Chapter XII: Part V: The Consolidation (3)

Mrs. Jeffries did not fight white. The blood had thronged to her head until her very lips seemed swollen; Miss Levey could hardly have spoken more thickly. She spoke, too, in a passionate ellipsis than which Louie's own five words did not go more straight to the heart of the matter.

"Oh, you would if you could--I've known that a long time!" she cried. "Wouldn't you just--rather! You'd do it if it was only to give _me_ one for myself! _I_ know you."

Louie thought she rather liked her for making a fight of it. She still smiled. "Then that was it?" she said.

Evie flushed even more deeply. "You didn't suppose I didn't know all about that absurd meeting, did you?" she said, with a still darker flush.

"Dear me, no. I've known for weeks that you 'knew'--if we mean the same thing. Perhaps we don't, though. Anyway, I can quite understand your wanting to see for yourself. Miss Levey can't tell you everything."

Evie's inability to speak for mere fury was so evident that Louie, after watching her for a moment, continued:

"As for that picture, naturally I wanted to keep it. I'm sure you'll see that for yourself."

Here Evie flamed. "'Naturally!'" she broke out. Louie gave an almost humorous shrug.

"Well, surely it's natural?"

"Natural!... As if his coming in wasn't the merest accident!"

"Oh, I know that; but what _are_ you here for then? And now that you _have_ been and seen, what can you possibly do about it?"

Evie's lips seemed as thick as if a bee had stung them. She broke out again.

"'It!'--I like your 'it,' Miss Causton or Mrs. Causton or whatever you call yourself!"

Louie coolly smoothed the folds of her blouse. "By 'it,' I mean, of course, my loving your husband," she said. "As you guessed, I knew that you knew about that picture. But it's really a much older thing than that! I don't quite know how old; while you were still engaged to somebody else--as old as that anyhow. And as it's purely my affair, and even he can't stop it, I wonder what _you_ can possibly do!--I'm 'Miss' Causton, by the way."

Louie had almost a genius for these last words that could be taken up; she smiled again as Evie, taking them up, said: "Oh, _are_ you!"

"Well, I don't think I need be longer than I like, but that's neither here nor there. The important thing at present is whether you were wise to come to-day or not. I wonder whether you'd let me give you a piece of advice?"

And that, as Evie still stood speechless with rage, might be described as the end of the first round. There was a long pause during which the two women stood looking at one another. Then the second round began, with a rapid exchange of half sentences.

"Advice! Thanking you very much for your kindness----"

"Oh, please don't raise your voice; they aren't double windows here."

"Advice is cheap."

"Far from it, believe me."

"You common----"

"Sssh, ssh, ssh! Your husband wasn't above asking my advice----"

"I'll take very good care----"

"Please--there are other people in these flats."

"Well, is noise anything new here?" said Evie grossly.

"Oh, you really shouldn't say those things!"

And again they fell back, as it were, for breath. It was Louie who presently resumed.

"I don't in the least know why I should want to advise you," she went on. "I'd no intention of doing so when you came into this room, and to be frank I still half hope you won't take the advice. But you'll please yourself about that. It's this. Don't be a little fool. Go home, and don't tell your husband you've seen me at all. If you do you'll make a sad mistake. You say advice is cheap; well, this isn't; it's fearfully dear. It's not the first time I've tried to help you, and I really haven't strength to do it any more. No, don't try to think of fresh names to call me either; already you've called me common and told me that the tenants here are used to hearing angry wives, and one can have too much of that. So go home, and say nothing to your husband about where you've been. Believe me, it'll be quite the best."

It did in truth cost her more, far more, than she had intended to pay. The greater fool she, she told herself, but--she gave a quick, defiant glance round the bedroom, as if her eyes sought somebody who dared to meddle in her affairs. She would be a fool if she wished; who should stop her? This jealous little scold had fair warning now; let her take it and go while there was yet time. Louie had all but spoken her former _fiance's_ name once; with much more provocation she might forget herself and involve Jim too in a catastrophe of ten little words; and she wanted to do the sporting thing after all. Let Jim's wife take her fill of that canvas of Billy's, then, and go. Her eyes were glued to it now. As she looked Louie exulted; it _had_ been so--precisely so; not all Evie Jeffries's looking could alter that fact....

But suddenly, as if even in this gratification and triumph lurked a peril best avoided, Louie strode to the canvas, took it from its nail, and set it on the floor by the little fireplace with its face to the wall. She had felt the tigress stretch again. To put that thing out of sight was the safest thing to do. She turned to Evie again.

"Please go," she said. ("Yes, mother's coming in a minute, Jimmy.) You see, he's calling me. Forgive my turning you out like this, but do, do go, and don't tell your husband where you've been. Good-bye."

But Evie Jeffries seemed to suspect that Louie was merely "coming it over her" with something indefinable, essential, not to be acquired. After all it was she, this shabby, grey-eyed woman, who wrote shorthand for a weekly wage, and herself, Mrs. James Herbert Jeffries, who lived in the mansion in Iddesleigh Gate. Perhaps she felt herself challenged; at any rate she plunged her hand into her lucky-bag once more.

"Oh, there's no need for such a hurry," she said frigidly. "For one thing, I'm a little particular about who I take my advice from. You needn't think I don't see you're just shutting me up?"

