EVE BORROWS AN UMBRELLA
What strikes the visitor to London most forcibly, as he enters the
heart of that city’s fashionable shopping district, is the almost
entire absence of ostentation in the shop-windows, the studied
avoidance of garish display. About the front of the premises of Messrs.
Thorpe & Briscoe, for instance, who sell coal in Dover Street, there
is as a rule nothing whatever to attract fascinated attention. You
might give the place a glance as you passed, but you would certainly
not pause and stand staring at it as at the Sistine Chapel or the
Taj Mahal. Yet at ten-thirty on the morning after Eve Halliday had
taken tea with her friend Phyllis Jackson in West Kensington, Psmith,
lounging gracefully in the smoking-room window of the Drones Club,
which is immediately opposite the Thorpe & Briscoe establishment, had
been gazing at it fixedly for a full five minutes. One would have said
that the spectacle enthralled him. He seemed unable to take his eyes
off it.
There is always a reason for the most apparently inexplicable
happenings. It is the practice of Thorpe (or Briscoe) during the months
of summer to run out an awning over the shop. A quiet, genteel awning,
of course, nothing to offend the eye--but an awning which offers a
quite adequate protection against those sudden showers which are such
a delightfully piquant feature of the English summer: one of which
had just begun to sprinkle the West End of London with a good deal of
heartiness and vigour. And under this awning, peering plaintively out
at the rain, Eve Halliday, on her way to the Ada Clarkson Employment
Bureau, had taken refuge. It was she who had so enchained Psmith’s
interest. It was his considered opinion that she improved the Thorpe &
Briscoe frontage by about ninety-five per cent.
Pleased and gratified as Psmith was to have something nice to look at
out of the smoking-room window, he was also somewhat puzzled. This girl
seemed to him to radiate an atmosphere of wealth. Starting at farthest
south and proceeding northward, she began in a gleam of patent-leather
shoes. Fawn stockings, obviously expensive, led up to a black crêpe
frock. And then, just as the eye was beginning to feel that there
could be nothing more, it was stunned by a supreme hat of soft, dull
satin with a black bird of Paradise feather falling down over the left
shoulder. Even to the masculine eye, which is notoriously to seek in
these matters, a whale of a hat. And yet this sumptuously upholstered
young woman had been marooned by a shower of rain beneath the awning of
Messrs. Thorpe & Briscoe. Why, Psmith asked himself, was this? Even,
he argued, if Charles the chauffeur had been given the day off or was
driving her father the millionaire to the City to attend to his vast
interests, she could surely afford a cab-fare? We, who are familiar
with the state of Eve’s finances, can understand her inability to take
cabs, but Psmith was frankly perplexed.
Being, however, both ready-witted and chivalrous, he perceived that
this was no time for idle speculation. His not to reason why; his
obvious duty was to take steps to assist Beauty in distress. He
left the window of the smoking-room, and, having made his way with a
smooth dignity to the club’s cloak-room, proceeded to submit a row of
umbrellas to a close inspection. He was not easy to satisfy. Two which
he went so far as to pull out of the rack he returned with a shake of
the head. Quite good umbrellas, but not fit for this special service.
At length, however, he found a beauty, and a gentle smile flickered
across his solemn face. He put up his monocle and gazed searchingly at
this umbrella. It seemed to answer every test. He was well pleased with
it.
“Whose,” he inquired of the attendant, “is this?”
“Belongs to the Honourable Mr. Walderwick, sir.”
“Ah!” said Psmith tolerantly.
He tucked the umbrella under his arm and went out.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Eve Halliday, lightening up the sombre austerity of Messrs.
Thorpe & Briscoe’s shop-front, continued to think hard thoughts of the
English climate and to inspect the sky in the hope of detecting a spot
of blue. She was engaged in this cheerless occupation when at her side
a voice spoke.
“Excuse me!”
A hatless young man was standing beside her, holding an umbrella. He
was a striking-looking young man, very tall, very thin, and very well
dressed. In his right eye there was a monocle, and through this he
looked down at her with a grave friendliness. He said nothing further,
but, taking her fingers, clasped them round the handle of the umbrella,
which he had obligingly opened, and then with a courteous bow proceeded
to dash with long strides across the road, disappearing through the
doorway of a gloomy building which, from the number of men who had
gone in and out during her vigil, she had set down as a club of some
sort.
A good many surprising things had happened to Eve since first she
had come to live in London, but nothing quite so surprising as this.
