Miss Matfield awoke next morning with a vague feeling that something
pleasant and rather exciting was about to happen. Norman Birtley.
So that was it. She could think of nothing else, and was rather
disappointed, slightly cross with herself, when it all dwindled to
Norman. That showed the sort of existence she led, these days. There
had been a time when Norman Birtley was only a joke. When he became
serious she had brushed him aside. After that, when he turned into the
attentive admirer, popping up at odd intervals and popping down again
wistfully, it is true she had liked him better. But now, the very
thought of an evening with him could bring her out of sleep in a vague
sense of excitement. It was absurd. It was pathetic. No, it was simply
revolting.
Before she reached the office, she had completely reversed this
judgment. There was nothing revolting about it. Perfectly right and
natural. Norman Birtley was quite decent; he liked her, admired her,
perhaps was in love with her; and she had every right to look forward
to an evening with him, to an evening out with anybody (except girls
from the Club, sharing Pit seats and sandwiches), for that matter.
The 13 bus, grinding away through the slight fog, agreed with this
conclusion, hinted that she was too proud, and seemed to say that for
its part it took all it could get, like the stout-hearted Cockney
it was. There was some fog too in the City, and it was a raw yellow
morning for Angel Pavement. Everybody in the office yawned a good deal
and was rather irritable for the first two hours. It was that sort of
morning. The rest of the day was more comfortable, but dull and slow,
lumbering towards five-thirty like a stupefied elephant. Miss Matfield
had not much to do. Mr. Golspie was out all day, and it was he who
usually kept her busy. Mr. Dersingham, who found himself getting pink
and flustered when Miss Matfield coolly stared at him and waited, with
a kind of ironic resignation, for his next halting sentence, preferred
to dictate his letters, whenever possible, to little Poppy Sellers, in
whose eyes, as he rightly suspected, he was a large fine gentleman.
The only amusing thing that happened in the afternoon was that poor
Mr. Smeeth, returning importantly and fussily from the bank, tried to
tell them a funny story he had heard there and completely failed to
bring out the point. He was rather pathetic, Mr. Smeeth. After that
there were huge blank spaces, during which yellow wisps of fog seemed
to creep into one’s mind. But she was able to get away early and have a
really good Burpenfield bath, tons of hot water, before changing.
She was quite ready when the message came that Mr. Birtley was waiting
below. In the corridor she ran into Kersey, one of the depressing old
inhabitants who, as usual, was trailing along with a kettle. She meant
well--poor old thing--but she had a horrid trick of saying things that
depressed you at once.
“Hello, Matfield,” she droned damply. “Going out, are you? That’s the
way. You have to enjoy yourself sometimes, haven’t you? That’s right,
dee-ar.”
This was Kersey’s usual speech if she saw that you were dressed to
go out. She had another speech ready for you if she saw you were not
dressed. “Not going out to-night, eh, Matfield? No, I thought not.
Well, you can’t expect to go out every night, can you, dee-ar?” And you
left her drooping there, with her kettle, but not before she had set
your spirits drooping too, whether you were staying in or going out. It
was as if the horrible future addressed a few remarks to you.
Norman Birtley was waiting in the lounge, looking very tall, very
awkward, very uncomfortable. Round the fire was the usual set, two
or three of the bright young ones with Ingleton-Dodd lounging in the
middle of them. Ingleton-Dodd was a large woman, about forty, with a
curious white face, her hair plastered back, severe mannish clothes,
and a bass voice. She seemed to have more money than anybody else in
the Club, and owned quite a good little car, about which she talked
a great deal. She was talking about it, or about some car, when Miss
Matfield walked in.
“Oh, the man was a complete fool,” she was saying, in that deep bass
voice of hers. “I told him to have a look at the mag. ‘Put the mag
right,’ I told him, ‘and the whole thing will be right. Clean those
points a bit, to start with.’ By this time, he’d taken the mag out and
was staring at it like a stuck pig.”