Louie was almost hushing, soothing. "Then let me shut you up. You've seen all you came to see; if there's anything else you want to know, ask me, quite quickly----"

And Louie, in her eagerness to get rid of her and to remove herself from danger, almost gladly submitted to what Evie said next.

"Oh, of course, if you've--an appointment," she said, with a toss.

"Yes, I've an appointment--you understand," she answered, with a little shepherding movement of her hands.

But the next moment that too had turned into something else.

"Oh, you little fool!" Louie broke out, suddenly seeing. "You don't suppose I'm trying to get you out of the way so that I can meet _him_, do you? Good gracious, woman, he's never set foot in this place in his life, and I'll see he never does! Perhaps I wanted you to think he had--I don't know what I thought--with one and another of you I'm getting almost past thinking--but that's the truth anyway! _Now_ are you satisfied? Or have you got the idea so thoroughly into your stupid little head that nothing will shake it? If you're going to spend your Saturday afternoons going round to every place you think might possibly----"

But the denial counted for nothing. Evie turned haughtily.

"Who's making the noise now? And why should I believe you? I knew before I came you'd say that----"

"Oh, how you try me!... I _do_ say that. There's nothing else to say. Do you think if it was any other way I shouldn't boast of it, to you or anybody else? Why, how _can_ you know so little of him--not to speak of myself----"

"You needn't talk as if you hadn't already had the cheek to tell me you loved him!"

"Did I? Upon my soul, I sometimes don't know whether I do or not! Say I don't--say I lied--say I sometimes almost hate him as much as I do you and you me."

"Oh, very likely, the grapes being sour," Evie scoffed.

"Then if they're sour----? What more do you want? Isn't that enough? And isn't it more than enough that I let you stand there and tell me so? Oh, I'm doing my best to warn you--you'll make a great mistake if you make me _try_ to get him!" She stamped. "_Won't_ you go?"

Evie too stamped. "Oh yes, I'll go, and so will you, I promise you--from Pall Mall----"

"Anything you like--only go----"

But as Evie took a step towards the door a little accident turned Louie suddenly as white as paper. Billy's study leaned against the wall; Evie's skirt or foot caught it as she passed; and the canvas fell. Evie gave a short laugh and pushed it with her shoe.

The dear symbol, nay, the very evidence of so many dreamings, that poor thing of wasted smiles and sighs and tears, the pearl from the heart of the oyster-grey----

A kick of her rival's shoe was treatment good enough for it----

It was as if the hives of her own breasts and the heart beneath them had been trodden on.

Louie stepped slowly forward. "No, stop," she said.

She stood for a moment looking down at the picture; then she spoke slowly.

"You were quite right to come," she said. "You have reason to be jealous."

Evie affected not to hear, but she heard. Louie continued:

"A moment ago I told you not to tell him you'd been here. Now I want you to tell him. He may even be expecting it. You see we have spoken of it, he and I."

Evie Jeffries seemed about to say something, but "Just one moment," said Louie quietly----

She placed the picture against the wall again, face outwards. She did not display it as a taunt now; it had served its turn. As if Evie's looks had cheapened it, she no longer wanted it. She stood looking at it.

"It was the last time I sat," she murmured to herself.

Even that pale shadow of a bridal was to be taken from her.

Well, let it go.

This time it was her own foot that kicked the canvas aside; then like a flash she turned--Louie at her deadliest.

"I suppose you're aware you've lost him, whether he knows it yet or not?" she demanded truculently.

Again she was grateful to Evie that she stiffened up against her. Evie smiled.

"Oh, that way--'whether he knows it or not'--nobody minds _that_ kind of losing! _That_ wasn't what you were trying to make me believe a few minutes ago. Thank you very much for the tea, not forgetting the advice," she went on, "and if I might return the compliment, I should like to give you a piece of advice too. You say you could get married if you like; I'd jump at that if I were you! You see, there's your boy. Quite a well-behaved little fellow he seems--quite a superior child--and now that I've seen for myself, I'm perfectly satisfied, thank you!"

"Then," said Louie, advancing, "I'm going to spoil your satisfaction. Listen to me." Her eyes were like saucers of ice. "You've lost your husband. I'm not going to tell you how, but I'll tell you how you can find out. You can tell him what he wouldn't believe when I told him--that you're jealous. You've reason; ask him what it is. If he doesn't tell you, he daren't; if he does--ck!--it's all up between you. Do you suppose," she said slowly, "that _you're_ the kind of woman men tell things to? You, who can neither trust him nor be trusted by him? You, who spy on him when his back's turned? You, who listen while a miserable little Jewess makes mischief for you--for I guess Miriam Levey sent you here? _You_ think you love him? Look at me, I say"--she rapped out the words like a command--"listen, and I'll tell you _my_ idea of loving a man! I've messed my life; if you were anything but what you are you'd know that if you wanted to hurt me your way wouldn't be to point at my little boy and look round my bedroom as if you expected to find pipes and overcoats there! Oh, that's not the way! The way would be to let me see what a perfect marriage could be; there might be tears in my eyes then! But what's this you show me instead? Oh, I know what your marriage is without telling. It would take you and a woman to make a wife for a man! And what would mine have been if I hadn't thrown my chance away? What should I have said if I'd seen what you think you've seen? Listen! I should have said: 'Go, if you like; find a woman if you can whose love's like mine; search the earth for her; I give you leave, and I shall be waiting for you, just the same, when you come back and say there isn't one!' But had _you_ thought of that? Not you! At a word you're off, asking whether this and that's true, because you don't trust him; and so he gives his trust to somebody else! That's what you've lost--and you don't even miss it, you know so little of love!"

