MESSALINA OF THE SUBURBS

Messalina of the
Suburbs : : : : By
E. M. DELAFIELD : :

Author of “Tension,” “The Optimist,” “A
Reversion to Type,” etc.

LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO.
PATERNOSTER ROW

DEDICATED
TO
M. P. P.

My Dear Margaret,

We have so often agreed that causes are more interesting than the most dramatic results, that I feel you are the right person to receive the dedication of my story about Elsie Palmer, in which I have tried to reconstruct the psychological developments that led, by inexorable degrees, to the catastrophe of murder. These things are never “bolts from the blue” in reality, but merely sensational accessories to the real issue, which lies on that more subtle plane of thought where only personalities are deserving of dissection.

For what it is worth, I offer you an impression of Elsie Palmer’s personality.

E. M. D.

August, 1923.

CONTENTS

MESSALINA OF THE SUBURBS

Messalina of the Suburbs

PART I

I

“Elsie, I’ve told you before, I won’t have you going with boys.”

“I don’t, mother.”

“Yes, you do. And don’t contradict. Surely to goodness you’re aware by this time that it’s the heighth of bad manners to contradict. I’ve taken trouble enough to try and make a lady of you, I’m sure, and now all you can do is to contradict your mother, and spend your time walking the streets with boys.”

“Mother, I never.”

“Now don’t tell lies about it, Elsie. Mother knows perfectly well when you’re telling a lie, and you don’t take her in by crocodile tears either, my lady. Don’t let me have to speak to you again about the same thing, that’s all.”

Elsie began to cry, automatically and without conviction. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do, miss. I mean Johnnie Osborne, and Johnnie Osborne’s brother, and Stanley Begg and the rest of them. Now, no more of it, Elsie. Go and give the gurl a hand with washing up the tea-things, and hurry up.”

Elsie went away, glad that it was so soon over. Sometimes mother went on for ages. Thank the Lord she was busy to-day, with two new paying guests coming in. As she went past the drawing-room door Elsie looked in.

“Hallo, little girl!”

“Hallo, Mr. Roberts! Can’t stay, I’ve to go and help the girl wash up or something.”

“You’ve been crying!”

“I haven’t, then!” She went further into the room and let him see the downward droop of her pouting mouth and her wet eyelashes. She had not cried hard enough to make her nose turn red.

“I say, what a shame! What have they been doing to you?”

“Oh, nothing. Mother’s on the warpath, that’s all. It isn’t anything.”

“How rotten of her! Fancy scolding you! I thought you were always good, Elsie.”

“And who said you might call me Elsie, if you’ll kindly answer me that, Mister Impertinence?”

She shook her short, bobbing curls at him and laughed, suddenly good-tempered.

“You witch! Elsie, shall you miss me a tiny bit when I’m gone?”

“Oh, you’re going, are you?” She pretended to consider. “Let me see, there’s a single gentleman coming, who’ll have your room, and a married lady and gentleman for the front bedroom. I don’t really suppose, Mr. Roberts, there’ll be time to miss you much, with the house full like that.” She looked innocently up at him.

“Little devil!” he muttered between his teeth, causing her to thrill slightly, although she maintained her pose of artlessness without a visible tremor.

“Who’s the bounder who’s going to have my room after to-night?”

“Mis-ter Roberts!” She affected a high key of indignation. “He isn’t a bounder. You know very well that mother’s awfully particular. She wouldn’t take anyone without he was a perfect gentleman in every way. Now I can’t wait another minute. I should get into an awful row if mother caught me here.”

“What’s the harm? Don’t run away, Elsie. Just tell me this: are you coming to the pictures to-night—for the last evening?”

“Oh, are you going to take me and Geraldine? I don’t suppose Geraldine’ll be able to—she’s ill.”

“Can’t we go without her?”

“Mother wouldn’t let me.”

“Well, look here, Elsie—come without telling anyone. Do, just for the lark. I swear I’ll take the greatest care of you.”

“Oh, how could I? Besides, mother’d want to know where I was.”

“Can’t you say you’re going somewhere with that eternal friend of yours—that Irene Tidmarsh girl, or whatever her name is?”

“I’ll thank you to remember you’re speaking of a friend of mine, Mr. Roberts. And the idea of suggesting I should do such a thing as deceive my mother! Why, I’m surprised at you!”

“Don’t rot, Elsie. Say you’ll come. Slip out after supper, and meet me at the bottom of the road. There’s a jolly good programme on at the Palatial.”

“I hope you’ll enjoy the pictures, Mr. Roberts,” said Elsie demurely. She sidled backwards to the door.

“I shall wait for you—eight o’clock sharp.”

“Don’t catch cold waiting,” she mocked.

“Look here, kid——”

“That’s mother! She’ll skin me alive, if I give her half a chance!” She flew out into the hall and down the passage to the kitchen.

The servant Nellie was there, and Elsie’s sister Geraldine.

“Where’ve you been, Elsie?”

“With mother. I didn’t know you were here; I thought you were s’posed to be ill.”

“So I am ill,” returned Geraldine bitterly. “But as you were out, someone had to do some work.”

Elsie looked critically at her sister. Geraldine did look ill, sallow and with black rims round her eyes, but then she had something altogether wrong with her digestion, and often looked like that.

“Bilious again?”

“’M. I think it was that beastly pudding we had last night. I’ve been awfully sick.”

“Poor wretch!”

Neither of them paid any attention to Nellie Simmons, who went on plunging and clattering greasy spoons and plates about in the water that steamed from a chipped enamel basin.

“Can’t you take this rag, Elsie, and wipe a bit, and let me get upstairs? I’m sure I’m going to be sick again.”

“I suppose I must, then—poor me!”

“Poor you, when you’ve been out since dinner! I should like to know what for. If it was me, now——Oh, Lord, my head!”

“Well, go on upstairs again. Have you tried the new medicine that Ireen’s aunt did the testimonial for?”

“Yes, and I don’t believe it’s a bit better than any of the others. I feel like nothing on earth. I say, where were you all the afternoon?”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” said Elsie, wiping the plates.

“I’m sure I don’t want to know.”

“That’s all right then, we’re both satisfied, because I don’t mean to tell you.”

Geraldine looked angrily at her sister and walked away, her thin plait of dark hair flapping limply between her angular, slouching shoulders.

“What is there for supper to-night, Nellie?” said Elsie presently.

“The ’am.”

“Oh, goodness, that old ham! Why can’t we ever have anything nice, I should like to know! And I s’pose the cold tart’s got to be finished up, and that beastly cold shape?”

“That’s right,” Nellie said laconically.

“Well, there’ll be no cooking to do, that’s one thing.”

“She wants some soup put on, because of the new people, but I’ve left it all ready. I’m off at six sharp, I can tell you.”

“What’s the hurry, Nellie?” asked Elsie amicably. She saw that Nellie wanted to be asked, and she felt good-humoured because there was no cooking to be done, and she could lay the supper and ring the bell earlier than usual, so as to be able to keep her appointment with Mr. Roberts.

“I’ve got someone waiting for me, I ’ave,” Nellie said importantly. “Couldn’t be kept waiting—oh dear, no!”

Elsie looked at the ugly, white-faced Cockney woman, whose teeth projected, decayed and broken, and round the corners of whose mouth and nostrils clung clusters of dry pimples, and burst out laughing.

“It’s true!” said Nellie, offended. “And I’m off now.”

She went to dry her chapped hands on the limp and dingy roller-towel that hung beside the cold-water tap.

Elsie laughed again, partly to tease Nellie Simmons and partly because it really amused her to think that her own projected diversion with Mr. Roberts should be parodied by this grotesque Nellie and some unknown, equally grotesque, companion.

Nellie pulled down her hat and coat from the peg on the kitchen door, put them on and went away, although it was quarter of an hour before her time. She knew well enough that none of them would say anything, Elsie reflected. Girls were too difficult to get hold of, when one took in guests.

As soon as the side door had slammed behind Nellie, Elsie flew into the scullery. A broken piece of looking-glass hung there, where she had nailed it up herself long ago.

She pulled down the thick, dust-coloured wave of hair that fell from a boyish, left-hand parting, until it lay further across her forehead, deepening the natural kink in it with her fingers, and loosening the black ribbon bow that fell over one ear. The soft, flopping curls fell to her shoulders on either side of her full, childish face. She rubbed hard at her cheeks for a moment, without producing very much visible effect on their uniform pale pinkiness, starred all over with tiny golden freckles. The gold was repeated in her eyelashes and pale eyebrows, but Elsie’s eyes, to her eternal regret, were neither blue nor brown. They were something between a dark grey and a light green, and the clear blue whites of them showed for a space between the iris and the lower lid.

Her nose was straight and short; her wide mouth, habitually pouting, possessed a very full underlip and a short, curving upper one. When she showed her teeth, they were white and even, but rather far apart. The most salient characteristic of her face was that its high cheek-bones, and well-rounded cheeks, gave an odd impression of pushing against her underlids, so that her eyes very often looked half shut, and small. Elsie saw this in herself, and it made her furious. She called it “a Japanese doll look.”

She realised that her soft, rounded neck was really beautiful, and was secretly proud of the opulent curves of her figure; but to other girls she pretended that she thought herself too fat, although in point of fact she wore no stays.

She thought with pride that she looked more like eighteen than sixteen years old, although she was not, and knew that she never would be, very tall.

Dragging a black velveteen tam-o’-shanter from her pocket, Elsie pulled it rakishly on over her curls, her fingers quickly and skilfully pouching the worn material so that it sagged over to one side. The hands with which she manipulated the tam-o’-shanter were freckled too, like her face, and of the same uniform soft pink. The fingers were short, planted very far apart, and broad at the base and inclining to curve backwards.

She wiped them on the roller-towel, as Nellie Simmons had done, only far more hurriedly, and then went quietly out at the side door. It opened straight into a small blind alley, and Elsie ran up it, and into the road at a corner of which her home was situated. Turning her back on No. 15, from which she had just emerged, she kept on the same side of the road, hoping to escape observation even if Mrs. Palmer were to look out of the window.

