IV
Thelove-affair of Elsie Williams and Leslie Morrison swept on its course, and in the early days of their madness neither of them paused for an instant to count its possible cost.
It seemed, indeed, as though Fate were deliberately simplifying their way.
Horace Williams appeared unable to give his attention to anything beyond his newly-discovered digestive trouble, and remained constantly indoors through the hottest and finest of the summer days, experimenting upon himself with drugs, and studying tables of dietetic values. He questioned Elsie very little as to her movements, taking it for granted that she, Morrison, and Geraldine formed a trio.
In point of fact, the youth whom Geraldine had met at the Sunday evening concert, and whom she spoke of as Percy Belcher, now almost always made a fourth in the party.
Geraldine monopolised him eagerly, and openly showed her triumph at feeling that she could now afford to relinquish Leslie Morrison.
Elsie and Morrison went swimming together, and lay on the hot, crowded sands, and dropped behind the others when they all went for walks, and sat with locked hands and her cheek against his shoulder in the stifling, thrilling darkness of the picture theatre, watching together the representation of a love that was never anything but the reflection of their own, the eternal triumph of a Man and a Woman, pale representatives on the screen of Elsie Williams and Leslie Morrison.
The golden fortnight drew to its close, and with the end of the Torquay holiday, it suddenly seemed to Elsie as though the end of the world must come.
“What are we to do, Leslie?” she gasped.
“I don’t know, darling,” he said miserably.
“You’re going to be in town for a bit?”
“For a little while. They’re sending me off again, pretty soon—abroad this time.”
“I can’t live without seeing you sometimes. Oh, Les, how can I go back to the old life with Horace afterthis?”
“Elsie,” said Morrison very low, “would he divorce you if——?”
“Not a hope. It costs money, and he’s too mean. Besides, he’d never do it if he thought I wanted it. He’s cruel, is Horace.”
“Not to you?”
“He doesn’t knock me about, if that’s what you mean—he knows I wouldn’t stand it—but of course he doesn’t care for me, or for anybody but himself. I was told he gave his first a rotten time—anyway, I know she used to look wretched enough. You know there was a first Mrs. Williams?”
“No, I didn’t. Of course, I saw he was much older than you. Oh, Elsie, whatever made you marry him?”
“Oh, I was a fool and I thought I’d like to be married, and get away from home. I didn’t know what it was going to be like, that’s certain. Oh, Les, fancy if I was still Elsie Palmer, and you and me could get married!” She gave a sob.
“Don’t, sweetheart! I’d have asked for your promise, fast enough, if you’d been free, but I couldn’t marry any girl till I’m earning a bit more.”
“Don’t you get a good screw, Leslie?”
“Rotten. But I’m jolly lucky to be in a job at all these days, I suppose.”
“Lucky!” Elsie echoed the word drearily. “You and I aren’t amongst the lucky ones, boy. I don’t see how things are ever going to come right for us, without a miracle happens.”
“He—Williams—may ... he may die.”
“Not he!” said Elsie bitterly. “There’s nothing the matter with him. All this talk about indigestion is stuff and nonsense—just fads he’s got into his head. There’s nothing wrong with Horace. And it’s always the ones who aren’t wanted that live on and on. But how am I going to bear it, after this wonderful time we’ve been having?” She began to cry.
“Elsie, don’t, darling! I’ll think of a way. There must be some way out.”
Leslie took her in his arms and she forgot everything else.
On the last evening they all went to the theatre together, and it was there, for the first time seeming awake to the situation, that Horace Williams, sitting at the end of the row of stalls, suddenly leaned across Geraldine and looked long and balefully at his wife.
She felt herself changing colour.
Morrison, however, observed nothing. He talked only to Elsie, looked only at her during the interval, and whilst the play was in progress and the lights in the theatre lowered, his hand sought and held hers.
“Elsie, we can’t part like this. How can I see you alone?”
“We can’t—not here. But Horace starts at the office again on Wednesday, and he’s there all day. Come to the house.”
