Bell Timson

by Marguerite Steen

  But they showed me what money could accomplish, as well as how it could be misused, and old George was right, although I would not admit it. As a matter of fact we were further apart than we had ever been, during this transition period of mine, when I was getting rid of the old Bell Timson and trying on a new one of whose fit, to begin with, I was not perfectly sure. I expect a snake in the act of sloughing its skin is not very companionable; it feels shabby and touchy and uneasy about the future. That is how I was with George; his caution exasperated me, his ideas were small-town, and I could have screamed with irritation at his narrow, excellent honesty, in which I always suspected criticism of myself and my methods. Dear old George, what an injustice I did him. I believe he would have backed me through murder; he would have done it desperately, unhappily, in a cold sweat of fear — but not for himself: for me.

  We chatted on, rather stiffly, about the new house; I wanted some plumbing done, and then, of course, there would be the decorating, for the paint and paper had not been touched for years, by the look of them — and of course the furnishing. George listened solemnly and kept putting down figures on a sheet of paper.

  “It’s going to cost you something. I tell you what, Bell; I know a fellow who’s at the head of the decorating at Stokes and Sewell; how’d it be if I asked him to look after you? I know Plummer’d see they did the square thing by a friend of mine.”

  I am ashamed to this day of the way I answered him; but something boiled up in me, and I felt myself go crimson as a turkey cock at his lack of understanding of me and of the new way I was proposing to plan my life.

  “Thank you, George, but I don’t want the girls brought up on fumed-oak standards! I’m not putting my house in the hands of some potty suburban firm that deals in plush suites and oxydized copper fitments! I’ve practically fixed with a Bond Street firm for the bathroom, and I’ve seen the sort of stuff I want for the rest of the house.” So I had, and the prices had made my head swim, but I had the bit in my teeth. Houses like Mrs. Carpenter’s and Mrs. Thesiger’s — although I neither wanted nor hoped to imitate them — had given me standards that George knew nothing about.

  “I see. Then I’m afraid I won’t be much good to you.” He sounded so hurt that I could stand it no longer; I jumped up and said it was time I looked for a taxi — taxis being as ordinary to me now as busses were in the old days — and we started to walk down the street toward the main road. We met a couple of the town girls I knew by sight, and I nodded to them as usual and said good night; George looked straight ahead, as usual, and pretended not to see them, and that just touched me off.

  “What a god-damned prig you are, George!” I generally took trouble to moderate my language before George; as a matter of fact, beyond a “My God” or so, I never used to swear; it was one of the things I had picked up in my new company, where damns and bloodies were just part of the courtesies of everyday life; and it had occurred to me I would have to take a grip on myself before the girls came home. I don’t approve of swearing; as someone I got to know later used to say, it is a confession of verbal inadequacy. But my vocabulary was never very adequate, and there are moments when a good swear word is nearly as good as a benzedrine tablet for pepping you up.

  George looked as if I had hit him between the eyes.

  “Why, Bell ...”

  But I was all worked up, and I let him have it.

  “I’ll tell you something, George Glaize. It’s a pity you don’t take a mistress. She might make a man out of you, instead of a stuffed shirt.”

  I don’t know what made me so cruel to him; to George, who was never anything but a kind, good friend to me. It seemed, in those days, as if our every meeting had to end in my hurting or shocking him. Perhaps, deep down, I compared him with the people I had got to know lately, and perhaps the comparison made me ashamed.

  And of course I was overworking, which is a foolish thing in my profession. I was making a great deal of money (for me) and spending it as fast as it came in, and I knew I must find ways of making more. I now had the responsibility of the house, and that meant some sort of a housekeeper, at any rate for the holidays, because the girls could not be left by themselves all day while I was at work. So perhaps I had a lot, as they say, “on my plate” — not that that is any excuse for my behaving so badly to George, whose only thought, as I very well knew, was to help me and be kind.

  For a moment he did not answer. We were standing under a street lamp, and when I looked up at him there was none of the old friendliness in his face; he looked down at me gravely, as if we were strangers. I will confess now — it turned me cold.

  “Well, Bell: we don’t seem to get on these days the way we used to. I’m sorry; I don’t mean to vex you, and I don’t think you mean all the things you say to me. Perhaps it ’ud be better for both of us if I kept out of your way for a bit. I expect I am slow and stupid, but I don’t seem to get the hang n[ this new pace of yours — not just yet. I expect you need somebody more” — he stopped and looked puzzled — ‘more up in things than me. But if you want anything, you know you’ve only to ask me. Good night — and give my love to the girls.”

  I cried most of the way home. My own loneliness had come over me, and for two pins I would have told the taxi driver to turn round and catch George up before he got to Kozy Kot. I thought of my new pace, as he called it, and began to wonder if I could keep it up; and of the money the house was going to cost, and of the school fees which were due. But by the time the taxi stopped in front of my lodgings I had got back my stiff upper lip, and I gave the man a shilling over the fare and said to hell with George as I let myself in with my key.

  I am quite aware I have not presented myself in a very attractive light in this part of the story, so I may as well put in the last black touches.

