Elsie found the life at 8, Mortimer Crescent, a pleasant contrast to
that of her own home.
Mrs. Woolley herself never came downstairs before half-past nine or
ten o’clock, and then she was very often only partly dressed, wearing
a stained and rumpled silk kimono and a dirty lace-and-ribbon-trimmed
boudoir cap. Elsie’s only duty in the morning was to keep the two
children quiet while their mother slept. This she achieved by the
simple expedient of letting them go to bed so late at night that they
lay like little logs far on into the morning.
Elsie shared a bedroom with Gladys, and Sonnie’s cot was in a
dressing-room opening into theirs.
The children were rather pallid and unwholesome, never quite free from
colds or coughs, and seeming too spiritless even to be naughty. They
went to a kindergarten school from eleven to four o’clock every day,
and Elsie took them there and fetched them away again.
During the daytime she was supposed to dust the dining-room,
drawing-room, and Mrs. Woolley’s bedroom, but she soon found out that
no accumulation of dust, cigarette ends, or actual dirt would ever be
noticed by the mistress of the house.
There was a general servant, who was inclined to resent Elsie’s
presence in the house, and who left very soon after her arrival.
Another one came, and was sent away at the end of a week’s trial
because Mrs. Woolley said she was impertinent, and after an
uncomfortable interim, during which Elsie nominally “did” the cooking,
and they lived upon tinned goods and pressed beef, there came a
short-lived succession of maids who never stayed.
At first, Doctor Woolley was seldom seen by Elsie. He went out early,
and both he and his wife were out nearly every night.
Mrs. Woolley told Elsie that they adored the theatre. Elsie, who adored
it too, had on these occasions, after putting the two children to bed,
to remain sulkily behind while Dr. and Mrs. Woolley, after an early
meal, walked away together to the Underground station. Sometimes Dr.
Woolley was sent for, and could not go, and Mrs. Woolley rang up one
of her friends on the telephone--always another woman--and took her
instead. One evening after this had happened, the doctor returned
unexpectedly early, just as Elsie had finished putting Gladys and
Sonnie to bed.
She was coming downstairs, some needlework in her hands, as the doctor
slammed the hall door behind him. Instantly the prospect of a dreary
evening, probably to be spent in sucking sweets and surreptitiously
looking over everything on Mrs. Woolley’s untidy writing-table,
disappeared.
“Hallo! And how was you to-morrow, Miss Elsie?” cried the doctor
genially.
He was a stout, middle-aged man, jocose and very often foul-mouthed,
with nicotine stains on his fingers and grease spots on his waistcoat.
He affected a manner of speech that Elsie found intensely amusing.
“You and I all on our ownie own, eh? Where’s the missus?--and the kids?”
“The children are in bed, and Mrs. Woolley’s gone to the play with Miss
Smith, Doctor.”
“And haven’t you got a drink of cocoa and a bit of bread for a poor
man, kind lady?”
Elsie burst out laughing. “You’re so silly, I can’t help laughing!”
“‘Silly,’ says she, quite the lady. ‘How’s that?’ says I; to which she
says, ‘Not at all,’ says she, and the same to you and many of them,”
was the doctor’s reply.
Elsie giggled wildly.
“Come along now, tell that slut in the kitchen to stir her stumps and
bring some food to the dining-room. Have you had your supper yet?”
“No, Doctor.”
“Then you and I will make a party-carry, otherwise a _tête-à-tête_,
otherwise a night of it. Run along and I’ll get out something that will
make your hair curl.”
Elsie had heard this formula before, and understood that the doctor
would unlock the door of the tiny wine-cellar and bring out a bottle.
She told the maid to bring supper for Doctor Woolley to the
dining-room, but she herself carried in her own plate and cup and
saucer, knowing that Florrie was quite aware she had already eaten her
evening meal with Mrs. Woolley.
The doctor was drawing the cork out of a bottle as she came into the
room. The electric light was turned on, and the small dining-room, with
drawn red curtains, and the gas-fire burning, was bright and hot.
The doctor ate heavily of cold meat and pickles, prodding with a fork
amongst the mixed contents of the glass jar until he had annexed all
the pickled onions that it contained.
He made Elsie sit down and eat too, but he made no demur to her
assurance that she wasn’t hungry and only wanted some cake and a cup of
cocoa.
At first the doctor gave all his attention to the food and warmth of
which he stood in need, and Elsie felt self-conscious, and as though
she were out of place.
She ceased to answer his occasional facetious interjections, and threw
herself back in her chair, gazing down at her own clasped hands.
Gradually the atmosphere of the room altered, and Elsie’s instinct told
her that the current of magnetism that had never failed her yet was
awakening its inevitable response in the man opposite.
At once she felt confident again, and at her ease.
“I say, why didn’t the missus take you to the theatre when she found I
was busy?” he queried suddenly.
“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose she never thought of such a thing.”
“Wanted someone nearer her own age, eh? You won’t find the ladies
running after someone younger and prettier than themselves, you know.
Too much of a contrast.”
