III
Fora little while after Norman Roberts had gone away, Elsie was bored. She received a letter from him, reproaching her for not having been downstairs on the morning of his departure, and giving her an address in Liverpool. He begged her to write to him, and the letter ended with half a dozen pen-and-ink crosses.
“That’s for you, Elsie.”
Elsie, who hated writing, collected with some difficulty a pen, ink, and a coloured picture postcard of the Houses of Parliament.
“Thanks for yours ever so much,” she wrote. “I expect you’re having a fine old time in Liverpool. All here send kind remembrances.”
Then, because she could not think what else to put, she filled in the remaining space on the card with two large crosses. “From your’s sincerely, Elsie.”
Roberts, after an interval, wrote once more, and this letter Elsie did not answer at all. She was out nearly every evening, walking, or lounging round the nearest public park, with Irene Tidmarsh, Johnnie and Arthur Osborne, and Stanley Begg.
Arthur Osborne was nominally Irene’s “friend,” but he, as well as Johnnie and Stanley, always wanted to walk with Elsie, or to sit next her at the cinema, and their preference elated her, although the eldest of the three, Arthur, was only twenty, and not one of them was earning more than from fifteen to twenty shillings a week.
At last Irene and Elsie quarrelled about Arthur, and Irene, furious, went to Mrs. Palmer.
“It’s no more than my duty, Mrs. Palmer,” she virtuously declared, “to let you know the way Elsie goes on. The fellows may laugh and all that, but they don’t like it, not really. I know my boy doesn’t, for one.”
Mrs. Palmer, on different grounds, was quite as angry as Irene.
She worked herself up, rehearsing to Geraldine all that Irene had said, and a great deal that she alleged herself to have replied, and she summoned her two unmarried sisters, Aunt Ada and Aunt Gertie Cookson, to No. 15.
“What I want,” she explained, “is to give the gurl afright. I’m not going to have her making herself cheap with young rag-tag-and-bobtail like those Osborne boys. Why, a pretty gurl like Elsie could get married, as easily as not, to a fellow with money. Nice enough people come to this house, I’m sure. It’s on account of the gurls, simply, that I’ve always been so particular about references and all. I’m sure many’s the time I could have had the house full but for not liking the looks of one or two that were ready to pay anything for a front bedroom. But I’ve always said to myself, ‘No,’ I’ve said, ‘a mother’s first duty is to her children,’ I’ve said, especially being in the position of father and mother both, as you might say.”
“I’m sure you’ve always been a wonderful mother, Edie,” said Aunt Ada.
“Well,” Mrs. Palmer conceded, mollified.
When Geraldine came in with the tea-tray to the drawing-room that Mrs. Palmer was for once able to use, because the Williamses, her only guests, had a sitting-room of their own, the aunts received her with marked favour.
“Mother’s helpful girlie!” said Aunt Gertie, as Geraldine put down the plate of bread-and-butter, the Madeira cake on a glass cake stand, and another plate of rock-buns.
“Where’s Elsie?” Mrs. Palmer asked significantly.
“Cutting out in the kitchen.”
“Tell her to come along up. She knows your aunties are here.”
“I told her to come, and she made use of a very vulgar expression,” Geraldine spitefully declared.
“I don’t know what’s come over Elsie, I’m sure,” Mrs.Palmer declared helplessly. “She’s learnt all these low tricks and manners from that friend of hers, that Ireen Tidmarsh.”
Mrs. Palmer was very angry with Irene for her revelations, although she was secretly rather enjoying her younger daughter’s notoriety.
“Get that naughty gurl up from the kitchen directly,” she commanded Geraldine. “No—wait a minute, I’ll go myself.”
With extraordinary agility she heaved her considerable bulk out of her low chair and left the room.
“And what have you been doing with yourself lately?” Aunt Gertie enquired of Geraldine.
She was stout and elderly-looking, with a mouth over-crowded by large teeth. She was older than Mrs. Palmer, and Aunt Ada was some years younger than either, and wore, with a sort of permanent smirk, the remains of an ash-blond prettiness. They were just able, in 1913, to live in the house at Wimbledon that their father had left them, on their joint income.
