The tension under which Elsie now lived began at last to affect her
health. She slept badly, and was nervous as she had never been before.
Williams watched her without comment--a sinister little figure.
Sometimes, utterly overwrought, Elsie tried to force a scene with him,
but she only once succeeded in making him evince anger.
Strangely reckless, she suddenly suggested that Leslie Morrison should
be invited to lodge in their house, with no slightest expectation that
her husband would entertain such a scheme, but with a wild desire to
provoke him to a scene that should release some of her own pent-up
emotion.
“He’s looking for rooms, Geraldine says,” she declared, “and we’ve a
bedroom to spare, and might as well use it.”
Williams gazed at her incredulously. “Are you aware that I’ve shown
Morrison the door once already?” he asked at last.
“Yes, I’m quite aware of that,” said Elsie, with insolence in her
voice. “I thought you might have got more sense now, that’s all.”
“Listen to me, Elsie. I forbade you to speak to that fellow again--and
by God, if you’ve done so, I’ll see you never forget it!” His face was
livid and he spoke through his clenched teeth.
“I’ll speak to whom I please.”
“Have you been meeting Morrison?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
Elsie felt a curious pleasure and relief in thus mocking at the furious
jealousy that was evident in her husband’s face and manner.
“Answer my question.”
She remained silent.
“Are you and that fellow in love?”
“I’ve answered that before. I told you months ago, when you first
started to insult me, that he was nothing to me.”
“That wasn’t true then--and it isn’t now. Morrison’s in love with you,
damn him, and you’re in love with him!”
“Am I?”
Elsie laughed derisively in the new and uncomprehended realisation that
she was no longer afraid of Horace.
“You little bitch!...”
He caught her by the shoulders and suddenly flung her against the wall.
Elsie screamed, but it was reflex action from the physical shock alone
that made her do so. She was neither frightened nor very much startled.
There was even an odd exhilaration for her in the sudden release of
those pent-up forces that had for so long vibrated tensely between
herself and her husband.
However, her arm and shoulder were bruised, and her whole body
violently jarred. “You’re a coward!” she panted. “Hitting a woman!”
“You drove me to it.... Elsie, get up!... I’m sorry I did that, but
you’re driving me mad. God, if I had that fellow here I’d wring the
life out of him!”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Elsie taunted him. “He’s a great deal stronger than
you are--he’s a man, he is--you’d never dare to touch him. All you can
do is to knock a woman about.”
“That’s a lie! I’ve never touched you before, though there’s many a man
in my place would have beaten you within an inch of your life. I didn’t
know what I was doing just now.”
He took a step towards her, but Elsie pulled herself up from the floor
without appearing to notice the movement. She felt slightly giddy, and
her head ached.
“Aren’t you going to--to forgive me? I oughtn’t to have hit you, I
acknowledge, but you’ve done everything to drive me to it. Elsie, swear
to me that there’s nothing now between you and Morrison.”
“Oh, all right,” she said wearily. “I swear it.” She felt that she no
longer cared what happened in a sudden overwhelming fatigue.
“I don’t believe you,” said Williams bitterly.
Elsie shrugged her shoulders, and turned, moving stiffly, to leave the
room.
“Are you--are you hurt?”
“Yes, of course I am. My shoulder will be black and blue to-morrow, I
should think.”
“Shall I get you anything?” Williams muttered, shamefaced.
She made no answer.
That afternoon Elsie rang up Leslie Morrison on the telephone after her
husband had gone out. “Is that you, Les?”
“Yes. How’s yourself?”
He had told her never to be prodigal of verbal endearments in their
telephone communications, and she knew that he was probably not alone,
but it struck her painfully that his tone was a purely casual one, such
as he might have used to anyone.
“We’ve had an awful scene, boy.”
“What--who?”
“Him--Horace--and me. The same old thing, of course--jealousy. I stood
up to him, and told him I didn’t intend to put up with that sort of
treatment any longer, and I’d never give up anyone I--I liked.”
“I say, Elsie, you were careful, weren’t you?” asked Morrison, his
voice grown anxious.
“Yes, yes, darling, of course I was, for your sake. But Leslie--this is
what happened--he knocked me down.”
There was a smothered exclamation that made her heart leap with sudden
exultation. Of course Leslie cared....
“Elsie--girlie--he didn’t! Are you hurt?”
She could have laughed in pure joy at his sharply-anxious question.
“Nothing bad. Shaken, of course, and I expect there’ll be a bad bruise,
but I can put up with worse than that, you know.”
“You oughtn’t to have to! The hound! I’d like to.... Look here, can’t
we meet?”
“Yes, yes!” she said eagerly. “What about tea? I’ll come to----”
“The same place,” he interrupted quickly, and she understood that he
did not want her to mention the name of the tea-shop that had so often
served them as rendezvous.
“What time?”