Evie had fallen back against the wall, a little intimidated by her vehemence. She did not understand, but she seemed to apprehend that there was something she did not understand. Louie broke out anew.

"_You_ know love! And when and how did you learn it, pray? As you learned your shorthand and things (oh, you're trying hard to forget you ever knew them!) at that place in Holborn? Why, you failed in your petty little examinations there; do you think love's easier? Something you get out of a text-book and answer a paper on? Your husband might know if you don't! _He_ knew just what those other lessons were worth, but he doesn't seem to know that loving has a genius too--that one in a million has it as a gift and the others mimic it as you're mimicking people in your dress and talk now! And you call _me_ common--me, who told your husband long ago what his only, only chance was! Oh, I mustn't say any more or I shall say everything! And you toss your head and say: 'Nobody minds that kind of losing!' That's your idea; that's what you really think! Why, your mind wants a window as badly as that little dark back room at your Business College.... Oh, it maddens me, the sheer waste! A necklace of love--pearls--and good gracious, a bit of cheap glass in the middle of it! Yes, I mean you."

She was walking rapidly up and down; she struck the rail of Jimmy's cot with her hand as she passed. Evie, cowed, watched her from the wall. Louie stopped before her.

"What do you _do_ for him?" she said bitterly. "What do you _give_ him? What do you _bear_ for him, suffer for him? Don't whimper--tell me--you've made pretty free with me--put that handkerchief away and tell me----"

But instead of putting the handkerchief away, Evie burst into loud sobs. Louie watched her remorselessly. Tears, of course--no doubt that was the way she managed Jim----

"That's no good with me," she said harshly. "I want to know what you do for your husband besides following him about and asking questions about him."

Evie's hand moved as if for a chair. There was none. She lifted her head, walked across the room, and fell across Louie's bed. Louie still watched her unmoved.

"Well?" she demanded again, after a quarter of a minute.

Muffled in the bedclothes, Evie's voice came.

"I give him all--all I--have. You talk as if--as if--I'd no right--to be on the earth at all."

"Well?"

"Oh, you do--you do! How--how can I give him more--than I've got? Oh, you think you know, but you don't--you don't know what I've gone through--you've never had that horrible morning--when I was to have been married--and I never expected Jeff to propose, but he did----"

"Oh, for goodness' sake, get up!" Louie cried.

"He did--one day--and I said No at first, but he caught hold of me.... And even then I was jealous about Kitty--I know I'm jealous--but he told me afterwards that I needn't be jealous of poor Kitty because he'd only done it because he thought he couldn't have me--I know I'm jealous--it hurts sometimes so that I can only cry and cry----"

Louie hadn't wanted this at all. Again she cried: "Oh, get up!" but Evie continued to sob.

"And then when Jeff saw you--that night--at Billy's--it was worse than ever, but I kept it from him. I'm not like you, Louie--it's no good my telling myself I don't mind--even though I knew it was all an accident it was like a knife----"

"Oh, don't lie there like that!" Louie muttered.

"And then Miriam Levey reminded me of that thing Archie had said--but he's dead now--and I know it was absurd, but I did think he liked you. You've--such ways, you see--I expect you've been a governess or something in swell houses--I've got to learn them too, now, but Jeff says I'm really very quick at it----"

Louie was pacing the floor now, but more slowly and with downhung head. This was the very last thing she had wanted. More than ever she hated this unresisting piece of pulp; but strike again she could not; no, not with Evie's soul as it were a naked picture for her to set her foot upon. And unless she did strike it was now quite, quite final. To take it lying down! Gladly she would have goaded her into a fresh show of resistance; contemptuously she would have told her to stand up and fight; but the child--Louie felt her to be a child, and herself a faded woman--was merely beyond all decency exposed. Louie only wanted to cover her up again as quickly as possible--her confessions, her abjectness, her appalling artlessnesses, her humiliating appeals. She was beginning to sob once more.

"Oh, don't go on like that; do get up and pull yourself together!" Louie snapped.

"I do love him--I haven't anything else to give him--except my life--he could have that--you couldn't give him more than that----"

"I could stop blubbering for him," said Louie curtly, resuming her walk.

Yes, it was final. Evie had overcome; Louie now backed out of the whole affair. If Jim liked to tell her of his own accord, well and good; it still seemed the only way out; but what was the good even then? Evie Jeffries would no more acquire love as Louie understood it than she would ever acquire the _nous_ to preside without betrayals at Jim's table at Iddesleigh Gate. And if Evie had lost Jim, so had Louie. By her silence she was relinquishing him now. She saw his image recede, slowly, slowly, as if it had been indeed that ship of her fancy, outward bound, her own vessel already condemned for breaking up. Yes, the ship was drawing away. The eyes of her spirit tired of watching it; surely now she might turn them elsewhere; but no--there it was still, very small, leaning, no doubt, to a brisk breeze, but hardly appearing to move.... No, it was not gone even yet; that sudden anguished searching for it was but a trick of the eyes; it was still there--a speck----

And it had only needed six words: "James Herbert Jeffries killed Archie Merridew."

