Julius and I will be leaving
early."
He nodded pleasantly as he dropped his hint, and left her. Louie
resumed her work.
It was a report of phosphate deposits, but it had been worked over
before and needed little attention; or at all events it got little. At
five o'clock Louie gathered the sheets together and put them into the
drawer of her table. As she did so some object at the back of the
drawer knocked. She thrust in her hand. It was the forgotten bottle of
chloroform.
"I'd better throw that down the basin," Louie muttered.
"I think, Mrs. Jeffries, that you and Roy between you put me a little
beside myself for a day or two. Much better not to have things like
that lying about; to have 'em's sometimes to use 'em. I'll throw it
away now."
But as she was rising, one of the telephone girls brought her a cup of
tea and a biscuit, and she closed the drawer again. The girl began to
talk. She was Ivy Warner, the operator who would talk to her "boys"
over the telephone if she wanted. Louie, as a matter of fact, always
admired the skill with which she did this. A yard away not a word
would be audible, and yet Miss Warner would be carrying on a
flirtation in Brighton or Bournemouth under the eye of Mr. Stonor
himself.
"Well, how's Harold?" said Louie, smiling over her cup of tea.
"Oh, not at all pleased with himself; backed three winners to-day, one
at thirty to one, a gift; like to see him? He's coming up this
evening," Miss Warner replied. "I'd a chin with him a quarter of an
hour ago; dinner at seven-thirty, at the Troc; no steak-and-fried and
a small dark lager when a thirty-to-one creeps home! He's bringing a
friend, too; a dasher, Harold says; he's almost afraid to introduce
him; and Daisy says she really must give her steady a show to-night.
Know anybody?"
Louie thought for a moment. It was a thing she had never done before.
She gave Ivy a sidelong look. Again she had the hunger to go
somewhere, to see lights, hear music, smell the cigarettes of men.
"Do you care to take me?" she said.
Ivy was surprised. "You?"
"Oh, not if I should spoil sport----"
"Rather not! Do come! What a lark! I'll get on to Harold again now.
You really mean it?"
"Yes."
"Good egg!" cried Ivy, glad to make up her party and to improve her
relations with her business superior at the same time. "I didn't
really want Daisy, you see. Of course they do talk loud at the Troc,
but Daisy's just a _ti_ny bit ... well, a perfect stranger had the
cheek to come up to our table and speak to her the last time----"
Ivy ran jubilantly off to ring up Harold again.
Louie told herself it was a stupid thing to do; she was getting into
the habit of loitering about late at night, heedless of Jimmy. But she
had promised, and would go. If she didn't she would only be mopishly
thinking, and, after all, she would be no more out of place with
Harold's dashing friend than Evie Jeffries would be in another place
much about the same time. Perhaps the dasher for Evie and Jim's guests
for herself would have been more fitting, but no matter. She would be
a dasher too. She wondered how Ivy was describing her dashing self to
Harold over the telephone.
At seven o'clock she made herself ready and left the Consolidation
with Ivy.
She retained no very clear recollection afterwards of the gaieties of
that evening, but the little she did remember arrested her a little.
She had a confused impression of the lights and tables and pilastered
walls of the Trocadero as of a bright beckoning vista, stretching
before her as the white road stretches before the knapsacked and
stout-booted walker. She knew that many girls went that way.... The
air was heavy with the smell of coffee, smoke, dishes, scent; Harold's
friend was a Hebrew "killer," and reminded her of Miss Levey; noisily
he claimed the privilege, which Harold noisily disputed, of paying for
everything; and the waiter contemptuously accepted a tip of a
sovereign from him. Perhaps he was the same cavalier who had resented
Daisy's loudness; at all events he appeared to find in Louie's
quietness another--or perhaps the same--meaning; and Louie had to move
her chair and to change her attitude at the table. Afterwards they
went to the Alhambra; it was Ivy who cried out at the sight of two
cabs and refused to go unless they all went together. At the Alhambra
Louie was afraid she was rather a wet blanket; she declined to "take a
walk round" and remained seated in her stall; but Harold's friend was
fickle as well as dashing, for by-and-by she had a glimpse of him with
another lady, who had not dined with them at the Trocadero. She
wondered how Evie Jeffries had got on--or "got off," to use an
expression of Kitty Windus's.
