So again Noodles sits and waits, and nobody asks her to do anything else. And again the Diamond Dominoes gossip and wrangle, and boast about imaginary triumphs elsewhere. And smoke cigarettes, and fling the stubs into the sand-buckets in the wings. And emit hollow or eldritch laughter at nothing at all. And occasionally start being very confidential with Noodles, only to lose the thread and wander away while she is still wondering what they are talking about. The men call her “dear” now, and Miss La Touche calls her “dearie,” but in such a distant, automatic manner that it never occurs to her to resent it. She doesn’t exactly like it, and she doesn’t exactly like the Dominoes quite as much as she thought she did when she wrote to Beaky this morning. But there’s no getting away from it; they do obviously mean to be most awfully kind. And one simply can’t help feeling awfully sorry for them.
“I suppose they’ll explain a bit more later on,” says Noodles, at the meal in the lodgings which follows the imperceptible disintegration of the afternoon rehearsal. “Do you think they’ll show me what I’m to do to-morrow?”
But Miss Selbrook has a better idea than answering queer questions from this queer, though apparently harmless, girl that Lester has picked up.
“Can you sew at all, dearie?” she asks. “Not anything fancy, I don’t mean.”
“Oh, yes. I’ve done quite a lot.”
“That’s fine,” says Miss Selbrook. “I can’t stick it myself, and here’s this nightie come back absolutely in pieces, and I do like to have nice things always. Now, how’d it be if you borrowed a work-bag from the girl and took it along to the show to-night? That’s an idea, don’t you think?”
So from shortly after eight until nearly half-past ten, Noodles Brett sat in the wings of the Pavilion Chalet repairing the ravages of Miss Selbrook’s—and Miss La Touche’s—undergarments. There was a gap in the dusty hangings immediately opposite her, and through it she could hear and see the Diamond Dominoes yelling and stamping and bawling and thumping the battered piano. Sometimes there was a hideous sound of laughter from further away, or a feeble burst of Friday-night applause. In the hot glare of the electric lights the performers looked fantastic and disgusting, and never for an instant did they do anything which the seamstress could honestly acknowledge to be either funny, or clever, or ingenious, or making the slightest sympathetic appeal to the human eye or the human ear. Fortunately, however, none of them asked her what she thought of it. As they came off the stage they generally told the first colleague with whom they collided how damned good they had just been, and added an opprobrious epithet to describe their enemies the audience. And just before they went on, they would often pull a frightful face at the same enemies from behind the dusty hangings, changing instantly as they bounded through them to a forced and horrible smile. But Noodles, apparently, in her present stage of development, was neither in one camp nor the other. Not even a benevolent neutral, it would seem, or at any rate not one in whose opinion either side was interested. She could hardly have felt more invisible or superfluous in the dining-room at Pippingfold.
But she finished her sewing, and the Diamond Dominoes finished their entertainment, and the enemies trooped off into the night, and the lights were turned down. The victors—for it is perhaps fair so to describe those who remained in possession of the field—were very noisy as they scrambled into their ordinary clothes again in the stuffy little dens that existed for this purpose. They shouted to each other, and kept borrowing matches and towels and something called “the opener.” They sang vociferously. They conducted conversations at the tops of their voices even when they were sharing the same den, and they had a great deal to say about what they were going to have for supper, and what they had had for supper at Southsea, or Scarborough, or Weston-super-Mare. But there were also a number of esoteric jokes—mostly, it seemed, of a personal nature—which no outsider could hope to understand. As for instance, when Mr. Colyer suddenly bellowed: “What about the cucumber?” and Mesdemoiselles Selbrook and La Touche laughed so piercingly that it sounded as though they were being tortured.
At one point Lester Vaughan burst from his particular den in a pair of trousers and a singlet, and with a face that glistened like a tongue in aspic; and seeing Noodles still patiently waiting there, said “Hullo, kid” in such a friendly manner that she quite hoped that he was going to add something definite about her duties at last.
“Hullo,” she said, jumping up eagerly.
“All right. Don’t you move. Getting on all right? Fine!”
He turned away.
“Mr. Vaughan!”
“Yes, dear?”
“When are you going to——”
“What? Now, don’t worry me now; there’s a good girl. All this hanging about costs money, you know. Pounds, shillings and pence. Besides, I’ve got to get off early tomorrow. Got to go and see a pal at Croydon. We’re writing a play together.”
“Oh, are you really?”
“Yes. Damned fine story, too. At least, it will be if we can only fix the last two acts. Quite original, what’s more. Got a scene that’s going to absolutely knock ’em. A scream. A yell. The real goods.”
“Oh, how splendid! But, I say—Mr. Vaughan——”
“Some other time, dear. Now, don’t you worry.”
“Yes, I know, but——”
A hoarse cry from one of the dens.
“Lester, old man! Where’s the opener?”
