one-and-fourpence, pushing some coppers towards the waitress, who, with
a dignified motion and an aloof-voiced "We do not receive gratuities,"
pushed them back, would in all probability be the last customers.
Lucilla having discovered the man's hat for him, restored to the woman
the wrist-bag and pocket-handkerchief and parcel she would have left
behind her, and watched the pair from the room, yawned aloud as she
piled the soiled teacups, plates, and saucers on the little brown
Japanese tray, and carried them to that screened-off angle of the room
where china was washed and bread and butter cut all the day long.
She returned, yawning still, to dust the crumbs from the little bamboo
table. Half-past five! What, in those delightful fourteen days which
had composed her yearly holiday, had she been doing at that hour? So
precious the memory of that fortnight, so treasured every incident,
almost she could have accounted for each minute of the time.
As she set the chairs straight before the dozen bamboo tables, put each
illustrated paper in its allotted place, her inward gaze was turned
upon scenes she had left behind with the delightful luxuriousness of a
life which, for that small, allotted space, she had been permitted to
live.
She had driven, she had motored, she had paid visits, had danced.
Yes--danced! She paused on that word, and her lips trembled to a smile.
She had read of such an existence, dreamed of it, perhaps; at last, she
had lived it. Would it make her days in the tea-shop--and out of
it--easier?
For one thing, she had returned a little ashamed of her work. "Don't
mention about the tea-shop, even before your cousins, dear," her aunt
had admonished her. Her aunt, being an old-fashioned person who did not
realise that a lady can get her living by any honourable means, in the
present day, and remain a lady still. Lucilla had, of course, obeyed
her aunt's injunction, but had felt, for her own part, not the
slightest repugnance to mention the means by which she gained her
livelihood, until a couple of evenings before she had returned. That
evening of the dance, whose memory brought the quiver of a smile to
Lucilla's lips.
"Suppose I had told him!" she said to herself as she moved from table
to table, mechanically putting all in order. "He asked me how I passed
my time. What would have happened? Would he have gone on dancing with
me, and gone on sitting out with me when I couldn't dance? I'm glad I
didn't tell, even if it did deceive him--even if I am a snob. I'm glad
I had my hour."
She looked out of one of the windows into the market square, around
which the lamps were lighted now, and a pleasing vision rose before her
eyes of herself in her cousin Alice's last year's ball-dress, looking
so supremely happy, and as pretty--he had said that--as a dream. Yes;
she was thankful he would never have to know. What would he think of
her if he could see her now in her full-skirted brown merino frock, her
brown muslin apron, the big white chrysanthemum, which was the emblem
of the tea-shop, embroidered in its corner and on its bib, her high
muslin cap with the stiff strings tied beneath her chin?
"He would never recognise me; but I'm glad he will never see me,"
Lucilla said.
Then she turned from the window at the sound of a step upon the stairs,
and saw him coming into the room.
He was accompanied by a lady, young and pretty.
"Such a crush, and so badly managed, and so under-waited!" she was
volubly declaring as she came in. "Half a cup of cold tea, and a
quarter of an inch of fishy sandwich was all I got hold of. It was a
splendid thought of yours to turn in here for a feed, Captain Finch. I
couldn't possibly get along on that till dinner-time. Bread and
butter, please, for two, and a good lot of it. Two hungry people.
And--oh, where is the young lady who usually waits?"
It was the attendant from behind the screen who was taking the order, a
girl with a fine figure, a sharp-featured, high-coloured, alert face,
and wearing the brown uniform of the establishment. The other young
lady was engaged elsewhere, she said.
"Oh!" said the customer on a falling note, and repeated in a flatter
tone her order. "I wanted you to see this other girl," she said to
Captain Finch as the waitress moved away. "She is called a beauty. One
or two men rave about her. Women can't judge of these things. I wanted
to hear what you thought of her."
"My word--on such a subject--would be final," the man said.
Lucilla, cutting bread and butter behind the screen, quivered at the
voice, the rather hesitating utterance which was characteristic, the
little laugh at the finish. Ah, what a mercy she had had that minute in
which to dash into the corner and to drive Miss Dawson forth to take
her place! She remembered how beautifully, intoxicatingly deferential
he had been to her in her charming ball-dress, niece to the lady who
was wife of the most influential man in Workingham. Words could not
express how he must despise her if he saw her now.
"They make you judge at all the beauty shows in India, I suppose?" the
lively lady was saying.