Very soon, however, she was obliged to cross the road, and then she rang the bell of a tall house that was the counterpart of the one she lived in, and indeed of all the other hundred and eighty yellow-and-red brick houses in Hillbourne Terrace.

Irene Tidmarsh opened the door, a lanky, big-eyed creature, with two prominent front teeth and an immense plait of ugly brown hair. Her arms and legs were thick and shapeless.

“Hallo, Elsie!”

“Hallo, Ireen. Look here, I can’t stay. I only want to ask you if you’ll swear we’ve been to the pictures together to-night, if anyone ever asks. Quick! Be a sport, and promise.”

“What’s up?” Irene asked wearily.

“Oh, only my fun. I don’t particularly want mother to know about me going out to-night, that’s all. If I can say I was with you if I’m asked, it’ll be all right, only you’ll have to back me up if she doesn’t believe me.”

“Oh, all right, I don’t care. You’re a caution, Elsie Palmer—you and your made-up tales. Don’t see much difference between them and downright lies, sometimes.”

“Well, what am I to do? I can’t ever go anywhere, or have any amusement, without mother and Geraldine wanting to know all about it, and if I’ve been behaving myself, and ’cetera and ’cetera.”

“Who is it this time, Elsie?”

“Only this fellow who’s leaving to-morrow, the one that’s been P.G. with us such a time, you know.”

“Oh, Roberts?”

“’M. Well, so long, dear. Thanks awfully and all that. Ta-ta. Don’t forget.”

“Ta-ta,” repeated Irene. “You’ll have to tell me all about it on Sunday, mind.”

“Awright.”

Elsie turned and hurried homeward again, shrugging her shoulders up to her ears as the wind whistled shrilly down the street.

It was September, and cold.

When she was indoors again, she pulled off her tam-o’-shanter and stuffed it once more into the pocket of her serge skirt. Then she went upstairs to the room at the top of the house that she shared with Geraldine.

“I wish you’d knock.”

“Whatever for? It’s my room as much as yours, isn’t it?” Elsie said without acrimony.

“Have you been washing up all this time?”

“Nellie went off early.”

“The slut! Whatever for? Did you tell mother?”

“No. It wouldn’t be a bit of good. She won’t say anything to Nellie just now, whatever she does, with these new people just coming in.”

“Oh, my head!” groaned Geraldine, not attending.

She lay on her bed, her white blouse crumpled, and a machine-made knitted coat, of shrimp-pink wool, drawn untidily over her shoulders. Her black Oxford shoes lay on the mat between the two beds, and her black stockings showed long darns and a hole in either heel.

Elsie began to arrange her hair before the looking-glass in a painted deal frame that stood on the deal chest-of-drawers. Presently she pulled a little paper bag from one of the drawers and began to suck sweets.

“No good offering you any, I suppose?”

“Don’t talk of such a thing. Elsie, I can’t come down to supper to-night. Do be a dear and bring me up a cup of tea—nice and strong. I’ve got a sort of craving for hot tea when I’m like this, really I have.”

“You don’t want much, do you, asking me to carry tea up four flights of stairs? I’ll see what I can do.” Elsie began to hum, in a small, rather tuneful little voice. She let her skirt fall round her feet as she sang and pulled off her blouse, revealing beautifully modelled breasts and shoulders. Her arms were a little too short, but the line from breast-bone to knee was unusually good, the legs plump and shapely, with slender ankles and the instep well arched. She wore serge knickerbockers and a flimsy under-bodice of yellow cotton voile over a thick cotton chemise.

“Are you going out again?” asked Geraldine in a vexed, feeble voice.

“I may go round and sit with Ireen for a bit, after supper. I think she wants to go to the pictures, or something.”

“How’s Mr. Tidmarsh?”

“Going to die, I should think, by all accounts,” glibly replied Elsie, although as a matter of fact she had forgotten to make any enquiry for Irene’s father, who had for months past been dying from some obscure and painful internal growth.

“Why doesn’t he go to a hospital?”

“Don’t ask me. Ireen’s always begging him to, but he won’t.”

“Old people are awfully selfish, I think,” said Geraldine thoughtfully.

“Yes, aren’t they? Look, I’m going to put this collar on my Sunday serge. That ought to smarten it up a bit.”

She pinned the cheap lace round the low-cut V at the neck of an old navy-blue dress, and fastened it with a blue-stoned brooch in the shape of a circle. Her throat rose up, fresh and warm and youthful, from the new adornment.

“Isn’t it time I put my hair up, don’t you think?”

“No. You’re only a kid. I didn’t put mine up till I was eighteen. Mother wouldn’t let me.”

Elsie dragged a thick grey pilot-cloth coat from behind the curtain of faded red rep that hung across a row of pegs and constituted the sisters’ wardrobe, caught up the black tam-o’-shanter again and ran downstairs.

All the time that she was laying the table in the dining-room, which was next to the kitchen on the ground floor, Elsie hummed to herself.

The tablecloth was stained in several places, and she arranged the Britannia-metal forks and spoons, the coarse, heavy plates and the red glass water-jug so as to cover the spots as much as possible. In the middle of the table stood a thick fluted green glass with paper chrysanthemums in it.

Elsie added the cruet, two half-loaves of bread on a wooden platter with “Bread” carved upon it in raised letters, and put a small red glass beside each plate. Finally she quickly pleated half a dozen coloured squares of Japanese paper, and stuck one into each glass.

“Mother!” she called.

“What?” said Mrs. Palmer from the kitchen.

“It’s ready laid.”

“What are you in such a hurry for? Miss M. and Mr. Williams haven’t turned up yet.”

“Mr. Roberts wants his supper early, I know.”

“You’ve no business to know, then. Well, put the ham on the table and the cold sweets, and he can go in when he pleases. This is Liberty Hall, as I call it.”

Elsie carried in the ham, placing the dish on the table beside the carving-knife and fork that were raised upon a “rest” of electro plate. The glass dishes containing a flabby pink decoction of cornflour, and the apple tart, with several slices of pastry gone from the crust, she laid at the other end of the table.

“Supper’s in, Mr. Roberts,” she cried through the open door of the drawing-room, but this time she did not go in, and flew back to the kitchen before Mr. Roberts appeared.

“Geraldine’s asking for tea, mother.”

“There’s a kettle on. She can come and fetch it.”

“I’ll take it up,” Elsie volunteered.

“You’re very obliging, all of a sudden. I’m sure I only wish you and your sister were more like sisters, the way Aunt Ada and Aunt Gertie and Mother were. There wasn’t any of this bickering between us girls that I hear between you and Geraldine.”

“You’ve made up for it later, then,” said Elsie pertly. “The aunts never come here but they find fault with things, and Aunt Ada cries, and I’m sure you and Aunt Gertie go at it hammer and tongs.”

“Don’t you dare to speak to me like that, Elsie Palmer,” said her mother abstractedly. (“Give me a spoon, there’s a good gurl.”) “What you gurls are coming to, talking so to your own mother, is more than I can say. What’s at the bottom of all this talk about carrying tea to Geraldine? What are you going to do about your own supper?”

“Have it in here. I don’t want much, anyway. I’m not hungry. Tea and bread-and-jam’ll do.”

“Please yourself,” said Mrs. Palmer.

She was a large, shapeless woman, slatternly and without method, chronically aggrieved because she was a widow with two daughters, obliged to support herself and them by receiving boarders, whom she always spoke of as guests.

“Where are these what-you-may-call-’ems—these Williamses—coming from?” Elsie asked, while she was jerking tea from the bottom of a cocoa-tin into a broken earthenware tea-pot.

“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,” said her mother.

She had no slightest reason to conceal the little she knew of the new people who were coming, but it was her habit to reply more or less in this fashion, semi-snubbing, semi-facetious, whenever either of her daughters asked a question.

“I’m sure I don’t want to know,” said Elsie, also from habit.

She made the tea, poured out two cups-full and took one upstairs. As she had expected, the alarm clock on the wash-stand showed it to be eight o’clock.

Almost directly afterwards, she heard the front door slam.

No. 15 was a narrow, high house, with very steep stairs, but Elsie was used to them, although she grumbled at the number of times she went up and down them, and she and Geraldine and Mrs. Palmer all kept numerous articles of toilet and clothing in the kitchen, so as to save journeys backwards and forwards.

She now went down once more, and sitting at a corner of the newspaper-covered kitchen table, drank tea and ate bread-and-jam deliberately.

“That’s the bell!”

Mrs. Palmer hoisted herself out of her chair, from which she had been reading the headlines of an illustrated daily paper, commenting on them half aloud with: “Fancy!... Whatever is the world coming to, is what I say....”

“That’ll be the Williamses, and about time too. You’ll have to give me a hand upstairs with the boxes afterwards, Elsie, but I’ll give ’em supper first.”

She went out into the hall, and Elsie heard the sounds of arrival, and her mother’s voice saying: “Good evening, you’ve brought us some wet weather, I’m afraid.... You mustn’t mind me joking, Mrs. Williams, it’s my way.... Liberty Hall, you’ll find this....”

Elsie ran to the back kitchen, donned the pilot-cloth coat and the tam-o’-shanter, and slipped out through the side door into the wet drizzle of a cold autumn evening.

“Ooh!” She turned up the collar of the coat, and pushed her gloveless hands deep into her pockets as she hurried along the pavement. It shone wet and dark, giving blurred reflections of the lamps overhead. Every now and then a tram jerked and clanged its way along the broad suburban road.

Only a few shops were lit along the road. Most of the buildings on either side were houses that displayed a brass sign-plate on the door, or a card with “Apartments” in one of the windows. Right at the end of the street, a blur of bluish light streamed out from the Palatial Picture House.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” said young Roberts, reproachfully. “It’s long after eight.” He wore a light overcoat and he, also, had turned up his collar as a protection against the rain.

“I had to help mother, of course. And if you want to know, I ought to be there now.” She laughed up at him provocatively.

“Come on in,” he said, pulling her hand through his arm.

II

This was Elsie’s real life.

Although quite incapable of formulating the thought to herself, she already knew instinctively that only in her relations with some man could she find self-expression.

In the course of the past two years she had gradually discovered that she possessed a power over men that other girls either did not possess at all, or in a very much lesser degree. From the exercise of unconscious magnetism, she had by imperceptible degrees passed to a breathless, intermittent exploitation of her own attractiveness.