“There’s always heaps to do in the house, I’m sure, Aunt Gertie,” said Geraldine vaguely. “And I’m not strong enough to go to work anywhere, really I’m not. Now Elsie’s different. She could do quite well in the shorthand-typing, but she’s bone idle—that’s what she is. Or there’s dressmaking—Elsie’s clever with her needle, that I will say for her.”
Mrs. Palmer came back with Elsie behind her. The girl reluctantly laid her face for a moment against each of the withered ones that bumped towards her in conventional greeting.
“Hallo, Aunt Gertie. Hallo, Aunt Ada,” she said lifelessly.
Mrs. Palmer began to pour out the tea, and whilst they ate and drank elegantly, the conversation was allowed to take its course without any reference to the real point at issue.
“What are these Williamses like, that have got the downstairs sitting-room, Edie?”
“Oh, theyarenice people,” said Mrs. Palmer enthusiastically. “A solicitor, he is, and only just waiting to find ahouse. I believe they’ve ever such a lot of furniture in store. They lived at Putney before, but it didn’t suit Mrs. Williams. She’s delicate.”
Mrs. Palmer raised her eyebrows and glanced meaningly at the aunts.
Aunt Ada gazed eagerly back at her.
“Go and get some more bread-and-butter, Elsie,” commanded Mrs. Palmer, and when the girl had left the room she nodded at Aunt Ada.
“You know, Mrs. Williams isn’t very strong just now. She’s been unlucky before, too—twice, I fancy.”
“But when? Surely you aren’t going to have anything like thathere?”
“Oh dear, no! I told her it was out of the question, and she quite understood. It isn’t till April, and they hope to move into their new house after Christmas.Shemust be about fifteen years younger thanheis, I imagine.”
“How strange!” said Aunt Gertie.
Both she and Aunt Ada were always intensely interested in any detail about anybody, whether known or unknown to them personally.
“Rather remarkable, isn’t it, that there should be an event on the way——” Aunt Ada began.
Mrs. Palmer frowned heavily at her as Elsie came back into the room. “It’s ever so long since we’ve seen you, as I was just saying,” she remarked in a loud and artificial voice, making Elsie wish that she had waited outside the door and listened. She thought that they must have been talking about her.
After tea was over, they did talk about her. Mrs. Palmer began: “You can let Geraldine take the tea-things, Elsie. It won’t be the first time, lately, she’s done your share of helping your poor mother as well as her own.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” from Aunt Gertie.
“Geraldine’s health isn’t as strong as yours, either. She looks to me as though she might go into consumption, if you want to know,” said Aunt Ada.
They looked at Elsie, and she looked sulkily back at them.
It was one of the days on which she was at her plainest. Her face looked fat and heavy, the high cheek-bones actuallyseemed to be pushing her lower lids upwards until her eyes appeared as mere slits. Her mouth was closed sullenly.
“Elsie’s not been a good gurl lately, and she knows it very well. Her own mother doesn’t seem to have any influence with her, so perhaps ...” said Mrs. Palmer to her sisters, but looking at her child, “perhaps you’ll see what you can do. It’s not a thing I like to talk about, ever, but we know very well what happens to a gurl who spends her time larking about the streets with fellows. To think that a child of mine——”
“What do you do itfor, Elsie?” enquired Aunt Gertie, in a practical tone, as though only such shrewdness as hers could have seized at once upon this vital point.
“Do what?”
“What your poor mother says.”
“She hasn’t said anything, yet.”
“Don’t prevaricate with me, you bad gurl, you,” said Mrs. Palmer sharply. “You know very well what I mean, and so do others. The tales that get carried to me about your goings-on! First one fellow, and then another, and even running after a whipper-snapper that’s already going with another gurl!”
“This is a bit of Ireen’s work, I suppose,” said Elsie. “I can’t help it if her boy’s sick of her already, can I? I’m sure I don’t care anything about Arthur Osborne, or any of them, for that matter.”
The implication that Elsie Palmer, at sixteen and a half, could afford to distinguish between her admirers, obscurely infuriated the spinster Aunt Ada.
She began to tremble with wrath, and white dents appeared at the corners of her mouth and nostrils. “You’re not the first gurl whose talked that way, and ended by disgracing herself and her family,” she cried shrilly. “If I were your mother, I’d give you a sound whipping, I declare to goodness I would.”
