loved when you did not. Why, now she thought of it, nearly everyone in
the world was dead!
She was summoned to luncheon. It amused, and at the same time touched
her, to see how Aunt Comstock and Simon covered up the morning's
mistake with a cheerful pretence that it had never occurred.
Luncheon was all chatter--musical chatter, clerical chatter ... hearty
laughter. Lucy submitted to everything. She submitted to an afternoon
drive.
It was during the drive that she learned that on the very next morning,
by the 10:15 train, Simon would lead her back to Hawkesworth. When
she heard that her heart gave a wild leap of rebellion. She looked
desperately about her. Could she not escape from the carriage, run
and run until the distant streets hid her? She had no money; she had
nothing. If only she could remain a few days longer in London she
felt that she would be sure to meet her friend again. Maddening to be
so near and then to miss! She thought of bursting out into some wild
protest--one glance at their faces showed her how hopeless that would
be! Hawkesworth! Prison!
Then she felt her new life and vitality glow and sparkle in her veins.
After all, Hawkesworth was not the end. The end! No, the beginning....
That night they were, oh! so kind to her!--laughing, granting her
anything that she might ask--oh! so tactful!
"Poor Lucy," she could hear them say, "she had a fit of hysteria this
morning. This London has been bad for her. She mustn't come here
again--never again!"
In the morning the taxi was there, the bags were packed.
In the pretty green and white hall with the grandfather's clock,
when Lucy tipped Fanny, the Portress, she whispered to her, "I'm
coming back. They don't think I am--but I know I am. And if
anyone--anyone--should ask for me, describe me, you know, so that you
are sure it's me, write to me at this address."
Fanny smiled and nodded. "Now, Lucy, dear," cried Aunt Comstock, "the
cab's waiting."
She was sitting in it opposite to Simon, who looked clean, but
ridiculous on one of these uncomfortable third-party seats. They
started up Duke Street, and turned into Piccadilly.
"I do hope you'll have a nice journey, Lucy. It's a fine day, and I've
got some chocolate...."
Are not these things arranged by God?
The cab was stopped by traffic just close to St. James's Church. Lucy,
truly captured now like a mouse in a trap, glanced with a last wild
look through the windows. A moment later she had tumbled over Simon's
knees and burst open the door. She was in the street. As she ran she
was conscious of whistles sounding, boys calling, the green trees of
St. James's blowing. She had touched him on the arm.
"I saw you.... I couldn't help it.... I had to speak...." She was out
of breath. When he turned and the light of recognition flamed into
his eyes, she could have died with happiness. He caught her hand. He
stammered with joy.
"Everywhere," he said, "I've been looking ... hoping ... I've walked
about.... I've never thought of anything else...."
"Quick," she said. "I've no time. They're in the cab there. It's our
last chance. Can you remember this without writing it down?"
"Yes."
"Well--Lucy Moon, The Rectory, Hawkesworth, N. Yorkshire. KES ...
Yes.... Write at once...."
Even in her agitation she noticed the strength and confidence of his
smile.
"I'll write to-day," he assured her. "You're not married?"
"No. It's Miss."
"I'm not either." He caught her hand. "I'll find you before the week's
out."
She fled. She was in the cab. Aunt Comstock and Simon regarded her with
terrified eyes.
"Lucy, dear--How _could_ you? What were you about? The train...."
"Oh, it was a friend! I had to say good-bye. He didn't know I was going
so soon."
She felt that her happiness would stifle her. She flung open the other
window. She looked at them both and felt the tenderest pity because
they seemed so old, so cross, so dead.
She bent over and kissed her aunt.
"Here we are," said that lady, with an air of intense relief. "Now
you'll be all right, Lucy darling. You'll just have Mr. Laud to look
after you."
"Yes!" cried Lucy. "Now I'm all right.... Come along, Simon, or we'll
miss the train."
VII
MRS. PORTER AND MISS ALLEN
One of the largest flats on the fourth floor of Hortons was taken in
March, 1919, by a Mrs. Porter, a widow. The flat was seen, and all
business in connection with it was done, by a Miss Allen, her lady
companion. Mr. Nix, who considered himself a sound and trenchant
judge of human nature, liked Miss Allen from the first; and then
when he saw Mrs. Porter he liked her too. These were just the
tenants for Hortons--modest, gentle ladies with ample means and no
extravagant demands on human nature. Mrs. Porter was one of those
old ladies, now, alas, in our turbulent times, less and less easy to
discover--"something straight out of a book," Mr. Nix called her. She
was little and fragile, dressed in silver grey, forehead puckered a
little with a sort of anticipation of being a trial to others, her
voice cultured, soft, a little remote like the chime of a distant
clock. She moved with gestures a little deprecatory, a little resigned,
extremely modest--she would not disturb anyone for the world....