"They'd like to. I couldn't stand the fag."
"Poor dear! You appear to be very much exhausted."
"That beastly wedding! I never was so bored in my life."
"That doesn't excuse your yawning in my face."
"Oh, I say! Did I do that, now? I beg your pardon."
"If only this pretty girl I was telling you about had been here!"
"Oh, come! Good-looking women aren't so rare, I know a dozen I can see
any day, Mrs Eaton. But as we're here, can't she be produced?"
The lady tinkled the little bell with which her table was supplied.
"Some walnut cake, please." As it was set on the table, "I hope the
other young lady has not left?" she inquired.
"Oh no, madam."
"A little more hot water."
"An officer, I'll bet my eyes! And a fine-looking fellow! Did you say
he was a pal of yours, miss?" Miss Dawson whispered to Lucilla as she
replenished the jug.
"If they mention me again, say Miss Browne--you can call me that--is
gone home, and isn't coming back any more for a month."
The bell tinkled again.
"I thought perhaps you had forgotten the hot water," the lady said
sweetly.
"No, madam," replied Miss Dawson as she placed the jug on the tray;
"Miss Browne, our other young lady, being gone home, we're a little
short-handed, like. The young person who is taking her place is rather
awkward at the work, and puts us backward," she raised her voice here
that Lucilla might enjoy the joke.
"Ah. I thought things were not quite so nice," the customer said.
"No, madam," acquiesced Miss Dawson, and giggled, and pinched Lucilla
as she retired behind the screen.
The lady at the tea-table was a vivacious creature; she rattled on with
hardly a break in her stream of chatter through the half-hour, during
which she ate all the bread and butter and drank nearly all the tea.
Lucilla, behind her screen, listening for the pleasant tones of the
man's halting speech, grew weary of the high-pitched, untiring voice.
"It is getting late," Captain Finch said at last. "I had better put you
in a cab."
"You aren't going to take me back?"
"Sorry. I've got to buy some things."
When they had left the room and were going downstairs, the woman's
tongue still volubly running, Lucilla came with a soft rush from behind
the screen and looked from the window. The shops round the market place
were brilliantly lighted now; the elegant backs of the couple emerging
from the confectioner's beneath the tea-room were easily visible. The
man raised his stick and hailed a hansom.
"How wonderfully things happen!" mused Lucilla. "He said, I remember,
that he was going to the wedding of a friend; to think that it should
have been here!"
"If you and him are friends, I can't think why you didn't show
yourself," Miss Dawson called from behind her screen.
"I daresay you can't," said Lucilla to herself.
"Where'd you see him first?" Miss Dawson asked. "Did he come up and
speak to you?"
The withering glance which Lucilla cast in the direction of the screen.
"Come up and speak to me!" she repeated.
"And why not, pray? Rubbish!" laughed Miss Dawson, rattling the teacups
she was washing. "What does it matter in the end? Comes to the same
thing when you do know them."
"You and I look at such things from a different point of view."
"Heap of nonsense!" Miss Dawson shrilled. "Your father was a lawyer
that failed and couldn't pay his debts; mine was a bankrupt
greengrocer. Both of 'em's dead now, and one as good as another; and
us, too."
It was not the first time Lucilla had heard the argument; she listened
to it now with compressed lips, in silence. Then she went to the
mantelpiece, made an entry in a memorandum book lying there, tore out
the page, counted the money in the bag which hung at her side, piled it
upon the loose leaf, which she folded around it, preparatory to
carrying it to the desk in the shop below.
"If you don't want to know the man, say you've never met him before,
and bounce it," Miss Dawson called after her in contemptuous tones as
she disappeared.
Two short flights of stairs led from shop to tearoom, and these were
divided by a small landing, where spare cups and saucers and teapots
were stacked. From the upper flight the lower was invisible. Lucilla,
descending, was unaware therefore of the gentleman coming up until she
met him on the square of landing beneath the unshaded gaslight. He held
a great, loose bunch of long-stalked violets in his hand; and he was,
of course, Lucilla's partner at the heavenly dance, Captain Finch.
Lucilla's heart beat tumultuously, her face turned white. "Bounce it,"
said the practical Miss Dawson's voice in her ears. She kept her head
up, therefore did not notice the proffered hand, would have passed the
gentleman by.
"Miss Mavis, I have brought you some violets," he said.
"You are mistaken. My name is Miss Browne," said Lucilla. "I do not
accept flowers from men I do not know."