Elsie shot a vicious look at her aunt out of the corners of her slanting eyes. “Are the grapes sour, Aunt Ada?” she asked insolently.
Aunt Ada turned white. “D’you hear that, Edie?” she gasped.
“Yes, I do,” said Mrs. Palmer vigorously, “and I’m not going to put up with it, not for a single instant. Elsie Palmer, you beg your auntie’s pardon directly minute.”
“I won’t.”
The vast figure of Mrs. Palmer in her Sunday black frock upreared itself and stood, weighty and menacing, over her child. She had never hit either of her daughters since childhood, but neither of them had ever openly defied her.
“Do as I say.”
“N-no.”
Elsie’s voice quavered, and she burst into tears. Mrs. Palmer let out a sigh of relief. She knew that she had won.
“Do—as—I—say.”
“I’m sure I’m very sorry, Aunt Ada, if I said what I didn’t ought.”
“It isn’t what you said, dear,” said Aunt Ada untruthfully. “It was the way you said it.”
There was a silence.
Then Mrs. Palmer pursued her advantage. “You may as well understand, Elsie, that this isn’t going on. I haven’t got the time, nor yet the strength, to go chasing after you all day long. I know well enough you’re not to be trusted—out of the house the minute my back’s the other way—and coming in at all hours, and always a tale of some sort to account for where you’ve been. So, my lady, you’ve got to make up your mind to a different state of things. What’s it to be: a job as a typewriter, or apprenticed to the millinery? Your kind Aunt Gertie’s got a friend in the business, and she’s offered to speak for you.”
“I’d rather the typing,” said Elsie sullenly.
“Then you’ll come with me and see about a post to-morrow morning as ever is,” said Mrs. Palmer. “It’s your own doing. You could have stayed at home like a lady, helping Mother and Geraldine, if you’d cared to. But I’m not going to have any gurl of mine getting herself a name the way you’ve been doing.”
“I suppose I can go now?”
“You can go if you want to,” said Mrs. Palmer, flushed with victory. “And mind and remember what I’ve said, for I mean every word of it.”
It was only too evident that she did, and Elsie went out of the room crying angrily. She did not really mind the idea of becoming a typist in an office or a shop in the very least, but she hated having been humiliated in front of her aunts and Geraldine.
As she went upstairs, sobbing, she met Mrs. Williams coming down. She was a gentle, unhealthy-looking woman of about thirty, so thin that her clothes always looked as though they might drop off her bending, angular body.
“What’s the matter, dear?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Come into the sitting-room, won’t you, and rest a minute?”
“Well, I don’t mind.”
Elsie reflected that there would probably be a fire in the sitting-room, and in her own room it was cold, and she knew that the bed was still unmade.
She followed Mrs. Williams into the sitting-room, where Mr. Williams sat reading a Sunday illustrated paper.
“Horace, this poor child is quite upset. Give her a seat, dear.”
“It’s all right,” said Elsie, confused.
She had only seen Mr. Williams half a dozen times. He always breakfasted and went out early, and Elsie, of late, had eaten her supper in the kitchen. They had met at meal-times on Sundays, but she had never spoken to him, and thought him elderly and uninteresting.
Mr. Williams was indeed forty-three years old, desiccated and inclined to baldness, a small, rather paunchy man.
His little, hard grey eyes gleamed on Elsie now from behind his pince-nez.
“No bad news, I hope?” His voice was dry, and rather formal, with great precision of utterance.
His wife put her emaciated hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Two heads are better than one, as they say. Horace and I would be glad to help you, if we can.”
“It is silly to be upset, like,” said Elsie, sniffing. “Mother and I had a few words, that’s all, and I’m to get hold of a job. I’m sure I don’t know why I’m crying. I shall be glad enough to get out of this place for a bit.”
“Hush, dear! That isn’t a nice way to speak of your home, now is it? But about this job, now. Horace and I might be able to help you there.”
She hesitated and looked at her husband. “What about the Woolleys, dear?”
“Yes—ye-es.”
“These are some new acquaintances of ours, and they’ve a lovely house at Hampstead, but Mrs. Woolley isn’t any too strong, and I know she’s looking out for someone to help her with the children and all. It wouldn’t be going to service—nothing at all like that, of course; I know you wouldn’t think of that, dear—but just be one of the family at this lovely house of theirs.”
