“When do you want to take your holiday, Elsie?”
“I’m not particular.”
“Your mother will want you to get a breath of sea-air, I suppose.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Elsie. “Mother’s not awfully struck on going
away.”
It was late July, and between Elsie and her employer a curious, secret
relationship had been established, at present only symbolised by
occasional furtive touches of his hand on her neck or her dress, and
a continual exchange of glances, steady and compelling on Williams’s
side, and responded to by Elsie almost against her own will.
Her typewriting table had been moved into his office, and she sat there
nearly all day.
He spoke to her very little, but she was now always intensely conscious
of his presence, and of her own effect upon him.
At first she did not understand to what his questions about the
holidays were leading.
Next day, he spoke about them again.
“Shouldn’t you like to go to Brighton--some place like that?”
“Rather.”
“I often run down there myself from Saturday to Monday.”
Mr. Williams looked at her more attentively than ever, and Elsie felt
the blood creep up into her face. She knew that she blushed easily and
deeply, and that men enjoyed seeing her blush.
“That hasn’t got anything to do with me,” she stammered, at once
excited and confused.
“Hasn’t it?”
“Mr. Williams!”
He glanced cautiously at the door, and then lowered his voice. “Look
here, my dear child, I’m old enough to be your father and--and my dear
late wife took quite a fancy to you. Surely you and I understand one
another well enough to take a little holiday jaunt together without
anyone but our two selves being any the wiser.”
Elsie had not really expected the suggestion, and she was startled, but
also triumphant.
“Whatever do you mean, Mr. Williams?”
He smiled, a small, thin-lipped smile, that held a suggestion of
cynical mockery at her transparent pretence.
“Only what I say. I’m a poor, lonely fellow, with a little bit of money
and no one to spend it on, and if I go to a nice hotel for the week-end
I want someone to keep me company. Think over it, Elsie. You quite
understand that I’m not asking anything of you--you’re as safe with me
as if I were your father. Just a pretty face opposite me at meals, and
a smartly dressed little companion to take out for a walk on the front
or to the theatre on Saturday night--that’s all I want.”
“Oh, I daresay,” said Elsie.
His face stiffened, and she felt immediately that she had made a
mistake.
“It’s awfully kind of you to think of such a thing, Mr. Williams, but
I really couldn’t dream of it. Why, I don’t know what mother would
think----”
“Of course, it’s a very conventional world,” said Mr. Williams gravely.
“You and I would know well enough that our little adventure was most
innocent, but we don’t want anyone to think or say otherwise. So I
propose, Elsie, that we should keep it to ourselves. I presume it would
be easy to tell your mother that you were staying with a friend?”
“Well--there’s Ireen Tidmarsh, a young lady I often go with. I could
say I was going to her.”
“Just so. After all, you’re of an age to manage your own affairs.”
Elsie swelled with gratified vanity. She loved to be told that she was
grown up.
“Well, what about the August Bank Holiday week-end? I could meet you at
the booking office at Victoria Station on the Saturday, and we could
travel back together on the Tuesday morning. I’d like to show you
something of life, Elsie.”
He moistened his lips with his tongue as he spoke the words.
Elsie wished desperately that she could feel attracted by him, as
she had been by Doctor Woolley. But Mr. Williams, physically, rather
revolted her.
“Oh, I couldn’t!” she repeated faintly.
He was very patient. “No expense, of course. And if you’d like a
new hat or an evening frock, Elsie, or a pretty set of those silk
things that girls wear underneath, why, I hope you’ll let me have the
privilege of providing them. You can choose what you like and bring me
the bill--only go to a West End shop. Nothing shoddy.”
Elsie was breathless at his munificence, and she longed wildly for the
evening dress, and the silk underwear. Pale pink crêpe....
Perhaps it would be worth it.
“I’m sure you wouldn’t ask me to do anything that wasn’t perfectly
right, Mr. Williams,” she said demurely.
“I am glad you feel that. I’m glad you trust me,” he solemnly replied.