“Marvellous!” cried one of the bright children. They all thought
Ingleton-Dodd “the very last word.”
“‘Oh, give it to me,’ I said, and snatched it out of his hand. Then I
sent for the manager. ‘Look here,’ I said to him, ‘does anybody in this
place know how to time a mag?’ You should have seen his face.”
Awful creature! _She_ ought to have seen Norman Birtley’s face.
He was looking at Ingleton-Dodd with fascinated repulsion written
clearly on his simple and expressive features. He greeted Miss
Matfield confusedly, dropping his hat when he shook hands. His hands
were hot and damp, and there was a glint of perspiration on his pink
forehead. He had not changed at all, except that he now wore rimless
eyeglasses and his sandy moustache was a trifle more in evidence. He
was only a year or so older than Miss Matfield and, as he was far less
sophisticated than she was, not at all at home in London, which he only
visited at long intervals, she felt the older of the two.
“How are you, Lilian?” he inquired, smiling nervously. “You’re looking
very well.”
“Am I? I don’t feel it. I’m feeling pretty foul.”
“You’re not, are you?” He looked at her anxiously. “What’s wrong? You
haven’t got anything the matter with you, have you? Are you seeing a
doctor?”
This obvious concern ought to have pleased her, for it was very
flattering. But these questions, demanding as they did a definite
answer, a disease or two, only irritated her. It was understood at
the Burpenfield that you were nearly always pretty foul, with nothing
exactly wrong with you perhaps, but nevertheless in a fairly permanent
state of being worn out, nerve-racked, tottering on the brink of
something ghastly. Miss Matfield had forgotten that this simple visitor
from the country knew nothing of this convention.
“Oh, I’m all right really, I suppose,” she replied, dismissing the
subject. “Shall we go now? Where do you propose to take me, Norman?
Have you any plans?” She moved to the door.
“Well, I didn’t know exactly what to do. I suppose I ought to have
asked you first, but there wasn’t time. There seems to be a rather good
show on at the Colladium this week, so I got two seats for that, second
house. Do you like music halls?”
“Not bad. It all depends.”
“A fellow I was talking to at the hotel said it was a very good show,
so I thought that would be all right. But if you don’t want to go, I
suppose I can get rid of the tickets, can’t I?”
“No, that will be all right. I’d like to go,” she told him. They were
walking down the hill now, towards Finchley Road.
“Good. And about dinner,” he continued, struggling laboriously with
his duties as host. “I thought we might go to a place in Soho. Old
Warwick--he’s our principal at the Chestervern Agricultural, and he’s
been here a good deal--told me there was a good little place, one of
those French or Italian places, you know, a bit bohemian but very good
cooking--I’ve got the name and address in my book and I’ll find it in a
minute. Anyhow, I thought, if you didn’t mind, we might go there.”
“All right,” she replied, not very enthusiastically. Some of those
little Soho places were rather foul, and old Warwick of the Chestervern
Agricultural might not be a very good judge. “Let’s go there, and you
can dig out the name and address on the way. We’ll hurry and catch a
bus.”
“Oh, will a bus be all right?” he cried, obviously relieved. “I thought
perhaps we might have to take a taxi.”
“No, a bus will do,” she told him. A taxi, though, would have done a
great deal better. She loved riding in taxis. Perhaps--who knows?--if
Mr. Birtley had insisted upon their having a taxi, the whole evening
might have been different.
Once again she went jogging down the long hill, past the sudden sparkle
of Swiss Cottage, the genteel gloom of St. John’s Wood, and a Baker
Street that was now like a series of captivating peepshows. They did
not talk much inside the bus, which was full and uncommonly noisy,
but he shouted a few questions about the Club and Ingleton-Dodd (whom
he regarded with horror) and the office and her father and mother,
and she screamed fairly adequate if brief replies. Her spirits rose
when they actually arrived in Soho, for though she had some mournful
memories of its _table d’hôte_ and had been in London long enough to
be sceptical about its romantic bohemianism, she could not resist the
place itself, the glimpses of foreign interiors, the windows filled
with outlandish foodstuffs, chianti flasks, and bundles of long
cheroots, the happy foolish little decorations, the strange speech, the
dark faces, the girls leaning out of the first-floor windows. It was
quite a long time since she had last walked along Old Compton Street.
