refused Mr. Charles Holding in writing and immediately, and the same
post transmitted to his father Charles Holding’s letter to me. The
queer thing about the whole business, in the eyes of Mr. Wentworth
Holding, was that Miss Sibyl Norton did not bring an action for
breach of promise and scornfully refused the extremely handsome
solatium which was suggested to her. But this did not surprise me.
I had to show a certain amount of conscience myself, or I should have
been made rich and unhappy, for Mr. Wentworth Holding’s gratitude was
extreme. Even as it was I was enabled to feel myself out of all
danger of such privations as I had recently suffered for the next
year or two.
VIII
THE PEGASUS CAR
Extreme poverty and a low diet are not in themselves attractive, but
in some ways I was happier in my low-water period than I was now with
enough money banked to keep me in moderate comfort for a couple of
years. I might be more satisfied with my circumstances, but I now
had leisure to become profoundly dissatisfied with myself. I had
come to London to play a lone hand and do well by it. I was not
going into any of the ruts. I would not become a governess. I had
brilliant ideas and enterprise and all the rest of the bag of tricks
to make a millionairess of me, yet I had only made few and
comparatively small sums by my wits; the rest had been pure luck
or--and this seemed more degrading still--had come to me more because
of the outside of my head than of the inside. On my arrival in
London I did extremely well, merely from the fact that there was a
chance resemblance between a girl who was dead and myself. My
success in the strange commission that Mr. Wentworth Holding gave me
had not been due in the least to my cleverness but to the fact that I
was pretty. I had been outwitted by a fraudulent spiritualist and by
a romantic lady of title. My attempts at literature had been
practically a failure. When I had taken my bright ideas to business
men they had either ridiculed me or robbed me. So, on a general
review of the case, I did not think as well of myself as I had done.
Self-disapproval is not only very unpleasant but it is positively bad
for one. It takes away one’s spirit; it checks one’s invention. I
determined to make a serious and sober effort to recover my own
esteem and incidentally to make a little money.
I looked round for a point from which to start, and after a great
deal of consideration I noted as a very useful fact that new motor
cars sold for very high prices. A person who could influence the
sale of motor cars would be likely to make a good commission. In the
old days, after this brief reflection, I should have put on a
cheerful smile and my best hat and gone round to one of the big
places in Long Acre to explain that I should like to sell cars for
them, and the manager of that place, having discovered in twenty
seconds that I knew nothing whatever about motor cars, had no
influential connection, and was about as likely to sell a motor car
as I was to sell the moon, would have shown me out--quite politely,
because I happened to be pretty.
So I began in a different way. I went out and bought dark blue
linen--many yards of it--and came back and consulted with Minnie Saxe
on the manufacture of a garment. Ultimately it was manufactured, and
I have seldom seen anyone look more pained and distressed than Minnie
Saxe did when I put the abomination on.
“I can’t let you go out in that, miss,” she said. “You’d ’ave all
the boys in the place callin’ after you, and that brings disgrice on
me, it being known as I work for you.”
“That’s all right, Minnie,” I said. “I’m not going to wear it in the
street.”
So far I had not gone outside my own province, and had moved with
comparative ease. My next step had to be more circumspect, for I was
about to attack the business man once more.
There are many cars, and at that time they were all the same to me.
I read the motoring news in the daily papers assiduously for a week,
and then I thought that I would try the Pegasus people. The Pegasus
car had just done some remarkable trials; it had one or two novelties
in construction; it had not an immense reputation already, but it
seemed to have a chance of making one.
So one afternoon I put on gorgeous apparel and walked into the
show-room of the Pegasus people looking exactly as if I were about to
buy a car. I even felt a little like it too. A tall, handsome man
in a frock coat and a powerful little fellow in a dirty overall
removed their attention from a car’s duodenum as I approached. The
handsome man came forward. The powerful, squat man remained by the
car; he still seemed busy with its vermiform appendix, but he was
listening all the time.
“I want,” I said, “to learn how to drive the Pegasus car. I want
also to learn a good deal about the interior of the car so that I can
do adjustments and slight repairs. And I want to learn everything
about tyres.”
There was just the flicker of a smile over the handsome man’s face,
but in a moment he had stowed it away at the back of his head and was
asking me suavely if I wished to buy a car.