Elsie laughed self-consciously.
“All the better for me, eh? I’m not often allowed to get you all to
myself like this, eh? Ah, when I was a gay young bacheldore things was
different, they was.”
Elsie laughed again, this time in spontaneous tribute to the humour of
wilful mis-pronunciation.
“Now, what about this bottle that you made me get out, eh? Where are
the glasses?”
He found two in the cupboard of the carved walnut sideboard, and poured
a liberal allowance of port from the bottle into each.
“Oh, I couldn’t, Doctor! You must excuse me, really you must. I simply
couldn’t.”
“Oh, couldn’t you, really, awfully, truly couldn’t?” he mimicked in
exaggerated falsetto. “Well, you’ve got to--so that’s _that_!”
“Who says so?”
“I say so. I. _Moi._ ‘_Je_,’ replies I, knowing the language. Come
along now, be a good girl.”
He laid his big coarse hand on hers, and at the contact the familiar
thrill of sensuous excitement and pleasure ran through her.
“Are you going to drink it?” he said masterfully.
“Oh, I suppose I must try it. I’ve never tasted wine before,” Elsie
added truthfully.
“High time you began, then.”
He went back to his place, and drank in long gulps, first saying:
“Our hands have met--our lips not yet--
Here’s hoping!”
Elsie sipped at her glass, choked, and put it down again. “How
beastly!” she said, shuddering.
“You’ll get used to it.”
“No, I shan’t, because I’m not going to touch the horrid stuff again.”
“We’ll see about that.”
He came round beside her again, and held her with one arm while he
tried to force the glass to her lips.
Elsie turned her head aside, struggling and laughing.
“You young monkey!” said the doctor, and forced her face upwards with
his free hand.
His breath was in her face, and his inflamed eyes gazing into hers.
Instinctively Elsie ceased to struggle and closed her eyes.
He kissed her mouth violently. “God! You haven’t got much to learn.
Who’s been teaching you?” he asked her roughly.
“Oh, you oughtn’t to have done that,” said Elsie feebly.
“Rubbish! You know I’ve been thinking of nothing else since you’ve been
here.”
He sat down and pulled her on to his knee. “Now tell me all about it,”
he commanded. His manner was no longer facetious, and he had dropped
his jocosities of speech.
“Let me go,” said Elsie.
“Sit still.”
“Suppose someone were to come in?”
“No one will.”
She wriggled a little, half-heartedly, and he gripped her more firmly
round the waist. The scene degenerated into a sort of scrambling orgy
of animalism.
Elsie, although she was frightened, was also exhilarated at the
evidence that she possessed power over a man--and a married man--so
much older than herself.
She knew that if at any moment he became unmanageable, she had only
to threaten to call the servant, and she fully intended to do so as
a last resort. But in the meanwhile there was an odd and breathless
fascination in feeling that she stood so close to a peril in which lay
all the lurking excitement of the unknown.
A sudden wail from the room overhead startled them both.
“That’s Sonnie!” gasped Elsie.
“Oh, blast the kid!”
But he let her go and she flew upstairs, glad, and yet disappointed, at
her release.
She dismissed Sonnie’s nightmare with sharp injunctions not to be
silly, tucked him up and decided to go to her own room and not to
return downstairs.
“That’ll show him,” she murmured, simulating to herself a conventional
indignation.
In reality, she was intensely excited, and she had been tossing about
her bed restlessly for nearly an hour before reaction overtook her, and
she became prey to a strange, baffled feeling of having been cheated of
the climax due to so emotional an episode.
When at last Elsie slept, it was after she had heard Mrs. Woolley come
in and the doctor bolt the hall door and both of them go upstairs to
their bedroom, on the other side of the landing.
Every day now held the potentialities of amorous adventure.
Sometimes Elsie did not see the doctor all day long, sometimes they met
in the evenings, with Mrs. Woolley present, and he talked in the old
facetious style, watching Elsie furtively as she giggled in response.
He very often made excuses for passing things to her at meals, so that
their hands touched, and he pressed her foot under the table with his
big one, or rubbed it up and down her ankle.
There were moments, however, when they were alone together, and then he
pulled her to him and kissed her roughly all over her face and neck,
pushing her abruptly away at the first possibility of interruption.
Once or twice, at the imminent risk of being discovered, he had
snatched hasty and provocative kisses from her lips in a chance
encounter on the stairs, or even behind the shelter of an open door.
The perpetual fear of detection, no less than the tantalising
incompleteness of their relations, was a strain upon Elsie’s nerves,
and she was keyed up to a pitch of unusual sensitiveness when the
inevitable crisis came.
Mrs. Woolley, in a new blue dress that looked too tight under the arms,
had taken the children to a party.
The maid Florrie was out for the afternoon. Elsie, restless and on
edge, terribly wanted an excuse to go down to the surgery. At last she
found one, and after listening at the door to make certain that no
belated patient was with the doctor, she knocked.
“Come in!”
He was sitting at the writing-table, rapidly turning over the leaves of
a big book.
