Eva did not reproach him for his inordinately long absence. And the
taxi-driver, whatever he may have looked like before, now looked
resigned, as if hoping for the best. “I stopped him ticking after a
time,” she said, “and I told him you would pay him well. So he looked
quite pleased and stopped ticking.”
“I know it was a long time. It must have seemed a terribly long time.”
“Oh, it seemed ages and ages and ages! I thought perhaps you had had a
stroke or that Lord Ottercove had strangled you. And then I simply
ceased worrying and fell asleep.”
“And the taxi-driver?”
“He fell asleep too. I told him it would be all right.”
“And yet,” said Frank, looking at his watch, “I haven’t been away three
hours!”
“And I dreamt that it was a big mystery case, and that they dragged out
your body and hanged Lord Ottercove for instigating the affair and--”
“I’ve been reading my book to him.”
“Your book?”
“About you, darling.”
“Oh, darling!”
As the taxi-driver, who had by now outgrown the faculty of astonishment,
asked for a clue, they directed him, provisionally, to Piccadilly
Circus. Alone, Eva at once pressed herself to his side and brought her
mouth to his for kissing, before he was really ready for it; for he had
drunk too much champagne and had read aloud so long and now was
hiccupping all the time.
“Stop hiccupping,” she said.
For him the day was too rich in new impressions to allow him to savour
his happiness. That morning, after a long absence, he had come back from
Paris. The Calais boat sidling to the Dover pier. British porters, big,
sturdy ruffians, elbowing, like a football team, by the gang-plank;
suddenly charging the decks, making away with your boxes and bags. Then
the bright shining boat-train gliding away and racing along through the
dim countryside, London-ward, without stop. Victoria at last. The vast
hideous metropolis blinking through the milky mist. And Eva’s letter in
his pocket-book:
“_Darling Blue Eyes.--So sorry you are ill. And here I’m waiting
for you all alone in London Town._”
He had not understood the secret pleading of these words, till,
following up the girl’s address to a dingy lodging-house off the Edgware
Road, the landlady related to him how Eva, waiting for him, had held
out three weeks, but that her sister Zita tracked her up through the
police and took her home with her where, ever since, she was kept under
surveillance but was allowed to take the terrier out for daily exercise
in the adjoining Park. Eva, said the landlady, was a nice girl; owed
rent, but all the time while waiting for him at the lodging-house sat
piously at home, retired early to her bed to read a novel and eat
chocolates.
She had waited, perilously, for him all these weeks, running up a debt,
while he idled away in Paris on the pretext of sickness and postponed
indefinitely his arrival! She had no money; but had not reproached him,
had only written: “Come as soon as you are better. Perhaps it’s selfish
of me to ask you to get better quickly. But I am _waiting_ for you,
Ferdinand,” etc. His name was Frank, but she did not like the plainness
of it, and so called him Ferdinand. The landlady, who told him she had
in her day eloped romantically and married secretly and very, very
happily, exhorted him to be the knight-errant who should, like her own
late husband, free his Eva from her intolerable captivity; while he
rather wished she would mind her own business and let him do as he saw
fit. And then, having pursued all the terriers in Hyde Park in vain, and
equally so in Kensington Gardens, he had halted for a moment by
Whiteley’s window in Queen’s Road and somebody sidled up to him, and
before he turned to look he could feel the warmth of her delighted
gaze. “Eva! And I had lost all hope of ever finding you!”
They lunched together hurriedly and then took a taxi to his appointed
interview with Ottercove.
“‘Me-Too’ Darling! And how did Zita find you?”
“Through Scotland Yard.”
“And she came and took you away, did she?”
“Yes, she broke in and cried, ‘You’ve got a man here!’ and began opening
all the cupboards and looking under the bed. But I was alone, in bed,
reading a novel and eating chocolates and waiting.”
“Waiting?”
“For you, darling.”
“Oh, darling! And who paid?”
“She paid.”
“Rather generous of her.”
“But she took it all out of my saving’s bank at the post office.”
“Oh! how mean! how cruel!”
“And she took me home with her and locked me up, and got Mr. Pilling to
lecture to me on morals.”
“But what is Mr. Pilling to you!”
“He is our guardian, while Mummy is away in Ireland.”
“He has guarded you well,” Frank said, not without bitterness. “What
about Zita?”
“He’s taken a fancy to Zita long ago at the Arcadia Ball Rooms, where
he’s a professional with her.”
