VI
Elsie’sreturn home caused far less sensation than she had feared. Mrs. Palmer, indeed, was very angry, but principally at Elsie’s folly in having come away without her trunk or the money due to her.
When a week had elapsed, and nothing had come from Mortimer Crescent, Mrs. Palmer declared her intention of going to a solicitor.
“However you could be such a fool, young Elsie—and I don’t half understand what happened, even now. What was the row about?”
Elsie had decided upon a half-truth. “Oh, she was a jealous old fool, and couldn’t bear her hubby to look the same side of the room as anyone else. That’s all it was, really. She spoke to me very rudely, I consider—in fact she was decidedly insulting—so I simply up and said: ‘Mrs. Woolley,’ I said, ‘that’s not the way I’m accustomed to be spoken to,’ I said, ‘and what’s more I won’t stand it.’ Quite quietly, I said it, looking her very straight in the face. ‘I won’t stand it,’ I said, quite quietly. That did for her. She didn’t know how to take it at all. But, of course, I wasn’t going to stay in the house a moment after that, and I simply walked straight upstairs and put on my things and left her there. She knows what I think of her, though.”
“Yes, and she knows what she thinks of you,” remarked Mrs. Palmer shrewdly, “and it probably isn’t so far out, either. She may be jealous as you say—those fleshy women often are, when their figures come to be a perpetual worry, so to speak—but there’s no smoke without a fire, and I knowyou, Elsie Palmer. I suppose this doctor fellow was for ever giving you sweets and wanting to take you out at nights, and sit next you in the ’bus coming home, with his wife on the other side of him as like as not. You were a young fool, let me tell you, to lose a good place like that for a man who can’t be any use to you. What you want to look out for is a husband. I shan’t have a minute’s peace about you till you’re married.”
“Why?” asked Elsie, rather gratified, and very curious.
“Never you mind why. Because Mother says so, and that’s enough. Now you can get on your hat and come with me to Mr. Williams’ office and see what he can do to get this trunk of yours away from that woman. She’s no lady, as I saw plainly the very first time I ever laid eyes on her.”
On the way to the City, Mrs. Palmer questioned Elsie rather half-heartedly. “You’ve not been a bad girl in any way while you’ve been away from Mother, have you?”
“No, of course not. I don’t know what you mean,” Elsie declared, sick with sudden fright.
“I should hope you didn’t. Because mind, Elsie, any gurl of mine who disgraced herself wouldn’t get any help fromme. And though I don’t object to a bit of fun while a gurl’s young, skylarking may lead to other things. I hope there’s no need for me to speak any plainer. I’ve brought you gurls up innocent, and I intend you shall remain so. Not that Geraldine’s ever given me a moment’s worry.”
“Oh, Geraldine!” Elsie was profoundly relieved at seeing an opportunity for changing the subject indirectly. “She’s a sheep.”
“You’ve no call to speak like that of your elder sister, miss. I wish you were half as steady as she is. She’s the one to help her widowed mother, for all she has such poor health.”
“What do you suppose is the matter with her, Mother?”
“Bile,” said Mrs. Palmer laconically. “Your father was the same, but it doesn’t matter so much in a man.”
“Why ever not?”
“It doesn’t interfere with his prospects. Now I often think Geraldine won’t ever get a husband, simply becauseof the bad colour she sometimes goes, and the way her breath smells. She can’t help it, poor gurl.”
Elsie felt contemptuous, rather than compassionate. When they came to the office, a very young clerk, who stared hard at Elsie, explained that Mr. Williams was away. He had suffered a family bereavement.
“His wife?” gasped Mrs. Palmer, greatly excited.
“I am sorry to say that Mrs. Williams died yesterday morning. Mr. Williams was not at the office, and a telephone message came through later to the head clerk, giving the melancholy intelligence. I believe Mrs. Williams had been ill for some time.”
“Why, goodness me, we knew her ever so well, my daughter and I! They stayed with us in the autumn.... Elsie, fancy poor Mrs. Williams dying!”
“Fancy!”
“Would you care to see the head clerk, Mr. Cleaver, madam?” said the youth politely, still gazing at Elsie.
“Yes, yes, I think I’d better. He may be able to tell us something more, Elsie,” cried Mrs. Palmer gloatingly.
