I
The European war affected Elsie Williams as much, or as little, as it
affected many other young women. She had been married a little over a
year in August 1914.
She was vaguely alarmed, vaguely thrilled, moved to a great display of
emotional enthusiasm at the sight of a khaki uniform and at the sound
of a military band.
Later on, she sang and hummed “Keep the Home Fires Burning,”
“Tipperary,” and “We _Don’t_ Want to Lose You, but we Think you _Ought_
to Go,” and was voluble and indignant about the difficulties presented
by sugar rations and meat coupons. She resented the air raids over
London, and devoured the newspaper accounts of the damage done by them;
she listened to, and eagerly retailed, anecdotes such as that of the
Angels of Mons, or that of the Belgian child whose hands had been cut
off by German soldiers; and after a period in which she declared that
“everybody” would be ruined, she found herself in possession of more
money than ever before.
Never before had so many clients presented themselves to Messrs.
Williams and Cleaver, and never before had there been so much money
about. Elsie bought herself a fur coat and a great many other things,
and went very often to the cinema, and sometimes to the theatre. She
very soon found, however, that Williams, when he could not take her out
himself, disliked her going with anybody else.
He was willing enough that she should take Irene with her, or her
sister Geraldine, but if she went out with any man, Williams became
coldly, caustically angry, and sooner or later always found an
opportunity for quarrelling with him.
Elsie was bored and angry, contemptuous of his jealousy, but far too
much afraid of him to rebel openly.
She was more and more conscious of having made a mistake in her
marriage, but her regrets were resentful rather than profound, and her
facile nature found consolation in her own social advancement, her
comfortable suburban home, and her tyrannical dominion over a capped
and aproned maid.
She very seldom went to Hillbourne Terrace, and had quarrelled with her
mother when Mrs. Palmer had suggested that it was time she had a baby.
Elsie did not want to have a baby at all. She feared pain and
discomfort almost as much as she did the temporary eclipse of her good
looks, and the thought of a child that should be Horace Williams’s as
well as hers filled her with disgust.
She only spoke of this openly to Irene, and Irene undertook the
purchase of certain drugs which she declared would render impossible
the calamity dreaded by her friend. Elsie thankfully accepted the
offer, and trusted implicitly to the efficacy of the bottles and
packages that Irene bought.
Sometimes Horace declared that he wanted a son, and as time went on his
taunts became less veiled, but Elsie cared little for them so long as
she remained immune from the trial of motherhood.
She spent her days idly, doing very little housework, sometimes making
or mending her own clothes, and often poring for a whole afternoon
over a novel from the circulating library, or an illustrated paper,
whilst she ate innumerable sweets out of little paper bags. She never
remembered anything about the books that she read thus, and sometimes
read the same one a second time without perceiving that she was doing
so until she had nearly finished it.
After a time, Elsie became rather envious of the money that Irene
was making as a munitions worker, and the “good time” that Geraldine
enjoyed in the Government office where she had found a job. Elsie
seriously told her husband that she felt she must go and do some “war
work.”
“You are not in the same position as an unmarried girl, Elsie. You have
other duties. These war jobs are for young women who have nothing else
to do.”
“I don’t see that I’ve got so much to do.”
“If you had children, you would understand that a woman’s sphere is in
her own home.”
“But I haven’t got children,” said Elsie, half under her breath.
“It’s early days to talk like that,” Williams retorted, and his glance
at her was malevolent. “One of these days you’ll have a baby, I hope,
like every other healthy married woman, and neither you nor I nor
anybody else can say how soon that day may come.”
“Well, I suppose till it does come--_if_ it ever does-you’ve no
objection to me doing my bit in regard to this war?”
“I don’t know. What is it you propose to do?”
“Oh, get a job of some kind. Ireen says they’re asking for
shorthand-typists all over the place, and willing to pay for them, too.
I could get into one of these Government shows easily, or I could go in
the V.A.D.s or something, and take a job in a hospital.”
“No,” said Williams decidedly. “No. Out of the question.”
Elsie, who at home had, as a matter of course, surreptitiously
disobeyed every order or prohibition of her mother’s that ran counter
to her own wishes, knew already that she would not disobey her husband.
She was afraid of him.