Suddenly Louie herself sank to the floor by Jimmy's cot. Evie heard her sinking. She rose from the bed and ran to her. But Louie cried aloud and put up her hand.

"For God's sake don't touch me--go now--and say nothing."

The touch of Evie Jeffries would have been more than she could have borne.

* * * * *

"Mother, there _is_ a gentleman!"

It was Jimmy's voice outside the door.

Slowly Louie rose to her feet. "Very well," she called shakily; "talk to him till I come. Please go at once," she added to Evie.

Evie began: "I'm sorry I said----"

"Oh, do you want me to strike you?"

"Can't I--do anything--for you?"

"_Go!_"

She heard the outer door close behind Evie Jeffries. By that time her eyes were straining at a wide and empty horizon....

VII

Sec._a_

What followed when, after a few minutes during which Louie bathed her face in the bathroom, she entered her sitting-room again, fell mercifully flat. Any visit would have been an anti-climax; a visit now from Roy--it was Roy--was even welcome for that reason. If she must see him, best get it over.

He was sitting on a rush-seated chair with Jimmy between his knees. Jimmy was playing with his watch. Save that the rims of his stolid porcelain-blue eyes were pinkish, as if with suppressed tears, he had not greatly changed. He wore a braided morning-coat; his silk hat, stick and gloves lay on another chair. His watch slipped from his boy's hand and dangled by its chain as he rose. His voice carried Louie instantly back to the carpenter's shed at Rainham Parva.

"It's me, you see, Louie; here I am, like a bad penny, always turning up."

Louie spoke listlessly. "How are you? I'll get you some tea."

A minute later, with a "May I come in here?" he had followed her into the kitchen. He merely got in her way, if she could be said, in her complete exhaustion, to have a way at all. She was cutting bread and butter.

"Louie, old girl," he said piteously over the bread-board, "why didn't you--tell a fellow?"

Louie did not answer. Then Roy chirped up a little, as if something might now, past all discussion, be taken for granted.

"Well, this settles it," he said. "Clinches it entirely. You know what I mean."

Louie did know. "Just take the kettle off, will you?" she said.

"So you see that's settled--clinched," said Roy, quite bustling. "Right you are. The only question now is; how soon can you pack up."

"We'll talk about it presently, if there's anything to say. There isn't, though. Will you carry the tray in?"

Jimmy ran straight to his knee again. "May I give him some jam?" said Roy; and then he added to the boy: "Oh, come, don't mess yourself up with it like that!" Louie remembered his account of the accident with the centre-board: "Jam and all the lot!" but she did not smile.

"Rhoda will be here in a few minutes, then I'll have a short walk with you," she said. "I've nothing to say, though."

Presently Rhoda did come in, and Louie put on her hat and old grey coat. They went out and walked slowly across Eelbrook Common towards Walham Green. There she told Roy that his return could make no difference whatever. "Don't talk such stuff, Louie," he said; "sit down." They sat down on a bench on the side of the common past which the District Railway runs and talked.

The air rang with the shouts of poorly clad children at their Saturday afternoon play; the common was a-crawl with urchins. Into Roy's honest, statue-like eyes tears had come; none came into Louie's. She only shook her head.

"You're only lacerating me," she said.

"But, Louie----"

"You want to lacerate me?"

"But--the little chap----" Roy said presently, with a gulp. "Will you tell a fellow how you manage?"

That Louie did not mind doing, more or less. "And now I must go back," she said, rising.

"I'll walk back a bit of the way with you. I'm not going to let you go like this."

At the little drinking-fountain she stopped. "Don't make it harder," she said. He had been indicating the rabble of children.

"But look at 'em, poor little beggars!" he said. "Dash it all, I'm not just blowing off--I _could_ do such lots for him--he could ride--and shoot--and fish--and I've a corking little pony at grass now." He mentioned these things one after the other, slowly, as they occurred to him.

Louie groaned inwardly, but aloud she said: "Please don't come any farther. Good-bye."

"But I may come again? You see, I jolly well know I could persuade you."

"N-o----"

"I shall, though--you bet," Roy announced.

She left him, wondering whether it would have made any difference at all had he, in asking her to marry him, told her once, even once, that he loved her.

But she did not return home. Instead, she walked past the block of flats, crossed Putney Bridge, and sought her old Nursing Home in Mortlake Road. As a drunkard might pant for a drink, so now in her extremity she wanted to hear gaiety and laughter and talk. Though she paid for it in prostration afterwards, she felt that without some such intermission she could never get through the night. And to-morrow was that dead day, Sunday. Further than that she did not see; beyond the anodyne of an ordinary human laugh she did not inquire. It seemed to her a matter of the last moment to herself that Miss Dot and Miss Cora should be at home; if they were not, she felt that she must walk straight into a public-house, as a man might, and get herself something to drink.

But Miss Cora and Miss Dot were at home; they had just come in from a matinee. They made an onslaught on Louie. Had she seen the piece? Oh, the funniest thing! They really had had some luck at the theatre at last! The last time it had been a slum piece, all heartstrings and gutter-snipes; and the time before that--would Louie believe it!--just when they had expected to see frocks and dancing and suchlike, the curtain had gone up on a dentist's parlour! Two half-crowns for seats in the pit for that! It was almost like paying money to go and see another Nursing Home!

