“Hello, Matfield! What sort of a Christmas did _you_ have?”
“Oh, the usual thing, you know--rather feeble.”
“Do anything special?”
“No, just stodged and sat about and yawned. Stayed in bed every morning
for breakfast and never got up till nearly lunch time. That was about
the best thing that happened. What about you?”
“Oh, awful!” replied the other girl, Miss Preston, who worked at the
Levantine Bank, but based her claim to attention at the Club on the
fact that her brother, under another name, was a well-known actor. He
had visited the Club twice, and each time Preston’s reputation had
soared. “The minute I got home I started the vilest cold, and then
Archie--my brother, you know, the actor--had promised to come for
Christmas, but wired at the last second that he couldn’t.”
“Hard luck!” cried Miss Matfield, but not with much conviction. You had
to give out so much sympathy at the Burpenfield that you were apt to
become very mechanical, and if something really terrible and tragic had
happened there, if, for example, half a dozen girls had gone down with
ptomaine poisoning, the other girls would probably have been struck
dumb, having over-worked so long all the possible expressions of pity
and horror.
Now they were all discussing their holidays. The youngish ones, who had
probably enjoyed themselves thoroughly, were mostly going about crying
“Vile! Absolutely ghastly, my dear!” The oldish ones, the lonely hot
water bottle enthusiasts, who had probably had nothing but a mocking
shadow of a Christmas, were busy pretending, with a strained creaking
brightness, that they had had a wonderful time. The members in between
these two groups, such as Miss Matfield, gave fairly truthful accounts.
The entrance hall, the lounge, the stairs and the corridors above, all
buzzed with these descriptions. The Burpenfield Club was returning to
its normal life. With admirable forethought, Miss Tattersby had pinned
up half a dozen new notices all written in her most exclamatory and
sardonic style, and already these notices, especially a very bitter and
tyrannical one about washing stockings and handkerchiefs, were feeding
the mounting flames of talk. “My dear, but _have_ you seen Tatters’
latest?” they cried, along the landings and in and out of their little
bedrooms.
Miss Matfield went up to her little room, found a space on the wall
for two framed Medici prints she had brought back from home, cleared
out of her tiny bookshelf several books she had borrowed and forgotten
to return, and put in their place some books she had contrived to
borrow during the holidays. There were two travel books and three
novels or romances, and all three stories had for their settings such
places as Borneo and the South Seas. This was not a mere coincidence.
Miss Matfield liked her fiction to be full of jungles, coral reefs,
plantations, lagoons, hibiscus flowers, the scent of vanilla,
schooners on the wide Pacific, tropical nights. So long as the young
man was first shown to her dressed in white and lounging on a verandah,
while a noiseless brown figure brought him something long and cool to
drink, she was ready to follow his love story to the end. If the story
had no love in it but had the right exotic setting, she would read it,
but she preferred a fairly strong love interest. She had not bad taste,
and if the story was written for her by Joseph Conrad, so much the
better; but she was ready to endure if not to delight in authors of a
very different cut from Conrad if they would only give her the jungles
and lagoons and coral reefs and mysterious brown faces. The worst story
about Malaysia was preferable to the best story about Marylebone.
She did all her reading on the bus to and from the office, in some
teashop at lunch time, and in bed, and as her one desire was to escape
from any further consideration of buses, teashops, and girls’ club
bedrooms, these stories of the other end of the world, strange, savage,
beautiful, might have been specially created for her; indeed, many of
them were. She never admitted that she had a passion for these exotic
and adventurous tales. She did homage to them negatively by looking
through other and very different novels, novels about London and
Worcestershire, and then sneering heavily at them. A long acquaintance
with these heroes in bungalows and schooners and bars run by Chinese
had gradually shaped and coloured her attitude towards men, though
here again she admitted nothing and only paid these distant creatures
a negative tribute, by criticizing adversely the fellows who were
quite different and much nearer home. The idea of a man that warmed
her secret heart was that of the strong, adventurous, roving male with
a background of alien scenes, of little ships and fantastic drinking
haunts. If she married him, she might want to domesticate him in that
beautiful old country house in which she had spent so many imaginary
Christmasses, but he would have to be that kind of man first, and not
born in captivity.