“He has, has he? A fine guardian and no mistake! What is their
relation?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know quite well what I mean.” He looked bluntly into her eyes. “Yes
...?”
“Yes,” she nodded.
“And so he’s taken you both under his wing?”
“Yes. And Mr. Pilling said I was not to go out except to take the
terrier out for exercise. And I took him every morning out into the Park
and wandered all over Kensington Gardens, hoping I might come across you
suddenly.”
“And you did!”
“And I did!”
“Darling Eva!” He pressed her to his side.
The taxi-cab had reached the bottom of the Strand and was rounding
Nelson’s Column into Pall Mall. “I must think of a hotel,” he said. “I
daresay I will find a room at the Madrid Palace.”
“No, no,” she said, “that is not a smart hotel. Mr. Pilling will say it
isn’t smart.”
“Hang Mr. Pilling! Besides, why can’t you tell him I am staying at the
Ritz?”
She thought a while. “I didn’t think of it. Yes, I will tell him you are
staying at the Ritz.”
He gave directions to the driver; ran up the steps into the hotel,
ordered a room, and came back to her. “Darling, what do you want to do
now?”
“Let us get out, darling, and walk and think. I am so tired of living in
this taxi.”
He dismissed the man, after paying the full penalty of his caprice, and
they walked on into Piccadilly and inadvertently turned into New Bond
Street. “What do you want to do?” he asked again. “You are surely not
going back to your sister’s to-night, are you?”
“No, no, I am not!”
Her reassurance weakened his resolve. “But if she searches for you; if
she goes to Scotland Yard?” he asked uneasily.
“I don’t care, darling. I want to be with you.”
“We’ll dine.”
“Yes, and after dinner go to a dance.”
“All right,” he said, unenthusiastically. “What your mother used to call
‘making a night of it.’”
“Mummy writes that she is very dull in Ireland.”
“What is she doing there?”
“She’s gone to visit daddy’s people to see what they can do for us. I’d
like,” she added, “to go to the Kiss-Lick Club.... It isn’t really
expensive.”
“No. All right.”
“But I--”
“But you--?”
“But I haven’t a gown. The old Meran orange crêpe-de-Chine one is an old
rag now.”
“We’ll get one.”
“But, darling, are you rich enough?”
“Just enough,” he said, not wishing to encourage her in her
extravagance.
Now she was already standing at a shop window, trying to decide between
two equally attractive gowns. But as they went in, the choice, and with
it the difficulty of selection, and the perils of subsequent remorse,
increased alarmingly. Seated, like a royal pair, in luxurious armchairs,
the mannequins parading with studied step before them, they displayed,
in return for the united efforts of the selling staff, an increasingly
dispersed appreciation. From time to time, Eva disappeared behind a
screen to emerge from it as an exhibit, to the venal praises of the
saleswoman, who, anxious to bring matters to a head, gradually narrowed
down the field of selection to two expensive gowns.
“I really can’t make up my mind which I should take.”
“Take both,” he said.
The saleswoman looked up at him as though she thought he was a fine
young gentleman, and he felt pleased to have risen in her estimation.
“But are you sure--?”
“I think I can just do it.” Lucky to have cleared his entire bank
balance that morning! To-morrow he would draw a cheque on Ottercove. It
seemed scarcely credible. The affair smacked of the fairy godfather type
of Christmas tale in an all-fiction magazine for juveniles. Yet
Ottercove, his cheque book, and his bank balance were presumably
realities. In the midst of life we’re in a dream, he mused, as they were
bowed out into the street, when, a few paces off, Eva suddenly
remembered that she had no shoes to match the gowns, and he took her to
the nearest shop where she selected competently, while asking him, “Are
you quite sure--?” the best the shop could offer.
“I think I’ll manage,” he replied, more by way of secret loyalty to
Ottercove, who, he recalled, had said, “As much as _you_ need,” not “as
much as your women folk may feel they need,” which was not the same.
The shops were just closing; but, of his own accord, he suggested that
she indulge in lingerie, and here, despite the closing hour, Eva’s fancy
ran adrift, while his new-born tenderness for her prevented him from
curbing her desires. So long as he had money enough to last out till the
morning, what did it matter?
But he did not himself indulge in any purchases that evening, as an
ascetic act of abstinence before the pure image of the kindly Ottercove
which, like an ikon illumined by a candle, always shone before him.