On the rare occasions when she saw any of her own family, Elsie always
made a great display of her own grandeur and independence. She was
really proud of her little suburban villa, her white-and-gold china,
fumed oak “suite” of drawing-room furniture, “ruby” glasses and plated
cake basket. She was also proud of being Mrs. Williams, and of wearing
a wedding-ring.
Geraldine came to see her once or twice, and then declared herself too
busy at the office to take the long tram journey, and as Elsie hardly
ever went to Hillbourne Terrace, they seldom met. But Irene Tidmarsh
came often to see Elsie.
She came in the daytime, when Williams was at the office, and very
often she and Elsie went to the cinema together in the afternoon. Irene
seemed able to get free time whenever she liked, and she explained this
to Elsie by telling her that the superintendent at the works was a
great friend of hers.
Elsie perfectly understood what this meant, and realised presently that
Irene was never available on Saturdays and Sundays.
The war went on, and Mr. Williams made more and more money, and was
fairly generous to Elsie, although he never gave her an independent
income, but only occasional presents of cash, and instructions that all
her bills should be sent in to him.
He did not rescind his command that she should not attempt any war
work, although, as the months lengthened into years, it seemed fairly
certain that there was to be no family to give Elsie occupation at home.
At twenty-five, Elsie Williams, from sheer boredom, had lost a great
deal of the vitality that had characterised Elsie Palmer, and with it
a certain amount of her remarkable animal magnetism. She was still
attractive to men, but her own susceptibilities had become strangely
blunted and no casual promiscuity would now have power to stir her.
She was aware that life had become uninteresting to her, and accepted
the fact with dull, bewildered, entirely unanalytical resentment.
“I s’pose I’m growing middle-aged,” she said to Irene, giggling without
conviction.
One day, more than a year after the Armistice in November 1918, Irene
Tidmarsh came to Elsie full of excitement.
She had heard of a wonderful crystal-gazer, and wanted to visit her
with Elsie.
Elsie was quite as much excited as Irene. “I’d better take off my
wedding-ring,” she said importantly. “They say they’ll get hold of any
clue, don’t they?”
“This woman isn’t like that,” Irene declared. “She’s what they call a
psychic, really she is. This girl that told me about her, she said it
quite frightened her, the things the woman knew. All sorts of things
about her past, too.”
“I’m not sure I’d like that,” said Elsie, giggling. “I know quite
enough about my past without wanting help. But I must say I’d like to
know what she’s got to say about the future. You know, I mean what’s
going to happen to me.”
“Oh, well, you’re married, my dear. There’s not much else she can tell
you, except whether you’ll have boys or girls.”
“Thank you!” Elsie exclaimed, tossing her head. “None of that truck for
me, thank you. Losing one’s figure and all!”
“You’re right. Anyway, let’s come on, shall we?”
“Come on. I say, Ireen, she’ll see us both together, won’t she?”
“I hope so. I wouldn’t go in to her alone for anything. Swear you won’t
ever repeat anything she says about me, though.”
“I swear. And you won’t either?”
“No.”
The crystal-gazer lived in a street off King’s Road, Chelsea, a long
way down.
A little hunch-backed girl opened the door and asked them to go into
the waiting-room. This was a small, curtained recess off the tiny
hall, and contained two chairs and a rickety table covered with thin,
cheap-looking publications. There were several copies of a psychic
paper and various pamphlets that purported to deal with the occult.
“I’m a bit nervous, aren’t you?” whispered Elsie. She fiddled with her
wedding-ring, and finally took it off and put it in her purse. When
the hunch-backed child appeared at the curtains, both girls screamed
slightly.
“Madame Clara is ready for you,” announced the little girl, in a harsh,
monotonous voice.
She led them up to the first floor, into a room that was carefully
darkened with blue curtains drawn across the windows. They could just
discern a black figure, stout and very upright, sitting on a large
chair in the middle of the room. A round stand set on a single slender
leg was beside her.
Elsie clutched at Irene’s hand in a nervous spasm.
The black figure bowed from the waist without rising. “Do you wish
me to see you both together, ladies?” Her voice was harsh and rather
raucous in tone.
“Yes, please,” said Irene boldly.
“You quite understand that the charge will be the same as for two
separate interviews?”
“Yes.”
The little girl advanced with a small beaded bag. “The fee is payable
in advance, if you please.”