It made her sigh for an adventure. Meanwhile, that very evening took
on a faint colouring of adventure while they were still searching for
old Warwick’s restaurant, though, with all the good will in the world,
she could not transform Norman Birtley, fresh from the Chestervern
Agricultural College, into a romantic and adventurous companion.
At last, they found old Warwick’s restaurant. It might have been French
or Italian or even Spanish or Hungarian; there was no telling; but it
was determinedly foreign in a de-nationalised fashion, rather as if
the League of Nations had invented it. No sooner was Norman’s hand on
the door than a very fierce-looking, moustachioed, square-jawed Latin
flung it open very quickly and with a great flourish, so that they were
almost sucked in. The place was very small, rather warm, and smelt of
oil. The lights were shaded with coloured crinkly paper. There were
only four other people there, two oldish tired girls masticating rather
hopelessly in the far corner, and a queer middle-aged couple sitting
almost in the window. The fierce Latin swept them across to a tiny
table, thrust menus into their hands, rubbed his hands, changed all the
cutlery round and then put it all back again, rubbed his hands once
more and then suddenly lost all interest in them, as if his business
was simply to drag people in and then, having got them seated, to
create a momentary illusion of brisk service before they had time to
change their minds.
“You can have the whole dinner for three and sixpence,” said Norman,
looking up from his menu. “Wonderful how they do it in these places,
isn’t it? I mean to say, what would you get in an English restaurant
for that? Nothing worth eating, I’ll bet. But these foreigners can do
it. Of course, it’s their job. They know how to cook. Shall we have the
dinner?”
Miss Matfield thought that they might, and looked about her, not very
hopefully, while Norman gave the order to a waitress, a very tall fat
girl with a chalky face and no features, who had just appeared. The
queer middle-aged couple looked queerer still now, for the man appeared
to be dyed and the woman enamelled and it was incredible that they
should ever eat food at all. You felt they ought to feed on wood and
paint.
Having given the order, Mr. Birtley was now looking about him too,
and when he had finished doing this and had obviously noted the more
picturesque details for the benefit of the other members of the staff
of the Chestervern Agricultural College, he beamed at her through his
rimless eyeglasses. “Nothing I enjoy better than studying these queer
types,” he whispered. “A place like this is a treat to me, if only for
that reason. Old Warwick told me I’d enjoy that part of it. He’s had
some very funny experiences in his time. I must try to remember some
of the yarns he’s told me, once or twice when I’ve been sitting up with
him over a pipe at the Chestervern.”
While Miss Matfield was asking idly what sort of man Mr. Warwick was
and Norman was telling her, the waitress had brought them the two
halves of a grapefruit, the juice of which had apparently been used
some time before. They had not finished with old Warwick, who seemed to
Miss Matfield a silly old man, when the waitress returned to give them
some mysterious thick soup, which looked like gum but had a rather less
pronounced flavour.
Miss Matfield tried three spoonfuls and then looked with horror at her
plate. Something was there, something small, dark, squashed. There were
legs. She pushed the plate away.
“What’s the matter, Lilian? Don’t you like the soup?”
She pointed with her spoon at the alien body.
Mr. Birtley leaned across and peered at it through his glasses. “No,
by George, it isn’t, is it? Is it really? Oh, I say, that’s not good
enough, is it? That’s the worst of these foreigners. Do you think I
ought to tell them about it?”
“If you don’t, I will,” said Miss Matfield indignantly. “Absolutely
revolting!”
But there was nobody to tell. Even the fierce Latin had disappeared. It
seemed as if when soup was served, the whole staff hid in the kitchen.
