Chapter IX: Part IV: Pillar to Post (2)

As Evie Soames's figure was lost in the crowd that jostled in the lights of the Horse Shoe Louie did not look round. She was too angry. "Good gracious!" she exclaimed, "the insupportable little creature! Why, I never looked at one of my mother's housemaids so! _De haut en bas_--her to me! But I did catch you that day, Miss Polly Ross, and you know it!"

But as the bus moved southwards again, she was trying once more to forget that white stripe in Evie Soames's dress. She did not want to think that anything had suddenly seemed to come a stride nearer. And she would now rather not have been told, what apparently was the fact, that, whether frequently or not, Evie Soames did see Mr. Jeffries.

The parcel she was taking home contained a dress; she had been sitting in it; but it was not the oyster-grey. The old oyster-grey, too, served to bring her nearer to her mother and that weak flicker of romance long ago in Henson's studio. Not for worlds would she have had Celeste see the idiotic looks she sometimes gave that dress in which she had danced with Mr. Jeffries. And sometimes she would suddenly toss it aside, roughly, anyhow. She was not seventeen (she would tell herself), to moon over a flower a man had given her or a dance programme on which he had scrawled his name. She was a woman of turned thirty-one (she rubbed it in), with her living to earn and an illegitimate son to provide for.... But sometimes she was very wistful too. She had never (she sighed) really been a girl of seventeen at all; looking back, she saw that she had missed that. She blamed nobody; no doubt she had been unruly, ill-conditioned, unmanageable; still, she had missed that. The thought always sent her off into her reveries again; and then, how differently, how much more admirably, she was able to plan everything to herself! Over and over again she built it all up, unbuilt it again, rearranged it, played with it. Had she, as a girl of seventeen, met Mr. Jeffries--had this circumstance been different, that particular not been the same--had she nursed no grudge against her mother--had it been Mr. Jeffries, not Roy, with whom she had kicked her long legs during the vacations at Mallard Bois--had she, in a word, had the arranging of the world herself and the choosing of the places she and he were to occupy in it----

"Bosh!" she usually cut herself abruptly off. "I shall be afraid of turning a corner soon for fear of walking into the gentleman! What shall I take in for supper?"

* * * * *

She did not know yet--indeed it was only some months later that she learned it, but it is set down here--that already, at a Langham Exhibition, Billy Izzard had one day seen a big stranger standing before one of his sketches, had gone up and spoken to him, and had liked the fellow--had liked his hewn slab of a face with the yellow eyes in it so much that presently, having an old sketch he was never likely to sell, he had given it to him. But Billy would at any time rather give away a sketch to somebody he liked than sell one to somebody he didn't like, and he still set, moreover, less than their real value on those paintings of flowers that he "knocked off" in a couple of keen and nervous hours. One of these sketches, by the way, Louie herself coveted--a straggle of violets, a few white ones among them, in a lustre bowl; and she offered a certain number of sittings in exchange for it--another elementary example of the transaction in kind. But Billy shook his head. He wanted that for a wedding present for a fellow, he said. He'd give Louie another some time--after he'd found another studio. He was sick of Chelsea; when a fellow got to know the cracks in the flagstones it was time he moved. He thought of going up north somewhere, Camden Town or Hampstead or St. John's Wood--better air. So Louie could make up her mind to the bus-rides, or else move too. He wasn't going to let Henson get hold of her.

But Louie still delayed to move from Lavender Hill.

III

Louie's adventures, as she continued to sit, would fill a book: but not this book. Her sittings were the accidents of her life; her real life she reckoned from Sunday to Sunday. Sundays were the blest days she devoted to Jimmy.

