"Lord Effingham" was the book on which Mrs. Walbridge was at work, and
she sat the greater part of the next three nights reading the books that
Mr. Lubbock had given her, with a view to freshening up her nearly
finished novel. She could not read during the day, because she had too
much to do.
The plumbers had played havoc with the house in getting the new bathroom
in, and the cook had to leave even more unexpectedly than cooks
generally leave because her only sister was marrying and she had to go
home and look after her mother. This domestic complication is familiar
to many, but it didn't make it any easier for Mrs. Walbridge. Nor did
things improve when Maud Twiss and her husband went for a second
honeymoon to Ireland, leaving little Hilary at "Happy House."
Mrs. Walbridge loved her grandson; but he was a querulous, spoilt child,
and at the best of times his presence was upsetting. Now, with no cook,
with plumbers and the dreadful necessity of modernising "Lord
Effingham," the little boy nearly drove her mad.
One morning, about four weeks after her interview with Mr. Lubbock, she
was sitting in her little attic at the back of the house, surrounded by
closely written sheets of foolscap into which she had red-inked her
desperate efforts at enlivening--Lady Tryx, the heroine, had started on
a new career of endless cigarettes and cocktails, and a hitherto
blameless housemaid, who at first had been dismissed by an unkind
countess on a charge of theft, was now burdened with an illegitimate
baby; but even this failed to brighten up the dull level of decency that
was so discouraging to the publishers. Violet Walbridge was a failure at
illegitimacy and lawless passion, and, what was worse, she knew it.
It was cold up in the attic, for there was no fireplace, and something
had gone wrong with her oil-stove. Paul had promised to see to it before
going to the City that morning, but he had forgotten, so his mother had
to put an old flannel dressing-gown on over her ordinary clothes and
wrap her aching feet in a shawl. Her hands were covered with red ink,
for her cheap stylographic pen leaked, and her pretty black hair, wavy
and attractively threaded with white, was tumbled and loose.
She was utterly discouraged and unhappy about the book. "Lord
Effingham," with ridiculous perseverance, insisted on pursuing his so
blightingly blameless career. Her effort had put the book, such as it
was, completely out of shape, and she could have cried with despair as
she sat there staring through the curtainless window at the sky. Her
burden was so very great, and it made it worse, although she had always
prided herself on keeping her secret, that no one knew how utterly
dependent the whole household of "Happy House" was on her books.
Her husband had an office and regarded himself as a business man; Paul
worked in a bank, and poor Guy had been called up and was in France. (He
had been with some stockbrokers in the City.) But none of them had ever
contributed anything serious to the upkeep of the house.
Paul's salary was small, and his mother considered that the poor boy
really needed all that he made, because he was one of those people who
are very dependent on beautiful surroundings. He was a poet, too, and
had written some charming verse, most of which was still unpublished,
but every line of which was carefully copied in a vellum covered book
someone had sent to his mother one Christmas from Florence.
Somehow that morning her mind was full of the now long absent Guy. Guy
was the troublesome one. They were all tabulated in her mind--Hermione
being the beauty, and Maud, "my eldest girl," while Paul was artistic.
There had been scrapes in Guy's early days (he was only twenty-one now).
Certainly his tendencies had been inherited from his father--full grown
cap-â-pie tendencies they were, sprung whole, it seemed, from Ferdie's
brain, as Pallas Athene sprang from her father, Zeus's. The boy was fond
of billiards and devoted to horses, and there had been a time--a very
tragic time--when he had shown signs of being too fond of whisky and
soda. But that was past. Twice he had been home on leave from the front,
and he had undoubtedly improved in many ways.
A year ago there had been an Entanglement--(Mrs. Walbridge thought of it
with a capital in her mind)--with a young Frenchwoman in Soho, but that
too seemed to have died down and now that the war was certainly going to
end before long--this dreadful war to which we in England had so
dreadfully become accustomed--he would be coming back. She sighed, for
Guy's return would mean an even severer strain on her resources. He was
rather a dandy and fond of clothes, but he had grown and expanded of
late, and would need new things.
She looked down with something very much like hatred at the impeccable
"Lord Effingham," whose persistent virtue and the wholesome tendencies
of whose female friends were such drawbacks to her living children.
She struggled on and wrote a few pages, realising that the
interpolations she had made were as clumsy and damaging to her story as
were the red ink words that expressed them to the fair sheets of her
manuscript.