Suddenly--perhaps it was this thought of Evie elsewhere that did
it--she got up, sought the cloakroom, and walked out of the place. She
went home, once more quietly and steadily thinking of that vista of
lights and cigar smoke and laughing mouths and gilded pilasters--the
way so many girls went.
The row she expected with Ivy in the morning was not a moment delayed.
It began in the lift in which they both happened to ascend together.
"Good-morning," said Ivy stiffly. "I hope you got home in good time
last night."
Louie waited until the liftman had clashed the doors to behind them;
then, "I'd a headache," she said.
"Well, perhaps it's better than having one in the morning," said Ivy,
more icily still. "All the same, there is such a thing as playing the
game when you go out with people."
"I'm sorry. I oughtn't to have come," said Louie, walking with the
angry girl to the telephone exchange, where the lights on the great
switchboard came and went like the sparks at the back of a gate. They
were coming and going with great rapidity that morning.
"Oh, _much_ obliged for your company, I'm sure," Ivy broke out,
"but----"
"Sssh!" came from a girl who stretched the rubber worms.
"Sssh yourself, Daisy Dawson--time you knew how to speak into a phone
by this time!" snapped Ivy.
But another and a louder "Sssh!" came from another girl, and suddenly
Mr. Stonor's head appeared in the doorway.
"Quiet there!" he rapped out, and withdrew his head again.
"Sssh, Ivy--haven't you heard?" Daisy Dawson said softly.
Ivy's own voice dropped. "What?" she asked quickly.
"About Mr. Jeffries."
"No--what?"
Mr. Stonor came in again--but not before Louie had heard Daisy whisper
the word "dead."
Suddenly she remembered the face of the liftman. She clutched Mr.
Stonor's arm. He looked at her. There was no need to ask.
Dead!
Slowly she walked to her own table behind the screen.
The place was at once busier and more hushed than usual. Presently Mr.
Whitlock passed. Mr. Whitlock was thirty-five; he looked fifty. Louie
only asked him a single question: "Is it in the papers?" He nodded and
passed on. She sought a messenger.
It was on the right-hand middle page. It had happened at one o'clock
in the morning; cerebral haemorrhage. That very evening he had given a
dinner-party; followed a short interview with Sir Peregrine Campbell,
one of the guests; but Mr. Robson, of the Board of Trade, had declined
to be seen. There would be no inquest. Heartfelt sympathy was extended
to his widow. Half-a-column of "career" closed the announcement. The
early edition of the evening paper for which she sent out had it all
over again.
Dead!
Another absence!
Slowly she turned the paper and began at the beginning again.
Jim dead!
* * * * *
That night Louie fetched Jimmy from his cot into her own bed. It was
not, she felt, for comfort for herself; she had a strange feeling that
she ought to be comforting Jimmy. Jimmy slept, but, her eyes
alternately very widely open and very tightly closed in the dark, she
whispered to him.
"Well, we've got to look after ourselves now," she whispered to the
sleeping child. "I don't think we care to go and see him, do we? I
daresay she wouldn't refuse it, but we won't go. That was his wife,
who said she'd a little boy like you, and of course we're all very
sorry for her. She did give him all she had; she said she'd die for
him; but of course that's only a way people have of speaking when they
mean they love somebody very much. Nobody wants her to die for him
really; that would only be two dead instead of one; and she won't
actually die.... And she'd a sad thing happen once before. Nobody ever
knew about that really except me and him; she didn't know; if she did
she might die really then. People have to be careful, they say, when
they've once had a terrible shock. It's rather funny though, Jimmy,
that mother shouldn't feel very much of a shock. Of course I didn't
expect it, but as soon as it happened it seemed as if it had been
bound to happen. That's queer--and I don't know that I wouldn't have
preferred the shock."
