CHAPTER VIII
“I am writing to you, my dear Zoe, from the Café Romanico. But indeed the talk all round me is so loud, I can hardly collect my thoughts. My finger is better, but I have a pain in my neck. I do not know what it can be, for as you know I do not squander money on doctor’s bills, which reminds me, my dear Zoe, that it is quite impossible that you can already have spent the ten pounds I gave you on leaving....”
Suddenly Pinto looked up. Across the babel of sound, a familiar name struck his ear.... “Little Zoe Dene-Cresswell—si, si, I know her—I should have known her better but she was occupied—Oh, very occupied ... all the day and most of the——”
“For shame, Gian....”
Here the laughing voices became for the moment inaudible. Pinto knew the first speaker by sight. It was a friend of his friend Marchetti, who had arrived the day before from England to perform his military service. The other man, a stranger, wore the R.F.C. badge. They were at a table behind him, and doubtless had not recognized him. Without turning his head he strained his ears to hear more. The English boy was reading aloud from a letter.
“... ‘With the face of an orang-outang and the temper of a Patagonian savage!’... How she can put up with him, I don’t know—and Cliffe says she actually seems fond of the horrid coarse brute....”
Pinto had heard enough. He rose and stalked out of the café. He was amazed, staggered by this proof of Zoe’s hypocrisy and infidelity. The world swam in yellow and green before his bilious gaze. So Zoe could write him every day those pretty little letters, sympathizing, yes, daring to sympathize with the many discomforts of his enforced trip, and all the while she was in the arms of another lover—a horrid coarse brute with a face like an orang-outang and the temper of a Patagoniansavage.... Pinto thought he could have borne it better, had his rival been a worthier man—in which supposition Pinto was entirely wrong.
In the first throes of his jealousy he decided never to see Zoe again, never to write to her explaining his desertion. Let her wonder at it as much as she pleased! He had been betrayed, he had been fooled, he who had always been so good to her! Even now the thought of the ten pounds rankled. How she must have rejoiced at the necessity for this business-trip! How she must have laughed in her sleeve during their farewells.... After all, she was a common little thing, this Zoe! He had tried to educate her taste, but she was evidently glad to sink again to the type of male with whom she was most at her ease. In time she would learn the difference.... Pinto preened himself. He had done with Zoe.
But a month later, when his business-affairs were concluded, and it was time to return to England, he decided that it was very dull, cutting people off for ever without seeing the effect upon them of this treatment; also he wanted his big row with Zoe; also he had discovered that no French girls could cook macaroni like a certain English girl.... He did not see why he should deprive himself of the relief of telling Zoe just exactly what he thought of her. His nerves were in a state of suppressed irritation for lack of a victim. Yes, most decidedly he would go to Zoe and have a grand scene with her, and then never see her again. Perhaps he would throw something at her; perhaps even, he would challenge his unknown rival. But this he resolved not to do, in case the challenge should be taken up.
“Antonia dear, Miss Stella Marcus has just spoken to me on the telephone. She asked for you. Perhaps I did wrong in not calling you, but she was kind enough to say that I was not to trouble. She seems to be in deep distress of mind, causelessly I should say, but of course I am in no position to judge.”
“Why, mother?” Antonia and Cliffe were engrossed over a portfolio of Cubist pictures by an aspirant for their candid criticism, when Mrs Verity came to the door of the studio.
“Deb has eloped, with very commendable independence ofspirit, I thought, but I did not say so to Miss Marcus, who seemed in deep distress of mind. Forgive me if I repeat myself, Antonia dear. Cliffe, do, I beg you, forgive me if I repeat myself, but it is all so surprising.”
“Eloped! Deb! but she’s never said a word to me!” Antonia sprang to her feet, scattering the drawings over the floor. “Whom has she eloped with?”
“Miss Marcussaid... but I really and truly doubt if she can be accurate, so perhaps I ought not to report her words—it is so very, very difficult to know what is tactful and prudent under such circumstances—but Miss Marcus said her niece had unfortunately eloped this afternoon with Mr Cliffe Kennedy!”
Antonia raised quizzical eyebrows in Cliffe’s direction. “Present appearances are in your favour, Cliffe—but still——”
Kennedy protested heatedly: “I have most emphaticallynoteloped with Deb! Do I look as though I’d eloped with anyone this afternoon? What nasty people those Marcuses are, taking away a fellow’s character!”