“About half-past five. I shan’t get away any earlier.”
“All right, darling. I’ll be there.”
“Sure you’re all right?”
“Yes, quite all right now,” Elsie declared, laughing happily.
“I must go. See you later, then?”
“Yes. Good-bye, boy.”
The answering good-bye came to her faintly over the wires as the final
click warned her that he had hung up the receiver.
Elsie looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. Only three o’clock--two
hours and a quarter before she could think of starting out.
The telephone rang again, and Elsie, with a joyful hope that Morrison
had been unable to resist a further word, snatched at the instrument.
“Hallo, hallo! Who’s there?”
“I am--Horace,” said her husband’s flat, nasal voice. “Look here. How
would you like to go to the play to-night, Elsie?”
“What!” said Elsie, disappointed at not hearing Leslie Morrison’s voice
again, and still dazed from the scene of the morning.
“I said, how would you like to do a theatre to-night? I’ve got tickets
for ‘The Girl on the Pier’--good places--for to-night.”
She understood at last that he was seeking to propitiate her, and to
make up for his violence. “I don’t mind. What time does it start?”
“Half-past eight, but we’d better meet in town somewhere for some food.
I shan’t have time to come home first. What about the Corner House,
at about seven o’clock? That’ll give us plenty of time to go on to
Shaftesbury Avenue afterwards.”
“All right. How many tickets have you got, Horace?”
“Just the two. I thought you and I would go by ourselves and have a
jolly evening,” said the far-away voice rather tremulously.
Elsie laughed drearily as she rang off.
It seemed to her that the time dragged interminably until she could go
upstairs and dress herself for the evening’s outing. She meant to meet
Morrison first and then go on to the Corner House and wait there for
her husband.
Elsie put on a dark blue coat and skirt, with a new pale blue jumper
of artificial silk, and a big black hat with a blue feather. Round her
neck she wore a small black fur.
After her variable wont, she had suddenly recovered her looks, after
the sodden, stupefied ugliness that the morning’s unhappiness had
produced in her. Her eyes seemed more widely opened than usual, her
hair fell into thick curls and rings, and a soft, bright colour lay
under her oddly prominent cheek-bones. She rubbed lip-stick on to her
full, sulkily-cut mouth, and lavishly powdered her straight, beautiful
neck. The glow of excitement and gladness transformed her as she went
out to meet Morrison, slamming the door of the villa behind her.
“Darling!”
“My own dear little girl!” said Leslie, and held both her gloved hands
for a moment in his. “I haven’t been able to think of anything but what
you told me this afternoon. Are we going for a walk, or will you come
in?”
“I’d like to come in and sit down,” said Elsie languidly. “Have you had
tea?”
“No. I’ll order some.”
“Not for me, boy. I’m meeting Horace for a meal in about an hour and a
half. We’re going to the theatre.”
“Have you made it up, then?”
“Oh, I suppose so! He telephoned and said he had these tickets. I
suppose he thought it’d make up, in a way.”
They chose a corner table at the further end of the tea-shop, and Elsie
took off her coat and leant against it as it lay folded over the back
of her chair.
“Where did he hurt you this morning?” said Morrison intently.
She pulled up the loose sleeve of her silk jumper. “Look!”
Her smooth, soft arm was already discoloured all round the elbow and up
to the shoulder.
“It’s worse higher up, only I can’t get at it now to show you.”
“_Damn_ him!” Leslie Morrison muttered between his teeth.
His boyish face was black with an intensity of feeling that Elsie had
seldom seen there of late. It sent a rush of joyful reassurance all
through her.
“Darling, I don’t care about anything while we’ve got each other.”
“But it can’t go on, Elsie. He’s making your life miserable. Isn’t
there any hope of a divorce, or even a separation?”
“He says he never will.”
Elsie spoke slowly. She was revolving a possibility, that she had often
viewed before in her own mind.
“Les, can’t we go away together? I don’t care what happens, or what
people think of me. I’d face anything, with you.”
Even as she spoke, she knew--and one side of her was relieved to
know--that Morrison would negative the suggestion, as he had often done
before.
“Out of the question, darling girl. Think what I’m getting--two
twenty-five a year and no particular prospect of a rise for years to
come. And look at what you’ve been used to!”
“Not before I married.”
“Times were different then. It was before the war. Living has gone up
five hundred per cent. since then, and it’ll be many a long year before
it comes down again. Why, Elsie, we couldn’t even live!”
“I don’t know whether you think I’m living now!” she exclaimed
vehemently. “Existing, I call it. And we shall only be young once,
Leslie, and it seems so hard to waste it all.”
He groaned, and they sat silent for a time, their hands locked together
beneath the table.
“Would you be ready to--to end it all?” she asked suddenly. “I mean for
us to go out together, right out of life?”
“Do you mean suicide?”
“Yes--a suicide pact.”