She continued her curious consolation of the sleeping boy:
"Poor Jimmy--poor mother! He looked beaten yesterday--done--but I
didn't think.... One never does think till afterwards.... Ah, but
mother did, once, a long time ago! Mother danced with him once, and
knew then--and the next time she saw him Jimmy was quite a big boy. If
she could only have seen him a few times in between, she doesn't know
what she could have done, but she would have done something, and then
by-and-by he would have blessed her for it--she's sure, quite sure he
would.... And there she was, with some terrible people at a music
hall----"
She choked a little.
Even had it been proposed to her, she did not think she would have
gone to see Jim. That was another woman's affair; Louie's part in him
had nothing to do with what remained now. Not that she was so absurd
as to tell herself she had lost nothing; even when it is only yours to
look at, or perhaps to put your arms about just once, a body counts
for something; but the other woman had had nothing but that. "Nothing
but" was perhaps a queer way of putting it; for that "nothing but"
Louie might perhaps have given all the rest; but all the same it was
not very much her business now. Her business now, like the other
woman's, was to jog on just the same, the one in her empty mansion,
the other one it didn't much matter where. Again she whispered to
Jimmy.
"How thankful I am that I didn't tell her--something! Oh, I don't
think I could bear her to die for him as she said she would! And I do
hope he's not been so foolish as to--leave anything about; anything
that might tell her, I mean; she can't bear what I can bear. But he
wouldn't. He wouldn't cover it all up so cleverly to go and uncover it
himself. I always knew it would happen if that insect got in his way;
Jim wouldn't think twice about it, except how to make himself safe....
Was it Kitty Windus who told me that about him--about his father
having been an English merchant captain and his mother a Corsican
woman he found dancing in a sailors' cafe in Marseilles? If it wasn't
Kitty I dreamed it; mother's done a most foolish lot of dreaming; but
it must have been Kitty. They say they do that kind of thing in
Corsica. I shall never know.... Well, it doesn't matter.... Poor
little Jimmy...."
She deliberately tried herself, to see whether she was capable of
emotion about him. She seemed to be quite incapable. "I'm simply
callous," she thought.... She tried several days later, on the day of
his funeral; the words she repeated to herself had no meaning for her;
"gone," was merely a thing of four letters, "never" one of five. The
word "absence" she quite failed to understand. She heard that Mrs.
Jeffries was prostrated, but quite as well as could be expected in the
circumstances. Perhaps Mrs. Jeffries too was repeating the words
"gone" and "never." Louie wondered whether she would marry again. It
would not surprise her.
Well, if Evie Jeffries could live, Louie could live.
A piece of news, however, which she had from Billy Izzard one
night--this was three weeks later, but her stony insensibility had not
changed--filled her, she could not have told why, with a quite
different disquietude. It appeared that Billy had felt himself
permitted to call on Mrs. Jeffries, and had found her (so he told
Louie) busy with her husband's private papers. Sir Julius also had
been there, to advise if advice was necessary; and Sir Julius had been
of opinion that the painful task would be more quickly over if Mrs.
Jeffries would have a number of papers that were written in shorthand
transcribed by a clerk, if a trustworthy one could be found. "In fact,
he mentioned your name," said Billy. But it appeared that Mrs.
Jeffries knew some shorthand, had other reasons, and so forth. She had
refused to have the papers transcribed. Naturally they had not said
much with Billy there, who, indeed, had not stayed many minutes; but
he had gathered that the papers formed some sort of a journal.
Louie felt her flesh grow queerly crisp. This, by the way, was in a
little restaurant not far from the Palace Theatre. Louie had had three
consecutive nights at home, and felt that a fourth would kill her. She
and Billy were going to the Palace afterwards.
"A journal?" she said slowly.
"Well, Pepper rather thought a novel of some sort; I'd a talk with him
afterwards; but I suppose he only knows what Mrs. Jeffries tells him.
It wouldn't surprise me in the least that poor old Jeff dabbled a bit
in that sort of thing. I'm quite sure he'd have made a painter. One of
the big sort he was, the Titian, Leonardo, Cellini sort--the big men,
who can take an art or so in their stride."
