To My Sister
Ethel
To Whose Ceaseless Encouragement
I Owe More Than I Can
Ever Express
Miss West was tall and splendid. No curves where Nature intended curves to be, but then, as Miss West would have said if questioned herself as to the lack of feminine completeness, she had no time for curves. No one at St. Christopher’s had time for curves. No one at St. Christopher’s had time for anything, except just to get on with their job, whatever that might be. For St. Christopher’s was one of those wonderful modern schools for girls that are of comparatively recent growth. Dotted round the South Coast of England, they stand and stare unblinkingly out at the restlessness of the grey sea beyond their playing fields. Schools where girls are taken in at the age of about twelve, comparatively raw, and turned out at the age of eighteen ready for anything, the six years in between having been spent in looking thoroughly unprepossessing: a vista of long black-stockinged leg—stocking ending somewhere far above the knee and showing all the ugly part of the leg in the process.
But nobody seemed to mind these depressing years, except perhaps the fathers of these children. Fathers who had recollections of little soft daughters who wandered about the house looking dreamy and detached; who sometimes came down to dessert in velvet frocks and little square-toed buckled shoes; who held up soft faces to be kissed and cried out with pleasure at the sight of a new shilling; and who were suddenly changed, as if by magic, into something casual and ungainly, in depressingly shaped blue serge garments; who no longer sat timidly at table, but who sat talking firmly and with decision—rubbish about cricket, for instance; who as they talked sat atrociously, with poking shoulders and crooked spines, feminine charm a thing of the past.
But as a rule the mourning father only sighed, and with the sigh relinquished any protest that he might have been about to make. It was of no use to protest where daughters were concerned; he knew it far too well. So the ridiculously large cheque would go off to the stupid school, and the father, if he was a philosopher, would console himself with the thought that, as there were now not nearly enough men to go round, it was perhaps a good thing that his daughter would probably not want one, or get one, if she did want one when the time for such things came round.
But of course, at St. Christopher’s, thoughts like these would have been considered simply stupid. Miss West would have scattered them in a few short sentences—Miss West, who was dominating the mistresses’ room now with her vivid personality. For it was the weekly meeting of all the mistresses to discuss the girls under their care. They met in the beautiful sunny room that faced the Channel. A large room, hung with charming pictures and painted with a dull-surfaced parchment-coloured paint. Comfortable chairs, in which lounged trim, competent women—well-dressed women—the head of St. Christopher’s was very particular about that.
“Well, I’m afraid I don’t see eye to eye with you.” Miss West’s face was just a little flushed. Miss Hilliard had ventured to disagree with her, and Miss West was not accustomed to it.
“Yes; but you must see.” Miss Hilliard had a little pucker between her eyebrows, but she had been at St. Christopher’s almost as long as Miss West, so she was not going to be sat on. “Shirley is not in the least like her two sisters—it is ridiculous to think that she is. I agree with you that they did do magnificently and have both got excellent posts, but Shirley is a good deal younger and not in the least like them. She is far more imaginative. I maintain that she would not do at all well at Oxford. And, as a matter of fact, I think that her parents would be rather relieved if she did not want to go there. It is very expensive, as you know, and I don’t think they are too well off. In fact, I know they’re not. Shirley told me quite simply the other day that they had gone to live in Switzerland because Daddy couldn’t afford the income tax. So that’s that,” ended Miss Hilliard, laughing a little.
But Miss West was not laughing. She was touched on her most vital point. A career; in her mind everything flattened out and became foolish compared with that. Both the sisters of the girl under discussion had done brilliantly. Margaret had got her degree and was now lecturing on botany at Holloway College. Pansy had also got her degree and was a house mistress at St. Andrew’s. Well, what more could you ask? Miss West looked rather defiantly round the room.
“Quite; but I maintain that Shirley is an entirely different type of girl.”
Miss Hilliard had begun to look bored. Sometimes she felt utterly out of place among all these determined spinsters. She liked men and suddenly felt that she would like one to come in then. Secretly she felt sure that everyone would perk up and become more spry if he did. Secretly she wished that she was not twenty-eight and had not done brilliantly at Oxford, so that she had had to adopt teaching as her career, or throw away a magnificent opportunity. Secretly and passionately she wished that she had adopted anything else as a career—even to selling programmes in a theatre, so that you sometimes saw well-groomed men with delightful voices, who spoke to you politely, even though you were a programme-seller, simply because you were a woman.
“All women are fundamentally the same”—and then Miss West was off. And as she really was a brilliant woman the rest of the people in the room listened to her and agreed, because it was too much bother to do anything else. Besides, the discussion of Shirley Mortimer did not interest them much. She never did anything in the exams, and was very often late. Also, she showed very little interest in games.
“Shirley cooks beautifully. She will get her diploma at the end of this term.” Miss Hilliard was not going to be talked down. Her sudden passion of discontent at her lot had made her obstructive. Miss West was a fool. All these hard-faced spinster women were fools. They had got their perspective all wrong. Miss Hilliard set her small mutinous mouth.
“Cooks beautifully!” and with that the meeting broke up. The moonfaced clock on the parchment-coloured wall chimed the hour melodiously. Everyone had something desperately important to do at the very next instant. All were scattered in the space of a short five minutes. And the moonfaced clock looked benignly down on the empty room and the trim housemaid who came hurrying in to put it tidy, so that she should not be late in meeting her young man. Such a lot of talk about nothing, she thought disconnectedly, punching up the cushions and thrusting them back into the comfortable chairs again.
Meanwhile Shirley Mortimer lounged in a low chair in the Sixth Form sitting room, and also thought about life in general. Her great friend sat by her side. This was a time that the girls at St. Christopher’s always enjoyed. A long quiet hour after the five o’clock tea, when they were supposed to darn their stockings, or write to their parents, or really do anything that they liked. Shirley was not doing anything because Marjory always did her darning for her.
“Won’t it be a relief when we haven’t got to wear those deathly black stockings any more!” Shirley’s pale little freckled face was derisive.
“I don’t know; I don’t mind them.” Marjory spoke equably. Her parents were rich, so darning was something of a novelty. “What’s the matter with them? We should look frightful sights without them, anyhow, with these short skirts.”
“Yes, I know. But that’s partly why I hate them. It’s so stupid, all this dressing of us up in these businesslike clothes. We’re grown up now; at least we’re practically grown up. We’re both well over seventeen. Mother was married at eighteen—Margaret was born when she was twenty.”
“Was she?” Marjory was holding the card of mending up in front of her and staring at it. “Why do you always mangle your card of mending so frightfully?” she demanded. “Mine never gets like this.”
“It goes like that by itself,” said Shirley, smiling. When she smiled Shirley looked very attractive. Her rather solemn face broke up in crinkled mirth; her green eyes shone, and her little teeth showed brilliantly.
“You are!” Marjory was also smiling, although rather unwillingly. “I can’t think why I bother to do your mending for you at all.”
“Nor can I.” Shirley was still smiling. “It’s because you’re such a pet,” she volunteered.
“No, it isn’t. It’s because I know that if you attempted to do it yourself the result would be too awful,” said Marjory briskly. She broke off a long strand of wool and stretched it tightly over the slender darning needle. “Talk to me, anyhow, while I am darning,” she said. “Didn’t you hear from your family to-day? What’s happening there?”
“Oh, nothing very particular,” Shirley became suddenly grave. “You know it’s a ghastly thought,” she said abruptly. “Only one more half-term here and then I’ve got to go and live at home or go out and do something. Sometimes I feel as if I really couldn’t do it—as if I should go raving mad if I had to.”
“How do you mean ‘do something’?” asked Marjory solidly. Shirley’s exaggerations and superlatives left her unmoved. Shirley was always either up in the heights or down in the depths; Marjory was used to it.
“Why, everyone in our family does something. Father writes, as you know, and writes jolly well; although I’m his daughter I love his books. Mother reviews and writes articles; she’s just as clever as father really, only in a different way. Margaret and Pansy both teach and are desperately highbrow. Ralph has gone to India, but, as you know, he got into the I. C. S., and that wants brains, if anything does. And here am I left. Well, you can’t suppose that with that family record I can just sit down and be, can you? I shall have to do something. But the point is, what? Oh, how I loathe the idea of it,” groaned Shirley, suddenly terribly grave.
“Teach,” suggested Marjory, carefully threading her long needle in and out of the black stocking.
“Teach what? And what on earth is the use of it when you are teaching?” demanded Shirley. “Look at all of us, simply stuffed. And whatever for? What are we going to do with it? If they taught us to dress properly, and hold ourselves well, and come into a room gracefully, there would be some sense in it. But all this stupid stuffing with Latin and algebra and higher mathematics; and when we’ve done that, all this rushing out and tearing about a hockey field, and looking more and more hideous and actually thinking that it matters if we do it or not. Well, it’s childish,” concluded Shirley abruptly.
“I say, you are up against it!” said Marjory, vaguely surprised. A placid girl, she took the school curriculum as it came and did not think about it. “What’s started you off?”
“Oh, I don’t know! Everything,” Shirley was staring out at the sea. “It’s all coming to an end—this; and although I make game of it, I’ve loved it really. You, and the life, and never having to think about what one is going to do because it’s all settled for one. And now a sort of horrible vista of ghastly having to earn one’s own living. Not in a nice way. I wouldn’t mind going into a shop, or being a house parlourmaid or something like that, or selling programmes in a theatre, or showing people into their seats at a cinema with one of those jolly little electric torches, or being a mannequin in a big shop—anything where there was a chance of some adventure,” said Shirley excitedly. “But simply to qualify in some frightfully specialized way for some dreadful job that one loathes—the very idea of it makes me feel sick.”
“Good heavens, you are wrought up,” said Marjory placidly. “Don’t be specialized then. Cook: you know you cook most frightfully well. Everyone wants a cook. They’ll give you a hundred pounds a year and a kitchenmaid into the bargain, or you can get more than that if you go into a school.”
“Cook!” Shirley’s face was a study. “And have some dreadful fussy woman coming down every morning to give me orders! No, thank you!”
“You are funny: I don’t know what you do want,” said Marjory, and she clipped neatly with little bright scissors at the fluffy ends of wool. “Cook for a man, then. They’ve got to eat as well as women.”
“They’ve all got dull wives,” said Shirley quickly. Her face flushed and a sort of queer wild shyness settled on it for a moment. “Marjory,” she said, “I’m not going to talk about young men, because it’s hateful. But haven’t you ever thought how utterly blissful it would be to have a real love affair? Nothing stupid—I don’t mean that. But just to worship someone—worship him most frightfully. Someone older than oneself. Someone one could look up to and sort of adore because he was so utterly, utterly perfect,” ended up Shirley rather incoherently.
“I don’t believe I could adore anyone,” said Marjory solidly. “I’m not like you, all diving about into all sorts of queer ideas and feelings that I don’t believe anyone else but you has got. I like ordinary things. I daresay I might fall in love with someone one day simply because everyone seems to do it sooner or later. But I shouldn’t worship him or think him a god. Men aren’t gods; they come down to breakfast late and then look at you as if it was your fault,” ended Marjory laconically, bending forward to throw the completed stocking into her friend’s lap.
“Do they? My man wouldn’t,” thought Shirley swiftly. But she did not say the words aloud. Sometimes she thought that that was why she was so fond of Marjory; they were so utterly unalike. Marjory just was; she was not always straining to be something else. Why was she always doing it? thought Shirley rather disconnectedly, taking the long black stocking and rolling it up into a ball rather badly. Where was the one that belonged to it? Oh, yes, here it was: she stretched herself down over the side of the low chair to feel about underneath it.
“I’ll get it.” Marjory had already gathered the missing stocking neatly and methodically into her hand. “You are such a muddler, Shirley,” she said. “Why don’t you try to get a grip on yourself? Give me the stockings and let me roll them up properly. There you are.” Marjory handed them back a neat and compact ball.
“Thank you, lambkin!” Shirley was laughing again. The brief feeling of despair had evaporated. After all, there were six weeks yet—a whole half-term; anything could happen in six weeks.
But nothing did happen. And in after-life Shirley often shuddered away from the thought of that feeling of acute misery with which she waked on that last morning at school. A blank, despairing misery. Until that moment she had not known that she loved her school so much. She stood on the flagged terrace and stared out at the blue sea, and thought in her heart that she would never survive this wrenching out of the very fibres of her being.
“My dear, you’ll feel all right when you’ve actually gone.” Marjory was concerned. “Besides, we’ve got heaps of fun in front of us. You’re staying the night with us, and Daddy says that he has got seats for Dear Brutus. Well, my dear, if you want someone to worship, you can worship Gerald du Maurier. Phyllis simply raves about him.”
“I don’t want to worship Gerald du Maurier,” said Shirley, and she spoke with a deep, strangling sob. “You don’t understand. It’s the awful end of something. It’s all done, this, and I don’t know what’s coming next. I know it’ll be fun with you, but that’s only for one night. Then I’ve got to go out to Switzerland. Marjory, I wouldn’t say it to anyone but you, but I feel I don’t care for my parents at all. Somehow we’ve been away from each other so much, how can we be fond of each other? Why should I have to go and live with them and do what they want? It isn’t as if they were old and needed me. They don’t. They’re both quite fairly young and frightfully busy. How can they know what I want in my soul?” sobbed Shirley.
“My dear, don’t be so futile.” Marjory’s consolation was brisk and to the point. “It’s only because of that old farewell hymn and Miss Frost sort of laying it on thick; you know how she always does at the end of term. You’ll feel all right when we’ve got away, and think of to-night: I expect we shall dine at a restaurant.”
“How heavenly!” Shirley smiled through her tears. Somehow the load at her heart seemed not quite so heavy now. Because Marjory not being able to understand in the least how she felt made it easier to be cheerful. It was easier to be cheerful with people who could not understand how you felt, decided Shirley, following her friend back into the big ivy-covered house. Otherwise you had to be on guard all the time, in case they found out something that you wanted to hide from them.
And as the day went on her misery grew still less. Marjory’s mother was nice, and very daintily dressed, and at Victoria she was there with a beautiful car to meet the two girls.
“But, oh, my dear child! how thankful I am to think that at last you can be dressed decently,” she exclaimed. “Marie has already got something ready for you for to-night. Oh, those long black legs! How I detest them!”
“So do I,” said Shirley abruptly. Suddenly she felt that she liked Marjory’s mother. She was ordinary and said ordinary things. No sort of straining to be above ordinary things like hideous clothes and ghastly stockings; no talking to girls as they ought to be talked to, simply because they were girls.
“Mother, can we find something for Shirley to wear to-night, too?” said Marjory eagerly. She knew that Shirley’s wardrobe was limited. And Shirley would so loathe being dowdy if they were going to a restaurant.
“Of course we can,” said Mrs. Fielding kindly. She smiled into Shirley’s green eyes. “I’ve just read your father’s last novel,” she said, “and I enjoyed every word of it. Do tell him so, will you, when you see him?”
“Rather!” Shirley’s expressive face shone. In this atmosphere of appreciation she felt suddenly entirely at home.
And the next evening, when she had gone, Mr. Fielding spoke with approbation of Marjory’s slim little friend. “She’s not absorbed any of this higher education nonsense,” he declared. “She’s just a very sweet, simple little girl. And mark my word, some man will go crazy over those green eyes of hers one day, Maisie. Pity she’s got to go and bury herself in Switzerland, but I suppose that’s because that novelist father of hers can’t stand the income tax. Marjory tells me that he’s not too well off.”
“No, I don’t believe he is,” and Mrs. Fielding smiled down at her work. She, too, had loved Shirley, and had wondered why it was quite possible to wish that your own daughter was like somebody else’s. Marjory had all her father’s stolidity, and Mrs. Fielding was a little weary of stolidity. She loved the sparkling, dancing irresponsibility of Shirley’s mind. Something in hers had leaped to it. The same something that had trembled and wept a little at the exquisite genius of Barrie’s play. A second chance—if only she could have one. This child had all her life in front of her. Pray heaven she would not make a hash of it as she had done, thought Mrs. Fielding, glancing across the beautifully furnished drawing room to where her husband sat at the open window, and thinking what a shame it was even to think that. Always so kind and generous to her. And Marjory was a dear good girl, too. But somehow . . . Mrs. Fielding was just fifty, and at fifty, unless it has been thoroughly satisfied, the craving for romance is still very much alive. She thought with a tender interest of the slender little girl with the eager face and green eyes. She wished she was her own little daughter, so that she had the right to walk beside her until she met the man whose step fell in with hers. Mrs. Fielding hoped that she would meet that man soon, so that he could have all that eagerness and sweetness for his own, and not let anyone else damp and quench it first.
The Mortimers had gone to live in Switzerland because, after a brief holiday there one year, they found that if they did their income would go almost twice as far as it did in England. At the hotel at which they were staying were two separate couples, both of whom after profound deliberation had decided to take this step, and were at that very moment settling the furniture which had been shipped from England into pleasant apartments high above the Lake. They talked to Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer and eventually persuaded them to do the same.
And they had never regretted it. The society was charming and cultured; domestic service was easier to obtain and infinitely better. The climate was beautiful, and on an income of a thousand pounds a year, instead of being filched of about two hundred pounds of it, you paid out at the most twenty and got your house insured into the bargain. So the Mortimers were thoroughly satisfied, and both being comparatively young, they enjoyed the facilities for enjoyment that Montreux provided. The views were divine; you could go out on the Lake in a steamer and have tea at the little villages on the Savoy side of it. You could take an electric train up into the mountains and walk down again. In fact, you could have a great deal of fun for very little money, which you could not do at home on what was left of your income after heavy school bills had been paid. Although, so far, the Mortimers had never grudged the money spent on education. Both their daughters had amply repaid it by the excellence of the posts they had obtained.
But, somehow, on this first evening after Shirley’s arrival a kind of gloom had settled down on the two parents. They sat together on the veranda and gazed at the divine beauty of the Alps across the Lake, and wished, although they did not put it into words, that they were still by themselves. They were by themselves now, because Shirley had gone to bed, but still she would be there the next morning. And both felt ashamed of the thought. After all, a daughter was part of yourself; you ought not to be able even to. feel that she could ever be in the way.
“Is she like you thought she would be, Jim?” Mrs. Mortimer looked rather pathetic as she put the question.
“Yes, I think she is, darling.” Mr. Mortimer had a very nice voice, and he took his pipe out of his mouth as he spoke. He was still in love with his wife, which was unusual, as they had been married nearly thirty years. “She’s awfully like you were at her age.”
“Like I was!” Mrs. Mortimer was surprised.
“Yes; like you were when I first saw you. We were practically engaged when you were Shirley’s age. Margaret was born when you were twenty.”
“Yes, so she was. Of course, Shirley is years younger than Margaret. I always forget that.” Mrs. Mortimer sat with her hands clasped in her lap.
“Of course she is. Shirley was a mistake, really.” Mr. Mortimer was smiling reminiscently.
“Jim!”
“She was. What do we want with a daughter of that age, now? How is she going to fit in? After all, we barely know her, because Charlotte always had her for her holidays. Poor old Charlotte! I’m sorry she died. That might have been a solution.”
“A solution of what?”
“Of Shirley’s future. She could have gone to live with her.”
“Jim, don’t you want her here?”
“About as much as you do, darling,” said Mr. Mortimer, smiling.
“I do want her.” Mrs. Mortimer suddenly felt the tears rushing to her eyes. She felt unstrung and stupid. Of course she wanted her own daughter. It was only that she seemed strange at first. Somehow, at dinner that night her green eyes had been so searching. She seemed to take in both her parents and then to relegate them to somewhere else. Of course, that was what that particular school always seemed to do—make the girls who went to it so independent. And it was a good thing really, because they most of them had to earn their own living. Shirley would earn her own living, too, when she had had time to look round her. “She will earn her own living,” she said, speaking her thought aloud.
“How?” Mr. Mortimer had stopped smoking and was staring out at the Lake. Apart from his daughter’s arrival he had something else to worry him. His last book had not sold nearly as well as the one before. The afternoon post had brought him the last six months’ account from his agent. Perhaps he was beginning to go off: men did. But ghastly when your writing was your only source of income. Mercifully he had saved a certain amount. But not much, really.
“How? Oh, she’ll teach, I expect.” Mrs. Mortimer spoke vaguely. She had already begun to forget a little about her dismay at Shirley’s arrival. She was writing a series of articles for the English Review and she was interested in them. After years of practice Mrs. Mortimer had learned to control her thoughts. If you didn’t, you were finished, especially if you had a vivid imagination, she knew. She switched them off onto the articles now. She would consult her husband about them.
But Mr. Mortimer realized that here was the opportunity for which he had been waiting. “Dolly,” he said, “you do realize, don’t you, that it will be absolutely impossible for Shirley to go to Oxford?”
“Will it?”
“Absolutely. Charlotte, as you know, helped me with the other two, and Charlotte has gone. What she left me has paid Shirley’s school fees, certainly, for this year, and there is a little over that will do for her clothes. But beyond that I really don’t think I can do anything more for Shirley. St. Christopher’s cost me three hundred a year, and that has been going on for the last five years. Shirley’s education has therefore at a low estimate cost about fifteen hundred pounds. Well, that’s all she can have. If that large expenditure of money hasn’t equipped her for anything, all I can say is that it ought to have done.”
“Yes, but——”
“Yes; I know exactly what you are going to say, darling, and that is that the other girls had a University career. They had, and I don’t say that they haven’t profited by it. But Shirley can’t have it, I can’t afford it, and that’s the end of it. I only wish I could.”
“What will she do, then?” Mrs. Mortimer had forgotten all about her articles for the English Review, and only felt worried.
“Well, she’ll do what other girls do. What do other girls do when they come home from school? They occupy themselves about the house. They go out and see other girls. They make their own clothes. They go out to tea. What do those girls of the Manwarings do? They always seem to be occupied.”
“Oh, they’re absolutely different.” Mrs. Mortimer stared at her husband and thought how stupid the very cleverest men could be at times. “Those girls think of nothing but young men, Jim. Shirley is not in the least like that.”
“And a great pity she isn’t.” Mr. Mortimer’s eyes were twinkling as he stared out over the Lake to where the lights of St. Gingolph were beginning to wink and twinkle through the soft evening mist. “What were you thinking about at Shirley’s age, Dolly?”
“What was I thinking about? Well, not about young men, Jim. I should have thought it degrading. I was thinking about—well, I don’t know what I was thinking about. About what I should do with my life—how I could make the best of it.”
“No, you were not. You were thinking about me,” said Mr. Mortimer humorously. “And a very good thing, too. I’ve not the remotest patience with this modern idea that marriage is a secondary thing and to be relegated to the second-best place. I know that in a great many cases it has to be; for instance, the young men of Margaret’s and Pansy’s generation are practically non-existent because of the war. That’s why I went in so wholeheartedly for the Oxford scheme for them. I knew they would be wretched if they didn’t have something to entirely fill up their lives. But Shirley is different: she has a young man of her own age waiting for her somewhere, and she must find him. And she won’t find him if she goes and bottles herself up with a stack of other women. Let her stay at home and lead the ordinary life of an ordinary girl. If it doesn’t answer, we can let her do something else. But let her try it first: that’s all I mean.”
“Yes, but——” And then Mrs. Mortimer gave it up. Her husband did not often assert himself, but when he did he always meant what he said. And in a way it was a relief to think that she had not to begin to make plans at once for Shirley, thought Mrs. Mortimer, standing up and dropping her handkerchief and then stooping to hunt for it in the half-darkness.
“Here it is.” Mr. Mortimer swung himself a little sideways out of his chair and groped round with a long arm. “Always your hanky or your scissors or your thimble, Dolly; what a baby you are, really!”
“Yes; but if Shirley always stays here we shan’t ever be alone any more.” Mrs. Mortimer felt the rush of tears to her eyes again. They were so awfully happy together, she and this beloved husband of hers.
“Yes, we shall. She’ll marry,” said Mr. Mortimer confidently.
At the end of her first day in Montreux, Shirley felt that it couldn’t have been only a day, it must have been a week.
To begin with, she woke very early. Everything was so different, although she had been in the flat the year before. But it was so different to England. The small room with its pale parquet floors and long French window opening onto a tiny veranda. Then the light seemed different; it, too, was pale and luminous, and as she had slept with her curtains drawn, she could see it stealing over the tops of the dark Alps that shaded the Lake on the farther side. Then the sounds were different; there was the grinding metallic sound of the powerful brakes of the early morning train to Italy as it drew up in Montreux station—the shouting of the porters and the funny tooting of the horn as it started on its way again. Everything was different. And Shirley, as she turned her head on the square pillow, wondered how she was going to endure it.
Almost a physical feeling of misery spread over her. She tried to go off to sleep again and could not. She began to think about breakfast and about how she would have to look as if she were glad to be at home again. She wouldn’t be able to, because she was not glad. She thought about Marjory and the luxurious flat overlooking Kensington Gardens, and the car that they had to go out in. There was so much fun in Marjory’s life. Not that she wanted fun exactly, but she wanted something to do. Not the ordinary sort of thing to do, as the other girls at St. Christopher’s had wanted, but something different—something exciting; something where you got adventure.
Shirley turned her auburn head on the pillow and began to imagine adventure. Something like—something like what? Shirley began to try to whittle it down. Something so that she could meet someone like—someone like whom? And then Shirley turned scarlet as she buried her face a little deeper into the pillow. Someone like Sir Gerald du Maurier. There it was; she was just like any other stupid girl who went mad over an actor. Shirley sat up a little and leaned on her elbow and stared out into the exquisite beauty of the dawn. No, she wasn’t though; she struggled with her thoughts, trying to disentangle them. It wasn’t Sir Gerald du Maurier himself. It was something he stood for. Romance!
Shirley lay down again. Yes, it was romance she wanted. That was what it had been that made her so loathe the idea of going to Oxford, because, although the going to Oxford was fun, the meaning of Oxford wouldn’t have been fun at all. It would have meant that she was destined for a life of drudgery—to teach stupid women things that they would have been just as well without. Now, cooking was different; there was something adventurous about mixing up things and seeing them turn into something else; that was why it was so easy to get your diploma for that; there was nothing stuffy about it. But teaching—Shirley lay back on her pillows and thought about her two sisters and wondered how they could endure it.
And at breakfast, after this early waking, Shirley looked pinched and almost plain. She sat with her fragrant coffee and delicious rolls in front of her and looked dejected. Mrs. Mortimer, who always felt at her best in the morning, was dismayed. She had thought that Shirley was pretty the night before: now she saw that she wasn’t.
“Well, darling, what are you going to do with yourself to-day?” Mrs. Mortimer spoke more brightly than she would otherwise have done because of her dismay. “Daddy and I generally write all the morning after the housekeeping is done. But Germaine is so splendid that there really isn’t any housekeeping to be done,” said Mrs. Mortimer, laughing.
“I think I shall finish unpacking and then go for a walk,” said Shirley. “Then I can go to Cook’s and change my money, can’t I?”
“Yes, you can, dear.” Mrs. Mortimer was eating her petits pains and butter with obvious enjoyment. Shirley, glancing at her, thought how much older she had got to look in the last year. Daddy looked older too. Both so absolutely settled down. And both—and this Shirley could see very plainly—both absolutely content with their life together. Not the very faintest need of a daughter, that was obvious. Shirley’s green eyes dwelt on her plate. She wondered desperately what her mother would do if she began to cry. The sort of inner surging misery she felt, and all so ridiculous really. Did all girls feel like this when they left school—all at sea and lonely; sort of trying to catch hold of something that wasn’t there to catch hold of; wrenched away from everything they were used to, with nothing else to take its place?
But Shirley’s storm of self-conscious misery only made her look rather hard, and Mrs. Mortimer felt more dismayed than ever, and her dismay made her brisk. She spoke brightly of the beauty of the morning and the pleasure of having lots to do, and hoped fervently that no one would call so that she would be interrupted. And Mr. Mortimer said that he hadn’t an idea in his head, and was going to cut work and have a day’s golf at Aigle with old someone whose name Shirley didn’t know. Both were entirely occupied and happy without her, that was obvious, thought Shirley, getting up from the table a little drearily and going away to her bedroom.
And the rest of the day was very much the same. Shirley finished her unpacking and set out her few photographs, and then pulled on her little straw hat and put on her walking shoes and went to Cook’s to change her English money into Swiss. And when she came back there had been a letter from Margaret, full of cheerful, happy news, and Mrs. Mortimer talked about her all lunchtime and about how happy she was, and about Pansy and how happy she was, too. And then after lunch Mrs. Mortimer laughed and said that she was going to rest; that it was a ghastly habit, but that she always did it, because she worked with her brain all the morning and she felt at her age it was justifiable. But that they would meet at teatime and that perhaps Shirley would like to lie down with a book too, because she was probably still tired with her journey of the day before.
“Thank you, Mummy; yes, I think I will. I’ll read Daddy’s last book—I haven’t seen it yet.” Shirley’s red mouth was unsmiling. It was as if something had got her face in a vise. She couldn’t be natural and pleasant with these parents of hers, for some reason or other. They were like utter strangers. All the more so because really they stood to her in the closest relation possible.
“Yes, darling, I’ll give it to you.” And when Mrs. Mortimer had lifted it down from the shelf and handed it to Shirley, she went away to her room and lay down on her bed and wondered why the relationship of mother and daughter could be so astoundingly difficult to negotiate. So simple really, and yet so desperately difficult in practice.
Life went on more or less like this for about a fortnight. Shirley was so quiet that Mrs. Mortimer felt more at ease about her. She read and did a little sewing and wrote letters. And to her astonishment one day she found that Shirley had obtained her diploma for cooking at the end of her last term.
“My darling, you never told me!” Mrs. Mortimer’s rather faded blue eyes were quite round with astonishment and pleasure. “How splendid, Shirley! Why, it is a most tremendously difficult thing to get.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t.” Shirley’s embarrassment made her voice gruff. “Heaps of girls get it.”
“I don’t believe they do.” And this set a new train of thought to work in Mrs. Mortimer’s brain. At that new school up at Les Avants, she had heard that they wanted someone to teach the girls cooking. English cooking of the simpler kind. She spoke to her husband excitedly about it. What did he think?
“I should think it would be the very thing.” Mr. Mortimer was relieved. He was delighted to think that St. Christopher’s had had the sense to encourage anything as intelligent as cooking, and said so.
“Darling, you are frightfully unjust to that splendid school,” said Mrs. Mortimer, going away to find Shirley. She was in her chambre à coucher, said Germaine, who worked like a slave and was always good-tempered over it.
“Merci, Germaine.” Mrs. Mortimer was always pleasant to her servants and so they always stayed.
She tapped at Shirley’s door and waited for an answer. It came after a long pause, and came from a Shirley who had opened the door and was standing with the handle of it in her hand.
“Oh, my darling! What is it? Aren’t you well?” Mrs. Mortimer felt all the love and longing of motherhood suddenly flood over her. Shirley was crying, and her small pale freckled face was all blotched and stained with tears. Like all people with auburn hair, tears disfigured Shirley badly. Auburn hair wants joy to set it alight, and the delicate complexion that goes with it.
“No, I’m all right.” Shirley suddenly felt that she almost hated her mother. Why had she needed to come to her room just then? Now she would have to explain, and how could she explain? There was nothing to explain. It was her fault that she couldn’t settle happily down in a nice home like this. Other girls didn’t feel as she did—desolate, and horribly alone.
“But there must be something the matter, darling.” Mrs. Mortimer was really just as self-conscious as Shirley, but she struggled with it. “Tell me, there’s a dear child. After all, I can understand a girl’s feelings, Shirley, although I am so much older.”
“I feel so useless.” It came from Shirley in a burst. She walked to the bed and sat down on it and buried her face in her hands. “I’ve left school, and here I am and what’s the use of me? What’s going to become of me? You and Daddy don’t really need a daughter at home. I don’t mean that you’re not pleased to have me, because I know you are. But there’s no point in it. It makes me wish I had never been born,” wailed Shirley.
“My darling, don’t be such a goose.” Mrs. Mortimer walked to the bed and also sat down on it. She looked at Shirley’s small freckled hand clutching the handkerchief and longed to take hold of it, but yet dared not. A dreadful constraint held her in its grip. What ought she to say to this daughter of hers? There were great things to say at a crisis like this. Things about thought for others; high ideals; the opportunity to lead a fine unselfish life. But she left them all unsaid, largely because at the moment there was something far more practical to say.
Mrs. Mortimer suddenly remembered what she had come for. Of course—she turned excitedly to look at her daughter.
“Shirley, don’t cry or think yourself useless, darling, because you aren’t,” she said eagerly. “Just think, it might just have dropped from the skies, this great chance for you. They want someone to teach cooking at that big girls’ school at Les Avants. Isn’t it splendid? and I know Miss Wills quite well. I’ll phone at once; I know she would jump at you.”
“Yes, but I should hate it.” Shirley raised her head with a jerk. “I’m sorry, Mother, but I should simply loathe it. Just think, to be jumbled up with masses of women perhaps for years and years. Why, there would be no chance of adventure at all—there would be no chance of anything. Oh, what an awful idea!” Shirley’s green eyes, blurred with tears, opened widely and then closed again.
“Yes; but still, my dear child——” And now Mrs. Mortimer was put out. She spoke forcibly. In this life you did not look out for adventure; you waited until it came to you. The same with romance. Now that Shirley had spoken frankly to her mother she would speak equally frankly to her. Probably partly why Shirley felt so miserable and unsettled was a sort of unconscious craving for romance. Girls were all alike at her age. But romance came by itself. Where you least expected it, it came: from the most unexpected sources. Mrs. Mortimer forgot her annoyance at the sight of Shirley’s crumpled misery. She took hold of the small clenched hand and pressed it in her own.
“Yes; but you don’t go where you know it can never possibly come to you,” said Shirley rather impatiently. “I know I ought to teach cooking because I have got a diploma. But I simply can’t teach it in a girls’ school, Mummy, and please don’t make me. At least, don’t make me yet. After all, I’ve only been at home a fortnight. I will find something to do, I promise you I will. But let me find it for myself,” said Shirley, beginning to cry again, rather wildly this time.
And although terribly disappointed and baffled, there was nothing to be done but to agree and then go away. But Mrs. Mortimer felt angry with her daughter. It was all so ridiculous, she thought. Shirley was only a child. A couple of years in close association with Miss Wills would have done her all the good in the world. What on earth had been the advantage of that costly education at one of the foremost girls’ schools in England?
And her husband only made it worse by saying that there hadn’t been any good in it, and that it had only been because she was so set on it that he had ever gone in for it at all.
“But it did all right for Margaret and Pansy,” reiterated Mrs. Mortimer, standing in the shelter of her husband’s arm and staring up at him.
“Margaret and Pansy are like Charlotte was. You are like Shirley. Or rather, Shirley is like you,” said Mr. Mortimer, stooping and kissing the top of his wife’s head.
So this was all rather miserable, and was made more so by Shirley being able to see herself exactly as her parents saw her. She had been able to do that at St. Christopher’s when Miss West had harangued the girls in her ringing, bell-like voice. She had seen herself as Miss West saw her: rather inert and apt to flop about and stare aimlessly when she ought to have been doing something quite different. Only Marjory knew her as she really was, thought Shirley bitterly, letting her white freckled eyelids fall over her greeny-grey eyes and craving desperately for her friend. Marjory had listened to her as she expounded her ideas about the future—about what she would love to do if she had the chance, etc., and had joined in and applauded, although as a matter of fact Marjory had very few ideas about anything, except those that concerned themselves with going to settle at home and having a thoroughly good time.
Also, although Shirley did not know it, the abrupt change from the bracing air of Windhaven to the comparatively tropical heat of Montreux was affecting her. It was August, and a great many people in Montreux had already gone to the mountains.
But the Mortimers were used to the heat, and, being always extremely busy, they did not notice it. The flat was an airy one and stood high above the Lake, and in the afternoons, when the glare from the glimmering water was too much, they let down green sun-blinds and the wind stole gently in underneath them, making them flap softly and sweetly, and Mrs. Mortimer, refreshed from her little nap, would come brightly in to tea, which Germaine had spread so daintily in the salle à manger, and would ask her husband how his writing was getting on and say how she was longing to hear him read the last completed chapter. And he would beam and say, “How’s the last highbrow article going? Gracious, Shirley, I have to mind my ps and qs with this intellectual mother of yours!” and smile at her mother as if he adored her; and Shirley would feel a sort of dreadful stiff constraint, coupled with a longing to cry out that she wasn’t a bit like this really, that they made her like this because she had nothing to do, and wasn’t really wanted.
And this went on for a month. And then one day she had a long letter from Marjory. How was Shirley? Her letters sounded most frightfully fed-up. They were all going to Cromer until the thirtieth of August, and then her mother said why shouldn’t Shirley come and stay—for a month or six weeks, because otherwise it wouldn’t be worth the fare.
When Shirley had read this letter she sat quite still on her bed for quite a long time. She had got the letter at breakfast-time and had looked at it and decided to keep it until she was alone. Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer were chattering about the letters they had had: Pansy had got a month’s holiday and was going to spend the last part of it in Montreux: the first fifteen days of September, if there was room for her. Mrs. Mortimer was delighted, and Shirley, in her miserable, morbid self-consciousness, felt sure that her mother was mentally comparing her two daughters and thinking what a much better affair Pansy had made of her life. She had, of course. Shirley went away to her room, grasping Marjory’s letter and wondering how she was going to read the account of all the fun Marjory was having without being hideous and jealous and more horrible than ever.
But when she had read it she was only conscious of a trembling sense of joy. Supposing they would not let her go, though; the fare was expensive. Excitedly she went to her dispatch case and got out her English Post Office Savings Bank book. Aunt Charlotte had always made her put money in this bank every holiday. Only once, as a stupefying treat, had she been allowed to take out a pound on demand. Feverishly she scrutinized the funny pin-like handwriting that told her exactly how much money she had. Twenty-five pounds: she had not had the least idea that it was so much. The second-class fare to London, with first-class on the steamer, was a little more than five pounds. Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer would not have known Shirley if they could have seen her then. Faltering and tremulous, with her delicate skin flushing and paling; her little freckled hands hanging straight down at her sides; her large green eyes fixed on the Lake. One of the steamers had just put off from the quay at Montreux with a brisk hooting. One day soon, perhaps she too would be putting off from land in a steamer. Not to go round and round on a shut-in lake, heavenly beautiful though it might be; but to go across a real sea into a wider life altogether. When should she ask her mother? and—although, as a matter of fact, even if she said she couldn’t go, she would. Things were different nowadays; besides, she could pay for herself.
But as a matter of fact there was no difficulty about it at all. Inwardly, Mrs. Mortimer was enormously relieved. She knew that the Fieldings were charming people and probably had charming friends. Shirley might meet someone nice whom she could marry. Late that night, when Shirley had gone to bed, she talked to her husband about it.
“Oh, I thought something must have happened. Shirley looked absolutely different at dinner tonight. You know, Dolly, that child is pretty. Do you notice the look of transparency she has? To-night her pale little face seemed to shine. I’m sorry for that child; we’ve rather failed as parents to her.”
“Rubbish, Jim; we haven’t!”
“Yes, we have. We don’t in the least understand her and she feels it. No one can be so remote as a child from its parents. One hasn’t the slightest idea what they are thinking about. The old-fashioned idea that you had to love your mother and father because they were your mother and father has gone for ever.”
“I think it’s a great pity it has.” Mrs. Mortimer was surprised at the wave of warmth that swept over her. So often her husband stood up for Shirley. It was ridiculous; the child led a perfectly useless life and then was surprised that she was dull. “All I can say is that when I was that age——”
Mrs. Mortimer stopped abruptly.
Mr. Mortimer laughed. “When you were that age you were fully occupied in body, mind, and spirit with being in love with me, my darling, and don’t you forget it. Shirley and you are very much alike, and that is probably why you don’t hit it off too well.”
“We do hit it off,” said Mrs. Mortimer.
“No, you don’t; you don’t understand each other in the least. If I liked to try, Shirley and I could get on extremely well. But I don’t want to try, because I think that the child would be far happier out on her own. Who knows? This visit to London may be the very thing for her. In any event, of course she must go, and there must be no nonsense about paying her own fare. She can take her Post Office book with her if she likes, because I can’t give her very much money for gadding about.”
And so that was settled. Excited letters passed between the two girls and pleasant and appreciative ones between the parents. Shirley was all one huge excitement about her clothes. From a rather drooping and disconsolate young woman she changed into a sparkling, vibrating streak of joy. Her small face shone. She whistled in her bedroom and talked excited and atrocious French to Germaine as she helped her to make the bed.
She said, “Oh, bother! It’s so much more fun to be alone,” when one day at breakfast her father glanced up from a letter he was reading and said that Hugo Trent was on his way to England and hoped to drop in one day next week. “Which day?” he scanned the letter again. “Why, it’s the thirtieth as ever is. You and he can travel together, Shirley.”
“Oh, no, Daddy!” Shirley raised a desperate face. “I was so frightfully looking forward to going alone. Why, it’s half the fun. Don’t suggest it, Mother!” Shirley shot a passionate look of entreaty across the table.
“My dear, Mr. Trent wouldn’t want to be bothered with you!” Mrs. Mortimer spoke rather drastically. “Don’t worry. He’s a frightfully busy man, always tearing about the world. What’s he been out here for, Jim?”
“About that case at Sierre: you know, that Englishman who was found dead on the golf links. They had him out, as they were rather worried about whether it had been foul play or not. He has been there a fortnight, and has just settled things up, and is on his way home. He can’t stay long: in fact”—Mr. Mortimer referred to the letter again—“he’s only going to drop in after lunch and stay to dinner if he may, and catch the night train on.”
“But it’s the same train I’m going by!” Shirley’s brow was furrowed.
“My dear child, you can’t expect to have the whole train entirely to yourself!” Mrs. Mortimer was appalled at this astounding egotism of her youngest daughter. Really, the present generation! She got up abruptly and began to gather her letters together. So often Shirley made her feel like that. The astounding selfishness! Here was an old friend of her father’s on his way to England after an intensely trying and difficult fortnight in a foreign land. And all Shirley could think of was that her journey might be disturbed! Mrs. Mortimer had collected her letters and was trying to look pleasant.
“Is he a lawyer, then?” Shirley was secretly clenching her hands together under the table to keep them from trembling.
“A barrister.” Mr. Mortimer was trying not to laugh. How odd it was, he thought, that you only had to get two women under the same roof for the atmosphere instantly to become electrically charged.
“Oh!” and then Shirley went away. And nothing more was said about the expected advent of Mr. Trent.
And the next thing was that the thirtieth arrived and Shirley, in a frenzy of excited packing, went tearing into the salon to fetch something, dressed in an old pale-green jumper suit, with her rust-coloured curly hair anyhow, and there was Mr. Trent standing at the French window staring out of it at the Lake.
“Oh!” Her dismayed gasp brought him round on his heels. And Shirley got a swift impression of a clean-shaven clear-cut face above a very well fitting collar. He was tall, too: Shirley found herself gazing upward.
“Miss Mortimer, I expect.” Mr. Trent was a very self-possessed man, and not at all an impressionable one. He gazed down at the rather untidy child below him and then looked over her head. “Ah, how do you do?” he had already forgotten Shirley, and was walking toward her mother, who had just come into the room.
“I say, I am so sorry you had to wait!” Mrs. Mortimer was all smiles and cordiality. “Germaine has only just told me.”
“I expect I waked you up!” Mr. Trent was smiling. “I know that pernicious habit of yours of going to sleep after lunch. Where’s Jim—asleep too?”
“No, he isn’t!” and then Mr. Mortimer was in the room.
And Shirley rushed away back to her bedroom and shut the door tightly. Once safely in there, she flung herself down on the bed and lay there with her hands clenched over her ears.
She felt dazed and stupid. Something had happened to her.
In that short five minutes since she had left the room something had happened to her.
What? She felt a queer prickling sensation pass over her skin, as though it was suddenly all gooseflesh. And then she stole a hand round to the back of her neck. It was wet there, above the woolly collar of her cardigan, as if she had been running. What was the matter with her? She sat up and pressed both her cold hands tightly over her eyes.
And then she lay down again as if she were exhausted. And the next thing was a knock at the door, and her mother’s voice asking her if she was not coming in to tea.
“Tea?” Shirley was all alert in a moment. Then she must have been asleep! She steadied her voice. “Mother, may Germaine bring me a cup in here?” she called. “I’m so untidy, and I don’t want anything to eat.”
“Certainly, darling,” and Mrs. Mortimer, rather relieved, went away again.
She had been dismayed at the sight of Shirley all dishevelled and untidy in the salon with Mr. Trent. Mercifully he took very little notice of women, and he had not mentioned Shirley, so perhaps he had not taken her in.
Tea was a delightful meal. Hugo Trent was a good deal younger than Mr. Mortimer, but they had both been at Harrow together, and had kept up their friendship ever since. There was heaps to say and to talk over. The two men lit their pipes and Mrs. Mortimer got out her work, and the evening sun died down over the Alps, leaving them cold and austere; and then Mrs. Mortimer suddenly remembered Shirley, and that she was going to England that night. She got up with a murmured excuse and hurried away out of the room.
“Oh, yes, of course, I’d forgotten.” Mr. Mortimer looked up from his pipe and gazed after his wife’s retreating figure. “We’ve got a daughter going to England to-night, but she won’t bother you, Hugo. To begin with, she’s travelling second-class and I suppose you’ve got a sleeper. Also, the present generation is very well able to look after itself I find. A pity, I think, Hugo, don’t you?”
“In a way.” Hugo Trent spoke laconically. A daughter . . . that must have been the queer dishevelled child who had met him on arrival. Perhaps there really was something queer about her, as she hadn’t appeared since. Bad luck for the Mortimers if it were so: he turned a contemplative glance on his old friend and began to talk about something else.
In the middle of the night Hugo Trent, half-stupefied with heat and devoured by an overmastering thirst, sat up in his sleeper and gasped. The train from Montreux to Paris was thundering along the badly laid metals. Outside, the blackness of midnight seemed to come close up against the large windows and press against them like something solid. He swung his long legs over the edge of his bunk and got out of it. Tall and rather dishevelled in his white shirt open at the neck and grey flannel trousers belted in at the waist, he left his compartment and started to wander along the corridor. There would be an attendant of sorts in charge of the sleeper. He had got to get him a soda or there would be murder.
But the attendant was not on the little seat at the end of the corridor where he ought to have been. Rather angrily Hugo went farther, going from one long coach to the other across the little communicating platform shut in on both sides by something that looked like an accordion, and swaying badly. And he found himself in the second-class coach. Into the darkness of the compartments he gazed in spite of himself. He suddenly remembered Shirley’s funny, eager little face as it had appeared across the dinner table at the Mortimers’. She had never once looked at him, he remembered, but had kept her eyes resolutely on her plate. Probably depressed at the idea of leaving her parents. But how ghastly to have to spend a night in that welter of human beings, propped up against some other horrid person if from sheer exhaustion you happened to fall asleep.
A second swaying, heaving little platform was crossed. And here he met the sleeping-car attendant hurrying back apologetically—probably from having a drink himself! thought Hugo grimly. Well, he could get him one now. He gave the order curtly.
“Bien, monsieur,” and the attendant turned round and hurried back the way he had come. And then Hugo saw Shirley standing in the corridor, leaning forward against one of the large windows, her curly head buried on her arms. Asleep, or only trying to sleep? He touched her on her shoulder.
“Oh!” Shirley’s head came up with a jerk and in the half-light Hugo saw the colour flame over her freckled skin. “I feel as if I shall die, I am so tired,” she said, stammering with fatigue.
“Why, what’s happened? Is your compartment so full?”
“Crammed, and if it wasn’t there is a Frenchman who will smoke a little cigar,” said Shirley, her pink lower lip trembling babyishly. It was so wonderful suddenly to see him, she thought stupidly. With her head pressed against that hard brass bar she had been thinking about him.
“Oh, that won’t do at all! Have you got anything with you—a bag or anything? There’s a sleeper empty next door to me. Collect your bag and come along. Leave your other kit until the morning; it’ll be all right. Oh, you’ve got your bag,” Hugo was smiling.
“Yes, but I’m second-class. I don’t think——”
Shirley was gazing upward with riveted eyes as Hugo smiled down at her.
“These things can be arranged with a little skill. There’s a very fine ticket collector perambulating the train. I’ll seek him out. Come along with me and don’t argue. Remember, I’m a very old friend of your father’s,” said Hugo, smiling still more brilliantly, and he laid a quick hand on her shoulder. “Hang on to me as we cross between the coaches,” he said briefly, “because this train sways like the devil.”
Shirley followed him without saying anything more. So would she follow him if he told her to throw herself out of the train, she thought incoherently. Could one feel like this about a man all of a sudden? she wondered vaguely. As if around him hung a trembling haze—something that dazzled and almost burned; something that encompassed him and almost caught him up. Shirley’s thoughts were strange at that moment.