For several minutes she stood where she was without moving, staring
round-eyed at the building opposite. The episode was, however,
apparently ended. The young man did not reappear. He did not even show
himself at the window. The club had swallowed him up. And eventually
Eve, deciding that this was not the sort of day on which to refuse
umbrellas even if they dropped inexplicably from heaven, stepped out
from under the awning, laughing helplessly, and started to resume her
interrupted journey to Miss Clarkson’s.
* * * * *
The offices of the Ada Clarkson International Employment Bureau
(“Promptitude--Courtesy--Intelligence”) are at the top of Shaftesbury
Avenue, a little way past the Palace Theatre. Eve, closing the
umbrella, which had prevented even a spot of rain falling on her hat,
climbed the short stair leading to the door and tapped on the window
marked “Enquiries.”
“Can I see Miss Clarkson?”
“What name, please?” responded Enquiries promptly and with intelligent
courtesy.
“Miss Halliday.”
Brief interlude, involving business with speaking-tube.
“Will you go into the private office, please,” said Enquiries a moment
later, in a voice which now added respect to the other advertised
qualities, for she had had time to observe and digest the hat.
Eve passed in through the general waiting-room with its
magazine-covered table, and tapped at the door beyond marked “Private.”
“Eve, dear!” exclaimed Miss Clarkson the moment she had entered, “I
don’t know how to tell you, but I have been looking through my books
and I have nothing, simply nothing. There is not a single place that
you could possibly take. What _is_ to be done?”
“That’s all right, Clarkie.”
“But . . .”
“I didn’t come to talk business. I came to ask after Cynthia. How is
she?”
Miss Clarkson sighed.
“Poor child, she is still in a dreadful state, and no wonder. No news
at all from her husband. He has simply deserted her.”
“Poor darling! Can’t I see her?”
“Not at present. I have persuaded her to go down to Brighton for a
day or two. I think the sea air will pick her up. So much better than
mooning about in a London hotel. She is leaving on the eleven o’clock
train. I gave her your love, and she was most grateful that you should
have remembered your old friendship and be sorry for her in her
affliction.”
“Well, I can write to her. Where is she staying?”
“I don’t know her Brighton address, but no doubt the Cadogan Hotel
would forward letters. I think she would be glad to hear from you,
dear.”
Eve looked sadly at the framed testimonials which decorated the wall.
She was not often melancholy, but it was such a beast of a day and all
her friends seemed to be having such a bad time.
“Oh, Clarkie,” she said, “what a lot of trouble there is in the world!”
“Yes, yes!” sighed Miss Clarkson, a specialist on this subject.
“All the horses you back finish sixth and all the girls you like best
come croppers. Poor little Phyllis! weren’t you sorry for her?”
“But her husband, surely, is most devoted?”
“Yes, but she’s frightfully hard up, and you remember how opulent she
used to be at school. Of course, it must sound funny hearing me pitying
people for having no money. But somehow other people’s hard-upness
always seems so much worse than mine. Especially poor old Phyl’s,
because she really isn’t fit to stand it. I’ve been used to being
absolutely broke all my life. Poor dear father always seemed to be
writing an article against time, with creditors scratching earnestly
at the door.” Eve laughed, but her eyes were misty. “He was a brick,
wasn’t he? I mean, sending me to a first-class school like Wayland
House when he often hadn’t enough money to buy tobacco, poor angel. I
expect he wasn’t always up to time with fees, was he?”
“Well, my dear, of course I was only an assistant mistress at Wayland
House and had nothing to do with the financial side, but I did hear
sometimes. . .”
“Poor darling father! Do you know, one of my earliest recollections--I
couldn’t have been more than ten--is of a ring at the front-door bell
and father diving like a seal under the sofa and poking his head out
and imploring me in a hoarse voice to hold the fort. I went to the door
and found an indignant man with a blue paper. I prattled so prettily
and innocently that he not only went away quite contentedly but
actually patted me on the head and gave me a penny. And when the door
had shut father crawled out from under the sofa and gave me twopence,
making threepence in all--a good morning’s work. I bought father a
diamond ring with it at a shop down the street, I remember. At least
I thought it was a diamond. They may have swindled me, for I was very
young.”
“You have had a hard life, dear.”
“Yes, but hasn’t it been a lark! I’ve loved every minute of it.
Besides, you can’t call me really one of the submerged tenth. Uncle
Thomas left me a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and mercifully I’m
not allowed to touch the capital. If only there were no hats or safety
bets in the world, I should be smugly opulent. . . . But I mustn’t
keep you any longer, Clarkie dear. I expect the waiting-room is full
of dukes who want cooks and cooks who want dukes, all fidgeting and
wondering how much longer you’re going to keep them. Good-bye, darling.”
And, having kissed Miss Clarkson fondly and straightened her hat, which
the other’s motherly embrace had disarranged, Eve left the room.