ALIX AND EVIE
1
Basil had Evie on the brain. He liked her enormously. He was glad he had
a month's more leave. He took to meeting her after she came out from her
hat shop and seeing her home. They spent Saturday afternoons together.
Alix saw them parting one Saturday evening, as she came home. Spring
Hill was dim and quiet, and they stood by the door into the Park, on the
opposite side of the road to Violette, chaffing and saying good-bye.
Alix saw Basil suddenly kiss Evie. It might be the first time: in that
case it would be an event for them both, and thrilling. Or it might be
not the first time at all: in that case it would be a habit, and jolly.
Anyhow Evie said, 'Oh, go along and don't be a silly.... Are you coming
in to-night?'
He said 'No' and laughed.
Then they saw Alix turning into Violette.
'There now,' said Evie. 'She must have seen you going on. Couldn't have
missed it.... Whatever will she think?'
'She won't think anything,' said Basil Doye. 'Alix is a nice person, and
minds her own business.'
'I believe it's her you're in love with really,' said Evie, teasing him.
He kissed her again, and said, 'Oh, do you?'
After a little more of the like conversation, which will easily be
imagined, they parted. Evie went into Violette. She ran upstairs and
into her dark bedroom and flung off her outdoor things. Turning, she saw
Alix sitting on the edge of her bed.
'Goodness, how you startled me,' said Evie.
'Sorry,' said Alix. 'Got a toothache.' She was holding her face between
her hands.
Evie said, 'Oh, bad luck. Try some aspirin. Or suck a clove.... I say,
Al.'
'What?'
'Did you see me and Mr. Doye just now, in the road? You did, didn't
you?'
'No,' said Alix.
'Oh,' said Evie, dubious, glancing at Alix's face, that was dimly wan in
the faint light from the street lamps, and twisted a little with her
toothache.
Pity seized Evie, who was kind.
'I say, kiddie, do go to bed. What's the use of coming down with a
face-ache? You'd be much better tucked up snug, with a clove poultice.'
'No,' said Alix, uncertainly, and stood up. 'It's better now. I've put
on cocaine.... Where are my shoes?... Of course I saw you and Basil in
the road.... Did you have a jolly afternoon?'
Evie knew that way of Alix's, of going back upon her lies; that was
where Alix as a liar differed from herself; you only had to wait.
'Yes, it was a lark,' said Evie carelessly. 'Mr. Doye's priceless, isn't
he? Doesn't mind _what_ he says. Nor what he does, either. He makes me
shriek, he's so comic. You should have heard him go on at tea. We went
to the rink, you know, and had tea there. He's so _silly_.' Evie laughed
her attractive, gurgling laugh.
They went down to supper.
2
Sometimes Basil and Evie lunched together. By habit they lunched in
different shops and had different things to eat. Evie liked pea-soup, or
a poached egg, bread and honey, a large cup of coffee with milk, and
what she and the tea-shop young ladies called fancies. Basil didn't.
When they lunched together they both had the things Basil liked, except
in coffee.
'Did you tell him two _noirs_?' Evie would say. 'Rubbish, you know I
always have _lait_.'
'A corrupt taste. One _cafe au lait_, waiter. You like the most
ridiculous things, you know; you might be eight. You aren't grown-up
enough yet for black coffee, or smoking, or liqueurs. You must meet my
mother; you'd learn a lot from her.'
'Oh well, I'm happy in my own way.... As for smoking, I think it's jolly
bad for people's nerves, if you ask me. Alix smokes an awful lot, and
her nerves are like fiddle-strings. I don't go so far,' Evie said
judicially, 'as to say I don't think it's good form for girls. That's
what mother thinks, only of course she's old-fashioned, very. So is
Kate. But after all, there _is_ a difference between men and girls, in
the things they should do; _I_ think there's a difference, don't you?'
'Oh, thank goodness, yes,' said Basil, fervently, not having always
thought so.
'And I don't know, but I sometimes think if girls can't fight for their
country, they shouldn't smoke.'
'Oh, I see. A reward for valour, you think it should be. That would be
rather hard, since the red-tape rules of our army don't allow them to
fight. If they might, I've no doubt plenty would.'
Evie laughed at him. 'A girl would hate it. She'd be hopeless.'
'Plenty of men hate it and are hopeless, if you come to that.'
'Oh, it's not the same,' asserted Evie. 'A girl couldn't.' She added,
after a moment, sympathetically curious, 'Do _you_ hate it much?'