“Perhaps they did not mean it uncharitably, Cliffe; I trust indeed that if you or anyone were to elope with a daughter of mine, that I should approve heartily—though certainly elope has an old-fashioned sound. The Marcuses are slightly old-fashioned people; charming—I mean nothing to their detriment, but laggards in emancipation. Young people do not elope nowadays—they walk straight out of the dusty temple of convention on to the open heath. But pray do not allow me to be a bore; I merely wanted to assure you, Cliffe, that in repeating Miss Marcus’ comment, I in no way attach any blame to your possible complicity.”
Cliffe bent and kissed her hand in its black silk mitten.
“I regret to state, dear lady, that I’ve frequently invited a daughter of yours—I may saythedaughter of yours, to step with me on to the open heath, but, deplorably archaic in her principles, she has always rigidly insisted on the prior formality of a registrar’s office.”
Mrs Verity shuddered slightly. It was one of her troubles that the late Mr Verity had succeeded in imposing upon her the legal right to bear his name, before she knew enough of life, or the New Movement, to resent it.
“Mother, you’re being selfish. I want to know about Deb?”
“Oh, dear,” full of contrition. “And you have been sopatient with me. Now let me try and be accurate: I gathered from Miss Marcus that violent argument had taken place this afternoon between little Deb and her father, in which he censured her, most unwisely, if I may be permitted to say so, for a too passionately independent spirit, and threatened her with closer guardianship for the future. The brave child, refusing to submit, has been seen leaving Montagu Hall at tea-time—no, a little after, with a suit-case, but without a word of explanation. They are anxious to discover her whereabouts. The object of the telephone call was to enquire if Antonia knew anything.”
“But where do I come in?” demanded Kennedy in aggrieved innocence.
“Miss Marcus seemed to think it possible that you were involved in the flight, but she did not give me her reasons for supposing so. I mentioned indeed that you were here, but ... Cliffe, if you have an appointment with Deb to-night,” Mrs Verity glanced at her neat wrist-watch—“it is precisely a quarter to nine,” she said anxiously. “You ought not to be late—if she has taken this step for your sake—I truly have no desire to be meddlesome, but——”
Cliffe turned sulky, asserted that he knew nothing about Deb, that she had probably gone for a walk, and that he and Antonia were due at Gillian Sherwood’s at nine o’clock.
“People don’t go out for walks lugging a suit-case. Don’t be inhuman, Cliffe. Deb’s such an impetuous little goose.... Oh, probably she has gone to La llorraine—or to Zoe.... Yes, I remember Zoe offered her a spare bed whenever she liked to drop in. I wish she had a ’phone.” Antonia fidgetted irresolutely with an easel-peg, popping it in and out of its hole.
“I’ll run round to Zoe,” she exclaimed suddenly. “Explain to Gillian for me, will you, Cliffe? I shan’t rest till I find out—it puzzles me why Deb doesn’t come here....”
After Antonia had quitted the studio, and Cliffe and Mrs Verity had enjoyed a little desultory chatter on Reconstruction of Sexual Morality in Conformity with the New Era of Womanhood, and what a pity it was that darling Antonia was so intolerant, he departed for Bayswater, where he found Winifred Potter lolloping in plump content on the horse-hair sofa, with a penny novelette.
“Hullo, Winnie, where’s Gillian?”
“Hullo, Cliffe. I believe she’s out. Or she may be in herroom. Just look....” She was of the pretty unremarkable type of suburban girl, who wears beads round a podgy white neck, and never moves save under compulsion.
“Not in there, Cliffe,” as he opened the door of the bedroom adjoining; “We’ve changed over, so that I needn’t do the stairs so much. Jill sleeps on the third floor now. Wasn’t it sweet of her to change?”
Cliffe grunted and ran up to the third floor, then down again.
“Not a sign of her. At least—no—the whole bally floor is littered with signs of her, but that’s all. Is she out? She expected me and Antonia to-night to go to the Vermilion Club, but that’s nothing; no inconvenience. Winnie, do wake up—you’ve grown fatter.”
“Theo says I’ve grown thinner,” said Winnie unperturbed.
“Theo was pulling your leg, my dear.”
“Was he? Yes, he often does. Heisa caution....”
“Where’s Gillian?” shouted Cliffe, whom, strangely, this placid young woman could always irritate to a frenzy—(“If youpokeher mind you only dimple the suet”—he complained to Antonia). “Where’s Gillian? She invited Antonia and me to supper.”
“I expect she forgot,” lazily, “anyway, Antonia hasn’t come, so it doesn’t matter.”
“I’ve come, haven’t I?”
“Yes,” Winnie sighed, and fingered her novelette.
“Well—I’m off again. Can’t waste a moment. Tell Gillian that we’re in a terrible state; Antonia has had to run round to Zoe—Deb Marcus is missing from home since yesterday—no; the day before—since days——” he paused, for sensation.