"But give the poor girl some tea--what are we thinking of!" said Miss Cora.

"No, thanks--I've given two people tea this afternoon already," said Louie. "Tell me about the play."

And, both speaking at once, they told her about the play--_such_ a frock as Ellaline Terriss had worn!--an e-_nor_-mous pink hat, pink like a rabbit's ear, and a frock, chiffon over pink satin.

Ah! That was better!

"But where's my bonnie boy?" Miss Cora demanded.

"Oh, let's show her the new one, the little Crowley baby!"

The little Crowley baby was brought in....

"May I invite myself to supper?" Louie asked by-and-by.

"Oh, do stop!"

"Then give me some stout or something. I'm not sleeping very well."

"Oh, we'll see that's all right----"

And when, at ten o'clock, Louie left, it was with a sleeping preparation in her pocket. She took it in bed. It did its work. Half Sunday had passed when next she awoke.

On the Sunday afternoon she went with Jimmy and Rhoda to Bishops Park; then, packing them off home, she crossed the bridge again and took the bus to Buck's. At Buck's she again stayed until ten, and she smiled as, on the way home again, she remembered the little party to which Chaff had once taken her, pigtail and all. If Chaff had had a little party that night she would have invited herself to it; it would have been something to do. Although it was half-past eleven when she reached her own door she was not in the least tired; had she not slept until well after midday? She walked back to Putney Bridge again. There a man spoke to her. She wondered what he would have said had she stopped; it would have been amusing to know. She felt that she had not had enough amusement. She wished she could have gone back to the Business School in Holborn again. That had been amusing. Mr. Mackie had been very amusing. One of his songs, he had said, that about the Gorgonzola Cheese, never failed to create merriment.

She hummed as much as she could remember of the air of it as she walked, and took two more of Miss Cora's sleeping-tablets before going to bed.

She found, too, an entirely unexpected amount of amusement at the Consolidation on the Monday morning. Not that everything was not much as usual; the routine was the same; but a quite comic spirit seemed to pervade the whole place. Lacking a Mr. Mackie, Sir Julius, dapper and perfect in his aplomb, who had thought of asking her to be his mistress but had found a more profitable use to put her to, seemed somehow as funny as needs be; she wondered she had not noticed it before. It happened that Mr. Stonor had to rebuke one of the telephone girls that morning; there was diversion in the way in which the girl tossed her dolly-capped head and told him that she would talk to her "boys" if she liked. Quite right; that was the way to take things, as a joke. And Mr. Whitlock was portentously funny over a nought or so that had strayed into a pile of figures; and the glazed screen that marked Louie's superiority to the other girls in the same room seemed inanimately funny, and Jim himself was funny, when you came to think of it, sitting invisible there in his room with people coming and going all the time, as if the earth would have ceased to revolve on her axis or the sun have omitted to rise if Jim had not rung bells and jotted his initials on his bits of paper. And funnier than everything else was the fact that Louie should be there at all. She laughed outright when, at nine o'clock that night (she had been kept on account of some urgent joke or other), she stepped from the upholstered lift and out into Pall Mall.

Again she wished that Chaff had had a little party somewhere. Jim, she understood from Mr. Stonor, was giving a party presently, not a little one, but a large, probably a screamingly funny, one. But its humour would probably be lost on Jim. Jim did not always see jokes; that was where Jim had made the mistake; he needed somebody to point them out to him. His wife, being part of the comedy herself, naturally could not do so; she cried when she should have laughed; she had no "kick," no "buck," in her. It was a pity, for Jim needed these things, and ought to have married a woman who had them. Well, it was rather late, but not too late for Louie to go into a shilling gallery somewhere. To-morrow, if she could get away early, she would go up to Camden Town and see Billy. Billy was a joke too, spending whole, real days in making artificial coloured shapes on canvases or solemnly scratching his copper plates. One of the best things Billy had ever done a woman had humorously kicked aside with her foot. That showed what these things were worth in the big, big world. Of course a sense of humour was really a sense of proportion. The dreadful lack of it showed when people magnified trifles so. Yes, she would go and see Billy to-morrow. To-night, the theatre gallery.

She found Billy on the following evening, still etching, the humorous fellow, but amusingly grave too. Perhaps he had heard, or guessed, something from Roy. He was dissolving the ground from a plate; Louie wondered what the curiously sweet-smelling fluid he was using was; and then she remembered. She had smelt that same smell when Jimmy had been born--which event also, by the way, had been the consequence of a lark. She remembered, too, the wonderful, releasing sleep that heavy-smelling stuff had given her. It might be rather a useful thing to know where to find that stuff; it was necessary to Louie's enjoyment of the world and its humour that she should sleep at night. It struck her as a very happy chance that chloroform should be used in the practice of etching. She admitted that it was rather a shame to steal from Billy again, but she felt that she now needed that wonderful, releasing sleep even more than when Jimmy had been born.

An hour later she left Billy's with the ribbed blue bottle in her pocket.