It was not possible to change her room very much--though she always
tried after being away--because it was far too small; it was like
trying to re-arrange three or four toys in a boot-box; but now, as
before, she did what she could. She had come back determined, as she
told herself, to fight against the Burpenfield atmosphere. No more
drooping and whining, no more waiting for something to turn up while
you knew all the time it wouldn’t, no more wistful hanging about on
the roadside of life! She would lead a real life of her own, full,
adventurous, gay. This was not the first time--alas!--she had come back
to the Club with such a resolution and had promptly tried to change her
room about as an early outward sign of it; but now it was different;
she was older, more experienced, and this time she meant it. Moreover,
she had now a total of five pounds a week instead of four pounds ten,
for they had given her a ten-shilling rise at the office, and though
she had told her father, he had only congratulated her (with that tired
smile and that faint irony which frequently accompany long experience
of a general medical practice, that constant round of births and
deaths), and had not proposed cutting down his allowance of six pounds
a month. Any girl at the Burpenfield would have instantly appreciated
the profound distinction between five pounds a week and four pounds ten
shillings, for whereas on four pounds ten you have still to be careful,
on five pounds you can really begin to splash about a bit.
“Well, if you ask me, Mattie,” said Miss Cadnam, who had looked in
and had been promptly told about this new mood, “you’re absolutely
_rolling_. I only get four, you know, including what I get from home,
when they don’t forget, and I know if I suddenly got an extra pound,
I’d simply break out in all directions. Do you know, Ivor only gets
six pounds a week, that’s all. Don’t say anything, of course. He’d be
furious if he knew I’d told anybody--men are awfully silly about things
like that, aren’t they?--terribly secretive--but honestly that’s all he
gets, and he seems to have an awful lot to spend.”
Miss Matfield shut a drawer with a bang, turned to face her visitor,
and looked very determined. “I always think this time that’s coming
now--the next two months or so--the foulest part of the whole year.
Awful weather, cold and slush and everything, and Easter and spring a
long time away, and nothing happening very much, and it’s just the time
when, if you let yourself go, you get depressed beyond words.”
“I absolutely agree,” said Miss Cadnam earnestly.
“Well, I’ve made up my mind this time I’m not going to have it. If
things don’t happen, I’ll _make_ them happen. If anybody asks me to go
anywhere or do anything that’s at all decent, I shall accept. I shall
go to theatres and concerts more, and if there’s any dancing about, I’m
having it. By the way, mother’s given me what seems to me _rather_ a
nice dress. I’ll show it to you. The only thing I’m not certain about
is the length at the front. What do you think?”
There was a short interlude, during which the dress was held up, pulled
down, examined, and finally approved.
“Anyhow, that’s _my_ programme, Caddie,” said Miss Matfield, after the
dress had been put away again. “I’ve come to the conclusion that one
gives in too much--I don’t mean that you do, my dear, because you’re
one of the very few people here who definitely don’t--it’s something in
the Burpenfield atmosphere that does it, sort of saps your initiative
and makes you frightened--and if you let yourself drift here, it’s
fatal. I’m not going to have it. And that’s to-day’s great thought and
resolution, Caddie.”
“Good! I always come back feeling like that. You know, feeling I must
start all over again _somehow_, whether it’s leading a gay life or
leading a quiet life or what it is.”
There was a tap on the door, which opened to admit the head of Miss
Morrison. “Hello, Matfield. Hello, Cadnam. Is this terribly private?
Sure?” She came in. “This is to announce that I’ve changed my room and
am now your neighbour, four doors down on the other side.”
“That’s Spilsby’s room,” said Miss Matfield.
“It was, but is Spilsby’s no longer. Spilsby is not coming back.
