Chloe nodded.
“Lovely hot tea!” she murmured. “May I have three lumps of sugar? I want one to crunch.”
“And my advice is, you eat humble pie, and go back to your friends.”
“What?—when I’ve just got a job? Never!” said Chloe. She crunched the lump of sugar with decision. “And look here, I haven’t told you half how exciting it is. Prepare for thrills, real thrills”—she made a noble gesture with the empty cup—“I’m going to be Cinderella for the second time in my life. I’m going to the ball.”
A gleam of interest sparkled for a moment in Mrs. Rowse’s disapproving eyes. It was instantly subdued.
“Lor, how you do run on!—and time we were all in our beds.”
“Albert isn’t in,” said Chloe firmly. “And you know you wouldn’t dream of going to bed whilst he’s out. I expect his club is having a frightfully exciting time settling just how they’ll share everything out when we’re all Communists. He’s going to teach me to sing ‘The Red Flag’ so as to be all ready. I shall tell him I’ve been simply wallowing in titles all day; and to-morrow I’m going to mingle, absolutely mingle with an effete aristocracy. He’ll be frightfully shocked! Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn is going to lend me a nice, plain black dress. I do hope it’ll cover my knees, because the one she had on didn’t cover hers, not really. And I shall see all the people come in—the ball is at The Luxe. And I’m to have a little table in the vestibule and take all the tickets. And every fiftieth person gets a prize—the prizes are lovely! I’m looking forward to it most awfully.”
“I don’t hold with balls,” said Mrs. Rowse in ad tone of unrelieved gloom.
Chapter XXVII
Chloe looked at herself in the glass in Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn’s spare room, and shook with laughter. The room was emerald green: carpet, floor, walls, ceiling, and furniture. The bedstead had gold knobs and a black eiderdown with gold dragons on it. Chloe was the only other black thing in the room.
She gazed at herself in Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn’s nice, plain black frock, and fell back against the emerald bedstead gurgling:
“It’s perfectly, perfectly square; and I expect she paid guineas, and guineas, and guineas for it.”
The frock had, in fact, every side equal to every other side. It just touched Chloe’s knees coyly. There were no sleeves. Two other Chloes could have squeezed into its ample width. Chloe whisked round, saw her back, and went into fresh convulsions.
“What on earth would Ally have said to this?” she made a face at herself in the glass. “Cinderella up to date! Pouf! I don’t like it very much. The shoes at least fit me. But the frock! Oh, I do hope to goodness I shall never weigh thirteen stone to fill it—and it would certainly take thirteen stone to fill it. Now have I got all the ink off my fingers?” She took a hurried look at them, remembered that she had been given ten minutes to dress, snatched her coat from a fantastic chair, and waved good-bye to her reflection.
A door opened. Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn was calling her:
“Miss Green! Miss Green!”
“Dene,” murmured Chloe automatically, and fled.
The Gold Room at The Luxe was empty when Chloe came into it. Its floor, the best dancing floor in London, shone like water, and like water, took and threw back the reflection of the gold dome and golden walls. Chloe felt like a little black fly in a room that had come straight out of an Arabian Night’s Entertainment.
“I’m really Cinderella, and I haven’t got any business in this fairy story—that’s why I feel queer,” she decided, and made haste back to the table where she was to sit and take the tickets.
The lounge of The Luxe, like the Gold Room, has a note of oriental extravagance. In the day-time it is even a little ridiculous, with its ceiling a brilliant blue, its couches upholstered in sapphire velvet, and its great, gilded pillars. But at night and as a setting for a ball, the brilliant background has its effect.
Chloe’s table had been set in the lounge, just where the great double archway lined with mirrors gives access to the Gold Room. She felt very small and insignificant as she sat there waiting for the people to arrive. A momentary wave of depression crept over her. It wasn’t nice to feel so small and alone. She would rather be Cinderella in the kitchen at Hatchelbury Road than here at The Luxe in Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn’s horrible dress, with that lovely dancing floor so near—she could see part of it reflected in the mirrors that lined the archway. Presently she would see other people swing by to all those tunes which make you feel as if you could dance to the end of the world and beyond it.