  Next day was Sunday, and I had the actress, whose flat was in Shepherd Market, in the morning, and the matron in the afternoon. I generally took a walk across the Green Park, had my lunch in a little pub near the Houses of Parliament, and picked up my bus at the foot of Whitehall. I was surprised as I was crossing the Mall to see Hetty, dressed in her Sunday coat and hat, smiling and waving to me. She told me she had come up to see one of her brothers, who was in a war hospital, and was putting in time until the visiting hour. So I asked her to come and have lunch with me, and she colored up with pleasure. She was a nice, unassuming girl, and it struck me she had never taken advantage of having known us when we lived “down the street,” and how she was always respectful, and how much the girls liked her.

  Over lunch I told her about the new house, and nobody could have shown more interest or been nicer in every way.

  “I am glad! I always felt it was such a shame you couldn’t have more of the children in their holidays. It’s a pity when girls can’t grow up with their mothers — specially when it’s a mother like you, Mrs. Timson!”

  “I’ll still need somebody to look after them. What I really want, Hetty, is a good, dependable housekeeper — working of course. She might need a char to help her, but I dare say that could be arranged.”

  “You’ll want somebody motherly, won’t you?” asked Hetty.

  “It doesn’t matter, so long as she gets on with Kathleen. Jo’s all right, but young Kay’s a bit of a problem!” I told her. “A good, sensible young woman who’s fond of children.” I hesitated a moment, then took the plunge. “What about you, Hetty? The girls love you, and I wouldn’t have a care in the world with you to look after them.”

  I saw she was startled.

  “But I’m with Mr. Glaize!”

  “Cashiers aren’t hard to find, and there’ll be plenty of time for him to get suited before I want you — though I’d like you as soon as I can. You could be a lot of use while we’re getting the house ready. Look, Hetty: it’s a nice little house, easy to work, and I mean to make the kitchen lovely and get as many labor-saving things as I can. You’ll have a bed-sitting-room of your own, with a gas fire, and as I’m out so much, you will be a
ble to plan your day to suit yourself. You’ve always said you’re fond of housekeeping and wanted a home of your own. This is nearly as good; why don’t you try it?”

  She was so long in answering that I wondered if she was thinking of getting married. Most girls in Hetty’s position do, and George and I had often said she would make a good wife. She was good-natured and orderly, devoted to children, and useful in the house; and yet, somehow, I saw, although George did not, that Hetty was the kind that never marries. Nice-looking, pleasant, and as free-spoken with men as with women, Hetty was just not the sort that makes a man burn, or want to keep and protect her forever. Poor girl, I am sure she dreamed of a husband and children of her own, and I could not be the one to tell Hetty that she was just a natural sister, and she might as well settle down cheerfully to looking after other people’s houses and children. I knew she loved the girls, and I hoped she was thinking it out, but her answer, when it came, showed she had other things on her mind.

  “You see, Mrs. Timson, it’s like this. Mr. Glaize was very kind to me when I was miserable. I — I met him in a sort of little coffee shop —”

  “Do you mean he picked you up?” Perhaps George was not as backward as I thought! But Hetty gave me a reproachful sort of look.

  “I was sitting at a table, crying, and he made me tell him what was the matter.” Yes, that was George. If Hetty had to cry in front of a stranger she couldn’t, being Hetty, have picked a better specimen than George. She’s in love with him, all right, I thought; and not a chance, poor kid. I thought what a fool George was, not to see that Hetty would be much more the wife for him than Bell Timson. “He couldn’t offer me a job then because he wasn’t his own master, but he gave me his word — and you see he kept it — and I couldn’t let him down after that, could I, Mrs. Timson?”

  “Oh, come now, Hetty!” This was too much for my stomach. “You’ve been with George four years! He hasn’t got a lien on you.”

  “Oh no,” said Hetty. “He’s not the sort of person who would ever stand in one’s way. Don’t misunderstand me, please, Mrs. Timson! I’d love to come to you. You know I think the world of you and the girls, and I’d much sooner be your housekeeper than work in the shop.”

  “Well, that’s the answer, isn’t it?” Perhaps I spoke a bit impatiently, for I have always been one to make up my mind quickly and act upon it, whether it turned out the way I expected or not. And I felt that Hetty was the solution of my problem and was determined to have her, with or without George’s consent. Not that I doubted getting it; if George held out on me over Hetty it seemed to me his offers of help were not worth much.

  “It is, in a way,” she said, “and then it isn’t. You see, in the business the cashier has a good deal of responsibility, and Mr. Glaize has gone to a lot of trouble to get me into his ways and those of his customers. And I help a good deal with the ordering and accounts; it would take quite a while to teach another girl all the things I know, and it would take up a lot of Mr. Glaize’s time. You know how overworked he is already. I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Timson; but I couldn’t, after the way he’s treated me, walk out on Mr. Glaize.”

  It was then I made a mistake. I should have known Hetty was not a Mrs. Thesiger and have altered my line of approach, but I had had a good many recent experiences of the power of money, and I think my judgment must have been clouded by my determination to get Hetty, by whatever means I could.