He was now nearly four years old, and (as Celeste continued delightedly to exult) "existed" and "manifested" indeed. Louie herself gave him her bath before she set out of a morning; she did so in a waterproof and little else--why, the splashed condition of the wall-paper in the poky little bathroom explained. It was the same old waterproof she had worn at Rainham Parva. Buck's admiration of the boy's chest and limbs was merely fatuous; he himself was teaching him to swim at the Public Baths. He had announced to Louie, with a great show of harshness, that the money she was fool enough to refuse, the boy would have the benefit of; that at least was something she couldn't prevent, he informed her, and though Louie scolded fondly back, it was a weight off her mind. Chaff, the other grandfather, came occasionally on Sundays; he came, for example, on the Sunday after the opening of the Royal Academy. He brought a catalogue with him, and, taking Louie into a corner, desired her to mark the numbers for which she had sat. Whether the poor old fellow meditated the buying of them all up, or what else, there was no telling. Her sittings, too, were "just like Mops." Perhaps that was more than some of the pictures were.

But it is not true, as has been reported, that for Henson's last picture, "Resurgam," Buck Causton and his daughter posed together. Buck never posed after his first marriage. Louie only posed for Henson once, and that was in wet drapery. She caught a pretty cold in consequence. She exulted in that cold; it gave her three whole days with little Jimmy. They played with tops and balls and soldiers on the floor. The boy wanted an ensign's uniform, like that of the fourth Lord Moone in the miniature, and Chaff bought him a dragoon's helmet and cuirass. Buck laughed because the cuirass was already too small; and then he sighed. Perhaps he remembered the suit of armour of Big Hugo at Mallard Bois.

Well, if a little money was all that was necessary, the boy could be put into the army by-an-by.

And so things might have gone on had they been destined to do so; but into Louie's life of busy sitting and foolish dreaming and Sunday's rompings with her boy, there came a disruptive force. Kitty Windus brought it on a Sunday morning in early June.

Celeste was reading a story to Jimmy when she walked in; Louie was putting the last touches to a piece of crochet; and all three were awaiting Buck's arrival with the trap--he was going to take them to Hampton Court. She entered unannounced, and, to Louie's way of thinking, would have been better in bed. Her face seemed unusually small and thin; she spoke in a high, painful voice.

"Louie, I want to see you--quick----"

It was as if Louie too caught an instant alarm. Hurriedly she dropped her just-finished crochet and rose.

"What's the matter?" she asked quickly. "Come into my bedroom."

In the quite prettily furnished little bedroom Kitty began to walk rapidly to and fro. Once or twice she turned her looks to the brown-papered walls, as if she expected to find texts there; for the rest the blinking little eyes roved ceaselessly at about knee-height from the floor. Then she stopped before Louie.

"They're getting married in a fortnight," she cried harshly, accusingly.

There is no need for Louie to ask who, nor did she know what instinct again, as before, bade her take up a definite attitude without a moment's delay. She only felt in her very bones that delay would be perilous, and that not the shade of an expression must cross her face that was not natural and unsurprised.

"Yes, of course; didn't you know?" she said quietly. "Mr. Jeffries and Evie Soames, you mean?"

Again Kitty made that painful little sound--_a bouche fermee_. "You knew?" she cried.

A simple lie would not have availed; this was so obvious that Louie lied deliberately, circumstantially and at length.

"Yes, of course I knew. Of course I did. Do you mean to say you didn't? I made certain you did; I was going to write to you. In about a fortnight, isn't it? I'm--I'm giving them a wedding present; it's--it's that piece of crochet you saw me doing. It isn't much, but these things don't go by value; it's the intention. What are you going to give them?"

She almost blushed for the lameness of it. As a matter of fact, she had intended that piece of crochet for the new flat, when she should take it; but to soothe Kitty now was of more importance than crochet for new flats. She watched her covertly, anxiously.

"How did you know?" Kitty flashed out, again stopping in her walk.

"Sit down, dear; sit on the edge of my bed; I'm sure you're tired. How did I know? Why, I saw Evie herself. I saw her on a bus one day in Tottenham Court Road. It was near the Adam and Eve. And--I say, Kitty"--dropping her voice confidentially, she made an appeal to Kitty's hunger for gossip--anything for a diversion--"I doubt if they'll have too much to live on--it takes a tidy bit to get married on--and I don't suppose she has any shares to sell."