Miss Matfield was sure now that her first instinctive disapproval had
been right, as usual. This was a foul little place. Unfortunately, she
was really hungry, having had a very small lunch.
The next member of the staff they did see obviously could not be blamed
for the soup, for he was the wine waiter, an ancient gloomy foreigner.
He padded across to Mr. Birtley, who was trying not very successfully
to explain a very funny thing that had happened last term at the
College, held out a wine list decorated with dirty thumb marks, and
waited apathetically.
“A-ha!” cried Mr. Birtley jovially. “Let’s have something to drink,
shall we? Do you think we could manage a whole bottle? I think we
could. Yes, let’s have a whole bottle. Now then, what is there? Will
you have red or white wine, Lilian? It’s all the same to me.”
“I’d like red, I think,” she replied. “Burgundy perhaps.” It was more
sustaining. After all, with bread and butter and some burgundy, it
might be possible to stun one’s appetite. She had no hopes of the
dinner.
“Burgundy it is,” cried Mr. Birtley, with the air of a reckless
musketeer. “All right, then. A bottle of Number Eleven. Beaune.”
“You geef me moanay,” murmured the ancient foreigner.
“Righto. Money. There you are.” And then he gave Miss Matfield a wink
and smiled at her. She smiled back, softening towards him a little, for
he was so obviously enjoying himself and thinking it all so wonderful.
Poor Norman!
“You ought to come and see us at the College next time you’re home,
Lilian,” he said. “You’d like it. We’ve got one or two amusing fellows
on the staff, and the students aren’t a bad crowd. We have little
dances sometimes, and tennis in the summer. It’s growing too. In a
year or two, if I can scrape up some money, I may get a partnership.
Not bad, eh? The fact is,” and he lowered his voice, as if to keep
these confidences away from the waitress, who had just deposited some
microscopic pieces of fish in front of them and was still standing
near, as if to see if they would have the audacity to eat them, “the
fact is, I can get on better with old Warwick than any of the other
fellows. He’s taken rather a fancy to me, thinks I’ve got more drive
than the others. And as a matter of fact,” he added, looking earnestly
at her, “I have. And I wish you’d come and look me up down there.”
She said she would, if she could manage it, and then explained, while
the ancient foreigner poured out the wine, how difficult it was to
do all one wanted to do, what with one thing and another, and then,
fortified by the burgundy and determined to drive old Warwick out of
the conversation for a time, she went on to tell him more about the
office and the Club. He listened attentively, though with just the
faintest suggestion of patronage. Obviously he thought a good deal
more of himself these days, now that he had made such a hit with his
old Warwick of the Chestervern Agricultural. But then all men were
alike in that: they all thought they were marvellous. However, she
could tell from the way he looked at her that he still thought she was
marvellous too, which was very pleasant. She could feel herself getting
steadily better looking and more attractive.
This could not be said about the dinner. The chicken was not
marvellous, was not even pleasant. Like many other places in Soho,
this restaurant evidently had a contract that compelled it to accept
only those parts of a chicken that could not be called breast, wing,
or leg. It specialised in chicken skin. The salad could be eaten, but
its green stuff seemed to have been grown in some London back garden
behind a sooty privet hedge. The sweet was composed of a very small
ice, the paper in which it had been delivered from the van at the back
door, and some coloured water that might have been part of the ice two
hours before. That was the dinner, a miserable affair. Even Norman
seemed to have a suspicion that it had not been very good, but he did
not apologise for it, perhaps out of loyalty to old Warwick. Miss
Matfield, in despair, had had two full glasses of the burgundy, a raw
and potent concoction, which had produced at once a rather muzzy effect
in her mind so that everything seemed a little larger and noisier than
usual. Once, just before the coffee, she had found herself wanting to
giggle at the thought of Norman taking his sandy moustache back to
Chestervern and old Warwick. The coffee, black and bitter, stopped all
that nonsense. They smoked a cigarette together over it, and Norman,
with tiny beads of perspiration on his ruddy forehead and his glasses
slightly misty, talked about old times and smiled sentimentally across
the cruet at her.