Miss Allen was, of course, another type--a woman of perhaps forty years
of age, refined, quiet, efficient, her dark hair, turning now a little
grey, waved decorously from her high white forehead, pince-nez, eyes
of a grave, considering brown, a woman resigned, after, it might be,
abandoning young ambitions for a place of modest and decent labour in
the world--one might still see, in the rather humorous smile that she
bestowed once and again upon men and things, the hint of defiance at
the necessity that forced abnegation.
Miss Allen had not been in Mrs. Porter's service for very long. Wearied
with the exactions of a family of children whose idle and uninspiring
intelligences she was attempting to governess, she answered, at the end
of 1918, an advertisement in the "Agony" column of _The Times_, that
led her to Mrs. Porter. She loved Mrs. Porter at first sight.
"Why, she's a dear old lady," she exclaimed to her ironic spirit--"dear
old ladies" being in those days as rare as crinolines. She was of the
kind for which Miss Allen had unconsciously been looking: generous,
gentle, refined, and intelligent. Moreover, she had, within the last
six months, been left quite alone in the world--Mr. Porter had died of
apoplexy in August, 1918. He had left her very wealthy, and Miss Allen
discovered quickly in the old lady a rather surprising desire to see
and enjoy life--surprising, because old ladies of seventy-one years of
age and of Mrs. Porter's gentle appearance do not, as a rule, care for
noise and bustle and the buzz of youthful energy.
"I want to be in the very middle of things, dear Miss Allen," said Mrs.
Porter, "right in the very middle. We lived at Wimbledon long enough,
Henry and I--it wasn't good for either of us. Find me somewhere within
two minutes of all the best theatres."
Miss Allen found Hortons, which is, as everyone knows, in Duke Street,
just behind Piccadilly and Fortnum and Mason's, and Hatchard's and the
Hammam Turkish Baths and the Royal Academy and Scott's hat-shop and
Jackson's Jams--how could you be more perfectly in the centre of London?
Then Miss Allen discovered a curious thing--namely, that Mrs.
Porter did not wish to keep a single piece, fragment, or vestige of
her Wimbledon effects. She insisted on an auction--everything was
sold. Miss Allen attempted a remonstrance--some of the things in
the Wimbledon house were very fine, handsome, solid mid-Victorian
sideboards and cupboards, and chairs and tables.
"You really have no idea, Mrs. Porter," said Miss Allen, "of the cost
of furniture these days. It is quite terrible; you will naturally get a
wonderful price for your things, but the difficulty of buying----"
Mrs. Porter was determined. She nodded her bright bird-like head,
tapped with her delicate fingers on the table and smiled at Miss Allen.
"If you don't mind, dear. I know it's tiresome for you, but I have my
reasons." It was not tiresome at all for Miss Allen; she loved to buy
pretty new things at someone else's expense, but it was now, for the
first time, that she began to wonder how dearly Mrs. Porter had loved
her husband.
Through the following weeks this became her principal
preoccupation--Mr. Henry Porter. She could not have explained to
herself why this was. She was not, by nature, an inquisitive and
scandal-loving woman, nor was she unusually imaginative. People
did not, as a rule, occur to her as existing unless she saw them
physically there in front of her. Nevertheless she spent a good deal of
her time in considering Mr. Porter.
She was able to make the Horton flat very agreeable. Mrs. Porter
wanted "life and colour," so the sitting-room had curtains with pink
roses and a bright yellow cage with two canaries, and several pretty
water-colours, and a handsome fire-screen with golden peacocks, and a
deep Turkish carpet, soft and luxurious to the feet. Not one thing from
the Wimbledon house was there, not any single picture of Mr. Porter.
The next thing that Miss Allen discovered was that Mrs. Porter was
nervous.
Although Hortons sheltered many human beings within its boundaries, it
was, owing to the thickness of its walls and the beautiful training
of Mr. Nix's servants, a very quiet place. It had been even called
in its day "cloistral." It simply shared with London that amazing
and never-to-be-overlauded gift of being able to offer, in the very
centre of the traffic of the world, little green spots of quiet and
tranquillity. It seemed, after a week or two, that it was almost too
quiet for Mrs. Porter.