“How perfectly awful. But I expect she’ll come back,” yawned Winnie.
It had become more essential to Cliffe than anything else in the whole world, that Winifred Potter should be made to display some rending emotion.
“No. She won’t come back. I ... happen to know she won’t come back, you see.”
Winnie dangled her bare braceletted arm over the side of the sofa and picked up a cushion which had slid to the ground.
“Why? Do you know where she is?”
“No. Only where she isn’t. Only where she isn’t, Winnie. And that’s on earth.”
... After all, it was merely the question of the novelette.Now that Cliffe had really produced a thrill which out-rivalled even “The Sin of Lady Jacynth” by Coronal, Winnie immediately yielded him what he coveted in the way of attention all agape. She was personally acquainted with neither Deb nor Lady Jacynth, but Cliffe had proved himself a better author than Coronal.
“—Dead?”
He nodded curtly, and stood for a moment with eyes fixed on the carpet ... then bent and cut off a loose strand absently with his penknife ... seemed on the verge of speaking ... thought better of it. Winifred watched him; her light blue eyes were circles of horror and fascination.
“She’s not dead,” abruptly; “forget that I said it. I ought not—Ought I?—I don’t know.... Upon my soul, I don’t know....” he began to stalk the room, hair falling shaggily over his frowning forehead, as he jerked his head in acute mental conflict.
Winifred was rapacious for detail: “Did anyone treat her badly?” she whispered, with healthy gloating. “Any man, I mean?”
And one man stood stock-still as though he had been shot.
“What makes you askmethat?”
“Was it you?” queried Winifred, very naturally.
And then he unburdened himself. He had by this time safely crossed that precarious borderland stage in the Life of a Lie, by Cliffe Kennedy, when that lie, from being artistically perceived, created and approved by his own consciousness, is slowly and mysteriously merged, as far as he was concerned, into genuine and independent existence, the self-supplied ground-work entirely obliterated from his memory.
He was mostly worried, it seemed, as to whether he ought to tell Deb’s people ... what he knew. Directly he heard that she was missing, her threat of suicide had scorched like fire into his mind.... Why, that night on the open common ... black blown space, and Deb’s wild hair swept straight out like a drenched black banner by the wind; and Deb’s mood black as night itself, and as passionate, declaring that she meant to die—that she was tired of fighting God—“tired of fighting Him for you, Cliffe.... And sometimes it’s easier to die than to live——” He had no very clear notion of what the fuss was about, but he saw her face, a grey blur, save where her eyes and mouth were wet and black ... and knewit was best for him to turn and go; her ragged sobbing followed him through the swish of the rain, black slanting stripes of rain....
So the man’s racing sense of what was fitly beautiful and tragic caught the scene and flashed it into being; so his infallible ear caught the sounds, ... and so he described it to Winnie Potter—till the complete vision was broken all into bits—like the Cubist pictures which he had last seen strewing the floor of Antonia’s studio.
... Mrs Verity’s recent remarks, a certain conversation with Otto Redbury in the Tube, the actual Saturday to Sunday spent at Seaview, telepathic oddments from Winifred’s conventional expectation, suggestion from the cover-picture illustrating “The Sin of Lady Jacynth,” were all stirred and flung pell-mell into the descending spiral vortex of Cliffe’s prismatic imagination.
“Oh!” gasped Winifred at the end of the recital, “but I do think you ought to tell them, Cliffe, even if you’re not sure—they might want to drag the river, or something.... Anyway, they’ve got a right to know.”
“Granted that—have I the right to tell them? The Aunt mentioned me as being mixed up in the whole horrible business, when she ’phoned Mrs Verity.Am I the person to tell them?... when it may not even be true ... when I may be only the victim of my cursedly morbid imagination—And yet—I wish to Heaven, Winnie, that someone would take the decision out of my hands. I can’t stand it much longer—holding the secret alone—it gnaws ... like the fox—Spartan boy—you know!... I hold it tight, and it gnaws. What do you suppose my nights are like?” turning with ferocity on to his hearer, who replied simply: “What things you do say, Cliffe!”
“Ought I——” he hacked anew at indecision. The puzzle existed for him as surely as though it were wrought in bits of metal, and sold in a box for fourpence-halfpenny. Deb was missing; his name was mixed up in it; ought the Marcuses to be told what he knew about that night—(hiatus)—at Seaview? Was he the right person to tell them? These were all facts. The hiatus was slurred over unperceived ... it was such a tiny hiatus. Winifred Potter was responsible for it, by being fat, and yawning, and talking in that slow flaccid way of hers.... But it was an absorbing problem! And underneath a top layer of recently-manufactured tragedy,Cliffe’s genuine nature was genuinely concerned about Deb, and the circumstances which attended her flight from home, and his own possible share in the matter. Was any course of action expected of him—not officially by her family, but in the way of ordinary decency? An offer of marriage? Surely not! but he ought to go and look for her——
In the river?