It was time to be gone. The Latin suddenly decided to notice their
existence again, brought the bill, accepted money, proffered change,
swept away the tip, and then apparently threw them both into the
street, where the air seemed at once remarkably pure and unusually
cold. They arrived at the Colladium just at the right moment, a few
minutes after the doors had been opened for the second house. The
place was, as usual, besieged by a mob of pleasure seekers who all
looked like demons in the red glare of the lights at the entrance.
Norman led the way, a little uncertainly, and they went swarming down
thick-carpeted corridors.
“Didn’t that man say ‘Round to the left and up the stairs’?” Miss
Matfield asked. She had a slight headache now. Those peculiar red
lights outside the Colladium look exactly like a headache, and perhaps
they had inspired the burgundy. “I’m sure he did, you know.”
“I didn’t hear him,” replied Norman, not too amiably. He was somewhat
fussed. “Talking to somebody else, p’raps.”
Feeling a little dubious, she followed him down the gangway on the
ground floor of the auditorium, which looked as if it were recovering
from a fire, there was so much smoke about. There were programme girls
showing people to their seats, but you had to wait your turn and
Norman, anxious to secure his two beautiful seats, would not wait his
turn. He marched on, glancing at his tickets and the lettered rows of
stalls, then finally found the row he wanted, and they pushed past a
few people, sought and found the right numbers, and sank into their
seats.
“This is all right, isn’t it?” said Norman, after breathing a sigh of
relief. “Jolly good seats, eh?” He looked round triumphantly. More
lights were being turned on; the orchestra was beginning to tune up
again; and the place was filling rapidly. Miss Matfield’s headache
retreated, dwindled to an occasional twinge.
“What about a programme?” said Norman, and began to make vague, fussy,
ineffectual signs.
Then two large determined men, coarse-looking fellows with heavy
jowls and cigars stuck in the corners of their insensitive mouths,
came pushing down the row. They stopped when they came to Mr. Birtley
and Miss Matfield. “Here, I say,” the first one called back to the
programme girl, after looking at his ticket, “is this the right row?”
Apparently it was, for now he turned his attention to Norman.
“I think you’re sitting in the wrong seats, my friend,” he said, not
unpleasantly.
“I don’t think so,” replied Norman, rather sharply. He brought out his
own tickets and gave them a reassuring glance.
“Well, I do,” said the other. He had a loud voice, the kind of voice
that attracts attention. “Row F, fourteen and fifteen. Isn’t that
right? Well, those are my seats, bought and paid for. Ask the girl. She
sent us here.”
“I don’t see that,” said Norman stiffly. “Mine are Row F, fourteen and
fifteen. And we were here first. They must have made a mistake at the
box office.”
Miss Matfield had risen from her seat. People were looking round at
them. If there was anything she hated, it was this stupid sort of scene.
The second large determined man, who had nothing like the amount of
room to stand in his bulk demanded and deserved, now made a number
of impatient noises. These noises goaded his friend into more direct
action.
“Here, come on,” he said roughly, “let’s have a look at your tickets.
Here are mine. Now let’s have a look at yours.” He almost snatched them
out of Norman’s hand. The instant he saw them, he cried triumphantly:
“There y’are. Balcony Stalls, _Bal-cony_ Stalls. These aren’t Balcony
Stalls. Cor!--you’re in the wrong part of the theatre, boy, in the
wrong part of the theatre.”
“Wouldjer believe it!” cried the second man contemptuously.
“Cor! Up there you want to be, right up there, boy.”