“Elsie!”
“Oh, if you please, Doctor,” she minced, “they’ve all gone out, and
Mrs. Woolley left a message to say if you _could_ go and fetch her and
the children from 85, Lower Park Avenue, about seven o’clock----”
“Stow it, Elsie! D’you mean to say you and I are the only people left
in the place? Where’s that damned slut in the kitchen, eh?”
“It’s Florrie’s afternoon out, Doctor, but----”
“Florrie be damned! Look here, Elsie, this sort of thing can’t go on.”
She backed until she stood against the wall, feeling the warm blood
surge into her face and looking at him through half-closed eyelids.
“What sort of thing?”
“You know very well what I mean. Look at me. D’you think I’m a man?”
He thrust out his chest and doubled up his arms, standing with his
legs wide apart. In spite of his grossness and unwholesome fat, Elsie
thrilled to the suggestion of his masculine strength.
“Yes,” she murmured.
“Well, I tell you no man’s going to stand what you’re making me stand.
Elsie, you little devil! Don’t you know you’re driving me mad? God, if
I could tell you the sort of dreams I get at night, now!”
“About me?” she asked curiously.
“Shut up!” His voice was savage, and she suddenly saw sweat glistening
on his upper lip and round his nose.
Elsie decided to begin to cry. “It frightens me when you shout at me
like that. Perhaps I’d better go,” she said sobbingly.
“No, no, no! I say, what a brute I am! Come here and be comforted,
little girl.”
He sat down heavily in the revolving chair before the writing-table and
held out his hand.
Elsie advanced slowly, without looking at him, until she came within
reach of his arm. Then he caught hold of her and drew her on to his
knee, gripping her tightly until her weight sank against his shoulder.
“Let me kiss all the tears away. What a hound I am to make you cry!
Was’ums very mis’mis?”
He petted and soothed her, kissing the back of her neck and her
dust-coloured curls, murmuring absurd, infantile phrases.
Presently he whispered: “D’you love me?”
Elsie laughed and would not answer, and he struggled with her
playfully, pulling her about, and grasping at her with his big hands.
After the horse-play, she put both arms round his neck and lay still.
“I want to know something,” said Doctor Woolley slowly.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t you know more than a good little girl ought to know?”
“What about?”
“About--life. About being kissed, for instance. I’m not the first, my
girl, not by a long, long way. You’re the sort that begins early, _I_
know.”
“You’ve a nerve!” Elsie ejaculated, not knowing what to say.
“Well, it’s true what I’m saying, isn’t it? I mean, you’ve let fellows
kiss you?”
“Just boys, perhaps.”
“Hasn’t anyone taught you anything besides kissing, eh?”
“Of course not! What do you take me for, I’d like to know? Mother
brought up me and my sister like ladies, let me tell you. Besides, I
don’t know what you’re driving at, I’m sure.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then I’ll show you.”
“No!” screamed Elsie in a sudden, only half-assumed, panic.
She sprang up, but he pulled her back again.
“You silly little fool! You don’t suppose I’d really say or do
anything to frighten you, do you? Why, you’re much too precious.”
He kissed her again and again.
“Tell me one thing, though. You did know what I meant, didn’t you?”
“I suppose so.”
“Of course you did! A girl like you couldn’t help knowing. My God, I
wish I’d known you ten years ago. I wasn’t married then.”
“You oughtn’t to talk like that.”
“Why not? It’s true. Amy’s as cold as ice--not a real woman at all. And
she’s as jealous as the devil. I’ve always wondered why she let anyone
like you come into the house at all. It’s a miracle she hasn’t spotted
us yet.”
“It’d be all up with me being here if she did,” said Elsie shrewdly.
“If you go, I swear I’ll go with you,” said Doctor Woolley, but he said
it without conviction, and Elsie knew it. “Can’t do without you, little
one, at any price, now. But you’ve got to be even sweeter than you’ve
been to me yet.”
Elsie shivered a little, excited and disturbed, and in part genuinely
shocked.
“When will you, Elsie?”
His breath on her neck was hot and hurried.
She jumped off his knee. “Oh, look, it’s getting on for half-past six!
You’ll have to be off.”
“Come back! You haven’t told me what I want to know yet.” He grabbed at
her dress.
“Listen!” cried Elsie.
In the second during which he turned, arrested, she slipped out of the
room.
Her heart was beating very fast, and her face burning.
She half expected him to follow her, but he did not do so; and she was
partly relieved and partly disappointed.
She saw him again at supper, which the Woolleys always called dinner,
and the consciousness between them caused a singular constraint to
pervade the atmosphere. Mrs. Woolley, for the first time, seemed to be
aware of it, and every now and then turned sharp, bulging brown eyes
from her husband to Elsie, compressing her thin lips until they formed
a mere hard line in her red face.
When the meal was finished, she told Elsie to go upstairs and fetch one
of her evening dresses. “I want to see if I can’t smarten it up a bit,”
she explained. “I’m in rags, not fit to be seen.”