Who said she was in the river? truculently. Winifred Potter. She had talked about dragging it ... nasty idea! Anyway, how did she know? She was too fat to know anything—just a mischief-maker—And then again—ought the Ledburys to be told?... Would it be worse for them to wait from hour to hour and from week to week, hope slowly drained away—or be dealt the sudden blow?
Not by him in any case. Not by the man who ought to have married Deb.
His entranced mind, pacing the hiatus like a bridge between fact and fancy, took him out of the house and half-way down the street before he even realized that he had left the room. And he had completely forgotten to say good-bye to Winifred.
... Presently she picked irresolutely at the edges of “The Sin of Lady Jacynth.” She wondered if it would be wrong to finish it; like—like raising the blinds too soon after a funeral. But—it was not as if she had known Deb any better than Jacynth. And the solution to that lady’s sin was so handy ... one did not have to go out and drag for it, or even move from the sofa....
Winifred did not move from the sofa, not when the front-door bell was violently pealed—again—and several times again. She went on reading. After about six minutes, the lodger on the third floor, who had previously admitted Cliffe, came tramping wearily down the stairs again to let in Gillian Sherwood.
“So youareat home, you lazy young pug. And awake?”
“Have you lost your key again?” Winnie reprimanded her.
“Yes—no—here it is, in the ash-tray. I remembered suddenly that Cliffe and Antonia were supposed to turn up to-night, and flew home.” Gillian, yielding to natural tendencies, scattered widely her hat and gloves and coat in various portions of the room. Then chased them and retrieved them and draped them tidily on one chair, remembering that if she did not do so, nobody would. It was on understandingof the performance of this and like jobs that Winifred had been enlisted as her room-mate. Thus Gillian would be left free to be a genius. Winnie was glad to leave her own chaotic home of exacting parents and brothers. She ensconced herself tranquilly and for good on the sofa of Gillian’s furnished apartments. Having naturally a sweet disposition, she did not complain because it was a horsehair sofa and very slippery. And Gillian, having naturally a sweet disposition, enlivened by humour, continued to make brilliant effective dashes at domesticity, in the between-whiles of her other work; with the sole difference that now she cleared up for Winifred as well as for herself. She had grown fond of the plump little parasite; and took the same sort of freakish delight in her as Cliffe in Otto Redbury. And Winifred was mulishly averse from returning home; she was happier with Gillian; Gillian gave her more pocket-money than ever father did. And Gillian was famous—a personage.... It was all very nice. She was never going to leave Gillian.
Gillian began to hurl supper on to the table, smashing three plates and a jam-jar, confidently indifferent as a conjuror who smashes a watch in the knowledge that he can produce it whole again out of the top-hat of the Gentleman in the Back Row. Winifred watched her listlessly for a few moments, till it dawned upon her that knives and forks were being laid for four.
“Cliffe and Antonia aren’t coming. Didn’t I tell you? Cliffe has been here already, and he says that Deb Marcus has killed herself!”
“Then she probably has a cold in the head,” Gillian commented, with the perfect serenity of one who has often sampled the output from the Kennedy factory.
Winifred was indignant; and even roused herself to convince Gillian; who presently admitted that there “might be something in the story!”
“—Anyhow, Cliffe oughtn’t to be allowed to walk about with such a dynamo joggling loose in his pocket. Did you say he did or did not intend to explode it on the Marcus family? Because if the girl is really missing, it may frighten them.”
“He wasn’t sure. Never mind. We don’t know any of them.” And Winifred rolled off the sofa and established herself comfortably at the table.
Gillian’s eyes twinkled at her—narrow green-grey eyes set askew in an odd, thin, freckled face. Gillian’s body was alsothin and small-boned to a degree. And her hair, which, by all the rights of compensation should have been a gloriously redeeming feature, was short and mouse-coloured and ragged—short with the round pudding-basin effect. The man who loved her could say that she had pretty wrists and ankles, and enormous fascination. Then, lacking material, he must perforce cease from hyperbole.
(“Go on, Theo—what next?” and he could never be quite sure if she were wilfully plaguing him, or else blind to her own shortcomings. “Theo, do you know a bit in Browning about ‘Mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs’?... Jolly line, isn’t it?... Or d’you admire the slender type more? I—I suppose youwouldcall me slender, wouldn’t you?... Not exactly the right word?—Well,sveltethen? ... like ladies in the corset advertisements. No? Theo, not—not scraggy—Oh, you wouldn’t call me scraggy,wouldyou?...”