“Here we are, and here is the man we are looking for.” Hugo stood in the quiet and deserted first-class corridor with Shirley behind him and harangued a very important-looking official, who, having thrust an inquiring and imposing moustachioed face into an open door, nodded and talked volubly. There was a swift diving into a pocket on the part of Hugo, and by the time the hurrying attendant had arrived with a bottle of Perrier and a tumbler the transaction was complete.
“Voyez!” And then there were brief instructions to the sleeping-car attendant and the ticket collector went on his way. Hugo and Shirley stood together in the dim corridor. Such a much nicer and cleaner corridor than hers, thought Shirley briefly.
“He won’t take long.” Hugo was yawning. “I say, I’m sorry! Have some of this Perrier. I’ll get him to fetch another tumbler when he’s got your bunk ready.”
“No, thank you,” Shirley stammered again. “How much——” She was beginning to grope nervously in her bag.
“Nothing. Didn’t you hear me tell you that I was an old friend of your father’s?” laughed Hugo. “Of course not; I’m only so delighted that I happened to see you. You’ll find it simply roasting, though,” he said, “so I advise you to take something off. He’ll knock before he comes in in the morning, although as a matter of fact we get to Paris at five. Sure you’ll be all right then? Have you done this journey before?”
“Oh, yes, thank you,” and then the attendant came bustling out into the corridor again, saying that the sleeper was ready for madame. His hand closed easily over Hugo’s generous tip. Madame would have coffee at? His hard black eyes were fixed on Hugo.
“Oh, at about five,” said Hugo, speaking in excellent French. “And after that you’ll be all right, won’t you? Well, good-night, and don’t thank me, my child, because I assure you that there is nothing to thank me for. I only hope you’ll get a little sleep now,” and with a pleasant smile Hugo turned and sauntered into his own compartment.
Left alone, Shirley stood for a minute and then walked into her own compartment and shut the door of it. A bed and pillows and sheets, and a blanket tucking it all in. Quickly she dragged off her woolly skirt and flung off her cardigan that matched it. The blouse too; he had said that it would be hot. Lying in her berth with her eyes fixed on the queer little mauve light that illumined the compartment, she thought that he was actually next door—quite close to her. She shut her eyes and rolled over onto her side. And the next thing was that the thundering of the express train had become part of a queer tangled dream. But Hugo Trent was in it—Hugo and herself, all mixed up in something unreal and grotesque.
She did not see him again until the long continental express drew in at the platform at Victoria. Something that she could not explain to herself kept her out of his way. He would feel that he ought to go on looking after her, and he would not really want to. And she could perfectly well manage for herself; it was so easy to drive across Paris, and there was heaps of time for breakfast at the Nord before the eight o’clock train left for Calais. Shirley, having left her two suitcases in the charge of a blue-bloused porter, drank the harsh French coffee and ate the delicious rolls and butter off the queer blue plate and wondered why she purposely hid from him like this. Because if he had seen her, she knew that he would have helped her. And the utter joy of being under his care! Why, it was—it was like nothing she had ever imagined.
But something made her keep out of his way. Even when she saw him quite close to her on the Channel steamer she dodged him. And that although he almost seemed to be looking for her. With his grey felt hat rather dragged down over his eyes, he was staring round him. It was a beautiful morning, and the sea beyond the harbour lay blue and placid.
Mrs. Mortimer had said that if it was rough Shirley must go first on the boat; it was only five shillings more and well worth it. But it was calm, and Shirley knew that she would be glad of five shillings later on. Besides, he might think So she hurried onto the second-class deck and sat down with her heart beating and her eyes suddenly tightly shut. Because if she saw him again she knew she would have to break her resolve and go where she could be close to him. Vaguely she wondered if her mother had ever felt like this for anyone. For Daddy, perhaps! Oh, no, not possible, thought Shirley, opening her eyes again. Because she had married Daddy. You couldn’t marry anyone for whom you felt like this. If you did, you would die with the sheer rapture of it.
But she did see him again at Victoria. And he stopped on his way to the gate and lifted his hat. “Here you are, then!” he said, and he smiled rather jerkily as an excited passer-by stumbled up against him. “I looked for you on the boat, but you had effectually hidden yourself.”
“Yes,” and then Shirley stood stupidly tongue-tied.
“Are your friends going to meet you?” Hugo felt inclined to laugh. Shirley’s face was so small and babyish. And she seemed to clear her throat after every word she said. Fancy allowing a girl like this to go about alone! Old Jim Mortimer had nerve.
“Yes,” and then Shirley gasped as Marjory rushed up to her—Marjory and her mother, Mrs. Fielding, very well dressed, and Marjory beaming from ear to ear. Shirley, stammering and shy, faltered out something inaudible. But Hugo Trent had excellent manners and was never at a loss.
“How do you do? I’m thankful to be able to hand Miss Mortimer over to someone in authority,” he said, laughing. “She tells me that she has done this journey before, but I find it difficult to believe.”
“I have, really.” Shirley was protesting and eager. And then, after a few more words and a brief goodbye he was gone. Shirley stood and stared after him, and Mrs. Fielding watched her expressive face. “Who is he?” She asked the question when they were all comfortably settled in the luxurious saloon car.
“A friend of Daddy’s,” and a queer ripple of light seemed to flicker over Shirley’s small face. “He put me in a sleeping compartment last night,” she said, “because I was so stuffed in my second-class compartment.”
“Did he, though? I think he looks most frightfully adorable,” said Marjory enthusiastically. “Just the sort of man that you used always to say you would love to marry. Fearfully sort of ordering about and strong and silent. The sort of man that I should loathe,” finished up Marjory, laughing.
“Yes,” and then Shirley fell silent. “You know it is perfectly heavenly of you to have asked me to stay with you,” she said after a little pause, and impulsively she turned and caught hold of Mrs. Fielding’s hand. “London is so simply wonderful. Don’t feel you’ve got to take me to things, will you? Just to be here is enough for me”—and, ashamed, Shirley felt her lower lip trembling. She caught it anxiously between her teeth.
“My dear, we are all very pleased to have you,” said Mrs. Fielding, and she meant it. She was pleased to have Shirley; something drew her to this impulsive little child. And she would be an excellent friend for Marjory—Marjory, who went placidly on her way, enjoying everything as it came along and never seeming to want anything else.
The first three weeks of Shirley’s visit flew. How long had she been asked for? wondered Shirley, sitting in her pretty bedroom and staring at the stream of traffic rolling up westward. Scarlet omnibuses one after another, and nearly all of them full. Where was everyone going to? Long luxurious cars with well-dressed women in them—Shirley had never seen so many well-dressed women in her life. And all so beautifully got up. Although what happened if anyone kissed those red, red lips? thought Shirley, flushing at the thought. Did it all come off on his face or on his own nice natural-coloured mouth? Did it taste? wondered Shirley, longing to ask Marjory and not quite liking to; because Marjory put it on her lips, only not very much at a time. “Daddy gets in such a stew if he notices it,” as she said scornfully one day.
“Does he?” and then Shirley began to chuckle. “My dear, Miss West simply adored you at school,” she said. “What on earth would she do if she saw you now?”
“Oh, Miss West was a fool,” said Marjory contemptuously. “How we swallowed it all I can’t think. Just think of it all!—all that rot about teamwork and games. Girls aren’t like that, and Daddy said the other day that if they were they’d lose most of their charm. He used to get positively rabid about St. Christopher’s and all the rubbish they talked there. I only went because Mummy was keen on it.”
“Why was she?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think she thought that the air would be good for me, because I used to be delicate,” said Marjory. “Just think of me, delicate!” she said, laughing robustly and showing nice strong teeth. “You’re the delicate one, if anyone is. You sometimes look as if there was a lamp behind your skin. You do really—as if it was shining through.”
“My dear!”
“You do, really, especially if you are excited. The other night, when we went to supper at Ciro’s, you looked like that. You needn’t mind; it’s awfully becoming,” said Marjory generously.
“It’s when I am enjoying anything most frightfully,” said Shirley in a rush of confidence. “I get it especially when I am staying here. You are all so awfully kind to me. And soon I shall have to go. The horror of it!” said Shirley dramatically.
“No, you won’t.”
“Yes, I shall; you can’t stay indefinitely with people,” said Shirley soberly. “Although as a matter of fact——” she broke off. “Marjory, if I tell you something, will you keep it a deadly, deadly secret?” she asked.
“Yes, of course I will.”
“Not even your mother?”
“No, of course not,” said Marjory rather contemptuously. “I hardly tell Mother anything. Besides, even if I did, I shouldn’t tell her anything that you had asked me not to.”
“Well, I’ve absolutely made up my mind not to go back to Montreux,” said Shirley quietly. “I couldn’t—I should die with the deadly monotony of it. They don’t really want me; both of them write and are perfectly happy together. They won’t mind when they get used to the idea.”
“Well?”
“I’m going to get a job in London. You know I got my diploma for cooking; well, I’m going to cook for someone.”
“My dear!”
“Yes, I know it sounds frightful, but while I’ve been here I’ve thought it all out. Marjory, I want to tell you something. You’ll jeer, I know, but still I’m going to tell you.”
“All right, do; I shan’t jeer. Let’s put on your electric fire and then we can be more cosy. You put it on and wait while I dash and get my work—I adore working while someone talks to me. It’s raining, and we needn’t go out until after lunch. Look at the leaves all down in the Park; it’s simply freezing. Why on earth don’t you turn on the fire when you’re in here?”
“It’s so expensive.”
Shirley in her pale-green jumper suit stooped soberly to the electric switch when Marjory had gone out of the room. She somehow felt as a nun must feel before she takes her final vows. She was going to disclose the great illuminating secret of her life to this friend of hers. She had waited three weeks, and now it was the moment.
“Well, go on.” Marjory was back with a gaily embroidered workbag. She pulled her low cretonne-covered chair a little closer to the fire. “Mind you don’t burn your legs,” she said. “I did, one day.”
“All right, I won’t.” Shirley’s delicate complexion was flushing and paling. “Marjory, I’ve fallen in love!” she said abruptly.
“You haven’t!”
“I have, really.” Shirley’s flush was painful.
“My dear, you haven’t had time.” Marjory’s rather bovine stare was incredulous.
“It doesn’t take any time,” said Shirley heavily. “It’s all done in a second, before you know that it’s happened to you. And then everything is different. Everything is suddenly alive and meaning something else,” she said abruptly.
“My dear!” Marjory began to work again. “It wouldn’t be like that with me,” she said solidly.
“No, perhaps it wouldn’t; but it was with me,” said Shirley, and then she felt a swift regret that she had decided to tell Marjory.
“Go on, I’m madly interested,” said Marjory kindly. “Only you can’t expect me to be able to understand exactly how you feel, because I never could understand it,”she ended cheerfully. “Only half a second! I believe I know who it is. Shall I guess?”
“Yes, do,” said Shirley, and her expressive eyes were suddenly veiled by her white eyelids.
“That man at Victoria who came up and spoke to us,” said Marjory bluntly.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Why, because it’s just the sort of man you would fall in love with,” said Marjory bluntly. “Someone like a man out of a book, tall and clear-cut and dominating, and years and years older than you are. My dear, I agree that he looked frightfully attractive,” said Marjory, and she dropped her work and leaned forward to gaze at her friend. “But he’s probably married at that age. Do you know that he isn’t?”
“No.”
“Well, he’s sure to be. Men with faces like that have generally got the most fiendish wives,” said Marjory shrewdly. “It makes them look like that, having always to be patient and bearing with somebody. Mummy had a friend like that once,” said Marjory confidentially. “He was always here, because his wife was mad and shut up somewhere. And then he went to the war and was killed.”
“Oh, how perfectly frightful!” Shirley forgot her own tragedy in the thought of this more imminent one. “Whatever did your mother do? Didn’t she simply die?”
“Yes, I rather believe she did,” said Marjory solidly; “but I was only about eight and not supposed to notice. I always think it’s so odd,” she went on more thoughtfully, “how mothers think that their daughters don’t see things like that. I suppose in the old days they didn’t.”
“No, I don’t suppose they did.” Shirley was staring into the white-hot centre of the fire. “What did your father do? Didn’t he mind?”
“No. Daddy’s like me, stodgy,” said Marjory practically. “He knew that it would all end all right and he didn’t fuss. And, you see, it did end all right,” said Marjory placidly.
“Oh, but not for her,” cried Shirley. She could suddenly see the dear mother of this friend of hers torn with an agony that no one could understand. Mrs. Fielding’s expressive face flashed in front of her. That was what it was, then, that look of quiet repression. She was always thinking about him—about this man that she had adored.
“My dear, at that age you take things more quietly,” said Marjory contemptuously. “Besides, I didn’t mean to tell you about Mummy at all. For heaven’s sake don’t let anyone else know,” ended Marjory, putting down her work and staring over it at her friend.
“No, no, of course not,” gasped Shirley. Her mind was in a tumult. Why had she told Marjory about Mr. Trent? Perhaps this last confidence would have switched her mind off it.
But Marjory was interested and wanted to hear more about Shirley’s love affair. “Go on about that man,” she said urgently. “You say he’s not married. How do you know?”
“Well, I think if he was, Mother and Father would have said something about it,” said Shirley. “Because he stayed to dinner with us and talked a lot about things: his life and everything.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s a barrister. Rather a famous one, I believe,” said Shirley. “He came out to Switzerland about someone who was found murdered on some golf links.”
“What’s his name?”
“Hugo Trent,” said Shirley, and she wondered what it was that seemed to lay a quiet hand on her heart when she said his name.
“Well, go on,” said Marjory impatiently. “Tell it to me properly, because I’m really interested, and it spoils it to have to drag it out of you.”
“Well, he lives in the Temple,” said Shirley, and she spoke with her hands clenched in her lap. “And that’s what makes me think that he’s not married. He has a bonne à tout faire—you know, someone to look after his little flat and cook for him when he’s there, but he generally isn’t, because he has meals at the Law Society. Anyhow, he has to have someone there, but he finds it awfully difficult to get the right person. He was going away for a holiday almost directly after he came back,” said Shirley, “and he said that he would be back on the twenty-fourth of September, and that then he was going to the Gentlewomen’s League to find the treasure that he had been looking for for years.”
“Well?” Marjory had dropped her work and was gazing at Shirley.
“I’m going to be it,” said Shirley briefly, and calmly she met her friend’s astounded gaze.
“You?”
“Yes.”
“My dear, you can’t. It would be most frightfully improper,” gasped Marjory, for once thoroughly disturbed. What an astounding girl this was, she thought incoherently. So quiet and pale and small, and yet with such volcanic ideas in her red head.
“No, it wouldn’t.” Shirley spoke with a quiet precision. “I’ve thought out every tiny detail, Marjory; you needn’t get into a stew. I shall dress up like someone quite old, you know, with a very old-fashioned coat and skirt and perched hat. And then I shall go the Gentlewomen’s League on the day after he comes back. And from now until then I am going to pray to God that He will see that I get this place, so that I can look after him,” ended Shirley, and her small face was pale with emotion.
“My dear, you simply cannot do it,” said Marjory, and she suddenly got up out of her chair. “Your people! Besides, you would have to go from here. Mummy would want to know where you were going. I simply can’t——” Marjory’s face flushed a deep crimson.
“If you tell anyone I’ll kill you, Marjory. I’ll—I’ll——” Shirley suddenly began to stammer.
“Yes, but——”
“He won’t know, I tell you. Besides, can’t you see that it’s only a thousand-to-one chance that I should get this job at all?” said Shirley, suddenly cautious and practical. She must be careful, otherwise the whole thing was going to be wrecked. “Think of the frantic fun, Marjory; and you will have to write me a character. I shall go to one of those places in Drury Lane and buy the clothes—like the sort of old-fashioned servant you see on the stage.”
“You needn’t go to Drury Lane; we’ve got the things here,” said Marjory suddenly, and she burst out laughing. “Dressing up things that we’ve had for years. Shirley, you’re mad, and of course you won’t really do it, but do let’s see what you’d look like if you did. The things are in the big cupboard by the bathroom. I’ve always meant to give them away and never have. Come on.”
“Yes, but you must promise me first——” Shirley hung back.
“All right, I’ll promise you.” Marjory was laughing now and jolly. Her equable nature had reasserted itself. Shirley was always more or less cracked and had astounding ideas that nobody else had. This was probably only one of them. “Come on!” She caught Shirley affectionately and impulsively by the hand.
The underground cloakrooms at Charing Cross are really rather wonderful. Vast and white-tiled, and equipped with stem-faced, competent women in neat blue uniforms with white aprons and starched collars. But on an afternoon in late September the firm, impassive competence of one of these attendants was suddenly shaken.
“Well, that’s funny!” She spoke in a low whisper to a compatriot.
“What is?”
“Why, she came in dressed quite different. Paid her sixpence for a dressing room; and look at her now!”
Both women stood and stared after a small, oddly dressed figure that was making its way to the wide staircase that led up into the ladies’ waiting room.
“How do you mean, different?”
Shirley by now was out of sight. Sick with fright and trembling, the gloved hand that gripped the suitcase was shaking like a leaf. If they stopped her! If they stopped her!
“Why, she came in, as far as I can recollect, dressed just like an ordinary young lady. And you saw her yourself: skirt almost down to her heels, and them queer buttoned boots, and hat all cocked up on the top of her hair. I oughtn’t to have let her go.”
Neat-uniform Number One was badly perturbed. But neat-uniform Number Two was more practical.
“How could you possibly have stopped her?” she argued sensibly. “Twasn’t as if she was dressed up in man’s clothes or anything, although half of them are nowadays, silly things that they are!” she ended contemptuously. “I expect it’s some young girl who has taken service with some tartar who won’t allow her a bit of finery,” she concluded. “Mark my words, we shall see her back again. She’ll come in here on her days out, change her clothes and go off again. You see if I’m not right. It’s a shame to keep a young thing tied down like that. A shilling a day out of her pay, that’ll cost her, and threepence at the parcels office to leave her suitcase, because she can’t drag that round with her if she’s out to enjoy herself.”
Neat-uniform Number Two sniffed with kindly commiseration, and when a couple of hours later Shirley did come back, again trembling and terrified, to ask for a dressing room, the kindly woman gave it to her with a pleasant smile and took her sixpence with an excited wink at her friend.
But the lady who ran the Gentlewomen’s Employment Agency in Conduit Street was more thorough in her investigations, although at the sight of Shirley’s odd old-fashioned get-up her weary heart did leap. Was it possible that here was one of the old school? she thought—someone who thought of something else than her clothes and whom you could depend upon and leave with confidence to manage your household? Or was it one of those pathetic derelicts who drifted in with no qualifications whatever, expecting to find a post waiting for them with an excellent salary attached?
“No, I have no previous experience.” Shirley’s hair was strained back from her forehead, making her green eyes look larger than they really were. “But I obtained my diploma for cooking, so that I know I can do that. And housework is easy if you know how to go about it.”
“Quite.” The lady in charge of the office was practical. “May I ask why you are taking up domestic service?” she inquired.
“Because I find that I must do something,” said Shirley simply. At St. Christopher’s she had always been a great success in impromptu charades. She drew a large black-bordered handkerchief out of the folds of her old-fashioned skirt.
“I see.” The lady sat back in her chair. “Excuse me one moment,” she said abruptly, and she got up and vanished through a door that led from the office into what must be another office, thought Shirley, watching her and clutching the handkerchief and surreptitiously wiping the perspiration from her top lip. How infinitely more frightful it was all being than she had even dreamed, she thought. You felt criminal if you were dressed up, and yet why should you? Heaps of women of about sixty dressed like quite young girls of twenty, so that they should get places in shops. You could dye your hair and alter the shape of your face without it mattering. Then why should this matter?
The lady was back again. “I did not ask you your name,” she said. “You are married, I see”—her eyes were on Shirley’s left hand. That had been Marjory’s idea. “Woolworth,” she had said; “only sixpence, you can’t tell them from real.”
“Yes,” Shirley felt sick with shame and fear at the falsehood. But still it was only pretence, after all.
“Oddly enough, I have one of our clients here at the moment who is in search of a housekeeper,” she said. “As you know, we have a room here for the purpose of interviews. It was only your name I wanted.”
“Halifax,” said Shirley palely. It was the first name that came to her mind. John Halifax, Gentleman, she had read a book called that.
“Thank you,” and the lady had gone again. And in the inner room she laughed quite frankly as she faced a tall man standing with his back to the fire.
“There is the most astounding little lady in there,” she said, “because she is a lady—you can tell it by her voice. But she is dressed in the most extraordinary collection of old clothes that you have ever seen, completed by a hat that must be at least fifteen or sixteen years old.”
“How pathetic!” Hugo Trent had a very nice voice. “Life’s tragic for that type of person,” he said. “I often think of the old-fashioned governess: what has become of her? No degrees, nothing very often but an innate sense of what is fit. Far better than a hundred degrees,” said Hugo, laughing. He knew the lady who ran the Gentlewomen’s Employment Agency very well. She was the widow of an old school friend of his.
“I quite agree with you,” said Mrs. Marchant. She hesitated. “I don’t want to land you with an incompetent derelict,” she said. “Will you see her? You ought to be a judge of character.”
“I ought, but I’m not where a domestic is concerned,” said Hugo. “Witness my last treasure, who went off with my Sheffield-plate salt cellars. I got them back, by the way, but not until I had threatened to send for the police.”
“You’re too kind to them,” said Mrs. Marchant. “Or they haven’t enough to do; it must be one of the two. Well, I’ll send Mrs. Halifax in. What wages are you going to offer her?”
“I haven’t an idea. Thirty shillings a week, I suppose. That gives a sort of easy feeling that one can fire them out if one wants to.”
“All right,” and Mrs. Marchant went away.
And in another minute Shirley was in the room in her extraordinary disguise. And at her first sight of Hugo standing with his back to the brightly burning little fire, her knees refused to support her, and she sat quickly down in the chair nearest to her. Long afterwards Hugo Trent wondered that he had not recognized her at once. Perhaps it was that the recollection of her had entirely left his memory. In any event, at the moment he was only conscious of a bewildering sense that he had seen this queer person before. And then it was succeeded by an equally strong sense that he hadn’t. But she was astoundingly like someone he knew. Who was it?
“I gather that you think that you could undertake the duties of my small flat.” Hugo had thrown the cigarette that he was smoking into the fire behind him.
“Yes, sir.”
“Mrs. Marchant tells me that you can cook.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t require much in the way of cooking, but what I do require I require well done,” said Hugo, with his eyes on the queer hat. Mrs. Marchant was right; this was an odd figure indeed.
“Yes, sir.” By this time Shirley was half-stupefied with terror. What had she done—what had she done? This was success beyond her wildest dreams. Why had she ever embarked on such an insane scheme! Supposing he said that she would do! But hadn’t that been what she had wanted—hadn’t that been what she had wanted?
“Well, what about it? Do you think that you could manage the work?” Hugo spoke after a little pause. The old-fashioned shabbiness of this small woman touched him deeply because he was a kind and sensitive man. But he was a little dismayed when the oddly gloved hand started a wild fight with the ample folds of the queer skirt and Shirley began to cry.
“I say, don’t. What’s the matter?” He took a step forward and then thought better of it and stepped back again. Perhaps she drank. People cried easily when they drank, he knew.
“I’m so sorry. It’s just——” Shirley was snorting into her handkerchief. If it had meant instant death she would not have been able to stop herself from crying. The sudden sight of him, and the knowledge of what she had done It was mad: she must have been mad ever to think of it.
“Don’t cry; I quite understand.” Hugo’s instant response was kindly. Of course, the poor thing had never thought that she would even have the chance of the job. Heart-breaking, the life that some women had; no wonder they committed suicide and murdered people. “Well, we’ll consider it settled then,” he said cheerfully, “and I hope I shall be able to make you comfortable. When can you come, by the way?”
“Any time, sir,” said Shirley huskily. Her head was spinning and she felt giddy. She felt that she could not be alive at all. This must all be some astounding dream from which she would soon wake up.
“Shall we say Monday, then? This is Friday. How would that do for you, or is it too short notice?”
“No, sir, thank you; it will do very well,” and then Shirley gathered that the interview was over. She stood up, and somehow the feeling of being on her feet gave her confidence. She made a queer little old-fashioned curtsey and left the room.
And Mrs. Marchant, when she came back, found Hugo laughing. “Gad! We are back in early Victorian days,” he said. “Mrs. Halifax swept me a curtsey as she wished me good-day.”
“She didn’t!”
“She did, indeed. She’ll go beautifully with the flat. Frills and perukes, I must get out my Court dress!”
“What, have you engaged her, then?”
“Of course; how could I possibly do anything else? I never saw anything so pathetic in my life. She cried into a large black-bordered handkerchief!”
“Cried?”
“Yes, poor thing; she never thought she’d get the job. How I pity women who have to earn their own living,” said Hugo thoughtfully.
“Well, then, I’d better go and get a few more particulars from her,” said Mrs. Marchant quickly. “You’ll want a reference, of course.”
“Reference? Rubbish! That woman couldn’t hurt a fly,” said Hugo grimly. “She’s coming on Monday, thank the Lord, because the flat’s in a filthy state. The last treasure you provided me with couldn’t clean the kitchen because she was too well bred. But she wasn’t too well bred to go off with my salt cellars, by Gad!”
“All the same, I’m going to try to find out something more about her,” said Mrs. Marchant quickly. “Don’t go, Hugo; we’ll have a cup of tea in a minute. What did you say about wages?”
“Nothing,” said Hugo blithely. “You can do all that: that’s what your heavy fee is for, madam,” and he laughed as he lit himself another cigarette. And he was still laughing as Mrs. Marchant came back into the room again. “Well?” he said, and his keen eyes were twinkling.
“I think there’s something funny about the whole thing,” said Mrs. Marchant emphatically. “Don’t have her, Hugo, I can easily find you someone else. She says that she can’t give an address, but that she’ll be at your flat at three o’clock on Monday afternoon. Well, it’s not good enough. After all, you are entirely alone in that flat. Well, you must be careful.”
“I think I’m quite safe with Mrs. Halifax, Sybil,” said Hugo whimsically. “Besides, I took a fancy to the poor little derelict. She’ll be all right, you see! I’ve always got old Thomson in the Gate Lodge to appeal to if she becomes uproarious. Poor little wretch!” he laughed softly.
“Yes; but——” And then tea came in and Mrs. Marchant ceased to argue. After all, she thought, Hugo Trent was very much of a man of the world. And sometimes these queer people did have a strange virtue of their own. She had got her own maid in very much the same way. She, too, had drifted into the office just as Mrs. Halifax had done, an elderly spinster who had once been a governess and who was now out of a job because she had no visible qualifications for anything in particular. And now the thing was to keep her from killing herself with work, thought Mrs. Marchant, remembering, with a little tender smile, the exquisite neatness of the flat high above Battersea Park. So this might turn out in the same way. In any event, if it didn’t, Hugo Trent was quite capable of tackling the affair himself, thought Mrs. Marchant, noting the quiet resolute mouth and the keen, rather deep-set eyes surveying her in amusement.
Meanwhile Shirley had got back to the flat. Grasping her suitcase, she walked along the softly carpeted corridor to her bedroom. Once inside it, she dragged off her hat and flung it down onto the silk eiderdown. She felt utterly spent, both in body and mind. All she wanted at the moment was to fling herself down on the bed and sleep for ever. Her brain felt as if it literally would not stand any more.
But the Fieldings were wealthy people, and everything in the flat was very well done. In about two minutes’ time there was a knock at the door, and the trim parlourmaid, in her claret-coloured cashmere dress and beige net cap and apron to match it, came in with tea deliciously arranged on a glass tray.
“Oh, thank you, Foster; I was dying for it and didn’t even know that I hadn’t had it,” said Shirley gratefully. “Where is Miss Marjory?”
“Miss Marjory and Madame are both out for the moment,” said Foster fluently. “But Miss Marjory asked me to tell you that she would be in before half-past five, as she has only gone to be manicured.”
“Thank you,” and then Shirley poured herself out a cup of tea. And it was astounding how the hot liquid seemed to clear her head. The vague fatigue in it melted, and by the time that Marjory knocked excitedly at her door she was quite herself again.
“Well?” Marjory’s face below the soft beige-coloured felt hat was bursting with excitement.
“I’ve got the place as his housekeeper.” Shirley spoke deliberately, because if she hadn’t done so she would have screamed out the news.
“You haven’t!”
“I have.”
“How?” Marjory collapsed into a chair. And Shirley told her all about it, leaving out no detail. The recital took about twenty minutes.
“My dear, but what on earth are you going to say to Mother? She won’t let you go away from here without knowing where you are going to. No parent would.”
“She’ll have to.” Shirley’s lips set in a firm mutinous line. “I shall tell her that I have got a job through the Gentlewomen’s Employment Agency. That in itself is a sort of guarantee that it’s all right. And I shall ask her, too, if I may have my letters sent here until I know whether I like it or not. Then she’ll know that I am not going to cut myself off from you. And you promised me once that you wouldn’t tell anyone, Marjory, so I trust you to stick to it.”
“Yes, but I hadn’t any idea——” Marjory got up and took two or three uneasy turns about the room. “My dear, you’ll be shut up in a flat day and night with a man that you don’t know,” she said. “Supposing he—supposing he—well, you know what I mean. Men aren’t angels, after all, Shirley,” she concluded frankly.
“Yes; but look at him: you’ve seen his face.” Shirley’s delicate skin seemed to glow. “Does he look that kind of a man, Marjory? Can’t you tell in a second—in an instant?”
“No; I’m not so sure that you can,” said Marjory wisely. “Although you may be able to, you’re such a funny creature. But I know I wouldn’t shut myself up in a flat with any man, not if I worshipped the very ground he trod on in the queer way that you say you do. In fact, the more I worshipped him the less I would shut myself up with him,” said Marjory shrewdly, after a little pause, during which she glanced at Shirley as if she had made some queer discovery.
“Oh, well! I don’t feel like that,” said Shirley quickly, hoping and praying that Marjory had not noticed how her hands were trembling at the thought of being shut up alone with this man that she adored. “But, of course, about your mother: that is more difficult. When shall I tell her?”
“Now,” said Marjory. “I heard the front door go, and Foster will be taking her tea in her sitting room. I’ve had it at Derry’s. Daddy won’t be home for at least an hour.”
“All right,” said Shirley quietly. But she spoke with rather stiff lips.
This was going to be more difficult than anything, she thought. Because it was quite impossible for her to tell even darling Mrs. Fielding where she was going. Although, as Shirley combed her short curly hair, she realized somewhere far away inside her that this was just the sort of thing that Mrs. Fielding would have done herself. Only, of course, she would feel it her duty, as any grown-up person would feel it her duty, to tell Shirley that she must not do it. Shirley’s soft lips were compressed as she walked towards the tiny sitting room that was always full of flowers.
“May I come in?” she opened the white-painted door and peeped round it.
“Of course. Come in, darling.” Mrs. Fielding was extremely fond of this little red-headed friend of her daughter’s. “What have you been doing to amuse yourself this afternoon, Shirley? Marjory told me that you were busy or I would have asked you to come to Harrods’ with me.”
“I have been to get myself a post.” Shirley was standing with her hands linked in front of her to still a thundering heart.
“A post!” said Mrs. Fielding, bewildered. “What ever do you mean? Why, you’re staying with us!”
“I can’t go on staying with you indefinitely, although I have adored every instant of it,” said Shirley slowly. “So I thought it was the moment to find something to do. And I have found it,” she announced.
“Good gracious me! What?” asked Mrs. Fielding stupefied. “Shirley, my child, what will your parents say? I can’t let you!”
“Yes, you can, darling Mrs. Fielding, because you must,” said Shirley resolutely, gaining confidence. There was something so dear and precious about this dainty woman sipping tea with her lovely pale grey feet crossed on a velvet hassock. No wonder that unknown man had gone to his death with her name on his lips, thought Shirley wildly, staring at Mrs. Fielding and wondering how often he had kissed her.
“Yes, but——” Mrs. Fielding poured herself out another cup of tea. The bread and butter was brown and cut like a wafer. She doubled two pieces together and bit into them thoughtfully. “What is this job?” she asked. “And when are you supposed to be going to it?”
Shirley answered the last question first. “I am going to it on Monday,” she said, “and it is a cooking post—you know, I can cook. And I got it through the Gentlewomen’s Employment Agency,” she announced.
“Oh, did you?” Mrs. Fielding’s eyes lightened a little. She knew Mrs. Marchant by reputation, although not personally. “I had an awful fear that perhaps you might have answered some wild advertisement in a paper, Shirley,” she said. “This certainly does sound better. Now, tell me some more about it.” So Shirley began. And oddly enough she found it quite easy; because Mrs. Fielding took it for granted that she was going to be a housekeeper to a woman—someone who was out all day, busy. A small flat near the Strand. Shirley got excited and dilated on the charms of it. And she was to get thirty shillings a week. “And I want you to let me have my letters addressed here—at any rate at first,” she said; “then I can come and fetch them myself, and I shan’t feel cut off from you.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Fielding appeared to meditate. “You know, Shirley, I don’t half like it,” she said after a little pause. “You’re really taking a servant’s post. Thirty shillings a week, and ‘all found,’ as they say, is quite good pay of course. But what is it going to lead to? You obtained your diploma for cooking and can really command a very good salary. This will resolve itself into a great deal of ordinary housework, and perhaps a boiled egg and cup of cocoa in the evening for this lady, whoever she is. And very likely a couple of pieces of toast and another boiled egg in the morning. That’s not cooking, Shirley; you will rust.”
“Yes, I know; but still, it is a beginning,” pleaded Shirley, and as she spoke she began to feel thoroughly wretched. This was a horrible deception and Mrs. Fielding was such a darling. For one wild moment she wondered if she should make a clean breast of it all—say straight out to this understanding woman that she had seen a man that she worshipped and that she would never be happy again unless she was quite close to him, looking after him—seeing that his life when he was not working was perfectly ordered; seeing that he had delicious things to eat and that there were always flowers in his sitting room, and that the tablecloth was always spotless and that there was a lovely fire burning when he came in from the law courts. For from what her mother and father had said about Hugo Trent, Shirley gathered that he was on the way to becoming famous. He needed care, and apparently from his own laughing comments on his domestic affairs he did not get it. Well, he was going to get it now, thought Shirley, clenching her teeth and forgetting all about Mrs. Fielding.
“Don’t look so fierce, darling.” Mrs. Fielding was looking at Shirley and smiling. In this little red-headed girl she sensed something akin to herself—something, though, that mercifully she had fought with and rendered inert. She suddenly sighed heavily.
“I’m not fierce, really, only——” Shirley suddenly dropped on her knees and held up her delicate face as if in appeal. “Can’t you see how I feel?” she cried. “How can I simply settle down at Montreux and do nothing? Nobody could, straight from a school like St. Christopher’s. They sort of make you want to do things.”
“Quite, I see all that,” said Mrs. Fielding sensibly. “Only there are things and things, Shirley. This is domestic service that you are embarking on, and I very much doubt if you will be able to sustain it. However, if you don’t you can always come back to us,” said Mrs. Fielding thoughtfully. “And if you take my advice, my child, you will say nothing to your parents about it for at least a week. Try it first, before broadcasting your decision. I have great confidence in Mrs. Marchant: I’m not worrying about the post itself. All I am doubtful about is your ability to sustain it.”
“I see,” and then Shirley got up slowly onto her knees and the ugliness of the deception swept all over her. She kissed Mrs. Fielding and went back to her own room. And there was Marjory, tingling to know what had happened.
“She agrees, but of course she doesn’t know it’s a man I’m going to live with,” said Shirley heavily. “And I hated deceiving her because she’s such a darling, your mother. If I had a mother like that I should never want to go away from her for a single second,” said Shirley passionately.
“Yes, you would. She wouldn’t seem like that if she was your own mother,” said Marjory, in a heavy matter-of-fact tone. “I don’t know what it is about mothers, but they never seem able to be natural with their own daughters—always a sort of egging them on to do what is right, and not what they would have done themselves at their age. Besides what was right at their age isn’t right now. Things have altered; they never seem able to grasp that.”
“Is it right now, then, to go and live alone with a man in a flat if you worship him?” asked Shirley eagerly. Here was a ray of hope. Perhaps the enormity of what she was doing wasn’t so fearful, then.
“That would always be a most appalling thing to do,” said Marjory frankly. “But I have a sort of feeling that because it’s you, Shirley, it isn’t quite so bad. It isn’t exactly because you’re so frightfully innocent—I don’t mean that; but it’s because you’re so sort of elusive. I can’t quite explain it. You seem to skim over things. You’ll get through this all right, when another girl would only make it horrid. I can’t explain any more than that, but that’s how I feel about it,” concluded Marjory.
“Oh,” and with that Shirley sat down on the bed and stared at her friend. Marjory was a brick; she had said just what Shirley wanted her to say. It wasn’t anything but just a wild craving to be close to the man she adored that prompted this mad adventure, and to see that he had a lovely fire to come home to. There was something so heavenly about a lovely crackling, sparkling fire, thought Shirley, smiling brilliantly to herself.
Well Walk is one of the most picturesque of the flagged courts of the Inner Temple. Three tall plane trees stand in the centre of it, and the walls of the high houses that flank it are covered with Virginia creeper. When Shirley walked into it on that Monday afternoon, a queer figure in her old-fashioned get-up, she paused a little breathlessly to look, and forgot the taxi driver who was close on her heels with two suitcases in his hard hands.
“Ask the custodian, he’ll tell you.” The taxi driver, who was inwardly in convulsions of laughter over his strange fare, thought that she had forgotten where she was going. “Picked her up outside Charing Cross. What a freak!” as he confided to old Thomson on his way out again.
But old Thomson was used to freaks and he had never fancied a taxi. He remembered the old days when delicate women drove up to the old doorway in the Strand and were helped out of their hansom cabs by tall men who handled them carefully, as if they were breakable and because of that doubly precious. He didn’t hold with this skipping about and showing your knees and what not, and he never would. So he disregarded the taxi driver’s pleasantry, and when he had gone, took off his greenish top hat and spat on the nap of it and smoothed it round a little,
Meanwhile Shirley stood in the dark little hall of Hugo’s flat and breathed rather quickly. Old Thomson had had the key of it, and he showed her into it, the taxi driver following with the suitcases. “Your bedroom’ll be here, missis,” he had said, and he had led the way into a plainly furnished room looking out into a bricked alleyway. “And here’s the kitchen,” went on old Thomson, leading the way again. “Gas stove, you see, and I don’t hold with them. But you’ve got an open grate if you want a bit of fire. Hot water you’ll have as much as you want of; we’ve got a furnace going downstairs. And that’s all, I think. You’ve paid the taxi driver; good-afternoon then, missis,” and old Thomson had gone, seeming to hustle the taxi driver along in front of him.
So that was that, and the great adventure had really begun. Shirley felt a wild impulse to sing. She stood in the hall for about two seconds longer and then rushed away to her bedroom. In case he came in she would take off her coat and hat and put on her uniform. She dived in her bag for her keys. And in a quarter of an hour she was ready. The uniform had been a difficulty, but like everything else in London it had been obtainable at last.
She had left the Fieldings early that morning and had gone straight to Charing Cross with her two suitcases, putting one at once into the parcels office. The hard-faced attendant in the ladies’ waiting room had recognized her and gave her a dressing room without even staring. “And if ever you want just to leave that suitcase for an hour or two, miss,” she said, “I’m sure we can manage it here. Such a business as it must be to drag it about with you all the time.”
“It is,” agreed Shirley gratefully. And when she emerged from the dressing room in her odd coat and skirt and boots and perched hat, and with her red hair tightly strained up onto the top of her head, even the attendant, who had almost forgotten how to smile, smiled at her.
“Such a shame as it is, can you wonder that the young things of to-day won’t go into domestic service?” she grumbled to her friend. “I wouldn’t, I know, not if I was put to it ever so.” So all that part of the adventure had been easy, and always would be now, thought Shirley gratefully. She went out into the Strand and wondered where Drury Lane was—somewhere along to the right, she knew. She could not ask a policeman, in case he laughed at her strange clothes.
But after all she did not have to go to Drury Lane. Tucked away in a little side street she came on a tiny shop that had real old-fashioned bonnets in the window of it. Shirley stopped and stared at them. If it had bonnets like that in it it would have other things as well. Shirley opened the door, that gave a sharp quick ring from somewhere up the top of it. And a funny dried-up-looking little lady rose up from behind the counter.
And she seemed to know exactly what Shirley wanted. In fact, the little old lady’s heart warmed to this old-fashioned servant. “Print dresses and aprons, of course. Stiff collars; yes, I should think so; too much of this showing of your neck to all and sundry,” said the little old lady, who had to get up onto a chair for these. And at last caps; severe and bunchy. Shirley chose four after carefully trying them on.
So now she stood in her bedroom, and even her own mother would have had difficulty in recognizing her. Her frock was of old-fashioned print and hung down to her ankles. Her apron was also long, and the bib of it was secured with two pins, not crossed at the back with straps, as is the modern way. Her collar was starched and fastened with a brooch—a large cameo brooch that Shirley had always stuck in the front of her blouses and loved. And her cap was a mob cap and her hair pulled up to the top of her head bunched it out a little in the crown.
“Oh, fancy if he comes in!” By now Shirley was in the wildest spirits. She dashed about the flat, holding up her skirt in both hands. It was an enchanting flat, she thought, feeling inclined to cry with pleasure at the thought that she was now safely ensconced in it. To begin with, the most delicious smell of tobacco hung in the air, seeming to warm it, making it friendly. Then the rooms were beautiful: very small, but beautifully furnished. The sitting room was low-ceilinged and looked out onto Well Walk—the falling leaves of the plane trees had even drifted on to the window sill of it. His bedroom was also low-ceilinged. Shirley walked into it and gasped at the sense of his nearness that this room brought with it. The bed was low and narrow and untidy; probably he had had to make it himself, thought Shirley, her throat swelling. Everything looked untidy, she thought, her glance darting round, but she would soon put that right.
And the tiny dining room was simply furnished with a bare oak gatelegged table and an old dresser and a Welsh serving table and four carved chairs. And books everywhere, thought Shirley, thinking how heavenly it would be to be able really to have a day of taking them all down and smacking them and putting them back again. And the nice little white-tiled bathroom was next to the kitchen. Everything so well arranged, thought Shirley, gazing round her. Just room in the flat for two people. And now, in case he came in to tea, she would lay it. Did he come in to tea? She would go and ask the old man who sat in the tiny glazed cupboard at the foot of the twisty stairs. Shirley wrenched open the front door.
“Sometimes he do and sometimes he don’t. But since the last nasty wench made ’e that uncomfortable he mostly don’t,” said old Thomson, looking at Shirley’s spartan get-up with approval. “But in case he do, and anyhow you’ll want a bit of something yourself, you’ll get it at Lyons’, just through yonder archway.”
“Can I go like this?” asked Shirley, quivering with excitement.
“Sure you can,” said old Thomson solidly.
But after Shirley had left the shop with her small purchases of scones and butter and half a pound of tea in case there wasn’t any in the flat, the neat-capped Nippys standing there rocked with laughter at the remembrance of her. “Spoke like a lady too,” said the girl in the cash desk, sputtering with renewed mirth. “Had lunch here, I believe, in her outdoor clothes. What a freak!” and the sputterings began afresh.
But, bolting up the twisty stone stairs, Shirley did not care about anything but that she was going to get ready a meal for the man she adored in case he came home. Home! Blissful word! She would make it “home” for him. She shut the front door, which she had recklessly left wide open, and made for the kitchen.
And a couple of hours later, when Hugo opened it with his latchkey, he stood still and thought as he took off his hat. Had the woman come? he wondered. Yes, she must have done; he stood in the door of the sitting room and stared. A bright fire fizzed and sparkled in the grate. A low table was drawn up close to it, neatly covered with a cloth. In a black Devon pottery vase a bunch of flaming Virginia creeper leaves glowed. The vase stood in the middle of a daintily laid tea: flowered cup and plate and silver milk jug, Shirley had found beautiful things in a glazed cupboard in the kitchen. And Hugo’s first thought was one of dismay. Too good to last; his latest acquisition drank—must drink—or took drugs, or was already preparing to go off with his silver. He walked into the hall.
“Have you arrived, Mrs. Halifax?” Hugo stood there looking towards the kitchen. The low-ceilinged hall was dark; the September afternoons were beginning to draw in.
“Yes, sir.” Shirley emerged from the kitchen. Since she had heard the snap of the closing front door she had stood, her hand pressed to her heart, wondering what she would do if he instantly saw through her disguise. He would think her frightful—unspeakable. Her parents would know, she would be an outcast for ever. She prayed wildly, “Lord, don’t let him guess,” her very thoughts were a prayer.
But beyond this sudden location of his former wandering thought that he had seen this woman before, Hugo was miles from guessing who she really was. Of course, she was like that funny little girl of the Mortimers whom he had befriended on the journey from Montreux to Paris. How very odd! Except that some people maintained that everyone had their double.
“That’s right. I hope you have found everything comfortable. Bring me some tea, will you, if there is any? I gather you have found some, as the table is laid. Thank you for thinking of a fire.” Hugo’s voice was curt and businesslike. He went back into the sitting room and flung himself down in the low chair drawn invitingly close to the fire, and thought half-unconsciously what a vast difference it made to life to have the little things decently done.
“Yes, sir,” Shirley had answered mechanically. He did not guess then, and now probably he never would. People saw those things at once or not at all. Walking back into the kitchen, she seized the fiercely boiling kettle and sputtered the water down on the warmed tea leaves. Cooking had been uncommonly well taught at St. Christopher’s, and no detail had been considered too unimportant. From the oven she took the frizzling buttered bun, secure in its silver muffin dish, and stood it ready on the tray. Now only the hot water in the electro-plated hot-water jug. She poured it out. Ready! Shirley started for the sitting room.
“Thanks very much.” Hugo dragged himself up a little straighter in the chair. “Oh, I see you’ve managed something to eat—splendid! I shall be going out again after tea, and I shall dine out. Probably there’s nothing in the house, and in any event, it’s easier at first for you to have an evening to yourself.”
“Yes, sir,” and Shirley withdrew. At the moment she was incapable of further speech. The sight of the beloved head with the hair turning a little grey over the ears! She had got him there like a child to take care of. Utter and complete bliss. And as well as that, she was earning her own living. Shirley was too intelligent to despise the thought of thirty shillings a week and all found. It made her independent and self-respecting. It took away all the feeling that she was doing something wrong and reprehensible in this. She went away into the kitchen and sat down at the table and dropped her head into her hands. Oh, how terribly, how madly happy she was!
But she was also hungry. Her lunch at Lyons’ had been sketchy. Vaguely she remembered something that the cookery mistress at St. Christopher’s had impressed upon them all. The ringing bell-like voice had repeated it many times. “Always allow at least half an hour for your own meal. It is poor economy to be grudging in this respect. And sit down for it: do not eat as you walk about the kitchen.”
So, having made her tea and collected her buttered bun from the gas oven, Shirley sat down at the wooden table. She had found a blue-checked tablecloth, so the table looked nice. In fact, the kitchen was nice, or would be nice when it was clean. Tomorrow morning would be the time for that, because Mr. Trent lunched at the Law Society. And if he was going out to dinner to-night, before he came back she would tackle his bedroom. There was a hot cupboard in the bathroom full of house linen all piled up anyhow, and a hot-water bottle hanging up on the door. Shirley was thankful that she had her own hot-water bottle. He would want one, of course, and she would have had to go without until she had time to buy one.
She was roused from her meditations by a sharp metallic ring. Oh, what should she do? Mrs. Fielding had found out and was already at the front door! Sick with fright, she got up from the table. What should she do?—what should she do? She was not going back for anybody—not for anybody.
The bell rang again, and this time it seemed nearer at hand. Shirley stared round her. Ah! An indicator on the wall and a little disc stuck out below the word “Drawing Room.” He had finished his tea. Of course, and he would be angry because he had had to ring twice. Shirley hurried across the hall.
“Oh, Mrs. Halifax, I thought that perhaps it would be a good time to talk over the arrangements for the next few days,” said Hugo. He had got up from the chair by the fire and was sitting at an old carved bureau. “I shall be out to dinner to-night, and as I always let myself in fairly late, do not, of course, wait up. I like an early cup of tea at half-past seven and my breakfast at half-past eight. I like coffee for breakfast, and always one slice of bacon and a fried egg. Some toast and marmalade, of course.”
“Yes, sir.” Shirley’s eyes were riveted in attention.
“Lunch I always have at the Law Society,” said Hugo, and he sat a little round in his chair and looked at his housekeeper. “Tea I like to feel that I can have here, if I want to, except on two afternoons a week, when you will of course like to go out. Sunday always, I expect, and any other day in the week that you care to fix. Dinner I generally have here, unless I let you know to the contrary, which will almost always be the day before.”