“I’ll stand you a new frock, Amy,” said the doctor suddenly. “How much
d’you want, eh?”
“Oh! Why, whatever’s up, Herbert? I’m sure it’s ages since I’ve had a
thing, and I’d be only too delighted----”
She broke off.
“Run up, Elsie, will you? The primrose dress, with the black lace, in
the left-hand corner of my wardrobe....”
Elsie went, envious of the new dress, and at the same time thinking
mockingly of Mrs. Woolley’s mottled skin and the lines that ran from
her heavy nostrils to her sagging chin. Dresses and jewellery ought to
be for girls who were young and pretty, not married women, plain and
stout, like Mrs. Woolley. When Elsie came down again the doctor had
gone, and Mrs. Woolley was in high good humour.
“I’ll get some tulle to-morrow, Elsie, and we can freshen it up round
the neck and sleeves. You’d better rip off all this old stuff. And look
here--you’re handy with your fingers--you can take the lace off and put
it on that old navy blouse of mine, that’s got no collar. You know the
one I mean ... you can drape it a bit....”
Elsie assented rather sulkily.
“Doctor Woolley’s so generous,” said Mrs. Woolley complacently. “He’s
for ever giving me things, me and the children. If you knew more of
the world, Elsie, you’d realise how lucky a woman is when she gets a
hubby like mine who’s never so much as looked at another woman since
he married. Some men aren’t like that, I can tell you. The tales I
could let out, if I cared to, that I’ve heard from some! But if Doctor
Woolley’s manner sometimes puts ideas into people’s heads, why, they’ve
only themselves to blame is what I always say. He wouldn’t give a
thought to anyone but me, not really.”
She looked full at Elsie as she spoke, and Elsie stared back at her.
The girl was puzzled and angry, not feeling certain that she knew
whether Mrs. Woolley really believed her own words, or was using them
to convey an oblique warning.
“If she really imagines that, she must be a fool,” thought Elsie
contemptuously, only to veer round uneasily a moment later to the
conviction that Mrs. Woolley had been talking _at_ her.
It was the latter unpleasant belief that prevailed, without possibility
of mistake, in the course of the next few days. Whenever the doctor was
in the house, Mrs. Woolley made a point of remaining at his side, and
during the hours when he was in the surgery she kept Elsie employed
with the children, every now and then coming to look in on her with
excuses that were always transparently flimsy.
The tension in the atmosphere pervaded the whole house.
At last one afternoon, when Gladys and Sonnie were at school, and Mrs.
Woolley in the drawing-room with an unexpected caller, Elsie and the
doctor met upon the stairs.
She knew that she was looking her worst, strained and overwrought, and
with the odd Japanese aspect of her eyes and cheek-bones intensified.
Even her hair felt limp and unresilient.
She looked at the doctor rather piteously, envisaging to herself her
own unprepossessing appearance, and wishing that she had at least
powdered her face recently.
“Where’s Amy?”
“In the drawing-room, with a lady visitor.”
“Thank God! I’ve been hag-ridden for the last week. What the devil’s
up, Elsie?”
“I don’t know,” she murmured. “At least, I know Mrs. Woolley’s been
horrid to me lately, that’s all.”
“She has, has she?” he muttered furiously. “Here--come in here.”
He drew her into the shelter of the nearest doorway.
“Elsie, I’m mad about you. This sort of thing can’t go on--it’s simply
hell.”
“Oh, hush, someone’ll hear....”
“I don’t care who hears!” But he lowered his voice. “I haven’t had a
kiss from you for days--quick_!_”
Their lips met.
“You dear little girl! Is she being a beast to you?”
Elsie, in his embrace, started violently. “_Someone coming upstairs!_”
she hissed.
He stood motionless to listen, waited a second too long, and then
sharply shut the door.
“Florrie!” Elsie whispered in a frightened voice. “Did she see us?”
“No, no--not a chance. Or, if she did, she only saw me. She won’t think
anything of that.”
“She’s gone upstairs--I must go.”
“No, don’t. I tell you it’s all right. Hang it, Elsie, when am I going
to get a word with you again?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think I shall go home again.” She was half crying.
“Elsie, d’you know Amy’s going out to-morrow night? She’s going to see
her friend, that Williams woman, who’s ill.”
“What, the one that was at mother’s place?”
“Yes--yes--but they’re in their own house now. It’ll take her all the
evening to get there and back, pretty nearly.”
“She won’t go.”
“Yes, she will. I shall tell her I’m going off to a case at Roehampton
or somewhere, and that I shan’t be back till late.”
“Oh, don’t. It simply isn’t safe.”
“It’s quite safe, you little fool. You and me have got to come to an
understanding, I can’t stand this life another minute. Look here, we’ll
go out somewhere together.”
“No, no! That’d be much worse. Sonnie always wakes up, and he’ll scream
himself into a fit if I’m not there, and then Florrie would know----”
“I forgot the kids. Elsie--Gladys sleeps in your room doesn’t she?”
“Yes,” said Elsie, suddenly flushing scarlet.