“No,” I said boldly. “Not at all. I could not afford it. I have
not the money. Buy a car? I’m more likely to sell one. All I want
at present is to understand the car thoroughly, and to know how to
drive it.”
The handsome man hesitated. The man in the dirty overall lifted up a
bit of the car’s femoral artery, looked at it, and then gave his
undivided attention to the handsome man and myself.
“I should, of course, be prepared to pay,” I added.
“Yes, of course, miss,” said the handsome man, “but you see--well, so
much of the work is hardly suited for a lady. Some of it requires a
good deal of muscular strength. Then, if I may mention it, you would
spoil your hands. Then, again, you would hardly like to work in our
repairing shop among the ordinary workmen who are there. There
really are many difficulties. Hadn’t you better think it over,
perhaps?”
“Marshall.” It was the voice of the powerful man in the dirty
overall. It was a loud voice, and packed full of authority.
“Yes, sir,” said the handsome man in the frock coat.
“You will arrange that. See? Do the best you can for the lady.”
Then he wandered away through a glazed door which seemed to lead to
outer darkness, carrying tenderly in one hand one of the car’s
vertebræ.
I had been imagining all this time that the frock coat was the
supreme manager and general god of the place, and that dirty overall
was a mere workman. I now saw that this was not the case.
“Well, miss,” said Mr. Marshall, “we can but try it, as Mr. James
says so. You will have to get something to cover up your clothes if
you don’t want to spoil them.”
“I have got that already,” I said. “I don’t want to work many hours
a day. Two or three in the morning would be quite enough. I suppose
I could not begin by driving?”
“No,” said Mr. Marshall. “You would begin by trying to understand
the car; then, of course, the rest would depend upon how you get on.”
There was no hope in his face whatever.
Nothing remained but to settle the terms, and here it seemed to me
that Mr. Marshall was very reasonable and lenient. But the man to
whom I should have liked to talk was Mr. James, and he did not appear
again that morning.
A very few days were enough to show me that there was a good deal to
be said for Mr. Marshall’s point of view. I had expected to get my
hands covered with black oil, and I was not in the least
disappointed. I did not like breaking my nails, but that happened
also. It takes more force than a woman generally uses to take a tyre
off or to screw a thing up really tight. The workmen in the place
were all decent, intelligent mechanics, a little inclined to be
amused at me at first, but concealing their amusement, and having the
fear of Mr. James before their eyes. I saw him several times in the
course of my lessons. He could do anything that had to be done in
the shop rather better than anybody else in it.
At the end of a month I was still learning my business. One morning
as I was leaving Mr. James stood outside with one of the big Pegasus
cars in waiting. The overall had vanished. He looked smart, clean,
and indefinitely connected with His Majesty’s navy.
“If you have an hour to spare, Miss Castel, I want you to begin to
learn how to drive these cars.”
“Thanks very much,” I said. “I should like it. Who’ll teach me?”
“I shall,” said Mr. James. “Now, if you’ll get in, please----”
I rather despised his style of driving then. He was particularly
careful; slowed down round every corner, did not exceed the speed
limit, did not take narrow shaves. He made the car go fast up hill,
and steadied her coming down. He was an excellent driver really; a
driver with great knowledge and good nerve, and without any of the
vain idiot’s desire to show off.
Some weeks afterwards, when my motor education was nearing its
completion, Mr. James asked me suddenly one day what I was doing it
for. “Do you mean to get a post as driver?” he asked. “You could,
you know. We could fairly recommend you, and I daresay some ladies
would prefer to have a lady driver.”
“No,” I said, “that was not my idea. My idea was to work for your
firm when you think I am good enough.”
“You drive all right. I’ll guarantee you know a lot more about the
car than a good many men do who are driving it about the country at
present. But what was it that you are proposing to do for us?”
“I am proposing to show cars for you. The fact is that your car
looks a little bit complicated at first. If an intending purchaser
found that a young girl understood it and drove it easily he would be
reassured.”
“Yes,” said Mr. James reflectively. “I’d thought of that. There’s
something in it, perhaps.”
He seemed to be debating the matter with himself in silence for a few
moments, then he said, “Look here. I’ve got a man coming up
to-morrow. He may buy a Pegasus, or he may buy some other car.