"Open a window, Lucy dear, won't you," she said. "I like to hear the
omnibuses."
It was a chill evening in early April, but Miss Allen threw up the
window. They sat there listening. There was no sound, only suddenly, as
though to accentuate the silence, St. James's Church clock struck the
quarter. Then an omnibus rumbled, rattled, and was gone. The room was
more silent than before.
"Shall I read to you?" said Miss Allen.
"Yes, dear, do." And they settled down to _Martin Chuzzlewit_.
Mrs. Porter's apprehensiveness became more and more evident. She was
so dear an old lady, and had won so completely Miss Allen's heart,
that that kindly woman could not bear to see her suffer. For the first
time in her life she wanted to ask questions. It seemed to her that
there must be some very strange reason for Mrs. Porter's silences. She
was not by nature a silent old lady; she talked continually, seemed,
indeed, positively to detest the urgency of silence. She especially
loved to tell Miss Allen about her early days. She had grown up as
a girl in Plymouth, and she could remember all the events of that
time--the balls, the walks on the Hoe, the shops, the summer visits
into Glebeshire, the old dark house with the high garden walls, the
cuckoo clock and the pictures of the strange old ships in which her
father, who was a retired sea-captain, had sailed. She could not tell
Miss Allen enough about these things, but so soon as she arrived at her
engagement to Mr. Porter there was silence. London shrouded her married
life with its thick, grey pall. She hated that Miss Allen should leave
her. She was very generous about Miss Allen's freedom, always begging
her to take an afternoon or evening and amuse herself with her own
friends; but Miss Allen had very few friends, and on her return from
an expedition she always found the old lady miserable, frightened, and
bewildered. She found that she loved her, that she cared for her as she
had cared for no human being for many years, so she stayed with her
and read to her and talked to her, and saw less and less of the outside
world.
The two ladies made occasionally an expedition to a theatre or a
concert, but these adventures, although they were anticipated with
eagerness and pleasure, were always in the event disappointing.
Mrs. Porter loved the theatre--especially did she adore plays of
sentiment--plays where young people were happily united--where old
people sat cosily together reminiscing over a blazing fire, where
surly guardians were suddenly generous, and poor orphan girls were
unexpectedly given fortunes.
Mrs. Porter started her evening with eager excitement. She dressed
for the occasion, putting on her best lace cap, her cameo brooch, her
smartest shoes. A taxi came for them, and they always had the best
stalls, near the front, so that the old lady should not miss a word.
Miss Allen noticed, however, that very quickly Mrs. Porter began to
be disturbed. She would glance around the theatre and soon her colour
would fade, her hands begin to tremble; then, perhaps at the end of the
first act, perhaps later, a little hand would press Miss Allen's arm:
"I think, dear, if you don't mind--I'm tired--shall we not go?"
After a little while Miss Allen suggested the Cinema. Mrs. Porter
received the idea with eagerness. They went to the West-End house, and
the first occasion was a triumphant success. How Mrs. Porter loved it!
Just the kind of a story for her--Mary Pickford in _Daddy Long Legs_.
To tell the truth, Mrs. Porter cried her eyes out. She swore that she
had never in her life enjoyed anything so much. And the music! How
beautiful! How restful! They would go every week....
The second occasion was, unfortunately, disastrous. The story was
one of modern life, a woman persecuted by her husband, driven by his
brutality into the arms of her lover. The husband was the customary
cinema villain--broad, stout, sneering, and over-dressed. Mrs. Porter
fainted and had to be carried out by two attendants. A doctor came
to see her, said that she was suffering from nervous exhaustion and
must be protected from all excitement.... The two ladies sat now every
evening in their pretty sitting-room, and Miss Allen read aloud the
novels of Dickens one after the other.
More and more persistently, in spite of herself, did curiosity about
the late Mr. Porter drive itself in upon Miss Allen. She told herself
that curiosity itself was vulgar and unworthy of the philosophy that
she had created for herself out of life. Nevertheless it persisted.
Soon she felt that, after all, it was justified. Were she to help this
poor old lady to whom she was now most deeply attached, she must know
more. She could not give her any real help unless she might gauge more
accurately her trouble--but she was a shy woman, shy, especially, of
forcing personal confidences. She hesitated; then she was aware that a
barrier was being created between them. The evening had many silences,
and Miss Allen detected many strange, surreptitious glances thrown at
her by the old lady. The situation was impossible. One night she asked
her a question.