The remainder of the week also was gay; so was the next week, though perhaps with a slightly diminishing gaiety. But the level was restored again when Roy once more turned up at her flat, again on a Saturday afternoon. Really she could have laughed, as they say, fit to split. Roy, who seemed to think that you could ask a woman to marry you without the--formality, call it--of telling her you loved her! It was not for Louie to spoil the sport by pointing out the inessential omission. Not that she hesitated at all now; she had only to think of how it might have read in the paper: "At Saint So-and-So's, on such and such a date, by a Reverend Statue, assisted by another Reverend Effigy, a Tanagra Figure, to a trodden-on Painting by Billy Izzard," etc., etc. Oh no. That wasn't loving----

There was no doubt that Roy loved Jimmy, however; and that was perhaps a little more serious. He had handed in his papers; he could provide for Jimmy; there was riding, and shooting, and fishing, and the corking little pony; but ... it was impossible, of course. Jimmy was Louie's and nobody else's. If Jimmy must play on Saturday afternoons with the rabble on Eelbrook Common, well, he must; Louie would do all for him that she could. It was a pity--especially about the pony. It disturbed Louie a little. It disturbed her, in fact, so much that that night she remembered something she had forgotten about for ten days and more--the blue ribbed bottle she had stolen from Billy. But as she had left it in her drawer at the Consolidation she had to sleep as best she could without it. Perhaps it was just as well. It was not a good habit. She wondered whether Billy had missed the bottle; she would go up again and see, taking that old painting with her. That would square accounts a little. Certainly it was a shame to loot Billy like that.

She went up to Billy's with the study. Billy received it absently. And she was glad that Billy had a code, for he was grave again, and seemed all but on the point of talking seriously to her, code or none. But it blew over. He asked her whether she'd noticed him with a bottle of chloroform one night; he'd lost one; stupid thing to be careless about; must be somewhere; had Louie seen him with it, cleaning a plate?----

"No," said Louie.

"Well, it may turn up. Thanks for the canvas. To tell you the truth I rather wanted it. Merely as painting it's--_knuk_!" Billy made a delectable little foreign gesture.

"I'm no judge of things as painting," said Louie. "And--I say--Billy----"

"What?"

"I don't know that I haven't changed my mind about not sitting--if you asked me very nicely----"

But Billy looked gravely at her again. "Oh, it doesn't matter. I'd rather you didn't. I think I can manage. You'd do far better----"

He looked hard at her, but the code held.

"To do what?" said Louie.

"Well, not to sit," said Billy, turning away.

Louie felt ridiculously touched; nevertheless, much as she liked his loyalty, she wasn't going to talk about Roy. "Thanks, Bill," she said simply. "You're a good sort." And there the matter dropped. Neither for Billy nor for anybody else did she ever sit again.

It seemed strange that so slight a thing as an indisposition of Mr. Stonor should obscure the mock-sun of Louie's gaiety as if a vapour had crept across it; but so it was. Occasionally urgent messages were taken to Iddesleigh Gate at night; usually Mr. Stonor took them; but one day Mr. Stonor left at lunch-time and did not come back that day. Sir Julius himself, who had had dinner sent in that night from a restaurant, sent for Louie and gave her certain papers and instructions. As soon as she learned the errand she asked whether nobody else could go instead. She invented an improbable engagement.

"I'm sorry," Sir Julius said, "but I want Whitlock--I shall have to wait here myself till you come back. If you could go, and give them to Mr. Jeffries himself--nobody else----" That was as near as Sir Julius ever came to a direct command.

So, as Evie Jeffries had seen Louie's home, Louie was now to see hers.

She went reluctantly, by bus, changing at the bottom of Park Lane. For days she had not seen Jim; she did not want to see him now. Therefore, though go she must, she would not sit down; she would not lift her veil; she would be in and out of his house again as quickly as ever she could. She passed the Marble Arch, and at Lancaster Gate got down and walked. She reached Jim's vast and tomblike house.

At the word "Consolidation" the man who opened the door said: "This way, please," and led her along a low-lighted hall, round a staircase the outspread double wings of which resembled some huge alighting architectural bird, and along a narrower passage to the library. At the touch of a switch the room broke into a softly masked glow of light. "Please to sit down," said the servant; but Louie stood by the great writing-table, looking towards the door. Evie had taken stock of her dwelling; Louie looked only towards the door of Jim's library.

Then, as the door was opened, she pushed up her veil after all. Jim came in.

He placed a chair for her; she still refused to sit. She continued to stand even when it appeared that the papers she had brought would require some examination. As she stood, a bell, not unlike that of a muffled telephone, sounded for a moment and then ceased. It was followed by a tap on the door.

"Come in," said Jim, without looking up.

Evie Jeffries entered, dressed as if for a State ball.

Even had Louie not seen her face, the touch of her hand would have told her what had happened. Evie was back again exactly where she had been; the only difference was that she now hated Louie the more that she had abased herself before her. Many times on that other Saturday afternoon Louie had begged Evie to go; now she longed to fly herself. After another minute Jim put it into her power to do so. He rose and returned the signed papers.

"Thank you," he said, and added, turning to Evie, "I don't know whether Miss Causton's had supper?"

Evie's face lighted up as artificially as if there too a switch had turned up masked lights.

"Yes; won't you let me have them lay a tray for you, 'Miss' Causton? It won't be any trouble," she said.