“Of course I do.”
“Then that’s our secret. We need take no one into our confidence,
Elsie, you understand. The arrangement is a perfectly innocent and
natural little pleasure that you and I are going to share, but people
are very often coarse-minded and censorious, and I would not wish to
expose either of us to unpleasant comments. You’ll remember that, and
keep it to yourself?”
“Oh, yes,” said Elsie.
That night as she was going to bed, she critically examined her own
underwear. Her chemise and drawers were coarse, she wore no stays,
and the garters that held up her transparent lisle-thread stockings
were plain bands of grimy white elastic. Her short petticoat was white,
with a torn flounce, and only the camisole, which showed beneath her
transparent blouses, was trimmed with imitation Valenciennes lace and
threaded with papery blue ribbons.
“What you doing, Elsie?” grumbled Geraldine from her bed. “Get into
bed, do; I want to go to sleep.”
“Have you seen those things they sell in sets, Geraldine, in some
of the High Street shops? Sort of silk combinations and a princess
petticoat and nightgown, all to match like?”
“I’ve seen them advertised at sale times, in the illustrateds, and
beastly indecent they are, too. Why, you can see right through that
stuff they’re made of.”
Elsie became very thoughtful.
Her sister’s words had brought before her mind’s eye an involuntary
picture that both startled and repelled her.
“Anyway, the prices are something wicked. What’s up, young Elsie?”
“Nothing. I heard something to-day that set me wondering, that’s all.”
“What?”
“Oh, some girl that wanted a pink silk rig-out, that’s all.”
“You must have some queer friends. No decent girl would wear those
things--only tarts do, unless it’s fine ladies that aren’t any better
than they should be, from what the Society papers say.”
Geraldine, in her curling-pins and her thick nightgown, looked rigidly
virtuous. “Get into bed, do.”
“It’s too hot,” sighed Elsie.
The room was like a furnace, but neither of them would have dreamed of
opening the window after dark.
Elsie tossed and turned about for a long while, unable to sleep. She
visualised herself in new clothes, in evening dress, which she had
never worn, and she thought of the excitement of staying in a big hotel
where there would very likely be a band in the evenings and, of course,
late dinner every night.
If only it had been anyone but Mr. Williams! But then, he was the only
rich man she knew.
“It’s a shame,” thought Elsie, “that I shouldn’t have opportunities
of meeting other men like him, only different. I wish I’d gone in for
manicure--I’d have met all sorts then.”
For a moment she wondered whether her friendship with Williams might
not lead to his introducing her to his wealthy friends, but she was
shrewd enough to perceive that his first preoccupation would be to
keep their connection secret, and that he was of far too cautious a
temperament to risk her meeting with men younger and more attractive
than himself.
Her last waking thought was of the silk set of underclothes, cool and
lovely and transparent against her skin.
The following morning Mr. Williams behaved exactly as usual, and made
no reference whatever to his suggestion of a holiday. Elsie, rather
anxious and affronted, took advantage of a late call from a client to
leave the office at six o’clock exactly, without returning into her
employer’s room to announce her departure as she usually did.
On her way to the crowded Tube station she was followed and accosted
by a strange man. This adventure had become a common one to Elsie, but
a certain recklessness pervaded her that evening, and when he urged
her to come and sit in the park, under the cool of the trees, she went
with him. He was a man of thirty-five or so, with a miserable, haunted,
disease-ravaged face, and he began almost at once to pour out to her
a long story of his wife’s treachery, of which he had just made the
discovery.
“I’ve never looked at another girl,” he kept on saying. “I’ve never
spoken to one the way I’ve spoken to you to-night. But you remind me
of her, in a way, and I knew you’d be all right, and sorry for a poor
devil who’s been fooled.”
Elsie hardly listened to him, but she let him put his arm round her
waist, and as his caresses became more violent and eager, she again
felt that instinctive conviction that it was to such an end that she
had been created. These physical contacts only, brought her to the
fullness of self-expression. At last she realised that her companion
was muttering a request that he might go home with her.