He laughed abruptly, scanning her face with hungry eyes. “I’ll have a
fire in the surgery. We’ll go down there. Florrie knows better than to
put her foot inside it,” said Doctor Woolley significantly.
V
It was two days later.
Florrie and Mrs. Woolley were talking in the kitchen. Elsie hung about
in the diminutive passage, trying desperately to hear what they were
saying. An awful intuition gripped her that they were talking of her.
Florrie’s voice was indistinct, almost inaudible, but snatched phrases
rose occasionally from the angry monotone that was Mrs. Woolley’s.
“... My innocent children ... turn my back ... the gutter ... don’t you
talk to me ... the gutter ... out of the gutter....”
Elsie tried wildly to persuade herself that Mrs. Woolley was abusing
Florrie. Sometimes she lost her temper with her servants, and shouted
at them.
On the evening that Mrs. Woolley had gone to see her friend Mrs.
Williams, who was reported very ill, Elsie, in her best frock, had
boldly gone into the surgery, where a fire blazed, and there was a
sofa newly piled with cushions. On the table had been placed a bottle
and glasses and a dish of biscuits. Doctor Woolley had locked the door
behind her, in spite of Elsie’s half-meant protests, but at first he
had been entirely jovial, using catch-phrases that had made her laugh,
and drinking heartily.
She herself had begun to feel rather affronted and puzzled at his
aloofness, before it suddenly came to an end.
The remembrance of her own surrender rather bewildered Elsie. She
had never consciously made up her mind to it, but the doctor’s
urgency, her own physical susceptibility, and an underlying, violent
curiosity had proved far too strong for her feeble defences, based
on timidity and on the recollection of certain unexplained, and
less-than-half-understood, arbitrary axioms laid down during her
childhood by her mother.
She supposed that that one half-hour in the surgery had made “a bad
girl” of her, but the aspect of the case that really preoccupied her
was her terror that Mrs. Woolley should have found it out.
She felt sick with fright as the kitchen door opened, and, turning
round, pretended to be looking for something in the housemaid’s closet
under the stairs.
She heard Mrs. Woolley brush past her and go into the drawing-room,
slamming the door violently behind her.
Elsie, her knees shaking, went upstairs to fetch Gladys and Sonnie and
take them to their kindergarten.
She dawdled on the way back, being unwilling to go into the house
again, and alternately hoping and dreading that the doctor would be at
home for the midday meal.
At one o’clock, however, Mrs. Woolley and Elsie sat down without him.
Mrs. Woolley did not speak to Elsie. She kept on looking at her,
and then looking away again. Her hard face was inscrutable, but
Elsie noticed that her hands, manipulating her knife and fork, shook
slightly. The doctor came in before the meal was over, jaunty and
talkative.
“Hallo! Is this Wednesday, or Piccadilly, or what? Which I mean to say
is, has the cold meat stage been passed and the rice pudding come on,
or contrarywise?”
Elsie burst into nervous laughter, the strident sound of which caused
the doctor to glance at her sharply, and Mrs. Woolley said:
“Nonsense, Herbert! The way you talk, sometimes! The girl has got your
meat and vegetables keeping hot in the oven, and I’m sure you haven’t
seen rice pudding at the table for a fortnight. There’s a nice piece of
cheese on the side, too.”
The doctor ate in silence, voraciously, as he always did, and his wife
presently said in a thin, vicious voice:
“Of course, you’ve nothing to say to your wife, Herbert. It’s easy
enough to talk and be amusing with strangers, isn’t it?--but I suppose
it isn’t worth while in your own home.”
“What’s up, Amy?” he growled. He did not look at Elsie, who found
herself fixing apprehensive eyes on him, although she knew it was a
betrayal.
“Why should anything be up, as you call it? But as it isn’t very
amusing for me to sit here all day while you eat, and as I happen to be
rather busy, strange though it may seem, I think I’ll ask you to excuse
me.”
She turned her head towards Elsie, but spoke without looking at her.
“I’ll thank you to come and find that paper pattern for Gladys’s smock.
The child isn’t fit to be seen.”
Mrs. Woolley pushed Elsie out of the room in front of her, making it
obvious that she meant her to have no opportunity of exchanging a look
with the doctor.
Throughout the afternoon she never let the girl out of her sight until
Elsie had actually left the house to go and fetch the two children from
school.
It was abundantly evident that a crisis impended. The atmospheric
tension affected everyone in the house, and Elsie, her nerves on edge,
became frantic.
She said, immediately after supper, that she was tired, and should go
to bed, and Mrs. Woolley laughed, shortly and sarcastically.
Elsie went up to her room and cried hysterically on her bed until
Gladys woke and began to whine enquiries.
It seemed impossible, to Elsie’s inexperience, that the horrors of that
day should repeat themselves, but the next one was Sunday, and brought
its own miseries.