“Idiot!” said Chloe to herself. “Stop it this moment! You’re going to have a most exciting evening, and see everybody who is anybody. Only I do wish they’d roll up—I do hate waiting for people.”
Twenty minutes later she was breathlessly taking tickets, assisted by a young lady from the booking office, whose golden hair, general efficiency, and remarkable flow of conversation fairly staggered Chloe. Whilst checking off the first fifty tickets, she informed her that she lived at Tooting with a widowed aunt, and found it rather slow, and if it wasn’t for her boy—
“After all what I say is this—twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven—if a young lady—no, you’ve given me two together—what was I saying? Well, after all, it comes to this, if you’ve got a boy you like, and you go out with him in the evening, it doesn’t matter so much where you live—thirty-nine, forty—Aunt’s a bit dull; but I’m not there much, and there’s something in being able to say that you live with your people. You know what I mean, dear; it gives you a sort of standing. Here, we’re just on fifty. Have you got that badge all ready? I wouldn’t mind having one of those prizes myself—would you? Fifty!” she announced, and nudged Chloe with her elbow.
Chloe picked up a little gilt badge from a pile her left, and handed it across the table to the dark, sallow young man who had just given in his ticket.
“What’s this?” he said, and stared; he had dull, unhappy eyes.
Chloe explained:
“Every fiftieth guest gets a prize. The prize will be drawn for after supper. The badge entitles you to draw for one.”
“Oh,” drawled the dark young man. He looked discontentedly at the badge, stuck it in his button hole, and strolled through the mirrored archway into the room beyond.
“Lord Algernon Du Pré,” said the young lady from Tooting—“and I don’t think much of him, nor any reason to either, if all they say about him’s true. I don’t suppose it is though, for there’s nothing that people won’t say. Only last Sunday my boy told me that a young lady we both know—Florrie Summers her name is, and she’s cashier Watson and Lobbs’—well, she’d told him—my boy, Ernie West, you know—she told him that she’d seen me with her own eyes driving in a motor car with a gentleman that no girl would be driving with if she thought anything of herself at all. ‘All right, Ernie,’ I said, ‘you can believe her, you can believe me. It’s not for me to say why she should be set on getting you to believe lies about me. But if you take up with her, you’re done with me—and I hope you won’t live to regret it.’” The stream of words flowed on without break, though the voice occasionally dropped to a faint, sibilant whisper. During the arrival of seven or eight hundred guests Chloe learned that “a girl might just as well be dead as not keep up her proper pride,” and that once you let a gentleman friend get the upper hand, he is apt to behave as if his word was law, “which it isn’t and never will be—not with me.”
Chloe gave out her gilt badges to every fiftieth person who presented a ticket. She had just given one, and Connie Cross at her side was remarking that she wouldn’t be seen dead at a pig fair in the dress worn by the recipient, when suddenly she felt her heart stand still.
There was a lull in the arrivals. The lounge had cleared, and she could see the whole length of it. At the far end a man was standing alone, a tall man with his back to Chloe. Her heart jumped, and
went on, beating hard. Why had she thought for a moment that the man was—was—? He turned, and her heart stopped again.
It was Martin Fossetter. Two women and another man had joined him. They all came forward together, talking and laughing.
With a whirl of her hand Chloe swept all the gilt badges on to the floor. She knelt behind the table picking them up whilst Connie took the tickets. And, kneeling there, she heard Martin speak:
“My luck’s clean out—no prize for me,” he said. He laughed, and passed on.
Chloe came up scarlet, her hands full of the little gilt badges.
“My! How easily you do flush!” said Connie Cross.
Chloe stared through the archway, watching the dancers. Presently Martin came into view. He was dancing with six-foot of elegance in a wisp of white ninon, the tallest, slimmest creature Chloe had ever beheld. The couple turned, and by looking into the mirror she could follow them a little farther—Martin’s dark eyes with the look devotion in them; and then, as they turned again, the tall woman’s face, small and white above her white dress, with big blue eyes looking out mistily from under a straight-cut fringe of hair as fine and flaxen as a baby’s.