“What do you take me for?” Elsie asked furiously. “I’m a respectable
girl, I am.”
He became maudlin and begged her to forgive him, and she sank back
again into his embrace, appeased at once.
At last, when the park gates were closing, she roused herself and
insisted that if he wanted to go on talking to her they must go
somewhere and have supper.
The man seemed too dazed and wretched to understand her, but when
Elsie, rendered prudent by certain previous experiences, asked whether
he had any money, he drew out a handful of loose silver.
“That’s all right, then,” she said, relieved, and took him to a cheap
and very popular restaurant.
Elsie drank cocoa and ate sweet cakes, and her escort, leaning heavily
on the marble-topped table, continued his low, maundering recitation of
self-pity.
She had very little idea of what he was talking about.
She liked the restaurant and enjoyed her cakes, and the occasional
contact between herself and the unknown man satisfied her for the time
being.
When they left the restaurant, Elsie directed him to the omnibus that
would take her nearest to her own suburb, and they climbed to the top
of it, and sat in close proximity on the narrow seat all through the
long drive.
It was with real difficulty that she tore herself away in the end,
physically roused to a pitch that rapidly amounted to torment. She was
frightened and disgusted by her own sensations, but much less so than
she had been in the days of her technical innocence, before she had
known Doctor Woolley. She decided that she would go to Brighton with
Mr. Williams.
And she would buy the silk underclothes--pink silk--and a real evening
dress, cut low, that should reveal her shoulders and the full contour
of her bust, and perhaps he would give her enough money for a string of
imitation pearl beads as well.
“After all, he can afford to be generous,” Elsie thought complacently.
“An old man like him! I expect I’m a fool to look at him, really.”
She meant that her attraction for men was sufficiently potent to
ensure her ability to cast her spell wherever she chose, but common
sense reminded her that the number of men within her immediate sphere
was limited. Even men who followed her, or addressed her casually in
the street, were mostly of the bank-clerk type, and of her own actual
acquaintance scarcely one reached the level of the professional class
to which Williams belonged.
At Hillbourne Terrace, Elsie found the front door locked, and realised
that it must be late. She understood what had happened. Mrs. Palmer,
angry at her daughter’s tardiness, had probably decided to give her
a fright, and was waiting in her dressing-gown, angry and tired, for
Elsie to try the side door.
“I just won’t, then,” muttered Elsie angrily. “I’ll jolly well go to
Ireen.”
She had seen a light in the house opposite as she came up the street,
and it would not be the first time that she had called on Irene
Tidmarsh for hospitality.
Her friend opened the door in person, and Elsie explained her position,
giving, however, no specific reason for her lateness.
“Come in,” said Irene indifferently. “You can sleep with me if you want
to. I often thank God I’ve no mother.”
The two girls went up to Irene’s large, untidy bedroom in the front of
the house, and began to undress, and Elsie was unable to resist the
topic of the pink silk underclothes that obsessed her imagination.
“Geraldine says only tarts wear them.”
“What does she know about it?” Irene enquired. “Ladies of title wear
them--that Lady Dorothy Anvers, that’s always being photographed, she
goes in for black silk nightgowns--_black_, if you please!”
“I’d rather have pink, a great deal. I think black’d be hideous.”
“Depends on one’s skin, I suppose,” said the sallow Irene thoughtfully.
“Who wants to give you a silk nightie, young Elsie?”
Elsie deliberated. She was not usually communicative about her own
affairs, but the notice of her employer had gratified her vanity, and
she very much desired to boast of it to someone. Irene, at least,
would be safe, and she sometimes offered shrewd pieces of advice that
were not the outcome of experience, of which, by comparison with Elsie
herself, she had little, but of a natural acumen.
Elsie, when the gas had been turned out, and the two girls were lying
in Irene’s bed, after extracting giggling oaths of secrecy, recounted
to Irene the whole story of her adventure with Mr. Williams. She
represented herself as still entirely undecided as to the sincerity of
his assurance that their relationship was to be purely friendly.