Anyhow, he’s going to buy a car, and we should prefer that he bought
a Pegasus. He’s a nervous kind of man, and my first idea was that in
order to make him feel quite secure I would drive him myself. Now
I’ll change my mind. He’d be more impressed if I sent the car out
with a girl. If you sell the car to him we will pay you a small
commission. Remember, he’s a nervous man. You don’t want to show
him how fast the car can go. Show him how handy it is in a block or
very slow traffic; the ease with which it is steered; the quietness
of the engines; the impossibility of a skid.”
“Yes, yes,” I said. “I see all that. I shall sell him that car.”
I was round next morning at eleven. The possible purchaser was an
elderly solicitor, retired from practice, who after long searchings
of heart had decided that he would have a motor car. He looked
dubiously at the big Pegasus waiting to take him his trial trip as if
he expected that it might go off any moment. He was a good deal
startled when he was told that I should drive him.
“Is that all right?” I heard him ask Mr. James.
“I am sending you out,” said Mr. James, “with one of the best drivers
we’ve got.”
I got up, switched on the spark, and the engines started.
“Dear me,” said Mr. Hoskins, “I was always under the impression that
it was necessary to wind it up--to turn a handle.”
“So it would be,” I said, “if the car had been standing for a long
time, or on a very cold day, but a good four-cylinder car will
generally start with switching on the spark.”
“You are a careful driver, I hope,” he said, as I took him through
Piccadilly Circus.
“Yes, I think so,” I said, “but then this car is particularly easy to
manage.”
His nervousness wore off as we got further away from London. He
desired me ardently to show him the utmost the car could do. As it
could do fifty miles an hour and we were in a police-trapped country
at the time I refrained, but I showed him what it was to have plenty
of power in going up steep hills. The car made nothing of them. He
became silent as we drove back, and I did not bother him by
chattering. Just as we were nearing home he said, “I like this car.
It goes well, and there can be no great difficulty about it if a girl
can drive it. I shall buy it.”
He did not buy that particular car. He got one like it, and we tuned
it up for him and found him a driver. He was in great trouble about
myself. If one of the ordinary drivers had taken him he would have
tipped the man, but he felt that he could not tip me although he
could see that I was an employed person. He sent me a charming
letter of thanks and a very good motor rug. And I got my commission.
Better still, I had now got back my self-respect.
After this I often drove for Mr. James when he wanted to show a car.
Naturally I did not always find a purchaser, but on the whole I was
fairly successful. Mr. James himself seemed to think that I had
unusually good luck. I did not in the least mind what work I did. I
was there one morning when Mr. Marshall had just opened a telegram.
It was from a young man living in Bedford who had bought one of the
cars, and it had been delivered the day before. The car had been
driven to Bedford by one of Mr. James’s mechanics. It had already
been run for a hundred miles and properly tuned up, and the mechanic
had had no trouble of any sort with it. The telegram said, “Engines
will not start. Please send man.”
“We can’t,” said Marshall.
Mr. James reflected. It was a very busy time, and everybody on the
place was fully engaged. “It can’t be anything serious,” said Mr.
James. “It’s some fool thing or other that he’s done.”
Then I volunteered. “I’ll go, if you like,” I said.
“Really?” said Mr. James. “It would be awfully good of you if you
would. Will you go by train or drive yourself down?”
I decided to go by train. At Bedford I took a cab to the house, and
told the butler who answered the door that I had called about the
car. He looked a little puzzled, and showed me into the
drawing-room. I was wearing my most enchanting clothes. I had put
them on with intent for the fun of the thing, but I had brought my
overall with me in case of need. A puzzled and sweet-looking young
lady came into the room, said “Good-morning,” and shook hands, and
then, “Am I right? I understand you have called about my husband’s
car?”
“Yes,” I said. “He wired to the Pegasus people for an engineer to be
sent. I am the engineer.”
She seemed considerably staggered. “Do you mean this? Really? You
an engineer?”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you mind?” It was rather cheeky.
Then she found her husband for me, a fluffy, enthusiastic young man,
weary and dirty with long wrestling with that car’s interior. I went
with him to the shed and looked it over.