The doctor, who did not go to church as a rule, announced his intention
of accompanying his family, and they set out, a constrained procession:
Gladys, in tight black boots and with fair hair crimped round her
shoulders, holding her father’s hand, Mrs. Woolley, walking just a
little faster than was comfortable for Sonnie’s short legs, clutching
the boy’s hand, and Elsie slouching a pace or two behind, cold and
wretched.
At the bottom of the Crescent they met an elderly couple who often
came to see them, and whom Elsie knew well by name as Mr. and Mrs.
Loman.
The encounter broke up the procession, and caused a readjustment of
places. Mrs. Woolley was at once claimed by the sallow, spectacled Mrs.
Loman, and the children, with shrill acclamations, ran to her husband,
Sonnie’s godfather and the purveyor of many small treats and presents.
The doctor, after a loud and boisterous greeting, boldly joined Elsie,
and both of them dropped behind the others.
“Oh, I’ve wanted so to speak to you!” gasped Elsie.
“Shut up--don’t make a fuss now, there’s a good girl. Keep a cheery
face on you, for God’s sake, or we shall give the show away worse than
we’ve done already.”
Mrs. Woolley turned round. “Herbert, Mrs. Loman is just saying that she
hasn’t set eyes on you for ages. Come and give an account of yourself.”
She spoke in a thin, artificial voice, but her eyes blazed a command at
him.
The doctor stared back at her, insolent security in his manner.
“Thankee, Amy, but I wouldn’t interrupt a ladies’ confab. for the
world. Go on about your sky-blue-purple Sunday-go-to-meeting costumes,
and I’ll keep Elsie company.”
Mrs. Loman laughed and the doctor grinned back at her.
White patches had appeared on the mottled surface of Mrs. Woolley’s
face, but she made no rejoinder.
Doctor Woolley turned to Elsie again, the merriment dropping from his
manner. “That’ll shut her up for a bit,” he said between his teeth.
“Has she been giving you gyp, Elsie?”
“Oh, it’s been awful. I’m certain she’s found out.”
“How?”
“That Florrie, I suppose.”
“Damn Florrie and her mischief-making! Well, kiddie, the fat’s in the
fire. I’m afraid there’s only one thing for it.”
“What?”
“Why--why, my dear child, don’t you see for yourself--you’ll have to
clear out of here. No use waiting for Amy to make a bloody row, now is
there? If you simply say you’re going home again, she won’t have a leg
to stand on. And if it wasn’t for--for the kids, I’d go with you.”
“You wouldn’t,” said Elsie bitterly. “I may be a bit green, but I’m not
green enough to swallow that.”
“Don’t talk like that,” said Doctor Woolley. He slipped his hand under
her arm, and at the contact, jaded and miserable as she was, her pulses
leapt. His fingers squeezed her arm.
“We’ve had some happy times together, little girl, eh?” he murmured in
a sentimental voice. “And don’t you see that when you’re on your own
again we can meet ever so much more freely. I want--you know what I
want, don’t you, Elsie?”
She did not respond. “What _I_ want, is to know what’ll happen to me if
I go back to mother and say I’ve left Mrs. Woolley. You don’t suppose
she, and my sister and my aunts, aren’t going to ask what’s happened,
do you?”
“Well, you can tell them something,” said the doctor impatiently.
“A clever girl like you, Elsie, surely you can think of something.
Besides, everybody knows that a pretty girl doesn’t always hit it off
with a woman older than herself. There’s nothing wonderful in that.
Damnation, they’re stopping!”
“Here we are,” said Elsie.
He withdrew his arm hastily from hers after a final pressure.
Mrs. Woolley and her friend were already standing at the church steps,
and both of them fixed their eyes on Elsie and the doctor as they came
up. Elsie saw Mrs. Woolley touch the other woman’s elbow, and guessed
at, rather than heard, the words coming from between her teeth:
“Look at that, now--_look at that_.”
On Mrs. Loman’s face was an expression of mingled eagerness, curiosity,
and disgust. It was evident that Mrs. Woolley had spoken freely of her
wrongs.
Elsie spent her time in church in wondering whether it would yet be
possible to blunt Mrs. Woolley’s suspicions, or whether she dared face
her mother with a made-up story to account for her return.
She was still young enough to have a furtive dread that her mother must
be omniscient in her regard, and she was afraid that Mrs. Palmer would
somehow guess at her lapse and tax her with it.
Elsie had very often lied to her mother before, but not with any
conspicuous success, and she felt just now strangely shaken and
unnerved, physically and morally.
When they came out of church, the Lomans hospitably pressed their
friends to return with them, share the hot Sunday dinner, and spend
the afternoon. The children were specifically included, but Mrs. Loman
glanced in Elsie’s direction, and then looked back at Mrs. Woolley,
raising her eyebrows.
“You’d better go and see your mother this afternoon,” said Mrs. Woolley
coldly. “Go home first and tell Florrie we shall be out, and she can
lock up the house and go out for a bit herself. Tell her she must be
back by five.”
“All right,” said Elsie lifelessly.
She turned on her heel, when a sudden shout stopped her.