“Know who that tall woman is?” said Connie Cross at her ear—“Here, you’ll want another badge in a minute; there are a lot of people coming late— They call her a beauty, but what I say is, what’s the good of all those extra inches unless you’re going to be a mannequin; then, I grant you, it does give you a pull. But in any other line what’s the good of it? And I don’t know that gentlemen admire it so much after all—Ernie doesn’t, for one. Why I pointed her out to him in the Park one Sunday, and what d’you think he said?” She giggled in anticipation, and patted her hair. “Why, he said she put him in mind of a line to hang clothes on—sarcastic, wasn’t it?” She thrust a plump left hand under Chloe’s eyes! “That’s his ring—not that we’re engaged; but I wear it. You see I was engaged—not to him—and when you’ve worn a ring for a year, your finger feels sort of funny without it. Alfred Mendelbaum, the other one’s name was—in a jeweller’s business, so of course the ring was a better one than Ernie’s—but, I couldn’t stand him being so jealous.”
“Was he?” said Chloe absently. Her eyes were on the mirror.
“Was he! Why, I couldn’t so much as look the side of the road where Ernie was without having a scene.” Her voice went on unceasingly.
Chloe watched the mirror. Martin came into it again, Martin and the tall woman.
“Who is she?” she said, turning suddenly to Connie.
“I said to him, ‘Take back your ring!’—who?—her?—didn’t I tell you?—I thought I did—about Ernie and the clothes line. That’s Lady Alexander St. Maurice. You wouldn’t think he’d be so sarcastic to look at him.”
The figures danced out of the mirror and were gone. Chloe dug her nails into the palms of her hands. The curtain that had fallen between her and Danesborough had been torn in two. Through the rent she saw Martin and the letters; Mr. Dane’s endorsement, “Two letters from Lady Alexander St. Maurice”; that blotted signature, “Your broken-hearted Judy.”
Chapter XXVIII
Chloe felt very tired before the ball was over. It is a fact that it is a great deal more fatiguing to watch other people dancing than to dance oneself. Chloe could have danced all night, even in Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn’s shoes; but to look on, to watch all these people whom she did not know, and every now and then to see Martin pass—Martin whom she had thought she knew so well—this was altogether another thing.
Connie departed at midnight, yawning frankly: “All very well for those who can have their sleep out, but I’ve got to get up at seven as per usual. So long, dear. I’m sorry for you having to stay till the end, but I suppose it’s all in the day’s work.” She turned back to add, “Mind you get paid for your overtime—that’s a thing you have to be as sharp as sharp about.”
When the last guest had departed, Chloe came down the steps of The Luxe, and began her walk to Hatchelbury Road—it had not occurred to Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn to ask how her secretary would get home. Chloe knew the way, but she was not prepared for the streets being quite so deserted as they were. She had only seen London all stir and bustle; and now that the roar of the traffic was gone, and the pavements empty, there was something strange and oppressive about the silence and the loneliness. Every now and then a belated car went by. Every now and then she passed a policeman on his beat.
She had been walking for about ten minutes when she first heard the footstep. Some one was walking in the same direction as herself, but a little way behind her and on the other side of the road. She came to a corner, turned, and walked on briskly. It was nice to be out in the open air after all those hours in the overheated lounge. Earlier in the night it had rained; the pavements were dark and wet, the air very soft and still.
Chloe heard the footstep again; it was right behind her now, on the same side of the street, coming up fast in spite of her quickened pace. She began to feel, not frightened, but angry. Instead of hurrying, she fell into a slower walk in order to let the person behind her pass on. Without looking, she was aware that it was a man. Midway between two lamps he came up with her and spoke her name:
“Chloe!”
In the darkness Chloe’s cheeks burned with the anger which flared in her at the sound of Martin Fossetter’s voice.
“Chloe! Thank God, I’ve found you! Where have you been?”