Then, after a pause, still persistent: “Theo—wouldyou call me scraggy? Do tell!”
“You’re just the squeak of a mouse made concrete, Gillian.”
“That’s not such a good line as Browning’s,” she sighed. And he, being a sensual epicure, sighed also, thinking of the great smooth marbly limbs—and for the thousandth time racked his brains for what attracted him so mightily and desperately in this exasperating bit of a creature with—with——
“Well, Theo?” expectantly.
“With remarkably pretty wrists and ankles.”
And: “Go on, Theo,” in complacent appreciation of these. “What next?”)
“Where’s the blanc-mange?” enquired Winnie, whose favourite pudding it was.
Gillian pushed her hands backwards through her hair, in an effort of memory; “I believe I turned it out on the washstand in your room. You’ll find it there when you want it.”
“Why, are you going out again?” as the other rose impetuously from supper.
“I’m not happy about that Deb Marcus kid.... Not my business, but Cliffe is such an irresponsible lunatic—and if even Antonia doesn’t know what he’s saying about it all——”
“Nobody knows but me and him,” said Winifred importantly. “It’s a secret.”
Gillian bestowed on her a quick mobile grin. “Mind you keep it, then. Did you say Antonia had gone round to Zoe?”
Winnie nodded, her mouth full of salad.
“Right. ’Night, Winnie.—Lord, I’d nearly forgotten that key again. Why didn’t you remind me? Think of the national calamity if I’d called you up out of bed.”
Winifred assented, but reflected no doubt that there was always the lodger on the third floor.... “You might give me the blanc-mange, Jill, as you’re up.”
“I say, is my sister here?”
Zoe opened her eyes very wide: “Are youSeul au Monde?” she whispered cautiously, bending from the threshold towards Richard till her rumple of primrose curls fell forward over the shoulders of her frilly white dressing-jacket.
He stepped back a pace.
“Because if you are”—with a gurgle of laughter—“then I’mPetite Sœur—but you’re not half as French as I thought you, and why aren’t you in your nice uniform? Never mind—are you hungry? Did you cross to-day? Do you think you’re going to like me as much as you supposed?”
“Well, honestly, you’re awfully jolly and all that—but you see we’re a bit bothered about Deb just at present. Is she here?”
“Deb—oh, then you’reherbrother. Mr Richard Marcus, isn’t it?” Zoe immediately adapted herself to the change of notion, and all the possibilities it in its turn entailed. “D’you know who I thought you were? My unknown correspondent at the Front—I answered his Ad. in the “Vie Parisienne”; there was no harm in it, was there? He wrote back such a darling letter—and promised to come here on his next leave. So of course I thought.... But it doesn’t matter one bit, so do come in. I’m really rather glad you’ve come, between ourselves, because my landlord’s called on me and he’s perfectlyawfulwhen he starts.”
“What a beast!” rather hazy, nevertheless, as to what it was the landlord started. Possibly the poor kid was behind-hand with the rent, and he was trying to cart away her furniture. “I say,isDeb here?”
“No, but I daresay if she told you to meet her here, she’ll turn up presently, so you might as well wait. I’ve often wondered what you were like ...” with a serious intimatescrutiny from under drawn brows, which she always found “went” well with under seventeen and over sixty. “Come into the sitting-room. You’ll excuse these clothes, but I was just dressing for to-night when he came”—with a nod towards the room—“and you won’t believe me, but I’ve had to be perfectly horrid to him ...to counteract the effect of my hair down, you know. I suppose he has the kind of wife who keeps hers always in iron curlers—shouldn’t you think he has? So, poor man, one would expect a little agitation. But there are limits, aren’t there? I mean from one’s landlord. So you really are a godsend ...a sort of guardian angel. Isn’t it curious, but I’ve always, even when I was a kiddie, wanted to see my Guardian Angel in the flesh—at least in his clothes—you know what I mean? Because I was always quite sure he was a man—it didn’t seem right that he shouldn’t be, somehow.”
“Bet you could have made a man of him, anyway,” said Richard in blind admiration. And he was right; Zoe could be relied on to rouse the sex element from any substance in her vicinity, even a guardian angel.
Delighted with his tribute, and still gabbling, she preceded him into the sitting-room, and prettily introduced him to the landlord, a very low man, but genial, and obviously with no evil intentions on the furniture. The difficult point at issue seemed to be that he desired to pay for the new carpet; and Zoe, wriggling coyly on the edge of temptation, would yet not quite yield to it. “Though if spitting on a carpet makes it yours, I’m sure I’ve no more claims at all, Mr Wright!” with a look of coquetry that mellowed her unexpectedly frank rebuke.