Nevertheless the devil tempted him from time to time. Suppose, he
thought, Lord Ottercove had gone mad. It was not impossible. He could
then gradually appropriate all his property. Till the executors stopped
him. If so, was that not a cause for hurry? And Eva’s impulse was right?
But it would never do to tell her. Not even if Lord Ottercove was mad.
He whispered in her ear as they pushed through the revolving door into
the hall of the hotel, and she signed her name--with a, to unsuspecting
eyes surely imperceptible, hesitation--“Nancy Dickin.” As they ascended
in the lift, he was tendering excuses:
“It’s a poor room, you know.”
“Is,” she asked, “my room as poor as yours?”
“It’s the same,” he said.
Forgetting to kiss him, she immediately began to inspect her purchases,
till he suggested it was time she put them on.
“It’s cold,” she twitched her shoulders.
“There’s a gas fire.”
“Yes, yes. Darling, ring the bell for me.”
And to the maid, in a commanding, knowing way:
“Put on the gas fire at eleven o’clock so it should be warm when we
return. My husband likes it warm.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
At the Kiss-Lick she beamed all the time. While they danced she talked
to him of himself. “Pilling said ... Zita said ... I said to Pilling:
‘Mr. Dickin doesn’t care a rap for your opinions! He wouldn’t look at
you--’” Or, suddenly, without preliminary introduction, she would
volunteer such isolated bits of information as: “He hurt me with my
teeth. I cried.”
“Who? Pilling?”
“No, the dentist. And the man in the Tube thought I was a little Russian
girl because I had a grey fur cap and was reading the translation of a
Russian novel.”
Eva, he noticed, was very observant and ironic about Mr. Pilling. “He
tries to speak French to Zita, because he thinks it’s grand. Pilling
thinks she has influence.”
“With whom?”
“With Lord Ottercove. Through Lord de Jones, you know, who is Mummy’s
friend. He is very funny.”
“Who? Pilling?”
“No, Lord de Jones. He goes about muttering funny things to me about
wanting to blow up the earth. I think he is not quite all there. But
Pilling would like Lord Ottercove to finance him.”
“Whom? Lord de Jones?”
“No, Pilling. He’d like to open out on his own. A dancing place, a night
club like this one. Only he says he wants Lord Ottercove or somebody to
finance him, because it will cost a lot of money. Pilling is very high
class. He has bought a cottage at Marlow and called it ‘Villa
Esperanza.’”
“Full of hope, evidently!”
“And he makes up to a man there because he is a member of the motor-boat
club, and Pilling can’t be a member of the motor-boat club because he
has no motor-boat. And he says he only needs Lord Ottercove to finance
him to buy himself a motor-boat. That is why I wanted to meet Lord
Ottercove this afternoon; and you wouldn’t let me.”
“You wanted to speak to Lord Ottercove to--to--” he stammered with
incredulity.
“To ask him if he’d like to finance Pilling.”
“But why?”
“I thought it would please Pilling.”
While they supped, her legs touched his and he had but one thought and
one desire: to return with her to the hotel, to grasp her, clutch her,
smother and devour her just as she was now with her wistful violet eyes
and her thoughts of Pilling. She sipped her champagne. She was silent,
completely content. Her large eyes were bright dewy flowers.
Ensconced in a taxi, she at once fell over him and brought her mouth to
his for kissing. But kissing, by this time, was nothing new to him. He
wanted to explore new avenues, new vistas of experience.
Then they were back, alone. He clutched her in his arms. “Come, come,
come,” he pleaded. She had quickly slipped into bed before he returned
to the room and looked at him doubtfully.
“Ah!” he cried in the accents of the primitive man and leaping to her
side.
But she had turned her back to him. “Darling....” she murmured.
“What?” he cried.
“Yes,” she said, “it isn’t always easy to be a woman, darling.”
He looked at her blankly. “Where is my revolver?”
“Your revolver?”
“Or I shall go out and hang myself--”
“What do you mean?”
“On the nearest lamp-post.”
After pacing the room up and down for a space, he lay down. But he could
not sleep. At last he dressed and, to the astonishment of the night
porter, went out and, incurring the suspicion of a lone policeman,
loitered in empty Piccadilly Circus. He had calmed down and his thoughts
turned back to his miraculous acquaintance with Lord Ottercove and his
unlimited offer of money, so unusually generous that he could hardly
force himself to take advantage of it. He would rather assassinate his
old grandmother for the meagre contents of her purse than overdraw Lord
Ottercove’s account. Wandering aimlessly about the quiet streets,
tears dimmed his eyes as he reflected on the essential goodness
of human nature. His look was moist, peculiarly naïve, and if a
confidence-trickster had that moment come up to him, he would have been
inclined to accept his offer, convinced that he would and could not harm
him.