“Yes, sir.” Somehow there was nothing else to say. Shirley’s heart under her uncompromising apron bib was leaping and jumping. Taking orders from him; what unutterable bliss!”
“Well, I suppose I had better give you a little money.” Hugo had got his hand in his inner pocket, although he disliked giving this queer-looking woman money. She had begun so well, and it would probably mean that when he came back that night she would have disappeared, or would be lying dead drunk on the hall mat.
“Wouldn’t it be better if I bought the things and told you afterwards?” said Shirley timidly. “There will be several things that we shall want—things like soap and Vim and furniture polish. There is some bacon in the larder, and I got some butter this afternoon. And I found two eggs which looked quite new. There is also a loaf, but we shall want a new earthenware thing to keep the bread in. The one in the larder is broken.”
“I see; yes, I expect things are in a pretty bad state,” said Hugo easily. “But as to the money, I think I should prefer to give you a little to go on with. Keep an account of it, please; I think you will find an account book of sorts in the kitchen. We can always settle up in the evenings if you have exceeded what I have given you. I live very simply really, and there are only two things that I cannot eat. Please don’t ever give me either sweetbreads or brains, Mrs. Halifax.”
“No, sir.”
“And that’s all, I think,” said Hugo, getting up. “I shall be going out again at about six, and until then I don’t want to be disturbed, please.”
“Very well, sir,” and as that was obviously dismissal, Shirley quietly collected the tea things, shook the crumbs off the cloth into the fireplace, and then folded it up. She very gently made up the fire and then left the room with the tray; set it down outside the door, and then came back to close the door gently behind her. And Hugo, left alone, sat still for the space of about three seconds, and then got up to take his pipe down from the mantelpiece. Was it possible that at last he had achieved the treasure that he had chaffed Mrs. Marchant about? No, not possible; they were a race extinct.
But when at midnight he let himself into the flat again, closing the outer door carefully so that he should not rouse his sleeping domestic—at least, he hoped she was sleeping and not either dead drunk or non-existent—he thought that perhaps he had found her. For his bedroom was a very different place to the one he had left a couple of hours before. The furniture in it was, of its kind, perfect, only it had generally been so neglected. Hugo, being a man, did not know quite how it was neglected; he was only profoundly conscious that it was. But now, tall and spare and well groomed in his well-fitting dinner jacket, he stood at the door and stared round him.
To begin with, the bed covers were turned down and the blue silk coverlet lay neatly folded on a chair at the foot of the bed. The pillows shone whitely and the edge of the turned-down sheet showed its double row of hemstitching against the black satin eiderdown. The plate-glass top to the dressing table was free from dust, and the few things on it, ebony hairbrushes and clothes brushes and safety razor in its nickel case, lay straight in their places. The little oval mirror shone and was tipped exactly at the right angle. Hugo was an observant man, and he noted these little details. The sheet of plate glass on the top of the William and Mary table that served as a washhand-stand was also free from dust, and in the basin a blue woolly cover sheltered what was obviously a can of hot water. And then—Hugo stood still and sniffed and wondered what it could be—the room smelt different. Could you smell dust? he wondered, standing and staring. Surely not. But something heavy and intangible that had always grated on him when he entered his bedroom seemed to have gone. There was a clean, cool fragrance in the air.
As Hugo took off his dress jacket and hung it over a hanger, he stood and thought that at the end of the week, if she went on as she had begun, he would raise this priceless creature’s wages. Two pounds, three pounds, anything so long as she went on like this. The only thing was—and he laughed as he got into bed, switching on the light again that stood close at his elbow—she must not give him a hot-water bottle. Skilfully he hooked it up with his toes and dropped it under the bed so that she should not step on it when she brought him his early morning tea. And then he flung himself back on his pillows and shut his eyes. The clean fresh scent of the newly washed sheets reminded him of his childhood; what was it?
And just a stone’s throw away from him Shirley slept, curled up like a baby in her small iron bed, her rust-coloured hair all tumbled on her pillow. But she slept the sleep of complete physical exhaustion, because she had turned out Hugo’s bedroom before she went to bed that night. And the dust in the electric carpet sweeper had turned her quite pale with indignation. Why, it hadn’t been done for years she thought. Feverishly she worked, because the furniture had been heavy to move. But when it was done, she stood and sighed with pleasure. And now just one more thing, so that his angel head should rest more comfortably: Shirley sprinkled a few drops of lavender water on the clean linen pillowcase. And then she crept away to bed, after having a glorious bath. It came spouting out in positive cascades of hot water; that funny old man in the glass box downstairs had been right about that, anyhow. Shirley turned on her pillow and smiled in her sleep.
Things went on like this for about ten days. And then at last the letter arrived at Montreux that told Shirley’s parents that their daughter had taken a post.
“Good heavens! Whatever sort of a post?” Mr. Mortimer was desperately ashamed of the flood of relief that poured over him at the thought that at any rate Shirley wasn’t coming back just yet. Somehow, having a daughter about had seemed to upset his wife. She was quite different again now.
“Well, she isn’t frightfully explicit about it,” said Mrs. Mortimer, consulting the blue-linen pages in her hand. “She seems to be cooking anyhow, and thoroughly enjoying herself, and she got the post through the Gentlewomen’s Employment Agency.”
“Well, then, that’s good enough,” said Mr. Mortimer comfortably. All his daughters arranged for, what a blessed mercy! “They wouldn’t be likely to send Shirley anywhere queer from a place like that,” he said.
“No, I know.” Mrs. Mortimer dropped the letter into her lap and stared at her husband. “But I think it’s rather funny of the Fieldings, Jim, to have had Shirley there and then to have let her go straight from them to some post without saying a word to us about it. Don’t you?”
“No; I don’t know that I do.” Mr. Mortimer was having his petit déjeuner, and he spoke with his mouth full of roll and butter. “Perhaps she explains all that—you haven’t finished the letter yet.”
“No, I have not.” Mrs. Mortimer spoke expectantly, like a child. “I’ll see—Oh yes, you’re quite right, Jim, she does explain. I’ll read it aloud. ‘I thought it was better to stay here for quite a week before saying anything to you about it because I didn’t know if I should like it. Mrs. Fielding thought the same too. But I find I do like it, and so I am staying on. But please still send my letters to the Fieldings’, because I always go there on Sundays and Thursdays and I like to find them there when I arrive.
“Well, that all sounds very sensible. Well done, Shirley!” said Mr. Mortimer. “Give me some more coffee, will you, darling, please?”
“She gets thirty shillings a week and ‘all found’,” said Mrs. Mortimer, pouring out the coffee and reading from the letter at the same time.
“Mind! The coffee’s all over the tray!” Mr. Mortimer caught his wife’s hand quickly in his own.
“That’s good pay, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Mortimer, beaming, and not taking any notice. “Thirty shillings a week. How much is that a year, Jim?”
“About seventy-eight pounds,” said Mr. Mortimer, who had already made the calculation. “Jolly pay for a child like that, and I suppose she gets food and all that thrown in.”
“Oh, yes; if she’s housekeeper to some woman she does, because I gather it is that that she’s doing, although Shirley never was very explicit. Oh, yes, she’ll get all that, and her washing and everything else,” said Mrs. Mortimer. “It really is good. Well done, Shirley!”
“Much more fun to be housekeeper to a man,” said Mr. Mortimer mischievously. “That would have been more in your line, Dolly? What?”
“My dear, you wouldn’t get a post like that from the Gentlewomen’s Employment Agency,” said Mrs. Mortimer. “They wouldn’t send anyone under about eighty to housekeep for a man. It wouldn’t do at all. Why, it would open the way for all sorts of things.”
“All the better,” said Mr. Mortimer, and he burst out laughing. “No, of course I don’t mean Shirley, darling; fathers don’t talk about their daughters like that. But all the same, if I were a woman I would infinitely rather work for a man. Now, Dolly, wouldn’t you, frankly?”
“Rather!” Mrs. Mortimer spoke frankly. “Now think of Hugo Trent,” she said after a little pause. “Fancy being housekeeper to a man like that. And yet do you suppose he can get one? Although I believe as a matter of fact he has got one,” said Mrs. Mortimer reminiscently. “Didn’t he say in his last letter, ‘You will be glad to hear that my housekeeping problem is effectually solved, at any rate for the moment’? Yes, I’m sure he did; I’ve got it somewhere.”
“Pity his domestic problem can’t be equally successfully solved,” said Mr. Mortimer gravely. “Gad! Did any man ever make such a hash of his life? That brilliant fellow and that awful wife of his. I wonder where she is now?”
“Isn’t she dead?”
“Not she! That kind of woman never dies. She nearly did go out once from alcoholic poisoning, but some brilliant fellow in a home pulled her round again. Now she’s either in the same home or sponging on her relations, I expect. In any event, it’s a fearful drain on Hugo, both financially and mentally, because, of course, with a woman like that you never know what ghastly disgrace she may not land you in.”
“Poor Hugo!” Mrs. Mortimer sat silent for a moment or two. “You know, if I were Shirley’s age that is just the sort of man I should fall in love with,” she said.
“Yes; I believe women do find him very attractive,” said Mr. Mortimer frankly. “That was the poor brute’s undoing. He got mixed up with someone undesirable and was too chivalrous to give her a check and tell her to go to hell. But Shirley would be too young to regard Hugo as a man at all. What is he now? Over forty—he’s a good bit younger than I am, anyhow. Well, what’s Shirley? Eighteen? She’s only a baby compared to him.”
“Yes, but still——” and then Mrs. Mortimer got up and shook the crumbs out of her lap onto the stone veranda. It was a divinely beautiful morning and the Lake lay quiet and blue under the clear sky. The Alps were just beginning to show faintly through the morning mist. She came close to her husband and slipped her hand into his.
“Jim, is it wrong of me to be rather glad that Shirley isn’t coming back—at any rate just yet?” she said pitifully. “At our age we oughtn’t to want to be alone, ought we? We ought to be only living for our children.”
“I don’t see it at all,” said Mr. Mortimer forcibly. “I only think that we ought to be damned thankful that we do still want to be alone. I can count on one hand the people that do, anyhow.”
“I’m glad you feel like that.” Mrs. Mortimer smiled rather wanly. “I did try to get on with Shirley, but somehow I couldn’t get at her,” she said hopelessly.
“No mothers nowadays can get at their daughters,” said Mr. Mortimer cheerfully. “And could they ever? I doubt it. Don’t you worry, my sweet, and be thankful that Shirley has had the nous to strike out for herself. And to-day we’re going to celebrate it by cutting work and going up to Les Avants and walking back to Chamby and having tea at that chalet where they give you all that delicious toast and butter. Hurry, my pet, and we’ll be able to catch the ten-twenty.”
“You darling—you always think of something heavenly!” Mrs. Mortimer scurried away, her face as excited as a child’s.
So the Mortimers were quite at ease about this sudden decision of Shirley’s to earn her own living. And the letter from her mother that greeted her the following Sunday when she went to have tea with the Fieldings absolutely made Shirley feel at her ease and happier than ever about the life she had chosen.
“My dear, do tell me about it!” Marjory was quivering with excitement. “I’ve got you all to myself, thank heaven; wasn’t it awful last Saturday! We couldn’t get a word alone.”
“What shall I tell you?” Shirley’s expressive face was all little flickering lights. Her hair was rumpled and curly as she cast her hat recklessly on Marjory’s bed.
“Tell me what he says. Tell me what you do. My dear, it’s madly exciting,” said Marjory breathlessly. Even Marjory’s placidity was stirred by this great adventure of Shirley’s. To see her arrive looking just the same on her two afternoons out, and yet to know that she went back to be housekeeper all alone to a man in the Temple. Well——
“Well, he doesn’t say a very great deal,” replied Shirley. “In fact, he hardly says anything at all, except when we are doing the accounts. And then he says: ‘By Gad! I never knew that so little would buy so much, Mrs. Halifax,’ and I feel so happy that I could burst because I am saving his money.”
“My dear——”
“You see, he is only in to two meals,” said Shirley, “and very often not to dinner, so that’s only one. And at night he comes in late, and sometimes I hear him come and the latch click, and I know he’s standing in the hall looking too perfect for words, and I feel all shrivelled up with joy because I’m alone in the flat with him.”
“My dear, you are!” Marjory stared uncomprehendingly at her friend.
“Yes, I know; you can’t grasp it,” said Shirley. “You never were like that. But you don’t know what I feel. Rapture isn’t the word! I’m there, his paid servant: I have to do what he tells me. I can make him comfortable. I can cook him nice things to eat, and he loves them because he is particular about his food. Thank God I went in for that diploma,” said Shirley reverently.
“Go on.”
“Well, I don’t know what else to tell you,” said Shirley dreamily. “You see, I’ve got more or less used to it now—I take it more for granted. I clean his shoes; that is to me the very height of bliss,” meditated Shirley in a rapture.
“Bliss! I should throw them at his head and tell him to clean them himself,” said Marjory indignantly. “You are the most hopelessly servile creature that ever lived, Shirley.”
“No, I’m not; I’m made like that,” said Shirley mildly, and she began to laugh with a sort of noiseless enjoyment. “I’ve got all those slavish instincts that awfully obstinate and self-willed women always have. Generally, you see, they don’t meet anyone that they can let them loose on, so they go through life either not marrying at all or marrying someone that they pretend all the time is like that. He isn’t really, but they have to pretend he is, or they would despise him and go away.”
“Marrying! Do you think you are going to marry this marvel of a Hugo Trent, Shirley? This Sheik: I am going to call him the Sheik.”
“I don’t think I ever think about him like that,” said Shirley, and a soft pink flush spread all over her soft throat. “I can’t: it would be too marvellous, too wonderful, if he was ever to look at me like that. You can’t understand it, Marjory; I don’t feel I’m on the same level with him at all. There’s something magical about him: when he comes into the flat it’s all different: the air is all tingling. You can’t grasp——” broke off Shirley abruptly.
“Yes, I can. At least I can’t exactly, but I know what you mean. It’s like that stupid Miss Hilliard was always quoting, ‘The light that never was, on sea or land.’ Don’t you remember how Miss West fell on her one day, and the poor thing was only more or less talking to herself? She’d had some love affair, I’m sure. That’s being in love, that tingling feeling,” said Marjory importantly. “Mind your Sheik doesn’t begin to tingle too, Shirley, or you’ll have to run like a hare!”
Shirley’s face flushed more deeply. Although she was devoted to Marjory, sometimes the awful way that she had of tearing aside all the filmy wonder of a thing made her wince. And yet, as she told herself sensibly, that was really how other people would regard her adventure—as the most dangerous and the most perilous escapade that she could ever have embarked on. They didn’t grasp the soul of Hugo Trent, as she had grasped it the instant she looked at him: the chivalry that couldn’t do a thing like that because it would hurt something weaker than himself. But what was the use of trying to explain this to Marjory? She would never understand it. The thing was to keep off that part of her adventure. Marjory could never grasp feelings: perhaps that was why Shirley was so fond of her. It was such a rest to be with someone who couldn’t.
“Tell me something else,” said Marjory, after a little pause. “And go on eating chocolates, there’s a dear.” Marjory felt a vague feeling of compunction. Shirley’s face had taken on that extinguished look that it got when she was upset. But, after all, in some ways she was such a frightful baby. Somebody must make her think a little about what might happen.
“There’s a funny old custodian called Thomson who lives at the foot of the stairs in a glass box,” chuckled Shirley, all her sense of fun returning. “And when I come down in my queer clothes to go out, he says, ‘Good-day to you, missis, and I hope I see you well.’ And he brings up the coal, and keeps the furnace going, and prevents people from coming up the stairs.”
“Why mayn’t you go up the stairs?”
“You aren’t supposed to, although people do,” said Shirley. “The other day someone rang at the bell, and when I opened the door there were two American ladies standing there. And they never spoke to me at all; they only looked at each other and said, ‘Well, now, isn’t that just too marvellous? She might have been dressed for the part,’ and they stood and stared at me until I shut the door in their faces.”
“Poor things! What a shame!” laughed Marjory.
“No, they were only globe-trotters; the Temple is full of them. You’ve been to the church, haven’t you, Marjory? I went the first Sunday evening I was there. The Benchers all have seats reserved for them. It’s too perfect for words——” and then Shirley broke off abruptly. Again she must not expect Marjory to understand. The exquisite wonder of that old, old church; the quiet, reticent scholarship of the Master of the Temple, who had preached; the voices of the choirboys, probably the most wonderful young voices in the world—the whole thing. Shirley had gone back to the flat and cried dreadfully. And yet she did not know why she was crying. Because it was so beautiful, she supposed, going to bed very early because Hugo was out, and yet when she was in bed turning and twisting, unable for some reason to sleep.
“I’ll come to the flat one day; I’d love to. When does the Sheik go out for a long time?” demanded Marjory. “Doesn’t he ever go away for the weekend? Then I could come and sleep the night and we could have some fun. Oh, Shirley! Do get him out of the way for a week-end some time. Can’t you? Try!”
“My dear, it would be fun,” conceded Shirley. “But I don’t know if he ever does go away. But I promise you this,” she said, and her face danced with interest and fun as she said it, “if he does at any time say he is going away for the week-end I will have you to stay. He will probably ask me if I have a niece or anyone who could come and keep me company, and I will say that I have. My dear, you’d love it, it’s the most adorable little flat, frightfully cosy, and we’d sit in the sitting room—there are the most perfect chairs and a gorgeous well fireplace.”
“Good; I shall look forward to it,” declared Marjory. “Bother, there’s the tea bell now and we shall have to be all shut up again. But anyhow, Mother’s absolutely on your side about it now,” she said. “She was only saying to Father the other day how awfully fit you looked. But your hands: how do you keep your hands so nice, Shirley?”
“India-rubber gloves inside other ones,” said Shirley. “I simply couldn’t let my hands get horrid. I asked him if I might get a pair, and he said I might.”
“What else could he say?” mocked Marjory. “Oh, you are a donkey, Shirley! But all the same I don’t know that I don’t rather envy you,” she said, and she got slowly up out of her chair. “It is dull just doing nothing after being at St. Christopher’s. Why do they fill up all your time so desperately at schools?” she grumbled. “How can you accustom yourself to doing nothing after a life like that?”
“You aren’t supposed to,” said Shirley briskly. “That’s what schools like St. Christopher’s are for—to make you discontented with ordinary home life.”
“Well, I think it’s very stupid,” said Marjory crossly. “And you’ve got the only Sheik there is, so there isn’t one left for me. Come on, or all the toast will be gone. Do you make the Sheik toast, Shirley?”
“No, I toast him buns; simply boiling and all squashy with butter,” said Shirley blithely. “And he eats them all, all sunk down in a lovely comfortable chair, with his feet right in the fire.”
“Miserable spoiled pig!” ejaculated Marjory contemptuously.
Another fortnight passed and only one little incident came to upset the quiet regularity of Shirley’s days. Oddly enough, it was on her Thursday afternoon out that it happened. She had not gone to the Fieldings’ as usual because Marjory had phoned in the middle of the morning before to say that she was just going to bed with an appalling cold. But she had just wandered about London in her queer old-fashioned clothes.
Shirley was beginning to be rather glad of her old-fashioned clothes, especially if she was out at all late. Men stared sometimes when she was dressed as an ordinary girl. She had no idea how pretty she was in her dainty green clothes. Shirley always wore green, because she knew it looked nice with her rust-coloured hair. And from under the soft furry felt hat her large green eyes, with their long black lashes, often looked like the large unconscious eyes of a very pretty kitten. And men were attracted. They liked kittens. One day one followed her for quite a distance along Regent Street, until, sick with fright, she had taken refuge in Swan & Edgar’s, wandering from department to department inquiring for things that she had not the slightest idea of buying.
But nobody looked twice at the plain woman with a hat perched on the top of a bun of dragged-up hair, except perhaps to giggle stupidly at her. And on the evening in question Shirley came home at about six. There was nothing to do in London after the shops were shut, unless you went to a cinema or a theatre. And the theatre would mean that she would be out too late, and the cinemas were all talkies now, with their dreadful subterranean voices and all the lovely organ music gone for ever.
So Shirley went home. And as she let herself into the flat she heard voices. Old Thomson, at the foot of the stairs, had prepared her—old Thomson, who was just giving his hat a final polish before going home.
“The Governor is in,” he said, “and got a friend with him. Went up about half an hour ago they did.”
A friend! And as Shirley went slowly up the twisty stone stairs she wondered for one still moment what she would do if she heard a woman’s voice. You were not supposed to have women in the flats in the Temple, she knew, but of course a good many of the men did. What should she do if, because his housekeeper was out, Hugo Trent had taken the opportunity to have some woman friend of his in? She would rush into the sitting room and drag her out by her hair and fight with her in the hall! Or supposing they were not in the sitting room. At that sick thought Shirley suddenly leaned against the wall and put her hand over her heart. Should she go away down the stairs again and not go in at all? But no; he would never—he would never do a thing like that. She stood for a moment in the hall and listened. And then she went away again into the kitchen. And at half-past seven o’clock, just as Hugo was beginning to wish most desperately that this old friend of his would make a move—it sounded so futile to say that his housekeeper was out, and that he was awfully sorry that he couldn’t give him a meal—the door of the sitting room opened and Shirley stood there.
“Dinner is served, sir,” she said, and then she went away again.
“Dinner! I say, I didn’t mean to stay so long.” Dr. Ferguson got up onto his feet and looked uncomfortable. He was a rawboned young Scotsman who lived in Temple Chambers and had a strange and varied practice among strange and varied people in the City.
“I’m only so glad that you have,” said Hugo easily. Hugo was a man who very rarely showed what he felt. Inwardly he was astounded at the sudden appearance of his housekeeper. This was her afternoon out, and he had only come in himself because he had wanted to work. And at half-past five, when he was just about to leave the flat and go and dine at his club opposite the Houses of Parliament, Ferguson had rolled up. So he had had to stay and give the fellow a drink. And now “Well, come along and have a wash,” he said hospitably. “My housekeeper looks after me very well, so there will probably be something fit to eat.”
But as the meal went on Dr. Ferguson looked across at Hugo rather whimsically. “The woman cooks like a chef, Trent,” he said; “where did you get her?”
So Hugo told him. And Dr. Ferguson listened and was very interested. “I’ll have a good look at her when she comes in to clear the plates,” he said. “One would immediately suspect something queer, because with a talent like this she could get a job in a first-rate London house at an enormous salary and with a troop of servants under her. But probably it’s a question of disposition. A woman like that and of that age has sometimes got a fierce temper. I’ll have a good look at her the next time she comes in.” And as Shirley moved round the table with the cheese plates in her hands she cursed the brief feeling of anxiety to serve Hugo Trent that had prompted her to prepare this impromptu dinner. It had all been so easy—the little bottle of tomato soup with the big blob of cream floating about in the middle of each plate. The sole with the sauce that Miss Frost had made them do again and again, so that they got it right and without lumps. The two chops all sizzling, with tiny bits of parsley sprinkled on them, and the two or three boiled potatoes and the brussels sprouts all shining with butter. And then the cheese savoury that Hugo always loved; men never cared for puddings. It had all been so easy; it had only meant a hurried bolt down the stairs and back again with her shopping basket. But now this young doctor with the bushy eyebrows that stuck out all over his eyes was staring at her from beneath the shelter of them—staring at her and taking her in. Doctors understood women’s faces much better than other men did, and he would see at once that she was not nearly so old as she was dressed up to be. And he would tell Hugo; he would tell Hugo.
But apparently, after his prolonged scrutiny of Hugo Trent’s housekeeper, Dr. Ferguson ceased to be interested in her. It was Hugo himself who broke the silence, which had lasted, oddly enough, for almost a minute after Shirley had left the room.
“Well, what do you think of her?” he inquired, and under the low shaded electric light his eyes were amused. He was amused because he felt light-hearted and pleased. The bare table looked so exactly right with its lace mats and the wide black pottery bowl in the middle of it, with the two flaming dahlia heads floating. It really was topping to be able to have a friend in just by chance like this and to be able to give him a decent meal.
“Well, Hugo, I don’t think anything except that you’re a damned lucky fellow to be looked after as you evidently are being looked after,” said Dr. Ferguson laconically; and he did not glance at his host as he took up his glass in a rather hairy hand and drained it slowly.
“Yes; but what do you think of her?” persisted Hugo. “Drugs, or what is it, that she has settled down in a job like this on thirty shillings a week?”
“Not drugs,” said Dr. Ferguson decidedly. Dr. Ferguson had scrutinized Shirley’s unlined face with an astounded thoroughness. He was accustomed to strange things, but not anything quite so strange as this. Hugo Trent keeping a child like this as his housekeeper and bluffing it out in the way he was doing! Even the wreck of his married life hardly justified it!
“Well, she can cook, anyhow, can’t she?” demanded Hugo cheerily. “And if you really won’t have another drink, let’s get back to the sitting room. An electric fire’s all right in its way, but it lacks the something that a coal fire has. Don’t you think so? I’m glad you don’t think that there’s anything queer about Mrs. Halifax,” he continued confidentially, when, with the little brass tray of coffee on a table between them, the two men drew their chairs closely up to the brightly burning fire. “Because she really does do most awfully well for me. I don’t know what I should do without her now.”
And as, a little later, Dr. Ferguson wended his way down the dark stone staircase, he went more mystified than he had ever been in his life. He would have staked his last farthing on the fastidious decency that would have prevented Hugo Trent from doing a thing like this. And yet, as Dr. Ferguson shot upwards in the electric lift to the fifth floor of the tall block of buildings that looks out over the wide and slowly crawling grey river, he reflected that sometimes the nicest men came the worst croppers when they did come croppers. And yet, on the other hand—once inside the flat Dr. Ferguson went into the sitting room and sat down by the cheerless and empty grate of it—had the man been bluffing, or did he actually not know that his housekeeper was a girl barely out of her teens? Sometimes the cleverest men were all at sea about women. Witness the way they married them, when any fool could have told them that the disparity of years was all on the wrong side. Well, perhaps this was a case in point. Dr. Ferguson got slowly up and decided that he would go to bed and not think about it any more. Hugo Trent’s morals were no concern of his. Nor were his housekeeper’s. Hugo’s life had been a hell, and who was to blame him if he took any consolation that offered? And yet, as Dr. Ferguson took off his clothes one by one and hung them neatly over the back of a chair, in case they should be wanted in a hurry, he felt a sort of inner conviction that Hugo did not know that his so-called housekeeper was quite a young girl. And if he didn’t, he, James Ferguson, was certainly not going to be the one to tell him, he thought, propping his watch up against the stem of the table lamp by his bed and switching off the light and going instantly to sleep.
And meanwhile, in the little dark hall of the flat in the Inner Temple, Hugo stood and looked at his housekeeper as she waited with her queer cap pulled down very low over her eyes and her freckled face pale with fatigue. He spoke especially kindly, because she obviously was so tired.
“It was most good of you to serve us up that excellent little dinner at such short notice, Mrs. Halifax,” he said, “and I am very grateful to you.”
And the stupefying relief from an almost overmastering terror rendered Shirley speechless. She dropped him the funny little curtsey that she sometimes did and turned and bolted into the kitchen. And once there she flung herself down on her knees by the table and buried her face on her outflung arms. “And I thought it was all over,” she choked, speaking half aloud. “God, God! You are kind not to have let that man find out.”
Another ten days passed, and by now it was well into October. All the leaves were off the three tall plane trees, and they stood with gaunt arms in the middle of the flagged court looking disdainfully down at the foolish human beings who scurried along so excitedly below them. Such a fuss about nothing, as they seemed to say, especially when Shirley flapped her yellow duster out of Hugo’s bedroom window. To tidy and make dainty Hugo’s bedroom was to Shirley almost the greatest rapture of the day. Not that it wanted much tidying, for Hugo was fastidious in his habits and lived reticently, hanging up his clothes on hangers and not leaving the room in a chaos when he came out of it in the mornings. But she could polish the plate glass on the top of his washhand-stand and dressing table and arrange all his brushes and little odds and ends neatly on them, and the carpet was almost entirely sucked down the humming electric cleaner in Shirley’s frenzied anxiety that everything should be perfect for this man that she worshipped.
But at last there seemed an opportunity for the little visit to the flat that Marjory was so keen on. Hugo, glancing up at his housekeeper one evening as he sat sunk in the low chair by the fire eating his excellently made buttered toast, said that he would be away for the following week-end.
“Oh!” said Shirley. Somehow, during the last fortnight she had felt able to relax her extreme care in the way she spoke to him. He so obviously had not the least idea who she was.
“Yes; and I should suggest that you either went to your own home for the two days or had someone to stay to keep you company,” said Hugo pleasantly. “I shall not be back until Monday evening in time for dinner.”
“Oh!” said Shirley again, and her heart fell. Where was he going? She suddenly felt an extraordinary pinching feeling in the region of her heart. He had fallen in love—she had never thought of that as a possibility before—and was going to stay for the week-end with the girl’s parents, perhaps.
“Which would you prefer to do?” asked Hugo, after waiting for his housekeeper to say something, and then, as she didn’t, speaking himself.
“I should prefer to stay here and have someone to stay,” said Shirley. And so it was arranged.
Mrs. Fielding was quite pleased for Marjory to have this little jaunt when it was proposed to her. As the girls proposed it, it all sounded quite all right. Shirley’s employer would be away for the week-end, and did not wish her left alone in the house. “Certainly go, dear,” said Mrs. Fielding, glancing at Shirley and thinking how astoundingly pretty the child was. Such wonderful lights on the eager little face. Shirley ought to marry: it was a pity she was stuffed away doing housework for some uninteresting woman. However, it certainly seemed to suit her and she was young yet. Better not unsettle her, thought Mrs. Fielding, sighing a little and then smiling quickly as if to banish the wish to sigh.
So the week-end was arranged. But when the morning came for Hugo to go away, Shirley felt as if she could not let him go. He had been so nice and thoughtful about it, intimating that of course he had no objection to his bedroom being used. “But as you know my ways,” he said easily, “I should prefer you to occupy it, Mrs. Halifax.” And then he had smiled pleasantly and gone away with Thomson carrying his suitcase, and Shirley had felt as if the sun had gone in, and as if she must wail and cry down the stairs after him.
At the foot of the stairs Hugo told Thomson of the arrangement. “Mrs. Halifax is having a young niece to stay for the week-end, Thomson,” he said. “It’s all perfectly all right; you needn’t be worried if you see her arrive.”
“Worried!” Old Thomson’s grey eyebrows were expressive. “Nothing to worry about with Mrs. Halifax, sir. Although what beats me is the way she gets up them stairs. Fair twisters you would think they would be for a woman of her years. But up she goes with her ankles fair twinkling,” said Thomson chuckling.
“Yes; she is very active,” agreed Hugo cordially. But as he waited for his taxi his thoughts lingered on what the old custodian had said. And when the taxi drew up outside the arched entrance to Well Walk, he stood for a minute and glanced up at the windows of his flat. Was it the white cap of his housekeeper that was withdrawn in a flash? he wondered as he got into the cab and nodded to old Thomson, who had stowed away the suitcase in the grimy interior of it.
But his wonderings died a natural death as the taxi steered up into the trail of scarlet omnibuses swinging round the old Church of St. Clement Danes. He was going down into the depth of the country to try to ferret out some important evidence. He had not time or inclination to think about his housekeeper any more. His keen face was sunk in thought as he sat back with folded arms in the taxi and watched the astoundingly clever way that the driver of it got through what was an apparently solid block of traffic ahead of him.
But women have not the same gift of control over their thoughts. Left alone in the flat, Shirley dashed to Hugo’s bedroom window to look out of it and catch the last glance of him getting into his taxi. And she only drew back just in time. If he had seen her he would have been angry, thinking it impertinent of her, thought Shirley, turning back into the room and thinking of the complete and utter rapture it was going to be to sleep in his darling bed. She would have felt that she ought to offer it to Marjory, because it was much the nicest room. But he had said that he wished her to have it. That was because he was not going to risk having any queer grubby relation of his housekeeper, who never had a bath, sleeping in it, thought Shirley, smiling a little wryly as she thought of Marjory’s fussy fastidiousness over details.
But Marjory was quite agreeable. “The only thing I do bar is having to go out with you in those amazing clothes,” she said. “Can’t you give them up for two days?”
“Of course I can’t,” said Shirley. “But you needn’t be seen with me at all unless you want to. I’m so used to it now; I go to that underground place at Charing Cross and change. I know all the attendants there quite well, and one of them lets me leave my suitcase there too. I’ll go on ahead and you can meet me in the ladies’ waiting room.”
“Oh, no; I was only in fun, of course,” said Marjory penitently. “But let’s explore the flat before we go out. I say, he does himself rather well!” she exclaimed as she prowled through the beautifully furnished little rooms. “It’s like a flat in a book: all just right. I love his bare dining table and his black bowl. What bliss for you to go and buy the flowers that float about under his precious nose,” she said mischievously.
“You are a wretch!” But Shirley laughed happily as she spoke. This was really frantic fun, she thought. And no bother, because they were going to have all their meals out.
Marjory could only stay one night after all, because the Fieldings had a supper party on Sunday night. But Shirley was going to it, too, and would come back late to the flat and not mind in the least that she had to spend one night alone in it. Besides, she wouldn’t be alone. She would be in his room, with the thought of his darling presence to keep her company. And she would kiss his pillow thousands of times and drop just about two drops of that lovely scent, “Stolen Flowers,” that Marjory had given her from that gorgeous place in Baker Street where they sold herbs and soaps and lots of perfect things like that.
And everything went off just perfectly. They went out and had lunch at Marjory’s club, and then got seats for the evening performance of Dear Brutus, although both girls had seen it before. And they came in very late that night—desperately late, because Shirley had to change her clothes at Charing Cross; but she was so used to it that it didn’t seem to matter, and being out at midnight only made it more fun. And old Thomson, who had known of this projected jaunt, left the light burning at the most twisty turning of the stone stairs so that they should get up safely.
And then there was the fun of letting themselves into the flat, all so mysterious in the dark, and eating a scratch meal at the kitchen table because it was warm in the kitchen. And then gorgeous hot baths for both of them, Marjory first, because Shirley, with the instinct of the hostess, wanted to see her guest comfortably settled in bed before she went to bed herself.
But at last she was in bed. And when she was lying with her head on the very pillow that so often she had seen his dark head squashing all out of shape when she brought in his early tea, Shirley stiffened her hands down by her sides and stared up at the ceiling. There was a light just under the arched entrance to Well Walk, and it shed a flickering reflection on the low ceiling of Hugo’s bedroom. Sometimes he would stare at that very light just as she was doing at that very moment, thought Shirley, flushing a little pink under the lace yoke of her silk nightdress as her young thoughts flamed and trembled round him. No one could love anyone as she loved Hugo Trent and not one day have him for her very, very own, thought Shirley; and then, in the middle of her passionate thought of him, breaking out into a little laugh as she felt the comfortable furriness of her hot-water bottle. “Not ever a hot-water bottle for me, Mrs. Halifax, please,” as he had said so solemnly on that first morning after her arrival. Angel mouth that could smile so perfectly if it liked, thought Shirley wildly, turning over on her face and burying her face in the soft pillow.
Sunday was one of those perfect early autumn days that sometimes come to remind people who live in England that there really is no other country like it in the world. Both girls were in the wildest spirits, but both decided to stay in the flat until about four, when they would start out for Marjory’s home overlooking the Park.
“It means so much changing of clothes if we go out and come back,” Marjory maintained. “I’ll go out and bring something in for lunch—if we want any lunch after this colossal breakfast, and early tea as well. Shirley, you were a brick to bring it to me like that. Didn’t it kill you to have to get up?”
“No, I’m used to it,” said Shirley simply. She sat in her silk shirt and green woolly cardigan and skirt, looking about sixteen, thought Marjory, gazing at her. There was a lovely bright fire burning, and the table was neatly laid, although it was a small table. The girls had decided to breakfast in the sitting room because it was cosier.
“Do you take the Sheik early tea?” inquired Marjory naughtily.
“Yes, of course I do,” said Shirley, getting very pink.
“Does he say: ‘Put down the tray first and let me kiss you’?” demanded Marjory, bursting with suppressed amusement at Shirley’s discomfort.
“No, of course he doesn’t—he doesn’t know who I am,” protested Shirley. “I’m his housekeeper, Marjory, and he pays me thirty shillings a week. You don’t kiss people you pay thirty shillings a week to. Besides, he isn’t like that,” insisted Shirley anxiously.
“All men are like that,” said Marjory shrewdly. “Your Sheik isn’t a god, although you seem to think he is.”
“He wouldn’t kiss a woman who he thought was his servant,” said Shirley indignantly. “Men don’t do that—at least, men like Mr. Trent don’t.”
“And how madly do you wish that he would?” asked Marjory frankly. In some ways Shirley made her feel cross, although she was rather a dear all the same.
“Absolutely frantically,” said Shirley suddenly. She threw her hands up to her face and stared over them at her friend. “Marjory, I want to tell you something,” she said. “I don’t care what you think of me. I’d—I’d be anything to Mr. Trent if he would have me,” she said. “I wouldn’t care what it was. You know—I’d be—I’d be—his slave,” she said, and she got very white as she said it.
“My dear, you’ve simply got to come away from here,” said Marjory, and she said it very slowly and after rather a long pause. “I was an absolute fool ever to have gone in for this perfectly insane plan,” she said, “and the stupidest thing I ever did was to promise not to tell Mother. You’ve got to let me off that promise, Shirley. She must know. You must come away from here. You are to.”
“If you tell Mrs. Fielding I shall never speak to you again, Marjory,” said Shirley, and she was white with fear this time. “I was joking: I don’t feel about him a bit like that really. I only said it to frighten you,” said Shirley, trying to laugh and failing dreadfully.
“No, you didn’t; you said it because you couldn’t keep it to yourself any longer,” said Marjory seriously. “And I’m glad you told me and not him. That’s what I’m afraid of with you, Shirley; you’re so reckless and so—so sort of lavish. You’ll throw yourself at his head in a fit of worship one day, and, my dear, believe me there’s no man on earth who would say no to an offer like that. You’re frightfully pretty and dainty and awfully young. And you cook like a dream. Well——” Marjory’s pause was significant.
“Promise me that you won’t tell Mrs. Fielding,” insisted Shirley, her heart drumming in her ears. Marjory had her in the hollow of her hand now; she only had to make Mrs. Fielding even a little suspicious, and she could easily do that without breaking any confidence.
“Promise me that you’ll give the Sheik a month’s notice then, and get away from here,” said Marjory hardly. “Give him a week’s notice: he pays you weekly, doesn’t he?”
“Yes.” And then the silence that fell between the two girls was abruptly broken. The telephone bell shrilled through the hall.
“You go, in case it might be somebody who knows me,” said Shirley after a terrified pause. “Say: ‘Mrs. Halifax’s niece speaking,’ if anyone asks.”
“All right,” Marjory was in the hall. Shirley tiptoed to her side. “Who is it?” her lips formed the words.
“Mrs. Halifax’s niece speaking,” Marjory shook her head briefly, speaking clearly. “I’ll ask her. She’s here.” She thrust the receiver into Shirley’s hand. “Someone wants to know where Mr. Trent is,” she said. “You speak.”
“Mr. Trent told me that any call for him could be sent on to the Burdock Hotel at Oxshott,” said Shirley. “Yes, he will be there now, I feel pretty certain. Thank you.” Flushed, she hung up the receiver again.
“Who was it?” Marjory felt a little shaken. She was overwhelmed by a sense of trespass. How did Shirley stand it for so long at a time? she wondered, looking at her friend’s curly hair and small hands.
“Some man, as you heard,” said Shirley. “It’s frightened me; let’s go out.” She spoke in a hurry. To spend any more time just talking to Marjory was fatal. She would find out things: make her give promises. She was not going to give any promises.
But Marjory was suddenly interested. “I expect it’s about that murder at Oxshott,” she said. “You know, that young artist who murdered his wife. He came home and found that she’d got drunk and daubed paint all over the picture that he had just finished for next year’s Academy. And he killed her—at least, they say that he killed her. Daddy was talking about it the other day, and I believe he said that they’d engaged Mr. Trent for the defence.”
“Oh, how perfectly awful! But she deserved to be killed,” gasped Shirley. Her imagination was a vivid one, and like a spider on a little piece of floating web it caught hold of this fragment of a passion and misery and wove it into a history of agony unspeakable. That desperate young artist, clutching at this great gift of his and trying by it to raise something out of the ruin of his life. And the sodden, bloated figure of the woman who was trying to drag him down eternally. “Oh, but she deserved to be killed,” she gasped again.
“Of course she did, but you mayn’t kill people because they deserve it,” said Marjory sensibly, “otherwise there would hardly be anyone left. But they’ve engaged Mr. Trent because he is supposed to be the coming Marshall Hall,” said Marjory composedly. She suddenly felt sorry she had worried Shirley. It would be all right, and suppose it wasn’t! Marjory was modern and looked at life in the indulgent modern way.
“Is he really?” Shirley’s eyes were wide. “Just think, and I cook for him, Marjory!” she said. “Isn’t it too marvellous for words?”
“You silly idiot!” and that was the end of any serious conversation.
Marjory helped to clear away and wash up and make the beds. All the sheets had to be changed and some put ready for the wash. And then it was time to get lunch ready, and by the time that was cooked and eaten and cleared away it was nearly four. For Shirley had insisted on cooking something for lunch, far more interesting than dull cold things from the restaurant in the Strand, or bothering to go out for it. So there was all that to do and to think about, and by the time they were both absorbed and interested in that, there was no time or inclination to go back and revive all that about Shirley’s feelings for the man she was housekeeper to. In fact, as Marjory washed her hands for lunch and thought about it again, she decided that it was far better to leave it alone. Shirley had never been a girl who would listen to anyone, even at school, so she certainly wouldn’t be likely to do so now. And the awful fuss and excitement if her own and Shirley’s people got all involved in it: why, there was almost enough in it to start a frightful scandal. So by the time Marjory emerged from the bathroom she had decided on silence, and she was not going to refer to the matter again, unless Shirley did.
But that was the last thing that Shirley was going to do, and the afternoon passed as lightheartedly as the afternoon of the day before had done. But it was not until half-past five that both girls were ready in the hall—Marjory in her dainty outdoor things, with the pretty furry felt hat, and Shirley looking like nothing on earth,as Marjory said frankly.”However, it’s only as far as Charing Cross, so perhaps I can put up with it,” she said good-temperedly.
Meanwhile, Hugo Trent, under the amiable eye of a watchful constable, was trying to reconstruct the details of the tragedy that had shaken the placidity of even stodgy England. For Norman Harrington was one of the most promising of the younger R.A.s. His picture, Dawn in a Cowslip Field, had brought down a shower of approbation from all parts of the world. Not that the subject was as pleasant as it sounded, because it wasn’t. But there had been something about the coarse bestiality of the sleeping tramp and the exquisite beauty of the flowers that grew up close against his unshaven face that had touched the imagination of the people, who stared and referred to their catalogues and then stared again. So Norman Harrington was well on the way to becoming famous.
And then he killed his wife. People who knew him and her said that they didn’t wonder, and then tried not to think about it any more. There was something so awful in the thought of that brilliant young man shut up close to the Brixton High Road with nothing to think about but death. The law was all wrong: people get excited about it, and some even wrote to the papers, not mentioning the tragedy in so many words, of course, but saying that it was time that the glaring discrepancies in the law were remedied—that the most horrible crimes were committed for which the penalty was only a miserable three months’ imprisonment, but that murder committed under the most frightful provocation and in a blinding fit of madness, during which the perpetrator of the crime probably had not the slightest idea what he was doing, was punishable by death.
However, the criminal law in England is adamant. You simply must not kill anyone in England unless you are prepared to be hanged for it. And so Norman Harrington sat with folded hands in Brixton Prison and stared at the walls of his cell, and wished stupidly that he had a tiny bit of looking-glass so that when the patrolling warder put his eye to the little hole to make sure that his prisoner was not trying to do away with himself, he could catch the fleeting rays of sunlight that filtered through the bars of the high window and dazzle him with them. Years ago he and his elder brother had sometimes done that from the window of the old home that had looked out on the golf links. But the agony of that thought was too much, and Norman Harrington got up and picked up the shabby Bible from the little stool. He would count up the number of a’s in the third chapter of Genesis, and b’s in the fourth chapter. Anything so that the fearful torture in his mind did not send him raving mad before he had to die.
And this was how Hugo Trent found him. Found him a few days before Hugo Trent stood in the chill empty studio with the amiable constable seated on a chair at the entrance and the dust lying thick over the heavy gold frames of the pictures hanging on the walls. He had been engaged for the defence by a firm of old family solicitors, who had arranged for him to see the young man’s father. And even Hugo, inured to the agonies and tragedies of life, had been moved by the grief of that father.
“Norman was always the most tender-hearted and thoughtful of our sons. Even when he was quite a little boy he was so eager that no one’s feelings should be hurt. His mother once made a cake; we have often laughed over it together. It was as hard as a rock and everyone declined it. But the little fellow was so afraid that his mother would be hurt that he ate a large slice of it, watching her all the time to see if she was pleased.” The grey-haired man broke down and cried as he told this stupid little story.
“Believe me, I will do my very utmost.” Hugo spoke with a deep anxiety to comfort, and when he saw this tormented man’s son sitting still on the one wooden stool that the cell provided, he felt yet more moved. Fancy, with a mind and imagination like this man, being shut up in a place like this! Nothing to do but to think—to think that perhaps if you had waited for even the fraction of a second you would still be out in the open air. Free: what more awful fate than not to be free when you had once known what freedom was?
Hugo had out his notebook. He sat on the hard low pallet bed and looked at Norman. “You are going to plead Not Guilty,” he said.
“Yes; but of course I needn’t tell you——” Norman began, but Hugo shot a warning glance at him. And in an instant Norman had pulled himself together. Of course the old solicitor and his last word of warning——
“I see; thank you for telling me so frankly.” And then the brief interview had very soon come to an end.
And now Hugo stood and looked round the studio. God! He was going to get that man off somehow. The struggle had taken place here; Mrs. Harrington had been found lying half under the wrecked easel.
No blood, but a fearful blow on the right temple that could not have been self-inflicted.
But nothing had been touched in the studio since that fateful day a week before—nothing, that is to say, except the body of the dead woman. And the atmosphere was foul. Drink has its disgusting side. Hugo visualized to a detail what the life of that imaginative young man must have been. What had kept him, Hugo Trent, from doing exactly the same thing, and not only once, but many times? He turned and stared at the constable and wondered what he would do if he knew what he was thinking about.
Then he turned round and sat down on a chair in the middle of the floor and stared at the furniture. The heavy oak bureau to the left of the easel: he got up and examined it closely. It had nasty corners: very nasty corners indeed. He examined it more closely. And then he went back to his chair again and made a quick sketch of it. He sketched that and the easel and then at last the whole room. And then he smiled pleasantly at the constable and said that he was afraid that he had been a very long time, but that he had quite finished now.
“Don’t mention it, sir. We all knew Mr. Harrington about here, and a nicer young gentleman never stepped.” The constable knew better than to hold forth about the dead woman, so he said no more.
And Hugo got into his taxi again, and went back to the Burdock Hotel, where he had had lunch and was now going to have tea and spend the night. The pleasant proprietor came forward to greet him with deference. Tea would be ready in a moment, and meanwhile he had noted down on this slip of paper a telephone call that had come through for him almost immediately after he had left the hotel. They had not liked to disturb him, as they knew he was fully occupied and was returning to tea.
“Thank you.” Hugo took it, and read it, and then shrugged his shoulders. “I shall not be able to stay the night after all, then,” he said, “as I must get back to see this man to-night. I’m so sorry; you and Mrs. Hale make me so comfortable always. But I’m going to have tea, anyhow,” he said, and he laughed. “Send along a time-table with the tea, will you, please, Hale?”
“Certainly, sir.”
Half an hour later Hugo was on his way to the station. In this gentle Surrey countryside the leaves were still on the trees, golden and a little twisted, but still beautiful. Hugo wondered for the hundredth time why people who need not live in London did. As he drove to the Temple he wondered again. No wonder foreigners denounced the English Sunday. The Strand was deserted, the shops shuttered, and the wind blew coldly, although certainly in the Temple it was beautiful and dignified enough. The tall houses there were placid and untouched by the hand of Time, except to look more beautiful because of that gentle touch. The old church stood down in its little hollow with people clustered round the iron gate of it. The Master was preaching at six, and it was half-past five now. There was to be a special anthem that night. Hugo often dropped into the church for a few minutes’ thought, and he remembered having seen it written up on the notice board. And old Thomson, who flatly declined to leave his post even on Sundays, greeted him with a pleased although rather toothless smile.