"No, thank you," said Louie. "Please don't come to the door, Mr. Jeffries."

He came, however.

"Good-night," he said, as the door was held open for her to pass out.

"Good-night," said Louie.

She remembered afterwards that she noticed, out in Oxford Street again, a sandwichman bearing an illuminated board with the announcement of some concert or entertainment upon it. Pasted across the device was a strip of paper with the words "To night" upon it. The date was the sixteenth of May. At midday on the day following, Louie, coming out of Mr. Whitlock's room, saw Jim advancing as if to come in. He saw her, stared hard at her for a moment, paused irresolutely, and then turned abruptly and walked away again. She watched his back, shaped like a church-door, but bowed as if with a load too great for him, disappear in the direction of his own room. He had made no attempt to conceal the deliberate avoidance. She half expected, though she knew not why, that he would send for her presently. He did not. She was infinitely glad. Something, she was perfectly sure, had happened between him and his wife. It was the first time he had not sought her aid. Had he, now that it was too late, told her? Had he realised that it was too late to tell her? Had he, realising this, determined to take his last risk and to tell her nevertheless? Or had something happened that had at last unsealed his eyes so that he now saw with a clearness as merciless as that of Louie herself?

Louie could not tell. She only saw his face again, the face of a man suddenly old as he realised his defeat, and his disappearing back, hunched under a burden that was crushing him at the last.

Sec._b_

"If I were you, Miss Causton, I should leave early to-night," said Mr. Whitlock that afternoon.

Louie looked up inquiringly from her desk.

"Oh, if you _want_ to make it a matter of conscience! But Mr. Jeffries is giving a party to-night, and both Sir Julius and I will be leaving early."

He nodded pleasantly as he dropped his hint, and left her. Louie resumed her work.

It was a report of phosphate deposits, but it had been worked over before and needed little attention; or at all events it got little. At five o'clock Louie gathered the sheets together and put them into the drawer of her table. As she did so some object at the back of the drawer knocked. She thrust in her hand. It was the forgotten bottle of chloroform.

"I'd better throw that down the basin," Louie muttered.

"I think, Mrs. Jeffries, that you and Roy between you put me a little beside myself for a day or two. Much better not to have things like that lying about; to have 'em's sometimes to use 'em. I'll throw it away now."

But as she was rising, one of the telephone girls brought her a cup of tea and a biscuit, and she closed the drawer again. The girl began to talk. She was Ivy Warner, the operator who would talk to her "boys" over the telephone if she wanted. Louie, as a matter of fact, always admired the skill with which she did this. A yard away not a word would be audible, and yet Miss Warner would be carrying on a flirtation in Brighton or Bournemouth under the eye of Mr. Stonor himself.

"Well, how's Harold?" said Louie, smiling over her cup of tea.

"Oh, not at all pleased with himself; backed three winners to-day, one at thirty to one, a gift; like to see him? He's coming up this evening," Miss Warner replied. "I'd a chin with him a quarter of an hour ago; dinner at seven-thirty, at the Troc; no steak-and-fried and a small dark lager when a thirty-to-one creeps home! He's bringing a friend, too; a dasher, Harold says; he's almost afraid to introduce him; and Daisy says she really must give her steady a show to-night. Know anybody?"

Louie thought for a moment. It was a thing she had never done before. She gave Ivy a sidelong look. Again she had the hunger to go somewhere, to see lights, hear music, smell the cigarettes of men.

"Do you care to take me?" she said.

Ivy was surprised. "You?"

"Oh, not if I should spoil sport----"

"Rather not! Do come! What a lark! I'll get on to Harold again now. You really mean it?"

"Yes."

"Good egg!" cried Ivy, glad to make up her party and to improve her relations with her business superior at the same time. "I didn't really want Daisy, you see. Of course they do talk loud at the Troc, but Daisy's just a _ti_ny bit ... well, a perfect stranger had the cheek to come up to our table and speak to her the last time----"

Ivy ran jubilantly off to ring up Harold again.

Louie told herself it was a stupid thing to do; she was getting into the habit of loitering about late at night, heedless of Jimmy. But she had promised, and would go. If she didn't she would only be mopishly thinking, and, after all, she would be no more out of place with Harold's dashing friend than Evie Jeffries would be in another place much about the same time. Perhaps the dasher for Evie and Jim's guests for herself would have been more fitting, but no matter. She would be a dasher too. She wondered how Ivy was describing her dashing self to Harold over the telephone.

At seven o'clock she made herself ready and left the Consolidation with Ivy.

She retained no very clear recollection afterwards of the gaieties of that evening, but the little she did remember arrested her a little. She had a confused impression of the lights and tables and pilastered walls of the Trocadero as of a bright beckoning vista, stretching before her as the white road stretches before the knapsacked and stout-booted walker. She knew that many girls went that way.... The air was heavy with the smell of coffee, smoke, dishes, scent; Harold's friend was a Hebrew "killer," and reminded her of Miss Levey; noisily he claimed the privilege, which Harold noisily disputed, of paying for everything; and the waiter contemptuously accepted a tip of a sovereign from him. Perhaps he was the same cavalier who had resented Daisy's loudness; at all events he appeared to find in Louie's quietness another--or perhaps the same--meaning; and Louie had to move her chair and to change her attitude at the table. Afterwards they went to the Alhambra; it was Ivy who cried out at the sight of two cabs and refused to go unless they all went together. At the Alhambra Louie was afraid she was rather a wet blanket; she declined to "take a walk round" and remained seated in her stall; but Harold's friend was fickle as well as dashing, for by-and-by she had a glimpse of him with another lady, who had not dined with them at the Trocadero. She wondered how Evie Jeffries had got on--or "got off," to use an expression of Kitty Windus's.

