Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  “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, Hew 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 Daddabeing 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 of 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 gurlof 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.”

  “Whyever 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 tonight, 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.