“Yes; you’ll find Mrs. Halifax in the flat, sir,” he said, “although she’ll be going out shortly I expect. Got the young woman with her that you spoke about, sir. That’s all right,” and old Thomson sat down again.
Hugo let himself in with his key. Had his housekeeper been alone in the flat he would not have done it, for fear of giving her a fright. But with her niece with her it would be all right. He turned the key in the lock, drew it out again, and opened the door.
And Marjory, who was standing waiting in the hall for Shirley, who had gone back into her bedroom to fetch her umbrella, knew instantly that this was Mr. Trent. And they stood and stared at one another. Hugo was struggling with his rather elusive memory. He sometimes forgot faces, although never names. The name came first, Fielding; it had been mentioned at dinner that night in the flat at Montreux. Shirley, Mortimer’s daughter, had been going to England to stay with these people, and they had met her at Victoria and he had spoken to them. And there, by God, was Mortimer’s daughter; he lifted his eyes and levelled them over Marjory to Shirley, who, in her usual old-fashioned outdoor uniform, was coming rather hurriedly out of her bedroom.
Hugo spoke first, and during the few seconds that had elapsed since he opened the front door he had managed to pull himself together.
“Ah, that’s right, Mrs. Halifax,” he said easily. “I’m so sorry to have taken you by surprise like this. But don’t alter any arrangements that you may have made. I shall be dining out. I got a phone message that you kindly sent on to me, and it meant that I had to return to-night. But don’t stay in, of course.”
A fearful silence hung in the little hall. Hugo felt briefly amused. Gad! It had frightened the two girls, and small wonder. He dropped his hat onto the oak chest and shrugged himself out of his overcoat. Shirley, walking like someone in her sleep, came forward and took it out of his hand.
“Thanks.”
But she had to put down a little suitcase and her umbrella before she did so. Hugo noted the little suitcase and the whole thing was clear to him in a second. Of course, she went out dressed like this and changed her clothes somewhere. And then a brief feeling of anger flamed over him. Not at the Fieldings, surely! That charming, well-bred woman with whom he had shaken hands at Victoria would never have countenanced a thing like this!
“Oh, thanks very much.” He stood and watched Shirley as she walked to the tall oak cupboard, opened the door of it, and hung up the coat. And then, briefly merciful, he nodded rather vaguely to the two girls and went into the sitting room and shut the door.
“Marjory, he knows!” Shirley was white as death. She turned and walked into the kitchen with Marjory following her.
“No, he doesn’t.” Marjory spoke with a bold assurance that she did not feel. “My dear, he hardly looked at us! He called you ‘Mrs. Halifax.’ Of course he doesn’t know. Why, he only saw me for a second at Victoria.”
“He does know.” Shirley sat down at the table and put her two elbows on it. “I shall die,” she said, and she let her head fall into her hands.
“Don’t be so silly,” said Marjory boisterously.
Sick with fright herself, her refuge lay in being boisterous. “Come along out, and don’t be futile. It’s late as it is; if only we hadn’t waited for tea we should never have seen him. Come on, Shirley.”
“How shall I ever come back again?” said Shirley, and she lifted her head and her eyes were terrified.
“My dear, why? Nothing has happened to alter anything,” asserted Marjory sturdily. “If he’d guessed he would have said something at once: a man isn’t going to risk being shut up in a flat at night with quite a young girl, especially one who’s the daughter of a friend of his. Come along and don’t be feeble. I never saw anyone go to pieces like you do!”
“How could he say anything? There wouldn’t be anyone to take him his early tea,” stammered Shirley, and she straightened her ridiculous hat with a shaking hand.
“Early tea! Do you suppose a man thinks of his early tea when his reputation is at stake?” said Marjory derisively. “I tell you he didn’t know. If you don’t come soon I shall go without you,” said Marjory, after a little pause.
So Shirley went. And Hugo, hearing the front door shut with its usual little sharp click, wondered briefly if he would ever hear it open again that night. He himself would be in early, because he was dog-tired. But would she come back? He doubted it. And oddly enough his first thoughts were of his early tea. It had always been so beautifully made and she was always so punctual with it. And now, just when he was going to be occupied almost to the limit of physical and mental endurance, he was to be again at the mercy of slovenly attendance and worse cooking. Heavens! It was almost more than a man could stand, thought Hugo, dropping wearily into the low chair by the brightly burning fire and groping hopelessly in his pocket for his pipe and tobacco pouch.
Shirley did not get back to the flat that night until half-past ten. Somehow it seemed to her as if the evening would never end, until at last Mrs. Fielding noticed her evident fatigue and suggested that she should make a move before the others. “Sure you are not overdoing it, darling?” she said, coming herself into the beautifully warmed hall to see her little guest safely off the premises.
“Oh, no, I’m only rather tired to-night because it seems to me to be rather hot,” said Shirley vaguely. And she held up her little pale face to be kissed and hurried out of the open door into the brightly lighted lift. But never had the long bus journey to Charing Cross seemed more dreadful. And the horrible monotony of the change of clothes in that underground place! It could not go on much longer, thought Shirley, forgetting, in her sick terror of what lay ahead of her, the joyful rapture with which she generally flew back to the flat. And then she remembered that it wouldn’t go on much longer anyhow. How was she going to bear the agony of shame and remorse that she would feel when he confronted her with the horrible brazen trick that she had played him? Because she wouldn’t be able to make him see what she had really done it for—that she had only wanted to serve him because he had the kind of face that would make any woman feel like that.
She let herself into the flat with her face white and her lips trembling. The hall was dark and she could see the white line of light under the sitting-room door. Then he was still up and waiting to see her. He would hear the door shut and would then give her time to get into the kitchen and breathe a little, because the stairs were steep, and would then ring the bell.
This was exactly what happened. Shirley stumbled as she crossed the hall to the sitting room. Hugo, looking at her from the low chair drawn up close to the fire, felt his heart contract with pity and amusement. Gad! She thought she was for it! But not yet: Hugo had had a good deal of time to think on his way to and from his club. He was a clever man and not quite a young one either. Also, although he despised himself for this last thought, she did make him so gorgeously comfortable. And this child of his old friend was as safe with him as she would have been with her own father.
“You look tired, Mrs. Halifax,” he said kindly. “I won’t trouble you, then, with my few orders for to-morrow.”
“What?” Shirley’s green eyes were wide and strained. Her strange hat was crooked. Looking at her, Hugo wondered how he had ever been fool enough not to recognize her at once. But then he had recognized her, as he remembered vaguely, only he had dismissed the idea as obviously impossible. It was still almost obviously impossible that it should be she, although it was she, thought Hugo, suddenly feeling inclined to laugh.
“I said that you looked so tired that I would reserve my few orders for to-morrow morning,” repeated Hugo, and this time from sheer pity he kept his eyes on the fire.
“Yes, but——” And then the relief from an over-mastering terror was so stupefying that Shirley lost control of herself. Still staring at him, she began to cry. She cried like a child, with wide-open streaming eyes.
“Come, come, Mrs. Halifax!” Hugo got up out of his chair. “You know, I don’t think it suits you, having your relations to stay,” he said, and he walked slowly to where Shirley stood with her back flattened against the door.
“I had a sort of feeling that you were going to dismiss me,” gasped Shirley, and her eyes were fastened on him in a sick fright. Perhaps this was an awful scheme of his to make her give herself away so that he should not have to do it himself.
“You look after me far too well for that,” said Hugo evenly. He stood close to Shirley, very tall in his evening clothes. “Why should I dismiss you?” he said. “You have done nothing to deserve it, have you? I haven’t missed my salt cellars, for instance.”
“Oh, no,” choked Shirley. A blessed security enwrapped her. Then he really didn’t know and she was all right again. “I would kill anyone who touched anything of yours,” she gasped.
“That is very kind of you.”
“I would do anything for you. I’d—I’d—I’d lay down my life for you,” stammered Shirley. He was so close to her that she could touch him if she wanted to. Magic hung about the presence of this man. What was it?
“That is still more kind of you,” said Hugo. He suddenly felt wicked and reckless. He felt that he longed to see this queer little child without this horrible hat on—without this ghastly coat and skirt. He laid his hand on her shoulder.
She turned quickly and pressed her lips to it. And then Hugo was alarmed and ashamed. Of course, the whole thing was ridiculous. He had better get it over at once and she must go to-morrow. He would have to go and live at his club and chance being ghastly uncomfortable. Just when he wanted to be specially comfortable and left to himself, too. He took a long deep breath.
But the tears had steadied Shirley, and she felt a swift revulsion of feeling. She had kissed his hand and he would be disgusted and appalled. By the morning he would have forgotten, perhaps. Mercifully, the door opened outwards. She slipped through it and was gone.
And as Hugo thought, left to himself, he could hardly be expected to pursue her into her bedroom, could he? He sat down again by the fire and watched the coals fade to a pale grayness. And then he got up and went rather drearily away into his bedroom, and tried to sleep. But he couldn’t. The eyes of that frightened child had been so pitiful. Hugo Trent always felt a tender pity for women. He hated to have frightened her, poor little thing!
But by the next morning, after about six hours’ dreamless sleep, Hugo Trent felt more normal again. He had one little twinge of remorse when he saw Shirley put his tray of early tea down by his bed. He watched her from under his eyelashes as she went to the window and drew the curtains back. But then, as he argued to himself as he performed his methodical and efficient toilet, a great many girls earned their own living nowadays, and in very extraordinary ways too—the very way in which Shirley Mortimer had obviously concealed her whereabouts from her parents showed how things were changed. Girls went out into the world nowadays and did what they liked. And why was it worse for her to do the work of his little flat than to slave for some finicky woman, or perhaps teach her tiresome children? Hugo was shaving as he asked himself the question. And his dark eyes twinkled as he drew the little nickel-plated razor upwards. She liked the look of him; he smiled a little shyly at his reflection in the glass.
Well, she wasn’t the first woman—and then he made a little wretched suppressed groan in his throat. God! Had any man ever before him wrecked his life as he had done? And then he felt a swift revulsion of feeling and contempt for himself. Yes, many had, and far better men than he, too. Witness that poor fellow in Brixton Prison; and then Hugo Trent’s thoughts went circling round Norman Harrington. He was going to get that man off or perish in the attempt. Think of him now—a man of that vivid imagination. Because you wouldn’t be able to paint unless you had a vivid imagination, any more than you would be able to write. Well, think of waking to the bare walls of a cell—the heavy tread of a warder outside your door. A man like that, who in spite of the misery of his married life had probably had pleasant intervals when he went away to stay at his own home, where he still had parents who loved him. He would have dainty early tea brought to him, a really hot bath. Those things mattered when you were getting older. And instead of that he had the almost insulting routine of a life that didn’t bear thinking about. To walk round and round in a yard in company with criminals; to be considered a criminal yourself, as you really were, judged by the letter of the law. Hugo unconsciously began to hurry over his dressing. He wanted to get down to it because to-day and every day that followed it was going to be a rush of appointments and interviews.
So Shirley’s masquerade drifted away into the back of his consciousness. He remembered her very little during the week that followed. To Marjory’s excited and almost incoherent questionings on the telephone Shirley returned that everything was perfectly all right—that she had got back the night before to find him exactly the same. He didn’t know a bit who she was, and wasn’t ever going to. Yes, she was coming on Thursday, if she might, and would love to stay to dinner. And then Shirley hung up the receiver and went away into the kitchen and wondered what it was that made her feel so utterly dead and flat all over. There didn’t seem any joy anywhere: not even in thinking him out a delicious dinner, that was generally such fun. She had gone to bed the night before in a quiver of rapture and excitement and thrill, and waked in a tremor of wondering what was going to happen on this wonderful day that was just beginning. And then nothing had happened at all: Mr. Trent had simply eaten his breakfast and said that he was coming back to dinner for certain, and to tea perhaps, and had then gone away just as he always did.
But what else had she expected? Shirley asked herself the question again, as she did the housework. If he had known who she was, something exciting might have happened, but he didn’t know. Then, did she want him to know? Shirley faced the question as she made his bed with meticulous care. Yes, she did, and she wanted him to love her as well. She wanted him to charge up the steps of the flat and dash into the front door and catch her to his heart and say that he had seen through her stupid pretence all the time, and that she was a darling plucky little thing, and that he loved her.
Shirley stopped making the bed and went away to the window and stared drearily out of it. Idiotic people down below scurrying along on their stupid business. What did anything matter but having someone tall and adorable and kind and everything that was perfect for your very own? Nothing mattered but that, and she would never have it. Shirley tore off her hideous cap and dragged the one tortoiseshell hairpin out of her rust-coloured hair. She would comb it with his comb and get what consolation she could out of that. She peered into the oval mirror and thought how ghastly red hair and freckles looked together. Despair! All the rest of her life was going to be a ceaseless torment and longing for something that she would never have.
Shirley cried all the rest of that long dreary morning—miserable, ashamed, disappointed tears; tears that were all the more bitter because they were so utterly useless. What is the use of crying when there is nobody there to see? Shirley asked herself, moving miserably between the kitchen and the rest of the house and wishing that she were dead, and that she would never have to cook another meal as long as she lived. Because what was the good of cooking meals for a person who ate them simply because they were nice and not because they were cooked by a person who worshipped the ground you trod on? thought Shirley bitterly, twisting her auburn curls up into a hideous refractory bunch again and stabbing them through with the long-suffering tortoise-shell hairpin.
Norman Harrington’s parents lived at East Horsley. They had chosen that part of Surrey to retire to because the golf links were good and both their boys loved the game. Mr. Harrington played, too, and was one of those charming, courtly, well-bred men that one sees in that part of the world. He had been a stockbroker and quite a successful one, so that he had been able to retire fairly young. The boys came back from their public school and spent delightful holidays together there, because, although Ralph was six years older than Norman, they both got on very well together. And then war broke out and Ralph went straight into the Flying Corps from his public school and was killed in August, 1915.
And Mrs. Norman often wondered whether all the agony she had suffered since was because of her frantic and passionate thanksgiving that the other son that she worshipped had not been old enough to go to the war and die a dreadful death, as his beloved brother had done. She told herself during those dreadful days that if she had had to say good-bye to him and see him perhaps trying not to cry, knowing in her heart that his sensitive, loving nature was deeply afraid, she would have died. If she had had to think of him perhaps wanting her, up to his knees in mud, cold and deadly afraid and hating himself because he was afraid, she would have gone raving mad. She could not have endured it—she could not have endured it, thought Mrs. Norman, lying awake and staring at the ceiling and thanking God again and again that Norman was only fourteen and safe for at least three years more at his public school in the West of England.
And then came the tragedy of his marriage. While at the ’Varsity he had got entangled with a girl from a hotel near Oxford and had insisted on marrying her. There had been one awful week-end when he had come home and his parents had implored him not to do this fatal thing. “My dear boy, money can do most things in cases of this kind. For God’s sake think twice before you ruin your life.” Mr. Harrington had been pale and almost tremulous as he had reasoned with his son.
But Norman had been obdurate. She had trusted him and now there was going to be a baby, and so he had to marry her. So that was that, and the young couple had gone to live at Oxshott, and for a time things had not seemed to be so bad. The baby had been born and had almost immediately died. Norman went into his father’s business and went up to London every day. But in his spare time he painted. The house in Oxshott that his father had bought for him had a studio in its grounds. Without telling anyone but his wife, who said he was a damned fool to waste his time like that, he sent up his first picture to the Academy. After all, he had taken painting lessons almost continuously during his three years at Oxford, he told himself. There was no harm in trying, anyhow.
And then it was accepted. Norman made an excuse and went to East Horsley for the day. He wanted to tell his mother first, because he knew she would understand what it had meant to him, after weeks of waiting and wondering.
And she did understand. “Oh, my darling, haven’t you hardly been able to bear the post in case it wasn’t all right?” Mrs. Harrington’s pale face was all flushed and quivering with excitement.
“Oh, I don’t know I’ve had to.” Norman’s voice was all jaunty with triumph. He felt now that it could never matter so much again that his home was a wreck. Here was something to hold onto; to absorb all of him that shrank and agonized from the squalor of his daily life and make a decent thing of it. And to find them all so pleased at East Horsley was heavenly. The excited discussions that went on all day! How long would she have to wait before she saw the picture hanging on the line? Of course it would be hung on the line: Mrs. Harrington almost flew at her husband when he said that after all it might not be, as it was Norman’s first effort. He went home feeling that after all things weren’t so bad. Perhaps even Daisy would pull herself together now. But Daisy was not of the stuff that pulls itself together at the success of others. She became more morose and jealous and spiteful. And when Norman was acclaimed as a young imaginative artist of rare merit, she was more angry still. She hated the orders that poured in. She told him that he was a damned fool to give up going to the City and spend his time in making daubs that only more damned fools would buy.
But Norman disregarded her. At least, he disregarded her until the awful day when he came back from an early walk with his beloved cocker spaniel to find his picture for the next Academy a mass of wet and dripping daubs of red paint, and his wife, who had done this monstrous thing, grinning drunkenly at him from beside the easel. “That’ll teach you to think more of your damned painting than of your wife,” she had said, and had died with the same silly grin still on her face.
And now Norman sat and counted the o’s in the first and second chapters of the Epistle to the Ephesians. The next day his warder, who was a kindly man, had promised him a pencil and a piece of paper, so that he could make up a crossword puzzle. He knew what Norman was under arrest for, and was deeply sorry for him. As he paced up and down the well-warmed corridor outside the cell, he remembered how often he himself had felt inclined to kill his own wife when, before his appointment to prison work, he had come home tired and cold from a heavy day on point duty in the City and found her a tousled, snoring, untidy heap in an easy-chair. But mercifully the traffic that raced up and down the Streatham High Road had relieved him from the dreadful responsibility. But how much worse is it to want to kill a person and refrain because of the inevitable consequences than to do the deed itself? wondered the warder, who was a thoughtful man and had plenty of time during his day’s work for cogitations such as these.
But at last the interminable days came to an end and Norman was moved from Brixton Prison to the Old Bailey. And the old family doctor who had attended the Harringtons for years was thankful. He gave up much of his valuable time in coming down from London to see Mrs. Harrington. He would be down on the day of the verdict he promised Mr. Harrington.
“She seems to me to cry all night,” said Mr. Harrington, pathetic and crumpled in his misery. “She and the boy have always been very close to one another.”
And even the old doctor wiped his eyes as he stepped into the car and went racing up to London again. Certainly that young K. C., Trent, was in the first rank, but still, on the face of it, what chance had the boy? The doctor blew his nose and cursed British justice, and then thought that perhaps it was right and leaned back in the corner of the luxurious saloon car and tried to forget the memory of that sensitive little boy’s face when Norman had had scarlet fever very badly. Such a little fragile, imaginative fellow! The doctor sighed heavily as he thrust his arm angrily through the comfortable padded sling close up to the bevelled window.
Even Shirley forgot her own particular misery when she at last grasped that Hugo had been engaged as counsel for the defence in the murder case that was absorbing the whole of England at the moment. Old Thomson told her.
“And they couldn’t have done better. Rare tongue he’s got on him when he likes to let it go,” he confided.
“Yes, but did he murder his wife?” gasped Shirley.
“Of course he did, and the best bit of work he’d done, too,” chuckled old Thomson. “But you mustn’t do it, Mrs. Halifax, and that’s a fact. Mortal hard they are on murder in this country, bless ’em.”
So that was that. And Shirley, grasping that Hugo was strained to breaking-point both mentally and physically, flung her whole soul into looking after him. One night she crept noiselessly into the sitting room and found him there, talking to himself. He was standing in front of the fire, which was nearly out, and was pointing into the far corner of the room. In spite of herself Shirley’s eyes followed the direction of his finger.
“Can’t you see it?” he was saying. “Well, what chance had the woman, dazed as she was with fright and drink? She stumbled back as you or I would have stumbled back. I admit that the motive to kill might have been in the prisoner’s mind; it probably was. But it remained there, thank God; I say thank God in all sincerity, because none of us wants to see a young man condemned to die when he probably has a long and successful life in front of him. Great artists are rare, and they do not as a rule spring from the ranks of murderers, do they?” and Hugo looked round the room with a smile.
And then the consciousness of Shirley’s presence dawned on him. “Good God! What ever time is it?” he said, and he flushed and felt foolish. “Why aren’t you in bed, Mrs. Halifax?”
“Because I have brought you some soup,” said Shirley solidly. “It is one o’clock and I have been waiting until you stopped talking to come in. You cannot work all day and all night too without suffering for it,” she said, and handed him the little tray with the bowl on it.
“Nor can you,” said Hugo, twinkling. This was the third time that Shirley had surprised him at midnight with a bowl of the most perfectly made soup. He took a spoonful and smiled at her over it. “What’s it made of?” he asked.
“Bovril and milk,” said Shirley promptly. She forgot herself in her longing to take care of this man. “Do go to bed,” she urged.
“What about you?” laughed Hugo. He suddenly began to enjoy himself. In his mind he felt perfectly certain that he was going to get Norman Harrington off. It was possible more or less to hypnotize a jury—he had seen it done by Marshall Hall more than once. Some nice person had once spoken of him as Marshall Hall’s successor. Well, perhaps this trial that was coming ofF in two days’ time was going to prove that nice person to be right. “What about you?” he repeated.
“I can rest in the afternoon and I very often do,” said Shirley. “I go to sleep sometimes for quite a long time.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Hugo earnestly. And in saying that he spoke the truth. When he did happen to remember Shirley, he felt a vague discomfort that she had to work so hard. Certainly he was out a good deal of the day, but then there was all the washing up to do. He had once done it himself and had never forgotten it. “I think I shall have to raise your wages,” he said suddenly. “I didn’t engage you to work for the whole of the twenty-four hours, and that is what you are beginning to do, Mrs. Halifax.”
“Oh, no!” said Shirley, and she flushed up to the frill of her ugly cap.
“But I say yes,” said Hugo. He suddenly felt reckless. This girl was such a pet, and so plucky when you came to think of it. “I insist,” he said, “and we will start from to-day with a week’s back effect, so that you will get two pounds to-morrow instead of thirty shillings. And now I want you to do me a favour, Mrs. Halifax. I have sisters and there is something about your hair that so intrigues me. It seems to have no ends. Is it short or is it long? Do forgive me for asking the question.”
“It is short,” stammered Shirley; “but I don’t like the colour of it, so I always hide it.”
“I see; what a pity, because I expect by your complexion it would be of an auburn shade,” said Hugo easily. “I love red hair, as a matter of fact.”
“Do you really?” Shirley’s breath suddenly came fast. She was so safe: so secure, he would never remember her or recognize her now.
“Yes, I really do.” Hugo’s dark eyes were dancing. He put the bowl down on the table. “That was nice,” he said; “you do make soup beautifully, Mrs. Halifax.”
“Do I?” said Shirley. Her quick little nervous fingers were busy with the ugly cap. “I could show you my hair if you liked,” she said breathlessly.
“Do; I should love to see it,” said Hugo cordially.
“It curls, really; wait half a minute until I have combed it.” Shirley was diving wildly at her voluminous skirt. She dragged out a pale-green comb in a little composition case. Snatching off her cap, she dropped it, a stiff starched thing, on the floor. Combing desperately, she stood with her rust-coloured hair making a gleaming nimbus round her delicate face. A strange little figure, with the high starched collar and large cameo brooch fastening it.
“Yes; I see that it curls.” Hugo forced himself to speak impartially. But the quaintness of the occasion and the lateness of the hour made it a little difficult. Was this girl really so astoundingly misguided as actually to think that he would allow an ordinary servant to take off her cap and comb her hair in front of him at midnight, he wondered, or did she really know that he knew who she was?
“Do you like it?” pleaded Shirley. She too suddenly felt reckless. It was all so odd, this, and he was so tall; and his eyes were so bright and so searching. How strange it was that he did not recognize her, a man as clever as this. And yet was it strange? He had hardly seen her that night at Montreux. And in the train it had been dark, and at Victoria it was such a scramble.
“I like it very much indeed.” And then Hugo got a strong feeling, born of his fatigue and the odd, mysterious hour of the night, that he would like to feel that soft bright hair under his hand. “It’s soft, isn’t it?” he said, and he laid his hand rather heavily on her head.
“Is it? I didn’t know,” said Shirley breathlessly. She stood very still and her white lids fell silently down and hid her green eyes. “Kiss it,” she breathed.
“Well, now, but what would you say if I did, Mrs. Halifax?” said Hugo quietly. But his heart beat a little faster. Mortimer’s daughter in his flat like this, all alone. It was a disgrace and would have to be put a stop to. But she was such a child. He felt inclined to laugh as she stood there with her eyes shut. Why shouldn’t he? He was almost old enough to be her father. He took a quick step forward and cupped her still little face in his hands. “There,” he said, and he tipped her head a little forward and kissed the white parting that ran and lost itself in the crown of her round head.
“I feel just like I did when I was confirmed, only more,” said Shirley, and she looked up at him with eyes that were full of something that gave Hugo a quick feeling of discomfort.
“Do you?” and then there was suddenly nothing more to say. Hugo felt deadly ashamed of himself, and because of that he spoke more curtly than usual. “Well, it’s time that we stopped being really rather silly,” he said. “The fire’s all right; it’s nearly out and I’ll turn out the light. Good-night, Mrs. Halifax.”
“Good-night,” said Shirley, and she stooped for her cap. So that was all, and after all, what else could there be? She had made him ashamed because gentlemen didn’t kiss their servants and he would know that and wish he hadn’t done it. But he had liked her hair and it was soft. She would stop screwing it up on the top of her head and fluff it out a little under her cap. Then she would not look so deadly, deadly hideous, thought Shirley, crawling away to her bedroom and wishing that she could go to sleep for ever and never wake up again.
At last the day dawned that was either to see Norman a self-respecting member of society again or a man whose earthly frame would be buried decently enough in quicklime and left to lie inside four prison walls. Mrs. Harrington woke from an absolutely dreamless sleep to find that it was half-past eight and that her husband was looking down on her. He had seen that the sleeping draught of the night before had been efficient, and the nice old doctor had promised something with morphia in it for the night that was ahead of them.
“Reggie,” and then recollection came and Mrs. Harrington lay back on her pillow and the heavy agonized tears began again.
“Come, darling, your tea will get cold.” Mr. Harrington fussed round the little tray. “Drink it while it’s hot.”
“Thank you, darling.” Mrs. Harrington raised herself on her elbow and shivered a little. Her mind groped round for comfort and found some. Never again could suffering reach the pitch that it was going to reach that day, thought Mrs. Harrington. She had always been able to visualize God as Someone infinitely human and understanding. If her son was going to Him, He would at least receive him tenderly and kindly, knowing what he had been through. He would make excuses for him—Norman, her little boy, her baby! Mrs. Harrington began to cry again.
“Oh, my darling, for God’s sake don’t!” Mr. Harrington suddenly broke down. Just the sort of day that Norman would have loved a game of golf with him. Always so nice to play with, noting secretly that his father couldn’t go up the hills as fast as he could; waiting for him and pretending that he wasn’t waiting. “Curse that woman, may her soul rest eternally in hell!” he suddenly stuttered through his tears.
And that pulled Mrs. Harrington together. She drank her tea and spoke tenderly to her husband, and got up and had a bath and wondered, as she walked along to the bathroom, how people could do the same ordinary things when they were going through what they were going through. Did people have baths when they—and then her sick brain leaped back from the terror—when they were going to be executed? Mrs. Harrington dropped her face into her hot sponge and felt a brief stimulus from the heat in it. There were exactly seven hours to be lived through before any news could reach them—hours that had got to be lived through: you couldn’t drug yourself eternally; there was life ahead of her and it would have to be lived with dignity.
Meanwhile, in London the sun shone with a wintry paleness and the streets were crowded and a stream of women sauntered along Oxford Street staring into shop windows and bumping up against other women also staring, and no one very much bothered about the trial of the young R. A. that was coming to an end that day. The exciting part of it was over—all the details; whether he was to be hanged or not really wasn’t so vital. Anyhow, it was so stupid to kill people, because you knew that you would only be killed too for doing it. “You keep the bit about it, Daddy, and give me the bit with the pictures of Debenham & Freebody’s Sale.” More than one young woman had said that that morning, casting over to a long-suffering parent the bit of the paper that he was longing to hold tightly clutched with all the others in his methodical fingers.
But in the Old Bailey the atmosphere was tense. The lunch interval was over and the judge had taken his seat again. The well of the court was full of colour; the red hoods of the robes stood out from the almost universally black clothes. White wigs framed keen alert faces. A wig is a very becoming thing. When Hugo Trent rose in his seat and faced the court, one of the two women in the jury conceived a romantic passion for him. She began to weep as his speech continued, and dared not get out her handkerchief because members of the jury were not allowed to show emotion. The man next to her, hearing her surreptitious sniffs, longed to turn and scowl at her and ask her what the hell she had wanted the vote for, if she didn’t like the responsibilities it brought in its train. He tried not to listen to Hugo Trent, because he had already made up his mind that Norman Harrington had killed his wife. He tried to think about the setting of eggs that he had seen advertised in the Exchange and Mart, and bought, and wondered whether they would hatch out now that it had begun to get frosty. Perhaps they would if he kept the Valor Perfection stove going in the fowl house. But would his wife be able to spare it? And then he was obliged to listen to Hugo Trent. He had a way with him that made you. People said that he was the next Marshall Hall. Perhaps he was. Anyhow, he was making a magnificent fight for Harrington’s life. How could Harrington listen to it so calmly? And he had on such a nice tie. What had he felt like when he had tied it that morning?
And then Trent had finished. The moonfaced clock on the high wall showed that he had spoken for more than an hour. When he sat down there was a second’s dead silence and then people began to cough and blow their noses. Up till then they had only sniffed. Then came the most dramatic moment of all—the impassive summing up of the parchment-faced judge, largely in Norman’s favour—thank God! thought Hugo, settling his white bands with a nervous gesture of his long fingers. The jury rose and the lady who had cried made a foolish snorting hiccupping noise as she got up to follow the jury out, and thought wildly that it was a shame that they didn’t have a cushion on the seat. Norman, left sitting between his two warders, glanced down at his locked hands and thought that the tips of his fingers looked blue and odd. He opened and shut his hands to relieve them. And then the gold signet ring that his father had given him on his twenty-first birthday slipped off his little finger and tinkled onto the floor of the dock. He stooped to pick it up and felt a little more sane as the blood ran into his head. He stared up at the shaft of pale sunlight that struck in through the high stained-glass window and had tiny little motes of dust sailing up and down in it. He wondered whether they would give him any tea if—— And then the jury filed in again.
And the first thing Norman remembered was the nice warder on his right laying a square, fatherly hand on his shoulder and saying that he was very glad to hear it; and a burst of applause from the gallery being instantly quenched by someone with a very loud voice. And then everybody getting up, and the feeling of his own stiff cramped limbs as he stepped down and walked down a little flight of stone stairs into a long corridor. The warders had disappeared. Where? Norman looked round vaguely; he wanted to thank them for being so nice to him. And then memory became more vivid at the sight of his father and the man who had defended him. They had met him in the corridor and drawn him into a small, rather dark room. But there was a nice gas fire in it: Norman shivered and walked over to it, holding out his long, sensitive hands.
“We’ll have some tea at once.” It was Hugo Trent speaking, and his father was saying something in answer to him. It was so like his father not to have any scene, thought Norman vaguely. He would have hated it. He wanted to get to his mother: she would want to know. “What about the mater?” He turned, and spoke from his place by the fire.
“I’ve phoned to her; she knows by now,” and then his father came over to him—rather timidly, Norman thought. His brain cleared a little. “I’ll wipe the floor with you at golf to-morrow, Father,” he said, and he smiled a little, tremulously, and turned away as his father caught hold of his hand and then walked away again.
“Say a word to Trent, Norman.” Tea was over, and father and son were preparing to go. Hugo had taken off his wig, railing at the weight of it, but was still in his gown. The little white tucker under his chin showed up his distinguished, clear-cut features. He knew to a fraction what Norman Harrington was feeling. It would be to a man of that imagination like rescue from a living tomb. The rush of air would stupefy him. “He can’t say anything,” he said, and he smiled. “But I know what he’s feeling; he needn’t tell me. He’s feeling as I should feel in the same position. Take him home and put him to bed early, and give him a really good hot bath. That’s what he’s longing for, I know,” and Hugo laughed again.
“There aren’t any words,” Norman had got Hugo’s hands in his. Both of them, he didn’t care what anyone thought. He wrung them and turned quickly away. And the motor drive down to East Horsley seemed short. The sky was all red and frosty over the bare trees, and the sun made long slanting shadows on the fields. Father and son sat silent. Norman was thinking vaguely about God: oddly enough, the same thoughts that Hugo had thought that morning, as with a bundle of papers in his hand he had turned into the old Temple Church. He often did that—it seemed to refresh him for the day. And that morning, as he thought that he was going to put his whole soul into defending a man who he knew was technically guilty, he felt glad that the Supreme Judge of all things was able to estimate these things more impartially. Staring up at the beautiful stained-glass windows, he felt unusually glad of that. Because, after all, one doesn’t want to put one’s whole soul into what the best part of one knows is wrong, thought Hugo, getting up and giving his legs a little shake, because he liked to be smart in Court and he was always particular about the set of his trousers over his shoes.
And Norman thought about God, too. Thought of Him with a passionate gratitude as he lay between cool fragrant sheets, warm and glowing from a hot bath. It had been good of Him to spare his mother that supreme torture that His own Mother had not been spared, thought Norman, closing his eyes in a very rapture of happiness and relief and thinking reverently and sleepily and passionately that he would try to repay it somehow. For the thing he had done he had surely been punished enough. And he had not meant to kill her really. Perhaps his brilliant counsel had been right and she had fallen and hit her head against the corner of that old bureau—the bureau that she had refused to have in the drawing room, because she said it was too clumsy, and that he had taken into the studio so that there should not be another row, reflected Norman, falling suddenly asleep, and then waking with an awful start and groan because he thought he was still in his cell.
And at the little flat in the Temple peace was reigning too. Shirley had had the first news of Hugo’s triumph from old Thomson who had come hobbling up the stairs with a copy of the midday edition of the Star. “Look at that, missis.” Old Thomson was in the hall trying to point out what he could hardly see himself from excitement.
“Where is it? I can’t see!” Shirley, with her cap all over one ear, had seized the paper. “‘Masterly Speech for Defence in Murder Case. Young K. C. Holds Court Spellbound For Over One Hour.’ Thomson, he has got him off.” Shirley was stammering with excitement and emotion.
“Of course he has. What did I say? Such a tongue as he’s got on him if he likes to use it. Now we’ll have to keep them off. Up the stairs like flies they’ll be coming, if I let ’em,” and old Thomson was out of the front door and down the stairs again, leaving Shirley standing. Ah, the telephone bell! She darted across the hall.
And that was only one out of dozens of calls. Shirley had her pencil and pad on the shelf and scribbled them all down. The telegraph boys started to let their enthusiasm be made known on the knocker. Shirley opened the door, if once, a dozen times. And this was only at his private address, she reflected. What about in his chambers? She could guess what he had been through when at about half-past six o’clock in the evening she heard him let himself in at the front door.
“Have you had tea?” Shirley was out in the hall in an instant.
“No—yes—I don’t know.” Hugo was pale with fatigue. “Thanks.” She had taken his coat from him. “No, I don’t think I have; at any rate I’ll have some more. Give it to me now; nothing to eat with it, and I’ll give dinner a miss. I shall go to bed at about nine. I could go to sleep now,” said Hugo, walking rather stupidly into the sitting room and throwing himself down into the chair drawn up close to the fire and shutting his eyes.
And ten minutes later, when Shirley brought in the tea, she found him fast asleep. She left him there and went away again. Three times she went in again and found him still sleeping. There were deep shadows under his eyes. The telephone bell rang, and still he did not stir. Shirley answered it and spoke firmly: Mr. Trent had given orders that he was not to be disturbed; he was sleeping. Yes, it was Mr. Trent’s housekeeper speaking. Shirley hung up the receiver again and stood there hesitating. The fire would go out if she left it too long; what should she do?
And then the door of the sitting room opened and Hugo came out of it. The second time that Shirley had gone into the sitting room he had been awake, and also the third time. In the interval he had sat and stared at the fire with half-opened eyes and fought with an almost overmastering temptation. Who would ever know; and the child adored him—she showed it in every movement. After all, she wouldn’t have been there if she hadn’t counted the risk first. Girls were not innocent nowadays; at least, not in the foolish sense of the word.
“I’m going to bed, I’m dog-tired,” said Hugo, and he spoke curtly. “No; I don’t want anything to eat, thanks; I’m better without it.”
“Oh, do let me bring you something when you’re in bed,” pleaded Shirley. “Some of that soup you like.”
“You really want to!” Hugo’s eyes were shining in between their long lashes. She was as innocent as a baby, he concluded swiftly. And what a mercy for her that she was! If those large green eyes had looked at him just a fraction differently—“I don’t want it, thanks,” he said. “Good-night,” and he walked to his bedroom door; opened it, and vanished.
“But I want you to have it.” Shirley was in sudden despair. She ran to the door and thumped on it. “You’ll be ill if you go to bed with no food,” she cried. “You’ve had a fearful day. Please!”
“No, thank you,” said Hugo. He had sat down on the bed and was staring at the closed door. He could visualize her through the panels of it, her silly little pale face trembling and that idiotic long dress tumbling round her heels. Utterly sweet and fresh and untried. “I never allow my servants to worry me,” he called out clearly. “Be quiet, please!”
Shirley slunk away into the kitchen. For one brief moment she would have liked to strike at him. And then she began miserably to cry.
And Hugo, forgetting that he had come into his room to go to bed, walked over to the dressing table. And then he went back to the door and, locking it, he pushed the key under the door until it was out of his reach. He would make some excuse in the morning about it, and if the flat caught fire he would smell it long before there was any danger. A key could easily fall out of a lock and bounce along polished boards, thought Hugo, beginning to undress and suddenly feeling very, very old.
Relations have a dreadful way of finding out things without being told. Perhaps there really is something behind that rather old-fashioned phrase: “reading between the lines.” In any event, Mrs. Mortimer suddenly began to feel panicky about her youngest daughter. Her letters were so very vague. They really told nothing, and what they did tell was really nothing more than a repetition of the letter before.
“I feel anxious about Shirley,” she said one day. They had just had petit déjeuner and were sitting by the comfortable fire in their bedroom. Mrs. Mortimer loved an open fire, and although the flat was centrally heated she had fires as well when there was any excuse for it. There was an excuse now. The snow was down as low as Glion, and Caux stood in a mist of white trees and gleaming slopes.
“Are you? Why?” asked Mr. Mortimer. He was not interested. “You know that was a magnificent defence of Hugo’s,” he said. “Harrington was practically a dead man, and in half an hour he had twisted them all round so that the jury were only away twenty minutes, and then returned a unanimous verdict of Not Guilty.”
“I expect that was the two women: they probably fell in love with Hugo and the men were thankful to agree with them,” said Mrs. Mortimer foolishly. “He must look desperately attractive in a wig, with that clear-cut, clean-shaven face. And I believe Mr. Harrington was good-looking, too.”
“Really, for an intelligent woman you can be remarkably foolish,” said Mr. Mortimer, and he put down the paper and began to laugh rather resentfully.
Mrs. Mortimer chuckled. “I am anxious about Shirley,” she said. “And you told me that you ought to go and see Mr. Cane. Go this coming week-end; it’s only Monday to-day. You can go on Friday, get there on Saturday, and stay at the Rubens. Have Shirley out on Sunday afternoon and evening, get your business done on Monday, and start back by the night boat. You like travelling at night, so that won’t be any hardship to you.”
“Oh, think of the packing!” Mr. Mortimer, like all artistic people, was inherently lazy. But Mrs. Mortimer was persistent, and at the back of his mind Mr. Mortimer knew that he ought to go and see his agent. Mr. Cane had said so. Besides, it would please his wife if he had a look at Shirley. If she began to worry it would be the devil.
“Ask Hugo to dinner with Shirley,” went on Mrs. Mortimer. “Yes, I know he’s married and all that, but his wife might die. She did nearly die once. Shirley looks very pretty when she is animated. She would be far happier married to a man much older than herself.”
“Why are you always thinking about Hugo and Shirley marrying each other?” asked Mr. Mortimer curiously. “You are always connecting those two together. They met here once and saw each other for about two hours, and probably since then have never seen one another, or thought about one another either,” ended up Mr. Mortimer.
“I know; but still, they are the two people that you ought to see while you are in London,” persisted Mrs. Mortimer, “and as you will really only have one free night, you must ask them both at once. Have Shirley out in the afternoon of Sunday as well. Take her to a cinema; it will please the child and it’s not a bit wrong: why should it be? Then have Hugo to dine. If you dine at your hotel you need not dress. Or at any rate, if you and Hugo do, Shirley needn’t. She told me of a printed velvet dress she had bought in Shaftesbury Avenue. I’ll write and tell her all about your coming and about what she had better wear.”
So it was settled. And that Thursday, when Shirley arrived at the Fieldings’, she found her mother’s letter and the news in it. And she was genuinely pleased. Fathers were not like mothers, they didn’t ask questions. And it would be jolly to go to the Rubens to tea and dinner. And she had the very pretty velvet frock, so her clothes were right. She would not have to ask Mr. Trent for permission to be out, because she would be out anyhow on Sunday. Shirley felt suddenly as if she longed to see someone of her own family. It was desolate always being alone. And somehow since that miserable evening after Norman Harrington was acquitted Mr. Trent had been different. Short and curt, and very rarely in in the evenings. No fun of cooking him delicious little dinners. Sometimes he didn’t even come in to tea, but would leave after breakfast with his flat suitcase containing his dress clothes and let himself in at midnight or after. The joy of the adventure was at an end.
But when Hugo got Mr. Mortimer’s letter he felt exactly like a criminal. He found it at his chambers and sat staring at it for quite a long time before he opened it. What should he do: should he accept the invitation and take the opportunity of telling Mr. Mortimer frankly what Shirley was doing? Or should he accept the invitation for the purpose of finding out what Mr. Mortimer thought Shirley was doing? Or should he not go at all and make some excuse? He sat and wondered. There was always the possibility, remote, certainly, that Shirley might have been asked to dinner too. But not likely; it was far more likely that Mortimer wanted to have a chat with him over old times. He would see his daughter in the afternoon. Besides, if she had been asked, it would be she who would be in the stew and not he. He would rather enjoy the fun of it, thought Hugo, twinkling and proceeding to answer the letter.
And Sunday was a great success. Secretly Mr. Mortimer thought that Shirley was infinitely prettier than she had been. She looked well and was animated and dimpled at him. She spoke very little about her work beyond saying that she enjoyed it. They went to a beautiful silent film at the Plaza and heard the organ played, and both came away stirred and enchanted. They had tea there, and as they had got there late, sat on to see the Pathé Gazette, which they had missed before. And they did not get back to the Rubens until nearly seven. Mr. Mortimer exclaimed when he saw the time.
“If Trent has dressed, you’ll have to amuse him until I’ve done the same,” he said, “but I told him not to, as we were only dining at an hotel, and he will probably have been in the country or somewhere, as I believe he only has a small flat in the Temple.”
“Who?” Shirley stopped dead on her way to the ladies’ dressing room and turned back to stare at her father. Who had her father said? She went on again. The attendant in the dressing room proffered a little water. Did the lady feel faint?
“No, thank you.” Shirley was fumbling in her bag. She had a sudden idea that she would put on her coat again and dash out of the hotel and fling herself into a taxi. But then her father would be so worried and anxious. It would mean explanations and inquiries. He might even want to come and see her in her situation, to see if she was all right. She saw her small face in the glass all white and queer. The attendant would probably have rouge. She asked for some.
“Certainly, madam.” The attendant, thinking that some people wanted everything for nothing, unlocked a little drawer. Shirley pulled a little tuft of cotton-wool out of the china pot and began to make herself up. A few minutes later her father, standing in the hall with his friend, felt a sudden twinge of pride at his pretty, dainty little girl as she came slowly towards them. Hugo was uncommonly good-looking, too, and a splendid fellow all round. Dolly had been right: it would be splendid if they took a fancy to one another and anything could come of it.
“Yes, I remember Miss Mortimer quite well.” Hugo was really laughing as he took Shirley’s outstretched hand. Gad! If ever a girl was frightened this one was!
“She’s quite chucked her old home and gone off completely on her own,” said Mr. Mortimer when they were all seated at the dainty little oval table in the pink and green dining room. “She earns two pounds a week and all found; don’t you, Shirley?”
“Yes,” said Shirley, and the colour came back a little to her dry lips. He so obviously did not know anything, and yet how astounding it was that he didn’t!—why was she in such a sick panic?
“Splendid! How do you like work, Miss Mortimer?” Hugo was drinking his soup and he glanced at Shirley over the shallow spoon.
“Oh, I love it,” said Shirley. She suddenly began to enjoy herself. After all, what was there to be afraid of? she asked herself. Why was it worse to meet Mr. Trent than any other man? The terror lay in her own mind. If he did not know that she was his housekeeper, the same person that brought him his early tea and looked a perfect fright in hideous clothes, why should she mind? She wasn’t going to mind. And then a strange little thought crept into her mind. Why shouldn’t she try to attract this man? She adored him, and always had done ever since the first second that she had seen him. Well, then——
And Mr. Mortimer was delighted with his daughter. Such fetching, confiding, simple little ways; independence had done much for Shirley. The dinner was a huge success. Hugo was at his best, telling little witty stories with a rare skill. The three laughed together and the time flew; and then Shirley glanced at the clock above the old dresser. “Why, it’s ten o’clock,” she said; “I must go.”
“Must you, my child: is the old lady a tartar?” Mr. Mortimer chuckled and glanced at Hugo.
“Oh, no, that’s all right,” Shirley stammered a little. “It doesn’t matter what time I get in really, but——”
“Wait a minute or two longer, Miss Mortimer, and then I will see you home,” said Hugo cordially.
“You’ll feel happier about her, Mortimer, if you know that she is under my fatherly care,” he twinkled.
“Much,” said Mr. Mortimer. “Wait a minute or two longer, Shirley. Or, if you like, go and put on your coat and come back. Mr. Trent will meanwhile have another drink.”
“Yes, but I don’t suppose you go the same way, Mr. Trent,” said Shirley unhappily. “Father, I’m quite accustomed to going about London alone. Really I am!”
“I very easily can go the same way,” said Hugo, smiling pleasantly, and deep down within him something chuckled and danced. This was a rare joke; he had got her now, unless he was very much mistaken.
“But I like going about alone,” said Shirley desperately.
And Mr. Mortimer suddenly felt provoked. This was how girls put men off, he thought. “I shall feel very much happier about you, Shirley, if you let Mr. Trent take you to wherever you have to go,” he said. “Where is it, by the way?”
“Oh, somewhere near the Strand,” said Shirley, and she could have cried with fright and anxiety. And then she could have hit herself with rage at her stupidity. Why hadn’t she said near Victoria? It would have really been untrue, and then she could have got out at Victoria and taken the underground to Charing Cross and changed her clothes and everything would have been perfectly all right.
“Splendid! Then our ways lie together,” said Hugo cheerfully. And when, Shirley having gone to get her coat, he drank a mild whisky-and-soda and listened to his friend talking about his little daughter, he felt a good deal happier than he had done for some time.
For Mr. Mortimer was astounded at the difference in Shirley. “I should hardly have known her for the same girl,” he declared. “She has filled out; she looks infinitely better and infinitely happier. I’m thankful I made the effort to come over. It will set her mother’s mind absolutely at rest. She has been worrying about her, rather.”
“I’m glad,” said Hugo simply. And he was. “You know, if you liked I would take the child out sometimes,” he said. “A quiet dinner and a theatre. I daresay it’s dull for her away from her people.”
“Would you really?” Mr. Mortimer was a little overwhelmed. Trent was in the way of becoming famous. And apparently, from what he had heard, his wife would not last very much longer. “I say, it’s most awfully good of you,” he exclaimed.
“Not at all. See if she likes the idea,” said Hugo. He stood and chattered until Shirley came back. What a pet she looked in her well-cut coat with its enveloping fur collar—such a sweet little pointed face peeping out of it.
“Shirley, you’re in luck’s way,” said Mr. Mortimer. “This very famous man says that he will take you out sometimes, if you like—a theatre and a dinner. I tell him that there is no doubt about your liking it.”
“Cut out the ‘famous,’ Mortimer, please.” Hugo gave a great gurgle of laughter. And yet at the same time he felt a swift impulse of profoundest shame. His horrible thoughts of the week before rose up and struck him between the eyes. He had been overwrought—not himself; he snatched at any excuse. In any event, never again, not even in thought.