“It isn’t in the country, is it?” Elsie asked suspiciously.
“Oh no, dear, Hampstead I said. Only three-quarters of an hour by ’bus from town. Don’t you like the country?”
“Too dead-alive.”
“Well, these people that I’m telling you about, this Doctor and Mrs. Woolley, they’re youngish married people, and most pleasant. Aren’t they, Horace? And they’ve two sweet kiddies—a boy and a girl. Don’t you think you’d like me to speak to Mrs. Woolley, now, dear?”
Elsie was not sure. She felt that Mrs. Williams was going too fast. “I don’t know,” she said ungraciously.
“She’s right,” said Mr. Williams. “We mustn’t be in too great a hurry. Write to your friend Mrs. Woolley by all means, my dear, and let this young lady think it over, and have a talk with her mother and sister. She may not care to live away from home altogether.”
“Horace is always so business-like,” said Mrs. Williams admiringly. “I expect he’s right, dear. But you’d like me to write, just to see if there’s any chance, now wouldn’t you?”
“What should I have to do there?”
“Why, just help look after the kiddies. I’m sure you love children, now don’t you?—and perhaps make a dainty cake or two for afternoon tea, if Mrs. Woolley’s busy, or do a bit of sewing for her—and keep the doctor amused in the evening if she has to go up early.”
It was the last item that decided Elsie. “I don’t mind,” she said in her usual formula of acceptance.
Mrs. Williams was delighted. “I’m going to write off this very evening,” she exclaimed enthusiastically. “Horace and I have to go out now, but I shan’t forget. It’ll be a lovely chance for you, dear.”
Elsie rather enjoyed telling her mother and Geraldine that evening that “Mrs. Williams was wild” to secure her services for a lady friend of hers, who had a lovely house at Hampstead.
“This Mrs. Woolley is delicate, and she wants a young lady to help her. Of course, there’s a servant for the work of the house.”
“If she’s counting on you to help her, the same as you’ve helped your poor mother since you left school, she’s got a disappointment in store,” said Mrs. Palmer grimly. “I don’t know that I’d let you go, even if you get the chance.”
In the end, Geraldine, who wanted the top bedroom to herself, and who thought that Elsie, and the problem of Elsie’s behaviour, were occupying too much attention, persuaded Mrs. Palmer that it would never do to offend the Williamses.
“Besides,” she argued, “it’ll be one less to feed here, and we can easily move her bed into the second-floor back room and use it, if we want to put up an extra gentleman any time.”
Mrs. Palmer gave in, contingent on a personal interview with Mrs. Woolley.
This was arranged through Mrs. Williams. She one day ushered into the dining-room of No. 15 a large, showily-dressed woman, who might have been any age between thirty-eight and forty-five.
Her rings, and her light, smart dress impressed Elsie, and her suggestion of paying twenty-five pounds a year for Elsie’s services satisfied Mrs. Palmer.
“My hubby’s a frightfully busy man,” Mrs. Woolley remarked. “He isn’t at home a great deal, but he likes me to do everything on the most liberal scale—always has done—and he said to me, ‘Amy, you’re not strong,’ he said, ‘even if you have a high colour’—so many people are deceived by that, Mrs. Palmer—‘and you’ve got to have help. Someone who can be a bit of a companion to youwhen I’m out on my rounds or busy in the surgery, and who you can trust with Gladys and Sonnie.’”
“I’m sure Elsie would like to help you, Mrs. Woolley, and you’ll find her to be trusted,” Mrs. Palmer replied firmly. “I’ve always brought up my gurls to be useful, even if theyareladies.”
“She looks young,” said Mrs. Woolley critically.
“She’ll put her hair up before she comes to you. It may be a mother’s weakness, Mrs. Woolley, but I’m free to confess that Elsie’s my baby, and I’ve let her keep her curls down perhaps longer than I should.”
Elsie remained demure beneath what she perfectly recognised as a form of self-hypnotism, rather than conscious humbug, on the part of her mother.
There was at least no sentimentality in her leave-taking a week later.
“Good-bye, Elsie, and mind and not be up to any of your tricks, now. Mother’ll expect you on Sunday next.”