But when the clerk had gone away to see whether Mr. Cleaver was disengaged, Mrs. Palmer remarked to her daughter:
“Not that he’ll be able to say much, naturally not. It’s an awkward subject to enter on at all with a gentleman, poor Mrs. Williams being in the condition she was.”
“I heard Doctor Woolley say she was very ill.”
“It’s a funny thing, Elsie, but many a time I’ve felt a presentiment like. I’ve looked at Mrs. Williams, and seen death in her face. And that Nellie Simmons, she told me she’d had a most peculiar dream about Mrs. Williams one night. Saw her lying all over blood, she said, and it quite scared her. I knew then what it meant, though I told Nellie not to be a silly gurl. But dreams can’t lie, as they say, not if they’re a certain sort.”
Elsie shuddered, as a thrill of superstitious terror went through her. Dreams played a large part in her life, and Mrs. Palmer had always shown her children that she “believed in dreams,” especially in those of amacabrenature.
The young clerk came back, and took them into a smallroom where a bald-headed, pale-faced man sat at a writing-table. Mrs. Palmer’s delicacy ran no risk of affront from him, for he was monosyllabic on the subject of Mrs. Williams’ death, and only said that Mr. Williams would not be back until the following week.
Mrs. Palmer, looking disappointed, launched into a voluble story of Elsie’s trunk and its non-return.
Mr. Cleaver said that the firm would write a letter to Mrs. Woolley that evening. He seemed disinclined to enlarge on that, or any other subject.
“It’s been a great worry, as you can imagine,” Mrs. Palmer said, reluctant to terminate an interview which was anyhow to cost her money. “However the girl could have been so silly, I don’t know. But we mustn’t look for old heads on young shoulders, I suppose.”
“I suppose not.”
For the first time, Mr. Cleaver glanced at Elsie as though he really saw her. “Your young lady will be looking for another post, no doubt?”
“By-and-by,” said Mrs. Palmer with a sudden languor. “I’m afraid if I had my way, Mr. Cleaver, I’d keep both my girlies at home with their mother. And this one’s my baby, too. I really only let her go to that Mrs. Woolley to oblige poor Mrs. Williams, who was a dear friend of mine. My daughter has been trained for the shorthand-typing, really, haven’t you, Elsie?”
“’M.”
“I see. Well, Mrs. Palmer, the letter shall go off to-night, and I am very much mistaken if the lady does not——”
“Don’t call her a lady, Mr. Cleaver. She’s no——”
Mrs. Palmer had said all this before, and Mr. Cleaver held open the door for her, and compelled her to pass through it before she had time to say it all over again.
Elsie and Mrs. Palmer were in the omnibus that was to take them back to their own suburb very much earlier than they had expected to be.
“I’ll tell you what, we’ll stop at the corner shop and have a wreath sent in time for the funeral. I’ve got some money on me,” said Mrs. Palmer.
They chose a wreath and were given a black-edged card upon which Mrs. Palmer inscribed the address of Mr. Williams and: “With true sympathy and every kind thought from Mrs. Gerald Palmer, Miss Palmer and Miss Elsie Palmer.”
“I’d meant to say a few very sharp words to them about introducingthatMrs. Woolley to me, and persuading me to let you go to her, but of course, it’ll have to be let drop now. I daresay poor Mrs. Williams was taken in by the woman herself.”
For two or three days Elsie lounged about at home, obliged by her mother to help in the house, but spending as much time as she could with Irene Tidmarsh, whose old father was still living, although suffering from incurable disease. Sometimes when Elsie and Irene were gossiping in the dining-room, they would hear the old man roaring with pain overhead, and then Irene would run up to him, administer a drug, and come down again looking rather white. A desiccated spinster aunt made occasional appearances, and took Irene’s place whilst Irene went to the cinema with Elsie. But Irene never mentioned Arthur Osborne, and Elsie saw neither him nor his brother.
She told herself that she did not care, and that she was sick of men and their beastly ways.
She one evening repeated this sentiment to Geraldine, whom she suspected of disbelieving her version of the quarrel with Mrs. Woolley.
“So you say. I s’pose that’s because there isn’t anyone after you. If that Begg boy turned up again, or Johnnie Osborne or any of them, you’d sing quite a different song.”