“Oh, but I don’t think I could,” gasped Shirley. And again Mr. Mortimer was annoyed. But Hugo was suddenly merciful. “We’ll fight it out in the taxi,” he laughed. “Good-bye, Mortimer, and thank you most awfully.” He turned away to let father and daughter say their farewells alone.
“Father, I don’t want to go out with him.” Shirley was clutching at her father’s arm. “He—he frightens me. I shouldn’t enjoy it. Tell him so, please.”
“My darling, I can’t quite do that.” Mr. Mortimer stooped to kiss his daughter’s anxious face. “You make some excuse while he is driving you home; it will come better from you. Good-bye, my child; I’ll tell your mother that you are looking splendid. Good-bye again, Trent.” Mr. Mortimer stood under the brightly lighted glass canopy and watched the taxi as it steered away from the door.
“And now which way do you want to go?” Hugo spoke after a little pause. He sat back in his corner and watched Shirley’s frightened eyes gleaming out of her fur collar. His clear-cut profile was amused. This was huge fun, he thought wickedly. It was a shame, but she really had asked for it!
“If you will very kindly put me down at Charing Cross it will suit me best,” said Shirley breathlessly. “Then I can find my way from there.”
“Find your way? But why should you do that? I have the whole evening before me. I’ll drive you straight to your flat,” said Hugo. He leaned out of the window and spoke to the taxi driver. “Just go to Regent’s Park and drive round it once,” he said. “And then take us to Charing Cross.”
“Regent’s Park! That’s miles away,” exclaimed Shirley. And then all her fear went and she felt inclined to weep with joy. He liked her and wanted to be with her. Her wide eyes caught the passing light of a street lamp, and Hugo could see them shining and happy.
“I know, but I want to settle up our meeting again,” said Hugo calmly. “What play would you like to see and where would you like to go to dinner?”
“But do you really want to take me out?”
“Yes, really.”
“Oh,” Shirley gasped with pleasure.
“Why shouldn’t I want to?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Shirley’s hands were wrenched together in her lap. She felt odd and unreal. He must know who his housekeeper was. No man couldn’t.
“I should love to take you out. Tell me where you live, then I’ll write and tell you what night I am free. That sounds rude; but I am very much occupied at the moment.” Hugo sat a little farther back in his corner so that he could watch her unobserved. Unless he was very much mistaken he had got her now.
“Well, I generally have all my letters sent to friends of mine called Fielding,” faltered Shirley after a little pause.
“Good heavens! Is the good lady you work for such a tartar as all that?”
“No, not exactly that,” said Shirley unhappily. And then she turned a little on her seat. “I want to tell you something,” she said.
“Go on.” Hugo thrust one hand into his coat pocket. And quite unconsciously he clenched the fingers of it.
“I don’t work for a woman at all; I work for a man,” said Shirley, and she brought out the words in a little burst.
“Really! I say, what do your people say to that?” asked Hugo. And then he sat up a little straighter. “Would you mind if I smoked?” he asked.
“No, do.” Shirley sat silent and watched him as his clean-shaven face showed briefly in the blue light of the quickly extinguished match.
“Go on,” said Hugo, sitting back again.
“There isn’t anything else to say,” said Shirley. “I only told you because I didn’t like telling you anything that wasn’t true, somehow,” and she got crimson in the darkness.
“You know you are doing a very risky thing,” said Hugo after a little pause. “Are you alone with this man, may I ask?”
“Quite alone.”
“Who is he?”
“I would rather not tell you that, if you don’t mind,” said Shirley evasively.
“Is he a gentleman?”
“Oh, yes,” cried Shirley passionately. She flung out her hands. “I don’t want to say anything more about it,” she cried. “I only told you because of what I said, that I hated you to think I wasn’t speaking the truth. Oh, do let us go back!” she almost sobbed.
“Certainly.” Hugo’s voice was quiet and grave. He suddenly felt that the whole situation was ridiculous and almost wicked. He put his head out of the open window on his side, gave the taxi driver a brief order, and sat back again. “I’ve told him to drive to Charing Cross,” he said. “You mentioned that at first, didn’t you? Well,” he went on, “I don’t want to force your confidence, so we won’t continue our conversation”; and then he sat very still in his corner and thought desperately. His duty was so entirely obvious. He should tell her that he had seen through her disguise almost from the very beginning; that she was a foolish and reckless child, and that he was going then to the Rubens Hotel to tell her father all about it from the very beginning; that she had been as safe with him as his own child would have been if he had had one—this would have been for Mr. Mortimer alone; that he was married, therefore any romantic ideas that she might have in her precious little head were of no use at all—this would have been for the child beside him, and would be said tenderly, so as not to hurt more than possible. And then—and then Hugo, not knowing that he was doing it, flung his half-lighted cigarette out of the window and knew suddenly that he was not going to do any of these things at all—that he was going to leave the whole thing as it was and tell his conscience to go to the devil, and that as a preliminary to this course of action he was going to kiss her as she sat frightened and sweet and fragrant beside him.
And Shirley yielded in a rapture. The touch of his lips was a magic that left sensitized all the rest of her body. She simply clung to him silently.
“Well, I had no business to do that,” said Hugo, and he said it as he lifted his dark head very slowly.
“You put your hat on my knee. Here it is,” said Shirley. She straightened her own hat and wondered why her hand was trembling.
“Here is Charing Cross,” said Hugo. They were sliding past St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, standing watchful and sentinel over London with its Ever Open Door.
“When shall I see you again?” breathed Shirley. And as she thought swiftly, she was really speaking the truth. This was not the same man that she waited on daily. A new man—magical, compelling.
“I’ll let you know,” said Hugo briefly. The taxi slid over the cobbles into the station yard. The taxi driver turned in his seat and wrenched open the door and Hugo got out first and helped Shirley to alight. “Good-night,” he said; “sure this is all right for you?”
“Perfectly,” said Shirley faintly, and she turned at once and walked away into the station. And Hugo, watching her go, wondered what she did next. She had no suitcase with her, and by now the luggage office would be closed. He got into the taxi again and directed the driver to the Temple. And then he sat back in his corner and briefly wished that he were dead. His head ached and he felt profoundly wretched. The whole thing was so disgraceful and it was so obvious that it ought to be put an end to.
And meanwhile, the attendant in the white-tiled waiting room down below the level of the street was quite chatty at the sight of Shirley. “My, you are late to-night!” she exclaimed. “Here’s your suitcase; I’ve kept it quite safe for you.”
But Shirley, somehow, could hardly smile. She was so tired and it was all so frightful somehow. Like a nightmare or one of those looking-glasses where you saw yourself all different. Which was she really? she wondered, letting her soft velvet dress slip down over her knees. This girl, or the mad, bold one who lived alone in a flat and did a man’s cooking simply because she loved him and had to be near him or die?
And the attendant wondered the same thing as she saw Shirley, quaint and prim in her disguise, wending her way up the shallow flight of stairs. Only she knew nothing about the man, or there wouldn’t have been the same cordiality towards Shirley. Although the attendant didn’t like women; she saw too much of them, she thought, as she braced herself for an encounter with one who was coming down the stairs holding very tightly on to the banisters, drunk. “I’ll drunk her, if she tries to come it over me,” thought the attendant, tightening her thin lips and standing very still.
Hugo had an atrociously bad night. He lit the gas fire in his bedroom and sat and smoked by it until he heard Shirley come in. Such a gentle closing of the front door and slipping of the bolt at the bottom of it. And then as her bedroom door also closed, equally gently, he got undressed and crawled into bed. Somehow he suddenly felt as if someone had beaten him all over with a stick. And he was thirsty—damnably thirsty, although he had drunk all the water in the carafe. Why did he suddenly feel like this? He had been all right earlier in the evening. He lay and thought about the ridiculous farce that was being enacted in his own flat. It had got to come to an end. He would end it the next day. Mortimer would still be in town, and he would go round to the Rubens directly after breakfast and catch him before he started out. After thinking this he fell off into an uneasy sleep. He felt as if his head were larger than it generally was. And his throat—that came of smoking too much. Of course, he really would have to go slow with cigarettes. When he was busy he forgot how many he was smoking.
But when he finally waked at half-past seven in the morning he knew that it was not smoking that had made him feel as he did then. Some cursed fool had sneezed all over him in his chambers the other day. Influenza; it was raging in London at the moment. His head ached as if it had been hit with a ruler. His throat tickled and scratched. He felt sick. He shut his eyes and lay still. When she brought in his tea he would get her to bring the telephone extension into the room. Then he would get old Ferguson to come round and give him some revolting concoction that would put him right.
Shirley brought the telephone connection without saying anything. She also had slept badly, but her wakefulness had brought her relief. She knew now exactly what she was going to do. She was going to meet Mr. Trent on a different footing altogether; he was going to take her out as her father’s daughter. Therefore, how he regarded her in the position that she now filled didn’t matter in the least. He thought she was his housekeeper. Very well then, she was his housekeeper, and only his housekeeper.
But when at about half-past ten Dr. Ferguson stood and stared at her from outside the front door all her resolutions went by the board. He was ill; that, then, was why he had stayed in his room and said that he didn’t want any breakfast.
“Thanks.” Dr. Ferguson was rubbing his feet on the mat and taking off his overcoat. “Is Mr. Trent in his bedroom?” he inquired.
“Yes, is he ill?” gasped Shirley, her heart suffocating.
“I don’t know; that’s what I’ve come for—to find out,” said Dr. Ferguson laconically. “Thanks, I know my way.” He dismissed Shirley with a glance. He did not like her childish figure and green eyes. She was a bad lot or she wouldn’t be there, he decided.
Shirley stood and looked at the closed door. Perhaps he would die, and anyway they would take him to a nursing home. Every fibre in her slender body cried out. If he died she would die too. She rushed into the kitchen and then rushed out of it again because she couldn’t stay there. She stood in the hall, and then put her hands over her ears because she heard Mr. Trent cough. He had pneumonia and he wouldn’t be able to be moved to a home, so a nurse would be sent in. And the nurse would find out everything. She was quite white by the time Dr. Ferguson came out again.
“Influenza; no, not bad, or I should have sent in a nurse. He can just get out of bed, but you must keep the house warm. Light the sitting-room fire and keep the door of the room open; it’ll supplement this radiator.” Dr. Ferguson had his hand on it. “Nothing but milk and soda, and I’ll come again in the morning,” and Dr. Ferguson had gone without a single glance at Shirley. Plenty of people had influenza, and most of them much worse than Hugo. And then he had a sudden thought, and he ran up the stairs again. Shirley opened the door instantly. She had not moved from where she stood in the little dark hall.
“Snuffle a little diluted Glyco Thymoline up your nose every night when you go to bed. It will prevent you from catching it,” said Dr. Ferguson briefly, and vanished again. “I’ll send some in,” he shouted up over his shoulder from the corner of the staircase.
“Thank you.” Shirley shut the door again. He was not going to die then; the relief was so intense that she put her hands over her face. And then a bell rang; Hugo’s bell. Shirley dashed into the kitchen to look at the indicator.
“Oh, Mrs. Halifax”—Hugo had his dark head propped up on two pillows, “I should——” and then he broke off. “What on earth is the matter?” he said.
“I thought you were going to die.” Shirley’s face was pale. She stood close to the end of the bed and her hands were locked behind her.
“And supposing I was?” In the space of one second Hugo had relegated every single good resolution he had made the night before to infinity. To begin with, he had been frightened at feeling ill, as all healthy men are frightened, and the relief of finding that it was only an ordinary attack of influenza made him feel reckless.
“Don’t!” said Shirley, and she made a little rush and flung herself down by his low bed.
“You silly little thing!” Hugo’s voice was caressing. “Take off this damned thing,” he said, and he groped for her cap and tugged at it.
“I have.” Shirley dragged it off recklessly.
“And now then, in that proper attitude of abasement, which I am very glad to see,” said Hugo lazily, and his eyes twinkled up at the ceiling as he spoke, “tell me what you mean by this astounding piece of play-acting.” He laid a quiet hand on her hair.
“What play-acting?”
“This,” said Hugo, and he let his hand wander down to her stiff collar. And then he brought it up to her hair again. Shirley crouched a little closer to the bed.
“Did you know?” she whispered.
“Know? What do you take me for?” smiled Hugo. “Do you imagine me to be a raving lunatic, or blind as a bat, or what?”
“I had to be near you somehow,” whispered Shirley. “And I couldn’t think of any other way.”
“Well, it was extremely reprehensible of you,” said Hugo. “But we won’t discuss it now, because I’m too fed-up with this beastly headache. I’m ill, so all unpleasant discussions are waived until I am well. And the first thing I am going to do is to go across to the bathroom and shave. Go and turn on the hot water so that the room gets warm. Get me my dressing gown and slippers and put them close to the bed.”
“Yes; but you mustn’t get up,” remonstrated Shirley. She lifted her ruffled head and laid her chin on the edge of the bed. A delicious sense of content stole over her. He knew, and was not angry. And now nothing could be done to stop it, because he was ill and couldn’t go out.
“Mustn’t I? I am a man who does exactly what he likes,” said Hugo. “Do what I tell you and then go away. And when you hear me shut the bathroom door you can come back in here and tidy the room and make the bed. And as I am an invalid, I will have a hot-water bottle,” he said, and a smile broke over his clear-cut face.
“Oh!”
“Don’t look so ecstatic when I am ill,” said Hugo rebelliously. But inwardly he felt a little as Shirley did. An extraordinary lightheartedness took possession of him. His head hardly seemed to ache now. He took hold of her hand as she stood beside the bed. “I suppose we shall have to continue the ghastly uniform for fear of a surprise attack,” he said, “but for God’s sake don’t put on that cap again. Unless anyone rings at the front door, and then of course you must. Got my dressing gown and slippers? Good child!”
“Do mind you don’t get cold!” Shirley was hovering rapturous and uncertain by the door.
“Not I, I loathe being in bed far too much to risk anything,” said Hugo grimly. “Now go away as I told you, and come back when you hear the bathroom door shut.”
“Now it is really perfectly all right,” said Shirley. “I am your nurse and nurses go anywhere, don’t they?” She spoke with her small face alight with pleasure.
“Anywhere,” said Hugo. He lay and looked at her and thought how shamefully he was behaving. The very incarnation of youth and joy, and in the hollow of his hand; but because of her helplessness infinitely more precious. The way would clear: how, he did not know. Nor did he care. “Go away,” he smiled.
So Shirley went. The hall was beautifully warm. She shut herself in the kitchen until she heard the bathroom door shut and then she rushed back into his bedroom to put it exquisitely straight and tidy for him. The kettle for the hot-water bottle was already on the gas, and it would boil in about three minutes. She stood and stared round the bedroom. Clean pillowcases for his darling head. Now everything was ready except the bottle. And the bottle only took a moment to fill. Foolishly she pressed the furry cover to her lips and then dashed back into the bedroom to slip it down under the covers.
Dr. Ferguson waited a whole week before he said anything. He waited until Hugo was up and sitting by the fire in the sitting room. Only in a dressing gown, certainly, but still he was up and taking ordinary food. Shirley had nursed him devotedly, and Dr. Ferguson’s opinion of her had changed. She was no more a bad lot than was his own small sister in Edinburgh. But as she was not a bad lot, what was she doing in Hugo Trent’s flat? He suddenly asked the question, taking his pipe abruptly out of his mouth to do so.
“What do you mean?” Hugo was also smoking; but he kept his pipe in his mouth, biting sharply on the stem of it.
“I mean what I say, Hugo. We’re old friends and I’m your medical attendant as well; therefore a privileged person. What’s that child doing in your flat, man?”
“Looking after me,” said Hugo stubbornly; but he flushed heavily in spite of himself.
“Quite, and doing it uncommonly well, too,” said Dr. Ferguson easily. “But what are her people about to allow it? That’s what I want to know.”
“Oh, shut up, Ferguson, and leave me alone,” said Hugo irritably. “What I do in my flat is no one’s concern but my own. Nor is my housekeeper.”
“But I’m thinking of her,” said Dr. Ferguson quietly. “She’s only a child, and hasn’t the least idea what she is doing in taking a place like this—the sole attendant to a man in a flat in the Temple. You do know and you ought not to let her do it, Hugo. You’ve gone off your head, man!”
“No, I haven’t in the least, thank you,” said Hugo coldly. “I know what I’m doing perfectly well. Why is it worse for a girl to be housekeeper to a man in his flat than to go and nurse him in his flat when he’s ill? Heaps of women just as young as the girl I have here go out to men who live alone as I do. Only they happen to be hospital nurses.”
“And therefore very well able to take care of themselves,” said Dr. Ferguson laconically, “even if that was all that there is to it, which you know is not the fact, Hugo. A nurse has a different position altogether; her profession ensures it to her.”
“I tell you that I’m perfectly well able to look after myself in this affair,” said Hugo coldly, “and I would ask you very kindly, Ferguson, to mind your own business.”
“But I tell you that I’m interested in the lassie and that I don’t like it,” flared Dr. Ferguson. “It’s a wrong position for the child, and if you can’t see it I’m here to tell you that it is. Get another doctor: I won’t attend you any more.” Dr. Ferguson got up out of his chair.
“Sit down, Ferguson, and don’t be a damned fool.” Hugo suddenly began to cough. “I’m an invalid,” he said, “and you yell at me and make me worse.”
“No, you’re not—you’re putting it on because you’re in a corner,” said Dr. Ferguson. But he sat down again all the same. “You’re going to tell me all about it, Hugo,” he admonished. “A doctor and a priest—they’re practically the same, ye know.”
“Yes, I know they are, and I think I will. Have another pipe. Now listen and tell me what else I could have done,” said Hugo. He told the whole story from beginning to end, leaving out nothing except his few caresses. For they had really been few: since he had been ill there was practically nothing on his conscience. Certainly she had sat by his bed and he had put his hand on her head. Well, you can put your hand on a dog’s head, thought Hugo uncomfortably, trying to think that it was the same and knowing that it wasn’t.
“Well, I agree with you that it was a difficult position, especially because you did not find out for some time after she arrived,” conceded Dr. Ferguson. “But now you and she both know, Hugo, the position’s impossible. It is made more impossible because you know her parents. It’s like going to stay with people and stealing their silver. You can’t do it.”
“I will do it,” suddenly flamed out Hugo, and he got very white. “My life’s been a hell; you know it has, Ferguson, and why shouldn’t I take the little consolation that offers? The child loves me—I know she does—and so do you, so it doesn’t matter telling you. Why shouldn’t I have her? I would take care of her and make it easy for her. I shouldn’t keep her here, of course, to work like a slave for me. But there are other places, aren’t there? I could afford to keep her as she ought to be kept.”
“You’d be sorry for it afterwards, Hugo,” said Dr. Ferguson quietly, and he shifted his position a little in his chair and sat staring into the fire. “I’m not one of those people who consider the chastity of a woman the beginning and end of the world. In my profession I have too often come across those who have lost it for the love of a man to be such a damned fool, if I may put it crudely. But I think with a child like the one we are speaking of you are taking an unfair advantage. She loves you now, and probably would love you for ever—you’re not a man that a woman would be likely to fall out of love with. But she might—I don’t say that she would, but she might—think afterwards that it hadn’t been fair of you. And if I know you at all, Hugo, that would be the end of you,” finished Dr. Ferguson seriously.
“Yes, I know, you’re perfectly right,” said Hugo abruptly. “Don’t suppose that I don’t know that you’re right, I’m not such a damned fool. But it’s just the doing of it that’s going to be so awful—the sending of her away. It’ll be like killing an animal that trusts you. I saw that done once: a man I was with shot at a hare that was sitting up staring at us with its nice little pointed ears cocked up. I hated him. He was a cad.”
“Quite; but——” and then Dr. Ferguson broke off. He would not say the obvious thing, that it would have been far worse to have wounded the hare for the rest of its life. Hugo would think of that presently, and meanwhile he would go away and leave him alone. He got up and went away. And as luck would have it, he ran into Shirley standing in the hall. She looked as if she had just been speaking to someone at the front door.
“It was someone to see Mr. Trent, but I told him that he was not really well enough to see visitors yet,” said Shirley. She was peering at the card. “Mr. Norman Harrington,” she read out the name.
“Ah, that’s the gentleman whom Mr. Trent saved from a very ugly death indeed,” said Dr. Ferguson jovially. “He’s come to thank him again, and I don’t wonder. You could have let him in,” he continued; “Mr. Trent’s quite himself again now.”
“Oh, is he?” Shirley made no attempt to hide her rapture. “Say it’s because I nursed him properly, Doctor,” she pleaded, and she gazed up into the kindly rugged face looking down into hers.
“It’s entirely that, coupled with my wonderful medical skill,” chuckled Dr. Ferguson. And he laughed again as Shirley helped him on with his coat. He felt much happier about this child now. Hugo was a white man, if anyone was, and would do the right thing. He actually whistled as he went down the stairs, and Dr. Ferguson was not given to whistling.
But he left Hugo feeling wretched and furious. There is nothing so infuriating as to have your obvious duty pointed out to you by somebody else. Especially if you have known all the time that it is your obvious duty. Hugo went to bed early and slept atrociously. How could he get rid of Shirley without almost wounding her to death? How should he put it? He turned and turned again in his narrow bed. He would do it the next day, because it was Sunday and she would be going out in the afternoon. He was perfectly well enough to be left, and she had not been out for more than a few minutes’ shopping for a week. He would tell her directly after lunch, when she brought him his coffee. For the last three days they had had coffee together, sitting by the bright fire in the sitting room, the cap in the hall all ready in case of emergency. And Hugo would look at Shirley’s bright eyes and tender little mouth, and wonder why on earth he couldn’t have been born a really unscrupulous man. Infinitely easier all round if he had been.
And he wondered it again when Sunday came and they sat by the fire with the little low table between them. To make herself feel more festive, Shirley had taken off her stiff collar and turned the neck of the print dress into a little V. She had no muslin collar to make it dainty, but it was tidy, anyhow, and she had not the least idea how white her slender neck was. Hugo had: he turned his eyes away from it as he spoke.
“I have decided that you must go away from here, Shirley,” he said. “I haven’t made up my mind in a hurry, but it is absolutely made up. And it must be soon.”
“What?”
“What I say. You mustn’t stay here.”
“Why?”
“Why, because it’s out of the question. It’s unsuitable. It’s improper. Improper is a ridiculous word, but it’s the only word I can think of that expresses it.”
“Yes; but I can’t go away from you. I—I—I— simply can’t.”
“You must, dear.”
“No, I can’t—I can’t; it’s cruel of you to suggest it.” Shirley lost her self-control. “Why, why——”
“Why, because you know you must,” said Hugo quietly. “Think what I must have felt the other night accepting your father’s hospitality and yet knowing all the time that I had his daughter in my flat as my servant, slaving for me. Why, it’s ghastly—it’s horrible. I ought never to have allowed it for twenty-four hours. Why I did, I can’t conceive.”
“Yes; but you must have somebody to look after you,” cried Shirley. “You told Mother and Father in Montreux that it was so wretched because you could never get anyone that you could trust. A man who works like you do must be properly looked after. You can trust me, can’t you?” she sobbed.
“Of course I can.” Hugo’s heart suddenly melted. “But supposing I say that I can’t trust myself?” he said gravely; “that if you go on staying here, well—— You know what I mean, I expect. Well, I’m your father’s friend. How can I behave like that to his child?” said Hugo, and he looked frankly across the low table that separated them.
“Take the table away; I can’t talk properly with it there,” wailed Shirley. She sat huddled in her chair while he got up and moved it to one side. And then, when he sat down again, she got out of her chair and flung herself down at his feet. “I can’t go away from you—I can’t,” she choked. “I don’t mind what relationship it is, as long as I’m near you. I’ll be—I’ll be your slave. I should like to be. It isn’t called that, but I’ll be it,” she sobbed.
“My sweet, don’t be such a little goose,” said Hugo, and he smiled over her head. She was making it easier because she was such a child. Briefly he wondered if she knew that he was married and concluded that she must, or even anyone as young as this would have resented the unspoken insult in his last words. Because if he was not married, why on earth shouldn’t he ask her to marry him? It would be frightfully unsuitable, of course, because he was twenty years older than she was. But still, it would be the obvious thing to do.
“I simply can’t go away from you,” sobbed Shirley. “You don’t know what it’s like to feel for anyone as I do for you. That’s why I came to be your servant, simply to be near you. I felt like that the minute I saw you standing by that window in the flat in Montreux. Up to then I hadn’t known what I had been born for: there seemed nothing that mattered; nothing worth while. And then, when I saw you I knew, and somehow I knew too that God would make it easy for me to get your place. And He did, you see. It must have been for some reason, because think of the frantic chance it was that I did get it. And now you are going to send me away from you.” Shirley wept again.
“What else can I do?” said Hugo hopelessly. And as he spoke he wondered how it was that he could be so callous. Was it that his heart was dead—atrophied? Apart from his brief impulse of passion, of which he was now extremely ashamed, he had no feeling of any sort for Shirley except an intense gratitude to her. He shuddered as he thought of his daily life without her. She had run his flat perfectly. “Even if you are no longer here as my bonne à tout faire” he said lightly, “we can still meet. I told your father that I wanted to take you out, and I do. You will still see me.” And then he broke off and thought how intensely fatuous the words sounded.
“But I don’t want to see you like that,” said Shirley slowly. Pride was coming to her rescue, although rather late in the day, as she thought bitterly. He did not care for her a particle or he would say so now. And that, of course, was what had been in her mind from the very beginning—that he would get to care for her. She had pretended that it was because she wanted to take care of him that she had taken the place as his housekeeper, and so it had been, partly. But not all. And now she had offered herself to him without any reservation whatever, and he had refused the gift. Kindly, certainly, but he had refused it. An agony of frozen shame dried up her tears. She got up and stood there beside him with her face turned away.
“Well?” Hugo now began to feel conscience-stricken. He felt for the small hand that hung down straight by her side. “Kind little hand,” he said, and he took hold of it and carried it to his lips.
“Don’t—you don’t mean it really. You only really think depraved, abandoned little hand,” blazed Shirley. The extremity of her shame suddenly seized on her. “I want to go now,” she cried, “this instant. I won’t sleep in the flat another night with you thinking all the time how revolting I am. I would rather die than do it.” She rushed to the door.
“Come back!” Hugo got up out of his chair.
“I won’t.” Shirley had seized the handle of the door in her hand. Her small face was white with passion and mortification as she faced him. “You think that because I said that I would be your slave I have no feelings,” she cried. “But I have. But they’re dead, frozen feelings. I shall never be the same any more. You’ve done something awful to my soul. Let me go away now and never see you any more.”
“Certainly not; you are coming to sit down again, to talk sensibly, as I tell you,” said Hugo. His heart began to thump. He walked towards the door.
But Shirley had wrenched round the handle and flung herself into the hall. And Hugo waited, and then decided not to follow her. Unless he was very much mistaken she would come back in a minute or two. He walked back to his chair and sat down in it.
But it was a long time before he heard any sound. And then he tightened his lips; she was coming in now: what should he say to her? But the footsteps passed the sitting-room door and went on. And the next thing was the sharp click of the front-door latch.
Then Hugo did get up in a hurry. A sudden dreadful sense of loss invaded him. He went across the hall into the kitchen. It was beautifully tidy, and a little tray was already laid with tumbler and knives and forks. There was a note on the tray, written in pencil.
Dear Mr. Trent:
If you hadn’t been quite well I wouldn’t have gone like this, whatever I felt, because I couldn’t have borne it. But you are; Dr. Ferguson told me so to-day. I have put your supper ready and I will call in at the Lodge and ask Mrs. Thomson to come round and get your tea. Thomson says she will; I have asked him, and as I told him I had to go in a hurry he says she will come in every day until you get someone else. I implore you not ever to tell anyone that I came to be your servant. They would think what you do—that I am depraved. But indeed I am not. I have packed my trunk and taken my suitcase with me, and Thomson will have it sent to Charing Cross by Carter Paterson to-morrow. My wages are due to-morrow, but if you have any feeling for me at all, please do not try to send them to me. That is part of my undying shame, that I took money from you, although, of course, I had to, or you would have known at once.
There was no signature to this letter. Hugo read it through and then put it in his pocket. He was astounded at the wave of misery that swept over him. Why, she had been absolutely part of the house! It was incredible that she could have gone. He stared round him. She couldn’t have gone! He went out of the kitchen into her bedroom. But it was empty. Even the blankets off the bed were neatly folded and laid on the mattress.
Hugo came out again. Fool that he had been to sit and wait for her to come into the sitting room again! He went and sat down by the fire and stared at his long fingers. He felt stupid. But then, as he told himself, he had only just got over influenza; naturally he felt stupid. That also would account for the feeling he had that he would like to cry, he thought, leaning back in his chair and shutting his eyes and furiously finding his handkerchief and blowing his nose with it. She had gone: where? To the friends to whom she went on her days out. But who were they? How could he find out? He couldn’t. Besides, if he could, what was the use? He could not make the only amends possible, which was to ask her to be his wife.
And when, about two hours later, wiry Mrs. Thomson bustled in to get him his tea, she found him still sunk in his chair and the fire nearly out. But she soon put it all right with energy and vigour. “They’re all alike, young and old,” she fumed, dragging up the little table and setting it in front of him without any cloth on.
And Hugo replied suitably. After all, what was there to say? he thought drearily.
Mrs. Fielding was astounded to hear that Shirley had left her place so suddenly. But the flat was spacious and she loved Shirley and money was no object, so she gave her the warmest of warm welcomes to stay as long as she liked. Although she did say a quiet word to Marjory about it.
“Do you know why Shirley has left her job so hurriedly?” she asked.
“No, Mother,” said Marjory frankly. And it was true. She did not know. To her questions Shirley returned a pallid silence. At first she said that she could not stay in the Fieldings’ flat. She would get rooms. She had about fifty pounds in her Post Office savings bank account—heaps to go on with until she found another post.
But Marjory scoffed at that.
“Then don’t ask me why I left,” said Shirley.
And Marjory promised not to, although she felt pretty certain that she knew. She hated Mr. Trent; men were all alike. Marjory was beginning to be even more worldly-wise than she had been before. Shirley looked dreadful, all her shimmering unearthly radiance merged into something hard and tragic. Marjory felt more anxious than she admitted even to herself. Supposing——
However, she said nothing about her fears. And after a day or two Shirley seemed to revive. She was determined to get another post and went out every morning to look for one. Old Thomson had sent her trunk to Charing Cross Parcels Office and she went to collect it in a taxi. The sight of Charing Cross sent the tears to her eyes in a silent flood. How utterly and completely happy she had been there! Even at the parcels office when at first she had deposited her suitcase there. A ghastly temptation seized on her to go and wander round the Temple Gardens and look at the flat. But she stamped it down. Old Thomson might see her, and somehow she did not want him to think badly of her, because they had always got on well. Not that he would be likely even to recognize her, because she was in different clothes. But still, he might. And then there was Mr. Trent. If she saw him, how could she do anything but rush to him, and be repulsed again? Shirley set her little white teeth and her green eyes shone queerly.
So she kept away from the Temple. And Norman Harrington, who had rather haunted it because he wanted again to see that queer-looking servant of Trent’s with a face like a Greuze, only much more beautiful, felt that it was time for him to call on Trent again. He hated going because of the circumstances in which they had met. But he owed him a visit of thanks, and now there was an added inducement to pay it.
Fortunately, Hugo was in and having tea. But he easily might not have been, as he told Norman over a rather crudely prepared tray. Because now that his housekeeper had left he very often didn’t come in until late at night; having all his meals out.
“Left!” Norman’s mortification was unconcealed. “Good God, and I would have given that woman twenty pounds a week to have come and sat for me,” he exclaimed. “Where does she live? Do you know?”
“No,” said Hugo rather shortly.
“Why, she was most astoundingly beautiful,” said Norman excitedly. “You mayn’t have noticed it, because of that ghastly uniform she wore. But her neck came out of that fearful collar like the stem of a flower. Her face was dazzling. Why, it’s awful to think she’s gone.” Norman was fuming.
“Well, she has gone,” said Hugo briefly, and was suddenly glad that she had. This was all very well in its way, he thought, but there were limits. “Where are you living now?” he asked, forcing himself to speak cordially.
“At Chelsea. I was lucky; I stepped straight into Wreford’s house,” said Norman. “He was ordered to the South of France for the winter and he told me privately that he thought he would very likely never come back. So I took on the remainder of his lease. It suits me excellently.”
“I believe you’re getting on extremely well,” said Hugo. “In fact, you’ve got on,” he laughed; “I put it rather crudely.”
“Yes, thanks to you,” said Norman quietly. The eyes of the two men met, and Hugo gave a little quiet nod. “That’s all right,” he said, “we won’t talk about that now. It’s forgotten.”
“Well.” Norman flushed and felt awkward. He got up to go after a few more minutes’ talk. Hugo took him out to the front door. He hoped that his visitor would not say anything more about Shirley.
“I say, isn’t there any way that I could trace that late domestic of yours?” asked Norman, as he stood on the rug cramming his soft hat down on his head. “I mean, she was the very essence of what I want. You so rarely get that look of spirituality with that colouring—at least, in a class that you can subsidize,” he laughed. “Haven’t you any idea where she is?”
“Not the remotest,” said Hugo, and he spoke the truth. But had he known he would not have told this man, he thought, as he shut the door behind him; only waiting to smile again as Norman waved from the corner. He felt furious. Shirley to sit to this man who had murdered his own wife! Certainly he had had provocation, but still—Hugo sat down and glowered at the fire. Where was she? What a damned fool he was not to try to find her. But even if he did find her, what could he say? You can’t say to a girl that you have a wife of your own and that if she dies you will see if you like her well enough to marry her! It was all so hopeless. Hugo suddenly got up and began to pace up and down the room.
And meanwhile Norman got into his car, which he had left by the arched entrance to Well Walk, and turned up into the Strand. It was deserted because it was Sunday. He turned out of it again: it was dismal with its shuttered shops and few sauntering couples. He would do a daring thing; park his car in the gravelled space reserved for Benchers, just below the old archway in the Temple, and then walk along through the Gardens. The chrysanthemums were beautiful, although it was getting a little late for them. The parking place would be empty because it was Sunday, he wouldn’t be doing anyone out of a pitch.
And when he got into the Gardens he could almost have cried with pleasure. In spite of her different clothes, he recognized Shirley in an instant. He had unconsciously and consciously scanned almost every woman’s face for the last ten days. This was the one that he had been looking for. He stopped dead as they came face to face on the well-rolled gravel path.
“Excuse me”—Norman had a very nice voice and a charming smile. “Don’t think me very forward, but aren’t you Mr. Hugo Trent’s late housekeeper?”
“Yes, why?” Shirley replied instantly. He was ill and wanted her, and had sent this man out to look for her. That was why she had come to the Gardens. “Why?” she repeated.
Norman was relieved. From the look of this girl with her fragile face and dainty clothes he might have laid himself open to a very severe snub. But, then, all that class looked like this nowadays; you could not tell them from the genuine article.
“Why, because ever since I saw you at Mr. Trent’s flat I have wondered if you would come and sit to me,” he said frankly. “I don’t know whether you know that I am an artist. I have just been there, and he told me you had left and that he did not know your address,” he said.
“Oh, what did he look like?” The words leaped to Shirley’s lips, but she bit them back. But to see this man was like a drink of water when you were dying of thirst. She turned and fell into step beside him. Norman was delighted: this was beyond his wildest hopes. No preliminary apologies needed at all. Simply, later, an arrangement of terms, and he would make them very generous, because this girl was exactly what he wanted. She was the incarnation of what he had dreamed of. But what on earth had she been doing in Trent’s flat? It was not possible that Hugo Trent should not have known that she was quite a young girl. The uniform had been a blind, of course—a protection against the tongues of casual visitors like himself. But still—Norman suddenly remembered the quiet, clear-cut face under the curly wig. The very antithesis of anything like a squalid intrigue with a domestic servant. But still, you could never tell.
“Well, what shall we do now?” Norman’s voice was cheerful. The high fur collar of Shirley’s coat reached to his shoulder. She walked neatly and with a little swing.
“I don’t know. Go somewhere where we can sit and talk,” said Shirley recklessly. She would be able to say Hugo’s name to this man. She had remembered him now—the man who was supposed to have murdered his wife.
“Well?” Norman thought briefly. “Come back with me to my house,” he said; “it’s only a small one, but still it’s nice in its way. Then you can see the studio and everything.”
“Oh, yes, I should love to,” said Shirley.
Norman swung round and took hold of her elbow. “This way, then,” he said; “I parked my car in the Temple; I’d no business to, but I thought that as it was Sunday I could risk it.”
“Oh, I don’t want to go into the Temple,” gasped Shirley. “I’ll wait for you here, under this lamppost.”
“No, no,” said Norman. “The car park isn’t anywhere near Trent’s flat,” he volunteered. “Much more this way.”
“Oh!” Shirley passed her tongue over her dry lips and began to walk on again. Norman was intrigued. Then there had been something? What? he wondered briefly.
“You see, here we are,” he said. “Trent’s flat’s over there, through that courtyard and then through another. Besides, I left him tucked up by a very nice fire, not looking at all as if he were contemplating going out.”
“Is he ill, then?” gasped Shirley. At any cost she must know. She stared up at Norman from under her small hat. The light from a gas lamp caught her wide green eyes.
“Ill! No; fit as a flea,” laughed Norman. “Never saw a man look better in my life.” But he felt a swift impulse of pity as he spoke. Had Trent given this girl the push when he found that she was becoming a nuisance? “Here’s the car,” he went on. “Hop in!”
Shirley got in. It was a very nice car and a closed one. Norman steered carefully down onto the wide road that runs parallel with the Embankment and set the bonnet of it towards Chelsea. “It’s not far,” he said, “and we can keep along by the river all the way. I love it, don’t you? I always think it so frightfully romantic.”
“Rather!” agreed Shirley. She felt suddenly happier than she had done for a long time. This man was a link with the man she adored. At the Fieldings’ she had never mentioned his name, not even to Marjory. She was beginning to want to leave the Fieldings’; there wasn’t enough to do there. How could there be? After all, her days in the Temple flat had been occupied from morning to night. Mrs. Fielding was an angel, and Marjory and she went everywhere together. But Marjory and a young man home on leave from India were beginning to get very friendly. He was always wanting Marjory to go out with him, and Shirley felt in the way. Marjory wouldn’t believe that she preferred to stay at home or go long walks alone. And Mrs. Fielding seemed to think it was hardly fair, too, although Shirley thought that she wanted Marjory and Captain Fairfax to be engaged by the way she looked when she spoke about them.
“Here we are.” Norman Harrington steered the car up to the curb. Here was the wrought-iron gate of a tiny house with a front door painted bright blue. Shirley could see the blue by the light of the gas lamp close to it. “I expect my man and his wife will be out because it is Sunday,” said Norman easily, as he turned the key in the lock of the front door. “But you won’t mind, I know. There’s sure to be a gorgeous fire in the studio; there always is.”
There was. Shirley looked round in a rapture. “Oh, what a beautiful room!” she exclaimed.
“Do you think so? I’m so glad. Sit down in that big chair by the fire; it’s awfully comfortable. Have a cigarette.” Norman had taken off his hat and overcoat and was wandering round the room.
“No, I don’t smoke, thank you,” said Shirley.
“I’ll have one then.” Norman lighted one and flipped the match into the fire. Shirley puzzled him. She couldn’t really be anybody, and yet she looked as if she were.
“What is that for?” Shirley had been looking round the room. Such a beautiful room: the polished boards covered with Persian rugs in dim mysterious colourings.
“That? Oh, that’s for the model. Her throne. Where I hope you’ll be sitting before very long,” said Norman, who had turned in his chair to follow the direction of Shirley’s gaze.
“I! Why? Why should you want to paint me?” said Shirley simply.
“Take off your hat, and I’ll tell you,” said Norman. “Comb your hair in that little alcove behind the curtain. See?” he got up to show her. “Take off that big coat and come back.”
Shirley did as she was told. It was all very odd, but it was fun, she concluded. Something new. And after all, Mr. Harrington was a very well-known man. Mr. Fielding had been very sarcastic about that, saying that you had only got to be suspected of being a murderer and your career was assured—especially if it got into the papers, as Mr. Harrington’s case had done. She combed her hair in front of the oval mirror in the alcove, and felt excited. The shaded light did make her look pretty. She came out from behind the curtain and walked towards Norman, feeling shy and excited and frightened all at the same time.
“So you wear green! Thank God for that!” said Norman. He came to meet her, and taking her by the shoulders he led her across to a long gilt-framed mirror. “You ask me why I want to paint you. Look at that and don’t be a little juggins,” said Norman quietly.
“Juggins!” Shirley was briefly affronted. It sounded wrong, somehow. They had only just met; you didn’t call a person a juggins at once.
“Well”—Norman still had hold of her shoulders—“juggins is rather too strong perhaps,” he said penitently. “But it conveys what I mean.” He looked over her head into the mirror. “‘Spirit of the Dawn,’” he said. “It’ll do for next year’s Academy. Shall we begin?”
“Begin what?” asked Shirley. She had caught some of Norman’s enthusiasm. Rather bliss to be in the Academy, although no one would know that it was she.
“The picture,” said Norman. He had led her back to her chair by the fire. “I’ll give you fifteen pounds a week,” he said, “if you will come here every morning from ten till one for certain, and sometimes in the afternoons if the light is good enough and I want you.”
“Fifteen pounds!” gasped Shirley.
“Yes; because, you see, you won’t really be able to do anything else,” said Norman. “Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I want you for certain for the next two months, anyhow. And any afternoon that I choose. But I shall generally be able to tell you in the morning about the afternoon. So that you will be able to get off sometimes.”
“Is there anywhere about here where I could live?” said Shirley excitedly. Her brain was in a whirl. Fifteen pounds a week and nothing to do but to sit still.
“Loads of places. Oakley Street, quite close to here is full of them,” said Norman. He was delighted. He got up and went to a little carved cupboard. “You’ll have a drink?” he said. “What? Shall I mix you a cocktail? I’m rather good at it.”
“Oh, no, thank you,” said Shirley hastily. She suddenly felt that she was doing something dreadfully wrong. “I must go,” she said, and she got up abruptly.
“Oh, no, not yet. Besides, we haven’t fixed it all up yet,” said Norman cheerfully. “I can’t have you giving me the slip, you know. What’s your address by the way?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” faltered Shirley. “I haven’t one. At least, not one that I can give you. Why must you know my address? I promise to come on Tuesday—won’t that do?”
“Perfectly, as long as you stick to it,” said Norman frankly. But for the first time he felt suspicious. Where did this girl live that she could not give him her address? That must have been why Trent had got rid of her: he was beginning to get nervous. Blackmail: he suddenly felt a little nervous himself. He would consult Trent about it after he had had her sitting a week. Not before, because after to-night he might never see her again. Besides, what harm could she do him? An artist surely ought to be proof against blackmail. And a model was protected by a peculiar code of her own.
“I shall come,” said Shirley slowly. And there was something about the set of her soft mouth that made Norman know that she was telling the truth.
“Good: and I’m only sorry that I can’t drive you home,” said Norman as Shirley, in her coat and hat again, stood quietly by the fire looking at him. “But I can’t if you won’t tell me where you live, can I? Although perhaps I could take you part of the way?”
“No, thank you,” said Shirley firmly.
“I don’t even know your name,” ventured Norman.
“No.” Shirley suddenly sent out a little gurgle of laughter. “It’s exciting, isn’t it?” she said.
“Desperately,” said Norman, and for the first time since that hideous nightmare of his time in prison he felt a little stirring of interest. As a rule, he felt that all interest of the kind was dead. He could be fond of his mother, and was. But of another woman, never! But Shirley pleased the aesthetic side of him. Although after she had gone he recoiled from the thought of her. Was he born to prefer a woman of a lower class? he wondered, pouring himself out a drink and then wandering round the studio with the tumbler clasped in his long, nervous fingers.
When, that evening, Mrs. Fielding heard that Shirley contemplated taking another post, she suddenly put her foot down. “No, darling,” she said, “not from this house unless you tell me what it is.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because I am responsible for you to your mother and father,” said Mrs. Fielding warmly. “You take a post and tell us nothing about it, and then leave it as abruptly as you took it. Well, there’s something funny about that, Shirley. I simply cannot have it happen again.”
“Marjory knew,” said Shirley unhappily.
“Yes, I know she did; but apparently you swore her to secrecy over it, darling.”
“Yes, I know; but then I’m grown up,” said Shirley wretchedly. Why, oh, why hadn’t she gone into rooms straight away? She could easily have afforded it.
“Grown up! Shirley, you’re only a baby, really.” Mrs. Fielding surveyed the childish figure in front of her. Mr. Fielding and Marjory had gone to the library to play poker patience and had left Mrs. Fielding and Shirley alone in the small drawing room. It was cosy, with a bright fire in the grate. Mrs. Fielding looked charming in her brocade evening coat trimmed with fur. Shirley wore her velvet frock and looked extremely pretty in it. But pale, awfully pale, thought Mrs. Fielding, scrutinizing her closely.
“I wish you’d be really frank with me, Shirley,” she said after a little pause. “After all, I’m not really old-fashioned, darling.”
“It’s not my nature to be frank with anyone,” mumbled Shirley miserably. “But you know I wouldn’t do anything wrong. I mean I do know things: at least, I’m not a baby about—well, you know—things that matter.”
“Yes; but how do I know that you mightn’t get into serious trouble simply because you are so sure that you’re so well able to take care of yourself, Shirley? You say that you want to go off and live in some hotel in Chelsea and go out to work every day. But what work? Can’t you tell me that?”
“No, I simply can’t,” said Shirley, and she hung her head miserably.
“Well, but you simply must,” said Mrs. Fielding impatiently. She suddenly wished that she had never befriended Shirley at all. It was too much, all this absurd secrecy.
“I promised to be at the place that I’ve taken—I mean I promised to go to work on Tuesday morning,” said Shirley anxiously. “And I must go, whatever you say.”
“Tuesday!” Mrs. Fielding was knitting—something soft and blue and fluffy. She began to count stitches to give herself time. “Is it something like work in a shop?” she asked after a little pause. “Something quite all right in itself, but something that you think I might think odd?”
“Yes, it is,” said Shirley instantly. “It isn’t work in a shop, but it’s something like that—odd.”
“Oh.” Mrs. Fielding was silent for a little while. “Could you go to it from here?” she asked.
“Yes, I could, easily,” said Shirley instantly. “But I can’t go on staying here indefinitely. It’s imposing on you. Why should I, after all?”
“Why shouldn’t you, dear?” said Mrs. Fielding comfortably. “The flat is large and my husband likes you, and Marjory is very fond of you. And then you never get in the way, Shirley. I mean to say that Marjory has her own friends now and you never seem to mind being left.”
“But I like being left!” exclaimed Shirley. “I mean to say that I don’t feel that it is being left. I like being alone.” In her relief and thankfulness she knelt down at Mrs. Fielding’s feet. “Oh, do you think that Marjory really is going to be engaged?” she gasped.
“Yes, I really believe she is,” said Mrs. Fielding. Since Marjory had started a love affair of her own, some of Mrs. Fielding’s weariness of outlook seemed to have gone. It had brought a new feeling into the house. The air seemed to tingle a little, instead of lying cold and flat.
“Oh, how madly exciting!” breathed Shirley. She sat up and leaned her head against Mrs. Fielding’s knee. “Then may I really go to work from here—at any rate for a little while?” she pleaded.
“Yes, you may,” said Mrs. Fielding. She suddenly felt that it would be fun to have Shirley to talk to about Marjory’s love affair, and also that Shirley, for her age, was a really very sensible girl. Having her coming home safely at night would ensure everything being all right, thought Mrs. Fielding, who in her younger days had also craved for adventure every whit as much as Shirley did. She entered into the girl’s mind and sympathized with her. And Shirley knew that she did, and the way that she clutched Mrs. Fielding round the neck that night when she kissed her told Mrs. Fielding so.
But all the same, when on Tuesday morning Shirley, neat and dainty, started off from the flat for her morning’s work, whatever it might be, Mrs. Fielding felt her misgivings return. “Marjory, do you know where Shirley has gone?” she asked of her daughter, who was sitting sunk in a low chair by the fire, reading the Morning Post.
“No, Mother, I don’t,” said Marjory airily. “But why do you worry? She’ll be back to lunch all right. Girls aren’t like they used to be, darling,” she said reprovingly.
“No, I should think they weren’t,” said Mrs. Fielding hopelessly, and she stood and stared out of the window. The trees in the Park were bare and leafless, but there were still some leaves on the grass and a man in uniform was sweeping them up.
“Shirley is awfully capable of taking care of herself,” went on Marjory. “And she is awfully nice, too, in the way that she never wants to be entertained. Don’t you think so, Mother?”
“Yes, I do. I think Shirley is a very nice girl indeed,” said Mrs. Fielding. “If I didn’t, I should not ask her to stay here indefinitely, Marjory.”