Suddenly--perhaps it was this thought of Evie elsewhere that did it--she got up, sought the cloakroom, and walked out of the place. She went home, once more quietly and steadily thinking of that vista of lights and cigar smoke and laughing mouths and gilded pilasters--the way so many girls went.

The row she expected with Ivy in the morning was not a moment delayed. It began in the lift in which they both happened to ascend together.

"Good-morning," said Ivy stiffly. "I hope you got home in good time last night."

Louie waited until the liftman had clashed the doors to behind them; then, "I'd a headache," she said.

"Well, perhaps it's better than having one in the morning," said Ivy, more icily still. "All the same, there is such a thing as playing the game when you go out with people."

"I'm sorry. I oughtn't to have come," said Louie, walking with the angry girl to the telephone exchange, where the lights on the great switchboard came and went like the sparks at the back of a gate. They were coming and going with great rapidity that morning.

"Oh, _much_ obliged for your company, I'm sure," Ivy broke out, "but----"

"Sssh!" came from a girl who stretched the rubber worms.

"Sssh yourself, Daisy Dawson--time you knew how to speak into a phone by this time!" snapped Ivy.

But another and a louder "Sssh!" came from another girl, and suddenly Mr. Stonor's head appeared in the doorway.

"Quiet there!" he rapped out, and withdrew his head again.

"Sssh, Ivy--haven't you heard?" Daisy Dawson said softly.

Ivy's own voice dropped. "What?" she asked quickly.

"About Mr. Jeffries."

"No--what?"

Mr. Stonor came in again--but not before Louie had heard Daisy whisper the word "dead."

Suddenly she remembered the face of the liftman. She clutched Mr. Stonor's arm. He looked at her. There was no need to ask.

Dead!

Slowly she walked to her own table behind the screen.

The place was at once busier and more hushed than usual. Presently Mr. Whitlock passed. Mr. Whitlock was thirty-five; he looked fifty. Louie only asked him a single question: "Is it in the papers?" He nodded and passed on. She sought a messenger.

It was on the right-hand middle page. It had happened at one o'clock in the morning; cerebral haemorrhage. That very evening he had given a dinner-party; followed a short interview with Sir Peregrine Campbell, one of the guests; but Mr. Robson, of the Board of Trade, had declined to be seen. There would be no inquest. Heartfelt sympathy was extended to his widow. Half-a-column of "career" closed the announcement. The early edition of the evening paper for which she sent out had it all over again.

Dead!

Another absence!

Slowly she turned the paper and began at the beginning again.

Jim dead!

* * * * *

That night Louie fetched Jimmy from his cot into her own bed. It was not, she felt, for comfort for herself; she had a strange feeling that she ought to be comforting Jimmy. Jimmy slept, but, her eyes alternately very widely open and very tightly closed in the dark, she whispered to him.

"Well, we've got to look after ourselves now," she whispered to the sleeping child. "I don't think we care to go and see him, do we? I daresay she wouldn't refuse it, but we won't go. That was his wife, who said she'd a little boy like you, and of course we're all very sorry for her. She did give him all she had; she said she'd die for him; but of course that's only a way people have of speaking when they mean they love somebody very much. Nobody wants her to die for him really; that would only be two dead instead of one; and she won't actually die.... And she'd a sad thing happen once before. Nobody ever knew about that really except me and him; she didn't know; if she did she might die really then. People have to be careful, they say, when they've once had a terrible shock. It's rather funny though, Jimmy, that mother shouldn't feel very much of a shock. Of course I didn't expect it, but as soon as it happened it seemed as if it had been bound to happen. That's queer--and I don't know that I wouldn't have preferred the shock."

She continued her curious consolation of the sleeping boy:

"Poor Jimmy--poor mother! He looked beaten yesterday--done--but I didn't think.... One never does think till afterwards.... Ah, but mother did, once, a long time ago! Mother danced with him once, and knew then--and the next time she saw him Jimmy was quite a big boy. If she could only have seen him a few times in between, she doesn't know what she could have done, but she would have done something, and then by-and-by he would have blessed her for it--she's sure, quite sure he would.... And there she was, with some terrible people at a music hall----"

She choked a little.

Even had it been proposed to her, she did not think she would have gone to see Jim. That was another woman's affair; Louie's part in him had nothing to do with what remained now. Not that she was so absurd as to tell herself she had lost nothing; even when it is only yours to look at, or perhaps to put your arms about just once, a body counts for something; but the other woman had had nothing but that. "Nothing but" was perhaps a queer way of putting it; for that "nothing but" Louie might perhaps have given all the rest; but all the same it was not very much her business now. Her business now, like the other woman's, was to jog on just the same, the one in her empty mansion, the other one it didn't much matter where. Again she whispered to Jimmy.