Presently she heard footsteps, and a familiar little cough, coming up
the stairs. It was Ferdinand coming, she knew, for a talk with her about
his visit to Torquay.
"Dear me, Violet, why can't you write downstairs like a Christian," he
began fretfully, turning up his coat collar and plunging his hands into
his trouser pockets. "All this affectation of needing quiet and solitude
for such work as yours is simply ridiculous."
She glanced up at him without moving. "I'm sorry, Ferdie," she said
gently, "but indeed it isn't affectation. I really can't work when
people are going in and out, and poor little Hilary is so noisy."
"Poor little Hilary! Damn nonsense! I slept very badly last night, and
had just got nicely off this morning about half-past nine, when he came
into my room and waked me--wanted my boot-jack for a boat, little
beast!"
"Oh, I _am_ sorry--I told him he mustn't disturb you. I'd just gone down
to show Jessie how to make the mince----"
"Jessie's cooking is abominable. I don't know why you haven't got
someone by this time."
When Ferdie's indignation had died away, he began again.
"What I want to know is about my rooms at Torquay. Has Mrs. Bishop
written?"
"Yes. Her letter came this morning. I've got it somewhere here"--she
rummaged about, but failed to find the letter. "I must have left it
downstairs. She says she can't let you have the front room, because some
general has got it and is going to stay all winter."
"Damnation! Just the kind of thing that always happens to me."
The clear morning light, falling undiluted from the sky, seemed to
expose his mean soul almost cruelly, and his wife turned her eyes
hastily away. She had known him now, as he really was, for many years
and yet somehow the memory of what he had once seemed to be, what he had
been to her, in her loving imagination, came back to her with painful
force, and smote her to the heart.
"She says there is a very nice room at the back----"
He rose impatiently, waving his beautiful hands, on which the veins were
beginning to stand out ominously.
"Oh, of course, you _would_ think it delightful for me to have a room at
the back. Nobody but _you_ ever _does_ appreciate beauty, views or
anything of that kind. When am I to go?"
"The room will be ready on Wednesday. But, listen, Ferdie, if you think
you can't bear it, why don't you write to Mrs. Bishop yourself and ask
her to look out something for you? You see, she knows you, so she'd take
more pains than if I wrote----"
A smile that she knew and hated crept round his mouth. "Yes, that's
possible, she might," he answered. "Nice little woman, Mrs. Bishop, and
although she is only a boarding-house keeper, she knows a gentleman when
she sees him."
At the door he paused. "Well, I'll go and write to her. I suppose you've
got some money, my dear? I paid my last cent to the income-tax man the
other day. I'm sure you needn't have declared all that money to them,
Violet----"
"I only told them the truth, Ferdie."
It was an old quarrel, this about the declaration to the income-tax
people, and one in which he was always beaten, so, with a shrug, he went
downstairs.
After a moment he called, his musical voice hoarse with the effort:
"Violet--I say, Violet, have my new shirts come?"
"I--I didn't know you had ordered any, dear----"
"Oh, didn't you? No, I may have forgotten to tell you. Well, I did.
Thought I might as well get two dozen while I was about it. Things are
going up so."
There was a little pause and then she said, "I hope you got them at that
nice place in Oxford Street?"
He had begun to whistle, but now he stopped and snarled out, "No, I
didn't then. I suppose it's _my_ business where I order my own shirts? I
got them at my usual shirt-makers in Jermyn Street."
Mrs. Walbridge went quietly back into her little study and sat down.
* * * * *
That afternoon she went by Underground to Oxford Street and from there
walked in a cold grey rain to Queen Anne Street, where her daughter,
Mrs. Twiss, lived. Doctor Twiss lived in one-half of a roomy old house
in Queen Anne Street. His waiting-room and his consulting-room were at
the left of the door, those on the right belonging to a fashionable
dentist--but the rest of his rooms were two flights upstairs, the
dentist, who was a rich man, occupying the whole of the first floor.
Mrs. Walbridge paused before she rang at the upstairs door, for she was
very tired, and her usually placid thoughts seemed broken and confused.
Maud was her eldest daughter and in some ways the most companionable,
but she was a selfish woman and devotedly fond of her husband and little
boy, so that she had scant room for anyone else in her life.
"If only Maud would be sympathetic," Mrs. Walbridge thought, as she
finally rang.
"Mrs. Twiss is in the bedroom," the maid told her, "she ain't very well
to-day. I think the sea voyage upset 'er."
Mrs. Walbridge nodded to her and went down the narrow rose-walled
passage and knocked.