She fixed her eyes upon him, anxious to believe that he was startled,
and acutely touched, at the lengths to which her love could carry her.
The actual idea behind the word--that of suicide--conveyed very little
to her. Although she believed herself to be fully in earnest, Elsie
never seriously contemplated her own death, nor that of her lover.
She had often thought of Williams’s death as the one possible solution
of their problem, but she had actually never really abandoned the
secret expectation that a way out would be found for herself and
Morrison that would secure their happiness.
She had read of suicide-pacts, and seized upon the idea eagerly as one
more peg upon which to hang the proofs of her passion for Morrison, and
maintain his love, and his interest in herself, at the level of her own
ardour. Although never consciously owning it to herself, Elsie knew
that his love was a lesser one than hers.
Leslie Morrison, now, did not make the passionate response for which
she had hoped. “Don’t talk like that. Oh, Elsie, it is hard, isn’t it?
And you don’t know what it’s like for me to think of that brute making
your life miserable. If only there was anything I could do!... I think
about it till I see red sometimes. Why doesn’t he die?”
“Because we want him to, I suppose,” said Elsie, suddenly listless.
“He’s always talking about his health failing, and things like that,
but I don’t see any sign of it myself. Things will never come right for
us in this world, Leslie.”
“Elsie, I’ll make him get a separation; I swear I will. It’s the only
possible thing. Then at least you’ll be free.”
She noticed that he did not refer to the separation between herself and
her husband as to a means of furthering their own love.
“Haven’t your people ever tried to get your freedom for you?”
“Oh, I’ve nobody much, you know! Only mother and Geraldine, and the old
aunties. They don’t approve of me either--never did.”
“Poor little girl, they don’t understand you!”
“I don’t care while I’ve got you, Leslie.”
They made love to one another, their voices low, until Morrison
reminded Elsie suddenly that it was late.
“You’ll hardly get to the West End by seven now. I’m glad you’re going
to enjoy yourself to-night, anyway.”
“I wish we were going together, Les, just you and I. That’s how it
ought to be. Are we going to meet to-morrow, dearest?”
“Lunch here, can you? One o’clock. And meanwhile, darling, I’m going
to think hard what I can do to make things better for you. He’s got to
stop leading you this sort of life, anyway, and it’s up to me to find a
way of making him do so. When I think of his knocking you about....”
The blood rushed into his face, and Elsie saw that he had clenched his
hand involuntarily. It was balm to her to realise that she still had
the power of exciting him to a frenzied anxiety on her account.
“He’s hit me before now, you know,” she said suddenly, hardly
realising, and caring not at all, that she was not speaking the truth.
“You never told me. I’ve sometimes wondered....”
“I didn’t mean to say anything about it. I knew it would upset you....
Never mind, darling, I don’t care.”
“But I do. I tell you it’s driving me mad. Oh, what’s the good of
talking when one can’t do anything! Look here, darling, I’m not fit to
talk to you now--and besides, you’ll be frightfully late. I shall see
you to-morrow.”
“One o’clock. Good-night, sweetheart. I wish it was you and me going to
this show to-night. Wouldn’t it be heaven!”
“Indeed it would. But things may come right for us even yet,
darling--don’t give up hope. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye!” she echoed.
Elsie was late for her appointment with her husband, but he did not
complain. He seemed anxious to do everything in his power to conciliate
her, and it was characteristic of their relations together that, as
her fear of his sarcastic petulance vanished, so her contempt for him
increased.
“I got dress-circle places,” said Williams impressively. “I know you
like them.”
The piece, a musical comedy, amused her, and she was pleased at various
glances that were cast upon her by their neighbours in the theatre.
At the back of it all was a warm inward glow that pervaded all her
consciousness at the remembrance of Leslie Morrison’s championship of
her, his assurance that he would “think out a way.”
Perhaps Leslie would make up his mind to take her away. She had asked
him to do so, and he had always refused. Elsie, with an ever-latent
fear that Morrison was already beginning to tire of an attachment that
to her was the one reality in life, told herself passionately that,
with him, she would care nothing for poverty.
“It’s good, isn’t it?” said her husband’s nasal voice.
“Rather. Topping!”
For a minute or two she listened to the comedian on the stage, and was
genuinely amused by his facial contortions and wilful mispronunciations
of polysyllabic words.
“He’s so silly, you can’t help laughing at him,” Elsie declared, wiping
her eyes.
Then she drifted back again into the dream wherein she and Leslie
Morrison figured as sole protagonists, with complete and unexplained
elimination of Horace Williams.
“Look who’s here, Elsie!”
She started violently, convinced against all reason that she would see
Morrison.
“Isn’t that your aunties?”
“So it is,” said Elsie without enthusiasm.
Aunt Ada and Aunt Gertie were making violent signs to her, and in the
interval Horace, still evidently bent upon doing everything possible to
please her, insisted upon going to speak to them, and suggested supper
after the play.