“Post those letters of mine, will you?” said Doctor Woolley very
loudly. “You’ll find them in”--he came nearer to her--“_wait in till
I come_,” he muttered almost inaudibly, and rejoined his wife before
Elsie had taken in the meaning of his words. It came to her afterwards,
and the renewed sense of intrigue very slightly relieved the dull
misery pervading her.
At No. 8, Mortimer Crescent, the hot joint was taken out of the oven
and left to grow cold, but Florrie had made a Yorkshire pudding, and
she and Elsie ate it for their dinner, and added pickles and bread and
cheese and cake to the meal. Very soon afterwards, Florrie announced
that she was going off at once.
“So am I,” said Elsie. “I told _her_ I’d lock up the house. Mind you’re
in by five.”
“That’s as it may be,” haughtily said Florrie, with a venomous glance.
Elsie felt far too tired to quarrel with the maid, as she had often
done before, and when Florrie was actually gone she went upstairs and
lay down on her bed. It was nearly three o’clock before a cautious
sound from below betrayed the return of the doctor.
Elsie rose and automatically glanced at herself in the looking-glass.
One side of her face was flushed, her eyes looked small and
swollen-lidded, and her hair was disordered. She dabbed powder on her
face and pulled her wave of hair further down over her forehead before
going downstairs.
The doctor was hanging up his hat on the crowded hooks that lined one
side of the wall in the tiny entrance lobby.
“Coast clear?”
Elsie nodded.
“Sure?”
“Absolutely.” She held out the key of the house door. “I’ve locked up
at the back.”
“Then I’ll lock up at the front,” said Doctor Woolley, and did so.
“My God, we’re in a bloody mess,” he began, turning round and facing
Elsie.
Desperate, she ran forward and threw herself into his arms,
instinctively seeking the only reassurance she knew, that of physical
contact.
The doctor suddenly buried his face in her hair, then forced her face
upwards and kissed her passionately.
They clung to one another.
At last he released his clasp, only keeping one arm round her waist.
“Where can we go? We’ll have to settle something, and Lord knows when I
shall get another chance of speaking to you, with that hell-cat on the
warpath. I’ve had the deuce and all of a time getting here now, and we
must both clear out of the place before she and the kids get back. Put
on your hat and coat, old girl, and come along.”
“Where to?”
“Where I take you,” said the doctor brusquely.
When she came down again, he hurried her out of the house, locking the
door again behind them, and putting the key under the scraper, where it
was always looked for on Sunday.
“Taxi!”
The doctor hailed a passing taxi and made Elsie get into it.
He gave the address of a hotel in a street of which she had never heard.
“Where are we going to?”
“Somewhere where I can talk to you.”
He passed his arm round her again, and she made no pretence of
resistance, but lay against him, letting him play with her hand and
occasionally bend his head down to kiss her lips.
Elsie had slept very little for the past three nights; she had shed
tears, and she had been subject to a continual nervous strain. By
the time that the taxi stopped she was almost dozing, and it was in
a half-dazed state that she followed Dr. Woolley into the dingy hall
of a high building and, after a very short parley with a stout man in
evening dress, to an upstairs sitting-room.
She asked nothing better than to sink on to the narrow couch in a
corner of the room and let herself be petted and caressed, but after a
time her wearied senses awoke, and told her that the man beside her was
becoming restive and excited.
“Look here, Elsie,” he said finally, “you’re a beguiling little witch,
you are--but we’ve got to come down to hard facts. I’m going to order
you a pick-me-up, and have one myself, and then we can talk about
what’s to be done next. I’ve got to be home again, worse luck, by seven
o’clock. I’m supposed to have had an urgent call to Amy’s friend, Mrs.
Williams. She’s ill enough, poor soul, in all conscience, and I’ll have
to go there before I go home. Now then, what’ll you have?”
“Tea,” said Elsie.
He laughed. “Women are all alike! You can have your tea--poisonous
stuff, tincture of tannin--and I’ll order what I think’s good for you
to go with it. Wait here till I come back.”
He went out, and Elsie, already revived and stimulated, flew to the
spotted and discoloured looking-glass, and took out her pocket-comb to
rearrange her curls.
She actually enjoyed the hot, strong tea when it came, and her spirits
suddenly rose to a boisterous pitch.
They both laughed loudly at the faces that Elsie made over the bottle
that the doctor had obtained, and from which he repeatedly helped
himself and her, and although they kept on telling one another that
they must talk seriously, their hilarity kept on increasing. At last he
began to make violent love to her, and Elsie responded coquettishly,
luring him on by glance and gesture, while her tongue uttered glib
and meaningless protests. Very soon, her flimsy defences gave way
altogether, and she had ceded to him everything that he asked.
Then the inevitable reaction overtook her, and she cried, and called
herself a wicked girl, and finally sank limply into a corner of the
taxi that Dr. Woolley had summoned to the door of the hotel.
He got in beside her. “Buck up, little girl!” he cried urgently.