Richard was enjoying it—enjoyingherimmensely. There was no real cause for alarm about Deb; only the family were fussing. And he was flattered by Zoe’s skill in making him feel essential to her being, while dimly recognizing that the flattery was somewhat impaired by its too even distribution between himself and the landlord. Zoe was not in the least Richard’s ideal. But Zoe was—well, rather a rag! And she bespoke applause by the zest and candour with which she demanded it, retailed it, invented it ...her existence might present a surface appearance of muddle, but perhaps more than other girls she could hail herself as a success. Zoe knew how to unwind unlimited quantities of what makes you happy, andhow to be made happy by a material of which unlimited quantities exist for the unwinding.
“I’m going to be taken out this evening by a Cavalry giant who clanks and jangles the whole way up the stairs, and calls me ‘You dear little thing! fancy livin’ all alone with no one to look after you—it’s a shame!’—and brings me presents. He’s about forty and thinks I’m not quite seventeen; and when I perch winsomely on his knee and turn his pockets inside-out to find what he’s got for me, he’s just as pleased as a little child. Really he is! And then I spread out all my presents on the table to make them look more, and dance round them and skip and clap my hands with glee. Oh, he loves it when I clap my hands with glee. You shall both see me do it if you wait long enough. Isn’t it funny what things please some men? Sometimes I say ‘What have you brought me?’ and he says ‘nothing at all’ to tease me, and I pout—like this—look—look, Mr Marcus!—and he can’t bear to see me so disappointed and pulls an enormous painted chocolate-box from behind his back! That sort of treatment is wonderfully rejuvenating, you wouldn’t believe it; tons better than massage. There he is, and I’m not dressed yet!” She scuttled into her room as a door banged down on the street level; then popped her head in again to say: “You’ll keep him entertained, won’t you, till I’m ready? He’s quite easy!”
“Would he rather have me or Mr Wright to perch on his knee?” laughed Richard.
“Ef it’s fur turnin’ aht ’is pawkits, it’ull be me!” the landlord remarked with a facetious wink.
As the footsteps were heard, though without any of the perceptible clank and jangle foretold, Zoe again appeared, with comb tugging at her curls.
“I wonder if the sight of you two would upset him.... I’ve told him that I had no friends in the world except him and one old lady who’s kind to the lonely little girl”—she eyed the landlord dubiously—“Oh, you could pretend to be the broker,” with a quick spurt of inspiration. “Will you, Mr Wright? It might make him feel generous, mightn’t it? And you”—even in the extremity of haste and peril she checked herself from a tactless decision that maybe Richard was too young to matter much—“You—behind the curtain. No—your boots will show. Get into the cupboard—Quick!”She banged the door on him, and banged her bedroom door, just as the front-door of the flat, left open at Richard’s entrance, banged shakily behind the entering newcomer.
“Like a bally old farce,” Richard reflected; he did not know that people ever really hid in cupboards. Though in Zoe’s flat such behaviour seemed not only free from eccentricity, but rhythmically correct.
He knew the flat quite well.... Richard’s imagination was not the choked-up affair of a year ago. This was the flat where comic misunderstandings took place, and false identities, where an incriminating glove was left in the corner, and where screens fell down at the wrong moment; it was the flat for runaway wives; the flat where the husband is made to look a fool. It was jolly, now, actually to be in such a flat, actually to be the Man in the Cupboard; Richard chuckled silently ... then grew impatient, till, after seemingly endless waiting in muffled darkness the fourth wall against which he pressed his weight gave way, and he stumbled forward into a room full of people.... “Fancy, I forgot you for the moment,” laughed Zoe, who had released him. “Why didn’t you bang or shout? Here’s Antonia come to find Deb. I’m sure I don’t know why all London is running here this evening to enquire after that sister of yours. Isn’t it funny—she and Monsieur le Caporal met on the stairs, andhethought she wasPetite Sœur, didn’t you?—just like I took Mr Marcus forSeul au Monde!”
A young man in uniform, with round red cheeks and a tassel dangling from his cap, stood adoring Zoe with an embarrassed smile, obviously not understanding a word of her harangue. There are two types of Belgian soldier—the stolid peasant who is shy, and the dapper townsman who is bold. Zoe unfortunately had hooked one of the former species. Undaunted, she turned her welcome into French with morsels of pidgin English inserted for the benefit of Mr Sam Wright, that he might not feel left out of the conversation; Richard over by the window, was explaining to Antonia about Deb.