Mr. Vaughan had vanished, and Noodles hardly liked to pursue him while he was dressed like that. She sat down again, feeling baffled and anxious. Feeling very sleepy, too. And increasingly conscious that whatever happened she could never be a Diamond Domino in spirit. One had to be born like that, she supposed, and if one wasn’t …
A vision of three beds flickered before her weary eyes. In her room at Pippingfold; in her cubicle at St. Ethelburga’s; under the sloping roof where she had slept last night. She would never see two of them again, and—oh, dear—she didn’t at all want to see the third. If only——
But no. Be firm, Noodles. Swallow that lump, and remember that you’ve burnt your boats. Of course these people can’t really mean you never to do anything at all. And of course you can’t dream of leaving them when you’ve nowhere else to go, and are running up a bill at those awful lodgings.
So Noodles controls herself, though she can no longer control her yawns. And presently Mesdemoiselles Selbrook and La Touche pop out of their den in hats and mackintoshes, and they all go back to a supper of tinned salmon and more pickles and stale cake and more tea. Rather fun? Well, not really. But they are still kind, though they talk more and more to each other, and less and less to the queer girl.
Eventually the queer girl slips off to the knobbly bed under the sloping roof. “It can’t really go on like this for ever,” is the thought which lulls her at length to a sleep of utter exhaustion. And most sincerely and whole-heartedly do we hope that the prophecy may prove to be correct.
Chapter IX
Sylvia at the Majestic—A strange telephone conversation—Misadventures on Wissingfield Common—The Rescue-Party reaches Newcliff—Miss Mulberry’s quiet afternoon—Farewell to St. Ethelburga.
1
Sylvia spent the morning walking up and down the front, or resting on portions of it and gazing at the hypnotic twinkle of a myriad miniature wavelets. So did Noodles, but it wasn’t written that they should meet. Sylvia had a paper-bag full of peppermint bull’s-eyes, but Noodles had resisted the very powerful impulse to a similar purchase, because—after buying the absolute minimum of equipment and toilet accessories—she had only got sevenpence left. And it would be a whole week, she had gathered, before she could hope to receive the balance of her still unearned salary.
But they both thought of Beaky a good deal, and Noodles thought of Snubs as well, and wondered if he would be ashamed of her if he knew what she had done. She didn’t mind what other people thought—not even her brother, because practically none of these things would have happene
d if only he had sent those gramophone-records to Pippingfold; but Snubs had always treated her with respect, and it would be terrible if he found that he couldn’t do so any longer. Moreover, there were a solidity and stolidity about Snubs that were infinitely comforting when one compared them with the absence of these qualities among the Diamond Dominoes. He didn’t always quite understand what one meant—and, if it came to that, one didn’t always express oneself so that anyone could—but at least he listened and was serious and did his best.
But the Dominoes never understood, and scarcely ever attempted to listen. So far as she could now learn—for apparently Mr. Vaughan had come round again last night, revivified by his own supper, after she had gone to bed—she was to take her place on the boards to-night without any preparation at all. She was to wear one of the dresses, and to sit on one of the bent-wood chairs, and to try and join in the choruses whether she knew them or not. And, worse still, she was to accompany Mr. Vaughan in his rendering of the ballad which he certainly hadn’t known on Thursday afternoon, and so far as she was aware hadn’t looked at since.
And he had gone to Croydon—and didn’t expect to be back until just before the show—with the stringed instrument still attached to the back of his motor-bicycle. She knew this, because of course she had rushed round to his lodgings to try and borrow it.
But all Miss La Touche had said was: “Don’t keep worrying, dearie. He’ll pull you through.”
And all Miss Selbrook had done was to tell a story about how she had once learnt twenty pages of script in three hours, and had gone right on and knocked them all silly. Quite meaningless and quite irrelevant, and not even said in a particularly nice or sympathetic sort of voice. She had also sniffed and glanced at Miss La Touche, and added that some people wanted to run before they could walk.
“Walk on, you mean,” Miss La Touche had replied, thus provoking screams of merriment from her colleague which had made Noodles escape as quickly as she could into the open air. She didn’t really know whether they had been laughing at her or not, but in either case it was quite obvious that they wouldn’t miss her. They had drawn their own salaries last night, and could think of little else but shopping.
So Noodles walked up and down, and longed for peppermint bull’s-eyes. And it grew hotter and hotter, and the shade grew less and less, and the only places where the Newcliff Corporation would let you sit without paying twopence, or sometimes even threepence, were in the full glare of the sun. But if she couldn’t buy herself bull’s-eyes, still less could she waste so much of her capital on a deck-chair either with or without an alleged awning which made it only slightly less dangerous than the guillotine. On the other hand, if she walked any further, she would drop. So she went back to the lodgings—feeling a reasonable hope that they would be emptier and less smelly than when she had set out; and it was at just about the same time, namely shortly after noon, that Sylvia found even her threepenny seat in the shade becoming a little too uncomfortable to be borne; and looked at her watch; and stretched herself; and decided that she ought to go back to the Majestic Hotel to see what Mummie was up to.
Strictly speaking, Mummie wasn’t up to anything, for she was still in bed. Perfectly well, thank you, and perfectly presentable—indeed, looking quite her best—but following a long-established precedent which gave over the first morning in any new place to a great peace and calm and absence of movement. To meditation, perhaps, but one could never be sure of this. At any rate to a determined tranquillity which no amount of fine weather outside could disturb.