“No.” Marjory was looking up at her mother’s back. Should she tell her that Fergus had proposed to her the night before, or should she keep it to herself a little while longer? And then Marjory felt a queer prickling of remorse. After all, it would be hateful if the first news her mother got of it was from her father when Fergus went to him. “Mother, Fergus asked me to marry him last night,” she said softly.
And that was the end of any thought or worry about Shirley. Mrs. Fielding’s neat pleated skirt swirled round her knees as she swung round to face her daughter. An engagement and a wedding! For a few brief months she would be able to renew her own youth.
Shirley came back to lunch rather flushed and excited, to find the flat in a turmoil. No one even asked how she had got on. Marjory was going to be engaged, and although Shirley had been fairly certain that she was, to know it definitely was a delirium of excitement. She would have to be a bridesmaid. Although Marjory was not even engaged yet, they began to discuss the bridesmaids’ dresses. Shirley would now, of course, have to stay until Marjory was married, because there would be such heaps to do and discuss. The whole afternoon was spent in blissful and excited discussion by the drawing-room fire, after drinking heaps of coffee with lots of sugar candy in it. Mrs. Fielding had not been so happy for a very long time.
It took Norman Harrington about a week to be quite sure that Shirley was well-bred. And it took him about another fortnight to begin to fall in love with her. His mother found it out first. He was spending the week-end at home and the weather was bad, and he sat nearly all day by the fire in the library, smoking.
“Do you feel all right, my darling?” Mrs. Harrington came into the library and stood behind her son’s chair. As she looked down at his head she wondered if there were any torture to equal the torture of a mother when she realizes that her son is thinking about some woman who, ten to one, will make him wretched if he marries her.
“Perfectly,” said Norman calmly, and he suddenly cursed the intuition which made a son’s mind an open book to his mother. He knew quite well that she knew that he was thinking about Shirley. At least, not about Shirley, because she didn’t even know her name, but about someone. He wished it were the next morning, so that he would be gone back to Chelsea. He vowed he would make an excuse and not come down to East Horsley for next week-end.
“That’s all right,” and then, with a gentle, rather hesitating kiss on the top of her son’s head—a kiss that was received in silence—Mrs. Harrington went away. It was just after lunch on Sunday, so she went and lay down on her bed. And for an hour and a half she stared at the ceiling and almost, although not quite, wished that she were dead. Because what chance was there that this time it would be more of a success?
Meanwhile, Shirley tried to analyze her feelings and couldn’t. She only knew that the days flew and were madly exciting. She was accustomed now to sitting on the queer little dais in a sea-green dress and holding her head as she was told to hold it. She got to know the old butler who opened the door, and who after about a week spoke to her as he would to any other visitor. At first he had been brief, and Shirley had resented it. But she had had the sense to keep her resentment to herself. After all, how did he know that she wasn’t just an ordinary model? He couldn’t know, she told herself. But Norman had been nice to her from the very first—although not as nice as he was after one awful day, the memory of which made her ears burn whenever she thought about it. It had been a day when everything had gone wrong. She had had to change her dress twice. Changing her dress behind only a curtain had frightened her dreadfully at first. Supposing the curtain fell down; Shirley examined the rings and rod closely. Was the rod far enough into the slip? Yes, it was. Reassured, she slipped her woolly jumper over her head. But on the day in question everything went wrong. Norman sat and scowled behind the easel. He got up more than once and irritably adjusted one of her draperies and then sat down again.
“It’s damnable,” he said; “it’s all wrong. It’s heavy, it’s lumpy. I’ll wash out the whole thing. It isn’t what I want.” He got up and lit a cigarette and began to walk about the studio.
“Is it something that I’m doing wrong?” queried Shirley hopelessly. “Fifteen pounds is such a lot if I’m not being a success. Tell me what it is and I’ll try to alter it.” She gazed at him in a passionate anxiety to do the right thing.
“No; you’re all right.” Norman was uneasy and cross. He wanted to make a suggestion, but something held him back. And yet why? She had sat to him for a week and taken her first week’s pay like any other model. Why should he hesitate? But hesitate he did, for some reason or other. “Get back into your ordinary clothes,” he said after a little pause. “We’ll call it off for to-day. I’m not in the mood, somehow.”
“Oh,” and after that stupid interjection Shirley got down off the dais. She walked to the dressing room and pulled the curtain along the rod after her. He was cross and disappointed: why? She dressed slowly and felt depressed. He had lighted another cigarette and was sitting by the fire smoking it. She could see the blue smoke curling up to the old tapestry panel that hung over the mantelpiece. Dressed again, she came out slowly and rather dejectedly. She was being a failure, and Norman found her not as inspiring as he had thought she would be. She felt flattened and damped.
But Norman greeted her with a smile. He was cheerful again, and had been thinking what a fool he was to have hesitated. They all looked like that: spirituelle, especially with that rust-coloured hair.
“Look here,” he said; “sit down half a minute, because I want to suggest something. You wouldn’t mind sitting to me for the altogether, would you? I’ll pay you extra, of course. It just came to me to-day—you with your face turned up, just slipping up out of the sea. The sun on your hair. Your chin just like that,” he took hold of Shirley’s chin and tipped it up a little.
“‘Altogether,’ what is that?” Shirley started to blush furiously, although his meaning was not absolutely clear to her. But it could only mean that. No clothes! How too perfectly frightful for words. She sat and just stared in front of her, scarlet.
“Well, what about it?” Norman spoke simply. To him it meant nothing at all. During his career as an artist he must have seen scores of women with nothing on. At first, as he afterwards remembered with amusement, it had been rather a shock to him to see the exquisitely shaped woman who had been sitting to the art class in the nude, sitting muffled in a fur coat smoking a cigarette and chatting to one of the masters. But that had only been for the first two or three times. Now it meant nothing to him at all.
“I don’t think I could,” faltered Shirley after a trembling pause. Her one instinct was to take his suggestion as a matter of course. Anything else would be too ghastly for words, she reflected quickly.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Norman quickly. He glanced at her face and sensed the storm of shame and discomfiture that was raging below the green jumper suit. Then she was not a model by profession, nor a bad lot who had got into Trent’s flat on purpose to make advances to him. Then who was she?
“Do you mind?” said Shirley after a long, miserable interval during which she wished she were dead.
“Not in the least: of course not,” replied Norman warmly. He could have kicked himself. Although how was he to have known? He suddenly made up his mind to go and see Trent the next day. He would not bother to make an excuse; he would simply go with that avowed purpose—to find out who this girl was who had lately been Trent’s housekeeper.
“Now perhaps you won’t want me to sit for you at all,” said Shirley dismally.
“Yes, I shall.”
“I wouldn’t mind having a little less on,” said Shirley unhappily. “I mean to say, one puts on evening dress and doesn’t mind. It must seem so stupid to you, because you’re used to it,” she said with a burst. “But I’m not. I’ve only been a housekeeper before. I would sit with a shawl on, if that would be any use,” she said pitifully.
“Forget that I ever suggested it,” said Norman urgently. “After all, I engaged you to sit to me for the head and shoulders and draped figure, and we’ll stick to that plan. I shall feel better to-morrow, I expect: to-day everything seems to go wrong. I say, you will come to-morrow, won’t you?” he said boyishly. Shirley had got up to go. Perhaps he had frightened this little wood nymph. He would be sick if she never came back again.
“Oh, yes I’ll come back,” said Shirley shyly. “I must; you pay me to do so,” she said soberly, and then she went away, leaving Norman staring after her, and thinking furiously. There was a mystery. He was going to find out what it was—that very day, if possible. He would take his chance of finding Trent at home.
So Hugo, to his intense annoyance, was told by Mrs. Thomson’s niece, a lumpy conscientious girl who came at seven o’clock in the morning, letting herself in, and went away after dinner in the evening. Mrs. Thomson came in and helped her for a couple of hours during the day.
“There’s a good deal for one to do, sir,” she had said apologetically when she propounded this plan.
“Yes, I am sure there must be,” said Hugo, and then he turned to the fire and thought how Shirley had slaved for him and nursed him into the bargain, and felt more profoundly wretched than ever. And then on this dark winter’s evening, when he was just settling down to his belated tea, Mr. Harrington was announced.
“Show him in,” said Hugo curtly. “And bring another cup, please.” He got up from his chair and struggled with himself. He must at least be polite to this man. But why the hell couldn’t he keep away?
But his politeness died a natural death when Norman, settled close to the blazing fire with his cup on a tiny table beside him, began excitedly to talk about Hugo Trent’s late housekeeper.
“What did you say?” Hugo was looking rather narrowly over the edge of his cup.
“She’s sitting to me,” said Norman. “Four times a week and sometimes in the afternoons as well. A splendid little model she’s turning out to be.”
“What? Sitting to you? It’s out of the question,” said Hugo swiftly. “She must stop it, of course.”
“Stop it? She’s not going to do anything of the kind,” said Norman heatedly.
So there was a mystery. This man sitting opposite to him had got that child into his flat for some purpose of his own and was now furious because she had escaped him. Norman was an imaginative man, and his brain began to work quickly. They said that about men who worked always among criminals or supposed criminals—that they absorbed criminal tendencies themselves and were always able to escape detection because they looked so blameless. Norman scanned the clear-cut, distinguished face in front of him. Devil!
“The thing is preposterous and must come to an end at once,” said Hugo coldly.
Fortunately he was accustomed to disguise his real feelings, or, as he thought cynically, he would get up and strike this man across the face. He had saved his life, and now he was going to filch the child he loved from him. Yes, loved; Hugo faced his own thoughts. Harrington’s intolerable air of possession had showed him that plainly enough.
“I don’t know what you are driving at,” said Norman coldly. “I’m sorry I told you anything about it, if that’s the way you’re going to take it. I simply came to ask you if you could tell me anything more about your housekeeper. Her name. I think. I understood from you that she was a married woman.”
“I don’t feel inclined to tell you anything at all about my late housekeeper,” said Hugo icily. He was almost alarmed at the fury of feeling that possessed him. Shirley becoming every day more intimate with this successful artist—what ending could it possibly have but one? This man, whose neck he had saved by persuading a hysterical jury that he hadn’t murdered his wife, was going to take the girl he loved away from him.
“Very well; then I won’t bother you any more about it,” said Norman coolly. He suddenly hated Hugo Trent. This man to whom he practically owed everything had behaved shamefully to the girl he was beginning to love. How shamefully he had yet to find out. The blood boiled in front of his eyes. He would get away before he made a fool of himself.
“That’s not the point: you’ve got to give me an assurance that Miss—that my late housekeeper will stop sitting to you,” said Hugo. And he crimsoned as he realized the slip he had made. Norman was quick to pick it up.
“Miss! Then she is not a married woman,” he said quickly. And then his anger flamed up. “What was she doing in your flat then?” he demanded. “She is as gently bred as you or I. I will know,” stammered Norman suddenly.
“You will not,” replied Hugo icily. “But what you will do is to give me the assurance I demand,” he said.
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” said Norman hotly. “Why on earth should I? What is Miss—Miss—what is my model to you? She was here as your housekeeper and has left your employment. Now she is in mine. The matter ends there.”
“Does it?” and then Hugo fell abruptly silent. The cruellest weapon of all was in his possession, and for one awful moment he thought he was going to use it. “You would have been hanged if it had not been for me.” Fancy, if in his fury he had said it! He sat quite still until he had regained his self-control.
“Well, there isn’t much use in prolonging this conversation, is there?” After an uncomfortable silence Norman spoke slowly. “I’ll go, if you don’t mind.”
“Yes; let me see you out,” said Hugo instantly. He got up abruptly. “But you haven’t given me the assurance that I want,” he said quietly.
“No; and I’m not going to,” said Norman, speaking equally quietly. “You have no right to demand it: if you had, it might make a difference,” he said, and with that he walked out of the room.
And Hugo let him go. If he couldn’t open the front door himself the girl would help him, he thought, standing where Norman had left him and scowling at the floor.
Shirley’s life now began to be very exciting and delightful. Mr. Harrington was charming, and sitting to him was tremendous fun. Fifteen pounds a week was a great deal, especially as it cost her nothing to live, and one day, half-mad with excitement, she and Marjory had a great shopping expedition and Shirley bought herself a fur coat. Moleskin: she loved grey, and Evans were having a great fur sale. She appeared in the studio in it the next day and her green eyes shone as she displayed its charms to Norman, sitting smoking a cigarette by the fire.
“Gorgeous! You look perfectly sweet in it.” Norman took his cigarette out of his mouth and threw it into the fire. He longed to take Shirley in his arms and kiss her. Not that he actually wanted to marry her yet; in thought he shrank from the idea of matrimony. But she was such a pet—such an unaffected little sweet.
“It cost twenty pounds, so it has practically been given to me by you,” said Shirley. “My Post Office savings account is simply bursting!”
“Bully!” said Norman, and then he laughed. “I’m painting an American,” he said, “and I’m catching it.”
“Then you fall for my coat,” twinkled Shirley.
“Rather!” said Norman blithely.
And the morning was a success. Shirley sat and stood and postured, and Norman painted furiously. In the middle of the morning they had beautifully made coffee brought by the old butler, and Shirley ate a chocolate biscuit with appetite. She went home on air. Somewhere far away down in her something ached when she remembered Hugo. But she tried not to remember him. He had not wanted her, but Mr. Harrington did and he was a dear.
But Mrs. Fielding was beginning to get more anxious. Her mind at rest about Marjory and her future, her thoughts circled round Shirley. The child came home to lunch in such brilliant spirits. What was she doing between ten and one every day and sometimes in the afternoons? And she seemed to have plenty of money. The moleskin coat had frightened her. After all, in a sense she was responsible for Shirley to her parents. Was she doing right in leaving her to her own resources as she did? wondered Mrs. Fielding.
And that afternoon Shirley started out again at two. Mrs. Fielding, left alone, sat down and lit a cigarette and thought hard. Where had she gone? She would not ask Marjory, because Marjory did not know: she said so frankly. Besides, Marjory was out with her young man. Mrs. Fielding sat and drew on her cigarette and blew the smoke thoughtfully into the fire. And she came slowly to a conclusion. She had one woman friend whom she could trust implicitly who lived at Ealing. She would get her on the phone and ask if she could come out that afternoon and have a talk with her. Often things had cleared themselves up after a talk with Pauline.
She finished her cigarette and then went over to the telephone. It stood on a little shelf with the frilly lady making a jaunty ornament of it. The frilly lady reposed on the couch as Mrs. Fielding glanced at the list of numbers. Pauline’s number had been altered lately. She would verify it. Marjory was naughty in the way she scribbled on the margin of the pages. Here was one of her scribblings—tiny, certainly; but unmistakable, “S. Fleet 1478.”
“S. Fleet 1478.” The words suddenly leaped to Mrs. Fielding’s mind and stuck there. This was going to take her the whole afternoon, but she was going to do it. Pauline could wait: Mrs. Fielding carried the heavy telephone book over to her chair by the fire and left the frilly lady where she was. And it took her an hour and a half with her tortoise-shell spectacles astride her delicate nose. And then it suddenly jumped at her. Mr. Hugo Trent, K. C., 17, Well Walk, Inner Temple. Fleet 1478.” She looked again, but there was no need to look again. A hundred things became clear. Then Marjory had known! Mrs. Fielding felt suddenly sick and faint. Marjory was out, but perhaps Mr. Hugo Trent, K. C., would not be. She got up and went into her bedroom.
And a few minutes later she came out muffled in her sable coat and sable toque to match it. To Parson’s trim and respectful questionings she murmured that she was going to walk. As the lift shot downwards she remembered that the underground railway went to the Temple. She would take a train to the Temple and then find the flat she wanted.
But it took her some time. It was four o’clock when she found it. Hugo was beginning to be sick of people coming while he was having tea.
“A lady? What lady?” He scowled at the lumpy niece.
“A real lady,” said the niece artlessly. And for one moment Hugo’s heart leaped and sang. Shirley! And then it fell again.
“Not quite a young lady,” said the lumpy niece discreetly.
“Show her in. And bring another cup,” said Hugo monotonously. Whoever it was she had no business to come to his flat, he knew. But she would probably want tea if she saw him having it: women were crazy about tea.
But directly he saw Mrs. Fielding he got up onto his feet. Yes, that fat girl had been right—this was a real lady. And in deep distress, too. Hugo was instantly at his very best. “Do come in,” he held out a welcoming hand. “You’ll have some tea, of course. Yes, another cup,” the lumpy niece went scurrying.
“You know, I almost feel as if I can’t sit down.” Mrs. Fielding’s voice was trembling. Her heart under her fur coat was thumping against her ribs. Tears were not very far from her eyes.
“Yes, but you must.” Hugo was deeply mystified, but he did not show it. He only hoped that this was not some relation of some man under arrest whom he would almost immediately have quietly to push out of his flat. But she should have some tea first: Hugo was possessed of a very tender chivalry towards all women.
“Well!”
Mrs. Fielding dropped down into the chair Hugo pushed towards her. Her knees were trembling. The lumpy niece came back with the cup and went out again.
“Do you take milk and sugar?” Hugo was manipulating the teapot. He was thankful that the tray had a nice cloth on it.
“Not any sugar, thank you,” said Mrs. Fielding. She was wondering in her own mind how she was going to begin. And then the enormity of what she was doing suddenly dawned on her. Supposing S. Fleet 1478 had meant something quite different! “I don’t know how to begin”—her voice was faltering. She had refused bread and butter. Hugo could see that the cup in the slender hand was trembling.
“Take your time: I’m accustomed to listening to people,” said Hugo very kindly. His keen face was alert and his eyes intent between their dark lashes.
“I have an awful fear that a little girl I know very well has been living here,” faltered Mrs. Fielding. She suddenly wept. “I was responsible for her,” she sobbed.
“Ah!” Hugo suddenly sat forward and put down his cup. “You are Mrs. Fielding,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Don’t cry. Miss Mortimer was as safe with me as she is with you,” said Hugo simply. He briefly thanked God that it was true. It so easily mightn’t have been.
“Yes, but——” Mrs. Fielding leaned forward and put her cup on the table. “I’m such a fool,” she said and wept again.
“Never mind; no harm has come to her,” said Hugo simply. “Have some more tea.”
“No, thank you,” said Mrs. Fielding, recovering herself a little and drawing a decorative little handkerchief out of her bag.
“A cigarette then.” Hugo got up. “Take off your coat,” he said; “it’s hot in here. Let me help you.”
“Thank you.” The beautiful fur coat slipped from Mrs. Fielding’s silk shoulders.
Hugo thought briefly that Mr. Fielding must be well off. He hoped he was nice. Mrs. Fielding was obviously very nice. He walked across to the old oak bureau and came back with the silver box of cigarettes.
“Thank you.” Mrs. Fielding’s delicate fingers were trembling as she fumbled among the cigarettes. Hugo took the matches from the mantelpiece. This nice woman was not going until he had had an exhaustive talk with her; he made up his mind very definitely to that.
“Tell me what Miss Mortimer is doing now,” he said pleasantly, settling himself in a low chair on the opposite side of the fire to Mrs. Fielding. “We’ll have tea cleared away if you’re positive you won’t have any more. Yes, take tea away, please,” he said to the lumpy niece, who came hurtling in at the sound of the bell.
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Fielding. The fragrant cigarette was soothing her. Hugo was also smoking, his brows drawn a little together in a frown.
“I do,” he said briefly. And then he told her. In a way he felt that he was going back on Norman Harrington, but he could not help himself.
“Why, that’s the man who was supposed to have murdered his wife,” said Mrs. Fielding abruptly. “You defended him; I remember it perfectly well.”
“He was proved to be innocent,” said Hugo quietly.
“Yes, I know; but still——” And then Mrs. Fielding broke off. You couldn’t tell a man in Mr. Trent’s position that heaps of people had said that Norman Harrington was really guilty and that it was only the magnificence of the defence that had saved his neck. “I know,” she concluded lamely.
“Let’s forget what she happens to be doing at the moment and go back to how she happened to be in this flat,” said Hugo briefly. And then he told Mrs. Fielding very simply what had happened.
“But her father has practically only just been over here,” gasped Mrs. Fielding, stupefied.
“Yes, I know, and invited me to meet his daughter at dinner,” said Hugo, and this time he did laugh.
“What ever did you do?”
“Went, and the child hadn’t the remotest idea that I’d known who she was for about six weeks,” said Hugo blithely. He suddenly felt blithe. To be able to speak about Shirley was such a relief.
“Why did she come here at all?” asked Mrs. Fielding abruptly.
“I don’t know.”
“I do; she fell in love with you, and I don’t blame her a bit,” said Mrs. Fielding suddenly. “Of course, you’re simply splendid—anyone can see that. Besides, nobody who wasn’t splendid would have behaved as you have done,” she said.
“Don’t!”
“But I mean it,” said Mrs. Fielding warmly. She suddenly felt that she had known this tall lean man for years. He was gorgeous. Mrs. Fielding was romantic, although she was over fifty. Perhaps he would want to marry Shirley. How magnificent if he did!
“Don’t say that,” said Hugo abruptly. He got up and walked to the window and then came back again and stood a little behind Mrs. Fielding’s chair. “I feel as if I can tell you,” he said simply, “because I know you’ll understand. I have been separated from my wife for years on the score of her intemperance. She is very ill now, in a Home where she has been for some time.”
“Oh, perhaps she will die.” There was a good deal of the child in Mrs. Fielding and the words leaped to her lips. But mercifully they did not pass them. Although, as Mrs. Fielding thought simply, he would absolutely have understood. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, and she turned a little in her chair and held out her slender ringed hand.
“Thank you,” Hugo pressed it, let it go, and sat down again. There was a great deal more that he wanted to say, and he said it. Miss Mortimer must cease going to Mr. Harrington’s studio, that was the first thing.
“I know; but how can I make her?” meditated Mrs. Fielding. “You see, I am supposed to know nothing about it. What am I to tell her about this, too?” She hesitated. “Does she know that you are married?” she ventured.
“No; tell her I could not,” said Hugo, and his dark eyes met hers miserably.
“I see; that makes it more difficult,” said Mrs. Fielding. With all her fragility she was a very practical woman. This practically amounted to a struggle between two men over one woman, and one man was heavily handicapped by being married already. Her sympathies flamed to Hugo. His wife would die, and until she did Shirley must be kept safe for him.
“Shall I tell her?” she asked timidly.
“No; it would come better from me,” said Hugo simply. “But it will be difficult for me to get the opportunity to do so. Miss Mortimer left here in great bitterness of spirit,” he said. “She felt that I was indifferent to her precious little childlike advances. Perhaps I was then. I should not be now,” he said after a little pause.
“I see.” Mrs. Fielding fell silent. But the circumstances and the hour made for confidence. She clasped her hands together and, resting them on her knees, looked at the man in the chair opposite to her. “I want to tell you something,” she said, “because I know you will understand. I too know what it is to love somebody that I ought not to. It was after I was married that I met the man to whom I would have given my soul, my body—everything. But he was like you—gorgeous; and he wouldn’t take it,” said Mrs. Fielding, and she wept again.
“Thank you for telling me,” said Hugo. He leaned across and put his hand over hers. “Perhaps—one day,” he said.
“No; because he’s dead,” said Mrs. Fielding bleakly. And the heavy tears in her eyes caught the flicker of the firelight and swam blood red.
“I’m sorry.” The simple words were charged with sympathy. What else was there to say? Nothing, thought Hugo, hoping briefly that Mr. Fielding had behaved decently over it. But he probably hadn’t. That abominable idea of possession was so rife in the minds of some men where their wives were concerned.
“Well, what are we going to do?” he said after a little pause. Somehow it seemed quite natural to take it for granted that Mrs. Fielding was going to help him.
“You will have to meet Shirley somehow,” said Mrs. Fielding. But even as she said it she realized the intense difficulties with which such a meeting was hedged about. Besides, if the object of it was to prevent Shirley from sitting to Norman Harrington, what reason could Mr. Trent give for his objections? After all, Norman Harrington was a very well-known artist. Well-known people sat to him for their portraits. It was more an honour than anything else that he should want to immortalize Shirley.
“Yes, I shall have to meet her and I will arrange it,” said Hugo promptly. “Now that I have seen you, I feel that it is all quite easy. Thank you for coming,” he said, and he smiled at her.
“Thank you for being so kind to me,” said Mrs. Fielding simply.
“May I ask how you found out that Miss Mortimer had been here!” asked Hugo curiously.
“I found a scribbled number on the edge of the telephone book; Marjory had done it and put an S against it. Why!” Mrs. Fielding suddenly gasped, remembering her daughter’s week-end with Shirley. “Why, my daughter has been here too,” she stammered.
“I know, and that’s how I found out.” Hugo was laughing at the thought of it. “I wasn’t going to tell you that, but I will now,” he said. “It was the funniest thing in the world.”
“It wasn’t: it was the naughtiest,” said Mrs. Fielding. And then she too laughed. “Mustn’t they have been terrified!” she said.
“They were. Petrified,” said Hugo, and he threw back his head and laughed again. “Don’t go!” he said abruptly, as she rose.
“I must, it’s late,” said Mrs. Fielding. She was looking round for her coat. “Thank you,” she said as she slipped it on. “Well, then——”
“Well, then, you don’t do anything,” said Hugo. “I do it all. Don’t tell anyone that you have been here: I’m sure it’s better not to let anyone else into what has happened. You know, I know, your daughter knows, and Mr. Harrington knows. Also a doctor friend of mine. Two at least too many, as it is. Let us keep it at that, if you don’t mind.”
“I will,” said Mrs. Fielding. And then she said good-bye and went away.
Old Thomson, from his glazed box, looked at her and wondered who she was, and then reflected that his niece would tell him later. In any event, he didn’t blame the governor for wanting a little female society. Such a life as he had, stuck up there among the chimney pots. And the only decent housekeeper as he’d ever had doing him down as she had done, thought old Thomson, watching Mrs. Fielding stepping down, rather uncertainly and daintily, out into the dark court.
Hugo had seemed very certain of his own course of action and very much master of the situation when talking to Mrs. Fielding. But really he was not in the least certain of his own course of action. After she had gone he flung himself into a chair in a very torment of thought. Awful thoughts crowded into his brain; almost murderous thoughts. How long was his wife likely to live? How could he find out? Ferguson would tell him; good old Ferguson, who knew every circumstance of his disastrous married life. He would ring him up and ask him to come round, and then take him out to dinner somewhere.
And Dr. Ferguson, being a shrewd man, grasped instantly what was going on in Hugo’s mind. He only hoped that it was that sweet little red-headed girl that he was thinking of. Where she had gone and why she had gone, he did not inquire. For of course Hugo had not alluded to her. He said quite frankly that for many reasons he was anxious to know more precisely the state of his wife’s health; that he had not been allowed to see her for some time because she was always worse after his visits; but that Ferguson knew Corder, who ran the Home. What did he say, if anything? He was always so damned guarded when he, Hugo, asked him anything.
“He told me the other day, when I met him at Barts, that Mrs. Trent was in a very bad way indeed,” said Dr. Ferguson slowly. “As you know, Hugo, you’re a fellow a bit in the limelight after that trial of Harrington’s, and your name crops up when another man’s wouldn’t. He said that she would last six months at the most.”
“Thanks.” Hugo’s face was inscrutable. Six months. For all practical purposes it might be six years. “Thanks, Ferguson,” he said again; “now then, what about a drink?” He got up and went out of the room, and as he crossed the hall to the dining room he wiped his top lip.
“But I’m not so sure that I agree with Corder,” continued Dr. Ferguson as Hugo reentered the room with the whisky decanter and two tumblers. “He’s optimistic, I think. I don’t wish to depress you, Hugo, but I should say that a couple of months would be nearer the mark.”
“I see. Thanks.” Hugo’s voice was as impassive as his expression. Ferguson knew what was in his mind: he felt it. He changed the conversation, and it was easy to do so. Dr. Ferguson did not want to talk about Mrs. Trent any more than Hugo did. After a pleasant drink and a smoke the two men put on their coats and went out to dinner. The evening was a successful one, and they parted with cordial wishes that it would not be long before they met again.
But Hugo went home with his thoughts in a whirl. Two months or six months, and both were practically hopeless. Because even during the last few days Harrington must have made tremendous progress. Shirley was little more than a child and could not fail to be flattered and interested by the attention, however impersonal, of a successful artist like Harrington. She would be in the Academy, and probably in more than one picture. Harrington had said excitedly that he would have given Hugo Trent’s late housekeeper twenty pounds a week to sit to him. That was probably on the lavish side, but even if he gave her ten it would be a large sum of money for a girl, especially for a girl like Shirley, who had been simply brought up. Hugo let himself into his dark flat and felt almost demented with indecision. He thought of the days not so long before when she would have been there, and perhaps still up and waiting for him, and stealing into the sitting room with some soup. He stared round the empty sitting room with its black, untidy grate, and noticed the lack of flowers in the vases. She had made it all so dainty for him. And now she was going to make a home dainty for some other man. By God, she wasn’t! Hugo walked across the room and sat down at his desk.
Shirley got his letter the next day. It came at breakfast-time, and she opened it and then laid it down again. Her heart suddenly began to beat in the great uneven thumps and her head felt strange. They would notice that she looked odd; she must be careful. She stared at her plate and felt that it couldn’t be a plate—that she couldn’t be the same girl that had walked so calmly into the breakfast room about five minutes before—that the whole face of the world was changed: could it be changed in an instant like that? But it was changed. Nothing mattered but that he had written to her—that he had written! She got up a little sooner than usual and went away into her bedroom. And there she read the letter again. Hugo wrote very well; of course he did. Precious handwriting! Shirley pressed the letter tumultuously to her lips.
Dear Miss Mortimer [wrote Hugo]:
You will see that I have found out where you live. Clever of me, is it not? but then barristers are notoriously clever! I want to see you again. Will you meet me in the lounge at the Church and Commercial Stores at half-past twelve o’clock on Thursday? The lounge of the Church and Commercial Stores is highly respectable, that is why I suggest it. You are laughing at me! No; the real reason why I suggest that meeting-place is that it is convenient for me and I daresay it is familiar to you, and from there we will go off and have lunch somewhere.
Hoping to see you on Thursday,
I am, yours sincerely,
Hugo Trent.
Shirley read this letter three times. And then she dropped her head on her hands and sat quite still for a minute or two. He did like her a little, then, otherwise why should he bother to write? She got up and moved about her bedroom in a trance. Thursday—it was Tuesday then. She would answer the letter when she came home to lunch: there was not time then; it was time to go to Mr. Harrington’s.
But the bus drive to Chelsea was like a triumphal entrance into Paradise. Shirley tried to analyze her feelings and could not. Everything was different—utterly different. She thought of Miss Hilliard’s words and how she had derided them: “The light that never was, on sea or land.” It was true; the very air looked different—it felt different. It meant something. Nothing had meant anything before. Now it was all meaning. Shirley went in at the bright blue front door in a blissful dream.
And Norman noticed it. It was impossible not to notice it. Shirley’s face as she sat on the dais was illumined. She laughed and chattered during her moments of resting. She drank her coffee and beamed over the rim of the cup. And Norman teased her. “Has someone left you some money? You look like it.” They laughed together.
“No; someone very nice has asked me out to lunch on Thursday,” said Shirley. For her life she could not have kept her joy to herself. She had finished her coffee and was back on the dais. Norman, behind the easel, was mixing his colours.
“Do tell me who,” said Norman carefully. He kept all eagerness out of his voice. But subconsciously he knew. This was Hugo Trent’s first move; damn him.
“Oh, no!” said Shirley jauntily. She too was cautious. One never knew; Norman might know who she was.
“A secret, what?” Normands voice was good-tempered. He would bide his time. He went on painting diligently.
“Yes.” Shirley kept her head in the position that she was meant to keep it, and wondered what she had had to think about the last time she was on that dais. There wasn’t anything but this latest joy that was worth thinking about, she reflected rapturously.
“You know, I saw that man who defended me at my trial, Hugo Trent, the other day,” said Norman after a little pause. “I don’t know really why I think of him just now. But what a cruel thing it is that a man like that should have had such bitter luck in his married life. Ghastly hard lines!” Norman fell silent.
“What did you say?” Shirley had recovered herself a little. Or was it that, before, her stiff lips could not articulate the words?
“Why, his wife drinks—has done for years, and I expect will go on doing it until she dies of alcoholic poisoning. But that’s the worst of those people, they never do die,” said Norman recklessly. His words were in bad taste because of his own history, but he did not care. The horror of his life in prison had done something to Norman Harrington that would never be undone. A fraction of his self-respect had been obliterated. Something had gone from him that would never come back.
“How dreadful” and then Shirley relaxed abruptly. “May I rest?” she gasped suddenly.
“Of course; have I kept you too long? I’m so sorry,” said Norman penitently. But he did not move from behind the easel. Shirley must pull herself together without him. If he touched her and saw her agonized little pale face he would probably propose to her. And he did not want to do that yet, if ever. Married life was a thing to be avoided, unless it was absolutely inevitable; more and more he was beginning to think that. The eternal monotony of it; the horror when you found out that you had made a mistake. His thoughts turned suddenly to his mother. Mothers understood everything and never bothered you. They were there when you wanted them and not if you didn’t want them. They were never on your mind. A wife was always on your mind.
All the same, though, Hugo Trent was not going to play fast and loose with this girl. And unless he was very much mistaken he had spiked his guns all right. Norman dabbed at his palette and pretended to be painting. He would give her another minute or two to come round.
But Shirley, after a desperate effort, had rallied. No one must know what she was feeling. “I’m quite rested now, thank you,” she said after a little pause.
“Good.”
Norman went on painting. Shirley sat and tried to think about something else. But she couldn’t; the word flared in front of her brain. Married! From the very beginning he had been married. While she had been in his flat, slaving for him for the sheer rapture of the thing, he was married. And she, poor pitiful fool! had thought that she would perhaps make herself necessary to him. And now he wanted to see her just as a kindly uncle might want to see a niece—to take her out and give her a good time. To give her a good time while she was starving—agonizing—for him; while his very touch was magic. Hugo, Hugo! Shirley cried his name in her soul. Why hadn’t he told her before? Why hadn’t her father and mother told her? They must have known all the time. She sat, her small bleached face turned to the great window, Norman painting; and glancing from his easel to her face, hated Hugo Trent. To bring that look to any girl’s face was damnable. And to this one’s especially.
“All over.” Norman spoke cheerfully and got up and stretched. He looked tall and attractive in his white blouse. He laid down his palette and easel and Came over to help Shirley down from the dais.
“Why, you’re freezing!” he exclaimed. He chafed her small hand in his. Norman was at his best when he was sorry for people. His down-bent face was kind.
“Yes; I don’t think I feel very well,” chattered Shirley through clenched teeth. As a matter of fact, she did suddenly feel very ill. Something had happened to her head: it was tight inside.
“Tell me, dear.” Norman’s touch was tender. He led her over to the fire and stood there by her. He suddenly felt fonder of her than he had done at all—desperately fond of her. “Poor little darling! What is it?” he said.
“Nothing,” said Shirley. Her voice was queer and hard. She suddenly turned her face into his shoulder. To hold onto someone in this awful agony that was shrivelling up her soul! “I feel as if I wanted to cry, but I can’t,” she gasped.
“Hang on to me, darling.” Norman, essentially a tender-hearted man, had quite forgotten that he did not want to marry. In his white blouse he held her to his heart and kissed her hair. She suddenly began to cry dreadfully; clinging to him.
“Oh, oh, oh!” she sobbed.
And Norman let her sob. He kissed her hair: such sweet, soft curly hair. Shirley felt him kissing it and wondered why she did not mind. But it was all part of this horrible nightmare of a morning. Anything could have happened and Shirley would not have cared.
“I must go home.” At last she released herself with a little shuddering sigh.
Norman looked at her as she stood a little way from him and noted the blotches that tears had left on her delicate skin. She dabbed at her face and blew her nose. A sweet little nose, but her emotion had left it pink. Norman hated himself for his thoughts and yet could not control them. But all the same a fierce partisanship flamed in his mind. Rather than that hatchet-faced barrister should get hold of her again, he would marry her himself.
“I look a perfect object!” Shirley suddenly felt foolish and awkward. With a little almost hysterical laugh she hurried away into the dressing room.
And while she was dressing Norman stood and thought, and lighted a pipe and thought again. Shirley was sweet and up to a point he loved her dearly. But somehow, beyond that point he didn’t. What would his mother think of her? His thoughts turned, with a sort of ache, to his mother. She always understood everything—supposing he asked this girl to be his wife and then she didn’t understand anything. What would be the good of it all? And after all, he had his art. He was getting on wonderfully well; it wasn’t only conceit to think so—he really was. Well, why wasn’t that enough? It was enough, only he couldn’t endure the thought of Trent fooling about with her. She was too good for it: it was a shame.
And long after Shirley had gone he was still thinking it was a shame. If only there were some intermediate stage between nothing at all and everything! There was, of course; but then, that was what he was up against Trent about. She was too good for that, sweet little trusting thing!
Meanwhile Shirley stood at the corner of King’s Road waiting for a bus and saw herself distantly in the plate-glass window of a big shop opposite, and wondered stupidly if Mrs. Fielding and Marjory would notice that she had been crying. Probably not, because it was cold, and the cold made your eyes and nose red and gave you a generally damp look. Also Mrs. Fielding and Marjory were very much absorbed in shoppings and dates and lists of people who ought to be asked to the wedding—Marjory was going to be married in the early spring.
But as Shirley sat very still and quiet while the deft parlourmaid carved the tiny joint at the sideboard and Parsons handed round the plates, Mrs. Fielding observed Shirley and saw with a very agony of fright that she had obviously been crying. She would have to tell this girl that she could not be responsible for her any longer. It was too much. And she had seemed so particularly beatific at breakfast! What on earth could have happened at the studio? Mrs. Fielding thought about Shirley’s long weeks alone in that flat with Hugo Trent. She thought of the marvellous way in which she had kept the secret and compelled Marjory to do the same; of the astounding skill with which she had managed her change of clothes; of this latest scheme, and the secrecy in which that was enveloped. She forgot her hope that in the end all would come right and that she would marry the charming keen-faced barrister in the delightful flat. She only felt that she could not stand any more of this appalling worry, and, after all, why should she? Shirley was not her child; she belonged to somebody else who ought to be looking after her, instead of allowing her to rove about the world, dependent on the hospitality of others.
So as Mrs. Fielding crunched excellently made toast and drank barley water, thinking privately that there wasn’t enough lemon in it, but that she would have to tell Mrs. Pullford carefully, because she was sensitive and had to be approached with tact, she was all the time making up her mind to an unpleasant but necessary scene with Shirley, which would have to follow lunch. She would have her coffee first and wait until Marjory had started out to meet Fergus at Paddington; they were going to see some relative of his who lived at Maidenhead. And then she would surprise Shirley in her bedroom and tell her quite frankly that she must go home again—that she could no longer be responsible for her or her mysterious doings; that they were beginning to get on her nerves. Mrs. Fielding, after a cup of beautifully made coffee, felt more equal to what lay before her. She saw Marjory off on her joyous expedition to meet her lover and then went and knocked at Shirley’s door.
And what she saw there made her feel more sure than ever that Shirley must go, and soon. Mrs. Fielding was a very generous woman, and never grudged anything to people she liked. But for a girl who wrapped her every movement in mystery to sit away in her room with the electric fire going full tilt irritated Mrs. Fielding very much. There were already two fires going in the flat: nice coal fires. Her husband had also mildly remonstrated at the amount of electric current they were using. Her irritation helped Mrs. Fielding to be firm although she carefully kept all irritation out of her voice.
“Shirley dear, you had been crying before lunch,” said Mrs. Fielding. She came up to the small figure sitting at the pretty writing table. And again she was irritated. Shirley drew the blotting paper over the letter she was writing. “What is the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” said Shirley rather pitifully.
But Mrs. Fielding did not feel in the least touched. She only felt more irritated. She forgot that she wanted Mr. Trent to marry Shirley; she only felt that she wanted her to go away, and quite soon.
“Shirley, I am tired of this perpetual secrecy,” she said; “in fact, dear, I can’t stand it any more. I loved having you here when I knew what you were doing, or thought I knew what you were doing. But now it has got a little too much for me. You must go home, darling, to Montreux. I won’t have any more of this going out from this flat to nobody knows where. It’s not suitable, and it is beginning to get on my nerves.”
“I see.” Shirley got up out of her chair. “You have been perfectly heavenly to me,” she said, “and I can’t be grateful enough. But I’m glad you have told me straight out what you feel. It’s what I feel too. It isn’t right for me to live here and not tell you what I am doing. I’ll go away, at once.”
“But not anywhere but to your home, Shirley; please understand that I am absolutely resolved on that point. I won’t take the responsibility of you any more. I don’t think you are behaving at all well to your parents in the way you are going on. Freedom is all very well in its way, but there is a point——” Mrs. Fielding broke off.
“My parents don’t want me,” said Shirley stubbornly. “Nothing will induce me to go back to Montreux.”
“No parents would want a daughter at home who thinks she knows better than everyone else,” said Mrs. Fielding rather reprovingly.
“I don’t think that,” said Shirley miserably.
“Yes, you do. Everything that you do and say shows it,” said Mrs. Fielding calmly. “Shirley, I am going to write to your parents and tell them that I will no longer be responsible for you.”
“No, don’t, please!” Shirley’s small face was suddenly pale.
“Then be frank with me!” said Mrs. Fielding, suddenly exasperated beyond endurance. For all she knew Shirley might actually be getting into serious trouble. Artists were erratic and had Bohemian ideas of morality. Supposing Shirley Mrs. Fielding suddenly felt that she could not stand it any more. “It must come to an end,” she said briefly.
“It shall,” said Shirley, speaking equally briefly. “But please don’t write to Mother, Mrs. Fielding. After all, girls are different nowadays from what they used to be. It is quite an ordinary thing for a girl to earn her own living; hundreds of girls do it and live in hostels and their mothers haven’t the ghost of an idea what they are doing. They may think they have, but they haven’t,” said Shirley.
“Well, think over what I have said,” said Mrs. Fielding and she got up from the low chair by the fire and looked at Shirley. And then she felt suddenly sorry for her. Her slender neck was so white and her rust-coloured hair so soft and curly. But she would have been much more sorry for her if she could have sensed the utter misery in Shirley’s mind. Her outlook was black. She would have to go back to Montreux—of course she would, only she wasn’t going to let Mrs. Fielding know that she knew it. Montreux, with that little daily round of things that she hated—with her heart and soul and body in the tiny flat in the Temple. Until that morning she had not known how through everything had run the little quivering silver cord of hope—hope that one day, perhaps—and now she knew that that day could never be; that such an idea had never even entered his head. Nothing but a kindly fatherly interest was his for her. The daughter of his old friend—that was all.
And she had degraded herself in his sight by what she had done. So that now he was beginning to be sorry for her and wanted to try to make up for it by asking her out to lunch. Shirley laid one small trembling hand on the blotting paper and wished that Mrs. Fielding would go away, so that she could finish the letter to him.
And Mrs. Fielding went away. But when she got outside Shirley’s door she realized that nothing had been settled as to Shirley’s movements. However, that could wait, thought Mrs. Fielding wearily, going away to her bedroom and deciding that she would rest for the whole of the afternoon. And when Marjory came in she would have a good long talk with her about everything. Marjory somehow had got more sensible since her engagement.
And Marjory proceeded to be very sensible now. Everything turned out very conveniently for a nice confidential chat between mother and daughter. Mr. Fielding had to go to a dinner of some City company that night and Shirley went to bed with a headache, not appearing at all after her talk with Mrs. Fielding. Marjory sat on the end of the sofa closest to the fire and looked normal and happy, with her nice engagement ring flashing on her finger. She did intricate and dainty needlework and smiled as she did it.
But she stopped smiling when Mrs. Fielding began to talk about Shirley. She listened until her mother had finished and then laid down her work. “I do wish you would leave Shirley alone, Mother,” she said. “She’s absolutely capable of looking after herself.”
“No girl is capable of looking after herself,” said Mrs. Fielding, snatching at an antiquated authority.
“She is,” said Marjory decisively. “Mother, when will you realize that all that sort of attitude about girls is dead as a doornail? Do leave Shirley alone to go her own way. And let her go away from here, if she wants to. It was her own idea to go at first, don’t you remember? When she got this new job, whatever it is. No; I don’t know what it is, and I don’t care either,” said Marjory. “Shirley is perfectly well able to look after herself.”
“Well——”
“And I think if you write to Shirley’s parents about her it will be positively cruel of you,” said Marjory after a little pause. “She doesn’t like being at home, and they obviously don’t want her there. Let her go into rooms in Oakley Street; there are hundreds of them there. It’s near her work, whatever it is. It doesn’t concern us, Mother; do try to get that into your head.”
“Very well, Marjory.” Mrs. Fielding sat back in her comfortable chair, and then leaned forward again and took a cigarette out of the tortoise-shell box close to her hand and lighted it, and made a mental resolve that she would dismiss Shirley and her doings from her mind once and for all. As she leaned back and stared up at the dancing shadows on the ceiling—for Marjory was working under a little electric lamp, she thought that after all perhaps it was as Marjory said it was. Girls were different and no longer had to be looked after. And a very good thing, too, thought Mrs. Fielding, who was tired and wanted to be able to devote herself entirely to the happy anticipation of Marjory’s wedding. The worry about Shirley kept on getting in the way of everything and spoiling it.
So the next morning, when Shirley appeared at breakfast, looking a little wan but otherwise quite normal, Mrs. Fielding started the idea of her going off into rooms by herself as a sort of little joke. “Shirley wants to leave us, George,” she said, and she laughed a little as she said it.
“Does she? Well, I expect she’s an independent young woman and likes the idea of being on her own,” said Mr. Fielding sensibly. And he beamed at Shirley and then went on eating again.
So it was settled. And Shirley, in spite of a little relief that it was settled without any fuss of any kind, felt an awful stab at her heart at the thought of how little anyone really wanted her. Marjory did not want her in the least, because she was entirely absorbed in Fergus. Fergus obviously thought she was a bother when she was there and looked as if he hoped that she would soon go away, which she always did. The Fieldings didn’t want her either because they were interested and absorbed in their daughter’s engagement and marriage. Her parents didn’t want her because they were absorbed in one another and she made a third, which is always horrid. The man she worshipped didn’t want her because he had a wife of his own, and even if he hadn’t had, she wouldn’t have appealed to him. So no one wanted her.
Shirley got up and went away to put on her hat and coat and thought, as she did it, that that must be why London was so crammed with hotels. Full of people whom nobody wanted, thought Shirley, staring at herself and thinking that she wasn’t even so nice-looking as she had been when she left school. She looked drab and her freckles showed more. She went drearily to Chelsea. Soon Mr. Harrington would think she was ugly too and would be tired of having her as a model.
But Norman Harrington was particularly nice that morning. He was always at his best when he was sorry for people. He saw that she was pale and silent, and told her that they would wait before beginning work and would have coffee first. He rang for it, and when it came fussed over where the table should be put. He waited on Shirley and he looked very nice in his white blouse. He smiled kindly at her. And his smiles seemed to thaw something that was holding Shirley’s heart in a tight grip. Her fingers trembled as she held the flowered cup. She stared up at him and spoke with a trembling mouth. “I want to tell you something,” she faltered.
“All right, go on,” said Norman kindly. And he sat and listened as Shirley suddenly let loose the floodgates of her queer reserved nature. It all came out—her home at Montreux—everything. Norman was inwardly frightfully relieved to hear about the home at Montreux. His mother would be glad; she didn’t like queer nondescript people.
“Did Trent make love to you?” Norman asked the question after a long silence. He was not going to ask her if she cared for him, because it was obvious. But he wanted to know how far things had gone in that little flat in the Temple. Again he thought of his mother. She wouldn’t like anything——
“No,” said Shirley bitterly. “Of course he didn’t. Why should he? Besides, he isn’t like that. He’s Father’s friend,” she ended up, and she set her soft mouth a little hardly.
“I see,” and then Norman smiled again, and very attractively this time. “It’s done you good to tell me,” he said; “why didn’t you tell me before? I’ve often wondered what your name was.”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t, somehow,” said Shirley. And then she suddenly felt dreary again and wished that she hadn’t been so expansive.
But Norman was pleased. He got up and began to collect his painting materials. “Porrett—you know, my butler—will find you nice rooms in Oakley Street,” he said. “He’s got a relation of sorts who lets them. It’ll be far more handy for you. And, look here, one day, if you will, I’d love to take you down to see my mater and pater. They live in Surrey and it’s a topping drive in the car. Will you come?”