Elsie fumbled in her purse, and pulled out two ten-shilling notes.
“Half a guinea each, if you please, ladies.”
“Irene, have you got two sixpences?” Elsie whispered, agitated.
Irene, by far the more collected of the two, produced a shilling, and
the little girl with the bag went away.
“Will you two ladies be seated? One on either side of the table,
please--not next to one another.”
Elsie made a despairing clutch at Irene’s hand again, but her friend
shook her head, and firmly took her place on the other side of Madame
Clara.
Elsie sank into the remaining chair, and felt that she was trembling
violently. Her nervousness was partly pleasurable excitement, and
partly involuntary reaction to the atmosphere diffused by the dim,
shaded room and the autocratic solemnity of Madame Clara.
A sweet, rather sickly smell was discernible.
The silence affected Elsie so that she wanted to scream.
Her eyes were by this time accustomed to the semi-darkness, and she
could see that Madame Clara was leaning forward, her loose sleeves
falling away from her fat, bare arms, her elbows resting on the little
table, and her hands over her eyes.
Suddenly the woman drew herself upright, and turned towards Irene.
“You, first. You have a stronger personality than your friend. It was
you who brought her here. Do you wish me to look into the crystal for
you?”
“Yes, I do,” gasped Irene.
Elsie wondered from where the crystal would appear, and then she
noticed the faint outline of a globe in front of the seer, on the
little stand.
A thrill of superstitious awe ran through her.
“Make your mind a blank as far as possible, please ... do not think of
the past, the present, or the future ... relax ... relax ... relax....”
Madame Clara’s voice deepened, and she began to speak very slowly and
distinctly, leaning back in her chair, the crystal ball before her eyes.
“Time is an arbitrary division made by man--the crystal will not always
show what is past and what is to come. For instance, I see illness
here--bodily suffering--but I do not know if it has visited you or is
still to come. It may even be the suffering of one near to you....”
She paused for an instant, and Elsie just caught Irene’s smothered
exclamation of “Father!”
“Hush, please,” said the seeress. “The shadow of sickness deepens--it
deepens into the blackness of death. A man--an old man--he is dying.
You will get money from him. Beware of those who seek to flatter
you. You are impressionable, but clear-sighted; impulsive, yet
self-controlled; reserved, but intensely passionate. I see marriage for
you in the future, but with a man somewhat older than yourself. I see
conflict....” She stopped again.
“Perhaps the conflict is already over. You have certainly known
love--passion----”
Elsie, from mingled nervousness and embarrassment, suddenly giggled.
The clairvoyante raised an authoritative hand. “It is impossible for me
to go on if there are resistances,” she said angrily, in the voice that
she had used at first, ugly and rather hoarse.
“Shut up, Elsie!” came sharply from Irene.
Elsie ran her finger-nails into her palms in an endeavour to check the
nervous, spasmodic laughter that threatened to overcome her.
“The current is broken,” said Madame Clara in an indignant voice.
There was a silence.
At last Elsie heard Irene say timidly:
“Won’t you go on, madame?”
“I’m exhausted,” said the medium in a fatigued voice. “You will have to
return to me another day--alone. All that I can say to you now, I have
said. Beware of opals, and of a red-haired man. Your lucky stone is the
turquoise--you should wear light blue, claret colour, and all shades of
yellow, and avoid pinks, reds and purple.”
She stopped.
Elsie, though awestruck, was also vaguely disappointed. It did not seem
to her that she had learnt a great deal about Irene, and the warnings
about colours and precious stones might have come out of any twopenny
booklet off a railway bookstall, such as “What Month Were You Born In?”
or “Character and Fortune Told by Handwriting.”
Then she remembered that she herself had made Madame Clara angry by
laughing, and that the woman had said the current was broken.
“Probably she’s furious,” Elsie thought, “and she won’t tell me as much
as she told Ireen. And she’s got our money, too. What a swindle!”
“What about my friend?” said Irene Tidmarsh. Her voice sounded rather
sulky.
“Your friend is a sceptic,” said the clairvoyante coldly.
“No, really----” Elsie began.
The woman turned towards her so abruptly that she was startled.
She could discern an enormous pair of heavy-looking dark eyes gazing
into hers.
“Make your mind a blank--relax,” said Madame Clara, her tone once more
a commanding one.