“You’re jealous,” said Elsie candidly.
Her sister laughed shrilly. “That’s a good one, young Elsie. Me jealous of a kid like you! I should like to know what for? Why, you’re not even pretty.”
The taunt enraged Elsie, because she knew that it was true, and that she was not really pretty. What she did not yet realise was that she would always be able to make men think her so.
“Your trunk’s come, Elsie,” Mrs. Palmer screamed at the door. “Carter Paterson brought it, carriage to pay, ofcourse. You’d better see there’s nothing missing out of it.”
Elsie made a perfunctory examination, noticing nothing but that there was a letter lying just under the newspaper spread over her untidily packed belongings.
“It’s all right.”
Mrs. Palmer had gone back into the kitchen again, and Elsie, who did not care what Geraldine thought of her, pulled out the note and read it. It was from Doctor Woolley, as she had expected.
“My Own Dear Little Girlie,“What a rotten world it is, kiddie, and what a shame you being turned away like that. Believe me, dear little girlie, if I had been at home it would never have happened. Now, Elsie, you and I have had a very nice friendship, and I know you will understand what I mean if I say that it must come to an endfor the present. Burn this letter, dear, won’t you, and don’t answer it on any account. The letters that come for me to this house are not safe from interference, so you see what trouble it might make. With all best wishes for your future, and thanking you for your sweet friendship, which I shall never forget,“Yours,“H.”
“My Own Dear Little Girlie,
“What a rotten world it is, kiddie, and what a shame you being turned away like that. Believe me, dear little girlie, if I had been at home it would never have happened. Now, Elsie, you and I have had a very nice friendship, and I know you will understand what I mean if I say that it must come to an endfor the present. Burn this letter, dear, won’t you, and don’t answer it on any account. The letters that come for me to this house are not safe from interference, so you see what trouble it might make. With all best wishes for your future, and thanking you for your sweet friendship, which I shall never forget,
“Yours,“H.”
“The cad!” said Elsie disgustedly.
She had not really expected Doctor Woolley to write to her at all, although there had been in her mind a vague anticipation of seeing him again very soon. But the letter, with its perfunctory endearments and cautionary injunctions, suddenly made it clear to her that the whole episode of their relationship was at an end.
“The swine,” said Elsie, although without violent emotion of any kind.
She felt that life, for the moment, was meaningless, but rather from the familiar and sordid surroundings of her home, and from her own listlessness and fatigue, than from the defection of Doctor Woolley.
It failed to excite her when a letter arrived for Mrs. Palmer, from the office of Mr. Williams and written byhimself, saying how much he regretted that Mrs. Woolley, the merest acquaintance of his dear late wife, should have failed to make Miss Elsie happy in her house. If Miss Elsie desired to find an appointment in the clerical line, as he understood, then Mr. Williams would be most happy to make a suggestion. Could Mrs. Palmer, with Miss Elsie, make it convenient to call at the office any afternoon that week?
“He may want to take you into his own office, Elsie, as like as not. He’d feel he ought to do something, I expect, considering they sent you to those people, those Woolleys, as they call themselves, in the first place.”
“I’m not sure I want to go into an office, Mother.”
“Now look here, Elsie, let me and you understand one another,” said Mrs. Palmer with great determination. “I’ve had enough of your wants and don’t wants, my lady. One word more, and you’ll get a smack-bottom just exactly as you got when you were in pinafores, and don’t you forget it. If you think you’re going to live at home, no more use in the house than a sick headache, and wasting your time running round with God-knows-who, then I can tell you you’ve never made a bigger mistake in your life. Off you pop this directly minute, and get on your hat, and come with me to Mr. Williams. If he’s heard of a job for you, we’ll get it settled at once.”
“I suppose,” said Geraldine bitterly, “I’ll have to see to the teas and everything else, while you’re out. It seems to me it’s always Elsie that’s being thought about, and sent here, and taken there, and the rest of it.”
“More shame for her,” said Mrs. Palmer sombrely. “I declare to goodness I don’t know how I’m to face your aunties next time they come here, unless there’s something been settled about Elsie. I’m sick and tired of being told I spoil that girl.”