“Sorry. I didn’t know.” Poor Norman was very flustered now. Miss
Matfield might have been sorry for him, but she wasn’t. She was
furious. Even after they had left the seats and were pushing their way
back to the gangway, the two brutes were still talking about it and
laughing and making contemptuous noises. Then as she arrived, scarlet,
in the gangway, she ran into a little party of three that was waiting
to be shown to its place. The first was a tall man with a bristling
moustache, obviously a foreigner; the second was a youngish girl, very
smart and pretty; and the third, who was still interviewing the girl
with the chocolates was--yes, no other--Mr. Golspie, rather flushed,
very jovial. There was some congestion in this part of the gangway;
they had to stop; and he looked up and saw her.
“Evening, Miss Matfield,” he said, grinning at her in his usual
fashion. “So this is where we come, is it?”
She stammered something.
“Had a good day at the office? You’ll see me there to-morrow. Half a
minute, Lena. Well, Miss Matfield, see you enjoy yourself. Here, take
one of these.”
She found one of the boxes of chocolates in her hand. Before she could
do anything or even say anything, he had given her another of his vast
grins and had turned away. As she followed Norman up the gangway, most
of the lights were lowered and the overture blared out. Their seats
were in the first tier and by the time they found them, the curtain had
risen and the stage was occupied by three very grave young men who were
busy throwing one another about.
“That was a bit of a mix-up, wasn’t it?” said Norman, when they had
settled themselves. “But it wasn’t really my fault. They should give
their seats proper names. I’ve never heard of stalls being up here.”
“Well, you might have asked. I told you what that man said.”
“By George, so you did. Sorry! But, I say, who was that rum looking
chap you were talking to down there?”
“He’s a man who’s just joined the firm I’m working with. I do his
letters.”
“Didn’t he give you that box of chocolates?”
“Yes, he did. As a matter of fact, he just shoved it into my hand.”
“Funny thing to do,” Norman continued, half resentfully. “What did he
want to do that for?”
“I don’t know. You’d better ask him.” She stared at the three young
men, who were now climbing on to piles of chairs and tables in order to
throw one another a greater distance.
“I must say I didn’t like the look of him very much.”
“That’s sad, isn’t it, Norman?” replied Miss Matfield. “Hadn’t you
better call at the office to-morrow morning and tell him so? What had I
better do? Get another job?”
“You don’t mean to tell me you like that chap?”
“I don’t know whether I do or not,” she told him, with perfect truth.
But her voice betrayed irritation. “It doesn’t matter, anyhow. I’ll
admit, though,” she added, more amiably, “that he does look a bit
weird. But he’s rather amusing. Have one of his chocolates, seeing that
they’re here, and don’t talk so much.”
The subject was dropped and when they talked again, as they did at odd
moments throughout the performance, Mr. Golspie was not mentioned.
The show itself was neither better nor worse than the others she had
seen there. She liked the white-faced clown with the squeaky voice who
nearly fell into the orchestra pit, and the two men who got involved
in the most passionate argument all about nothing, and the Spanish
dancers, and the wildly ridiculous schoolmaster. On the other hand, she
did not like the American cross-talking and dancing pair, or the two
girls who sang at the piano or the various acrobats and trick cyclists.
Norman, who soon recovered from the ticket scene and settled down to
enjoy himself, to like as much as he could of the show and to patronise
the rest, was rather more human than he had been during the misery
of dinner. Old Warwick was banished at last, and the dull shade of
Chestervern never fell on the talk.
When they came out of the Colladium into the astonishing sanity of the
night, and Norman not only suggested a taxi but actually found one,
she felt she was beginning to feel friendly towards him again. And if
he had said, “You know, Lilian, I _am_ rather feeble and a bit of an
ass, and I know you’re marvellous and far above my style, but I’ve been
in love with you a jolly long time and still am, honestly I am, worse
than ever in fact, so will you marry me? I’m not doing anything very
wonderful, I know, and you might easily find it dull at first down at
Chestervern, but we’d have some fun and things would get better all
the time”; if he had said something like that, in the proper tone of
voice--rather wistful--and with a dumbly devoted look in his eyes, she
felt there was no telling what she might reply. She could just see
herself marrying him.