She did not know why boys so often wished to kiss her, nor why she was sometimes followed, or spoken to, in the street, by men. At first she had thought that she must be growing prettier, but her personal preference was for dark eyes, a bright colour, and a slim, tall figure, and she honestly did not admire her own appearance. Moreover, her looks varied almost from day to day, and very often she seemed plain. She had never received any instruction in questions of sex, excepting whispered mis-information from girls at school as to the origin of babies. The signs of physical development that had come to her early were either not commented upon except in half-disgusted, half-facetious innuendo from Geraldine, or else dismissed by Mrs. Palmer curtly:

“Nice gurls don’t think about those things. I’m ashamed of you, Elsie. You should try and be nice-minded, as mother’s always told her gurls.”

A sort of garbled knowledge came to her after a time, knowledge that comprised the actual crude facts as to physical union between men and women, and explained in part certain violent bodily reactions to which she had been prone almost since childhood.

She had not the least idea whether any other girl in the world ever felt as she did, and was inclined to believe herself unnatural and depraved.

This thought hardly ever depressed her. She thought that to remain technically “a good girl” was all that was required of her, and admitted no further responsibility.

Geraldine and she quarrelled incessantly. Geraldine, with her poor physique and constant indispositions, was angrily jealous of Elsie’s superb health and uninterrupted preoccupation with her own affairs. She had only just begun to suspect that Elsie was never without a masculine admirer, and the knowledge, when it became a certainty, would embitter the relations between them still further on Geraldine’s side.

On Elsie’s side there was no bitterness, only contempt and unmalicious hostility. She disliked her elder sister, but was incapable of the mental effort implied by hatred. In the same way, she disliked her mother, almost without knowing that she did so.

Her home had always been ugly, sordid, and abounding in passionless discord. Elsie’s real life, which was just beginning to give her the romance and excitement for which she craved, was lived entirely outside the walls of No. 15, Hillbourne Terrace.

To-night, as she entered the hot, dark, enervating atmosphere of the cinema theatre, she thrilled in response to the contrast with the street outside. When she heard the loud, emphasised rhythm of a waltz coming from the piano beneath the screen, little shivers of joy ran through her.

A girl with a tiny electric torch indicated to them a row of seats, and Elsie pushed her way along until the two empty places at the very end of the row were reached. It added the last drop to her cup of satisfaction that she should have only the wall on one side of her. Human proximity almost always roused her to a vague curiosity and consciousness, that would have interfered with her full enjoyment of the evening.

She settled herself in the soft, comfortable seat, slipping her arms from the sleeves of her coat, and leaning back against it.

Roberts dropped a small box into her lap as he sat down beside her.

“Thanks awfully,” she whispered.

A film was showing, and Elsie became absorbed at once in the presentment of it, although she had no idea of the story. It came to an end very soon, and a Topical Budget was shown. Elsie was less interested, and pulled the string off her box of chocolates.

“Have one?”

“I don’t mind. Thanks.”

“They’re awfully good.” She chewed and sucked blissfully.

“Ooh! Look at that ship! Isn’t it funny?”

“Makes you feel seasick to look at it, doesn’t it?” whispered Roberts, and she giggled ecstatically.

Words appeared on the screen.

“‘Hearts and Crowns,’ featuring Lallie Carmichael.”

“How lovely!” said Elsie.

The story was complicated, and as most of the characters were Russian, Elsie did not always remember whether Sergius was the villain or the lawyer, and if Olga was the name of the “vampire” or of the soubrette. But the beautiful Lallie Carmichael was the heroine, and a clean-shaven American the hero. Elsie watched them almost breathlessly, and after a time it was she herself who was leaning back in the crowded restaurant, in a very low dress, and waving an ostrich-feather fan, torn between passion and loyalty. The American hero assumed no definite personality, other than that which his creator had endowed him. The scenes that she liked best were those between the two lovers, when they were shown alone together, and the American made passionate love to the princess.

At the end of the First Part, the lights went up.

Elsie turned her shining eyes and rumpled curls towards her escort.

“It is good, isn’t it?” he said, with a critical air.

“Isn’t it good? Have another sweet?”

“Well, thanks, I don’t mind. Are you enjoying yourself, kiddie?”

“Awfully. I like pictures.”

“What about me? Don’t you like me a little bit too, Elsie, for bringing you?” His voice had become low and husky.

Still under the emotional influence of the story, the music, and the relaxation produced by bodily warmth and comfort, she looked at him, and saw, not the common, rather negligible features of sandy-haired Mr. Roberts, but the bold, handsome American hero of the film.

“Of course I like you,” she said softly.

“You won’t forget me when I’ve gone?”

“No.”

“You will, Elsie! You’ll let some other fellow take you to the pictures, and you won’t give me another thought.”

“Of course I shall, you silly! I shall always remember you—you’ve been awfully sweet to me.”

“Will you write to me?”

“We’ll see about that.”

“Promise.”

“Promises are like pie-crusts, made to be broken.”

“Yours wouldn’t be. I bet anything if you promised a chap something, you’d stick to it. Now wouldn’t you?”

“I daresay I should,” she murmured, flattered. “Mother says I’ve always been a terrible one for keeping to what I’ve once said. It’s the way I am, you know.”

No fleeting suspicion crossed her mind that this was anything but a true description of herself.

“Elsie, do you know what I should like to do?”

“What, Mr. Roberts?”

“Call me Norman. I should like to make a hell of a lot of money and come back and marry you.”

“You shouldn’t use those words.”

“I’m in earnest, Elsie.”

“You’re making very free with my name, aren’t you?”

“You don’t mind.”

“No,” she whispered.

“You’re a little darling.”

The lights went out again, and his hand fumbled for hers in the darkness. Warm and unresisting it lay in his, and presently returned pressure for pressure.

The story on the screen began to threaten tragedy, and Elsie’s body became tense with anxiety. She pressed her shoulder hard against that of Roberts.

He, too, leant towards her, and presently slipped one arm round her waist. Instantly her senses were awake, and although she continued to gaze at the screen, she was in reality blissfully preoccupied only with his embrace, and the sensations it aroused in her.

Intensely desirous that he should not move away, she relaxed her figure more and more, letting her head rest at last against his shoulder. She began to wonder whether he would kiss her, and to feel that she wanted him to do so. As though she had communicated the thought to him, the man beside her in the obscurity put his disengaged hand under her chin and tilted her face to his.

She did not resist, and he kissed her, first on her soft cheek and then on her mouth.

Elsie had been kissed before, roughly and teasingly by boys, and once or twice, furtively, by an elderly lodger of Mrs. Palmer’s, whose breath had smelt of whisky.

But the kisses of this young commercial traveller were of an entirely different quality to these, and the pleasure that she took in them was new and startling to herself.

“Elsie, d’you love me?” he whispered. “I love you. I think you’re the sweetest little girl in the whole world.”

Elsie liked the words vaguely, but she did not really want him to talk, she wanted him to go on kissing her.

“Say—‘I love you, Norman.’”

“I won’t.”

“You must. Why won’t you?”

“It’s so soppy.”

“Elsie!”

She felt that the magnetic current between them had been disturbed, and made an instinctive, nestling movement against him.

He kissed her again, two or three times.

Reluctantly, Elsie forced herself to the realisation that the film must soon come to an end, and the lights reappear. She looked at the screen again, and when the lovers, in magnified presentment, exchanged a long embrace, responsive vibrations shook her, and she felt all the elation of conscious and recent initiation.

The lights suddenly flashed out, a moment sooner than she expected them, and she flung herself across into her own seat, pressing the backs of her hands against her flushed, burning cheeks and dazzled eyes.

She knew that Norman Roberts was looking at her, but she would not turn her head and meet his eyes, partly from shyness, and partly from coquetry.

“Isn’t this the end?” she said, knowing that it was not, but speaking in order to relieve her sense of embarrassment.

“No, it isn’t over till half-past ten; there’s another forty minutes yet.” He consulted his wrist-watch elaborately. “I expect they’ll have a comic to finish up with.”

Elsie sensed constraint in him, too, and in sudden alarm turned and faced him. As their eyes met, both of them smiled and flushed, and Roberts slipped his arm under hers and possessed himself of her hand again.

“Did you like that?” he whispered, bending towards her.

“The picture?”

“You know I don’t mean that.”

She laughed and then nodded.

“Elsie, tell me something truly. Has any other fellow ever kissed you?”

Her first impulse was to lie glibly. Then her natural, instinctive understanding of the game on which they were engaged, made her laugh teasingly.

“That’s telling, Mr. Inquisitive.”

“That means they have. I must say, Elsie, that considering you’re only sixteen, I don’t call that very nice.”

Elsie snatched away her hand. “I get quite enough of that sort of thing at home, thank you, Mr. Norman Roberts, Esquire. There’s no call for you to interfere in my concerns, that I’m aware of.”

His instant alarm gratified her, although she continued to look offended, and to sit very upright in her chair.

“Don’t be angry, Elsie. I didn’t mean to offend you, honour bright. Make it up!”

The pianist began some rattling dance-music and the lights went out again.

Elsie immediately relaxed her pose, feeling her heart beat more quickly in mingled doubt and anticipation.

The doubt was resolved almost within the instant. Roberts pulled her towards him, bringing her face close to his, and whispered:

“Kiss and be friends!”

All the while that the last film was showing, Elsie lay almost in his arms, seeing nothing at all, conscious only of feeling alive as she had never felt alive before.

Even when it was all over and they rose to go, that sense of awakened vitality throbbed within her, and made her unaware of fatigue.

“Follow me,” said Roberts authoritatively, and took his place in front of her in the gangway. There he waited, meekly and like everybody else, until the people in front should have moved. But to Elsie there was masculinity in the shelter of his narrow, drooping shoulders, as he stood before her in his crumpled light overcoat, every now and then shifting from one foot to the other.

She followed him step by step, pulling her hair into place under the tam-o’-shanter, and settling it at its customary rakish angle.

It was no longer raining, and a watery moon showed through a haze.

They dawdled as soon as they were out of the crowd, with linked arms and clasped hands.