Eva was not asleep when he came back. Where had he seen it? Ah, she
reminded him of that picture of a kitten tucked away in a big bed, with
one paw over the quilt, one eye closed, the other open and looking at
the world. In the dark they talked across the bedside table which
separated their two beds, and she told him of all that had happened to
her since he saw her last in Vienna. “Lord de Jones got Mummy to put me
into a Secretarial College as he said he would need a secretary to go on
his mission with him round the world to close all the craters and Mount
Vesuvius and such for which Lord Ottercove is financing him for
propaganda and such like purposes and that he could see from the colour
of my eyes that he could trust me. Mummy wants to go with Lord de Jones
on his mission all round the world because she says she hasn’t been
round the world and would like to see it as his private secretary, but
Lord de Jones says he’d rather I went with him, much rather than Mummy.
And so he put me into this Secretarial College to learn shorthand and
typewriting, and the Principal was making up to him, because he was
Viscount de Jones, and used to write silly letters to him trying to
flatter him because he thought Lord de Jones would appreciate deep
thoughts. And so he wrote to Lord de Jones to congratulate him on the
nobility of his scientific thoughts and researches and said: ‘Your
philosophical mind, I am sure, will appreciate what a small fraction
time is of eternity.’”
“And Lord de Jones?”
“He simply laughed, and I told the Principal what a fool Lord de Jones
thought him. But he was making up to me.”
“Who? The Principal? Or Lord de Jones?”
“The Principal. And Lord de Jones, too. But I don’t mind Lord de Jones
because he is an old friend of Mummy’s. But the Principal was a real
rotter. He had a sort of conservatory behind his study where he used to
receive visitors, and there was a palm tree there and an aquarium with
goldfish, and he said to me when I said I was leaving him because he was
a fool, ‘We had better kiss and be friends,’ and he tried to kiss me
there among the goldfish.”
“No!”
“He did! And he used to pay his teaching staff at the end of the week in
silver money. Three or four half-crowns, not more. They all stood
huddled together at the end of the room and he’d recline in his chair at
the desk and call out: ‘Jones!’ ‘Ferguson!’ ‘Gould!’ (Never ‘Mrs.
Ferguson,’ or ‘Miss Gould!’) ‘Here!’ and give them three or four
half-crowns each. And the typewriting mistress, Miss Gould, only got two
half-crowns and a shilling.”
“And they seemed pleased?”
“No, not pleased, but kind of dumb, cowed, hungry looking. And when
Mummy was behind with the payment because Lord de Jones had quarrelled
with his wife and she wouldn’t let him have any more money, Mr. Bumphill
got very ratty and said I had a bad character. I asked him what I had
done; and he said: ‘You are lazy, and where is your loyalty to the
College? Have you ever recommended it to a single human being?’
“‘I have,’ I said.
“He suddenly looked very interested. ‘And to whom, pray?’ said he.
“‘To Mr. Gorilla,’ said I, ‘a Spanish young gentleman.’
“‘Oh, indeed! I am interested to hear it,’ says he. ‘Take his name down,
Miss Frazer.... H’m! And what is his address?’
“‘The Zoological Gardens,’ said I.”
“And then?”
“Then I left his Secretarial College. Mr. Pilling thought I should study
to become a Nurse.”
“And why must you listen to Mr. Pilling.”
“I told you he is our guardian.”
“A fine guardian!” said Frank bitterly. “I’d like to bash his head for
his treatment of Zita.”
“But what about yourself?” she asked, it seemed to him rather
tactlessly.
“That was different. That was on a hill.”
“It was lovely. And Zita too thought it was lovely. But she said she
could never tell Pilling about it. She doesn’t know what he’d do to you
if he knew.”
“No need for him to know,” Frank said, gloomily. And then: “I say, is he
... Pilling a great reader of novels?”
“I don’t know, darling. I don’t remember having seen any of yours in
their flat, though Pilling once said about you, ‘He is very clever. I
wish I had his brains. I would not be a professional, nor Zita either.’”
“Why don’t they marry?”
