“You’ve missed your train.”
He said it rather severely, and she felt obliged to explain:
“I didn’t want to go by it really.”
“Next one doesn’t go till seven-twenty, and you’ll have to change at Durnham.”
Valentine thanked him politely and put the ticket away in her purse. Then she walked to the line of waiting taxis, gave Eustace’s address just as she had heard Helena Ryven give it, and in a moment was being driven out of the station.
It was all quite, quite easy. The horrible sick feeling had gone, and the weight on her heart had lifted. If she married, she could give the money back; and if she married Eustace, there would be no difficulty about giving it back. This was the great idea that had come into her head as she sat in the train. She would marry Eustace; then the money would all belong to Eustace again.
She felt very happy indeed, and she hardly gave a thought to Helena Ryven. Great ideas are like that; they catch you up and whirl you away so fast that you have no time to think about other people. Also somewhere deep down in her mind was the unformulated impression that Aunt Helena might say “No,” or that Aunt Helena might say “Wait.” She might say “No,” because she did not really like Valentine, and she might say “Wait,” because that was what she nearly always did say. Valentine was tolerably sure that Aunt Helena would not feel very enthusiastic about a great idea unless it were her own great idea. She wasn’t troubling at all about Aunt Helena. She was going to see Eustace, and she was going to find out whether he would like to marry her at once, so that he could have the money and go on with his work. She felt no embarrassment, because people under the influence of a great idea are never embarrassed. She was going to his flat. She wanted to see him alone, and she wanted to see him at once. The great idea made her feel that she could not possibly wait till to-morrow, or the day after, or next week. She was going to see Eustace at once, and when they had got everything fixed up, he could telephone to his mother and tell her all about it.
The taxi drew up, and she got out and paid the man as composedly as if she had been going about London by herself for years. Eustace’s flat was on the fourth floor. She walked up the stairs because the automatic lift was out of order, and when she had almost reached the fourth floor she heard someone behind her, running. Next moment a man rushed past her and on, taking three steps at a time. She heard the click of a key, and, running too, came up on to the landing to see the door of Eustace’s flat standing ajar.
It was Eustace himself who had passed her then. She had been almost sure of it; but the stair was dark, and he was gone so quickly.
She pushed open the door and came into the small empty hall. When she and Helena Ryven had been there earlier in the day, they had waited in the sitting-room, whose door stood half open just in front of her.
She went into the room and threw a quick look round it. Eustace wasn’t there. There were the chairs they had sat in—worn leather chairs, one a little larger than the other; and there was a crumpled newspaper on the floor, and one or two matches in the grate. Eustace wasn’t there.
She turned and went towards the door of the room, and just as she reached it, Eustace ran through the hall and out of the flat, banging the door behind him. Valentine ran after him. But the catch of the door puzzled her, and by the time she got it open, there wasn’t even the least sound of his footsteps to be heard, though she hung over the well of the lift and listened.
Presently she went back into the flat and shut the door again. It didn’t really matter. She would look for the servant and tell her she wanted to wait till Eustace came in. In two minutes she realized that there was no servant; the tiny kitchen was empty, and though there were two bedrooms, only one bed had been made up. She stood for a moment looking round Eustace’s room. It was very bare and plain, and it smelt of boots. Valentine didn’t think she liked the smell of boots very much. She went back into the dining-room and sat down to wait for Eustace. Presently she fell asleep.
It was some hours later that she woke up with a start. Something had waked her, but she didn’t know what it was. She sat on the edge of the leather armchair, blinking a little under the electric light and staring at the black oblong which was all the open door could show her of the dark hall. Then the telephone bell rang again, and she knew what it was that had waked her.
She jumped up, put on the hall light, and took up the receiver with a little thrill of excitement. Telephones were most frightfully exciting things. She listened, and heard a woman’s voice speaking:
“Is that you, Eustace? Katherine speaking. I thought I’d just catch you. You didn’t sign one of that last lot of cheques—I’ve only just discovered it. I know you work late. I hope I didn’t haul you out of bed.”
Anyone a little more experienced than Valentine might have thought Miss Hill rather too explanatory. Valentine did not think anything at all. She said in a sleepy voice,
“Eustace—hasn’t—come back yet. Is it very late? I’ve been asleep.”
There was a pause. Then Katherine Hill said sharply,
“Who is speaking?”