That wouldn’t be all that would disturb us, if we tried to spend the whole morning in bed at an hotel. Chamber maids would come bumping and clattering in, and go bumping and clattering out; and a window-cleaner would whistle outside on the balcony; and the people in the next room would play their portable gramophone, or shriek madly over their packing and unpacking. We have little doubt, either, that in our case the electric bell-board for an entire floor would be just outside the door, and that a vacuum-cleaner would howl and whine up and down the corridor, and the water-pipes would have been so arranged as to gurgle and pant and roar all round us whenever anybody else in the hotel turned a tap either on or off. Probably, also, this would be the morning when one of the under-porters polished the hydrant which was just under the bell-board, and kept dropping bits of it, and clanking them together, and singing lustily as he did so. And some one would have left a door open, and the wind would alternately come howling through it or slam it ferociously without ever engaging the latch. Also the people overhead would be picking the furniture up and flinging it down again, and the jug on our washstand would rattle sympathetically each time that this happened.
But then, as we said before, we have never been and can never hope to be a Mrs. Shirley, and perhaps when you are as fond of hotels as she was they reward you with a different kind of treatment from that which the rest of us get. And in any case when Sylvia re-entered her mother’s bedroom, she found her looking extremely peaceful and comfortable, and they smiled at each other, and if you will believe us there wasn’t even a broom leaning against the end of the bed, or a dustpan on the seat of the large arm-chair.
“Well, darling?” they said.
“I’ve been out,” said Sylvia. “It’s marvellous. How are you feeling, darling?”
“Much better,” said Mrs. Shirley, and as she had never complained of feeling worse, this seemed a most excellent state of affairs.
“You wouldn’t like a bull’s-eye, I suppose?”
“No, thank you. Did I give you that hat?”
“Yes, darling. Do you like it?”
“Yes. And much better down here than in London.”
This seemed a most admirable state of affairs, too; and Sylvia sat down on the foot of the bed.
“I’m so glad,” she said. “Do you think you’ll get up for lunch?”
“Oh, yes. There’s plenty of time, isn’t there?”
“Oh, rather. But I was wondering … About Noodles, I mean.”
“Noodles?”
“Now, Mummie!”
A warning forefinger cautioned Mrs. Shirley against being Mummie-ish again, and again they both smiled.
“For lunch, you mean?” said Mrs. Shirley. “Yes; certainly. Why not ring up the school, and we’ll send Carter.”
“All right,” said Sylvia, and she slipped off the foot of the bed, and picked up the telephone directory from the table by the head.
“It’s called ‘St. Ethelburga’s,’” she murmured. “I wonder where that would come. Oh, dear; it’s one of those books that’s all in different little chunks. Why will they do it?”
“Never mind, darling. Just ask them, and they’ll get it for you downstairs.”
“That’s an idea,” said Sylvia, appreciatively. And she put down the directory, and picked up the telephone, and asked for St. Ethelburga’s School. And although the operator was a woman, she liked Sylvia’s voice so much that she found the number for her without telling her to make a note of it, please; and there were some clicks and crackles to show that she was getting it as fast as she could.
“I wonder if they’ll let me speak to her,” thought Sylvia with the receiver against her ear, and her eyes thinking how nice and pink her mother looked. “I wonder who answers one at a school. I do hope they’ll let her come.…”
There was a rushing sound, and a female voice.
“St. Ethelburga’s. Yes?”
Sylvia’s first question having already been answered by this model subscriber, she found that she wasn’t quite ready with her second.
“Oh,” she said. “I see. Well, look here …”
“Yes? Who is it, please?”
“Well, we wanted to know if—— I mean, could I speak to a girl, or send her a message, or something? About coming out, I mean.”
“A message for a pupil? Who is it, please?”
Sylvia made a very quick face at her mother, to convey her opinion of the slight tiresomeness of the
voice at the school, and proceeded almost simultaneously.
“It’s for a girl called—(Oh, dear, what is her proper name?)—It’s for Miss Brett.”
If only the voice would explain whether it were a mistress or a maid, it would make it so much simpler. But it was the most non-committal voice that Sylvia had ever heard. Except that it sounded a little suspicious all the time.
“The line’s not very clear,” it now answered. “Would you mind spelling that?”
“Brett,” said Sylvia. “B-R-E-double T. She is at your school, isn’t she? Perhaps you could—— Hullo! I say—hullo!”
No answer. But the line was still full of energy and rushings and roarings. Only there had been a bump as though the voice had put its receiver down on a table.
“Hullo! I say!”
“Cut off, darling?” suggested Mrs. Shirley.
“No, Mummie; at least, I don’t think so. But they seem to have—— Oh, hullo!”
Some one was clearing their throat.
“Is that still St. Eth——”
“This is Miss Mulberry speaking. Is that Pippingfold!”
Sylvia was astonished.
“Pippingfold?” she echoed. “No. At least, yes—in a way. But I didn’t ask for Miss Mulberry. Can’t you find Miss Brett?”
Another Part of the Wood Page 17