“Pilling told her from the start that he couldn’t marry her as he was
already married but separated from his wife, but Zita being always
business-like and practically minded asked Pilling to guarantee to her
on paper that he would remain true and loyal to her all his life. But
Pilling said he couldn’t do such a thing as a man can never trust
himself. Zita then met a doctor--an old consumptive fellow, full of gout
and ischias and sciatica and heart disease--who fell in love with her
and wanted her to be his own eternally and everlastingly, and as he also
could not marry her he gave her the guarantee she asked in writing that
he would be true to her during all his lifetime and even had it stamped
at Somerset House; and then she became just like his wife. But he died
in a week--from heart failure.”
“And what did Zita say?”
“She said: ‘I could have murdered him for it.’”
“Poor thing! And now?”
“Now she has gone back to Pilling unconditionally. She did ask him for a
guarantee, but he only laughed at her. She still warns me about men. But
I also laugh at her.”
“Yet she controls your movements?”
“Yes, she does. Once, when I got so tired of sitting at home with Zita
and Pilling and went for a walk by myself, and a fat gentleman I met on
the station platform at Victoria took me to a dance, Zita gave me an
awful hiding and told Pilling to give me a dressing-down, and then
slapped me.”
“Really slapped you hard?”
“Yes, darling, I haven’t had an easy kind of life, I can tell you.”
“And so Pilling sent you to the hospital to study to become a Nurse, did
he?”
“He did. I had to cram my poor brains with so much anatomy. And the
things they made us look at, the operations and things. Once I fainted;
then I got used to it.”
“And do you really know something about it?”
“I know every little bone in your body.”
“Really?”
“There was a doctor there, an Irishman. He used to help me with my
examinations and kiss me.”
“You let him?”
“He loved me, he said. And it was Spring like that time on the hill, and
so stuffy at night, and the textbooks so difficult, and he so clever!”
“And then?”
“And then I ran away. I didn’t come back after my annual leave. I went
to London to Mrs. White’s boarding house.”
“Why?”
“Because you wrote to me from Paris that you wanted me to meet you in
London, and so I came to London from Colchester and waited for
you--weeks and weeks, till my sister came--the matron at the hospital
had started a hue and cry--and took me away.”
“And then?”
“Then Pilling said I must go back to the hospital, but I said I’d rather
die than go back to the hospital, so I had a row with Pilling. He was
furious, and I was furious, and so I went away to Mother Martha’s
boarding house and took a room, but I had no money, so had to look for a
situation.”
“You all alone in London looking for a situation! while I was lounging
lazily in Paris!”
“Yes. I went to the shops asking for a job, and I didn’t know where I
could get a reference. The managers were all the same. They said, ‘You
have intriguing eyes.’ Or, ‘If you’ll be nice and friendly with me, I’ll
give you a good cushy job.’ I had a good job in a draper’s shop in
Holborn; I got twenty-five shillings a week. But as they began to reduce
their staff and I was the lastcomer I was the first to go. Then I got a
job as part cashier, part waitress in a tea-shop in the City. It was
quite interesting. Business men would come up and talk to me and promise
me a job. They said I had intriguing eyes. One man said, ‘You have eyes
like violets.’ They would come up to the counter and we’d discuss
together City topics. And one fat man asked me if I knew what Nero was
doing while Rome was burning, and I said I didn’t know, and he said:
‘Fiddling.’ And we’d all burst laughing. It was quite intriguing.”
His heart ached for her. Poor child, all alone, men like vultures, ready
to pounce on her: forgetting that men, old and young, common and
cultivated, were to her a navigable ocean whereon indeed she was an A-1
skipper.
“Then I lost my job as part cashier because the manageress said I added
up all wrong and she couldn’t make head or tail whether the shop was
making profits or losses and I said she had better add up herself to
make sure, and I went back to Mother Martha’s boarding house and waited,
waited for you, while Mother Martha swilled whisky by herself upstairs.
And when the Irish Doctor from the hospital came to see me Mother
Martha, who was full of whisky, said I had a lover in my room and that
she’d write and tell my father in Ireland. But I said: ‘I shall inform
my Solicitor: False Accusation,’ and she got scared like a rabbit and
crawled upstairs to swill down some more whisky.”
“And then?”
“Then I went to see what Zita and Pilling were doing and left Mother
Martha severely alone.”
“Do you know what time it is? It’s four o’clock!”
“Good night, darling.”
“Good night, darling.”