'Oh, much,' Basil deprecated the adverb. 'It's quite interesting in some
ways, you know,' he added. 'And at moments even exciting. Though mostly
a bit of a bore, of course, and sometimes pretty vile. But, anyhow,
seldom without its humours, which is the main thing. Oh, it's
frightfully funny in parts.'
'Anyhow,' Evie explained for him, 'of course you're glad to be doing
your bit.'
He laughed at that. 'You've been reading magazine stories. That's what
the gallant young fellows say, isn't it?... Look here, bother the war. I
want to talk about better things. Will you meet me after you get off
this evening? I want a good long time with you, and leisure. These
scraps are idiotic.'
Evie looked doubtful.
'You and me by ourselves? Or shall we get any one else?'
'Any one else? What for? Spoil everything.'
'Oh, _I_ don't mind either way. Only mother's rather particular in some
ways, you know, and she ... well, if you want to know, she thinks I go
out with you alone rather a lot. It's all rubbish, of course; as if one
mightn't go out with who one likes ... but, well, you know what mother
is. I told you, she's old-fashioned, a bit. And of course Kate's
shocked, but I don't care a bit for Kate, she's too prim for anything.'
'We won't care a bit for any one,' suggested Basil. 'I never do. I don't
believe you do really, either. If people are so particular, we must just
shock them and have done. Anyhow, you don't suppose I'm going to give up
seeing you.'
The quickening of his tone made her draw back from the subject. Evie
liked flirtation, but did not understand passion; it was not in her cool
head and heart. It was the thing in Basil that made her at times,
lately, shy of him in their intercourse; vaguely she realised that he
might become unmanageable. She liked him to love her beauty, but she was
occasionally startled by the way he loved it. She thought it was perhaps
because he was an artist, or a soldier, or both.
'Well, perhaps I'll come,' she said, to soothe him. 'Where shall we go?
Let's go _inside_ something, I say, not walking in the dark like last
time. Oh, it was very jolly, of course, but it's not so snug and comfy.
We might do a play?... I say, it's nearly two. I must get back. I got
into a row yesterday for being late--that was your fault.'
They walked together to the side door of the select hat shop.
'Not really a shop,' as Evie explained sometimes. 'More of a studio, it
is. It's awfully artistic, our work.'
While she went upstairs, she was thinking, 'Dommage, his getting so warm
sometimes. It spoils the fun.... He'll be wanting to tie me up if I'm
not careful, and I'm not ready for that yet.... There are plenty of
others.... I don't know.'
3
As it happened, she met one of the others when she left the shop at
five, and he took her out to tea at the most expensive tea place in
London, which was always his way with tea and other things. He was on
leave from France, and had met Evie for the first time three days ago,
when she was out with Doye, whom he knew. His name was Hugh Montgomery
Gordon, and he was the son of Sir Victor Gordon of Ellaby Hall in Kent,
Prince's Mansions in Park Lane, and Gordon's Jam Factory in Hackney
Wick. He was handsome in person, graceful, clear-featured, an old
lawn-tennis blue, and a young man with great possessions, who, having
been told on good authority that he would find it hard to enter into the
kingdom of heaven, had renounced any idea of this enterprise he might
otherwise have had, and devoted himself whole-heartedly to appreciating
this world. He was in a cavalry regiment, and had come through the war
so far cool, unruffled, unscathed, and mentioned in despatches. He had a
faculty for serenely expecting and acquiring the best, in most
departments of life, though in some (such as art, literature, and social
ethics) he failed through ignorance and indifference. Meeting Evie
Tucker in Bond Street, and perceiving, as he had perceived before, that
her beauty was in a high class of merit, he was stirred by a desire to
acquire her as a companion for tea, and did so. Evie liked him; he was
really more in her line than Basil Doye (artists were queer, there was
no getting round that, even if they had given it up for soldiering and
had lost interest in it and fingers), and she liked the place where they
had tea, and liked the tea and the cakes and the music, and liked him to
drive to Clapton with her in a taxi afterwards.
'You don't seem economical, do you?' she remarked, as they whirred
swiftly eastward.
'I hope not,' said Hugh Montgomery Gordon, in his slow, level tones. 'I
can't stand economical people.'
He left her at Violette and drove back to his club, feeling satisfied
with himself and her. She was certainly a find, though it was a pity one
had to go so far out into the wilderness to return her where she
belonged. Her people were, no doubt, what his sister Myrtle would call
quite imposs.