It was Mr Wright who discovered that the Belgian had had nothing to eat for fourteen hours. “’Old on, Missy—the young chap’s guts is fair yawning for a bit o’ something solid. This is my treat—see—and you go an’ cook a steak for ’im. Veev la Belgium!” and the Corporal, understanding, stood at attention—and then bowed gratefully to Mr Wright, toAntonia, and Richard, and Zoe, in turn, while the tassel from his cap bobbed absurdly....
Zoe, interrupted in a rapidrésuméof her own intimate history, calculated to set the intruder at his ease, took up the threads again while she ran in and out of the kitchen, laying the table and grilling the steak.
“Isn’t it a good thing I’ve still got some wine in the house—this is the last bottle, but I expect more to-morrow—it’s a present. Oh, not from Captain Braithwaite—I wonder why he’s so late, by the way?—but there’s an Italian wine-and-macaroni shop just round the corner, and the owner is simply crazy about me ... an atrocious old man with black teeth, but he does stock good wines, and so cheap.... His wife caught him out ogling me over the counter one day, and now she won’t leave the shop, so the old demon comes round here, and brings me Chianti on the sly, hoping to melt me. There’s not the slightest chance that I shall be melted, but you don’t think it’s wrong of me to accept the wine, do you? I mean he takes the risk of losing all and gaining nothing, doesn’t he?... Of course I daren’t let him into the flat, besides, I wouldn’t do such a thing! No, I wouldn’t, because I don’t honestly think it’s right, if his wife feels like that about me, do you, Mr Wright? So I half open the door and tell him to leave the bottles outside and go away quietly for both our sakes! He supposes I’ve got a jealous husband—the Italian bandit kind, with ribbons and daggers all the way up their legs.... And just fancy, once he had the cheek to come round without any wine at all, and said—well, I didn’t know men were like that, did you, Antonia? But I sent him home to fetch some pretty quick. Wouldn’t you have?” appealing to the Caporal, who murmured “Mais oui, certainement!” and sat down to his steak as to a serious business. He shovelled up the food strangely, and thought how beautiful was Zoe, in her white frilly dressing-jacket, clouded with yellow curls....
“Why not go round to La llorraine?—Deb might be there,” Antonia suggested. And reluctantly Richard stood up. Deb was a nuisance—of course she was all right. He disliked La llorraine and Manon; but Zoe and her doors and her landlord and her Belgian and her spaniel and her lovers and her stories, had a unique flavour of attraction. Any further developments, comic or ridiculous, might occur at any moment, in this atmosphere.... Sure enough, a door banged four flightsof stairs away ... scuffle of many feet approaching—and:
“Why, it’s Captain Braithwaite,” cried Zoe, in a clear, childish treble of astonishment. “And did you find little Becky and Mark and Joey on the stairs? What’s the matter, Becky? broken your scooter? ... never mind, let me give you a ginger-snap—two ginger-snaps are better than one scooter, aren’t they? What a pretty drawing of a thermometer, Joey? Is it for me? Now that is sweet of you.”
“Mother thayth I’m to athk you to ’ave a look at me thore throat, Mith!” The children of the Second Jewish Tailor, whom the good-natured Cavalry officer had gathered and brought in from the landing, were grouping themselves round Zoe’s Barrie-like representation of the lonely little mother to whom all the children bring their troubles, as spontaneously and efficiently as though they had been rehearsed for weeks. Zoe really had been very good to them in different ways at different times, and their present adhesion round her knees, in full view of a beaming Captain Braithwaite, was her reward.
Antonia, in an aside to Richard, anxiously questioned her own grotesque fancy that yet another set of doors had just banged, and yet more footsteps were scuffling and clattering up the stairs: “This flat is haunted by a delusion of banging doors—listen!”
“Listen!” echoed Zoe, smashed into sudden silence—“It’s Pinto!” she whispered, all her gay resourcefulness paralysed.
“She hears it too,” Antonia sighed with relief; “I don’t mind so much if we’re all raving together!” And indeed it was obviously incredible that the corpulent whiskered person who was projected squealing into the sitting-room, by an image of bony yellow ferocity, could be otherwise than chimera. The wine-bottles which the pursued swung in impotent arabesques from either hand, erased the last touch of credibility.
“Face—like—an—orang-outang—temper—Patagonian savage ...” were the only words distinguishable from the yapping, snapping medley of limbs and bottles and vituperation.