"What made Sir Julius think it might be a novel?" Louie hoped that her
new agitation did not show.
"My dear girl, you know as much about it as I do."
"And it was in shorthand?" she demanded.
"Yes."
"His own?"
"I'm sure I can't say. It was in his desk though. Why?"
"And you say Mrs. Jeffries is reading it herself?"
"Well, when Pepper suggested you--and a Miss Levey, I remember,
whoever she is----"
"Miriam Levey? Yes?" Louie said, with a jerk.
Billy looked hard at her. "What's the matter?" he said abruptly.
"You're as queer as Mrs. Jeffries herself was about it."
"She was queer? How, queer?"
"Oh, I don't know. How can one describe things like that--just
impressions one gets?"
"Did she strike you as queer because she'd perhaps read some of it?"
"Well, I understand it was private----"
"You mean she _must_ have read some of it to find that out?"
"I suppose so."
Again Louie had that curious crawling of her flesh. She hesitated for
a moment; then, slowly:
"What sort of terms are you on with Mrs. Jeffries, Billy?"
Billy stared. "Oh, quite all right--I don't understand----"
"Have you any influence over her?"
"What sort of influence?"
Louie hesitated again. After all, it might be only a fear. She went
on. "Say influence enough to advise her about reading that journal, or
novel, or whatever it is?"
"Lord, no!" said Billy. "I was his friend, hardly hers, you see."
"Well, if it could be put as a matter of friendship with him?" Louie
was speaking almost feverishly now.
"I wish I knew exactly what you meant," said Billy.
"Order me another cup of coffee. That's what I can't tell you, because
I don't know myself. But let me ask another question. Do you happen to
know whether there are any real names in this thing, whatever it is?"
"Really, I----"
"Just a moment. I'll tell you why I asked. If this is a journal, and
has names of people in it, the chances are mine's there."
Billy was quick enough. He nodded. "I see; at least I think I see. You
mean about his coming in that night and Mrs. Jeffries possibly not
liking it? Well, to tell the truth I don't think she did much. I could
have bitten my tongue out when I'd told her; but I suppose everybody
doesn't look on these things quite as we do. You mean in a
word--excuse me for putting it rather stupidly--that she's jealous and
thinks she can find out the truth? Supposing there was any 'truth' to
find out, I mean?"
"That's the idea. Of course there was no 'truth.'"
"Well? Why not let her discover that and make her happy, poor thing?
You see, he was her husband."
Louie winced, but continued. "That's all right as far as it goes; but
if there's one name there are probably others."
Billy looked sharply at her. "Other women? Jeffries? Don't you believe
it!"
"I didn't say women."
"What then?"
"I can't tell you. And perhaps I'm altogether wrong. But if I'm not
wrong, Billy," she said earnestly, "and you've any interest in Mrs.
Jeffries at all--say interest enough to want to spare her a shock--she
oughtn't to be allowed to read that journal--always supposing it is a
journal."
Billy gave a short laugh. "Really, Louie! Is this the Surrey or
Sadlers Wells?... You're not serious, are you? Of course it's bound to
be painful for her at the best, but she's getting on very well--better
than we could have hoped."
Louie made a little despairing gesture. "Well, I can't tell you any
more."
"Well, if it's as important as all that, why don't _you_ tell her?"
"I couldn't do that either. Look here, Billy, couldn't you find out
about this for me?"
"Oh, dash it all--how can I?"
The saucer of Louie's coffee cup was full of ashes; she added another
butt and reached for Billy's case. She looked Billy full in the eyes
as he struck a match for her.
"Do you go much to Iddlesleigh Gate?"
"Well, just at present, you see----"
"I mean, _could_ you go? Where does all this take place? In that
library? (Yes, I've been once.)"
"Yes. At least that's where we were that night."
Still Louie looked steadily into his eyes. "Now this really _is_
Surrey and Sadlers Wells," she said. "Could you get those papers out
of her way--anyhow--so that she doesn't read them?"
Billy twinkled a little. "It takes a woman to do these things, Louie."
"Suppose without asking any questions, if you did I'd--marry Roy?"