He stared at her, his lips fallen apart beneath his moustache. "I--was
under the impression we had met at the dance at Workingham Town Hall,"
he said.
She took courage from his hesitating manner, and smiled with great
self-possession. "You are unfortunately mistaken. Will you allow me to
pass?" she said.
Lifting his hat, he moved aside; then turned to watch her make her
deliberate descent. The soft folds of her full brown skirt dropped from
stair to stair; the light from the flaring gas-jet fell on the knot of
brown hair massed between the high, stiff cap and the high, stiff
collar.
"Is that you, miss?"
It was a voice from above which called the superfluous question; he
turned from the contemplation of the young lady in brown, who had now
reached the bottom stair, to that of the young lady in brown who stood
at the top. Towards the latter he mounted with a lingering step, as if
not quite aware that he did so, and followed her into the tea-room.
"That young lady who has just gone down----?" he said.
"Miss Browne, sir."
"Er--is that so--really?" He lost himself, apparently; for the moment
had nothing more to say; until, with a happy inspiration, "and--your
name?" he asked.
"I'm Miss Dawson, sir. Miss Nellie Dawson."
"Really? Pleased to have made your acquaintance. Er--I've--er--brought
you some violets, Miss Nellie Dawson," he said.
He appeared again the next morning, and had lunch at the tea-shop; the
only man among a bevy of women lunching off scones and tea. He was shy
of his isolated position, perhaps, for he held the illustrated paper he
took up rather persistently before his face. At that hour a servant
stood behind the screen and washed the china; both the girls waited.
Above the top of his paper and round its edges he watched the more
elegant of the two moving with noiseless tread among the tables,
standing with bent head in the attitude of dignified attentiveness to
receive orders, carrying her light burden of brown tea tray and Satsuma
china. It was Lucilla he watched, but it was Miss Dawson who waited on
him.
He ordered two poached eggs--the most substantial item on the menu
card. He had to wait a long while for them, and when they were eaten,
and he had given himself time to read his _Punch_ two or three times
through, he apparently discovered himself to be still hungry, for he
ordered two more. By the time these were consumed, and he had
conscientiously looked through _The Ladies' Field_, with which Miss
Dawson had thoughtfully supplied him, the room began to empty.
A couple of ladies, evidently from the country, strayed in. One, in a
low and secret voice demanded stout, which could not be supplied.
Lucilla, with her head at a charming incline, suggested as a substitute
tea, coffee, or chocolate; finally took the order for chocolate,
supplied it; then, there being no one else to wait on, sat down by the
fire, drew a strip of knitting from her apron pocket, began to work on
it.
Captain Finch, rising from his table, pulled down his waistcoat, picked
up his hat and stick, crossed the room, and placed himself before her.
In the hand held in the fall of his back he carried a book.
"I--er--will you allow me--to--pay?" he asked. "Four
eggs--er--coffee--er."
Lucilla, without raising her eyes from the brown silk she was knitting
into a narrow strip, slightly waved a hand in the direction of Miss
Dawson. "The other young lady," she said.
But Miss Dawson, at that moment, was in spirited controversy with an
elderly, handsomely-dressed customer, whose carriage and pair of horses
awaited her at the pastry-cook's door, who could only remember to have
eaten one slice of walnut cake, while Miss Dawson was of opinion that
she had eaten two.
"Am I not permitted to pay Miss--er--Browne--if I prefer to do so?"
"It is the rule for each customer to pay the young lady who waits on
him."
"Thank you. Miss--er--Browne, when I had the happiness to meet you at
the Workingham Town Hall--at that delightful dance----"
"Pardon me. You did not meet me there. I do not dance."
"You spoke of a wish to read one of--er--Bernard Shaw's plays. I've got
this for you." He produced the hand from the small of his back and
tendered her the book.
She laid down her knitting and rose; a belated customer had appeared.
"I am sorry," she said, without looking at man or book. "The lady you
speak of would doubtless think it very kind of you. I have no wish to
read the plays, and could not possibly take the book."
With the slightest inclination of the head she passed him, and, the
menu card in hand, leant over the newcomer.
Left with the book, Captain Finch poised it in his hand, looking rather
stupidly at it for a few minutes; then tossed it to the mantelpiece,
and went from the room.