But he made no such speech, and was clearly not in that dumbly devoted
mood at all. All the way home, he was vaguely sentimental--what fun
they’d had in the old tennis club days and what good pals they’d
been!--and was timidly amorous, like some faint-hearted Don Juan taking
one home after a dance. Unluckily, Miss Matfield was not sentimental,
at least not on conventional or Christmas card lines, and she heartily
despised and disliked the timidly amorous male, who could not let
one alone but had not passion enough, or courage, to make him risk a
sound snubbing. He would slip an arm round her waist and she would
tell him to take it away because it was uncomfortable, as indeed it
was. And then he would say, “Ah, Lilian, you’re not very kind to me,”
in a ridiculous mooing voice, like a farm hand trying to ape the
artful philanderer. It was all terribly irritating. When at last, as
the taxi began grinding up the last hilly half mile, she was so tired
of this that she actually asked him questions about his prospects at
Chestervern, dropping into the part of the cool interested woman friend
with a sound business head, he turned rather sulky and answered her in
a poor half-hearted fashion.
“I suppose I can get a bus back?” he said as they stood at the entrance
to the Burpenfield and the taxi departed.
“Oh, yes, of course. Just at the bottom there, on the Finchley Road.
They run until after twelve, and they’re much quicker at this time of
night, too. You’re going back to-morrow, aren’t you?”
“Yes, on the 10.20. I suppose I’d better be getting along now. Rather
cold standing here, isn’t it?”
“Well, Norman,” she said, trying to look bright and friendly and not
ungrateful, “it’s been nice seeing you again. And thanks awfully for
the dinner and everything. I adored that clown with the chairs, didn’t
you? Good-bye.”
He shook hands. “Good-bye. I’m glad you liked it,” he muttered.
“Good-bye.”
She stood in the entrance a minute or two after he had gone, fumbling
for her key, and suddenly from that great ocean of deep depression
which she always felt was not far away, rose in the dark a great
breaker and swept her away. She could have cried. It was not Norman
Birtley--he was a feeble fool who was rapidly getting worse--but the
endless cheating of life itself that frightened her and stifled her.
She was Lilian Matfield, Lilian Matfield, the same that had gone
playing and laughing and singing and looking forward to everything
only a few years ago, no different now except a little older and more
sensible, and yet she felt, obscurely, darkly, that somehow she was
being conjured into somebody miserably different, somebody stiff and
faded and dull.
Another girl came up. Miss Matfield steadied herself, found her key,
and walked in. Isabel Cadnam was just coming out of the lounge, and
they met.
“Hello, Matfield. Been on the razzle? Look here, I hope you didn’t want
that shawl I borrowed. I didn’t get in last night until the crack of
dawn, and then I was in such a hurry this morning, I forgot about it.”
“No, it didn’t matter, thanks, Caddie. I’m going up. I’m tired.”
“So am I. Had a good night. That show that Ivor took me to last
night was rather a wash-out, I must say. The most ghastly people,
and millions of them. And Ivor wanted to join in with some of the
ghastliest, and I didn’t, of course, and that started it all over
again. Another row, my dear. Isn’t it foul?”
Miss Matfield said dispiritedly that it was.
“What did you do to-night, Matfield? Anything thrilling?”
“Not very. Rather dull, in fact. I’ve got a headache. I think I’ve
eaten too many chocolates. I’ll try some aspirin.”
“Nothing like it,” said Miss Cadnam. “Look here, I’ll fetch your shawl
and bring it round, and then, if you have any to spare, I’ll borrow
a couple of aspirins. If I don’t take _something_, I’ll never get a
wink of sleep all night. It’s always the same after I’ve had a row with
Ivor. I begin _arguing_ with him the minute I get to bed, and then I go
on and on all night until I think my head’s going to burst. Isn’t it
foul?”
“Completely,” said Miss Matfield, opening her door. “All right, then.
Hurry up with the shawl and I’ll get you the aspirin.” She closed the
door behind her.