4
As Evie and Captain Gordon had taxied down Holborn, they had passed, and
been held up for a minute near Alix, Nicholas, and West, who stood
talking at the corner of Chancery Lane.
'Hugh Montgomery Gordon,' Nicholas murmured. 'Bright and beautiful as
usual. Know him, Alix? Surely he doesn't visit at Violette? I can't
picture it, somehow.'
'Oh, he might, for Evie's sake. Evie picks them up, you know; it's
remarkable how she picks them up. They look very beautiful together,
don't they? Is he nice?'
'Just as you saw. I scarcely know him more than that. He was a Hall man;
my year. I believe he had a good time there. He looks as if he had a
good time still. West's opinions about him are more pronounced than
mine. Is he nice, West?'
'He's in the family jam,' West told Alix, as sufficient answer.
'Gordon's jam, if that means anything to you.'
'Wooden pips and sweated girls,' Alix assented, having picked up these
things from her mother. 'It must be exciting: so many improvements to be
made.'
'No doubt,' agreed West. 'But the Gordons won't make them. They make jam
and they make money--any amount of it--but they don't make improvements
that won't pay. A bad business. It will be more tolerable for Sodom and
Gomorrah in the day of judgment, at least I hope it will. They've been
badgered and bullied about it by social workers for years, but they
don't mind.... And at the same time, of course, they've no more ideas
about what to do with their money than--than Solomon had. They put it
into peacocks and ivory apes. These rich people--well, I should like to
have the Gordons in a dungeon and pull out their teeth one by one, as if
they were Jews, till they forked out their ill-gotten gains for worthy
objects.... If you ever meet Gordon, Miss Sandomir, you might tell him
what I think about him. Tell him we have a meeting of the Anti-Sweating
League in our parish room every Monday, and should be glad to see him
there.'
Nicholas wondered, though he didn't ask Alix, whether Evie was still on
with Basil Doye, or whether a breach there had made a gap by which Hugh
Montgomery Gordon was entering in. One thought of Evie's friendships
with men in these terms; whereas Alix might drive with a different man
every day without suggesting to the onlooker that one was likely to oust
another. The difference was less between Evie and Alix (for Evie was of
a fine and wide companionableness) than in what men required of them
respectively.
'Evie and he,' Alix commented, considering them. 'They might be good
friends, I think. They might fit. The jam wouldn't get between them--nor
the money.... _I_ rather like him too, I think. He's so beautiful, and
looks as if he'd never been ill. That's so jolly.' She was giving the
same reasons which Basil had given for liking Evie. It occurred to her
to wonder whether, if she'd been to the war, these two things would take
her further in her mild inclination towards Hugh Montgomery Gordon--much
further. Perhaps they would....
Alix went to her bus at the corner of Gray's Inn Road. Nicholas went
back to his rooms to finish an article. West went to a Sweated
Bootmakers' protest meeting in his parish room. West attended too many
meetings: that was certain. Meetings, a clumsy contrivance at best,
cannot be worth so much attendance. But he went off to this one full of
faith and hope, as always.
5
Evie was using the telephone in the hall. She was saying, in her clear,
cheery tones, 'Hullo, is that you? Awfully sorry, don't expect me
to-morrow evening. I can't come.... Awfully sorry.... Don't quite
know.... I'll write.'
Alix went up to her room.
Presently Evie came in.
'Did you hear me 'phoning?' she inquired superfluously. 'It was to Mr.
Doye. Fact is, I think he and I'd both be better for a little rest from
each other. It'll give him time to cool down a bit. He's got keener than
I like, lately. Fun's all very well, but one doesn't want to be hustled,
does one? I don't want him asking me anything for a long time.'
Alix, sitting on her bed with one shoe off, pulling at the other, said
in a small voice, 'I don't think he will.'
Evie turned round and looked at her, questioningly.
'You don't? Why, whatever do you know about it?'
Alix was bent over her shoe; her voice was muffled.
'Basil is like that. He doesn't mean things....'
'Oh....' Evie turned to the glass, and drew four pins out of the roll of
hair behind her head, and it fell in a heavy nut-brown mass, glinting in
the yellow gaslight. She began to comb it out and roll it up again.
'Doesn't mean anything, doesn't he?' she said thoughtfully. 'You seem
awfully sure about that.'
'Yes,' agreed Alix. She had pulled off both shoes now, and tucked her
stockinged feet under her as she sat curled up on the bed. She drew a
deep breath and spoke rather quickly.