After all, to marry Roy would be no worse than anything else now.
The twinkle disappeared. Billy was grave again.
"I'd like you to marry Roy, Louie."
"Well ... is it a bet?"
But Billy only shook his head. This was all very well at the Surrey
and Sadlers Wells, but----
"It's a physical impossibility," he said. "And if it wasn't, I
wouldn't."
"That's final?" said Louie, looking into his eyes for the last time.
"My dear girl----"
Louie rose. "All right. Then we may as well get across to the Palace
and see Marie Lloyd."
Could she have said more? She did not see that she could. The chance
loomed tremendously large now that Jim _had_ been fool enough to write
things after all, and perhaps his wife was reading that journal, if it
was a journal, even then----
Louie could not stop her--no power on earth could stop her. What Jim
had evidently not told her during his life she would read for herself
now that he had gone.
He would have done better to tell her.
But there: perhaps it was not a journal----
ENVOI
"Er--Miss Causton," Sir Julius called--"can you stay for an hour or
so? No, a private affair; I hope it's not inconvenient; thanks."
He was sickly white and tired-looking; Louie's feet dragged, and her
brain was as stupid as clay. She was sorry for Sir Julius; _he_ had
had no preparation; as for Louie, it seemed to her now that she had
been passing from preparation to preparation for such things for the
whole of her life. This of the morning paper was only the latest of
her fulfilments. The prophets, she thought dully, must have been very
weary men.... But on second thoughts perhaps Sir Julius ought to have
been sorry for _her_. Even shock is better than foreknowledge.
For of course Sir Julius wanted her to stay in connection with this of
Mrs. Jeffries.
She had put on her hat and coat for departure; as if she walked in her
sleep, she passed out of Sir Julius's room and removed them again. She
bathed her face, but felt little fresher; then she returned.
It was about Mrs. Jeffries. It was about them both. Then Louie seemed
to remember that Sir Julius had said something about an article on his
deceased colleague for a Review. She supposed that was why he wanted
her to take down his words in shorthand. Unless it was for the
inquest. Gas-taps turned on, doors and windows sealed, and so forth
usually meant an inquest; and they would not have far to look for her
motive--suicide through natural grief. It was only that morning, but
it seemed an old, old story already.
"'_Tragic Death of a Lady_,'" Sir Julius read out from a newspaper....
Well, he wouldn't want that part taken down; indeed, if he had only
known what Louie knew, he would not have asked her to take anything
down at all. But her notebook was on her knee and her pencil
sharpened, and when Sir Julius had finished reading her hand began to
write, purely functionally, of itself. It was no trouble to Louie
whatever; nay, her hand was hardly called upon more than her mind; the
pencil itself did it. After all, foreseeing minds could be put to
better uses than the mere recording of things after the event.... "Sad
business, sad business," Sir Julius was saying; and "Sad business, sad
business," the obedient pencil wrote. But Louie wondered whether it
was so sad after all. Evie Jeffries had had a sort of foreknowledge
too; "I could die for him; you couldn't do more," Louie remembered she
had once said; yet it was doubtful whether she had died for love of
him after all. Call it gas-taps, or the shock of discovering that Jim
had been her lover's executioner....
Still, she had died, from whatever reason, and she had been quite
right in saying that Louie could have done no more.
It was strange the way the pencil wrote of itself. "A page of notes in
her husband's shorthand has been found under one of the pillars of the
writing-table," it wrote, and it omitted, as if it had been endowed
with Louie's own intelligence, Sir Julius's interpolated remark, "I've
got that page of notes, by the way." Mr. Whitlock had described to
Louie one day a contrivance called a tele-writer; a pen dipped itself
into a bottle of ink and wrote, unassisted, a telegraphed message;
they were new, and they hadn't got them at the Consolidation yet; but
they were putting them into some of the post offices, Mr. Whitlock had
said. Her pencil moved like the pen of a tele-writer. She watched it,
fascinated. It was writing as Sir Julius talked, about Jim now.