The clock had struck six when he came in for tea, that evening, and all
the little tables were empty. Miss Dawson, who was second in command,
was, as usual at that hour, behind the screen; he had come in so
quietly that Lucilla had no chance to rush and take her place. Her face
paled as she saw him. The man was persistent, her strength at the
moment small; there was only her pride to carry her through.
The day had been a busy one, she was fagged, and read in his face that
he saw her to be so. His face, although not a clever one, was so
heavenly kind!
"I won't trouble you to fetch any tea," he said. "If I might be allowed
to--er--stay here and talk to you for a few minutes----"
"Tea or coffee, sir?"
"Oh, well, tea, then--confound the stuff!"
He threw down his hat and stick, and stood while she placed the brown
tray, the tiny teapot, the minute muffin-dish before him. "If you know
how I hate to have you--er--wait on me----" he said; but she gave him
no chance to enlarge on the theme.
He sat for a few minutes over the tea-tray, not touching its contents,
and with his eyes on Lucilla's back as she stood at the mantelpiece
making her entries, counting the money in her bag. When she moved to
the door he got up and intercepted her.
"You are Miss Browne while you are in the--er--shop, I understand?" he
said. "I don't care for her--for Miss--er--Browne. It is the girl I met
at the dance I care for, and want to see again. I can't find her here.
Can I--er--find her outside? If I wait at the door for an hour, say,
will you--will she be there?"
Lucilla drew back, with hurt eyes and a reddening face. As if she were
any Miss Dawson, with the pavement for a rendezvous!
"I can't possibly say where you may meet your friends," she told him.
"I, for my part, do not make appointments to meet men who are strangers
to me--in the streets."
She passed him then, and went downstairs, her head held high, although
her heart was sore. She watched, hidden in the shop, for his departure.
It seemed to her impatience a long time before he left.
Miss Dawson was warbling to herself, with rather shrill-throated
gaiety, whisking her full skirt among the bamboo tables, when Lucilla
returned to the tea-room.
"I like your friend, miss," she said. "He hung about for a good time,
waiting for you; but as you didn't choose to come back he's gone."
Lucilla had come in with her arms full of great, bronze-coloured
chrysanthemums, which had been sent in from the flower shop to deck the
tables for the morrow. In silence she went about the work of
replenishing the vases. Miss Dawson quavered some high notes of her
song.
"Did he say that he wanted to see me again?" Lucilla, in spite of
herself, was obliged to ask.
"Dear me, no, miss. He said he stayed to thank me for wearing his
flowers."
Lucilla viciously snapped off the stalk of a giant chrysanthemum. The
Princess violets in the other girl's bosom had been as thorns in her
own, all the day. She glanced at the mantelpiece where she had seen him
toss the book of plays.
"You've got his book as well, I suppose?" she asked.
Miss Dawson gave her high laugh. "Oh yes!" she acknowledged. "I know
it's your leavings; I'm not proud."
She sang in her florid style for a minute or two, then descended to
speech again.
"You wouldn't let your friend wait for you outside, miss," she said.
"You're so mighty particular. I ain't. I told him I had no one to walk
home with me to-night; so he's waiting for me."
Captain Finch brought his erect, handsome form, his kind, foolish face
no more to the tea-room. Lucilla, longing as much as she dreaded to see
him, felt her heart throb at the sound of each manly footstep on the
stair, paled at the sight of coat and trousers of a certain shade,
trembled at the sound of a voice that recalled his hesitating tones.
But he came never again. The "bounce" which Miss Dawson had counselled
had had its effect. Either he now disbelieved the evidence of his own
eyes, or, more probably, he bowed, as a gentleman would, to her desire
to disavow the acquaintanceship.
"A man in his position could not meet on equal ground a girl in mine;
and--and I won't meet him on any other level," she said to herself.
Aloud, she would not speak of him again. Neither did Miss Dawson any
more allude to the gentleman who had presented the violets and the
volume of plays, and with whom she had gone for a walk on the first
evening of their acquaintanceship. Relations between the young women,
never very friendly, had become strained since that evening.
"A girl who could do such a thing!" said Lucilla to herself; and held
her head disdainfully, and curled her lip at the other girl.
But Miss Dawson, if she noticed that scornful attitude, was not at all
impressed by it. She switched her brown skirt with more than her usual
air of jaunty alertness around the chairs and tables, looked in the
little glass behind the screen at which the pair adjusted their caps
and aprons with a smirk of self-satisfaction, and always wore a bunch
of Princess violets in the bosom of her dress. Soon, the string of
amber beads at her throat was discarded in favour of a gold chain and
pearl and turquoise pendant, which Lucilla despised as imitation, of
course, but which, nevertheless, looked real.