Chloe walked as far as the next lamp before she answered. There, under the light, she turned on him, bright-eyed and flushed.
“You’ve no right to speak to me! You’ve no right to follow me! I don’t ever want to see you again!”
He put out a protesting hand.
“But, Chloe—”
“I don’t know how you dare,” said Chloe with her head well up.
“Chloe, you don’t know what I’ve been through. I came back to the station and found you gone. I didn’t know what to think—I was in an agony about you. In the end I rushed down to Danesborough in case Wroughton— When I found you weren’t there I went on to Maxton. And when I saw you to-night—well, you don’t know what a relief it was.”
One of Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn’s shoes tapped the pavement sharply.
“Look here,” said Chloe, “it’s no use. You told me lies, and I found you out.”
“Lies?”
“Yes, lies,” said Chloe. She was walking on again, and spoke without looking at him. “Just plain lies. You told me Lady Wenderby was in town—you told me you had seen her two days before. Well, when you had gone to garage the car, I rang up the house because I thought somebody there would be able to tell me of a hostel I could go to. And when I rang up I found that Lady Wenderby had been in Mentone for a fortnight, and wasn’t expected back for another two months. I don’t know why you lied to me, and I don’t want to know. Now will you please go away, because I don’t ever want to see you again.”
“I suppose,” said Martin Fossetter in his quiet, charming voice, “I suppose it didn’t occur to you that there might be two Lady Wenderbys?”
Chloe stamped again.
“No, it didn’t—and there aren’t. As a matter of fact, when I was going through all those tickets with Debrett yesterday, I thought I’d just make sure—and there’s only one Lady Wenderby.” Her voice broke in an angry sob. “How could you do such a perfectly horrible thing? Please go away, please go away at once! I don’t ever want to see you again!”
“Chloe,” said Martin, “don’t take it like that, I was a fool, but I swear, I swear, I never meant you anything but good. I care for you more than I care for anyone else in the world. I want to marry you more than I want anything in the world. I was a fool not to tell you straight out that my aunt was away. The truth is—”
Chloe laughed.
“The truth!”
“Yes, the bed-rock truth. And tha
t is that I was scared to death for you. Wroughton’s a horribly dangerous man. You were set on going back to Maxton; and I knew you wouldn’t be safe there. I was every sort of fool you like to call me, but it was because I cared so much. I wanted you to come to London—I wanted you to turn to me for help. Chloe, you know, you know, that I love you.”
Chloe’s heart beat furiously. A car came slowly up the road behind them, turned the corner just ahead, and was gone.
“Chloe, you know,” said Martin Fossetter. His voice was full of a deep tenderness; his hand touched her arm.
“I don’t,” said Chloe. “How can I? I trusted you, and you let me down—that’s what I know.”
“I’ve been an utter, damned fool,” said Martin. “But I love you, Chloe, I love you. If you don’t believe anything else, you must believe that.” Chloe wheeled round on him with a sort of fierce decision.
“Look here,” she said, “it’s no good. I don’t want you to say these things to me. They might have meant something, and they don’t mean anything. I don’t want to hear them. I want you to go away.”
She put out her hands as if she were pushing something from her.
The street was empty from end to end, the houses curtained, dark, indifferent. Martin caught the outstretched hands in his.
“Ah, but you shall believe me. There’s something between us—Chloe, you know there is—, something that calls from me to you, and something in you that answers. Chloe, don’t you feel it?—don’t you feel it now?”
Chloe felt his hands burn on hers. She felt a wave of glamour beat against her resistance; and she saw Martin’s face, darkly agitated, very near her own. She wrenched her hands away and fell back against the railing of the house by which they stood.
“No! It’s no use,” she said. “Wait, Martin, and I’ll tell you the truth. I did trust you; I did like you; I did come near to caring for you. But it’s all gone, and you can’t bring it back again. I couldn’t ever care for anyone whom I couldn’t trust—and I could never trust you again. There—that’s the truth. Now will you go away?”
The Black Cabinet Page 16