  “What’s George paying you?” I asked her abruptly.

  She told me, adding that of course it wasn’t George, it was the firm, but that he had just got her a “rise,” which had surprised and pleased her very much. It was so long since I had dealt with so small a sum that I found myself wondering that anyone could be persuaded to work so hard for so little money.

  “Well, Hetty, you’ll be living in, which is worth at least thirty shillings at present prices, and I’ll give you a pound a week more than the wages you are getting if you will give George a month’s notice tomorrow.”

  I’ll never forget the look she gave me. I think if I had been bargaining with her for her virtue she could not have looked at me with greater horror.

  “Oh no, Mrs. Timson. Money doesn’t come into it.”

  I knew I was wasting my breath, so I paid the bill and got up. When we said good-by at the bus stop I knew Hetty didn’t “think the world of me” any longer. What Mrs. Thesiger would do for a paltry twenty pounds Hetty would not do for what must have represented, to her, a small fortune. It summarized the difference between the world I was leaving and the one I would be living in in the future.

  I was a bit taken aback at first; however, I soon gave myself a shake and told myself Hetty was a fool and that I would soon find someone to jump at the offer she had turned down. I wondered if she would tell George, and what he would think. Not that that would matter either. I had only done the kind of thing everyone was doing in those days, when each person was out for himself and you were looked on as a simpleton if you did not snatch and grab with the rest. It only struck me when I was getting ready for bed that not only Mother, but Father as well, would have been shocked at the idea of trying to buy out somebody’s loyalty to her employer. Well, what of it? Crowle lay a long way behind, and perhaps — I tried to persuade myself — even Father would have found himself obliged to alter his standards if he had lived through what we looked on for twenty years as the “Great” war.

  Chapter VIII

  I ALWAYS REMEMBER Mrs. Thesiger’s party, because it was the first invitation of the kind I accepted, and because of two contacts I made there, one of which was to influence my life for many years.

  When I received the invitation my first instinct was to refuse it; it was for the theater, with supper afterward, which meant a late night and (as I had not yet got into Plymouth Street) an expensive taxi fare home. But it was for a Thursday, and I remembered Friday was a comparatively easy day.

  I was working very hard and having very little pleasure, for I would not spend money on entertaining myself, and, to tell the truth, I was even missing the evenings with George at the Haymakers, or the one or two smarter pubs we had tried lately: because the Haymakers seemed to belong to a phase that was past, and somehow it embarrassed both of us to go and sit alone in the landlady’s little parlor, while it would have caused comment if we had taken regularly to the saloon. It seemed easier to keep the conversation going if we were not by ourselves but in the company of other people, and in the sort of places we had latterly gone to gin and French seemed more suitable than port. Gin and French is a more superficial drink than port; one can go on talking without getting intimate. That suited me, and of course George had fallen in with my wishes.

  But after that night when we had our quarrel — if you can call it such — I did not see George for weeks, and the day I got Mrs. Thesiger’s invitation happened to be a day on which I was feeling sorry for myself and thinking that, although I was making so much money, I personally was getting very little out of it. So I slipped into Berridge’s between two of my appointments and bought a black evening gown and a long velvet coat to wear over it. I have always worn black in the evening; I’m not what they call a clever dresser, but I knew enough to realize that black is safe and dignified and that it would not annoy the other women by clashing with what they happened to be wearing.

  The women, to be candid, struck me as rather a scratch lot. Mrs. Carpenter was not of the party; Mrs. Thesiger, I knew, was not much of a success with her own sex, but she had a gift for attracting the men. Did I say she was divorced? It was rather a showy case, and for some reason or other she had not married the corespondent. She was at this time in her late thirties, and I knew she was thinking it was time she took the plunge again. I suppose she did not want a lot of other women around to complicate matters while she was making up her mind.

  There was a Mrs. Anstey, whose husband was in France, a rather plain, dull woman with no conversation; a tall, horse-faced girl whom everybody called Marjorie — she was
Lady Something, but I can’t remember it now; myself; Mrs. Thesiger; and a woman who was introduced to me as Mrs. Wakeford. This one rather roused my curiosity; I had never met her before. She was small and rather prim in appearance, but when you came to look at her closely she had the most dissolute face I ever saw on a woman. Her little, prudish mouth suggested all sorts of things, and she could make a look come into her eyes that made something close up tight in you. You see, I was still fairly unsophisticated, in spite of the company I had been keeping. Everybody addressed this one as Aimee, and she seemed well known to all the party except myself.

  The men were a brigadier general whose name I forget; Archie Culmer, who had been the corespondent in Mrs. Thesiger’s divorce and had now married someone else; Lord Solness, who was her present boy friend; a Mr. do Araguayo, who seemed to belong to Marjorie; and the tall, good-looking man who was presented to me as Dick Somervell and was evidently told off as my escort for the evening. We all met at Mrs. Thesiger’s flat — where she had dined a deux with Solness — before going to the theater.

  “I’ve got a box and four stalls,” she told us. ‘It’s the best I could do; people seem to be fighting to book for this show. So I think we’d better draw for how we sit — unless anybody happens to hate a box.”