“Whatever job she gets, she’ll be home in a month,” said Geraldine.
“She’ll get something she won’t relish from me if she is,” Mrs. Palmer retorted. She pinned on her hat and pulled a pair of shiny black kid gloves out of a drawer in the kitchen dresser.
Elsie, rather sulky and unwilling, was obliged to follow her mother once more to the dingy office, but it cheered her to see the pleased, furtive smile on the face of the young clerk who had admitted them before. It was very evident that he had not forgotten her. Elsie thought more about him than about the desiccated, wooden-faced little solicitor, with the crêpe band round his arm, who responded to all Mrs. Palmer’s voluble condolence with solemn little bows and monosyllables.
Mrs. Palmer was evidently disappointed at extracting from him no details about his wife’s illness and death, and at last she turned the subject and began to speak of Elsie’s qualifications as a typist.
“You see, Mr. Williams, I always felt it was waste, her going to be a kind of mother’s help to that Mrs. Woolley. ‘It’s not what you’ve been trained for, my dear,’ I said, ‘but still, if you want to, you shall try it for a bit.’ I’ve always been a one to let my girlies try their own wings, Mr. Williams. ‘The old home nest is waiting for you when you’re tired of it,’ is what I always say. You’ve heard mother tell you that many and many a time, haven’t you, Elsie?”
“Yes,” said Elsie, bored.
She had often heard her mother make the like statements, in order to impress strangers, and she had no objection to backing her up, since it was far less trouble to do so than to have a “row” afterwards.
Mr. Williams bowed again. “I am sorry that Miss Elsie was exposed to unpleasantness of any sort, through an introduction of mine, and I may add that I entirely agree with you, Mrs. Palmer, in thinking that the—the domestic duties embarked upon were quite unworthy of her. Now, I am in want of a confidential clerk in this office.”
Elsie saw her mother’s eyes glistening behind the coarse fibre of her mended veil, and felt that her fate was sealed.
“Yes, Mr. Williams?”
“If I could persuade you to allow Miss Elsie to come to me.... Nine to six, and twenty-five shillings a week to begin with. Her duties would be light, simply to take down, type, and file my personal letters.”
“It would be a very good beginning for her,” said Mrs. Palmer, firmly, but with no undue enthusiasm. Elsie knew that her mother’s mind was quite made up, but that she did not want to seem eager in the eyes of Mr. Williams.
“You’d like to give it a trial, Elsie?”
“I don’t mind,” said Elsie. She met the eyes of Mr. Williams and managed to smile at him, and for an instant it seemed to her that an answering pin-point of light appeared behind the pince-nez.
“It would be quite usual,” said Mr. Williams gravely, “for me to give you a short test. Take this pencil and paper, please, and take this down.”
He handed Elsie a shorthand pad and a pencil. She took down in shorthand the brief business letter that he dictated to her, and then, more nervously, read it aloud, stumbling over the pronunciation of one or two words, and once substituting one word for another, of which the shorthand outlines were similar, without any perception of the bearing of either upon the context.
Mr. Williams corrected her. “It’s always the same,” he told Mrs. Palmer in a low, rather melancholy voice. “These young people are wonderfully clever at taking dictation—eighty words a minute, a hundred words a minute—but you can’t depend upon them to transcribe correctly.”
Mrs. Palmer looked offended. “I’m sure Elsie will tell you that she wasn’t doing herself justice, Mr. Williams. I’m sure she’s as accurate as anybody, when she’s not nervous. But if you think she won’t do the work well enough, of course....”
Mrs. Palmer’s lips were drawn together, and her intonation had become acidulated.
“Not at all,” said Mr. Williams quietly, “not at all. You misunderstand my meaning altogether. I have no doubt that Miss Elsie will suit me very well indeed, when she has fallen into my little routine. What about next week?”
“Very well,” Mrs. Palmer answered swiftly. “I’ll let her come to you on Monday morning, Mr. Williams, and I’m very much obliged to you for thinking of us. It’ll be a relief to me to know Elsie is in a good post. You see,I’m in the position of both father and mother to my girlies, and this one’s my baby, as I always say——”
As Mr. Williams opened the door for them he said: “I hope that little affair about the trunk was satisfactorily concluded? It was perhaps a shade awkward, having the letter written from this office, in view of the fact that we were personally acquainted with the parties—but my head clerk, Mr. Cleaver, could hardly be expected to appreciate that.... A very worthy man indeed, and an able one, but the finer shades are rather beyond him. Good morning, Mrs. Palmer—good morning, Miss Elsie. Nine o’clock on Monday morning, then.”