Mrs. Twiss was lying down on a divan at the foot of her bed, reading.
"Oh, Mum," she cried, without getting up, "how sweet of you to come so
soon! How are you, all right? We've had the most glorious
time--Moreton's put on four pounds and never looked better in his life."
Mrs. Walbridge sat down and looked round at the pleasant, familiar room.
There were plenty of flowers about and piles of new books, and all the
illustrated weeklies, and on a little Moorish table close to the divan
stood a gilt basket full of chocolates.
"You seem to be having a comfortable afternoon, my dear."
Maud laughed.
"I am. I expect we shall have a pretty bad time when we begin to count
up--travelling is fearfully expensive now--Moreton had to send home for
an extra fifty pounds. So we're taking it easy to-day. He's gone to the
hospital, and we're dining at the Carlton and going to see 'Chu Chin
Chow' to-night."
There was a little pause. Mrs. Walbridge was very unaccustomed to
telling bad news; being told it was more in her line. But she was in
such distress that she had thought she must tell Maud about Lubbock and
Payne. It would have done her good just to talk it over. But now, when
she tried, she found she could not.
"Caroline had taken Hilary to the Zoo when your telephone message came,"
she began, "or I would have brought him along. He's been very good,
Maud, and his appetite is splendid. I got him a bottle of cod liver oil
and malt, because I thought his little ribs stuck out a bit when I
bathed him----"
"Oh, the pet! I'm longing to see him! We've brought him all sorts of
presents. Oh, Mum, I was going to get you a sweet little bracelet of old
Irish paste--you know--a thing in four little chains. But at the last
minute Moreton found we had spent so much that I had to give him my last
fiver. So you'll take the will for the deed, won't you?"
"Of course, darling, how sweet of you to think of it. I'm glad Moreton
is so much better," Mrs. Walbridge began after a moment, "I hope he'll
have lots of patients this winter."
Maud's fair face clouded. She was a big, handsome woman, though less
shapely in her features than her sisters, and already showed signs of
being very fat in a few years' time, although she was only twenty-eight.
"I hope so, too," she grumbled. "Things are really awfully serious. I
believe all the tradespeople put their prices up when they hear this
address."
"I suppose it wouldn't--I suppose it wouldn't do for you to go and live
in a cheaper house?" Mrs. Walbridge faltered.
Maud sat straight up in her horror and dropped a half-bitten chocolate
on the floor.
"My goodness, mother, what a perfectly poisonous idea! Why, it would
ruin Moreton after having begun here. _Of course_ we can't."
She came and sat down on a stool near her mother and leaned her head on
her mother's knees.
"I'm longing to see Hilary," she repeated, playing with a bit of her
silk dressing-gown nervously. "And I have something to tell him,
Mum--he'll--he'll be having a little sister in the spring."
Poor Mrs. Walbridge sat perfectly still for a moment, her hand on her
daughter's silky brown hair. Another baby, another duty, another worry,
and she would be the only one who would really suffer, although Maud and
her gay, well-meaning young husband would talk a great deal about their
responsibilities.
"Mum," Maud said coaxingly. "Darling, you've got a new book coming out,
haven't you? Don't go and buy Paul any more of those nasty Japanese
things; those monkeys make me sick anyhow. Be a lamb, and let me have a
hundred pounds to see me through, will you?"
There was nothing particularly imploring in her voice, for she was quite
used to asking favours of her mother, and repeated favours always turn
into rights sooner or later. When her mother didn't answer, she screwed
round on her stool and looked up.
"Why, Mum," she cried, "what's the matter? Why do you look like that?"
Mrs. Walbridge kissed her. "Nothing, dear, I'm tired. I've been working
very hard."
She rose and her big daughter scrambled to her feet, laughing merrily.
"Oh, you old pet! Was it working hard at it's psychological masterpiece?
Anybody'd think you were what's-his-name, who wrote 'Elektra'!" She
laughed again, pleasant, full-throated, musical laughter, that yet cut
her hearer to her sore heart.
"Don't--don't laugh, dear," she said gently. "I know my bodes are awful
rubbish, but----"
Mrs. Twiss stared and took another chocolate.
"Oh, darling," she murmured. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. We
all _love_ your books. Well, you'll let me have the hundred, won't you,
pet? We're going to name her Violet."
The little sad face under the old-fashioned, pheasant-winged hat
softened a little. "I'll do my best, dear," she said. "Now I must go.
Give my love to Moreton."