Elsie moved uneasily in her chair and fixed her eyes on the crystal.
She could only see it faintly, a glassy spot of uncertain outline.
The seeress bent forward, leaning over the transparent globe. After a
moment or two she began to speak, with the same voice and intonation
that she had made use of in speaking about Irene.
“The crystal reflects all things, but Time is an arbitrary division
made by man--we do not always see what is past, and what is future....
In your case, there is very little past--how young you are!--and
what there is, is all on one plane, the physical. You are magnetic,
extraordinarily magnetic. You have known men--you are married, if
not by man’s law, then by nature’s law--you will know other men. But
you are not awake--your mind is asleep. Nothing is awake but your
senses....”
Elsie’s mouth was dry. She longed to stop the woman but a horrible
fascination kept her silent, tensely listening.
“Now you are bored--satiated. You have repeated the same experience
again and again, young as you are, until it means nothing to you. You
have no outside interests--and you are ceaselessly craving for a new
emotion.”
Abruptly the sibyl dropped on to a dark note.
“It will come. I see love here--love that you have never known yet.
There will be jealousy, intrigue--letters will pass--beware of the
written word----_Ah!_”
The exclamation was so sudden and so piercing that Elsie uttered a
stifled scream. But this time she was not rebuked.
Madame Clara, all at once, was calling out shrilly in a hard voice, an
indescribable blend of horror and excitement in her tone:
“Oh, God--what is it? Look--look, there in the crystal--what have you
done? There’s blood, and worse than blood! Oh, my God, what’s this?
It’s all over England--_you_--they’re talking about _you_----”
Irene Tidmarsh screamed wildly, and Elsie realised that she had sprung
to her feet. She herself was utterly unable to move, wave after wave of
sick terror surging through her as the high, unrecognisable voice of
the clairvoyante screeched and ranted, and then broke horribly.
“It’s blood! My God, get out of here! I won’t see any more--you’re all
over blood!...”
A strange, strangled cry, that Elsie did not recognise as having come
from her own lips, broke across the obscurity, the room surged round
her, she tried to clutch at the table, and felt herself falling heavily.
Elsie Williams had fainted.
She came back to a dazed memory of physical nausea, bewilderment, and
resentment, as she felt herself being unskilfully pulled into a sitting
position.
“Let go,” she muttered, “let me go....”
“She’s coming round! For Heaven’s sake, Elsie ... here, try and get
hold of her....”
She felt herself pulled and propelled to her feet, and even dragged a
few steps by inadequate supporters.
Then she sank down again, invaded by a renewal of deadly sickness,
but she was conscious that they had somehow got her outside the dark,
scented room, and that the door had been slammed behind her.
Very slowly her perceptions cleared, and she realised that Irene was
gripping her on one side, and the little hunch-backed girl holding a
futile hand beneath her elbow on the other.
With an effort, Elsie raised her head.
“Look here, old girl, are you better?” said Irene, low and urgently. “I
want to get out of here as quickly as possible. D’you think you can get
downstairs?”
Elsie, without clearly knowing why, was conscious that she, too, wanted
to get away.
She pulled herself to her feet, shuddering, and staggered down the
stairs, leaning heavily on Irene.
“What happened?”
“Oh, you just turned queer. Don’t think about it. Look here, we’d
better have a taxi, hadn’t we?”
“Yes. I couldn’t walk a step, that’s certain. Why, my knees are shaking
under me.”
“Go and get a taxi,” Irene commanded the hunch-backed child, who went
obediently away.
Elsie sat down on the lowest stair and wiped her wet, cold face with
her handkerchief.
“What made me go off like that, Ireen? That woman said something
beastly, didn’t she?”
“Oh she’s mad, that’s what she is. She suddenly started ranting, and
you got frightened, I suppose--and no wonder. Never mind, you’ll soon
be home now.”
It struck Elsie that Irene was looking at her in a strangely anxious
way, and that she was talking almost at random, as though to obliterate
the impression of what had passed at the _séance_.
Elsie herself could not remember clearly, but there was a lurking
horror at the back of her mind.
“What did she say?” she persisted feebly.
“Here’s the taxi!” cried Irene, in intense relief. “Here, get in,
Elsie. Thank you,” she added to the child. “Don’t wait, I’ll tell the
man where to go.”