“Swear you’ll write to me, Elsie.”

“All right.”

“Lordy, to think of all we might have done together these three months I’ve been here, and I’ve never had more than a word with you here and there!”

“I was at school all the time, till last week.”

“You aren’t going back to school again?”

“No, that’s over, praise be! I’m supposed to be taking up typing and shorthand, some time, though there’s plenty for two of us to do at home, I should have said.”

The faint reverberations of a church clock striking came to them.

“Goodness, that’s never eleven o’clock striking! Well, you will get me into a row and no mistake!”

She began to run, but stopped under a lamp just before No. 15 was in sight.

He had kept pace with her high-heeled, uneven steps easily, and stopped beside her.

“Say good-night to me properly, then.”

“How, properly? Good-night, Mr. Roberts, and thank you ever so much. Oh, and bonne voyage to-morrow, in case I don’t see you. Will that do?”

“No, it won’t. I want a kiss.”

“You don’t want much, do you?” she began half-heartedly, and looking up and down the street as she spoke.

It was empty but for themselves.

Roberts caught hold of her and kissed her with violence. Unresisting, Elsie put back her head and closed her eyes.

“Kiss me—you shall kiss me,” he gasped.

At the sense of constriction that came upon her with the tightened grasp of his arms, Elsie gave a fluttering, strangled scream and began to struggle.

“Let me go! You’re hurting me!”

He loosened his hold so abruptly that she nearly fell down.

She began to hurry towards home, moving with the ugly, jerking gait peculiar to women who walk from the knees.

“Shall I see you to-morrow before I go?” His voice sounded oddly humble and crestfallen.

“I’ll come to the drawing-room for a minute—no one’s ever there in the mornings.”

“What time, Elsie? I ought to be off at nine.”

“Oh, before that some time, I expect. I say, you’ve got your key, haven’t you?”

A sharp misgiving assailed her as he began to fumble in his pockets.

“Yes, all right.” He put it into the lock.

Elsie, relieved, stood on tiptoe and put her arms round his neck. “Good-night, you dear,” she whispered. “Now don’t begin again. Open the door and go in first, and if the coast isn’t clear, just cough, and I’ll wait a bit. I’ll see you to-morrow.”

When he signed to her that the house was quiet, and that she could safely enter, Elsie slipped past him like a shadow while he felt about for matches, and flew upstairs. Her mother slept in the back bedroom on the third floor, and Elsie saw that her door was shut and that no streak of light showed under it. Satisfied, she went up the next flight of stairs to the bedroom.

Geraldine, of course, was bound to know of her escapade, but Geraldine would either believe, or pretend to believe, that Elsie had been with Irene Tidmarsh, and the two Palmer girls always combined with one another against the sentimentalised tyranny that Mrs. Palmer called “a mother’s rights.”

Geraldine was lying in bed, reading a paper novelette by the light of a candle stuck into an empty medicine bottle that stood on a chair beside her. She looked sallower than ever now that she had undressed and put on a white flannelette nightgown with a frill high at the neck and another one at each wrist.

Her lank hair was rolled up into steel waving-pins. It was one of Geraldine’s grievances that she should be obliged to go to bed in curlers every night, while Elsie’s light curls lay loose and ruffled on her pillow. Sometimes, when they were on friendly terms, she and Elsie would speculate together as to how the difficulty could be overcome when Geraldine married, and could no longer go to bed and wake up “looking a sight.”

She rolled over as Elsie cautiously opened the door. “You’ve come at last, have you? How did you get in?”

“Mr. Roberts let me in. He knew I’d be late to-night,” said Elsie calmly, beginning to pull off her clothes.

“You’ve got a nerve, I must say. Mother thinks you were in bed ages ago. She came up after supper and said you were in the kitchen. She was in the drawing-room nearly all the evening, doing the polite to the Williamses.”

“Did she find out that supper hadn’t been cleared away?”

“I suppose she didn’t, or she’d have been up here after you. You’re in luck, young Elsie.”

“I shall have to go down and do it first thing to-morrow before she’s down,” said Elsie, yawning.

“Where have you been?”

“Pictures.”

“With Ireen?”

“’M.”

“I shall ask her what they were like, next time I see her,” said Geraldine significantly.

Elsie pulled the ribbon off her hair without untying it, shuffled her clothes off on to the floor from beneath a nightgown that was the counterpart of her sister’s, and dabbed at her face with a sponge dipped in cold water. She carefully parted her hair on the other side for the night, and brushed it vigorously for some moments to promote growth, but the worn bristles of her wooden-backed brush were grey with dust and thick with ancient “combings.”

At the bedside Elsie knelt down for a few seconds with her face hidden in her hands, as she had always done, muttered an unthinking formula, and got into bed.

“You’re very sociable, I must say,” Geraldine exclaimed. “Out half the night, and not a word to say when you do come up!”

“I thought you had a headache.”

“A lot you care about my headache.”

“I’m going to put the light out now.”

“All right.”

They had always shared a bedroom and never exchanged formal good-nights.

In the dark, a tremendous weariness suddenly came over Elsie. She felt thankful to be in her warm, narrow bed, and blissfully relived the evening’s experience.

She found that she could thrill profoundly to the memory of those ardent moments, and even the bodily lassitude that overwhelmed her held a certain luxuriousness.

Dimly, and without any conscious analysis, she felt that for the first time in her sixteen years of life she had glimpsed a reason why she should exist. It was for this that she had been made.

No thought of the future preoccupied her for a moment. She did not even regret that Norman Roberts should be going away next day.

“I must get up in good time to-morrow, and get a word with him in the drawing-room before he’s off,” was her last waking thought.

But she was sleeping profoundly, her head under the bedclothes, when Mrs. Palmer’s customary bang at the door sounded next morning soon after six o’clock.

“Wake up, girls.”

“Awright!” Geraldine shouted back sleepily. If one or other of them did not call out in reply, Mrs. Palmer would come into the room in her grey dressing-gown and vigorously shake the bed-posts of either bed.

They could hear her heelless slippers flapping away again, and Elsie reluctantly roused herself.

“I simply must clear that supper-table before mother goes down,” she thought. Still half asleep, and yawning without restraint, she put on her thick coat over her nightgown, and ran downstairs with bare feet.

The broken remains of supper, even to Elsie’s indifferent eyes, looked horrible in the grim morning light.

She huddled everything out on a tray, pushed it out of sight in the back kitchen, and ran upstairs again, her teeth chattering with cold.

The still warm, tumbled bed was irresistible, and tearing off her coat, Elsie buried herself in it once more.

She slept through Geraldine’s sketchy, scrambled toilet and muttered abuse of her sister’s laziness, and did not stir even when her senior, as the most unpleasant thing she could do, opened her window, which had been closed all night, and let in the damp, raw, foggy morning air.

Elsie did not stir again until the door was flung open and Geraldine pulled the bedclothes off her roughly, and said angrily:

“Get up, you lazy little brute! I had to wash all the beastly things you left over last night, and mother and I had to do the breakfasts, and see that young Roberts off and everything.”

“Has Roberts gone?”

“Yes, of course he has. It’s past nine, you lazy pig, you——”

“Oh,” said Elsie indifferently, stretching herself.

III

For a 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 a fright. 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, they are nice people,” said Mrs. Palmer enthusiastically. “A solicitor, he is, and only just waiting to find a house. 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 that here?”

“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. She must be about fifteen years younger than he is, 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 actually seemed 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 it for, 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 you when 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 they are ladies.”

“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 the platform 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. “You are silly, 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.

IV

Elsie found the life at 8, Mortimer Crescent, a pleasant contrast to that of her own home.

Mrs. Woolley herself never came downstairs before half-past nine or ten o’clock, and then she was very often only partly dressed, wearing a stained and rumpled silk kimono and a dirty lace-and-ribbon-trimmed boudoir cap. Elsie’s only duty in the morning was to keep the two children quiet while their mother slept. This she achieved by the simple expedient of letting them go to bed so late at night that they lay like little logs far on into the morning.

Elsie shared a bedroom with Gladys, and Sonnie’s cot was in a dressing-room opening into theirs.

The children were rather pallid and unwholesome, never quite free from colds or coughs, and seeming too spiritless even to be naughty. They went to a kindergarten school from eleven to four o’clock every day, and Elsie took them there and fetched them away again.

During the daytime she was supposed to dust the dining-room, drawing-room, and Mrs. Woolley’s bedroom, but she soon found out that no accumulation of dust, cigarette ends, or actual dirt would ever be noticed by the mistress of the house.

There was a general servant, who was inclined to resent Elsie’s presence in the house, and who left very soon after her arrival. Another one came, and was sent away at the end of a week’s trial because Mrs. Woolley said she was impertinent, and after an uncomfortable interim, during which Elsie nominally “did” the cooking, and they lived upon tinned goods and pressed beef, there came a short-lived succession of maids who never stayed.

At first, Doctor Woolley was seldom seen by Elsie. He went out early, and both he and his wife were out nearly every night.

Mrs. Woolley told Elsie that they adored the theatre. Elsie, who adored it too, had on these occasions, after putting the two children to bed, to remain sulkily behind while Dr. and Mrs. Woolley, after an early meal, walked away together to the Underground station. Sometimes Dr. Woolley was sent for, and could not go, and Mrs. Woolley rang up one of her friends on the telephone—always another woman—and took her instead. One evening after this had happened, the doctor returned unexpectedly early, just as Elsie had finished putting Gladys and Sonnie to bed.

She was coming downstairs, some needlework in her hands, as the doctor slammed the hall door behind him. Instantly the prospect of a dreary evening, probably to be spent in sucking sweets and surreptitiously looking over everything on Mrs. Woolley’s untidy writing-table, disappeared.

“Hallo! And how was you to-morrow, Miss Elsie?” cried the doctor genially.

He was a stout, middle-aged man, jocose and very often foul-mouthed, with nicotine stains on his fingers and grease spots on his waistcoat.

He affected a manner of speech that Elsie found intensely amusing.

“You and I all on our ownie own, eh? Where’s the missus?—and the kids?”

“The children are in bed, and Mrs. Woolley’s gone to the play with Miss Smith, Doctor.”