“Rats!” was Irene’s unvarnished comment. “It isn’t very likely the old
fool would have told you to get silk nighties and things unless he
meant to see them himself. But I wouldn’t do it, Elsie. It’s too risky.”
“Why, who’s to find out? It isn’t as if his wife was alive,” said
Elsie, with a recollection of the household in Mortimer Crescent.
“I don’t mean that at all. But it’s a beastly risk for you. He’s your
boss, after all. Suppose he gives you the sack, once this week-end
business is over? Men are like that--they get sick of a girl directly
they’ve had their fun, and then they don’t want to be for ever reminded
of it.”
“It’s quite as likely he’d be for ever pestering me to go with him
again,” Elsie declared, not at all desirous of supposing that her
attractions could be provocative of such speedy satiety. “And even if
he did sack me, there are plenty of other jobs going.”
“You young fool! Don’t you see what I mean? Suppose he landed you with
a baby?”
“Oh!” Elsie was startled.
Like a great many other girls of her class and upbringing, although
she possessed a wide and garbled knowledge of sex, she was singularly
unable to trace the links between cause and effect. “A baby,” in this
connection, was to her nothing but an isolated catastrophe, that she
had never particularly connected with the physical relations between a
man and a girl.
“It couldn’t, Ireen.”
“Why not? Of course it could happen. A girl I know got caught, only
luckily she had some sense, and went to one of these doctors that can
stop it for you----”
“Can they?”
“Some can,” said the well-informed Irene. “But mind you, it’s an
expensive business, and a jolly dangerous one. Why, the doctor can be
had up for doing it, I believe. So don’t you go and get yourself into
any mess of that sort, now.”
“I should think not,” murmured Elsie.
“How old did you say this fellow, this Williams, was?”
“I don’t know. About forty or forty-five, or something like that. He
was years older than his wife, and she wasn’t a chicken.”
“And she’s dead, is she?”
“Of course she is. I told you all about that ages ago.”
“I know. Look here, Elsie, I’ve an idea. Why don’t you marry this
fellow?”
“Ireen Tidmarsh, are you dotty or what?”
“I’m giving you jolly good advice, and you’ll be a young fool if you
don’t take it. He’s rich, and you’d have a splendid position, and after
a year or two you’d probably find yourself free to go your own way. He
wouldn’t live for ever, either.”
“Don’t,” said Elsie.
“Well, it’s true. You can bet he’s on the look-out for a second wife
already--widowers of that age always are.”
“He wouldn’t think of marrying me.”
“Only because he can get what he wants without,” said Irene curtly.
“You show him he can’t, and set him thinking a bit. If he’s half as
keen on you as you say he is, anyway, the idea’s bound to cross his
mind.”
Elsie was rather bewildered, and disposed to be incredulous. She was
incapable of having formulated so practical an idea for herself, and it
held for her a sense of unreality. “Anyhow, I couldn’t marry an old man
like that. I don’t even like him.”
“Whoever you marry, young Elsie, you won’t stick to him,” said Irene
cynically. “And if you ask me, the quicker you get a husband the
better.”
“That’s what mother says.”
“She wasn’t born yesterday. Well, do as you like, of course, but
it’s the chance of a lifetime. I’m sure of that. Just hold out for a
month--tell him you couldn’t think of going anywhere with him--and see
if he doesn’t suggest your becoming the second Mrs. Williams.”
“You’re mad, Ireen,” said Elsie, entirely without conviction.
She was in reality very much impressed both by Irene’s worldly
wisdom and by the sudden realisation it had brought to her of the
possibilities latent in Mr. Williams’ admiration.
She disliked having to work, and she knew that marriage was her only
escape from work. To be married very young would be a triumph, and she
thought with malicious satisfaction of how much she would enjoy asking
Aunt Gertie and Aunt Ada to visit her in her own house.
“Well, good-night,” said Irene’s voice in her ear. “I’m going to sleep.
If you want to get over to your place early in the morning, don’t wake
me, that’s all.”