“I’d love to,” said Shirley warmly. And her dreariness faded a little. She liked Mr. Harrington, she thought, as behind the heavy plush curtain she changed into the nondescript green frock. He was kind, and when you were miserable, kindness helped so tremendously, she thought, combing her rust-coloured hair so that it flamed out round her small face like a pale bright nimbus.
Hugo Trent was angry when he got Shirley’s letter. He read it twice; he had found it in the letter box when he came in late from the theatre one night. He had been with a large party and he read the letter standing close up to the empty grate in the sitting room. He looked taller than usual in evening clothes. Tails and a white tie and white waistcoat suited Hugo. He frowned over the letter and his clever mouth suddenly thinned a little.
Dear Mr. Trent [wrote Shirley]:
I am so sorry that I cannot come out to lunch with you, but I am very busy every morning from ten until nearly one. It is very kind of you to ask me.
Yours sincerely,
Shirley Mortimer.
So that was that. Hugo tore up the letter and dropped the fragments into the blackened embers in the grate. She had found out that he was married; he knew it by instinct. How? Norman Harrington had told her. He began to walk about the room and then thought what a fool he was being and stopped walking. He would go to bed; it was nearly one, and by the morning he would have thought what was best to do.
So he went to bed and slept excellently. Mrs. Thomson’s niece wasn’t doing at all badly, and arrived with the dawn and brought him in excellent tea at half-past seven in the morning. He bathed and shaved, feeling unusually cheerful. He would write to her again and see what effect that had. But not at once. He would wait two or three days.
Shirley got his second letter as she came in rather late one evening from a shopping expedition in Regent Street. It was now only about a fortnight until Christmas and everything was gay. The shops were full and little groups of people excitedly stared at things and chattered to one another about them. Shirley felt dreadfully alone. Shopping was no fun alone. And living alone was worse. Shirley had never realized until that moment how perfectly dreadful it was to feel that you had nowhere but your bedroom to retreat to. The house in which she had taken a room was quite a nice one. You could get meals there if you wanted to, although Shirley had only arranged for bed and breakfast. For this she paid seven and sixpence a day. There was a gas fire in her bedroom, and a slot into which she had to put a shilling from time to time. But although she tried very hard not to feel it, there was a terrible feeling of gloom in the house. Each bedroom contained one or two people. They came mysteriously out of the bedrooms and went away and then came back again. Shirley met strange-looking men wearing bowler hats on the stairs, men who stood back against the wall to let her pass.
There were only two bathrooms and baths were free, although you had to pay twopence for the use of a bath towel, which you kept and then gave back again and got another one for another twopence. But the bath gave Shirley a strange sinking sensation. After the first time she bought a tin of Vim and a brush and cleaned it well before she got into it. It gave her somehow a feeling of horror to see it mottled; she had not realized before that she was fastidious. This tall thin house in the midst of other tall thin houses was full of people who passed all their leisure hours in their bedrooms, all alone. What did they do? wondered Shirley after a week of it, sitting and staring at the bamboo table by the side of her bed. It had a Japanese crêpe tablecloth on it. At eight o’clock each morning the untidy chambermaid dumped her breakfast tray on it and went away to dump endless trays on endless bamboo tables. Miserable people in bed; waking up to another dreadful day.
Shirley thought of leaving and going to a hotel, and then she was frightened at the idea of a hotel. Also she was frightened at the idea of telling the lady with flaxen hair who ran the house that she wanted to go. Also, a feeling of pride came into it. She had wanted to live by herself, and now she was living by herself. Marjory forwarded the letters that went to the Fieldings’ flat in Kensington. She saw Hugo’s letter on the bamboo table the instant she entered the room that evening. He had written again. She flung her bag and parcels down on the bed and tore it open.
Dear Miss Mortimer [wrote Hugo]:
You do seem to be busy! But still, I think you might be able to find a moment to see me, if you try. Supposing we settle Sunday, as that is probably a free day for you. I have rather a nice car, so I will call for you in it and we will go somewhere for the whole day. I will call for you at eleven o’clock, if that suits you.
Shirley read the letter twice and then sat and stared in front of her. The temptation to fling everything to the winds and go and see him because she adored him was overwhelming. She got up and took off her hat and tossed it up into the top of the high built-in cupboard. She struck a match and stooped to light the fire, and then had to light another one because there was no gas left in the pipes. The jets sputtered and burned a little blue after she had put the shilling in, and the whole thing smelled a little. Shirley went mechanically to the washhand-stand, took the little strainer out of the soap dish, filled the part that was left with water, and set it down in front of the fire. And then she pulled the rather creaky wicker chair close up to the fire and sat down in it. Supposing she did see him, what was the use of it? He possessed her—enveloped her body and soul. And he had a wife of his own, and even if he hadn’t one he would not care for her yet. These efforts of his to see her were the efforts of a kindly man who could understand the shame she must be feeling because she had offered herself to him on any terms. He wanted to see her so that he could show her that he had forgotten all that—that she was to him, as she had always been, the nice little daughter of his old friend. And she would see him and sit beside him in a torment of longing that he would kiss her and make love to her. She didn’t care if it was wrong: she didn’t care what it was, so long as he would kiss her. And he would unconsciously feel this, even though she might have the decency to keep it to herself. No; Shirley buried her hot face in her hands and resolved that she would not see him. Nothing would induce her to see him; she got up to fetch her writing case from the top of the chest of drawers.
And Hugo got her letter the next morning when he came into the sitting room for breakfast. Mrs. Thomson’s niece was being a great success. While he waited for her to bring in the silver dish of egg and bacon, he stood by the fire and studied the envelope. The postmark was of Chelsea and the letter had been posted at ten-fifteen the night before. Chelsea: something caught Hugo by the throat and he suddenly coughed.
“Breakfast is ready, sir.” Old Thomson’s niece spoke and then lumbered out.
“Thanks.” Hugo sat down. He suddenly felt disinclined to eat. He slit open the envelope with the wrong end of the fork.
Dear Mr. Trent [wrote Shirley]:
It sounds so rude, but somehow I feel you will understand. I don’t want to see you very much. It isn’t because you weren’t very kind to me while I was with you, because you were. But now I want to feel that that is all done with. Please understand.
Yours sincerely,
Shirley Mortimer.
Hugo read the short letter twice, and then a third time. Mechanically he forked some bacon out of the dish in front of him and began to eat it. He poured himself out some coffee and began to drink it, and then put the cup down again because the coffee was so hot. He wiped his mouth and sat back in his chair and read the letter again. The brevity and the meaning of the words in it struck him between the eyes like a blow. She wanted to forget the time in the flat because she was falling in love with another man and she was ashamed of her passion for him, Hugo.
He got up, leaving the remainder of the bacon to congeal in his plate, and began to rage about the room. He was astounded at the fury of feeling that engulfed him. She was falling in love with, and would eventually marry, that murderer. God, she should not! He sat down again and went on eating. He had a heavy day in front of him, and he was sensible enough to know that he must eat if he was to do his work properly. But what was he going to do? While he buttered his toast and helped himself to marmalade he thought furiously. Should he get hold of Mrs. Fielding? No; the change of postmark meant that she had left the Fieldings, and probably after some difference of opinion. Also, the Fielding daughter was engaged: he had seen it in the Morning Post. Mrs. Fielding would be busy and also she by now probably bitterly regretted her confidence to him about her own love affair and would not want to see him any more.
And then an awful thought struck him, and he forgot about it being stupid not to eat and sat back feeling sick and overwhelmed. The postmark had been Chelsea. Was she then already living with Harrington, who had a house in Chelsea, and who was, like most artists, Bohemian to his finger-tips? Shirley! That little child, whose soft red hair he bad kissed that night, not really so very long ago—who had offered herself to him on the same terms as those on which Harrington had now got her. And yet not on the same terms at all. Because she had loved him—really loved him. He remembered her pale illumined face lifted to him in an ecstasy. And he had repulsed her! Hugo got up and rang for the breakfast to be cleared away.
But when it had gone he still sat irresolute. What should he do next? If she was already living with Harrington the thing was hopeless. But if she was not, there was still hope. And why, after all, should Harrington do this disgraceful thing? He was free to marry if he wanted to. But perhaps he did not want to. Men got shaken and afraid after they had been in prison. It would evoke a good deal of comment if the successful artist married again so soon. Shirley’s parents might not like it, because of the publicity it would mean. In any event—and then Hugo started to rage up and down the room again.
Norman began to be rather uneasy about Shirley’s change of abode after about a week, because she did not look nearly so well as she had been looking. She was so frightfully pale—almost transparent.
“I don’t believe you eat enough,” he said one day as they sat by the fire having coffee and biscuits. He said it because he noticed that Shirley, instead of eating only one or two biscuits, ate six. Also she had had two cups of coffee.
“Yes, I do.” Shirley flushed and felt uncomfortable.
“No, you don’t. You live in a horrible bedroom, and I know they don’t provide you with dinner there. I expect if it’s wet you don’t go out and get it and then go to bed hungry. Don’t you, now?” Norman’s eyes were searching.
“I’ve got biscuits in my room and chocolate.” Shirley’s hands were moving nervously in her lap. “And loads of money to have dinner at the Carlton every night if I want to,” she added rather defiantly.
“Yes, I know: but it doesn’t follow that you have it,” said Norman. He suddenly felt wretched because he couldn’t make up his mind to ask Shirley to marry him. He loved her—at least, he felt pretty sure that he did, she was so sweet and innocent. Norman had for a long time been perfectly certain that there had been nothing between her and Hugo Trent: that escapade had been nothing more than a rag on Shirley’s part. But somehow—marriage was so fearfully permanent. Supposing after a little while he got to feel that Shirley was a hindrance to his career? As it was he had been obliged to give up having her sit to him in the afternoons, because he was beginning to be so busy. If only—and then, being a nice, decent sort of man, he dismissed that idea ruthlessly from his mind. Besides, she wouldn’t; she wasn’t that sort of a girl.
The morning wore on. Shirley sat on the little dais and gazed out of the high window and looked like a white anemone, and a pathetic one at that. Norman glanced from her to his easel and then back again, and wished that he didn’t feel so ghastly inert about everything to do with love and women. He wished he could take Shirley down to see his mother and ask her what she thought of her. And then he suddenly thought, why shouldn’t he? He had already suggested it once and Shirley had seemed rather to like the idea. Why not? They could go down that afternoon and he would knock off work. He laid down his palette and spoke with unusual animation.
“I say, let’s go down and see my mater this afternoon,” he said. “We’ll go in the car: it’s fine, and the drive will be heavenly.”
“Oh!” Shirley withdrew her eyes from the high window with an effort. The glare made her feel stupid—or was it the fury of her thoughts?
“Would you like it?”
“Yes; I think I should,” said Shirley uncertainly. “The only thing is, how will you explain me? They don’t know anything about me, do they?”
“No; but they aren’t a bit like that,” said Norman cheerfully. He suddenly felt wonderfully cheerful. He would cut the stupid meeting that he had had on that afternoon—it wouldn’t matter a bit if he wasn’t there. And he would order the car for three o’clock and they would buzz off and have tea at his home, and then come back again and he would take her out somewhere to dinner. Home would be gorgeous with all the chrysanthemums in big vases smelling wintry and a heavenly fire and his mother there. He was beaming from behind the easel. “Cut off and change your clothes and then have lunch, and I’ll call for you at three,” he said. “I’ll phone the mater and explain it all, so that she’ll know what you are,” he added with a laugh.
“Don’t tell her that——” Shirley was beginning to get down from the dais, and she looked frightened and apprehensive. Norman got up from his low stool and came to meet her.
“That what?” he said.
“That I’m a model,” said Shirley. The soft colour began to steal up from her open neck and flood over her sensitive face.
Norman was looking at her and telling himself that he did love her—that all this stupid, dull, insensitive feeling that he had was simply a result of the shock he had had; that if his mother seemed to like Shirley he would propose to her on the way back and get something settled once and for all. They could keep it quiet for a time—that would only be decent, after what had happened. They could even be married absolutely quietly and tell people afterwards. That would be the best of all. It would do away with all comment and gossip and all the horror which would probably surround his second marriage.
“Promise me you won’t tell her,” said Shirley again.
“Of course I won’t,” said Norman, and a very flood of protecting tenderness washed over him.
She was such a child; his mother would be sure to love her. He smiled protectingly down at her.
And Shirley’s spirits rose. In her desolation of spirit it was nice to feel that someone valued her. When, a couple of hours later, the big closed car drew up at the foot of the steps of the tall thin house in Oakley Street, she ran down them feeling almost excited. It was a very cold day and she wore her moleskin coat with a soft green crêpe de Chine scarf and a furry green felt to match. Norman was pleased with the dainty picture she made. His mother would be pleased too. He was delighted that he had thought of the expedition.
“Come along beside me, of course. I’ve left Jennings behind, as we haven’t got to bother to garage.” Norman was leaning across the wheel to open the door as Shirley stood hesitating.
“Oh!”
Shirley stepped in beside him. He, too, looked nice and well set up in his leather coat and felt hat. She sank back in the comfortable seat and thought that it was fun. That ghastly bedroom was a thing of the past, at any rate for the next six or seven hours. Norman had told her of the plan that he had in his head. Tea at East Horsley and dinner in the grill room at the Carlton. If they sat in the corner it wouldn’t matter a button that they were not in evening dress.
“Oh, jolly!”
Shirley felt happier than she had done for some time. And the drive down into Surrey was exquisite. It was a cold crisp day—a story-book December day, as Shirley exclaimed, gurgling with pleasure over it. The sun shone and made the trees sparkle like Christmas-card trees, as she said, feeling that she was being silly, but for some reason or other not able to help it.
They got to the long low manor house at East Horsley exactly at four o’clock. The trim parlourmaid opened the door and smiled pleasantly at Mr. Norman. “Yes, madam was in the drawing room,” she said, walking across the hall and then waiting to take Norman’s coat and hat from him. As she had done for Hugo in the little flat in the Temple, thought Shirley, with a stab of sudden unbearable pain, remembering how sometimes she had put her lips to his coat when she hung it up in the tall oak cupboard.
“Hallo, Mother! I’ve brought a friend of mine, Miss Shirley Mortimer, to see you.” Norman and Shirley were walking across the polished floor of the beautiful flower-filled drawing room. Mrs. Harrington got up to meet them, and as she got up she gripped her handkerchief tightly in her right hand. Norman’s sudden telephone message had turned her sick and faint with apprehension. He was thinking of marrying this girl whom he was bringing down to see her—Mrs. Harrington felt sure of it. Would she like her, or would it be a repetition of the horror of a few years before? Mrs. Harrington felt somehow that she could not even endure to welcome any other girl to the house if Norman was thinking of marrying her. She was getting older and she could not stand things as she had been used to stand them.
But Shirley’s fragile little face and figure reassured her. Her voice, too, was low and sweet. Tea came in and Mrs. Harrington, desperately relieved, was at her best as she presided over it. Norman was delighted: he knew his mother so well that he would have been able to tell in an instant if she had not liked Shirley. His father came in from golf, and Norman could see that he liked her too. They sat round the low tea table and talked and laughed and ate, and Norman began to feel more and more delighted. If his mother had looked as if she did not like Shirley he would not have liked her either. But she did, and now his mind was absolutely made up. He would propose to her on the way back to town and they would go and have a jolly dinner to celebrate it. But they wouldn’t tell anybody, not even his mother. Not until they had been married about a month, and then it could come out gradually. Unless Shirley objected, and he didn’t think that she would. She didn’t seem to take very much notice of anything her parents said; but what girls did nowadays? They could be married at a Register Office and just come back and live at his house. He would tell old Porrett and his wife: he would have to, because they kept house for him. But the Porretts were discreet and would keep it quiet if he told them to.
So with this plan in his head he got up to go almost directly after tea. Mrs. Harrington exclaimed: “Oh, Norman, but I’ve hardly seen you!” and then sat and looked wistfully at him through the firelight. Shirley watched her and thought how nice she was. A heavenly mother to have, and she obviously adored Norman. What ever must she have felt when he was in prison?
“I’ll come again, Mother.” Norman was getting up and his sensitive face was flushed. He felt that he wanted to get his proposal to Shirley over. If she refused him he would give up any idea of marrying anyone and simply settle down as a bachelor.
But he and she could not go on as they were doing now any more. And he could not offer her anything less than marriage, although he would like to have done. There was something so horribly permanent about marriage: something so irrevocable. However, as he steered carefully out of the wide white gate onto the country road that gave onto the main London road, he knew that nothing short of marriage would do for the girl who sat beside him. She was too good for anything else—too fastidious and not Bohemian enough. So he started to pluck up his courage for a proposal. Everything was favourable for it. The moon was shining blithely in a perfectly clear sky. The white road ahead of him sparkled in the light of the powerful head-lamps. Shirley sat beside him very silent, and not touching him at all, and he liked the reticence of her. Aesthetically, Shirley pleased him very much. Emotionally? Well, emotions were the devil, thought Norman, and generally landed you where you didn’t want to be landed. One was better without them, thought Norman again, suddenly slowing down and drawing up by the side of the road. It was a long straight bit of road and absolutely deserted.
“Why are you stopping?” Shirley stirred in her seat and wondered if she had been asleep. She had enjoyed the time with Norman Harrington’s parents—it had been homelike and both of them were dears, especially his mother. She felt that she would like to have told his mother all about Hugo Trent, because she would have understood. She would have understood that it had not been from any horrible motive that she had gone to his flat to be a servant, but simply from an overmastering longing to serve the man she worshipped. And she would have understood that now nothing else seemed to have any savour in it. Shirley linked her hands together and looked up at Norman’s sensitive face turned to hers. Why was he stopping? she wondered vaguely.
And she soon knew. Norman went straight to the point, and the quiet unemotional way in which he spoke pleased Shirley. If he had protested and perhaps dragged her into his arms she would have hated him. But this was nice. He wanted to have the right to take care of her because she was such a little thing to be muddling about by herself. Would she marry him soon after Christmas and not mind if it was kept absolutely quiet for a time?—so quiet that not even his parents or hers were to know that they even were engaged. It would mean so much fuss and talk, of course, she would understand why. After what had happened, the quieter it could be kept the better.
“Where should I live?”
Shirley could see Norman’s face in the light of the little electric glow-lamp close to the clock. He looked nice as he talked to her. He was clever and very successful—almost famous; in fact, he was already famous. To be the wife of a successful artist would be nice, thought Shirley; she could help him on by always being beautifully dressed and polite to his visitors and sitters. He was not desperately in love with her either; she could tell that by the way he talked. But he would be kind to her and take care of her. Shirley thought of her future and shivered at the thought of it. Irrevocably made desolate by her love for a man who did not care for her and never would, even although his wife might die, what was to become of her? She could never go home again: that aimless life in Montreux would drive her crazy. She could not take a post, because her heart would not be in it. But she could be a good faithful wife to this nice man who had had such an awful time of it with his first wife. But she could not go on living in one room.
“Where should I live?” she asked again, timidly this time.
“With me in Chelsea, of course,” said Norman. “The Porretts will have to know, but they won’t tell anyone. At least, it won’t matter if they do tell people. I mean to say I don’t want any horrid secrecy about it after it’s over. Only I don’t want a lot of congratulations and rejoicings, and I feel at the moment that I couldn’t stand even my mother and father knowing. I am awfully fond of them both, but I couldn’t stand the sort of—oh, I can’t explain it quite,” said Norman impatiently.
“Yes; but I think I know,” broke in Shirley quietly. “It’s the sort of shrinking one has from showing one’s real feelings. I can’t explain it quite. A sort of horror of anything like weeping round. One can’t bear it, somehow.”
“No “; and then Norman s heart thrilled to Shirley’s quiet understanding and he turned and took hold of her hand. “And you liked my mother, too, didn’t you?” he asked eagerly. “I simply love my mother. I always have done.”
“Rather,” said Shirley enthusiastically.
“Kiss me then, will you?” said Norman. He stooped his head and touched Shirley’s soft lips with his own.
She responded with a quiet composure that delighted him. She felt, as he did, that it was the companionship of marriage that would make it worth while. He had done well to ask her to be his wife. She had not said that she would, but she meant it.
“We’ll be married quite soon after Christmas, shall we?” he said. “Just tell me that, and then we must get along. If I give notice at the Chelsea Register Office to-morrow it will be all right by about the eleventh of January. How would that do for you?”
“Beautifully,” said Shirley calmly. And in fact she felt calm. A tremendous relief stole over her. It was almost like some delicious opiate, the way that all her immediate miseries and anxieties seemed to be stilled. She was going to be married to this nice well-bred man and settle down and forget everything else except him and his career.
And the rest of the drive up to London was passed in a sort of acquiescent restful silence. Norman forgot about Shirley, except so far as next year’s Academy was concerned. He would get that picture that he had dreamed of—Shirley with her delicate childish limbs slipping up out of the green sea with her face turned up to the sun. He would have to alter her face a little, of course, but her hair could stay as it was. And Norman thought these thoughts without the slightest passion or emotion. She was going to be his jolly little pal, and he would be able to see that she had enough to eat. He would begin that night—he knew old Patier at the Carlton and he had got to put his best foot foremost. Norman felt more content than he had done for years as he slowed down the car in a sudden rush of traffic.
Meanwhile Hugo did nothing—principally because he did not know what to do. He thought of writing to Shirley again, and then came to the conclusion that it would be humiliating and would do his cause no good. He took to walking in the Temple Gardens in the evening and scanning the faces of the women that he saw there. He gathered that Norman Harrington had met her there one night, and perhaps she would come there again. But she never did. At least, if she did he did not see her. When he had time to spare he wended his way to the Church and Commercial Stores. Women loved the Stores always, and he had asked her to meet him there once, and perhaps—and Hugo’s heart trembled a little at the thought—perhaps she would go there just because of that. Not because she was going to meet him, but just for the idea of the thing.
People sitting in serried rows on the comfortable seats, dozing in the almost tropical heat, saw the tall keen-faced man come into the lounge and look round, and wondered whom he was looking for. One elderly maiden lady who spent most of her time at the Stores writing letters to her friends on the firmly doled out notepaper conceived a violent passion for the tall distinguished-looking man. She saw him come in four times during one week and wondered why he was doing it. Because he never seemed to find the person he was looking for. And there were never any messages for him on the white slate either. The maiden lady, in a sudden frenzy of thwarted sex instinct, wondered what would happen if one day she wrote one. She wondered that one day when the tall figure stood before the easel a little longer than usual. But as a matter of fact, although Hugo’s eyes rested on the stupid message: “Have gone up to the stationery department, but if you don’t find me there—big luncheon room, Ethel,” his thoughts were not there at all. Subconsciously he was feeling almost desperate. Time was going on and Harrington had got such a long lead on him.
He left the lounge at the Stores and walked all the way back to the Temple along the Embankment. Work at the moment was slack or he would not have been able to do it. But until the New Year sessions of the Old Bailey came on on the fourteenth of January he was fairly free. Christmas was almost on them and he was going to spend it in the country with his sister.
So he went home to tea. Mrs. Thomson was to wait on him that day, as the fat niece had a cousin come up from the country. She had got the tea all ready when he got back and a nice fire burning. She lingered after putting the teapot down on its flowered china stand. She admired Mr. Trent tremendously, and loved a chat with him when she got the chance.
“Well, Mrs. Thomson, and how is the world treating you?” Hugo did not in the least want to talk to Mrs. Thomson, but he felt it would be kind. “Sit down and give me the latest news,” he said, “and may I pour you out a cup of tea perhaps?”
“Oh, no, sir, thank you.” Mrs. Thomson, thin and wiry, remained standing as Hugo knew she would. But she beamed at him. He was a real gentleman, as she confided to old Thomson later.
“Any news?” Hugo was weary and he wished Mrs. Thomson would go away. But he was sorry for her. She had lost two sons in the war and her only daughter had married a man who drank. Most people seemed to drink, thought Hugo with a flash of dreadful amusement.
“Yes, sir, a very pretty little bit of news, sir,” said Mrs. Thomson mysteriously. “And it will interest you, sir, if I’m not very much mistaken.”
“Really?” Hugo’s voice was suddenly curious. He took another bit of bread and butter and put it down on his plate, forgetting that he had taken it.
“Well?” he said.
“It will not go any farther, sir?”
“No, of course it won’t,” said Hugo briefly.
“It’s Mr. Harrington, sir, that gentleman as you defended so noble. He’s going to be married again, sir. Porrett, that’s his butler and a cousin of Thomson’s, was round at the Lodge the other night. He was Mr. Wreford’s butler, sir, before Mr. Harrington’s, sir. And he told us just in confidence like, because he knew it wouldn’t go any farther. And I know it is perfectly safe with you, sir.”
“Perfectly,” said Hugo stilly. He turned his face a little more towards the fire. “Well, whom is Mr. Harrington going to marry, Mrs. Thomson?”
“A young lady what’s been sitting to him for the draped figure, sir,” said Mrs. Thomson glibly. “A lovely young lady she is, Porrett says, with a wealth of hair, all auburn,” said Mrs. Thomson, waxing poetic in her excitement.
“Really? Do you know where the young lady lives when she is not sitting to Mr. Harrington?” asked Hugo quietly. His heart was drumming in his ears.
“Somewhere in Oakley Street, Porrett says, sir,” said Mrs. Thomson. “Because as a rule Porrett doesn’t hold at all with models—says he knows too much about them,” said Mrs. Thomson, her dark face suddenly virtuous. “But Porrett says she’s a little lady if anyone was. Takes them in their coffee and biscuits at eleven o’clock every morning as regular as clockwork. And her so sweet, sitting so modest on the little platform,” ended Mrs. Thomson beatifically.
“Splendid! Thank you for telling me, Mrs. Thomson,” said Hugo heartily. “And now I will get on with my tea alone, if you don’t mind. Delightful bread and butter; thank you so much.”
“Don’t mention it, sir,” and Mrs. Thomson had gone.
And Hugo, left alone, simply sat and stared at the fire. Married to Harrington, the child he loved and had meant to have for his own! He suddenly sat forward and pressed the bell sunk into the wall by the corner of the fireplace.
“Yes, sir?” Mrs. Thomson was back again.
“Oh, Mrs. Thomson”—Hugo turned to smile pleasantly at his housekeeper—“have you any idea when Mr. Harrington is going to be married? You were right, I am greatly interested in what you have told me.”
“Yes, sir; Porrett says the eleventh of January. Mr. Harrington is so busy that he can’t take more than the week-end off, so he’s chosen a Saturday, sir.”
“I see; thank you, Mrs. Thomson. So sorry to have brought you back again,” Hugo smiled again. “Take the tea away while you’re here, won’t you?”
“Thank you, sir,” and Mrs. Thomson withdrew with the tray.
But she was back again in another moment or two. Hugo was standing up with his back to the fire when she came in.
“I’m sorry to trouble you again, Mrs. Thomson, but there was just one thing that I wanted to ask you about this marriage of Mr. Harrington’s. You asked me not to mention it to anyone. Why is there being this secrecy? Do you know?”
“Oh, sir, I feel now as if I oughtn’t to have told you,” quavered Mrs. Thomson. “It’s secret because Mr. Harrington doesn’t want anyone to know till it’s all safely over. He talks very confidential to Porrett, does Mr. Harrington, and of course we all knows what he had to suffer with that first lady of his. Not even the young lady’s parents are to know till it’s all over. A Register Office marriage it’s going to be, and I call it a poor way of getting married,” snivelled Mrs. Thomson, suddenly terrified at the look on the pale clear-cut face regarding her.
But Hugo smiled, and his smile was a very charming one. “Don’t distress yourself, Mrs. Thomson,” he said. “Remember that I am accustomed to keeping secrets. Thank you again so much for telling me. Now I really shall not have you back again,” he smiled again.
So Mrs. Thomson went. But as she sat in the kitchen staring at the tea things that she was soon going to wash up, she began to think that she had made a mistake in telling Mr. Trent about Mr. Harrington’s marriage. Thomson must never know that she had done it, she thought, walking slowly between the table and the sink. Or Porrett either. It might even cost Porrett his place, thought Mrs. Thomson, feeling by now thoroughly miserable and uncomfortable and deciding to steady herself by having another cup of tea.
Hugo spent the rest of that evening in profound thought. As he sat in the corner of the little French restaurant in Soho that he sometimes patronized, with a bottle of Chianti in its wicker basket in front of him, he looked so absorbed that Monsieur Murier, the delightful patron, rallied him on his air of detachment. “Monsieur is to-night very far from us in thought?” he ventured, standing with his fat jolly face creased in sympathetic deference.
“A little, Monsieur Murier,” said Hugo gravely, and Monsieur Murier took the hint and went away. That was why his restaurant was always crowded; he was invariably the charming and attentive host, but never the voluble bore.
Hugo dined well and then went out again into the crisp, frosty night. The stars were twinkling and were not even overshadowed by the blaze of light in Piccadilly Circus. He stood a moment and watched the quickly extinguished and equally quickly re-illumined winking, trickling electric advertisements by the Palace Theatre. How clever they were!—that cocktail shaker, for instance. How children loved them! Hugo stood and watched a rather shabbily dressed woman with a little boy clinging to her arm. His little pale face shone even paler in the bright light. He laughed shrilly and clung to her so that she should not move on. Hugo suddenly longed to give the little boy five shillings, or even ten, and made up his mind equally suddenly that he was going to, only it would have to be done most awfully neatly or he would be taken up for making advances to the woman or something equally ghastly. They looked so really poor: the sort of desperate well-bred poverty that very rarely gets any help. Hugo watched for his opportunity and got a note ready in his clenched hand. A pound note; anything less would be an insult. And five minutes later he was across the road and down Lower Regent Street, leaving the little boy gasping and staring up at his mother.
“He told me I’d dropped it,” he stammered.
“Where has he gone?” The shabby mother was staring round her. A whole pound, and it was so nearly Christmas!
“I don’t know: don’t let’s bother to look for him,” said the little boy, and he dragged his mother eagerly on up Regent Street.
And Hugo went on his way feeling extraordinarily happy. They had undoubtedly been gentle-people; he had seen the woman’s delicate profile quite close. A pound would help to cheer them on their way, he thought. And oddly enough, since that little brief impulse of charity, his own course of action seemed clearer. He would get back to the flat and look up dates and get the whole thing properly mapped out.
A bright fire was still burning when after having shed his overcoat and hat he walked into the sitting room. Mrs. Thomson was good about fires; she knew he was keen about them. He sat down immediately at his writing table and got out his engagement book. Five more days till Christmas—four more really, because on Christmas Eve he was due down in Wiltshire. He would be back on the thirtieth, a Monday. He would make himself wait until then, because it would be wiser. Would it or wouldn’t it? Hugo was not a man who cared for waiting. No; he would write now; then he would have something to go on during the Christmas holidays. Otherwise the uncertainty would drive him crazy.
Shirley got his letter the next morning and the sight of it on her breakfast tray sent the blood in a flood to her heart. She saw it propped up against the coffee pot—she always opened her eyes and looked at her letters when the maid went across the room to pull back her curtains. After the maid had gone she forced herself to brush her teeth and put on her dressing gown before she tore the envelope open. As she combed her hair she thought how funny it was that in about one minute more she would feel absolutely different from what she did now. She went back and got into bed, looking like a child in her saxe blue dressing gown. She tore the letter open.
Dear Miss Mortimer [wrote Hugo]:
You are determined not to see me, aren’t you? But perhaps if I tell you that you can be a very great help to me you will relent. I want to do some shopping for a young girl friend of mine, and I shall feel so foolish if I try to do it alone. I’ll tell you what it is, and then you will understand. I want to buy her everything that she would require for a couple of nights away from home, even to a suitcase. To-day is the nineteenth, and I shall go to the Church and Commercial Stores to-morrow, the twentieth. Don’t bother to write, but if you can, be in the lounge at three o’clock, and I shall be very grateful. If you are not there I shall know that you were otherwise engaged and shall quite understand. Or—and this will be very depressing—that you really don’t want to see me.
Yours sincerely,
Hugo Trent.
Shirley read the letter twice and then pressed it convulsively to her lips. To-day—she was going to see him to-day! Of course she would go: nothing would keep her away. It was all right now that she was engaged; she had that like a sort of anchor in the background—something to hold her down and to prevent her from losing her head or doing or saying anything idiotic. But she would go and see him. She would hear his voice—be able to touch him, perhaps. Rapture! Unutterable bliss! And he didn’t know that she was engaged—she realized now that that was partly why she had felt that awful sinking feeling at the sight of his writing, the fear that he might have found out. But of course he couldn’t have found out: no one knew except she and Norman, and perhaps the Porretts: the Porretts would have to know, of course. But she was going to see him to-day.
Shirley dressed in a frenzy of joy. She had a bath, carefully scrubbing the tub first with her tin of Vim and the brush. And then she suddenly remembered that she had not had her breakfast. There it was, sitting dismally on the tray by the bed. Shirley laughed out loud and moved the tray onto a chair, and then dragged the table across close up to the gas fire. Her eyes were shining and her hair seemed more curly than usual. And an hour and a half later Norman remarked on it.
“What’s happened? You look very beaming!” he said; though he himself felt cross. He had moments of wishing that he had not asked Shirley to marry him—moments of dreadful panic, thinking that it would not be a success. Even now he had something to suggest to her that he was ashamed of. But he simply had to suggest it, whatever she thought. He waited until she was on the dais in her simple green dress with her delicate little profile turned to him.
“I say, would you mind most awfully if I spent Christmas with my people?” he said, trying to speak casually. “I know it seems rather funny, when you and I have just got engaged. But I’ve always done it—at least, I have when I’ve been able to. Lately, of course, I haven’t been able to. And I know my mater would love it,” ended Norman lamely.
“Of course,” said Shirley instantly. Her quick mind leaped in sympathy with his. This was the first Christmas for years that he had been really free. And he wanted to enjoy it with his mother. Christmas would be a bad time for the Harringtons, because of the dearly loved elder son who had been killed in the war. But if the son that remained could be with them it would help. “Of course you must spend Christmas with your people,” she said. “May I rest a minute?”
“Yes, do.” Norman put down his palette and stretched himself. He was frightfully relieved that the Christmas question was settled. He felt that he wanted to kiss Shirley because she wasn’t a bother. He could really love her if she wasn’t going to be a bother, he thought, getting up from his stool and walking across the polished boards to where she sat smiling at him. She smiled because she was so frightfully happy, staring out over his ear as he kissed her. His kisses made no impression on her whatever. He kissed her hair, and below his lips her down-bent face was curved and dimpled with happiness. She was going to see Hugo that very day, and it was all right because she was going to be married to Norman. That settled everything and took away all the despair because she couldn’t marry Hugo because he had a wife already. But once safely married herself, she could be Hugo’s friend. Norman was not fussy or jealous. Besides, as Shirley thought, watching Norman going back to the easel, being married gave you a sort of position. You were finished and done with, and she and Marjory could have fun going about London together and shopping.
Shirley’s eyes twinkled as she fell naturally into position again. What should she wear that afternoon? Her fur coat, of course, but what hat and shoes? The green hat—it suited her; Norman had said so.
She was at the Stores half an hour too soon. Terror of being late had made her take an omnibus that landed her there long before the time that Hugo had settled. She went up in the lift and wandered through the book department and took out a book about palmistry and studied it. She wandered into the gramophone department and listened to somebody else having records played to them. She murmured something about meeting someone there when the assistant looked at her as if she thought it was time that she bought something.
Men assistants were much nicer than women, thought Shirley, wandering back into the book department again. You could stand for hours looking at books and the assistants only smiled, especially if you smiled at them first. And then she caught sight of a clock and saw that it was ten minutes to three, and she bolted into a lift that was going up to the top floor. She must have an exhaustive review of herself in a long glass and see if all her clothes were safely on. Fancy if the elastic in her petticoat suddenly gave out and it came off! In a frenzy she borrowed a safety pin from the attendant in the ladies’ waiting room.
And then she took the same lift down to the ground floor. Terror—it was three minutes past three! Fancy if he had gone! She almost ran into the lounge. He was not there—she cast an agonized glance round her. She had missed him; he had thought she was not coming. She rushed out into the grocery department, and from there into the little place where they book tickets for the theatre. She began to make little sounds of distress under her breath. Casting a desperate glance round her, she rushed back into the lounge.
“Here you are.”
Hugo had purposely sat down with a paper when he had arrived in the lounge punctually at three o’clock. For the last three minutes he had really had a very dreadful time indeed: she did then care for Harrington and really did not mean to have anything more to do with him. Hugo sat and stared at the paper and saw nothing of it at all. And then from underneath his hard hat he saw her dash in from the glass department, stare round her in obviously an agony of despair lest she had missed him, and rush out again. And it had told him all he wanted to know. He did not even get up to follow her. He stood up and waited for her though, because he knew she would come back again.
And she did. And when she saw him there, the breaking up of her face was like the struggling out of the first gleam of sunshine after a wet day.
“Oh!” she was speechless.
“Well, this is splendid!” Hugo was marking time. He took her hand and held it for a moment in his ungloved one. And he looked at her. She was paler, and not so pretty as she had been. She had suffered and was still suffering. She did not care for Harrington or she would not look like that. His heart breathed its relief silently.
“Let’s sit down for a minute or two, shall we?”
They took their seats between two sleeping people. Hugo laughed softly and glanced at her. “This place always amuses me so profoundly,” he said. “People come here and completely give it up!”
“Yes, don’t they?” Shirley was sitting very straight up like a child. Something within her became like a child when she was with this man, she thought. He seemed to take all of her and somehow envelope it with himself, and nothing else mattered any more. He was there and it wouldn’t matter if there wasn’t anyone else alive at all.
“Well, shall we start on our shopping?” Hugo was looking at Shirley, and as he looked he felt profoundly happy. This child adored him, so everything was going to be all right. There might be a struggle, but nothing that he couldn’t manage. “Shall we go on?” he said.
“Yes, let’s,” said Shirley joyously.
“I want these things. No; let’s study the list first,” said Hugo. He got out his pocketbook and drew a loose sheet of notepaper out of it. “Everyone’s asleep,” he said whimsically. “Read it out very slowly.”
Shirley did as she was told. The list was rather long. She flushed as she read it. There were underclothes in the list—at least a nightdress, and a nightdress was underclothes. There was a dressing gown as well. Who was this girl? wondered Shirley, flushing up to the brim of her soft hat and suddenly hating her. Not surely someone he was in love with, because he was married. A niece perhaps? Was it a niece? For her life she could not help asking.
“No, not exactly a niece: more of a ward,” said Hugo slowly. He saw that Shirley was jealous, and he was glad. “How many things are there on the list?” he asked.
“Twelve,” said Shirley, after counting.
“Read them out, will you?” asked Hugo. He was desperately enjoying himself, and yet he knew that he was behaving naughtily. But she was such a pet with her ridiculous blushings and confusion over the nightdress.
“Toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, comb, sponge, sponge bag, nightdress, vest, dressing gown, bedroom slippers, face cream, hot-water bottle,” read Shirley.
“And suitcase,” finished Hugo, heaving himself up. “Come along, then, and let’s get going.”
“I don’t see why you need bother to get all these things for her,” said Shirley mutinously. Her eager eyes were suddenly depressed. “Why can’t she get them for herself?”
“Oh, I don’t know! It amuses me,” said Hugo easily. And in fact he looked amused. His eyes twinkled between their dark lashes. “We’ll go up in the lift,” he said. “And you tell me where we have to stop.”
“Ladies’ outfitting,” said Shirley, who knew the Church and Commercial Stores by heart.
“We’ll start with the nightdress then,” said Hugo mischievously. He stood tall and distinguished-looking as Shirley spoke shyly to the smart assistant. “What colour?” he said, and his eyes danced.
“If it was me I should have very pale green,” said Shirley. “And a Shetland vest to match. But perhaps she wouldn’t like that.”
“Yes, she would,” said Hugo promptly. The assistant went away, and came back again with a deep, white-lined box. The nightdresses were exquisite. Shirley touched them and hated the unknown girl who was going to wear one of them. Soon she, too, would have to be buying herself delicate filmy nightdresses. She recoiled sickly from the thought.
“I like that one.” Hugo reached out and touched a delicate mass of lace with a long finger.
“Yes, I know, but I expect it’s awfully expensive,” said Shirley in an alarmed undertone.
“Never mind, we’ll have it.” Hugo’s response was prompt. “Now the vest and the dressing gown. We’ll have a country card, because I hate going to those tiresome desks. Come along, my child. It’s all on the same floor, isn’t it? Yes, thanks very much,” Hugo smiled pleasantly at the attendant.
The shopping did not take long. Hugo made Shirley try the dressing gown on—it was pale green soft, glimmering satin and had a lovely collar of white fur on it. He watched her little eager face and longed to kiss her. She was such a child, and yet she thought herself so well able to take care of herself. When would he be free to undertake it? wondered Hugo passionately. Soon, if what Ferguson said was true, although Corder had been guarded when he saw him the week before. He followed Shirley into the lift and stood close to her with his well-brushed head shining under the electric light. Ah, she had moved closer to him; he caught his breath as she leaned against his arm.
“Well? Ready for tea?” The shopping was finished and Hugo had signed the check and pushed it under the grille of the chief cashier’s office. He had spent nearly forty pounds—what a mercy this child did not know it! He had been desperately amused at Shirley’s efforts at economy. “I don’t see why she need have a shagreen back to her brush, anyhow,” she had said, and her lips had quivered babyishly.
“Oh, better have it, then she can start a shagreen set for her dressing table,” said Hugo. He glanced away from Shirley’s trembling mouth and wondered how long it would be before he would kiss it. The thought of Norman Harrington troubled him not at all. The man had murdered his wife and must suffer for it. Or was he saving him more suffering by preventing him from marrying a woman who didn’t love him? wondered Hugo as they stood at the wide entrance of the Stores and looked out onto Victoria Street.
“Yes, please,” he answered the commissionaire, who had asked him if he wanted a taxi. It came steering up to the curb and the driver put his hand behind him and wrenched open the door. They got in, Hugo with a quiet strong hand under Shirley’s elbow. He spoke briefly to the taxi driver.
“Tea,” he said, “and I know a nice quiet place out of Brook Street. You’d like tea, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, please,” said Shirley. She sat looking small and eager in her moleskin coat. Like a child clutching almost painfully at every instant of a long-promised treat. Hugo began to wish desperately that she would tell him that she was engaged to Norman Harrington, so that he could help her and find out from her if she really wanted to marry him or not.
If she did, of course he would have to stand back and behave decently. But she didn’t—no girl could look as Shirley had looked when she dashed into the lounge and thought him gone, if she was in love with another man.
Tea was a delightful little meal. Hugo felt confident and happy and also amused at Shirley’s childish pleasure in his company. He loved her childishness. Hugo was very much a man of the world, and thought that all women were meant to be loved and cherished and made much of. He did not believe in the independence of women; women were only independent when they had not found anyone they could believe in sufficiently to depend upon. He smiled at Shirley, and delighted in the way in which she met his gaze and then looked falteringly away from him. He longed to kiss her, and knew that he mustn’t.
“Well, when shall we meet again?” He said it at the end of the nice tea, when the girl who had waited on them had brought the bill and gone away with the money for it and a great deal of change for herself.
“Well, I don’t really know,” Shirley faltered, and grew rather paler. She was going to be married on the eleventh of January. There was hardly any time.
“Well, I shall be away for Christmas,” said Hugo. “So will you, I expect.”
“Yes; I am going to the Fieldings. They asked me a long time ago, but I didn’t know whether I should be able to,” said Shirley.
“I see.” Hugo’s spirits rose still further. Norman Harrington had charming parents, but he was not sufficiently in love with Shirley to want her as well as them at Christmas. That was all to the good.
“Well, I think I’d better write and fix a date,” he said. “We’ll meet some time in January again, if you would care to.”
“I shall be busy after the tenth,” said Shirley falteringly. Somehow she felt that she must see Hugo again, and quite soon, or she would die.
“Well, then, let us say the ninth,” said Hugo instantly, relinquishing any idea that he might have cherished of seeing Shirley before then. After all, it was hardly fair, when she was engaged to another man, to take her out and tacitly make love to her. There was no point in it. It would be ghastly to wait until the ninth, but still he would have to. “How will the ninth do for you?” he asked.
“Quite well,” said Shirley flatly. In fact, the disappointment rendered her almost speechless. Nineteen days! She made brief and despairing calculations.
“Splendid!” Hugo’s voice was satisfied. Shirley’s obvious dismay that she was not going to see him earlier delighted him. And for one brief moment he almost decided to throw all discretion to the winds, tell her that he knew that she was engaged to Norman Harrington, and tell her also that it was ridiculous—that she must break it off; that he himself was in love with her, but was held back from saying anything by the thought of his wife; that he hoped and felt sure that freedom was in sight for him, but that until it was his tongue was tied.
And then he decided to say nothing of the kind. Women were strange creatures and you never quite knew where you had got them. Some queer feeling of loyalty to Norman Harrington might make her feel that she must keep her promise to him, even although she did not love him. He looked down at Shirley as she stood fumbling with her gloves, her head a little cast down.
“The ninth, then,” he said, “and you won’t mind if I don’t come back with you now to your flat, wherever it is, will you? I must get back to work at once. I will put you into a taxi and you’ll be all right, won’t you? Thank you so much for helping with my shopping.”
“I’d rather walk,” said Shirley blankly. After all, how was he to know how much she had counted on another drive with him? she thought bitterly. “And where shall I meet you on the ninth?” she asked miserably. It was all over now, and for another nineteen miserable days she would not see him at all.
“At the same time and in the same place,” said Hugo, taking hold of her hand and looking down into her upturned desolate eyes. “And if you really mean to walk I’ll say good-bye here, because I must get a taxi myself and hurry for all I’m worth.”
“All right,” said Shirley bravely. She watched the taxi come steering up to the door of the little tea shop and the man she loved step up into it, and with a pleasant wave of his hat go buzzing off down Bond Street. But what she did not see was Hugo’s quick intake of breath as he put his hat down on the seat beside him and sat back in his corner with folded arms. That was all right; now to wait for the ninth. God! Would it ever come? thought Hugo, feeling desperately in his pocket for his cigarette case, dragging a cigarette out, and lighting it with fingers that in spite of himself would persist in trembling a little.
Christmas in the English country is, if it is fine and you can afford to have plenty of fires, more delicious than Christmas in any other part of the world. And Norman Harrington was thinking this as, after a very nice breakfast, he stood just outside the front door of his home and watched his breath go floating out in front of him like a spouting of steam, and the cocker spaniel that he loved rushing wildly about, making big straggly streaks on the frosty lawn. The post had come, and Mrs. Harrington, in the last stages of excitement, was sitting by the fire in the morning room surrounded by letters. His father had gone off to get his thicker shoes, because he thought he might need them on the golf links.
Norman sauntered back into the house and was suddenly glad that he was alive. Perfect content because he was in the home that he loved and with the parents that he loved. Nothing to bother about—no awful thought that people wouldn’t get on or say things that made you feel uncomfortable. Just blessed calm and peace, and in the background the thought that you were making a success of your job and that fame, if it wasn’t actually already in your grasp, was somewhere fairly near to you. Shirley was sweet, but she wasn’t part of this, thought Norman, standing in the square hall and looking at the low, shallow stairs and breathing in the scent of the chrysanthemums, and then suddenly thinking that he would go and have another look at his mother.
Mrs. Harrington, seeing him coming, looking so tall and fit and splendid in the dark brown plus-fours that suited him so well, felt inclined to fall on her knees and thank God for this happiness that was filling her heart. She would do it later in the old parish church. Her husband and her son were not coming to church. She had rebuked them at breakfast for their heathen behaviour in going out to play golf, instead.
“You will pray for us, my dear.” Mr. Harrington smiled as he spoke. He too was very happy on this gorgeous frosty Christmas Day. He loved Norman and the boy was fond of him. “We’ll meet at lunchtime, then,” he said, and as the two went off down the drive Mrs. Harrington watched them go, and again felt inclined to fall on her knees and thank God.
And, muffled up in her beautiful furs, she knelt and looked at the flowers on the altar, and added her prayers to those that were making the Holy Place a quivering circle of flame. Prayers such as she and many others were uttering at that moment were living things. They blotted out the heaviness and old-fashioned stupidity of many of the words of the service. They went straight up to the place where all real prayers and thanksgivings go. Mrs. Harrington thanked God quite simply that Norman’s wife was dead. And she uttered a little secret prayer, too, that, unless it were absolutely for his happiness, he should not marry again. Vaguely she felt that she knew her son better than God did. And then she knew that she didn’t, and felt inclined to weep. After all, He had stepped in and saved him from an awful death.
She sat back in her seat as the hymn was given out: “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” How often had she not heard it in the old days when the boys were tiny! The fearful mystery of the first wavering notes of carol singers, often dreadfully out of tune, coming in from behind a freezing front door. Her two little boys: Mrs. Harrington remained sitting down as the rest of the congregation got up to sing. But somehow her tears were not cruel tears, but tears that helped and healed. Towards the end of the last verse she wiped her eyes and got up and tried to sing too. After all, God had got Ralph safely with Him—he needed no more tears. And Norman would be all right now. Mrs. Harrington sang more resolutely.