'He's always the same, he was the same with me once, he doesn't really
mean it....'
'The same with you--' Evie, without turning round, saw in the glass the
blurred image of the huddled figure and small pale face in the shadows
behind her.
She drove in two more hairpins, then turned sharply and looked at Alix.
'You don't mean to say he used to be in love with you.'
'Oh ... in love....' Alix's voice was faint, attenuated, remote.
'Well--anything, then.' Evie was impatient. 'You needn't split hairs....
He went on with you, I suppose.... And you....'
She broke off, staring, uncomfortably, at a situation really beyond her
powers.
Her cogitations ended in, 'Well, I think you might have told me at
first. I thought you and he were just good friends. _I_ didn't want him.
I wouldn't have let him come near me if I'd known it was like that. I
never do that sort of thing. Now do I, Alix? You've never seen me mean
to other girls like that, have you? I never have been and I never will
be.... _I_ don't want him. You can have him back.'
Alix giggled suddenly, irrepressibly.
'What's the matter now?' said Evie.
'Nothing. Only the way you talk of Basil--handing him about as if he was
a kitten. He's not, you know.'
Evie smiled grudgingly. 'Well, anyhow _I_ don't want him. Particularly
if he doesn't mean anything, as you say.... It isn't every one I'd
believe if they told me that; they might be jealous or spiteful or
something. But I don't believe you'd say it, Al, if you didn't think it
was true'--(Alix said, 'Oh,' on a soft, indrawn breath)--'and you know
him, so I expect you're right. And I'm not going on playing round with a
man who makes love like he does and doesn't mean anything. It isn't
respectable.'
'Oh--respectable.' Alix laughed, again, shakily; it was such a funny
word in this connection, and so like Violette.
'Well, I don't see it's funny,' said Evie. 'It's awfully important to be
respectable, and I always am. I'll be good pals with any number of men,
but when they begin to get like Basil Doye I won't have it unless they
_mean_ something.'
Thus Evie enunciated her code, and washed her hands and face and put on
her dress and went downstairs. At the door she paused for a moment and
looked back at Alix.
'I say, Al--I'm awfully sorry. I didn't mean to be a sneak, you know; I
_wouldn't_ have, if I'd known.'
'Not a bit,' Alix absurdly and politely murmured.
'Well, do get a move on and come down. It's too cold for anything up
here.... I say'--Evie paused awkwardly--' I say, kiddie, you didn't
really _care_, did you?'
Alix shook her head. 'Oh no.' Still her voice was small, polite, and
attenuated.
'Well then,' said Evie cheerfully, 'no harm's done to any one. But
still, it's not the style I like, a man that plays about first with one
girl, then another.... I'm going down.'
She went.
6
The cold made Alix shiver. She stiffly uncurled herself and got off the
bed. She brushed her hair before the glass. Her face looked back at her,
pointed and ghostly, in the gaslight and shadows.
'Cad,' whispered Alix, without emotion, to the pale image. 'Cad--and
liar.'
'It's the war,' explained Alix presently, with detached, half-cynical
analysis. 'I shouldn't have done that before the war. I suppose I might
do anything now. Probably I shall. There seems no way out....'
Alix had heard and read plenty of views on the psychological effects of
war; some of them were interesting, some were true; many were true for
some people and false for others; but she did not remember that even the
most penetrating (or pessimistic) had laid enough emphasis on the mental
and moral collapse that shook the foundations of life for some people.
For her, anyhow, and for Paul; and they surely could not be the only
ones. Observers seemed more apt to take the cases of those men and women
who were improved; who were strengthened, steadied, made more unselfish
and purposeful (that was the favourite word), with a finer sense of the
issues and responsibilities of life; or of those young sportsmen at the
front who kept their jollity, their sweetness, their equilibrium,
through it all. Well, no doubt there were plenty of these. Look at
Terry. Look at Dorothy and Margot at Wood End, in their new
strenuousness and ardours. They weren't demoralised by horror, or eaten
by jealousy like a canker. They could even minister to combatants
without envying them....
There were such. There might be many. But Alix looked at them far off,
herself a broken, nerve-wracked, frightened child, grabbing at other
people's things to comfort herself, ashamed but outrageous.
'There seems no way out,' said Alix, and looked, as she changed her
frock, down vistas of degradation.
Downstairs Florence rang the supper bell. The smell of Welsh rarebit
drifted through Violette. That, anyhow, was something; Alix liked it.