"Dear Mrs. Porter," she said, her heart beating strangely as she spoke,
"I do hope that you will not think me impertinent, but you have been
so good to me that you have made me love you. You are suffering, and I
cannot bear to see you unhappy. I want, oh, so eagerly, to help you! Is
there nothing I can do?"
Mrs. Porter said nothing. Her hands quivered; then a tear stole down
her cheek. Miss Allen went over to her, sat down beside her and took
her hand.
"You must let me help you," she said. "Dismiss me if I am asking you
questions that I should not. But I would rather leave you altogether,
happy though I am with you, than see you so miserable. Tell me what I
can do."
"You can do nothing, Lucy dear," said the old lady.
"But I must be able to do something. You are keeping from me some
secret----"
Mrs. Porter shook her head....
It was one evening in early May that Miss Allen was suddenly conscious
that there was something wrong with the pretty little sitting-room,
and it was shortly after her first consciousness of this that poor old
Mrs. Porter revealed her secret. Miss Allen, looking up for a moment,
fancied that the little white marble clock on the mantelpiece had
ceased to tick.
She looked across the room, and for a strange moment fancied that she
could see neither the clock nor the mantelpiece--a grey dimness filled
her sight. She shook herself, glanced down at her hands, looked up for
reassurance, and found Mrs. Porter, with wide, terrified eyes, staring
at her, her hands trembling against the wood of the table.
"What is it, Lucy?"
"Nothing, Mrs. Porter."
"Did you see something?"
"No, dear."
"Oh, I thought ... I thought...." Suddenly the old lady, with a fierce
impetuous movement, pushed the table away from her. She got up,
staggered for a moment on her feet, then tumbled to the pink sofa,
cowering there, huddled, her sharp, fingers pressing against her face.
"Oh, I can't bear it.... I can't bear it.... I can't bear it any more!
He's coming. He's coming. Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?"
Miss Allen, feeling nothing but love and affection for her friend, but
realising strangely too the dim and muted attention of the room, knelt
down beside the sofa and put her strong arms around the trembling,
fragile body.
"What is it? Dear, dear Mrs. Porter. What is it? Who is coming? Of whom
are you afraid?"
"Henry's coming! Henry, who hated me. He's coming to carry me away!"
"But Mr. Porter's dead!"
"Yes...." The little voice was now the merest whisper. "But he'll come
all the same.... He always does what he says!"
The two women waited, listening. Miss Allen could hear the old lady's
heart thumping and leaping close to her own. Through the opened
windows came the sibilant rumble of the motor-buses. Then Mrs. Porter
gently pushed Miss Allen away. "Sit on a chair, Lucy dear. I must tell
you everything. I must share this with someone."
She seemed to have regained some of her calmness. She sat straight up
upon the sofa, patting her lace cap with her hands, feeling for the
cameo brooch at her breast. Miss Allen drew a chair close to the sofa;
turning again towards the mantelpiece, she saw that it stood out boldly
and clearly; the tick of the clock came across to her with almost
startling urgency.
"Now, dear Mrs. Porter, what is it that is alarming you?" she said.
Mrs. Porter cleared her throat. "You know, Lucy, that I was married a
great many years ago. I was only a very young girl at the time, very
ignorant of course, and you can understand, my dear, that my father
and mother influenced me very deeply. They liked Mr. Porter. They
thought that he would make me a good husband and that I should be very
happy.... I was not happy, Lucy dear, never from the very first moment!"
Here Mrs. Porter put out her hand and took Miss Allen's strong one.
"I am very willing to believe that much of the unhappiness was due to
myself. I was a young, foolish girl; I was disturbed from the very
first by the stories that Mr. Porter told me, and the pictures he
showed me. I was foolish about those things. He saw that they shocked
me, and I think that that amused him. From the first it delighted him
to tease me. Then--soon--he tired of me. He had mistresses. He brought
them to our house. He insulted me in every way possible. I had years of
that misery. God only knows how I lived through it. It became a habit
with him to frighten and shock me. It was a game that he loved to play.
I think he wanted to see how far I would go. But I was patient through
all those many years. Oh! so patient! It was weak, perhaps, but there
seemed nothing else for me to be."