“And haven’t you got a drink of cocoa and a bit of bread for a poor man, kind lady?”

Elsie burst out laughing. “You’re so silly, I can’t help laughing!”

“‘Silly,’ says she, quite the lady. ‘How’s that?’ says I; to which she says, ‘Not at all,’ says she, and the same to you and many of them,” was the doctor’s reply.

Elsie giggled wildly.

“Come along now, tell that slut in the kitchen to stir her stumps and bring some food to the dining-room. Have you had your supper yet?”

“No, Doctor.”

“Then you and I will make a party-carry, otherwise a tête-à-tête, otherwise a night of it. Run along and I’ll get out something that will make your hair curl.”

Elsie had heard this formula before, and understood that the doctor would unlock the door of the tiny wine-cellar and bring out a bottle.

She told the maid to bring supper for Doctor Woolley to the dining-room, but she herself carried in her own plate and cup and saucer, knowing that Florrie was quite aware she had already eaten her evening meal with Mrs. Woolley.

The doctor was drawing the cork out of a bottle as she came into the room. The electric light was turned on, and the small dining-room, with drawn red curtains, and the gas-fire burning, was bright and hot.

The doctor ate heavily of cold meat and pickles, prodding with a fork amongst the mixed contents of the glass jar until he had annexed all the pickled onions that it contained.

He made Elsie sit down and eat too, but he made no demur to her assurance that she wasn’t hungry and only wanted some cake and a cup of cocoa.

At first the doctor gave all his attention to the food and warmth of which he stood in need, and Elsie felt self-conscious, and as though she were out of place.

She ceased to answer his occasional facetious interjections, and threw herself back in her chair, gazing down at her own clasped hands.

Gradually the atmosphere of the room altered, and Elsie’s instinct told her that the current of magnetism that had never failed her yet was awakening its inevitable response in the man opposite.

At once she felt confident again, and at her ease.

“I say, why didn’t the missus take you to the theatre when she found I was busy?” he queried suddenly.

“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose she never thought of such a thing.”

“Wanted someone nearer her own age, eh? You won’t find the ladies running after someone younger and prettier than themselves, you know. Too much of a contrast.”

Elsie laughed self-consciously.

“All the better for me, eh? I’m not often allowed to get you all to myself like this, eh? Ah, when I was a gay young bacheldore things was different, they was.”

Elsie laughed again, this time in spontaneous tribute to the humour of wilful mis-pronunciation.

“Now, what about this bottle that you made me get out, eh? Where are the glasses?”

He found two in the cupboard of the carved walnut sideboard, and poured a liberal allowance of port from the bottle into each.

“Oh, I couldn’t, Doctor! You must excuse me, really you must. I simply couldn’t.”

“Oh, couldn’t you, really, awfully, truly couldn’t?” he mimicked in exaggerated falsetto. “Well, you’ve got to—so that’s that!”

“Who says so?”

“I say so. I. Moi. ‘Je,’ replies I, knowing the language. Come along now, be a good girl.”

He laid his big coarse hand on hers, and at the contact the familiar thrill of sensuous excitement and pleasure ran through her.

“Are you going to drink it?” he said masterfully.

“Oh, I suppose I must try it. I’ve never tasted wine before,” Elsie added truthfully.

“High time you began, then.”

He went back to his place, and drank in long gulps, first saying:

“Our hands have met—our lips not yet—

Here’s hoping!”

Elsie sipped at her glass, choked, and put it down again. “How beastly!” she said, shuddering.

“You’ll get used to it.”

“No, I shan’t, because I’m not going to touch the horrid stuff again.”

“We’ll see about that.”

He came round beside her again, and held her with one arm while he tried to force the glass to her lips.

Elsie turned her head aside, struggling and laughing.

“You young monkey!” said the doctor, and forced her face upwards with his free hand.

His breath was in her face, and his inflamed eyes gazing into hers. Instinctively Elsie ceased to struggle and closed her eyes.

He kissed her mouth violently. “God! You haven’t got much to learn. Who’s been teaching you?” he asked her roughly.

“Oh, you oughtn’t to have done that,” said Elsie feebly.

“Rubbish! You know I’ve been thinking of nothing else since you’ve been here.”

He sat down and pulled her on to his knee. “Now tell me all about it,” he commanded. His manner was no longer facetious, and he had dropped his jocosities of speech.

“Let me go,” said Elsie.

“Sit still.”

“Suppose someone were to come in?”

“No one will.”

She wriggled a little, half-heartedly, and he gripped her more firmly round the waist. The scene degenerated into a sort of scrambling orgy of animalism.

Elsie, although she was frightened, was also exhilarated at the evidence that she possessed power over a man—and a married man—so much older than herself.

She knew that if at any moment he became unmanageable, she had only to threaten to call the servant, and she fully intended to do so as a last resort. But in the meanwhile there was an odd and breathless fascination in feeling that she stood so close to a peril in which lay all the lurking excitement of the unknown.

A sudden wail from the room overhead startled them both.

“That’s Sonnie!” gasped Elsie.

“Oh, blast the kid!”

But he let her go and she flew upstairs, glad, and yet disappointed, at her release.

She dismissed Sonnie’s nightmare with sharp injunctions not to be silly, tucked him up and decided to go to her own room and not to return downstairs.

“That’ll show him,” she murmured, simulating to herself a conventional indignation.

In reality, she was intensely excited, and she had been tossing about her bed restlessly for nearly an hour before reaction overtook her, and she became prey to a strange, baffled feeling of having been cheated of the climax due to so emotional an episode.

When at last Elsie slept, it was after she had heard Mrs. Woolley come in and the doctor bolt the hall door and both of them go upstairs to their bedroom, on the other side of the landing.

Every day now held the potentialities of amorous adventure.

Sometimes Elsie did not see the doctor all day long, sometimes they met in the evenings, with Mrs. Woolley present, and he talked in the old facetious style, watching Elsie furtively as she giggled in response.

He very often made excuses for passing things to her at meals, so that their hands touched, and he pressed her foot under the table with his big one, or rubbed it up and down her ankle.

There were moments, however, when they were alone together, and then he pulled her to him and kissed her roughly all over her face and neck, pushing her abruptly away at the first possibility of interruption. Once or twice, at the imminent risk of being discovered, he had snatched hasty and provocative kisses from her lips in a chance encounter on the stairs, or even behind the shelter of an open door.

The perpetual fear of detection, no less than the tantalising incompleteness of their relations, was a strain upon Elsie’s nerves, and she was keyed up to a pitch of unusual sensitiveness when the inevitable crisis came.

Mrs. Woolley, in a new blue dress that looked too tight under the arms, had taken the children to a party.

The maid Florrie was out for the afternoon. Elsie, restless and on edge, terribly wanted an excuse to go down to the surgery. At last she found one, and after listening at the door to make certain that no belated patient was with the doctor, she knocked.

“Come in!”

He was sitting at the writing-table, rapidly turning over the leaves of a big book.

“Elsie!”

“Oh, if you please, Doctor,” she minced, “they’ve all gone out, and Mrs. Woolley left a message to say if you could go and fetch her and the children from 85, Lower Park Avenue, about seven o’clock——”

“Stow it, Elsie! D’you mean to say you and I are the only people left in the place? Where’s that damned slut in the kitchen, eh?”

“It’s Florrie’s afternoon out, Doctor, but——”

“Florrie be damned! Look here, Elsie, this sort of thing can’t go on.”

She backed until she stood against the wall, feeling the warm blood surge into her face and looking at him through half-closed eyelids.

“What sort of thing?”

“You know very well what I mean. Look at me. D’you think I’m a man?”

He thrust out his chest and doubled up his arms, standing with his legs wide apart. In spite of his grossness and unwholesome fat, Elsie thrilled to the suggestion of his masculine strength.

“Yes,” she murmured.

“Well, I tell you no man’s going to stand what you’re making me stand. Elsie, you little devil! Don’t you know you’re driving me mad? God, if I could tell you the sort of dreams I get at night, now!”

“About me?” she asked curiously.

“Shut up!” His voice was savage, and she suddenly saw sweat glistening on his upper lip and round his nose.

Elsie decided to begin to cry. “It frightens me when you shout at me like that. Perhaps I’d better go,” she said sobbingly.

“No, no, no! I say, what a brute I am! Come here and be comforted, little girl.”

He sat down heavily in the revolving chair before the writing-table and held out his hand.

Elsie advanced slowly, without looking at him, until she came within reach of his arm. Then he caught hold of her and drew her on to his knee, gripping her tightly until her weight sank against his shoulder.

“Let me kiss all the tears away. What a hound I am to make you cry! Was’ums very mis’mis?”

He petted and soothed her, kissing the back of her neck and her dust-coloured curls, murmuring absurd, infantile phrases.

Presently he whispered: “D’you love me?”

Elsie laughed and would not answer, and he struggled with her playfully, pulling her about, and grasping at her with his big hands.

After the horse-play, she put both arms round his neck and lay still.

“I want to know something,” said Doctor Woolley slowly.

“What’s that?”

“Don’t you know more than a good little girl ought to know?”

“What about?”

“About—life. About being kissed, for instance. I’m not the first, my girl, not by a long, long way. You’re the sort that begins early, I know.”

“You’ve a nerve!” Elsie ejaculated, not knowing what to say.

“Well, it’s true what I’m saying, isn’t it? I mean, you’ve let fellows kiss you?”

“Just boys, perhaps.”

“Hasn’t anyone taught you anything besides kissing, eh?”

“Of course not! What do you take me for, I’d like to know? Mother brought up me and my sister like ladies, let me tell you. Besides, I don’t know what you’re driving at, I’m sure.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then I’ll show you.”

“No!” screamed Elsie in a sudden, only half-assumed, panic.

She sprang up, but he pulled her back again.

“You silly little fool! You don’t suppose I’d really say or do anything to frighten you, do you? Why, you’re much too precious.”

He kissed her again and again.

“Tell me one thing, though. You did know what I meant, didn’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

“Of course you did! A girl like you couldn’t help knowing. My God, I wish I’d known you ten years ago. I wasn’t married then.”

“You oughtn’t to talk like that.”