“It means an age without seeing you. Elsie, can I write to you?”
“Yes ... no....” She was startled. “Oh, Les, darling, I’d love your letters!... But he’d see them. Wait a minute.”
She thought rapidly.
“Address them to the post-office—I’ll call there. He doesn’t know or care what I do all day, so long as I’m always there in the evenings when he gets back.”
But Elsie was to find herself mistaken. Her husband, after their return to the suburban villa, displayed a very unmistakable interest in her movements during the hours of his absence at work.
He obliged her to give him an account of her day, andtook to ringing her up on the telephone for no acknowledged reason, and always at a different hour.
At first, Elsie cared little. She and Leslie Morrison met daily, and on one occasion spent the afternoon in the country together. Elsie recklessly telephoned to her own house at seven o’clock that evening, and said that she was with Irene Tidmarsh, and should not come home that night.
“You must,” said the hollow voice at the other end of the line.
“I can’t. Her father’s awfully ill, and she’s afraid of being left.”
“When shall you be home?”
“To-morrow.”
“I’ll come and fetch you.”
“All right,” said Elsie boldly. “What time?”
There was no answer. Williams had rung off.
Elsie knew, beyond the possibility of mistake, that her husband suspected her; but in the intense excitement that possessed her she was conscious of nothing so much as of relief that a crisis should be at hand.
She spent the night with Leslie Morrison at a tiny hotel in Essex.
Early next morning they travelled back to London, parting at Liverpool Street station.
“Let me know what happens directly you can, darling,” urged the man.
“I’ll telephone. Anyway, come round as soon as you can get away.Hewon’t be in before seven.”
“Good-bye, Elsie darling. I’ll never, never forget....”
He left her, joining a hurrying throng of other young men wearing soft hats and carrying little brown bags, nearly all of them hastening towards the City.
Elsie proceeded by train and tram to the house of Irene’s father.
Her friend opened the door to her. “Hullo! I thought I should see you. That hubby of yours is on the warpath.”
“What’s happened?”
“Oh, nothing, thanks to me! Come in, Elsie. Have you had breakfast?”
“I’ve had some tea; I don’t want anything else. Tell me about Horace.”
“Well, Horace, as you call him, saw fit to come round here at eleven o’clock p.m. last night, and got me out of my virtuous downy by ringing at the front door bell till I thought the house was on fire. He said he’d ‘come for’ his wife, if you please!”
“I know. I told him I was going to spend the night at your place,” said Elsie calmly. “I suppose you didn’t happen to tumble to it, Ireen?”
“I’ve not known you all these years for nothing, old girl,” said Irene, grinning. “What do you take me for? I told him you were in bed and asleep, and had been for hours.”
“You’re a real sport, Ireen! How did he take it?”
Irene pursed up her lips and shook her head. “He asked me to tell you to ring him up first thing this morning. If you ask me, you’re in for trouble. And p’r’aps now you’ll be so kind as to tell me what it all means, and why on earth you couldn’t have given me fair warning before saying you were here. It’s lucky for you I didn’t give the whole show away on the spot.”
Elsie, habitually ready to discuss any of her love-affairs with Irene, had told her nothing about Leslie Morrison. But she saw now that a degree of frankness was inevitable.
Irene listened, sitting on the kitchen table, her shrewd, cynical gaze fixed upon Elsie. “You’re for it, all right,” she observed dryly. “I thought directly I saw you after you’d got back from Torquay that there was something up. But I somehow didn’t think you’d go off the deep end like that, Elsie. Why, you’re dotty about him!”
“Yes,” said Elsie, “I am.”
“And what do you suppose is going to happen?”
Elsie groaned. “I wish to the Lord that Horace would do the decent thing, or go West—and let me have a chance of happiness.”
“He won’t,” said Irene. “Well, whatever you do, don’t make a fool of yourself and run off with this fellow. It simply isn’t worth it, when he hasn’t got a penny, and not very often when he has.”