And the rest of the day was equally happy. In the afternoon Norman sank into a low chair after having dragged the cocker spaniel away from the hearth, where he was lying with his head practically under the grate. He sat with his long legs stuck out in front of him, thinking that nothing made up for one’s own home, and that after all he could easily have got another model for his next year’s Academy picture; that it was a funny reason to marry a girl so that you could paint her with nothing on; and that it was quite on the cards that Shirley’s figure would be disappointing—women’s figures often were. And he thought all these thoughts without a stir of the pulses and with a sense of profound detachment. He liked Shirley very much and she was a sweet little thing. But he liked his mother and his own home better. However, things would probably turn out all right. And Norman, who had had a very good lunch, sank a little lower still in the chair and went placidly to sleep.
Meanwhile, Shirley at the Fieldings was also enjoying herself. Mrs. Fielding inwardly felt a little apologetic towards this red-haired child whom she had begun to befriend and then rather neglected.
She was relieved that Shirley had accepted her cordial invitation to spend Christmas with them. She wrote a cordial little note, supplementing Marjory’s excited and verbose invitation, and insisting that as Christmas Day was on a Wednesday, Shirley must come on the Sunday before and stay at least a week. Fergus had to pay a short visit to an old uncle, and would be away for at least part of the time. The girls could shop together, and Marjory would love it. Mrs. Fielding felt happier about Shirley than she had done for some time when she got her delighted letter of acceptance. Shirley was always more or less on her mind, although she tried not to let her be. Because, after all, she was not her child, argued Mrs. Fielding, when she thought of Hugo Trent and Norman Harrington, and Shirley all alone between the two.
So Christmas passed happily for everybody. The Mortimers knew that Shirley was with the Fieldings, so were able to enjoy themselves together with a clear conscience. Besides, their daughter always wrote happily, so why should they worry about her? They never had any reason to worry about Pansy or Margaret, so why should they worry about Shirley, who was perhaps in her own way the most determined of all their three daughters? So everyone was happy, and Shirley went back to her shabby-genteel little bedroom on the thirtieth of December feeling a good deal better both in health and spirits. The quiet luxury of the Fieldings’ pleasant home life had been good for her both mentally and physically.
But after a day or two her spirits went down again. In spite of herself she had had a sort of subconscious hope that perhaps Hugo would write again. He had sent her a card for Christmas, and she had torn the envelope open in a frenzy of hope that perhaps there was a letter inside it as well. But there wasn’t. Shirley put it away with her other cards and felt as if someone had pinched her heart. She was going to see him again just once more on the ninth, and then she was going to be married—married to Norman, who had come back from his week with his people looking most awfully pleased with himself and cheerful. He hadn’t missed her at all, thought Shirley, standing and holding up her face to be kissed and thinking what a lot of fuss there was about kissing and how really awfully dull it was. Mercifully, Norman was not at all given to kissing, reflected Shirley with satisfaction, changing her dress behind the thick plush curtain and wondering what it would be like to be really married to him and living in this nice house. Mrs. Norman Harrington—what would her parents say when they knew—and Marjory? In a way she would have rather scored over Marjory, because Norman had a much better position than Fergus. When Shirley had any qualms about her marriage she always thought about Norman’s position. It cheered her up and made her think that she was doing the right thing in marrying him. And something else had cheered her up too. During the week she had spent with Marjory she had questioned her delicately about her feelings for Fergus. Marriage was so terrific and so wonderful, hinted Shirley shyly, how did Marjory feel about being married?
“Feel? I don’t feel anything, except that I like Fergus most awfully and want to be with him always because he’s such fun,” Marjory had replied. “I suppose you mean thrills and raptures and terrors, Shirley; you were always keen on them. But you don’t get them except in books, my child.”
Marjory had been almost patronizing with her superior knowledge. And somehow her matter-of-fact pronouncement about marriage had cheered Shirley up enormously. That was how she felt for Norman. That she could have felt very differently for somebody else Shirley shut her eyes to. What she felt for Hugo Trent wasn’t a thing that you could feel for a man you were going to marry. It was of another world altogether. Magical, compelling, overwhelming. If you felt like that for a man you were going to marry, the joy of marriage with him would be too much. You simply could not survive it, thought Shirley, standing close up to the mirror in the little dressing room and combing her short curly hair so that it leaped up in a cloud round her head.
So the days from the beginning of January to the ninth passed fairly happily. Shirley did a little quiet shopping on her own account, and then put the things that she had bought into a drawer and forgot about them. The ninth stood between her and anything else. After that she would give her mind to the wedding day that was going to change her life completely. Norman took it all quite placidly, and so would she.
And the ninth at last dawned. Shirley waked at six and knew, as she turned over in her narrow bed, that it was quite hopeless to try to go to sleep again. She lay and gave herself up to her thoughts. For the whole of that day she was going to think of nothing but Hugo Trent and of what he meant to her. She pictured his face and the way his mouth went when he smiled. The look in his eyes: so awfully kind and understanding, and yet so alarming somehow. She would see him standing waiting for her in the lounge at the Stores, and her knees would tremble because she was so happy. Shirley switched on the electric light to see exactly what the time really was. She had heard six o’clock strike, but perhaps she had counted wrong. No, it was just a quarter-past six now: Shirley lay down again. Her breakfast would come up at half-past seven and till then she would just lie and think about Hugo. To-day was to be just hers and his, except for the time that she spent at the studio, which really didn’t count. Norman had been very silent and rather taciturn for the last two or three days, and when she had asked him what was the matter he had said that nothing was the matter, but that he felt rather blue. When Norman could not explain his feelings he always said that he felt blue. Shirley was used to it. But he remembered that they were going to be married on the eleventh, because the other day he had asked her if she had forgotten. And she had replied cheerfully that she hadn’t.
And at last breakfast came. Shirley ate it sitting up in bed in her blue dressing gown and felt a thrill of anticipation tingling all over her. While she had lain and meditated on the rapturous afternoon that was coming, she had decided to put on all the new silk underclothes that she had bought for her trousseau. Why not?—it made it all more of an excitement. She would have a bath and then dress very slowly and put on all these perfect things. Palest green Celanese silk—desperately expensive, but they would last for ages and never ladder, as the charming assistant in the Celanese Depot in Sloane Street had told her.
And at last she was ready. The morning in the studio passed in a dream. Norman stared at Shirley and wondered what she was thinking about. He wished he knew, because it might give him an opportunity to say that he had been thinking it over and he had come to the conclusion that their marriage would be a mistake—that it had been kept so quiet that all that was necessary was not to turn up at the Register Office in the little back street in Chelsea, and no one would know that it had even been suggested that they should marry. But Norman’s tenderness of heart kept him from saying this. Shirley might mind, and after all, his mother had liked her. Better leave it alone, thought Norman, glancing from Shirley to the easel and then back again and thinking how pretty she was. Prettier since her visit to the Fieldings; her face had filled out. She did not eat enough in those beastly rooms in Oakley Street.
But to-day Shirley had a very good lunch. She simply could not stay away from the Stores, so after leaving the studio she went home, changed her clothes, and then started off for Victoria Street. Several people looked at Shirley as she walked along that nice clean street towards the Stores. Her omnibus had stopped outside the Grosvenor Hotel, and, literally unable to sit still any longer, Shirley had decided to get out and walk the rest of the way. She wore her moleskin coat, the green furry felt hat to match the green scarf, and a pair of green shoes. These last made her feel more festive than anything else in the way of shoes had ever done. And the frock under the moleskin coat was also green—a lovely little cardigan and skirt of pale green ring velvet. The shimmer of it set off Shirley’s brilliant colouring. She knew she looked nice; she had realized it as she looked at herself in the long mirror in her bedroom. And the realization of it made her look nicer still. She ate an excellent lunch in the large room at the top of the Stores and finished up with coffee and an ice. By then it was two o’clock. Exactly another hour to spend, and she would spend it in the upstairs ladies’ lounge and read a paper and perhaps write to someone, thought Shirley, collecting her coat and gloves and walking away to the cash desk, and not realizing a bit that lots of people were looking at her and thinking how extraordinarily pretty she was.
But Hugo realized it, when punctually at three o’clock Shirley walked into the lounge from the glass department. Since his early waking that morning Hugo had thought a good deal. He caught his breath as she came towards him. He had had awful moments of thinking that she would not come. And equally awful moments of thinking that he ought not to have asked her to come. He was banking on what he did not know to be a certainty. But still, unless you took risks in this life you achieved nothing, decided Hugo, turning and twisting in his low bed. After all, she had said that she loved him, and the last time he had seen her she had certainly looked as if she loved him, thought Hugo, groaning a little with joy at the sound of the lumpy niece’s arrival and because it meant that he would soon get his early tea.
And the instant he saw Shirley his qualms vanished. Her little upturned face with the powdering of freckles all over it was ecstatic. There was frank rapture in the innocent green eyes riveted on his. This child belonged to him: anything else was ridiculous. But his voice was curt because he was nervous and Shirley was frightened.
“Let’s sit down,” he said. “Here, there’s more room. I’ve got my car here: I’ve parked it outside the Auxiliary Stores. Would you like to go out in it?” asked Hugo, and he cleared his throat as he asked the question.
“Yes, I should love it,” said Shirley instantly. But suddenly all her joy had gone. He was different—not so friendly. That was what happened when you looked forward madly to a thing: it wasn’t so nice as you thought it was going to be. Shirley had a sudden frantic impulse that she would like to rush away and go home again.
“Come along, then, we’ll go out at the back,” said Hugo. He stood up, tall and compelling, and several people glanced at the oddly assorted couple. Uncle and niece, they concluded. But the girl was pretty—extremely pretty. One old colonel felt quite hostile to Hugo’s straight back as they disappeared into the glass department.
“Here it is.” Hugo smiled at the sturdy commissionaire, who was beckoning to him. “Thanks”—he spoke pleasantly to him as the man held the door open, giving him a shilling.
“Thank you, sir.” The commissionaire stood out into the road to give Hugo a clear passage out of the traffic. Shirley snuggled down into her corner and felt happier.
“What a comfy car!” she said.
“Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it? I like a Riley. I generally buy a new model if I can afford it, and scrap the old one.” Hugo was steering carefully out into Victoria Street.
“I see,” and then Shirley fell silent. As a matter of fact, with him so close to her she did not want to speak. She stole a glance at his clear-cut profile and thought how perfect it was. He looked very nice, too, in rather different clothes from those that he had worn last time. Still the hard hat, though, but a different overcoat.
“Where are we going?” Shirley spoke after rather a long silence.
Hugo was glad that this girl that he loved had the inestimable quality of being able to keep quiet, especially when he was driving through London traffic. Although they were almost out of it now. They had crossed Regent’s Park and were slipping along wider and less frequented streets. Hugo knew the route well, so he had not to bother about a map.
“1’11 tell you in a minute or two. Just wait till I get clear of the tram lines. Then I’m going to take off this brute of a hat, if you don’t mind, and put on my felt one. It’s on the seat behind. Oh, I didn’t mean you to bother.” Hugo spoke apologetically as Shirley made a quick little wriggle and twisted herself round in the car and began fishing about in the half darkness at the back. “Thanks awfully. Chuck it into the back anywhere.” Hugo, with relief, had taken off his bowler and put on the felt hat that Shirley with excited hand had handed to him. “That’s better!” He was wrinkling his forehead with relief.
“A bowler must be a horrible thing to wear.” Shirley settled her own soft felt hat anew and spoke with sympathy.
“It is. Foul!” Hugo was laughing and showing his nice teeth. He glanced down sideways at Shirley and twinkled at her. For the first time for more than a fortnight he felt almost perfectly happy. He had absolutely got her: he could have laughed aloud with triumph. “And now I’ll tell you where we’re going,” he said. They were now clear of the traffic and the car was skimming along a road that was flanked with fields and a few scattered clusters of trees. “I’m taking you right away from everyone and everything for two days,” he said. “It’s the only thing to do in the circumstances. I’ve thought it well out.”
“Oh, I see!” Shirley spoke after a little pause and then laughed rather awkwardly. It was a joke, of course; how funny of him. “Where are you taking me to?” she asked.
“To a little place I know in Buckinghamshire,” said Hugo frankly. “I sometimes go there and fish, and there’s a jolly little inn where they know me well. Tucked right away miles from the railway station, a perfectly enchanting little place. Of course, it will be more or less empty at this time of year, but it’s always nice, because it’s up on a little hill and absolutely dry and they always have gorgeous fires.”
“But how will you explain me?” asked Shirley brightly. To please him she would keep up the joke, she thought, although, in a way, it was funny of him to pretend like this. Not like him, thought Shirley, feeling a tiny twinge of disappointment because she did not feel about him like that at all. He ought to be above jokes, somehow, thought Shirley, surveying the clear-cut profile beside her and thinking how silly she was to mind.
“I have explained you. I have told them that I am bringing my ward down for a couple of nights,” said Hugo, and there was something in his voice that made Shirley twist in her seat and stare at him.
“It’s only a joke really, of course,” she said hastily.
“It’s not in the least a joke,” said Hugo quietly. “Why should I make a joke about it? It’s grim earnest.”
“But—but——”
“Well?”
“But I’m going to be married the day after tomorrow,” burst out Shirley. She was suddenly terrified out of her senses. Norman! She had pledged her word to him. He had always been so kind to her. She suddenly longed for him desperately. He was so quiet and placid and she would be safe with him. This man
“I know: that’s why I’m doing it,” said Hugo. He stared straight in front of him, and to Shirley the ungloved hands on the steering wheel suddenly looked cruel.
“But you are married,” gasped Shirley.
“Ah! So Harrington told you that, did he?” said Hugo. “I thought he would.” The car made a sudden spurt forward, and the pointing finger of the speedometer swung at right-angles on the dial.
“Of course he did; it was only fair that I should know it,” said Shirley. She faced him with her eyes blazing. “You can’t take me away like this: it’s absolutely—it’s absolutely outrageous,” she stammered.
“Why outrageous? I’m rather enjoying it,” laughed Hugo. “Besides, what else was I to do? I could not leave you there to marry a man whom you do not love, could I? It would have been simply silly. You would have ruined his life as well as your own, and Harrington has had enough domestic misery to last him for a very long time,” said Hugo sardonically.
“How did you find out?”
“Never mind,” said Hugo shortly.
“But you have got to tell me,” raged Shirley. She was suddenly beside herself with fright. Things that Marjory had said returned to her. What, after all, did she know about this man? She had conceived a violent passion for him, but that, after all, meant nothing. What was he like really? She suddenly tore at his arm.
“Mind! You’ll have us both in the ditch!” Hugo spoke hardly, as with a quick turn of his wrist he brought the car into the straight again. He was suddenly angry with Shirley, and all the more so because he was suddenly sick with fright himself. Was she then really in love with Harrington, and was he really taking her away against her will? Or was it only a pose? In any event, he was going on with what he had begun. Deep down under his cold, calm exterior Hugo had a streak of cruelty in him. He turned a pale face to Shirley’s terrified one. “Don’t be a little fool,” he said, “or I really shall get angry with you. You should never grab at anyone who is driving a car; it’s frightfully dangerous.”
“But I wanted to try to make you stop.” Shirley shrank back into her corner and tried to steady her quivering nerves. This was an awful nightmare, and soon she would wake up.
She glanced at the clock: it was half-past four and beginning to get dark outside. Hugo leaned forward and switched on the headlights and they blazed out over the white road that unrolled itself in front of them. The ground was sparkling with delicate frost crystals. She glanced up at the keen profile beside her, and to her it seemed to have the clear-cut cruelty of the face of one of the priests in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. They had looked like that in the Inquisition when they didn’t care what they did to their victim so long as they brought him to his knees. He meant to make her do what he wanted in the same way. Shirley shivered as she remembered the dreadful book. She tried to pray and could think of nothing to say.
“Well, are you feeling better?” Hugo spoke after a long silence, during which he had struggled with himself and regained his self-control. After all, as he told himself, he could not expect a girl who had had the spirit to dress herself up and take a post as a general servant to resign herself without a struggle to being carried off by force.
“No,” said Shirley hardly.
“I’m sorry you are taking it like this; it makes it so much harder for both of us,” said Hugo after a little pause.
“How do you expect me to take it? It’s—it’s the most scandalous, the most wicked thing to do,” raged Shirley. The very foundations of the everyday world around her had gone to bits. She was utterly in the power of this man; it would be utterly impossible to get away from him. She did not even know where he was taking her. He must be mad to do it—perhaps he was mad. Shirley shot a terrified glance towards him through the darkness.
“Well?” Hugo was smiling. “I want some tea,” he said abruptly. “Don’t you? We ought to be somewhere near Pulford by now. There’s a very nice hotel there where we can have tea. Don’t make any fuss when we get out, will you? or I really shall be very angry indeed,” said Hugo quietly.
“Fuss!”
“Yes, fuss,” said Hugo. He burst out laughing as he turned and saw Shirley’s terrified little face staring at him out of the darkness. “Child,” he said, “don’t look at me like that! I’m not going to hurt you, if you do as I tell you.”
“What is it that you want me to do, then?” gasped Shirley. Ah, here was a loophole. He had some plan, then—it wasn’t just a dreadful carrying of her off to serve his own purposes.
“I want you to write to Harrington to tell him that you have changed your mind and are not prepared to marry him after all,” said Hugo. “It’s quite easy, and if we post the letter late to-night it will catch the early morning post up to London and be in town by five o’clock in the afternoon, at latest.”
“And supposing I won’t write it?” stammered Shirley.
“Then I shall have to think of a way of making you,” said Hugo. “But we will hope it won’t come to that. Ah, here’s Pulford; I thought I knew the landmarks. And here’s the Crown. Don’t forget what I told you about making a fuss, will you?”
“I am not going to write to Norman to say anything of the kind,” stammered Shirley. “He is fond of me, and it would be very cruel.”
“Well, we won’t discuss that now,” said Hugo. “Here’s the hotel. Mind how you get out, because it may be slippery.”
The car drew up slowly and carefully before the old-fashioned front door. Inside the little glass-enclosed porch of it the “boots” saw the bright headlights approaching and was ready to welcome the visitors. The Crown had a very good reputation for casual hospitality. A pleasant-faced manageress came forward and said that as madame would doubtless like to wash her hands she would show her where to do it. Shirley went off with her. She glanced round her as she went and wondered if she really was awake or whether it was a queer, distorted dream and she would presently wake up and find her breakfast tray by her bed and the maid drawing her window curtains. If she was awake, what could Hugo have against Norman Harrington that made him so passionately anxious that she should break off her engagement with him? He showed no sign of wanting her for himself. Ah, if only he had done! thought Shirley, taking off her hat in front of the oval mirror in the ladies’ dressing room and dragging her green comb tremblingly through her curly hair. In any event, tea would be nice, thought Shirley, who felt shaken and unlike herself. Somehow it was difficult to believe that it was real, she thought, putting on her hat again and going back to the square hall, where Hugo stood with his back to a huge fire waiting for her.
“They’re going to bring us tea here.”
Hugo felt a little anxious, although he did not show it. And yet there was some queer untamed part of him that was enjoying this all the time. For years he had lived such a dull, uneventful life so far as women were concerned. This red-haired child with the straight little freckled nose had gone right into his heart to nestle there. She was far too young for him and he already had a wife of his own, and the whole thing was scandalous. Hugo was too intelligent a man not to know that it wasn’t. But she was the one woman for him and no other man was going to have her. So much he had decided before he had embarked on the undertaking. Also, he knew that some very drastic course of action would have to be taken if some other man was not going to have her. Things had gone too far for it to be settled by a couple of letters and perhaps an interview. Rivalry made men greedy where women were concerned. Even if Norman Harrington was not desperately in love with Shirley now, he very soon would be if he realized that some other man wanted her.
“That’s right; come and get warm.” Hugo spoke kindly as he saw Shirley’s averted and fugitive gaze. She came towards him with rather lagging feet and the bright firelight showed up the vivid green of her shoes.
“What sweet shoes! Come, don’t be frightened of me, but enjoy your tea,” said Hugo and he held out a kind hand.
“I’m not frightened of you.”
“Then don’t look as if you were,” said Hugo mischievously.
The trim maid brought the tea things and arranged them on a low table close to the fire. There were hot buttered toast and a flat chocolate cake with layers of butter cream inside it. Shirley poured out the tea and drank it, and felt a good deal better. She leaned back in her chair and shut her eyes as she ate, and tried not to think about what was ahead of her. Hugo Trent was not like any other man: you had to do what he said, and at the moment Shirley was content to leave it at that. Tea was so nice and the fire was so gorgeous, and he did not speak to her, so that she could lean back and rest and try not to think about anything. Besides, when he saw that she was determined to go on with her marriage to Norman he would be sensible and give way. Norman was so quiet and so safe, thought Shirley. Life with him would be so peaceful—not all volcanoes, like this was being.
“Well, I think we had better get along.”
Hugo had been watching Shirley for some time, and he had poured his second cup of tea out himself. She lay back in the low chair as if she were exhausted, and her long lashes lay very still on her pale face.
Hugo suddenly got a swift vision of that little delicate figure surrendering to the caresses of another man, and the blood drummed in his ears. He felt quite alarmed for a moment or two at the fury of his sensations. He groped in his pocket for his cigarette case and took one out of it.
“Do you mind if I smoke?” he said, and was angry to find that his fingers were trembling.
“No, of course I don’t,” said Shirley, and without moving she opened her eyes and looked across the table at him. She felt dreamy with the warmth of the fire and the delicious hot tea she had drunk. He looked so perfect with his clear-cut face and beautifully kept hands. Why wasn’t he in love with her without a wife of his own! thought Shirley drowsily. And then she remembered what had happened, and sat suddenly straight up in her chair.
“Then we’ll get along. Yes, I paid her while you were asleep,” smiled Hugo. “And she’s brought your hat and coat here, so that you can get into the car nice and hot from the fire. Come along, and let me help you on with it.”
Shirley dumbly obeyed. It was cold outside after the warm hall, but the interior of the car was warm. “How can it be so hot in the car?” Shirley, settling herself again in her corner, remarked on it.
“I’ve got a little heating contraption at the back. Electric,” said Hugo, leaning forward to press the self-starter. “People are so funny about their cars; it’s like the way we live in freezing houses in England in the winter. No other country does it. Everyone but us has central heating as a matter of course. We’re such a queer nation,” said Hugo, steering carefully out into the middle of the road.
“Yes,” and then Shirley fell silent. What was it about this man that kept her from getting up in her seat and screaming that he was to take her back to London again? Something magical, thought Shirley, glancing up sideways at his quiet profile and then very slowly edging herself a little along the seat so that she could touch him.
Hugo felt the movement, but showed no sign that he did. But his pulses drummed. Once let him be perfectly, perfectly sure that she loved him and the struggle would be over. Although—and here Hugo showed the legal side of him—he was going to leave nothing to chance. Shirley was not going back to London until her wedding day was well over: he was absolutely determined on that point.
They drove on in silence. Hugo had calculated that they would be at the Five Chimneys Hotel by six. But they were not. It was nearly a quarter to seven by the time that the car, bouncing rather resentfully up the narrow lane, came to a standstill in front of a long low building with lattice windows. The light shone cheerfully out between amber-coloured curtains. Hugo sounded the horn and the door of the hotel opened instantly.
“Well, Mr. Trent, and I’m glad to see you.” Mrs. Pomfret was short and rubicund and had a delightful North Country accent. “You’ll have been cold, I’m afraid, and little miss too. But I’ve got beautiful fires upstairs. Come along in, sir.” Mrs. Pomfret was leading the way.
“Come along, dear.” Hugo spoke quickly to Shirley, who seemed inclined to hesitate. He put his hand on her arm and drew her across the hall to the bottom stair. Mrs. Pomfret, carrying two brass candlesticks, was gone bustling up ahead of them.
They could hear her voice getting fainter and fainter along the corridor above them.
“I won’t,” said Shirley suddenly. In the quiet of the car, close up to the man she adored, the shame of the situation had been dawning on her. Infatuated as she was, she was tamely submitting to being wrenched away for ever from the man she had promised to marry—a man who trusted her, and a man who had a charming mother who would suffer deeply if her son was hurt. “I won’t come upstairs, and I won’t stay here either,” she stuttered below her breath. In spite of herself she dared not raise her voice, and despised herself because she dared not.
“You will,” said Hugo swiftly. He was a strong man and Shirley was small. He put his hand under her elbow and Shirley could feel his muscular fingers pressing into her soft skin. Degrading situation! She submitted helplessly. “Ah, this is delightful!” Hugo was standing in the little low-ceilinged sitting room and looking round him with appreciation. Mrs. Pomfret beamed with pleasure. She displayed with pride the two square bedrooms opening out of the sitting room. Delicious bedrooms, with low wooden beds with patchwork quilts on them. Polished floors with sheepskin rugs showing whitely against the dark polish. Lattice windows, hidden now, though with flowered-chintz curtains. Dim little rooms, lighted only by the sparkle of flaming pine logs on the hearth and the wavering light of the candles. The sitting room boasted a lamp, standing with a deep-yellow shade on it in the middle of a round table already laid for dinner. Mrs. Pomfret spoke shrilly to someone who came clumping up the stairs. “In here, George,” she called. “Which case is for which room, sir?” she said, beaming at Hugo.
“The larger one for me. Quite wrong, really, but it turns out so,” laughed Hugo. George, breathing heavily, carried in the suitcases and clumped them down according to Mrs. Pomfret’s directions. And until that very moment Shirley had forgotten that she had no clothes for the night. Ah, but she had! The suitcase that she herself had helped to choose and fill had been put down in the wood-scented dimness of her bedroom.
“Thanks very much; I think that’s all.” Hugo nodded pleasantly to Mrs. Pomfret. “We’re to dine up here, I see.”
“Yes, sir; I thought it would be warmer for you. And your bath is quite ready, sir. I thought perhaps the young lady would like hers before she went to bed,” said Mrs. Pomfret, who adored Hugo and obviously wanted him to have all the hot water available at the moment.
“Thanks very much; yes, I expect she would,” said Hugo. “Anyone else in the hotel?” he asked casually.
“Not a soul, sir. Very quiet we’ve been since the Christmas holidays,” said Mrs. Pomfret. And then, round and pleasing in her black satin dress and white apron, Mrs. Pomfret had gone, leaving the two standing there just staring at one another.
“It’s—it’s outrageous,” said Shirley in a low, passionate undertone.
“It’s inevitable,” said Hugo briefly. “How inevitable I see now by your obstinacy and I did a wise thing in leaving nothing to chance. You shall not marry Norman Harrington, and before you go to bed to-night you are going to write a letter to tell him so, too—a letter that I will see catches the early post to-morrow.”
“I will not write it,” said Shirley. The girls of St. Christopher’s had once seen Shirley Mortimer in a blazing temper and it had astounded them. “I should like to kill you,” she said, and she walked across the room to where Hugo stood looking at her and lifted her hand to hit him.
“Don’t!” Hugo caught hold of her wrist and held it stiffly down by her side. He was glad Shirley was taking it like this; it made him feel less of a brute.
“If I could kill you I would,” said Shirley, shivering with passion.
“You would be sorry the minute you had done it,” said Hugo, and as he said it he thought how odd it was that Shirley should have said exactly those words to him. It brought so terribly home the circumstances that had made such a scene as this necessary.
“To keep me here by force like this; to take me away—you could be put in prison for it,” raged Shirley.
“Doubtless; but I shan’t be,” laughed Hugo. He let go of Shirley and walked away towards his bedroom. “It’s late,” he said, “and I’m hungry, and, as you heard, I’ve got to have a bath before dinner. I’m so sorry that the one thing I didn’t buy you was a frock to change into,” he said; “but I hope you will find everything else there that you require.”
“I shan’t open it.” But the words were wasted: Hugo had gone into his bedroom and shut the door.
So there was nothing for Shirley to do but to do the same. Her brief impulse of passion had left her breathless and shaken.
She walked to the fire and sat down by it. And then she got up again and took off her hat. Something made her dreadfully want to look inside the nice leather suitcase. Such a beautiful one and made of lizard skin. And all the time the beautiful things inside it and the case had been meant for her. Such lovely things—and in the bright firelight they even looked more beautiful. The brush with the shagreen back to it that Shirley had demurred at—the bristles of it were so long; Shirley drew them through her hair and the hair all flew out and clung to them. The dressing gown: Shirley took it out, rather crumpled from having been folded for so long, and hung it up on the hook on the door. Mrs. Pomfret had provided soap, because they had forgotten that, thought Shirley, ceasing to stare at the dressing gown and taking the woolly white cover off the brass can of hot water in the basin and pouring some out. The sponge was a beauty: she drew it over her face and felt relieved by the warmth of it.
But in spite of his bath and changing, Hugo was ready first. But that was because she wouldn’t come out of her room, thought Hugo, standing tall and well-groomed in his evening clothes in front of the fire. The funny country maid brought in the soup and went away again. He waited a moment or two and then tapped at Shirley’s door.
“Yes,” Shirley’s voice sounded alarmed, and Hugo smiled impulsively.
“Dinner is ready.”
“Oh!” The door handle turned slowly and Shirley became visible. “I am sorry I tried to hit you,” she said, and her mouth trembled like a child’s.
“Don’t! I’ve forgotten it,” said Hugo instantly. For a brief moment every single good resolution he had made trembled in the balance, and she was nearly in his arms.
“It was ghastly of me!” Shirley stood with her head hanging down.
“As I say, I’ve forgotten it,” said Hugo. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Dinner is ready,” he said. “Come along, I’m sure you’re hungry.”
“Yes, I think I am.” Shirley sat down. The lamplight shone on her white neck and boyish little hands. Hugo remembered how devotedly those little hands had slaved for him and his heart melted. “We’re going to have champagne,” he said cheerfully, when the soup plates had been removed. “Mrs. Pomfret has quite a good cellar in a small way. In any event, I know the champagne is good. Pomfret used to be butler at the Mansion House, and he knows what’s what in those ways.”
“Oh, I see!” Shirley’s voice was trembling as she sat back in her chair and tried to look at her ease. “I have hardly had any champagne in my life,” she said, and then thought how ridiculously she had worded the stupid remark, and wished that she could crawl under the table and put her face on his nice shiny shoes and dissolve away in tears, so that she was no longer alive at all.
“Haven’t you? Well, in a way I think it is a much overrated drink, but on the other hand it has a very excellent way of bucking one up,” said Hugo pleasantly. He sat completely at his ease, surveying Shirley as she sat nervously twisting her hands in her lap. The golden light from the lamp made her rust-coloured hair look more vivid than usual. There was a little lace collar outlining the V-shaped opening at her throat. Her eyebrows and her eyelashes were black. Hugo observed that for the first time, and thought that that must be why she had not the featureless look of so many people with her colouring. But there was a stubbornness about the curve of her soft lips that Hugo observed with interest. She was not going to write that letter to Harrington without a very severe struggle, he decided.
“I was hungry.” Shirley spoke after rather a long pause. She sat with her elbows on the table and the lamplight shone on her hair.
Shirley had only had one glass of champagne, resolutely refusing any more. But it had done her good. Hugo had had four glasses, and although it had not gone to his head at all, he also felt more cheerful. A good thing, he thought dryly, because the fight was soon going to begin. Dinner would soon be over—a very good dinner in its solid, homely way—and it was already half-past nine. He had given his brief orders to Mrs. Pomfret when she came up to superintend the opening of the champagne. Early tea for both of them the next morning at half-past seven. And they would be out for the day—he wanted to show Miss Mortimer some places of interest in the neighbourhood. But they would be back in good time for dinner and would be leaving for London on the afternoon of the following day.
“That’s the day after to-morrow,” said Hugo cheerfully.
Her wedding-day! Shirley sat and listened and wondered why she didn’t get up and throw herself on the protection of this nice motherly woman, who stood listening to Hugo with her plump hands folded over her white apron. She surely would grasp the iniquity of what this tall, cruel-looking man was doing. Although Hugo did not look in the least cruel while he was talking to Mrs. Pomfret. He was smiling and even laughing as he talked to her. And then she had gone, and the maid was in the room and Shirley could say nothing. As a matter of fact, she did not want to say anything then, because she was hungry and the food was very nice. A beautifully cooked fowl, done in some sort of white sauce with little bits of mushroom in it; a pudding that was all cream and meringue, and came up accompanied by little tiny glasses of liqueur.
“Don’t you like it?” Hugo laughed as he saw Shirley’s timid glance at the pale-green liquid. “I thought all women liked crême de menthe.”
“I think I would rather not have it,” said Shirley shyly.
“Don’t then, dear,” said Hugo kindly. And then he reflected that he had no business to call her “dear.” But somehow it all seemed to him to be so absolutely natural. Shirley belonged to him; the idea of her belonging to anyone else was simply folly. He drank the coffee that had arrived and lighted a cigarette after asking Shirley if he might, and also sat with his elbows on the table, with his thoughts very far away indeed. Supposing she really was persistently obstinate, what was he going to do? And then he decided to leave that decision until she was persistently obstinate,
“Let’s get up and sit by the fire, if you’ve quite finished,” he said, and Shirley gave a little start as he spoke.
Her thoughts had been far away too. What would he do when he found out that she really meant what she said?—that she was not going to write a letter to Norman, saying that she had decided not to marry him? Shirley felt a queer sort of excitement stealing over her. This man did not know a bit what she was really like, she decided—that underneath she was just as determined as he was, only perhaps more so.
The maid came in and cleared everything off the table and replaced the lamp carefully in the middle of its woolly mat. She then went away and reappeared with a bottle of whisky and a siphon and a tumbler. These last she put on the old-fashioned sideboard, and then with a funny little bob she said, “Goodnight, sir; good-night, miss,” and went away.
“Thank heaven she’s gone!” said Hugo. He leaned forward and flicked a little of the white ash off the end of his cigarette. “You’re tired,” he said, “and it’s nearly ten o’clock. Write that letter now, and then go off and have your bath and go to bed. We ate slowly—if you dawdle about it won’t hurt you to have a bath at about half-past ten.”
“I’m not going to write any letter,” said Shirley. She just stirred in the deep chair on the other side of the fireplace and then sat still again.
Hugo smoked without speaking for a moment or two. A little of the charred ash from his cigarette fell on his white shirtfront. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and blew the ash off. And then he spoke. The thin spiral of smoke from the smouldering cigarette curled up from between his long fingers as he sat and looked at her.
“You are,” he said quietly.
“I am not.”
“You are,” said Hugo again.
“I am not,” flamed Shirley.
“And why?”
“Because—because,” Shirley began to stammer.
“Yes?” Unobserved by Shirley, Hugo’s eyelids flickered and fell for the space of about a second. If she said because she loved Norman Harrington he was done. But she didn’t love him—he would stake his last farthing on that.
“Yes, because?” he queried.
“What right have you to ask me?” flamed Shirley. “What right have you to carry me off like this at all? It’s ghastly—it’s outrageous,” she stormed.
“Desperate situations require desperate action,” said Hugo quietly. He threw the remainder of his cigarette into the fire and sat forward a little in his chair, his hands linked between his knees. “It came to my knowledge, never mind how,” he said, “that you were going to marry Norman Harrington on the eleventh of this month. And I made up my mind that you should not do it. To begin with, you are not in love with Norman Harrington, and I do not myself believe that he is really in love with you. That being the case, I have not the faintest compunction in preventing you from marrying him.”
“How do you know that I am not in love with Norman Harrington?” asked Shirley, her voice icy with suppressed anger.
“Because I feel you aren’t,” said Hugo.
“I suppose you think that I am in love with you!” flashed Shirley.
“I wonder,” said Hugo. He leaned a little farther forward in his chair. “Look at me,” he said, “and tell me that you are not.”
“I am not going to look at anyone unless I want to,” said Shirley, and she began to cry, like a child.
“Don’t, dear.” Hugo’s heart was suddenly wrung. “Do write that letter that I ask you to, now,” he urged. “Don’t prolong this, why should you? You’ve got to give in in the end, and I hate to make you wretched.”
“I don’t understand how you dare to behave as you’re doing,” sobbed Shirley, sitting all doubled up in the low chair, with her elbows on her knees and her face buried in her hands.
“I daresay you don’t, but you see I have a very good reason for behaving as I am doing,” said Hugo calmly. “I daresay it does seem arbitrary and almost barbarous to you for me to carry you off like this. But what else was I to do? If I had written to you, or even seen you and argued with you, what effect would it have had? None whatever,” said Hugo quietly.
“What have you got against Norman?” choked Shirley.
“Nothing,” said Hugo instantly. “But that’s not the point. Marriage is an awful thing between two people who don’t really love each other. You are alone in London, with no one really to look after you. I therefore feel that I am in a sense responsible for you. For more than two months you worked devotedly for me,” said Hugo, and then broke off. He had said the wrong thing. Shirley lifted a crimson face.
“Yes, and because of that, and because of what I said, offering myself to you in the most awful shameless way, you think that you can do whatever you like with me,” gasped Shirley. And then she shrank back in her chair as Hugo got out of his.
“Unsay what you’ve just said,” he blazed.
“But I mean it.”
“Unsay it.”
“I know you didn’t think I was shameless, really,” stammered Shirley. Her tears lay wet on her cheeks, but her eyes were dry. Hugo had altered. There were little blue shadows at the root of his nose. He drew a long breath and sat down again. And then he laughed, shakily. “We’re wasting time,” he said. “Come, there’s pen and ink over there. I’ll see that the letter goes the first thing in the morning.”
“I am not going to write it,” said Shirley excitedly. Her heart was throbbing against her ribs; her hands were dry and hot; her blood was up; her pride was aflame. One tiny little sign that he loved her himself and she would have given way. But just that some other man should not have her—no! She got up out of her chair, not knowing that she had done so. She stood over him and he lay back in his chair and looked up at her. Such a baby, as he thought, noting her smooth skin and the powdering of freckles on her nose. But a very attractive baby—the devil that is latent in every good man suddenly stirred slumberously in Hugo and awoke. He got up onto his feet.
“You really mean that?” he said quietly.
“Yes; of course I do,” said Shirley. But again her breath caught in her throat. Had she gone too far this time?
“All right, then,” said Hugo. “It is useless for me to argue with you any more. Go to bed. I’ll put out the lamp, as I shall have another cigarette before I turn in and perhaps a drink. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” said Shirley, suddenly panic-stricken. She stood and hesitated.
“Going to have a bath?” asked Hugo pleasantly and conversationally.
“No; I had one this morning,” said Shirley. And then she thought how happy she had been and of her joyful pilgrimage down to the bathroom with her tin of Vim and scrubbing brush; and the putting on of all her lovely new underclothes afterwards—the underclothes that she still had on. Was it then only about twelve hours ago since that all happened? She stood and the tears prickled again behind her eyelids.
“Good-night, then,” said Hugo again.
And Shirley went to her door and opened it, feeling suddenly foolish. She closed it again and stood and stared round the dim, fragrantly scented bedroom, and wondered why she had been fool enough not to do what he wanted. He would think that she loved Norman. Let him think it, thought Shirley, going over to the fire and staring at it through a rose-coloured blur of tears. She would marry Norman the day after to-morrow now, because obviously now Hugo had given up any idea of making her change her mind. Perhaps he had done it for that—to make perfectly sure that she did love him before she married him. After all, he was a good deal older than she was, and did in a way stand in the sort of position of a guardian, as he was an old friend of her father’s. Shirley crouched down by the fire and stared into the dancing flames of it. A fire was always so comforting, she thought wretchedly.
When Shirley had gone into her room Hugo put another couple of logs on the fire and sat a little lower in his chair. He then pushed them into place with the toe of his patent-leather shoes, and smoked three more cigarettes, lighting one from the other. This was a thing he did not often do, except when he was working very hard. By the time he had finished them it was half-past ten. He got up out of his low chair and stood for a moment tall and irresolute, with his elbow on the mantelpiece and his chin resting on his hand. He then walked to the sideboard and poured himself out a drink, splashing the soda freely down onto the half-inch of yellow spirit that lay at the bottom of the fat tumbler. With the tumbler in his hand he began to walk about the room, and his shadow walked with him, black and distorted on the parchment-coloured distempered walls. He was thinking about Shirley and of how he loved her—of how he adored every short curly hair that blew about her stupid little head. But he was not going to say so until she had given in. You never knew where you were with women, however young. His legal training had taught him that. In fact, you never knew where you were with anyone, not even with yourself, thought Hugo, remembering the queer untamed feeling that had stirred within him not three-quarters of an hour before. And yet surely he—with his life of at least comparative repression—ought to have himself in hand by now, thought Hugo, smiling a little grimly as he arranged the ink-pot and blotting pad and pen on the table under the lamp.
A quarter of an hour later he was standing outside Shirley’s door, tapping on the dark panels of it. He smiled briefly at the quick terror-stricken “Who is there?” that came immediately. Then she was not in bed or asleep.
“May I come in?” he said, and turned the handle.
“No; of course you can’t!” cried Shirley. She got up from the hearthrug where she had been kneeling in her dressing gown, and stood up. She had just been going to get into bed. She turned and faced the door in a terror. Why hadn’t she locked it?
“But I must,” said Hugo. He opened the door and stood in the dim oblong of it, tall and self-possessed. He never forgot the sight of Shirley, small and terrified, standing with bare feet on the curly sheepskin rug. The white fur collar of the beautiful pale-green dressing gown was hardly whiter than her face. She gathered the shimmering folds of it up around her and faced him, trembling.
“What do you want?” Her voice was pathetic in its panic.
“Your answer,” said Hugo quietly. He shut the door behind him and stood with his back to it. The firelight danced over his clean-shaven face and bare throat. To Shirley’s terror-stricken eyes he looked taller than he had ever done in the gay silk dressing gown.
“I have given it to you,” she said.
“Finally?”
“Yes, finally.”
“I see.” Hugo stood and seemed to be thinking.
He folded his arms and gazed at Shirley. He was trying to keep control of himself and finding it much more difficult than he had expected. The hour and the circumstances were not helping him. He had been a fool to have that last drink, although it had been a very mild one.
“You ought not to have come into my room,” said Shirley, and she shrank back against the mantelpiece, still clutching the shining satin of the dressing gown round her.
“I know,” said Hugo. “But I had to. Because, you see, you’ve forced me to resort to the last and most potent argument of all. I’m sorry—dreadfully—because I hate to make you unhappy. But you see I must.”
“What do you mean?”
“That I must make you irrevocably mine, to be sure of you,” said Hugo simply. “I can hardly believe that you, even with your incredible obstinacy, would go straight from my arms into the arms of another man.”
“Don’t,” cried Shirley. She raised her arms and wrenched her hands together. “Don’t!” she cried again.
“Well?” Hugo had come over to the fire. He caught hold of her terrified hands and held them against his thundering heart. He looked down into her panic-stricken eyes, and for one dreadful unforgettable moment the devil got the better of him and he wished she would hold out. And then with a little cry Shirley fell at his feet.
“Where is the pen?” she cried, clutching at him. “I will write it.”
“In here,” said Hugo, and he let go of her and turned to go back into the sitting room. His shadow was gigantic as it flickered weirdly over the low walls. He wanted to get away from her for one second, so that he could pull himself together. It had been too close a thing—he had been reckless. He had reckoned without himself. He stood in front of the sitting-room fire struggling to regain his self-control and waiting for Shirley to follow him.
She came after about three minutes; her small feet, in their pale-green moccasins, lagging, and her eyes full of an unquenchable shame. She could not meet his eyes. She stood by the table, and her trembling hand reached out for the pen.
“You need not say very much,” said Hugo, watching her.
“No.” Shirley sat down at the table, resting her head on her hand. She reached out for the pen and began to write. Completed, she pushed the letter over the table towards him.
“Am I to read it?”
“Yes, please.”
He walked over to the table and took it up. Not looking at him, she flung her arms out in front of her, laid her head down on them, and began to cry. Hopelessly and despairingly she cried, while he read.
The letter was short and to the point.
Dear Norman [wrote Shirley]:
I hope you won’t think me very dreadful when I tell you that I think we had better not marry each other after all. I don’t think we are really fond enough of each other for it to be a success.
Always your friend, if you will have me for one,
Shirley Mortimer.
“Thank you,” said Hugo; “address the envelope, will you?”
“Oh, yes.” Shirley raised her wet face. She wiped her eyes and did as she was told. He took the letter and put it into the pocket of his dressing gown.
“Now,” he said, “stand up and look at me.”
“No,” sobbed Shirley, and she wrenched herself away from him.
“Yes,” said Hugo tenderly. “You think I’m a fiend,” he said, and he stood beside her, his hand resting rather heavily on her bright hair. “And perhaps I am. But if I tell you now that I love you, will it make you feel any better?”
“What?” Shirley was suddenly very still. “What?” she raised her tear-disfigured face to his. “You can’t,” she trembled.
“But I do,” said Hugo. “Of course I do—that’s what it’s all about. I’m not going to let another man have you when I want you myself. At least, not unless I am certain that it is very much for your happiness, which I am perfectly convinced marriage with Norman Harrington is not. Although I’m not free myself—yet,” he ended abruptly.
“I can’t believe it,” breathed Shirley.
“Well, it’s true,” said Hugo quietly. “But I wasn’t going to tell you until I had made you write that letter. It may be a queer code of honour for a man who is behaving as I am behaving in carrying you off like this. But I won’t make love to a woman who is pledged to another man. Now that is all at an end and you belong to me.”
“Oh!” said Shirley. Somehow there was nothing else to say. The relief from unbearable misery was too extreme.
“Let me tell you what I want you to do,” said Hugo, “and then don’t let us talk about this sort of thing any more. I want you, directly you get back to London, to write to your parents and tell them that you are coming back to Montreux. Then, as soon as you have packed, I want you to go back to Montreux. And then I want you to wait there for me until I am free to come to you,” said Hugo quietly.
“Yes,” said Shirley simply. She raised her eyes to his. “I feel as if I should almost die with happiness,” she breathed.
“Beloved!”
“Don’t!” said Shirley, shivering.
“But I must,” Hugo took a long breath. “And I’m going to kiss you,” he said. “It’s scandalous, I know, but the whole thing is so scandalous that I don’t think a little more or less matters, do you?”
“Would it make any difference to you if I said that I thought that it did?” laughed Shirley a little brokenly.
“No, it wouldn’t,” said Hugo. He stooped and lifted her in his arms, and as she clung to him he pressed her bright head against his heart. And then he wrenched her face up to his with a quick turn of his strong fingers, and for a quivering moment her soft mouth was at his mercy. And then he let her go again. “Go to bed,” he said, and his voice was suddenly hoarse. “I’m behaving disgracefully. Sweetheart, good-night!”
“Good-night,” said Shirley breathlessly. She fled, a little green, shimmering shadow, and was gone, into the dimness of her bedroom. Hugo, left alone, stood staring after her, standing very still. And then he swung round and with not too steady fingers he turned out the lamp, waiting in the firelight until it had winked itself into obscurity. And then he walked into his own room and shut the door of it.
It had got colder, he decided, crossing over to the window and dragging the chintz curtains a little apart. No wonder; frost sparkled on the roofs of the low outhouses down below him; above, the moon hung clear and cold in a perfectly cloudless sky. Hugo pulled the curtains together again, walked over to the fire, and flung himself down in a low chair. Perhaps a pipe would help to steady him, he thought, although he had already smoked far too much. He got up again to grope in his suitcase for his pipe, found it, and came Back to the fire again. And by degrees his quivering nerves quieted down, and a queer peace stole over him. Perhaps the vaguely seen white envelope propped up against a china vase on the mantelpiece above his head helped to do this. Such a childish little letter; a tender smile curved Hugo’s lips as he thought of it and of the girl who had written it. A girl who at that very moment lay utterly at his mercy a few yards away from him. And yet for all intents and purposes she might have been miles away. Was it women’s defencelessness that won them men’s chivalry? mused Hugo; and if so, why were they always rebelling against it and clamouring for their rights? Perhaps it was only the plain ones who did that, because they were so plain, thought Hugo, remembering vaguely a political meeting to which he had once been summoned. In any event, he had finished his pipe, and, thank God! he was beginning to feel a little sleepy, he thought, leaning forward to knock out the ashes against the old-fashioned iron bars of the grate. And to-morrow would be heavenly, too, he reflected, standing and stretching himself so that his tall shadow scrambled all over the low ceiling, oddly distorted in the flickering firelight.
And a few yards away Shirley lay and thought that God was good. Very, very good, thought Shirley, lying with her bright head on the lavender-scented pillow and thinking of how heavenly the next day was going to be. And all the days after that too, thought Shirley, closing her eyes and going almost instantly to sleep.