She’s going to New Zealand or Australia, I forget which, and it’s
just the place for her, whichever it is. I’ve discovered Spilsby’s
secret vice--reading those American magazines that you can buy cheap at
Woolworth’s and other places, you know the kind--Western Yarns with a
Punch.”
“I know,” cried Miss Cadnam. “But not Spilsby?”
“Spilsby. She’d bought hundreds of them. I’ve just had them turfed out.
You couldn’t move for them. All Westerns or the big wild North-West
or the red-blooded Yukon, all bunches of gripping yarns with a punch.
Spilsby was a red-blooded Western addict--Revolting! Are you sure you
wouldn’t like some, Matfield, before they’re all gone? You look a bit
fierce to-night.”
“She is,” said Miss Cadnam. “Aren’t you, Mattie? She’s just been
telling me that she’s come back full of grand resolutions.”
“Ugh!” Miss Morrison looked disgusted. “Don’t tell me you’ve made up
your mind to spend all your evenings learning Italian and German or
something like that.”
“You’re quite wrong.”
“Quite.”
“Thank the Lord for that,” said Miss Morrison. “It would have been
completely foul. Besides, you’re not young enough and not old enough,
if you see what I mean, for that sort of thing. When I was a few years
younger, I used to come back full of good intentions and ambition and
tell myself I was going to learn commercial Spanish or qualify as an
accountant or something equally crazy. You feel like that after the
holidays. But what’s this new attitude?”
It was explained to her, and she listened with a dubious smile on her
smooth pale face. “Ah, my children,” she said, “I like to hear you
talk. I, too, have felt like that in my time. It won’t work.”
“In your time! Why, Morrison, I’m two years older than you at least,”
cried Miss Matfield.
“And I’m nearly as old as you, Morrison,” said Miss Cadnam. “I’m
getting terribly old.”
“It isn’t just the years, little ones. It’s the experience. You make
me feel old with your charming youthful illusions. However, I’m all
for you leading a dashing worldly life, Matfield. I’m all in favour
of you going to the devil, for that matter. How do you do it, by the
way? I used to hear an awful lot of vague talk about the temptations
of a poor girl’s life in London. Where do they come in? Nobody ever
tempts me. The only temptations I have are to steal some of my worthy
employeress’s terribly expensive bath salts when I’m allowed to enter
her bathroom to wash my hands, and--there must be something else--yes,
not to give the bus conductor my penny when he doesn’t ask for it. What
chance have I then to be really virtuous or to be wicked either? I
admit, Matfield, that you’re different. You go down to the great City,
to begin with, and meet mysterious men on romantic ships----”
“When was this?” cried Miss Cadnam. “Did you, Mattie, or is she making
it up?”
“Quiet, child! You will understand in time. And then again, my dear
Matfield, you have a _look_. I don’t say you look terribly marvellous,
my dear----”
“I don’t pretend to,” Miss Matfield told her.
“But there’s a _something_--a hint, you might say, of dark, wild
forces. I don’t suppose you have any, really, but there’s a _look_.
That’s where you completely beat me. I haven’t that look at all,
whereas if people only knew what I was _really_ like---- Well, never
mind. But you have it, though if I were you--particularly now, when
you’ve made up your mind to be a One--I should do my hair rather
differently. You ought to have it out at the side more. I’ll show you
what I mean. You watch, Cadnam, and see if you don’t agree.”
“Ye-es, I think you’re probably right,” said Miss Matfield finally.
“By the way,” said Miss Morrison, “there’s a dance here on New Year’s
Eve. And as nobody has asked me anywhere else, I think I’ll go, and
I might be able to persuade a couple of men I know vaguely to look
in. They’re not very bright lads, but they’re energetic and harmless
and better than nothing. What about you, Matfield? A dance at the
Burpenfield is perhaps hardly a proper start on the downward path--but
still, you never know.”
“Oh yes, I’ll be there,” said Miss Matfield. But she wasn’t.