But Kitty did not seem to hear. She flashed out again.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"My _dear_! I made sure you'd heard it from Miriam Levey. And I wasn't sure where you were; you move about so, you know. I wonder what Miriam will give them! Something far more expensive than mine, I expect. And you ought to give them something too, Kitty. What's done's done, you know, and after all, lots of engagements are----"

But once more Kitty flashed out. "Oh, _I_ shall give him a bottle of arnica, or whatever it is, for black eyes!"

Louie laughed almost hysterically at the joke. The tension was getting almost too much for her. "Oh, come, he isn't a wife-beater yet!" she protested.

"But he will be, that man!" Kitty cried aloud with frightening vehemence. "He'd do anything--anything--much he cares! Did you know I got lost the other night? In Lincolns Inn Fields; policemen coming up to me, if you please, and asking me where I lived! Much he cares! I believe it was her all the time--he never wanted me at all, and as soon as Archie's out of the way he goes and marries her! Miriam Levey herself says she can't help thinking it's funny--and I can't think what _your_ game is either, to be going on as if it wasn't! I'll tell you what _I_ think, if you want to know----"

"Hush, hush, hush!" came from Louie. She had her arms about Kitty. "Perhaps you're right, dear; he was cruel to you! And"--she rushed into another extemporisation--"I don't know that I would give him a present, after all. If one can't forgive an injury one can't, and it's no good pretending. He did wrong you, and perhaps he oughtn't to be let off, after all. I won't send him one either."

She said it because it was better to confine Kitty to her own wrongs than to allow her to approach a number of frightening unknown possibilities that began with black eyes. And apparently she succeeded. Kitty fell back on her own injury, and became a little calmer.

"Oh," she said cunningly, "but you'd have to send yours, and Miriam Levey'd have to send hers too--then, don't you see, I should be the only one who didn't, and he'd notice it! I just hope he does notice it. Serve him right. I wasn't as hard up for a fellow as all that--I carried on with a fellow at that breaking-up party. I did--you ask Mr. Mackie.... You _do_ think Jeff never intended to marry me at all, don't you, Louie?" She peered curiously at Louie.

Well, better that, Louie thought. "I don't think he meant to for a single moment," she replied.

"Oh, the _rotter_. Come on, let's send your present now. We'll show him!..."

She was quite eager about it; but Louie kept her in the bedroom a little longer. Kitty began to speak of texts again. Again she wondered why "Come" was written in green and "Unto" in red and "Me" in purple, and why all texts had Oxford frames. "You haven't any, I see," she said, glancing again round the brown-papered walls. "You ought to have 'Remember thy Creator,' you know, Louie; it always reminds you, you see. What's this?"

It was one of Billy Izzard's etchings. Kitty examined it with her head a little on one side.

"It's very nice, whatever it is," she conceded; "but where's the other one? I always think pictures look better in pairs. But you can get odd ones cheap sometimes; Mr. Mackie had a great sale of Art Engravings one day in one of those Oxford Street places--you can hear his voice right across the street--and _he_ said they were cheap because they weren't pairs, but they'd do splendidly for the middle of anywhere, like over a mantelpiece. And what a nice looking-glass! Really, you're quite comfortable here!"

She seemed to have forgotten all about Mr. Jeffries again. She walked round Louie's bedroom, bestowing encomiums and preening herself on her own pound a week.

At midday Buck came, but Louie did not join the party; she sent Celeste and Jimmy, and herself stayed with Kitty. She hoped Kitty would not stay long; she wanted to lie down and think--think. Nor did Kitty stay very long; but before she went she returned to the subject of the crochet. She wanted the article--it was a teacloth--sent immediately; she would run out and post it herself, she said; and _then_, when he got presents from Miriam and Louie and none from herself, _that_ would be rather a nasty one for Mr. Jeffries!

"Do pack it up. _I'll_ show him I'm not to be trampled on like the dirt under his feet!" she persisted vindictively; and another approach to the subject of black eyes caused Louie to yield hurriedly. She folded the cloth and found a piece of brown paper; Kitty did not notice that she enclosed no message.