"The last twenty years of our married life he hated me most bitterly.
He said that I had scorned him, that I had not given him children,
that I had wasted his money--a thousand different things! He tortured
me, frightened me, disgusted me, but it never seemed to be enough for
him, for the vengeance he felt I deserved. Then one day he discovered
that he had a weak heart--a doctor frightened him. He saw perhaps for
a moment in my eyes my consciousness of my possible freedom. He took
my arm and shook me, bent his face close to mine, and said: 'Ah, you
think that after I'm dead you will be free. You are wrong. I will leave
you everything that I possess, and then--just as you begin to enjoy
it--I will come and fetch you!' What a thing to say, Lucy, dear! He was
mad, and so was I to listen to him. All those years of married life
together had perhaps turned both our brains. Six months later he fell
down in the street dead. They brought him home, and all that summer
afternoon, my dear, I sat beside him in the bedroom, he all dressed in
his best clothes and his patent leather shoes, and the band playing in
the Square outside. Oh! he was dead, Lucy dear, he was indeed. For
a week or two I thought that he was gone altogether. I was happy and
free. Then--oh, I don't know--I began to imagine ... to fancy.... I
moved from Wimbledon. I advertised for someone, and you came. We moved
here.... It ought to be ... it is ... it _must_ be all right, Lucy
dear; hold me, hold me tight! Don't let me go! He _can't_ come back! He
can't, he can't!"
She broke into passionate sobbing, cowering back on to the sofa as she
had done before. The two women sat there, comforting one another. Miss
Allen gathered the frail, trembling little body into her arms, and like
a mother with her child, soothed it.
But, as she sat there, she realised with a chill shudder of alarm that
moment, a quarter of an hour before, when the room had been dimmed
and the clock stilled. Had that been fancy? Had some of Mrs. Porter's
terror seized her in sympathy? Were they simply two lonely women whose
nerves were jagged by the quiet monotony and seclusion of their lives?
Why was it that from the first she, so unimaginative and definite,
should have been disturbed by the thought of Mr. Porter? Why was it
that even now she longed to know more surely about him, his face, his
clothes, his height ... everything.
"You must go to bed, dear. You are tired out. Your nerves have never
recovered from the time of Mr. Porter's death. That's what it is....
You must go to bed, dear."
Mrs. Porter went. She seemed to be relieved by her outburst. She felt
perhaps now less lonely. It seemed, too, that she had less to fear now
that she had betrayed her ghost into sunlight. She slept better that
night than she had done for a long time past. Miss Allen sat beside the
bed staring into the darkness, thinking....
For a week after this they were happy. Mrs. Porter was in high spirits.
They went to the Coliseum and heard Miss Florence Smithson sing "Roses
of Picardy," and in the Cinema they were delighted with the charm and
simplicity of Alma Taylor. Mrs. Porter lost her heart to Alma Taylor.
"That's a _sweet_ girl," she said. "I would like to meet her. I'm sure
she's _good_." "I'm sure she is," said Miss Allen. Mrs. Porter made
friends in the flat. Mr. Nix met them one day at the bottom of the
lift and talked to them so pleasantly. "_What_ a gentleman!" said Mrs.
Porter afterwards as she took off her bonnet.
Then one evening Miss Allen came into the sitting-room and stopped
dead, frozen rigid on the threshold. Someone was in the room. She did
not at first think of Mr. Porter. She was only sure that someone was
there. Mrs. Porter was in her bedroom changing her dress.
Miss Allen said, "Who's there?" She walked forward. The dim evening
saffron light powdered the walls with trembling colour. The canaries
twittered, the clock ticked; no one was there. After that instant of
horror she was to know no relief. It was as though that spoken "Who's
there?" had admitted her into the open acceptance of a fact that she
ought for ever to have denied.
She was a woman of common sense, of rational thought, scornful of
superstition and sentiment. She realised now that there was something
quite definite for her to fight, something as definite as disease, as
pain, as poverty and hunger. She realised too that she was there to
protect Mrs. Porter from everything--yes, from everything and everybody!
Her first thought was to escape from the flat, and especially from
everything in the flat--from the pink sofa, the gate-legged table, the
bird-cage and the clock. She saw then that, if she yielded to this
desire, they would be driven, the two of them, into perpetual flight,
and that the very necessity of escaping would only admit the more the
conviction of defeat. No, they must stay where they were; that place
was their battle-ground.