She gave the driver Elsie’s address after the little girl had entered
the house again, and then climbed in beside her friend, drawing a long
breath.
“Thank the Lord! We got away pretty quickly, didn’t we? Well, it’s
the last time I’ll meddle with anything of that kind, I swear. I say,
Elsie, had we better stop at a chemist’s and get you something?”
“Yes--no. I don’t care. Ireen, I want to know what that woman said. It
was something awful about _me_, wasn’t it?”
“She had a--kind of fit, I think. I don’t believe she knew what she was
saying--she just screamed out a pack of nonsense. And you gave a yell,
and went down like a log. I can tell you, you’ve pretty nearly scared
the life out of me, young Elsie.”
Irene was indeed oddly white-faced and jerky. Her manner was as
unnatural as was her sudden volubility.
Elsie, still feeling weak and giddy, leant her head back and closed her
eyes. She felt quite unable to make the effort of remembering what had
happened at the clairvoyante’s house, and was moreover instinctively
aware that the recollection, when it did come, would bring dismay and
terror.
She and Irene Tidmarsh did not exchange a word until the taxi stopped.
“Here we are. You’d better pay him, Elsie. I’ll take the Tube from the
corner, and get home in half an hour.”
“Aren’t you coming in with me?” said Elsie, surprised.
“I don’t think I will. I’d rather get straight home.”
“Oh, do!” urged Elsie, half crying. She felt very much shaken. “I’m all
alone; Horace won’t be back till seven, and this has upset me properly.
Besides, I know I shall remember what it was that awful woman said in a
minute, and I’m frightened. You _must_ come in, Ireen.”
“I can’t,” repeated Irene, inexorably. “I ... really, I’d rather not,
Elsie.”
The door opened, and Irene turned rapidly and walked away down the
street.
Elsie tottered into the house.
“I’m ill,” she said abruptly to the servant. “I fainted while I was
out, and I feel like nothing on earth now. I shall go to bed.”
“Yes, ’m. Shall I go for a doctor, ’m?” said the girl zealously.
“No,” said Elsie sharply. “I don’t want a doctor. Telephone to Mr.
Williams at the office, Emma, and ask him to come home early. Say I’m
ill.”
“Yes, ’m.”
Elsie dragged herself upstairs and took off some of her clothes. She
was shivering violently, and presently pulled her blue cotton kimono
round her and slipped into bed. She lay there with closed eyes,
shuddering from time to time, until Emma brought up a cup of strong
tea. Elsie drank it avidly, lay down again and felt revived. Presently
she dozed.
The opening of the door roused her. It was nearly dark, but she knew
that it must be her husband, who never knocked before entering their
joint bedroom.
“What’s all this, Elsie?”
“I felt rotten,” she said wearily. “Turn on the light, Horace.”
He did so, and advanced towards the bed. His face wore an expression of
concern, and he walked on tiptoe.
“I fainted while I was out with Ireen,” Elsie explained, “and I was
simply ages coming to. We came back in a cab, and I must say Ireen’s
awfully selfish. She wouldn’t come in with me, though she must have
seen I wasn’t fit to be left--just turned and walked off. I’m done with
her, after this.”
“Where had you been?” enquired Williams quickly.
“Oh, just out.”
“Where to?”
“I suppose you’ll call me a fool, if I say it was to see one of those
clairvoyante women, someone Ireen had heard of. It was all Ireen’s
doing--she persuaded me to go.”
“Very silly of you both,” said the little solicitor coldly. “Did this
person upset you?”
“Yes. She had a sort of fit, I think, and called out a whole lot of
nonsense, only I can’t remember what it was.” Elsie moved uneasily.
“Where does she live?”
“Why?”
“She ought to be prosecuted for obtaining money under false pretences.
I suppose you gave her money?”
“Oh yes.”
“You’d better give me her name and address and I’ll see that she is
properly dealt with.”
“I’d rather not.”
Horace Williams shrugged his shoulders. “Well, you’d better get up and
come down to supper, hadn’t you? There’s no reason for lying in bed if
you’re not ill.”
“All right,” Elsie agreed sullenly.
Her husband never shouted at her or threatened her, but she was afraid
of him, and of a certain sinister dryness that characterised his manner
when he was displeased.
The dryness was there now.