“He is going it,” Elsie reflected dispassionately, not in the least
touched, but a good deal amazed at the lavishness of Horace’s amends.
She was in reality very much bored by the company of the two aunts in
the little restaurant to which they eventually went.
“Why don’t you go and see your poor mother, Elsie?”
“I do see her, Aunt Gertie.”
“Not very often, dear.”
“As often as I’ve time for,” said Elsie curtly.
“Geraldine’s not looking well,” Aunt Ada began next.
“What happened to that young fellow she was supposed to be going with
last year?”
Horace Williams called abruptly for his bill. “It’s after twelve, and
I’ve got to be at work to-morrow, if you ladies haven’t. All good
things must come to an end, you know.”
“It’s been most pleasant, I’m sure,” said Aunt Gertie.
And when Horace had gone to pay the account at the cash-desk, she added
sentimentally to Elsie:
“It’s a real pleasure to have seen you and him together--and so happy.”
“Thanks,” said Elsie sarcastically. “We’re as happy as the day is long,
of course.”
“So you ought to be,” said Aunt Ada very sharply.
They exchanged good-byes outside the restaurant, and Elsie and her
husband went by Tube to their own station.
The long suburban road was almost deserted when they came out into it.
“We’ll go by the Grove, of course,” said Elsie, indicating the narrow
alleyway that eventually merged into their own street, with a high
blank wall upon one side of it and the backs of a rather sordid row of
houses upon the other.
A few leafless plane-trees showed above the top of the wall, and an
occasional tall lamp slightly relieved the gloom of the long, paved
passage-way.
Their footsteps on the stones were clearly audible in the unusual
stillness that belonged both to the deserted locality and to the small
hours of the morning.
“Who’s that?” said Horace so suddenly that Elsie jumped.
Footsteps were hurrying behind them, and they both turned. With a
strange sense of foreknowledge, Elsie saw Leslie Morrison.
The two men stopped dead as they came face to face with one another.
Elsie shrank back against the high yellow brick wall, her eyes fixed
upon Morrison’s ravaged face.
“I couldn’t rest for thinking of it all. I know what happened to-day,
Williams,” he said in a high, strained voice. “It can’t go on. You’re
making Elsie’s life hell. Give her her freedom.”
“Damn you! Who are you to interfere between man and wife?” said
Williams, low and fiercely. “I know what you want, both of you, but you
won’t have it. Elsie’s my wife, and I shan’t let her go.”
“You’ve got to.”
Horace Williams, looking full at the youth, who was shaking from head
to foot with excitement, gave his low, malevolent laugh.
Almost at the same instant Elsie heard her own voice screaming, “Don’t
... don’t...!” and saw the flash of a knife as Morrison raised his arm
and struck again and again.
Williams spun round as though to run, and his eyes, oddly
surprised-looking, glared, straight and unseeing, at Elsie.
Leslie Morrison stabbed at him again in the back.
“What have you done?” sobbed Elsie to Morrison. “Oh, go!”
She saw Morrison dash away up the passage, and at the same moment
Horace Williams took a few steps forward.
“Keep up--I’ll help you!” gasped Elsie.
She thrust her arm beneath his elbow, dimly astonished and relieved to
find that he was walking, when he suddenly lurched heavily against her,
the upper part of his body sagging forward. Then he fell heavily and
lay motionless, blood trickling from his mouth.
Elsie, utterly distraught, and her knees shaking under her, felt her
screams strangled in her throat. A distant figure showed at the near
end of the alley, and she flew, rather than ran, towards the stranger,
calling out in a high, sobbing voice for a doctor--for help.
The woman, elderly and respectable-looking, asked what had happened.
“I don’t know,” said Elsie. A blind horror was upon her, but instinct
warned her to make no definite statement of any kind.
A nightmare confusion followed. The alleyway, from being a silent
and deserted spot, became clamorous with footsteps and voices. Elsie
dimly heard a tall man in evening clothes saying that he was a doctor,
and saw him kneel beside the blood-spattered form huddled upon the
pavement. It was he, and a stalwart policeman, who finally lifted that
which had been Horace Williams on to a hand-ambulance and took it away.
Another man in police uniform took Elsie’s arm, giving her the support
that alone enabled her to move, and helped her to a taxi.
She almost fell into it, weeping hysterically, and he took his place
beside her as a matter of course. In the sick, convulsed terror that
shook her, his stolid presence was an actual relief. She thought that
he was taking her home until he gently explained that she was coming
with him to the police-station.
“We want to get this cleared up, you know, and you can help us by
telling us just what happened.”
A new and more dreadful fear came over her. If Horace was dead someone
would be accused of having killed him. They might suspect her.... Elsie
felt as though she were going mad with the horror of it all.
She began hysterically to scream and cry.