“Why not? It’s true. Amy’s as cold as ice—not a real woman at all. And she’s as jealous as the devil. I’ve always wondered why she let anyone like you come into the house at all. It’s a miracle she hasn’t spotted us yet.”

“It’d be all up with me being here if she did,” said Elsie shrewdly.

“If you go, I swear I’ll go with you,” said Doctor Woolley, but he said it without conviction, and Elsie knew it. “Can’t do without you, little one, at any price, now. But you’ve got to be even sweeter than you’ve been to me yet.”

Elsie shivered a little, excited and disturbed, and in part genuinely shocked.

“When will you, Elsie?”

His breath on her neck was hot and hurried.

She jumped off his knee. “Oh, look, it’s getting on for half-past six! You’ll have to be off.”

“Come back! You haven’t told me what I want to know yet.” He grabbed at her dress.

“Listen!” cried Elsie.

In the second during which he turned, arrested, she slipped out of the room.

Her heart was beating very fast, and her face burning.

She half expected him to follow her, but he did not do so; and she was partly relieved and partly disappointed.

She saw him again at supper, which the Woolleys always called dinner, and the consciousness between them caused a singular constraint to pervade the atmosphere. Mrs. Woolley, for the first time, seemed to be aware of it, and every now and then turned sharp, bulging brown eyes from her husband to Elsie, compressing her thin lips until they formed a mere hard line in her red face.

When the meal was finished, she told Elsie to go upstairs and fetch one of her evening dresses. “I want to see if I can’t smarten it up a bit,” she explained. “I’m in rags, not fit to be seen.”

“I’ll stand you a new frock, Amy,” said the doctor suddenly. “How much d’you want, eh?”

“Oh! Why, whatever’s up, Herbert? I’m sure it’s ages since I’ve had a thing, and I’d be only too delighted——”

She broke off.

“Run up, Elsie, will you? The primrose dress, with the black lace, in the left-hand corner of my wardrobe....”

Elsie went, envious of the new dress, and at the same time thinking mockingly of Mrs. Woolley’s mottled skin and the lines that ran from her heavy nostrils to her sagging chin. Dresses and jewellery ought to be for girls who were young and pretty, not married women, plain and stout, like Mrs. Woolley. When Elsie came down again the doctor had gone, and Mrs. Woolley was in high good humour.

“I’ll get some tulle to-morrow, Elsie, and we can freshen it up round the neck and sleeves. You’d better rip off all this old stuff. And look here—you’re handy with your fingers—you can take the lace off and put it on that old navy blouse of mine, that’s got no collar. You know the one I mean ... you can drape it a bit....”

Elsie assented rather sulkily.

“Doctor Woolley’s so generous,” said Mrs. Woolley complacently. “He’s for ever giving me things, me and the children. If you knew more of the world, Elsie, you’d realise how lucky a woman is when she gets a hubby like mine who’s never so much as looked at another woman since he married. Some men aren’t like that, I can tell you. The tales I could let out, if I cared to, that I’ve heard from some! But if Doctor Woolley’s manner sometimes puts ideas into people’s heads, why, they’ve only themselves to blame is what I always say. He wouldn’t give a thought to anyone but me, not really.”

She looked full at Elsie as she spoke, and Elsie stared back at her.

The girl was puzzled and angry, not feeling certain that she knew whether Mrs. Woolley really believed her own words, or was using them to convey an oblique warning.

“If she really imagines that, she must be a fool,” thought Elsie contemptuously, only to veer round uneasily a moment later to the conviction that Mrs. Woolley had been talking at her.

It was the latter unpleasant belief that prevailed, without possibility of mistake, in the course of the next few days. Whenever the doctor was in the house, Mrs. Woolley made a point of remaining at his side, and during the hours when he was in the surgery she kept Elsie employed with the children, every now and then coming to look in on her with excuses that were always transparently flimsy.

The tension in the atmosphere pervaded the whole house.

At last one afternoon, when Gladys and Sonnie were at school, and Mrs. Woolley in the drawing-room with an unexpected caller, Elsie and the doctor met upon the stairs.

She knew that she was looking her worst, strained and overwrought, and with the odd Japanese aspect of her eyes and cheek-bones intensified. Even her hair felt limp and unresilient.

She looked at the doctor rather piteously, envisaging to herself her own unprepossessing appearance, and wishing that she had at least powdered her face recently.

“Where’s Amy?”

“In the drawing-room, with a lady visitor.”

“Thank God! I’ve been hag-ridden for the last week. What the devil’s up, Elsie?”

“I don’t know,” she murmured. “At least, I know Mrs. Woolley’s been horrid to me lately, that’s all.”

“She has, has she?” he muttered furiously. “Here—come in here.”

He drew her into the shelter of the nearest doorway.

“Elsie, I’m mad about you. This sort of thing can’t go on—it’s simply hell.”

“Oh, hush, someone’ll hear....”

“I don’t care who hears!” But he lowered his voice. “I haven’t had a kiss from you for days—quick!”

Their lips met.

“You dear little girl! Is she being a beast to you?”

Elsie, in his embrace, started violently. “Someone coming upstairs!” she hissed.

He stood motionless to listen, waited a second too long, and then sharply shut the door.

“Florrie!” Elsie whispered in a frightened voice. “Did she see us?”

“No, no—not a chance. Or, if she did, she only saw me. She won’t think anything of that.”

“She’s gone upstairs—I must go.”

“No, don’t. I tell you it’s all right. Hang it, Elsie, when am I going to get a word with you again?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think I shall go home again.” She was half crying.

“Elsie, d’you know Amy’s going out to-morrow night? She’s going to see her friend, that Williams woman, who’s ill.”

“What, the one that was at mother’s place?”

“Yes—yes—but they’re in their own house now. It’ll take her all the evening to get there and back, pretty nearly.”

“She won’t go.”

“Yes, she will. I shall tell her I’m going off to a case at Roehampton or somewhere, and that I shan’t be back till late.”

“Oh, don’t. It simply isn’t safe.”

“It’s quite safe, you little fool. You and me have got to come to an understanding, I can’t stand this life another minute. Look here, we’ll go out somewhere together.”

“No, no! That’d be much worse. Sonnie always wakes up, and he’ll scream himself into a fit if I’m not there, and then Florrie would know——”

“I forgot the kids. Elsie—Gladys sleeps in your room doesn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Elsie, suddenly flushing scarlet.

He laughed abruptly, scanning her face with hungry eyes. “I’ll have a fire in the surgery. We’ll go down there. Florrie knows better than to put her foot inside it,” said Doctor Woolley significantly.

V

It was two days later.

Florrie and Mrs. Woolley were talking in the kitchen. Elsie hung about in the diminutive passage, trying desperately to hear what they were saying. An awful intuition gripped her that they were talking of her.

Florrie’s voice was indistinct, almost inaudible, but snatched phrases rose occasionally from the angry monotone that was Mrs. Woolley’s.

“... My innocent children ... turn my back ... the gutter ... don’t you talk to me ... the gutter ... out of the gutter....”

Elsie tried wildly to persuade herself that Mrs. Woolley was abusing Florrie. Sometimes she lost her temper with her servants, and shouted at them.

On the evening that Mrs. Woolley had gone to see her friend Mrs. Williams, who was reported very ill, Elsie, in her best frock, had boldly gone into the surgery, where a fire blazed, and there was a sofa newly piled with cushions. On the table had been placed a bottle and glasses and a dish of biscuits. Doctor Woolley had locked the door behind her, in spite of Elsie’s half-meant protests, but at first he had been entirely jovial, using catch-phrases that had made her laugh, and drinking heartily.

She herself had begun to feel rather affronted and puzzled at his aloofness, before it suddenly came to an end.

The remembrance of her own surrender rather bewildered Elsie. She had never consciously made up her mind to it, but the doctor’s urgency, her own physical susceptibility, and an underlying, violent curiosity had proved far too strong for her feeble defences, based on timidity and on the recollection of certain unexplained, and less-than-half-understood, arbitrary axioms laid down during her childhood by her mother.

She supposed that that one half-hour in the surgery had made “a bad girl” of her, but the aspect of the case that really preoccupied her was her terror that Mrs. Woolley should have found it out.

She felt sick with fright as the kitchen door opened, and, turning round, pretended to be looking for something in the housemaid’s closet under the stairs.

She heard Mrs. Woolley brush past her and go into the drawing-room, slamming the door violently behind her.

Elsie, her knees shaking, went upstairs to fetch Gladys and Sonnie and take them to their kindergarten.

She dawdled on the way back, being unwilling to go into the house again, and alternately hoping and dreading that the doctor would be at home for the midday meal.

At one o’clock, however, Mrs. Woolley and Elsie sat down without him.

Mrs. Woolley did not speak to Elsie. She kept on looking at her, and then looking away again. Her hard face was inscrutable, but Elsie noticed that her hands, manipulating her knife and fork, shook slightly. The doctor came in before the meal was over, jaunty and talkative.

“Hallo! Is this Wednesday, or Piccadilly, or what? Which I mean to say is, has the cold meat stage been passed and the rice pudding come on, or contrarywise?”

Elsie burst into nervous laughter, the strident sound of which caused the doctor to glance at her sharply, and Mrs. Woolley said:

“Nonsense, Herbert! The way you talk, sometimes! The girl has got your meat and vegetables keeping hot in the oven, and I’m sure you haven’t seen rice pudding at the table for a fortnight. There’s a nice piece of cheese on the side, too.”

The doctor ate in silence, voraciously, as he always did, and his wife presently said in a thin, vicious voice:

“Of course, you’ve nothing to say to your wife, Herbert. It’s easy enough to talk and be amusing with strangers, isn’t it?—but I suppose it isn’t worth while in your own home.”

“What’s up, Amy?” he growled. He did not look at Elsie, who found herself fixing apprehensive eyes on him, although she knew it was a betrayal.

“Why should anything be up, as you call it? But as it isn’t very amusing for me to sit here all day while you eat, and as I happen to be rather busy, strange though it may seem, I think I’ll ask you to excuse me.”

She turned her head towards Elsie, but spoke without looking at her. “I’ll thank you to come and find that paper pattern for Gladys’s smock. The child isn’t fit to be seen.”