"--lived an intense crowded life too. I should say at a guess there
weren't many things he hadn't done at one time and another, short of a
murder or a matrimonial infidelity. Don't think he could have been
tempted to do that. One woman could do anything she liked with him,
but the others wouldn't have much chance----"
Very little chance, Louie thought. That, in a sense, had been the
tragedy of it all. Louie knew more about that than Sir Julius; Louie
had once said, "Come, come!" to him, in tones that might have brought
angels from above and devils from below running for love, but it had
not made a ha'p'orth of difference to Jim. Sir Julius seemed to be
praising him for it; Louie was not sure that she could exactly do
that; she could almost as soon have mocked him for it; but you neither
mock nor praise a blind man merely because he is blind. It was funny
that Sir Julius, with not very much to boast about himself, should set
up an idol of faithfulness; and not just for somebody else to worship
either; that was the funny part; men did that kind of thing; sinned,
and yet worshipped, and called it "the maintenance of an ideal." They
honoured Joseph, and winked when his back was turned. Perhaps they
made much of him because of his rarity. Well, it was all the same to
Potiphar's wife....
But all at once something seemed to have happened to the pencil. It
was tele-writing very furiously. Sir Julius was reading from another
piece of paper; Louie fancied, somehow, that it might be the piece
that had got wafted under the pillar of Jim's desk.
"_--show him that red thing on the floor and that curved thing on
the door._"
_But now Archie in his turn seemed to have become divided. He had
turned suddenly white. But an habitual pertness still persisted
in his tongue. I don't think this had any relation whatever to
the physical peril he seemed at last to have realised he was in.
I stood over him huge and black as Fate.... "Spare him if you
can," that generous bloodthirsty devil in me muttered
quickly...._
"_Merridew," I said heavily, "you'll disappear to-morrow
morning--or----_"
"_Shall I?" he bragged falteringly...._
He seemed to have hanged him, then; "that curved thing on the door"
evidently meant a hook. That was rather revolting; these were the
things about murder that Louie had not wanted to know.
"Sort of grim tale he would write," said Sir Julius to the pencil;
"and of course--_de mortuis_ and so on--but he did marry the wrong
woman. I suppose they're together again now."
Suddenly Louie put down her notebook and pencil. Her voice, too, as
she spoke, seemed to her a sort of tele-voice.
"Will you excuse me just a moment?" she said. "I'm thirsty."
She went out. When she returned, three or four minutes later, Sir
Julius sniffed once or twice and asked her if she had a toothache. She
took up the pencil and notebook again. Sir Julius resumed.
"What was I saying? Oh yes, about his marrying the wrong woman.... But
he was a mass of contradictions, and one of 'em was that he merely
idealised her. Pretty, of course, but poor Jeffries could have done
better for himself than that. She never could bear me...."
Louie felt no difference yet; she did not know how long these things
took. For a moment she wondered what would happen after ... and then
it struck her as foolish to wonder about a thing she would know so
soon. She fastened her eyes on the pencil again. It went on writing,
and Louie was thinking of her loved little Jimmy now.... She could not
have done very much for him; he might even have grown up to bear her
some sort of a grudge; Roy would adopt him; he would be far, far
better with Roy. There was a pony out at grass for him now; he would
ride and shoot and fish, and his father would send him into the army;
and perhaps there was already a baby girl somewhere in the world who
would one day be his wife--the right wife. "Was die Mutter traeumt, das
vollbringt der Sohn...."
It was far, far better....
"Well," the pencil wrote, "there's nothing to be said now, poor
creatures.... Funny smell in here, Miss Causton; I'll smoke if you
don't mind."
Sir Julius lighted a cigar. Its penetrating odour mingled with that of
the sweet, releasing stuff.
Ah! It was coming! The pencil wrote no less quickly, but it looked a
little smaller and farther away.
"But sometimes it made me almost angry that he hadn't married the
woman he ought...."
Louie felt her head sinking.... Yes, the woman he ought....
That had been the real fatality....
Her lids dropped for a moment, and then heavily lifted again; but she
could still see the pencil--mistily--dreamily--as if endued with a
life not her own--flying on.
THE END