But suddenly Louie had an odd little hesitation. She knew it to be ridiculous and a sentimentality, but while she did not want to send a particular message, she yet did not want to send the teacloth entirely without one. The opportunity for the little secret luxury would probably not occur again.... Kitty was condescendingly appraising her furniture again; on the mantelpiece lay a piece of blank card; it seemed to be there almost for a purpose, and furtively Louie took it. She scrawled an "L" upon it and slipped it into the parcel.

A few minutes later Kitty left, taking the wedding present with her.

Left at last alone, Louie once more went into her bedroom and threw herself on her bed. She lay with her hands clasped behind her head, her gaze now resting on Billy's etching, now straying idly over the brown-papered walls.

So they were to be married. And after that?

Well, she thought that on the whole she was glad. The curtain was about to fall on that drama that had begun at the Business School in Holborn, and so there would be an end of _that_.... What now? What about those fancy pictures with which she had beguiled herself as she had ridden on buses and trams and worked at her crochet during the rests? What about those half-whispered, nonsensical conversations? What about those drowsy, secret quarters of an hour out of which she had come with slight starts to smile at herself? They were to be married. What next?

The answer came as if for months it had been merely awaiting her pleasure. It was as plain as day that she could now have as much of these as ever she pleased. For what it was worth, the freedom of her cuckoo-cloud-land was about to be definitely made over to her. Because nothing else was hers, that was all the more hers.... Kitty's tidings brought it so sharply home to her that she forgot that those sweet hours of licence were no new thing. She forgot that it was no new thing to walk, in fancy, the woods of Mallard Bois and the lanes of Rainham Parva with him by her side, no new thing to call his name down the remembered glades--"Jim!" (not, as others called him, "Jeff"). She forgot that it was old and outworn already; she saw in it only newness and liberty and delight. A Jim of sorts was now hers, ineluctably and for ever--a Jim who did not fool predestined spinsters--a Jim who would know better than blunder into a blind and stupid marriage--a Jim whose relentless hand had not--had not--had not----

But here, as she paused, the colour that had made her cheeks rosy ebbed as if a brush loaded with white had been passed over them. His ruthless hand had--had--almost certainly had----

It was as if, in her fancy, a prison bell had tolled and a black flag had been run up in the morning breeze----

He was certainly a murderer; over the threshold of that hideous fact she must step before she could enter her palace of insubstantial delights. Stained she must take even the phantom of his hand, or not at all. Suppose the joy were to leave her, but the horror to remain?

She closed her eyes.

But she opened them again. She faced it. Say he was--that; what then? The joy and the horror were fatally one. A man capable of all--all--even of that--and her lover! Oh, the moment the shudder had passed the worst was over! He had killed; yes, but for a cause! He had been horribly to be feared; yes, but without the dread of him too she would not have had the whole of him, and she wanted the whole of him. _Not_ kill, with such a reason? Withhold death, with something approaching that was worse than death? Oh, Louie knew all about that; Miss Cora had told her....

A murder? There were things by the side of which a murder, once you had made up your mind to it, was a trifle!

* * * * *

Are women so? Is it so that they will place their soft hands, like willow-leaves, in those other hands that may be black with dreadful work, red with destruction, yet, seeing less than man and more than man, they care not? Is it so that they will set their lips, as if for a kiss, against the mouth of war itself with its ten thousand deaths? It seems to be so. Their loved ones, when they die, do not do so of fevers and shattered tissues, but of their own clear and trusted heroism. "Go," they say to the next one, even to the little Jimmy, "go--and come back if you may--and, though wooden props keep you together, you shall be beautiful to the mother who bore you--to the wife whose task it must be to take you to pieces and put you together again--to the woman who, because of her own heavenly dreaming, cannot think of the fiend you were in that hour when the call sounded and you dropped the point of your lance to the charge."

* * * * *

But one thing was clear: her dreams must remain dreams. If she would keep what was left her, she must never, never, never see him now!