Mrs. Woolley pushed Elsie out of the room in front of her, making it obvious that she meant her to have no opportunity of exchanging a look with the doctor.

Throughout the afternoon she never let the girl out of her sight until Elsie had actually left the house to go and fetch the two children from school.

It was abundantly evident that a crisis impended. The atmospheric tension affected everyone in the house, and Elsie, her nerves on edge, became frantic.

She said, immediately after supper, that she was tired, and should go to bed, and Mrs. Woolley laughed, shortly and sarcastically.

Elsie went up to her room and cried hysterically on her bed until Gladys woke and began to whine enquiries.

It seemed impossible, to Elsie’s inexperience, that the horrors of that day should repeat themselves, but the next one was Sunday, and brought its own miseries.

The doctor, who did not go to church as a rule, announced his intention of accompanying his family, and they set out, a constrained procession: Gladys, in tight black boots and with fair hair crimped round her shoulders, holding her father’s hand, Mrs. Woolley, walking just a little faster than was comfortable for Sonnie’s short legs, clutching the boy’s hand, and Elsie slouching a pace or two behind, cold and wretched.

At the bottom of the Crescent they met an elderly couple who often came to see them, and whom Elsie knew well by name as Mr. and Mrs. Loman.

The encounter broke up the procession, and caused a readjustment of places. Mrs. Woolley was at once claimed by the sallow, spectacled Mrs. Loman, and the children, with shrill acclamations, ran to her husband, Sonnie’s godfather and the purveyor of many small treats and presents.

The doctor, after a loud and boisterous greeting, boldly joined Elsie, and both of them dropped behind the others.

“Oh, I’ve wanted so to speak to you!” gasped Elsie.

“Shut up—don’t make a fuss now, there’s a good girl. Keep a cheery face on you, for God’s sake, or we shall give the show away worse than we’ve done already.”

Mrs. Woolley turned round. “Herbert, Mrs. Loman is just saying that she hasn’t set eyes on you for ages. Come and give an account of yourself.”

She spoke in a thin, artificial voice, but her eyes blazed a command at him.

The doctor stared back at her, insolent security in his manner. “Thankee, Amy, but I wouldn’t interrupt a ladies’ confab. for the world. Go on about your sky-blue-purple Sunday-go-to-meeting costumes, and I’ll keep Elsie company.”

Mrs. Loman laughed and the doctor grinned back at her.

White patches had appeared on the mottled surface of Mrs. Woolley’s face, but she made no rejoinder.

Doctor Woolley turned to Elsie again, the merriment dropping from his manner. “That’ll shut her up for a bit,” he said between his teeth. “Has she been giving you gyp, Elsie?”

“Oh, it’s been awful. I’m certain she’s found out.”

“How?”

“That Florrie, I suppose.”

“Damn Florrie and her mischief-making! Well, kiddie, the fat’s in the fire. I’m afraid there’s only one thing for it.”

“What?”

“Why—why, my dear child, don’t you see for yourself—you’ll have to clear out of here. No use waiting for Amy to make a bloody row, now is there? If you simply say you’re going home again, she won’t have a leg to stand on. And if it wasn’t for—for the kids, I’d go with you.”

“You wouldn’t,” said Elsie bitterly. “I may be a bit green, but I’m not green enough to swallow that.”

“Don’t talk like that,” said Doctor Woolley. He slipped his hand under her arm, and at the contact, jaded and miserable as she was, her pulses leapt. His fingers squeezed her arm.

“We’ve had some happy times together, little girl, eh?” he murmured in a sentimental voice. “And don’t you see that when you’re on your own again we can meet ever so much more freely. I want—you know what I want, don’t you, Elsie?”

She did not respond. “What I want, is to know what’ll happen to me if I go back to mother and say I’ve left Mrs. Woolley. You don’t suppose she, and my sister and my aunts, aren’t going to ask what’s happened, do you?”

“Well, you can tell them something,” said the doctor impatiently. “A clever girl like you, Elsie, surely you can think of something. Besides, everybody knows that a pretty girl doesn’t always hit it off with a woman older than herself. There’s nothing wonderful in that. Damnation, they’re stopping!”

“Here we are,” said Elsie.

He withdrew his arm hastily from hers after a final pressure.

Mrs. Woolley and her friend were already standing at the church steps, and both of them fixed their eyes on Elsie and the doctor as they came up. Elsie saw Mrs. Woolley touch the other woman’s elbow, and guessed at, rather than heard, the words coming from between her teeth:

“Look at that, now—look at that.”

On Mrs. Loman’s face was an expression of mingled eagerness, curiosity, and disgust. It was evident that Mrs. Woolley had spoken freely of her wrongs.

Elsie spent her time in church in wondering whether it would yet be possible to blunt Mrs. Woolley’s suspicions, or whether she dared face her mother with a made-up story to account for her return.

She was still young enough to have a furtive dread that her mother must be omniscient in her regard, and she was afraid that Mrs. Palmer would somehow guess at her lapse and tax her with it.

Elsie had very often lied to her mother before, but not with any conspicuous success, and she felt just now strangely shaken and unnerved, physically and morally.

When they came out of church, the Lomans hospitably pressed their friends to return with them, share the hot Sunday dinner, and spend the afternoon. The children were specifically included, but Mrs. Loman glanced in Elsie’s direction, and then looked back at Mrs. Woolley, raising her eyebrows.

“You’d better go and see your mother this afternoon,” said Mrs. Woolley coldly. “Go home first and tell Florrie we shall be out, and she can lock up the house and go out for a bit herself. Tell her she must be back by five.”

“All right,” said Elsie lifelessly.

She turned on her heel, when a sudden shout stopped her.

“Post those letters of mine, will you?” said Doctor Woolley very loudly. “You’ll find them in”—he came nearer to her—“wait in till I come,” he muttered almost inaudibly, and rejoined his wife before Elsie had taken in the meaning of his words. It came to her afterwards, and the renewed sense of intrigue very slightly relieved the dull misery pervading her.

At No. 8, Mortimer Crescent, the hot joint was taken out of the oven and left to grow cold, but Florrie had made a Yorkshire pudding, and she and Elsie ate it for their dinner, and added pickles and bread and cheese and cake to the meal. Very soon afterwards, Florrie announced that she was going off at once.

“So am I,” said Elsie. “I told her I’d lock up the house. Mind you’re in by five.”

“That’s as it may be,” haughtily said Florrie, with a venomous glance. Elsie felt far too tired to quarrel with the maid, as she had often done before, and when Florrie was actually gone she went upstairs and lay down on her bed. It was nearly three o’clock before a cautious sound from below betrayed the return of the doctor.

Elsie rose and automatically glanced at herself in the looking-glass. One side of her face was flushed, her eyes looked small and swollen-lidded, and her hair was disordered. She dabbed powder on her face and pulled her wave of hair further down over her forehead before going downstairs.

The doctor was hanging up his hat on the crowded hooks that lined one side of the wall in the tiny entrance lobby.

“Coast clear?”

Elsie nodded.

“Sure?”

“Absolutely.” She held out the key of the house door. “I’ve locked up at the back.”

“Then I’ll lock up at the front,” said Doctor Woolley, and did so.

“My God, we’re in a bloody mess,” he began, turning round and facing Elsie.

Desperate, she ran forward and threw herself into his arms, instinctively seeking the only reassurance she knew, that of physical contact.

The doctor suddenly buried his face in her hair, then forced her face upwards and kissed her passionately.

They clung to one another.

At last he released his clasp, only keeping one arm round her waist.

“Where can we go? We’ll have to settle something, and Lord knows when I shall get another chance of speaking to you, with that hell-cat on the warpath. I’ve had the deuce and all of a time getting here now, and we must both clear out of the place before she and the kids get back. Put on your hat and coat, old girl, and come along.”

“Where to?”

“Where I take you,” said the doctor brusquely.

When she came down again, he hurried her out of the house, locking the door again behind them, and putting the key under the scraper, where it was always looked for on Sunday.

“Taxi!”

The doctor hailed a passing taxi and made Elsie get into it.

He gave the address of a hotel in a street of which she had never heard.

“Where are we going to?”

“Somewhere where I can talk to you.”

He passed his arm round her again, and she made no pretence of resistance, but lay against him, letting him play with her hand and occasionally bend his head down to kiss her lips.

Elsie had slept very little for the past three nights; she had shed tears, and she had been subject to a continual nervous strain. By the time that the taxi stopped she was almost dozing, and it was in a half-dazed state that she followed Dr. Woolley into the dingy hall of a high building and, after a very short parley with a stout man in evening dress, to an upstairs sitting-room.

She asked nothing better than to sink on to the narrow couch in a corner of the room and let herself be petted and caressed, but after a time her wearied senses awoke, and told her that the man beside her was becoming restive and excited.

“Look here, Elsie,” he said finally, “you’re a beguiling little witch, you are—but we’ve got to come down to hard facts. I’m going to order you a pick-me-up, and have one myself, and then we can talk about what’s to be done next. I’ve got to be home again, worse luck, by seven o’clock. I’m supposed to have had an urgent call to Amy’s friend, Mrs. Williams. She’s ill enough, poor soul, in all conscience, and I’ll have to go there before I go home. Now then, what’ll you have?”

“Tea,” said Elsie.

He laughed. “Women are all alike! You can have your tea—poisonous stuff, tincture of tannin—and I’ll order what I think’s good for you to go with it. Wait here till I come back.”

He went out, and Elsie, already revived and stimulated, flew to the spotted and discoloured looking-glass, and took out her pocket-comb to rearrange her curls.

She actually enjoyed the hot, strong tea when it came, and her spirits suddenly rose to a boisterous pitch.

They both laughed loudly at the faces that Elsie made over the bottle that the doctor had obtained, and from which he repeatedly helped himself and her, and although they kept on telling one another that they must talk seriously, their hilarity kept on increasing. At last he began to make violent love to her, and Elsie responded coquettishly, luring him on by glance and gesture, while her tongue uttered glib and meaningless protests. Very soon, her flimsy defences gave way altogether, and she had ceded to him everything that he asked.