“All right.”
Elsie turned over, gave a fleeting thought to the memory of the man she
had met that evening, and fell asleep almost at once.
The next morning, after huddling on her clothes, and washing her face
very hastily just before putting on her hat over her unbrushed hair,
Elsie crossed the street and went home.
Mrs. Palmer was on the doorstep.
She was very angry.
“How dare you stay out all night like that, you good-for-nothing little
slut? I haven’t closed my eyes for wondering what’d happened to you.
Where have you been?”
“At Ireen’s.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going there?”
“I never thought of it, till I got here and found the door locked.”
“It wasn’t locked till nearly eleven o’clock, miss, and you could have
come in by the side door, as you very well knew. And what were you
doing out till eleven o’clock, I should like to know?”
“Nothing,” said Elsie, beginning to cry.
Her mother promptly boxed her ears. “Elsie Palmer, you’re nothing but
a liar, and you’ll break your widowed mother’s heart and bring her to
disgrace before you’re done. However you’ve managed to grow up what you
are, so particular as I’ve been with the two of you, is more than I can
understand. Tell me this directly minute, who you were with last night?”
Elsie maintained a sullen silence, dodging as her mother aimed another
heavy blow at her.
“I declare you’ll make me lose my temper with you!” said Mrs. Palmer
violently. “Answer me this instant.”
“I went to the cinema.”
“Who took you?”
“That fellow in the office--that Leary boy.”
“Why couldn’t you come in last night and say where you’d been, then?
The fact is, Elsie, you’re telling me a pack of lies, and I know
it perfectly well. You can’t take your mother in, let me tell you,
whatever you may think, I’m sure _I_ don’t know what to do with you. I
sometimes think you’d better go and live with your aunties; you’d find
Aunt Gertie strict enough, I can tell you.”
Elsie knew this to be true, and was fiercely resolved never to put it
to the test.
“What you want is a thorough good whipping,” said Mrs. Palmer, already
absent-minded and preoccupied with preparations for breakfast. “Put
that kettle on, Elsie, and be quick about it. And I give you fair
warning that the very next time I have to speak to you like this--(see
if that’s the girl at the door--it ought to be, by this time)--the very
next time, I’ll make you remember it in a way you won’t enjoy, my lady.”
Mrs. Palmer’s active display of wrath was over, and Elsie knew that she
had nothing to do but to keep out of her mother’s way for the next few
days.
She helped to get the breakfast ready in silence. She was too much used
to similar scenes to feel very much upset by this one; nevertheless it
influenced her in favour of acting upon Irene Tidmarsh’s advice.
She knew very well that it would not be as easy to hoodwink Mrs.
Palmer over a week-end spent out of London as she had pretended to Mr.
Williams. Elsie was still afraid of her mother, and believed that she
might quite well carry out her threat of sending her daughter to live
with the two aunts.
Her chief pang was at relinquishing the thought of the pink silk
underclothes, but she endeavoured to persuade herself that they
might still be hers, when she should be on the point of marrying Mr.
Williams. After all, it would be more satisfactory to own them on those
terms than to be obliged to put them away after two days into hiding,
in some place--and Elsie wondered ruefully what place--where they
should not be spied out by Geraldine.
She went to the office as usual and was a good deal disconcerted when
Fred Leary announced that “the Old Man” had telephoned to say that he
was called away on business, and should not be back for two days.
Elsie, rather afraid that her own determination might weaken, decided
to write to him, sending the letter to his home address.
Her unformed, back-sloping hand, covered one side of a sheet of
notepaper that she bought in the luncheon hour.
“DEAR MR. WILLIAMS,
“One line to tell you that I have thought over your very kind
suggestion about a holiday, but do not feel that I can say yes to
same. Dear Mr. Williams, it is very kind of you, but I cannot feel it
would be _right_ of me to do as you ask, and so I must say no, hoping
you will not be vexed with me. I do want to be a good girl. So no
more, from
“Your little friend,
“ELSIE.”