Then, one day, at an hour when the tea-room was empty, arrived a
letter, from her influential aunt at Workingham, for Lucilla.
A certain portion of this letter she read again and again; then, the
need to a bursting heart of the outlet of speech being imperative,
spake with her tongue.
"Your advice to me to--bounce it--wasn't very happy advice, Miss
Dawson," she said, with bitterness. "Captain Finch knew all the time.
He knew when he came to this place. He came to see me. He knew I served
in a tea-shop. It made no difference. He went to my uncle the day after
the dance, and spoke--spoke about me----" Her voice was not under
control; she turned away.
Miss Dawson, energetically rubbing a bamboo table on which some coffee
had been spilt, made no answer.
"I wish--I wish--" said Lucilla, with her back turned, a world of
regret in her eyes, "I wish I had not been so silly."
Miss Dawson looked up momentarily from her occupation. "You can put it
all right with him, you know," she said; "Captain Finch is still
hanging round."
"Here?" Lucilla cried. "He went three weeks ago!"
"Not he. Every night of the three weeks he's waited outside to walk
home with me. For the first week he went to talk about you. For a
fortnight he hasn't mentioned your name."
She ceased to rub the table, shook the cloth, folded it with nicety,
the other girl speechlessly regarding her.
"He gives me these every day," Miss Dawson went on, and dashed a hand
towards the violets in her breast. "He gave me this," she lightly
fingered the turquoise and pearl pendant. "I don't wear his ring yet,
our rules not allowing it."
She whisked off with her cloth to the screen, deposited it, reappeared.
"His leave's up in six weeks," she said. "Him and me are to be married
in a month; have a fortnight's fling, and off to India. I chuck this,
at the end of the week. They know, downstairs. I hope you'll like your
new pal when she turns up, miss."
* * * * *
Only once, during the few days that remained, did Lucilla and Miss
Dawson speak of matters not strictly concerned with teas, scones, and
girdle-cakes. It was on the last day of her service in the tea-shop
that the latter brought with her, and flung upon the mantelpiece, the
book of plays which Captain Finch, on his second visit, had deposited
there for Lucilla.
"This was meant for you," she said, "and you may as well have it. Such
stuff isn't in my line, thank goodness! and I can't make head or tail
of it. But there's a word in it I happened upon, first time I opened
the book; and it's stuck in my memory, for it happens to be holy sense,
and not tommy-rot. This is it--or something like it--
"'If you want a thing very badly, go straight for it, and--GRAB it!'"
She put her common face close to Lucilla's disdainful one as, with an
insolent emphasis, she made the quotation, then laughed as she turned
away.
"That is what you should have done--you idiot!" she said.
A CHALK-MARK ON A GATE
PART I
She was junior music-mistress at the high school for girls, and he
mathematical master at the boys' college hard by. On most afternoons of
the week it happened that, their day's work being done, they
encountered as they left the scene of their respective duties, and,
their homes lying within a few doors of each other, walked there
together.
He was a tall man, loosely put together, with iron-grey hair, stooping
shoulders, and a look on his long-featured face at once dreary and
gentle. She was small and dark, alert and pretty, and, from the crown
of her neatly-dressed head, in its plain straw hat, to the soles of her
sensibly shod feet, wholesome-looking.
The day that was soon to melt into evening had been sultry, the
class-rooms airless, their tasks fatiguing. The pavement beneath their
feet was hot; both were glad to breathe what tiny breeze was astir;
both were tired. They walked side by side in that best of all
companionships which demands no effort at sprightliness, nor the
utterance of one word not spontaneously spoken.
"Shall we see you down by the river to-night?" she asked him, at
length.
If he could get away he would go there, he said.
"Do come!" she gently urged him. "It does you good to get away."
Then the man's house was reached. It was one in a street of L30-a-year
houses, with large bow-windows, small gardens, red-and-white striped
curtains to protect green-painted front doors. He made a motion of his
hand, half-heartedly inviting her to enter.
She shook her head.
"I've been in once to-day," she said. "Mrs Kilbourne asked me to get
her something in the town, and I took it in."
"So long as you remember the caution I gave you----"
"You may be quite sure I remember."
As she would have passed on he stopped her.
"One minute," he said. "The rose I told you of is out, to-day."