There was perhaps one teaspoonful of petrol in the tank. I pointed
out to him that petrol cars went better when petrol was used. We
then filled up the tank and started. I think I never saw anyone so
absolutely abject. What he wanted to do, and did not dare to do, was
to ask me not to reveal the nature of the trouble to the firm when I
got back. He needn’t have minded. To the firm it was all in the
day’s work. And the curious thing was that the young man was by no
means a fool in mechanical matters; it was simply that he had not
happened to think of the petrol.
I got along very well now. I might have saved myself a good deal of
trouble if I had started on this business at once. I was now making
an income which justified me, I thought, in removing from my little
flat to something better and nearer to the middle of civilisation.
It was Minnie Saxe who decided it for me. She lingered one morning
after she had brought my breakfast; not lachrymose--for she never
wept--but stern and depressed.
“I am afraid I shall have to leave you, miss,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Why?”
“Well, father’s broken down again. These last three weeks he’s
brought back his money a shilling short, and great paper bags of
almond-rock in his pocket. Nothing I can say seems to be able to
save him.”
I did not smile outwardly. “Well, what are you going to do about it,
Minnie?”
“I am going to do what I ought to have done long ago. He’s got a bit
of money put by, and I know where there’s a good opening. I’m going
into the sweets and general.”
“What!” I said. “Going to sell sweets? But your father will eat the
stock.”
“That’s just it,” said Minnie. “What’s more, he’ll be encouraged to
eat it. What’s more, when he’s finished he’ll be made to go on
again. He’ll get that and nothing else for a week, and if he can
look sugar in the face at the end of it I’m a Dutchman. Him a grown
man too! I could find another girl to do you, miss, I think, though
I won’t say that she’d be quite my class. Still, I would have her
here the week before I left, and if anybody can knock a thing into a
girl’s head I think I can.”
I explained to Minnie that she need not trouble, and that I should
move from the neighbourhood.
Some time later I made a point of visiting Miss Saxe’s emporium. I
was served by her father, who looked distinctly chastened and rather
thinner. He told me that his daughter was a wonderful girl, and I
believed him. He waved one hand over the assorted boxes on the
counter. “I never touch anything of this kind now,” he said. “One
loses one’s taste for it as one gets older.” So Mr. Saxe was happily
reclaimed.
The Pegasus people began now to manufacture a light cheap 6½ h.-p.
runabout car. It was entered for a reliability trial, and Mr. James
told me that I was to drive it. I was nearly off my head with joy
over that. Subsequently I nearly broke my heart over it. I’ll tell
the story as briefly as possible. I had already tried the car
thoroughly myself and did not know of anything in the same class to
touch it. I was not the least nervous; indeed, now I come to think
of it, I believe I have never been nervous. The first day it did
splendidly, and we were more than a minute ahead of everything up
Onslow Hill. The second day the car broke down, and Mr. James and
myself were unable to find what was wrong and put it right again
within the time limit. Nothing but the turn of a screw was required,
and a few minutes later we were ready to start, but our chance was
gone as far as that trial was concerned. Mr. James got a couple of
pressmen whom he knew to get up on the car, and we had a little
private demonstration. One of the pressmen afterwards wrote on the
question as to whether reliability trials really proved reliability.
I did not talk much during our run; I was too much upset by the
failure of the car. As soon as I could I got back to the muggy
little hotel.
Mr. James came in there and asked for me, and I went down to see him.
“What have you been crying for?” he said sharply.
“Nothing,” I said, which is what an ass of a woman would say.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he went on. “It was my fault for sleeping in
a bedroom. The next time I go in for one of these things I’ll sleep
on my car. That needle valve never went wrong by itself. Prove it?
Of course I can’t prove it. But I know it, though I am going to say
nothing about it.”
So far we had been standing up. He then sat down and immediately and
in rather a dictatorial way asked me if I would marry him.
I told him that I would not. He could do all these things without
appearing in the least to be a fool. It was I and not he who seemed
to be humiliated when I refused him.
I left the service of the Pegasus people in consequence. Mr. James
thought it would be better, and had no doubt whatever that he could
find me another post. So these external personal qualities which had
brought me fortune before, now cut off, for the time at least, the
profitable employment which I had found for myself by sheer hard work
and common sense.