Mrs. Palmer went away in high spirits, and commented to Elsie and to Geraldine so enthusiastically upon Elsie’s good fortune, that she began to believe in it herself.
“Are there any other girls there?” Geraldine asked.
And Elsie said quickly, “Oh dear, no! Both the other clerks are men.”
She began to think that perhaps after all the hours spent in the office might not be without amusement.
Besides, all sorts of people came to see a solicitor.
Elsie spent the week-end in cutting out and making for herself a blue crêpe blouse, which she intended to wear on Monday morning. She also made a pair of black alpaca sleeves, with elastic at the wrist and at the elbow, to be drawn on over the blouse while she was working.
She put the sleeves, her shorthand pad and pencil, a powder-puff, mirror, pocket-comb, and a paper-covered novel in a small attaché case on Monday morning, pulled on the rakish black velvet tam-o’-shanter, and went off to Mr. Williams’ office.
Her first day there was marked by two discoveries: that Mr. Williams expected to be called “sir” in office hours, and that the name of the youth who shared with her a small outer room where clients waited, or left messages, was Fred Leary.
A high partition of match-boarding separated the waiting-room from an inner office where Mr. Cleaver sat. And if Elsie and Fred Leary spoke more than a very few words to one another, Mr. Cleaver would tap imperatively againstthe wood with a ruler. He was also apt to walk noiselessly round the partition and stand there, silently watching Elsie, if the sound of her typewriter ceased for any undue length of time.
She learnt from Fred Leary that there had never been a female typist in the office before, and that Mr. Cleaver had been greatly opposed to the introduction of one.
“The Old Man always gets his way in the end, though,” said Fred Leary, alluding to Mr. Williams.
“I knew him before,” Elsie asserted, to give herself importance. “Him and his wife were in our house for a bit. I knew Mrs. Williams too.”
“They said he led her a life,” remarked Leary.
“What sort of way?”
“Oh, I couldn’t tell a kid like you.”
“What rubbish! As though I didn’t know as much as you, any day.”
He laughed loudly. “Girls always think they know everything, but they don’t—not unless some fellow has——”
The sharp tap of Mr. Cleaver’s pencil sounded against the matchboard, and silenced them.
The fact that their conversations had to be more or less clandestine added zest to them, and although Elsie was not in any way attracted by young Leary, who was spotty and unwholesome-looking, she several times went to a cinema with him on Saturday afternoons, and once to a football match. After the latter entertainment, however, they quarrelled.
Elsie had disliked the mud, the cold, the noise, the standing about and the crowds. She had been bored by Leary’s enthusiasm, which was utterly incomprehensible to her, and secretly annoyed because, of the multitude of men surrounding her, not one had paid any attention to her, or to anything but the game and the players.
“I wasn’t struck on that outing of yours,” she remarked critically to her escort the following Monday morning. “Another time we’ll give the football matches a miss, thank you.”
Leary’s admiration for Elsie, however, was less strong than his desire to see a league match, and he offended her by going by himself to the entertainment that she despised.
Elsie resented his defection less for his own sake than for that of the excitement that she could only experience through flirtation, and without which she found her life unbearably tedious.
She had been in the office nearly three months when Mr. Williams asked her suddenly if she liked the work there.
“I don’t mind it,” said Elsie.
She was in reality perfectly indifferent to it, and merely went through the day’s routine without active dislike, as without intelligence.
“Now that you are used to our ways,” said Mr. Williams deliberately, “I think you had better remove your table into my room. The sound of your machine will not disturb me in the least, and if clients desire a private interview, you can retire.”
Elsie looked up, astonished, and met her employer’s eyes.
His face was impassive as ever, but there was a faint, covetous gleam in his fish-like eyes.
Elsie, at once repelled and fascinated, gazed back at him, and felt her heart beginning to beat faster with a nervous and yet pleasurable anticipation.