“You’ll be at No. 8 in no time, and we don’t want Amy asking awkward
questions. Look here, I’ll put you down at the corner of the Crescent,
and you can walk to the house. The air’ll do you good, and besides, we
can’t be seen together. I’m off to that wretched Williams woman, and
I’m not going to be in till late.”
Elsie continued to sob.
“Come, come, come--pull yourself to pieces,” Doctor Woolley tried to
make her laugh. “We’ve not settled anything, but we’ve had our time
together. Ah, a little love is a great thing in a world like this one,
Elsie. Thank you for being so sweet to me, little girl.”
He kissed her hastily, with a perfunctoriness of which she was aware.
When the taxi stopped in the main thoroughfare, a little way before the
turning into Mortimer Crescent, he almost shoved her on to the pavement.
“Don’t forget--you’ve been out ever since dinner-time, and you imagine
me to have been in the buzzim of my family enjoying back chat with the
old Lomans. Don’t say anything about that, though, unless you’re asked.
Tell the man to drive like blazes now, will you?”
Elsie mechanically obeyed.
Then she dragged herself to No. 8. Her ring was answered by Florrie.
The little servant girl was grinning maliciously. “She’s in the d--’s
own temper and all, and you’re going to catch it hot and strong for
leaving her to put the children to bed.”
“Mind your own business, Florrie,” said Elsie, pushing past her.
She affected not to hear the single word that the servant flung at her
back, but it made her wince.
In the bedroom she found Gladys already in bed, wide awake.
“Mother put us to bed. She was awfully cross, and she slapped Sonnie
twice and me once.”
“What for?”
“Oh, because I whined, she said. And she slapped Sonnie when he told
her about Dadda being so funny with you. You didn’t know we _saw_ one
day,” giggled Gladys.
“Saw what?”
“One day when Dadda kissed you and Sonnie and I saw, over the
banisters, and we laughed, but you didn’t hear us.”
“You little viper!” muttered Elsie between her teeth. “I’d like to kill
you, I would.”
Gladys alternately giggled and whined, and Elsie was quite unable to
distinguish whether the child was really malicious or simply amused by
something to which she attached no meaning.
“Anyway, if she’s told her mother, it’s all up,” thought Elsie.
She saw that there was nothing for it but to leave Mortimer Crescent,
and spent a miserable night wondering what to say to her mother and
sister.
At midnight she heard the sound of the doctor’s key in the front door
and his heavy foot on the stairs. He paused outside her door for some
seconds, then she heard him go into his wife’s room.
Elsie tossed about in her narrow bed. Her present dilemma frightened
her, and she had a vague, irrational idea that some awful and horrible
penalty always descended sooner or later upon girls who had done as
she had done. These fears, and her lack of any vivid imagination, had
dulled her emotional susceptibilities, and she scarcely felt regret at
the thought of no longer seeing the doctor. He now stood to her for the
symbol of an assuaged desire, the fulfilment of which had brought about
her present miseries. Nevertheless, at the back of her consciousness
was latent the conviction that never again would she be satisfied with
the clumsy demonstrations and meaningless contacts of her intercourse
with the boys and youths whom she had known at home.
It seemed to her next morning that she was wholly ugly. Her complexion
looked sodden and her eyes were nearly invisible. Her mouth, in some
odd way, seemed to have swollen. No one could have called her pretty,
and to anyone who had seen her in good looks she would have been almost
unrecognisable. Mrs. Woolley, coming downstairs at ten o’clock, eyed
her with a malignant satisfaction.
“Perhaps,” she said, “you won’t be altogether surprised to hear that
I’m going to make some changes. You’d better pack your box, and go home
to your mother, I think.”
“I was going to tell you that I couldn’t stay on here any longer,” said
Elsie swiftly. “The ways of the house aren’t what I’ve been used to,
Mrs. Woolley.”
In a flash, Mrs. Woolley had turned nasty, and Elsie had seen her own
unwisdom.
“Oh, aren’t they indeed? Perhaps you’d be so kind as to tell me what
you are used to--or shall _I_ tell _you_?”
Then she suddenly raised her voice almost to a scream and poured out a
torrent of abuse and invective, and the two children crept in from the
hall and began to cry, and to make faces at Elsie, and demonstrations
of hitting her with their little hands, and the servant Florrie held
the door half open, so that she might see and hear it all.
Elsie screamed back again at Mrs. Woolley, but she had neither the
fluency nor the determination of the older woman, and she was unable to
prevent herself from bursting into tears and sobs.
Finally Mrs. Woolley drove her out of the room, standing at the foot
of the stairs while Elsie ran up to pull on her best hat and coat, and
forbidding the children to follow her.
“Don’t go near her, my pets--she’s a wicked girl, that’s what she
is--not fit to be in the same house as innocent little children. Now
then, out you go, miss, before I send for the police.”
“I’ll go,” said Elsie, shaking from head to foot, “and I’ll never set
foot in your filthy house again. And I’ll send for my trunk and for
every penny you owe me, and I’ll have the law on you for insinuations
on my character.”
Then she dashed out of the house and into the street.