There was a crash of splintered glass, and ruddy liquid poured into pools on the carpet, and Zoe cried out to Captain Braithwaite, who flung his big form on top of the belligerents and wrenched them apart. The ensuing sequence of events was rather too nimble for disentanglement. The Italian wine-and-macaroni merchant from round the corner collapsedpanting—then rallied his faculties and bolted for the door. Zoe darted in his wake, and returned triumphant, a few seconds afterwards, carrying the second and undamaged flask of Chianti. Meanwhile Pinto had vented his spleen upon the Cavalry officer, the landlord, the round-eyed Belgian, and Richard, on whom each in turn he fastened his saga of “face like an orang-outang—tempaire of a P-P-Patagonian savage!”... The return of Zoe he greeted by a violent and uncomprehensible outbreak of what was certainly bad language and probably Portuguese; informed her that he knew all about it, and was done with her for ever ... caught up a chair and wrenched it into fragments ... glared viciously at the innocent amazement of Monsieur le Caporal; jabbed an accusing finger at him—“You—yes, it is you—you may have her—she is worth nothing, I tell you—stop eating and take her—take her—take her!” lifting the remains of the steak from the plate and flinging it across to the window, where it narrowly missed Antonia—“Here—just you stop that!” Richard ejaculated, doubling his fists truculently.
“Leave ’im alone, Sonny—’e dunno wot ’e’s doing!”
The finger travelled instantly round to the pacifist—“Whose is this house, you——?”
“Mine!” the landlord retorted, putting up his boots on the sofa as a sign of ownership. “Nah shut up, do—ladies present!”
“It is then you with the face and the temper?”
“Face and temper yourself!” from Mr Sam Wright, which retort, though merely made in the way of casual repartee, was, had the assembled company only known it, the full explanation of the scene so astounding them.
But Pinto’s suspicions made a last leap at Captain Raymond Braithwaite. “Take her”—flourishing with both arms in Zoe’s direction. “She is ungrateful, unloyal. True affection is not to be found in her nature. She lies and thieves; she is untidy in her clothing; she has betrayed me and will betray you. Take her—perhaps your temper like a Patagonian savage will keep her in order. Take her and beat her if you please. Who am I to have a claim?...” He recapitulated the entire list of Zoe’s crimes, linked to the benefits his easy-going generosity had showered upon her; shed tears at the recollection of his own innocent confiding trust and little tender ways; surpassed himself in an ebullition of Portuguese andEnglish blended into one final expanding monstrous, wall-cracking, hair-stiffening execration, anathema, and blight——
Antonia stepped forward, and laid her hand on his arm.
“You’re not behaving at all nicely, and we’re tired of you,” she said gently but distinctly.
Pinto, checked in his onrush of epithet, rolled round at her a pair of livid, yellow eyeballs; spluttered; made a few inarticulate sounds in his throat—and departed.
No one could deny that his visit, though short, had been full of lively colour.
“Ma foi!” said the Belgian poilu, still gaping stupidly after his steak.
Richard burst into a shout of laughter, and went on laughing boyishly, irresistibly. It was infectious ... presently Sam Wright joined in, and Captain Braithwaite, and Antonia, and even the Belgian. Zoe, on the verge of tears, was the last to succumb.... “At least, we’ve got some wine now,” she gurgled, divided between sobs and hysterical mirth. “And we’d better drink it—it’s g-good wine and so cheap! I’m glad I remembered just in time to nip it.” She darted away for glasses—“But honestly, I haven’t the faintest idea what Pinto was so cross and unkind about, have any of you?”
“He did seem a bit annoyed: what?” guffawed Captain Braithwaite. “Here’s to his good recovery!” They all drank Pinto’s health in excellent Chianti.... A bell tinkled from below.
“Oh dear! he must have jammed the downstairs front door in going out, and now people can’t push it open. I do think he ought to control himself a little bit better than that, don’t you? I mean, it’s so horrid when one has visitors.” The bell tinkled again impatiently. “Will one of you go down?”
Deb dawdled along the street, painfully carrying a suit-case. La llorraine had insisted on keeping her to supper, but the Countess was occupying the only vacant room in the house ... anyway, you could always rely on a bed at Zoe’s whenever you turned up—time enough to-morrow to think things over....
Somebody was already on the doorstep pealing at the bell:“The door usually stands open, but it must have got jammed.... Do you want tailor Moses, tailor Jacob, or tailor Isaac?”
“I don’t want a tailor at all, thanks. Not to-night, anyhow. I want Zoe Dene-Cresswell? I wonder if she’s in.”
Again Gillian tugged at the bell. “You look as if you ought to be Deb Marcus.”
“I am.”
“I’m Gillian Sherwood. Put down your suit-case and shake hands. I’ll carry it up for you, if ever they admit us.”
Gillian at last! Deb was first conscious of triumph—followed by a quick pang of guilt. She had not sought out this meeting; it was purely accidental—but what would Antonia say?
Antonia opened the door to them.