“Good-bye, Mother,” said Elsie indifferently.
She had that morning washed her hair, which made it very soft and fluffy, and had pinned it up in half a dozen fat little sausages at the back of her head. She was preoccupied with her own appearance, and with the knowledge that the newly-revealed back of her neck was white and pretty. She wore a blue serge coat and skirt, a low-cut blouse of very pale pink figured voile, black shoes and stockings, and a dashing little hat, round and brimless, with a big black bow that she had herself added to it on the previous night.
In the Tube railway, a man in the seat opposite to her stared at her very hard. Elsie looked away, but kept on turning her eyes furtively towards him, without moving her head. Every time that she did this, their eyes met.
The man was young, with bold eyes and a wide mouth. Presently he smiled at her.
Elsie immediately looked down at the toes of her new black shoes, moving them this way and that as though to catch the light reflected in their polish.
At Belsize Park Station she got out, carrying her suitcase.
As she passed the youth in the corner, she glanced at him again, then stepped out of the train and went up theplatform without looking behind her. Although there was a crowd on the platform and in the lift, and although she never looked round, Elsie could tell that he was following her.
The feeling that this gave her, half fearful and half delighted, was an agreeable titilation to her vanity. She had experienced it before, just as she had often been followed in the street before, but it never lost its flavour. When she was in the street, she began to walk steadily along, gazing straight in front of her.
She heard steps on the pavement just behind her, and then the young man of the train accosted her, raising his hat as he spoke:
“Aren’t you going to give me the pleasure of your acquaintance?” he suavely enquired.
His voice was very polite, and his eyes looked faintly amused.
“Oh!” Elsie cried in a startled tone. “I don’t think I know you, do I?”
“All the more reason to begin now. Mayn’t I carry that bag for you?”
He took it and they walked on together.
“Perhaps you can tell me where Mortimer Crescent is,” Elsie said primly.
“It will be my proudest privilege to escort you there,” he replied in mock bombastic tones.
It was a form of persiflage well known to Elsie, and she laughed in reply. “Youaresilly, aren’t you?”
“Not at all. Now if you called me cheeky, perhaps....”
“I’ll call you cheeky fast enough. A regular Cheeky Charlie, by the look of you!”
“I think I was born cheeky,” he agreed complacently. “D’you know what first made me want to talk to you?”
“What?”
“That pink thing you’ve got on with all the ribbon showing through it.”
He put out his hand and, with a familiar gesture, touched the front of her blouse just below her collar-bone.
“You mustn’t,” said Elsie, startled.
“Why not?”
“I don’t allow liberties.”
“We’ll have to settle what liberties are, miss. Come for a walk this evening and we can talk about it.”
“Oh, I couldn’t! I’m just going into a new job.”
She purposely used the word “new,” because she wanted him to think her experienced and grown-up.
“What can a kiddie like you do?”
“Why, I’m private secretary to a duke, didn’t you know that?”
“Lucky duke! Where does he live?”
“Oh, that’d be telling. This isn’t Mortimer Crescent?”
“It is, very much so indeed, begging your pardon for contradicting a lady.”
“Well, don’t come any further,” begged Elsie. “Ta-ta, and thanks for carrying the bag.”
“When do I see you again?”
“I dunno! Never, I should think.”
“Seven o’clock to-night?”
“No, I can’t, really.”
“To-morrow, then? I’ll be outside the Belsize Park station, and we’ll go on the razzle-dazzle together. I’d like to show you a bit of life. Seven o’clock, mind.”
“You and your seven o’clock! You’ll be somewhere with your young lady, I know.”
“Haven’t got one.”
“Wouldn’t she have you?” scoffed Elsie. “No accounting for tastes, is there?”
“I’ll make you pay for this to-morrow night, you little witch—see if I don’t!”
Elsie had caught hold of her suitcase, and began to walk away from him.
“Which number are you going to?”
“Eight.”
“I’ll ring the bell for you.”
He did so, rather to her fright and vexation. She urged him in low tones to go away, but he continued to stand beside her on the doorstep, laughing at her annoyance, until a capped and aproned maid opened the door.
Then he lifted his hat, said “Good-night” very politely, and went away.
She never saw him again.