Then the inevitable reaction overtook her, and she cried, and called herself a wicked girl, and finally sank limply into a corner of the taxi that Dr. Woolley had summoned to the door of the hotel.

He got in beside her. “Buck up, little girl!” he cried urgently. “You’ll be at No. 8 in no time, and we don’t want Amy asking awkward questions. Look here, I’ll put you down at the corner of the Crescent, and you can walk to the house. The air’ll do you good, and besides, we can’t be seen together. I’m off to that wretched Williams woman, and I’m not going to be in till late.”

Elsie continued to sob.

“Come, come, come—pull yourself to pieces,” Doctor Woolley tried to make her laugh. “We’ve not settled anything, but we’ve had our time together. Ah, a little love is a great thing in a world like this one, Elsie. Thank you for being so sweet to me, little girl.”

He kissed her hastily, with a perfunctoriness of which she was aware.

When the taxi stopped in the main thoroughfare, a little way before the turning into Mortimer Crescent, he almost shoved her on to the pavement.

“Don’t forget—you’ve been out ever since dinner-time, and you imagine me to have been in the buzzim of my family enjoying back chat with the old Lomans. Don’t say anything about that, though, unless you’re asked. Tell the man to drive like blazes now, will you?”

Elsie mechanically obeyed.

Then she dragged herself to No. 8. Her ring was answered by Florrie.

The little servant girl was grinning maliciously. “She’s in the d—’s own temper and all, and you’re going to catch it hot and strong for leaving her to put the children to bed.”

“Mind your own business, Florrie,” said Elsie, pushing past her.

She affected not to hear the single word that the servant flung at her back, but it made her wince.

In the bedroom she found Gladys already in bed, wide awake.

“Mother put us to bed. She was awfully cross, and she slapped Sonnie twice and me once.”

“What for?”

“Oh, because I whined, she said. And she slapped Sonnie when he told her about Dadda being so funny with you. You didn’t know we saw one day,” giggled Gladys.

“Saw what?”

“One day when Dadda kissed you and Sonnie and I saw, over the banisters, and we laughed, but you didn’t hear us.”

“You little viper!” muttered Elsie between her teeth. “I’d like to kill you, I would.”

Gladys alternately giggled and whined, and Elsie was quite unable to distinguish whether the child was really malicious or simply amused by something to which she attached no meaning.

“Anyway, if she’s told her mother, it’s all up,” thought Elsie.

She saw that there was nothing for it but to leave Mortimer Crescent, and spent a miserable night wondering what to say to her mother and sister.

At midnight she heard the sound of the doctor’s key in the front door and his heavy foot on the stairs. He paused outside her door for some seconds, then she heard him go into his wife’s room.

Elsie tossed about in her narrow bed. Her present dilemma frightened her, and she had a vague, irrational idea that some awful and horrible penalty always descended sooner or later upon girls who had done as she had done. These fears, and her lack of any vivid imagination, had dulled her emotional susceptibilities, and she scarcely felt regret at the thought of no longer seeing the doctor. He now stood to her for the symbol of an assuaged desire, the fulfilment of which had brought about her present miseries. Nevertheless, at the back of her consciousness was latent the conviction that never again would she be satisfied with the clumsy demonstrations and meaningless contacts of her intercourse with the boys and youths whom she had known at home.

It seemed to her next morning that she was wholly ugly. Her complexion looked sodden and her eyes were nearly invisible. Her mouth, in some odd way, seemed to have swollen. No one could have called her pretty, and to anyone who had seen her in good looks she would have been almost unrecognisable. Mrs. Woolley, coming downstairs at ten o’clock, eyed her with a malignant satisfaction.

“Perhaps,” she said, “you won’t be altogether surprised to hear that I’m going to make some changes. You’d better pack your box, and go home to your mother, I think.”

“I was going to tell you that I couldn’t stay on here any longer,” said Elsie swiftly. “The ways of the house aren’t what I’ve been used to, Mrs. Woolley.”

In a flash, Mrs. Woolley had turned nasty, and Elsie had seen her own unwisdom.

“Oh, aren’t they indeed? Perhaps you’d be so kind as to tell me what you are used to—or shall I tell you?”

Then she suddenly raised her voice almost to a scream and poured out a torrent of abuse and invective, and the two children crept in from the hall and began to cry, and to make faces at Elsie, and demonstrations of hitting her with their little hands, and the servant Florrie held the door half open, so that she might see and hear it all.

Elsie screamed back again at Mrs. Woolley, but she had neither the fluency nor the determination of the older woman, and she was unable to prevent herself from bursting into tears and sobs.

Finally Mrs. Woolley drove her out of the room, standing at the foot of the stairs while Elsie ran up to pull on her best hat and coat, and forbidding the children to follow her.

“Don’t go near her, my pets—she’s a wicked girl, that’s what she is—not fit to be in the same house as innocent little children. Now then, out you go, miss, before I send for the police.”

“I’ll go,” said Elsie, shaking from head to foot, “and I’ll never set foot in your filthy house again. And I’ll send for my trunk and for every penny you owe me, and I’ll have the law on you for insinuations on my character.”

Then she dashed out of the house and into the street.

VI

Elsie’s return 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 know you, 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 from me. 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 because of 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 a macabre nature.

The young clerk came back, and took them into a small room 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 introducing that Mrs. 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, of course. 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 end for 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 by himself, 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 against the 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.

VII

“When do you want to take your holiday, Elsie?”

“I’m not particular.”

“Your mother will want you to get a breath of sea-air, I suppose.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Elsie. “Mother’s not awfully struck on going away.”

It was late July, and between Elsie and her employer a curious, secret relationship had been established, at present only symbolised by occasional furtive touches of his hand on her neck or her dress, and a continual exchange of glances, steady and compelling on Williams’s side, and responded to by Elsie almost against her own will.

Her typewriting table had been moved into his office, and she sat there nearly all day.

He spoke to her very little, but she was now always intensely conscious of his presence, and of her own effect upon him.

At first she did not understand to what his questions about the holidays were leading.

Next day, he spoke about them again.

“Shouldn’t you like to go to Brighton—some place like that?”

“Rather.”

“I often run down there myself from Saturday to Monday.”

Mr. Williams looked at her more attentively than ever, and Elsie felt the blood creep up into her face. She knew that she blushed easily and deeply, and that men enjoyed seeing her blush.

“That hasn’t got anything to do with me,” she stammered, at once excited and confused.

“Hasn’t it?”

“Mr. Williams!”

He glanced cautiously at the door, and then lowered his voice. “Look here, my dear child, I’m old enough to be your father and—and my dear late wife took quite a fancy to you. Surely you and I understand one another well enough to take a little holiday jaunt together without anyone but our two selves being any the wiser.”

Elsie had not really expected the suggestion, and she was startled, but also triumphant.

“Whatever do you mean, Mr. Williams?”

He smiled, a small, thin-lipped smile, that held a suggestion of cynical mockery at her transparent pretence.

“Only what I say. I’m a poor, lonely fellow, with a little bit of money and no one to spend it on, and if I go to a nice hotel for the week-end I want someone to keep me company. Think over it, Elsie. You quite understand that I’m not asking anything of you—you’re as safe with me as if I were your father. Just a pretty face opposite me at meals, and a smartly dressed little companion to take out for a walk on the front or to the theatre on Saturday night—that’s all I want.”

“Oh, I daresay,” said Elsie.

His face stiffened, and she felt immediately that she had made a mistake.

“It’s awfully kind of you to think of such a thing, Mr. Williams, but I really couldn’t dream of it. Why, I don’t know what mother would think——”

“Of course, it’s a very conventional world,” said Mr. Williams gravely. “You and I would know well enough that our little adventure was most innocent, but we don’t want anyone to think or say otherwise. So I propose, Elsie, that we should keep it to ourselves. I presume it would be easy to tell your mother that you were staying with a friend?”

“Well—there’s Ireen Tidmarsh, a young lady I often go with. I could say I was going to her.”

“Just so. After all, you’re of an age to manage your own affairs.”

Elsie swelled with gratified vanity. She loved to be told that she was grown up.

“Well, what about the August Bank Holiday week-end? I could meet you at the booking office at Victoria Station on the Saturday, and we could travel back together on the Tuesday morning. I’d like to show you something of life, Elsie.”

He moistened his lips with his tongue as he spoke the words.

Elsie wished desperately that she could feel attracted by him, as she had been by Doctor Woolley. But Mr. Williams, physically, rather revolted her.

“Oh, I couldn’t!” she repeated faintly.

He was very patient. “No expense, of course. And if you’d like a new hat or an evening frock, Elsie, or a pretty set of those silk things that girls wear underneath, why, I hope you’ll let me have the privilege of providing them. You can choose what you like and bring me the bill—only go to a West End shop. Nothing shoddy.”

Elsie was breathless at his munificence, and she longed wildly for the evening dress, and the silk underwear. Pale pink crêpe....

Perhaps it would be worth it.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t ask me to do anything that wasn’t perfectly right, Mr. Williams,” she said demurely.

“I am glad you feel that. I’m glad you trust me,” he solemnly replied.

“Of course I do.”

“Then that’s our secret. We need take no one into our confidence, Elsie, you understand. The arrangement is a perfectly innocent and natural little pleasure that you and I are going to share, but people are very often coarse-minded and censorious, and I would not wish to expose either of us to unpleasant comments. You’ll remember that, and keep it to yourself?”

“Oh, yes,” said Elsie.

That night as she was going to bed, she critically examined her own underwear. Her chemise and drawers were coarse, she wore no stays, and the garters that held up her transparent lisle-thread stockings were plain bands of grimy white elastic. Her short petticoat was white, with a torn flounce, and only the camisole, which showed beneath her transparent blouses, was trimmed with imitation Valenciennes lace and threaded with papery blue ribbons.

“What you doing, Elsie?” grumbled Geraldine from her bed. “Get into bed, do; I want to go to sleep.”

“Have you seen those things they sell in sets, Geraldine, in some of the High Street shops? Sort of silk combinations and a princess petticoat and nightgown, all to match like?”

“I’ve seen them advertised at sale times, in the illustrateds, and beastly indecent they are, too. Why, you can see right through that stuff they’re made of.”