Elsie spent the evening downstairs. Her husband read the newspaper,
and she turned over the pages of a fashion magazine listlessly. Her
thoughts, unwillingly enough, returned again and again to the scene in
the clairvoyante’s room, but still she could not remember the actual
words screamed out by Madame Clara before she had lost consciousness.
But she remembered quite well other words, that had preceded them.
“You are magnetic ... extraordinarily magnetic.... You are not
awake--your mind is asleep.... Now, you are bored, satiated. You are
ceaselessly craving for a new emotion....”
Elsie reflected how true this was.
She glanced distastefully at her elderly husband.
The bald patch glistened on the top of his head, and he was breathing
heavily as he read his newspaper.
He had always been rather distasteful to her physically, and although
the continuous, degradingly inevitable proximity of married life in
a small suburban villa had hardened her into indifference, Elsie was
still averse from the more intimate aspects of marriage with him.
She wished that she could fall in love, remembering that Madame Clara
had said: “I see love here--love that you have never known yet.”
“That’s bunkum,” thought Elsie. “I’ve been in love heaps of times--I
was in love with that doctor fellow, Woolley. It doesn’t last, that’s
all.”
She hardly ever met any men nowadays, as she resentfully reminded
herself.
The husbands of her married friends were at work all day, and if she
occasionally met them at their wives’ card-parties, they did not
interest her very greatly. Most of the wives distrusted the husbands
and gave them no opportunity for flirtation with other women. And
Horace Williams himself was a jealous man, always suspicious, and never
allowed his young wife to go anywhere with any man but himself.
Elsie had been for a long while in inward revolt against the dullness
of her life. She remembered with longing the old days of her girlhood,
when every walk had been the prelude to adventure, and the casual
kisses of unknown, or scarcely known, men had roused her to rapture.
Nowadays, she knew very well that she would be less easily satisfied.
The apathy that had been creeping over her ever since her marriage
had to a certain extent lessened the force of the animal magnetism by
which she had been able to lure the senses of almost every man she met,
and for the first time she was beginning to have doubts of her own
attractiveness.
Elsie gave a sigh that was almost a groan.
Williams neither stirred nor raised his eyes.
“I think I’ll retire to my little downy,” Elsie murmured, drearily
facetious.
“It’s only a quarter past nine.”
“Oh, well, we lead such a deliriously exciting life that I’d better get
some rest, hadn’t I?” she said ironically. “Just to make up for all the
late nights we have.”
At last her husband put down the paper and looked coldly at her through
his pince-nez. “What is it you want, Elsie? I work hard all day at the
office, and you have plenty of time and money for amusing yourself in
the daytime--and a strange use you seem to make of them, judging by
to-day’s performance. What more do you want?”
“I don’t know. We might go to the pictures sometimes, or to a play. I
hate not having anything to do.”
“That’s the complaint of every woman who hasn’t got children.”
“I can’t help it,” said Elsie angrily.
He said nothing, but continued to fix his eyes upon her, with his most
disagreeable expression.
“Good-night, Horace.”
“I shall come up to bed before you’re asleep,” he said meaningly.
She went out of the room.
The thought crossed her mind, as it had often done before, that she had
made a frightful mistake in marrying Horace Williams.
“I was only eighteen,” she thought, “I ought to have waited. Perhaps
he’ll die.”
As she undressed, Elsie idly imagined a drama of which she herself
would, of course, be the heroine.
Horace would be at the office, as usual, and a telephone message would
come through to say that he was ill--very ill indeed--he was dead.
Everyone would admire the young widow in her black, with her string of
pearl beads.... Horace would leave her quite a lot of money. Elsie knew
that he was rich, although he had never told her his income. She would
stay on in the villa, but people would come and see her--she would go
out and enjoy herself--enjoy life, once more....
Elsie sighed again as she got into bed.
Bored and exhausted, she fell asleep almost at once, to dream vividly.
In her dream, she stood outside a closed door, knowing that something
unspeakably horrid lay beyond it. Terror paralysed her. At last she
pushed at the door, but it would not yield more than an inch or two.
Something was behind it. She looked down and saw a dark stain spreading
round her feet, oozing from beneath the resistant door.
Screaming and sweating, Elsie woke up, and as she did so the
remembrance came back to her in full of everything that the
clairvoyante had said that morning.