I sometimes thought at this time that if there were no men in the
world women would get on a good deal better.
IX
A LOSS AND A GAIN
Shortly after the events which I last narrated I happened one sunny
morning to be walking down Oxford Street. I had just come back from
an interview with a firm of motor manufacturers. They had made me an
offer and I had refused it. As I was walking along I found myself
touched on the arm by a girl of about my own age. She was extremely
well dressed--much better dressed than I was; and in appearance she
was not altogether unlike me, except for two points--she was
exceedingly pale, and her expression was one of acute anxiety.
“Will you help me?” she said.
It was impossible to suppose that she was a beggar. The idea that
she was insane flashed across me for a moment; then I noted her
extreme pallor and thought that she might be ill. I am not quite
inhuman.
“Yes,” I said. “I will help you if I can. What is the matter?”
“I have lost my memory,” she said. “It has all gone suddenly and
absolutely. I do not know what my name is or where I am. I am very
reluctant to apply to the police--it means so much publicity. It
would be horrible to me. If you could take me somewhere where I
could rest for a little time I think my memory would come back again.
I hope so. I can’t tell you how grateful I should be to you.”
“What made you ask me?”
“Because you looked so nice,” she said simply. “A long stream of
people went past me, and at first they confused me very much; then I
began looking at faces. I looked for a long time, and yours was the
first I could trust. If you would take me with you I would not give
you more trouble than I could help and I would do everything I was
told. I--I believe there is some money in the bag I have here.”
“That is not a very important point,” I said.
“I don’t know. I think I must have money. I think I must always
have had it. I have been looking at my clothes, and they seem to me
to be very good.”
“So they are,” I said.
She smiled faintly. “It seems so queer to be talking to a stranger
like this; only you see I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how I
came here or where I am to go.”
I liked the girl. “At present,” I said, “you will come with me to my
flat and have some luncheon. If your memory doesn’t come back then
you can stay there for the present. I have a spare room, and will
make you quite comfortable. I live alone. Then to-morrow, if your
memory has not returned, we can talk about it and decide what is best
to do. You must have friends. They will almost certainly advertise
for you.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much. I feel quite safe now that I have
met you. A few moments ago I was frightened out of my life. How
long will it take us to walk to your flat?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “and in all probability I never shall.” I
stopped a four-wheeler that was crawling past us. The girl was
obviously too tired and ill to walk. “Won’t you get in?” I said.
She got in and leaned back. “I feel utterly worn out,” she said. “I
shall have to wait a little before I can tell you how much I thank
you.”
“Come,” I said. “You mustn’t be silly. After all we are both human
beings. Don’t look on an act of ordinary decency as if it were
unparalleled heroism.”
Again came that ghost of a smile. I could see that she and I would
laugh at the same things, which is in itself a bond of union. She
talked no more until we were nearing Hensley Mansions. When the cab
stopped she was quite wide awake and alert, but although she was
sitting next the door she did not attempt to open it.
I noted that. The conscious mind could remember nothing, but the
sub-conscious mind was remembering absolutely. She was a girl whose
carriage door was opened for her.
It was really delightful to see the change which came over her when
she got into my flat. “Now at last I feel safe,” she said, and drew
a deep breath. “Don’t let me go out again. Don’t leave me alone if
you can help it. I’m quite all right really, it’s only that I feel
terribly pulled down, and for the moment some of myself is not in my
keeping. I’m sure it will come back. I shall remember directly.”
Suddenly she stopped and seized my hand and kissed it. I told her
not to be an idiot, and we both laughed. She absolutely refused to
go to bed. She said, “I have had too much of that,” without seeming
to know the meaning of the words she used. At this time my flat was
run by a good woman who was an excellent cook. She was also a widow,
but that did not matter so much. I explained to Mrs. Mason so far as
I could do so discreetly the state of affairs, and she at once became
intensely interested. She also became slightly disapproving. She
let me see clearly that she considered that I had not done enough.
My suggestions as to luncheon were waived aside imperiously. “Leave
it to me, miss,” said Mrs. Mason. “I know what illness is. I
shouldn’t wish to seem to boast, but there are few families has had
as much illness as mine has. Leave it to me.”