“If I thought Horace would divorce me it’d be different,” Elsie said. She was not listening to Irene at all. “Though even then, I don’t know what we would live on. Leslie hasn’t anything except his salary, and that’s tiny, and I’m sure I couldn’t earn a penny if I tried. Mother wouldn’t help me, either, if I did a thing like that.”
“No more would anybody else. And surely to goodness, Elsie, you’d never be such a fool. Think what it would mean to be disgraced, and have a scandal.”
“I wouldn’t mind that with him.”
Irene groaned. “You are far gone! Well, the worse it is while it lasts, the sooner it’s over. You’ll see sense again one of these days, I suppose. Meanwhile, you’d better ’phone that husband of yours.”
Elsie’s conversation with Williams over the telephone was brief. She agreed to come home at midday, and neither made any reference to the visit of Williams at eleven o’clock on the previous night.
Elsie anticipated a scene with her husband, and felt indifferent to the prospect. She had not enough imagination to work herself up in advance, and, moreover, her faculties were entirely occupied with the blissful expectation of seeing Morrison again that afternoon.
He came some hours after she had arrived home.
Elsie had done some shopping in the morning. With her husband’s money she had bought a gold-nibbed fountain-pen for Leslie, and had paid for copies of a photograph of herself.
She had scarcely ever in her life before given anyone a present, and Leslie Morrison’s ardent thanks, and rapture over the photograph, caused her the most acute pleasure.
“Darling, it’s lovely, and it’s just you! I shall always carry it about with me, done up with your dear letters.”
“Don’t keep my letters, Leslie,” said Elsie suddenly.
“Why ever not?”
A sudden recollection had come to her ... “Beware of the written word....”
The medium to whom Irene had once taken her had said that. She had also said other things; had told Elsiethat love would come to her.... Perhaps she really knew....
“I’d rather you didn’t, really,” she said feebly. “Suppose—suppose Horace ever got hold of them——”
“How could he? Besides, Elsie darling, he’s got to know about us some time. I wish you’d let me tell him now. I can’t go on like this; it’s a low-down game coming to a man’s house without his knowledge and—and making love to his wife.”
“His wife!” said Elsie angrily. “Don’t call me that. I may be his wife in law, but it’s you that I really belong to.”
“Well, let me have it out with him then,” said Morrison earnestly. “We don’t know, after all. He may be ready to do the decent thing, and set you free.”
“I don’t care if you do. I’m pretty sure he guesses.... Horace has always been jealous, though he’s never had any cause before.”
“He didn’t say anything at Torquay?”
“No, it’s since we got back. He asked me once if you were engaged to Geraldine, and I said no. And he asked if you meant to come and see us here, and I told him most likely you would. He didn’t say anything much, but he hates a man coming near the place, really.”
“I’d far rather have it out with him,” young Morrison repeated. His face was resolute, and he stood his ground when Elsie, starting violently, exclaimed:
“I believe that’s Horace now! I can hear his key in the door. He’s never in at this hour as a rule—the skunk, he’s come to spy on me!”
“Darling, it’s all right!” said Morrison.
He put the photograph away in his breast-pocket with hands that trembled slightly. Both fixed their eyes on the door as it opened upon the figure of the little elderly solicitor. His face wore a no more sardonic expression than was habitual with him, and Elsie could not deduce from it whether or not he was surprised to see Leslie Morrison.
Neither man made any movement towards shaking hands, but they greeted one another conventionally, andtalked a little, as though indifferently, of the holiday at Torquay.
Leslie asked whether Mr. Williams was any better in health, and the solicitor replied coldly:
“No, I am no better. I daresay my case would be a very interesting one, from the point of view of a doctor. But I am not one to give up, and I have no doubt that a great many people do not realise there is anything the matter with me.”
He turned his eyes upon Elsie for a moment as he spoke.
At the same instant, the inevitable thought that had flashed through her mind at his words caused Elsie to cast a lightning glance towards Leslie Morrison.
It was that glance that her husband intercepted.