“I’m waiting for Eustace,” said Valentine. “Who are you, please? Because I can take a message.” This came word for word out of Helena Ryven’s last lesson in telephone manners.
There was no answer. The humming of the wire had stopped.
Valentine asked her question again. Then she yawned and hung up the receiver. She wondered when Eustace would come back, and went down the passage to the kitchen to see what the time was by the funny round clock on the dresser. It was a quarter past one.
She had just taken a peep into Eustace’s room to see whether he had come home without her hearing him, when the telephone bell rang again. This time there was a lot of buzzing, and someone asked her three times whether she was 0008. Then, very faint and small, Helena Ryven’s voice:
“Eustace—”
Valentine dropped the receiver and backed away from the telephone. She stood in the middle of the hall and looked at it with round, frightened eyes. A gurgling, crackling sound came from it, broken every now and then by a long thrum.
Valentine stood quite still until the thrumming and the gurgling died away. Another sound took its place. This sound came through the door. Someone was on the landing.
This time Valentine knew how to manage the catch. She flung the door open and ran out with Eustace’s name on her lips. And it wasn’t Eustace at all. The door of the opposite flat was open; two women in evening wraps were just going in. They turned and looked at Valentine curiously.
Valentine came to a standstill a yard away from the door she had opened.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, “I thought it was Eustace.”
“I see,” said the younger woman. She had red hair and green, malicious eyes. Valentine didn’t like the way she looked at her at all.
The red-haired girl turned to the other woman, a large blonde creature artificially pale.
“She thought it was Eustace,” she said with extreme gravity. Then her eyes danced back to Valentine.
“I’m waiting for him,” said Valentine. And because the girl looked at her like that, two bright carnations flamed in her cheeks.
“She’s waiting for Eustace,” said the red-haired girl in the same solemn tone. Then she began to laugh, and Valentine ran into the flat and slammed the door with all her might.
CHAPTER XVIII
If Eustace Ryven had not forgotten to provide himself with a pocket handkerchief that Thursday evening, a great many things might have happened differently. He came running back, having gone no farther than the corner of the street. He passed Valentine on the stairs without noticing her in the least, and banged the door of his flat behind him without any idea that he was closing a door in his life.
He went on his way to St. Luke’s. Thursday evening was devoted to boxing, and he spent the next two and a half hours imparting the elements of the noble art to a crowd of eager boys. After which he went back
with Harden and sat talking over his plans with the one man on earth who had the power to loosen his tongue.
Harden had been head of the Community of St. Luke’s for two years. He was not so much a man as a dynamic force, unresting, dogmatic, and of an optimism unquenched by a twenty years’ struggle against the grinding poverty of the slums. He was small, dark, bright of eye, and quick of movement. He let Eustace talk for a while, and then cut in, his voice as dry as might be.
“In any country but this the whole thing would be settled with the greatest ease—you’d marry your cousin and there’d be an end of it.”
Eustace looked at him for a moment in silence before he said,
“What sort of end?”
Harden gave one of his quick shrugs.
“Oh, one of the best, I should say. Parkin Row would come down, and about six or seven hundred people would get a new start. That’s not an end of course—it’s just a beginning. The end—” He paused and threw out his hands with a jerk. “The end—isn’t yet.”
Eustace made no comment. About ten minutes later, in the middle of a conversation about drainage, he said,
“Were you serious just now, Giles?”
“Horribly, I expect,” said Harden with his staccato laugh.
“About my cousin—you’re the second person who has suggested to me that I should marry her.”
“I never suggest. I merely say that if we were in some other country, the marriage would be arranged as a matter of course. England’s the best country in the world; but our institutions are not practical. That’s the worst of belonging to a sentimental race.”
Eustace refused to be drawn.
“You haven’t answered my question. I didn’t come here to talk about national characteristics.”
“Did you come here to talk about your cousin?”
“Perhaps I did.”
Harden got up.
“If you’re really asking my opinion, I’ll give it you. You’re in such an unfair position, and the way out is such an obvious one, that I really don’t see what there is to talk about.”
There was a little pause. Then Eustace said slowly,
“Would it be—fait?”
Harden laughed.
“Have you by any chance been reading novelettes? Fair? What d’you mean by fair? Fair to the girl?”
“Perhaps.”
“Well—” said Harden deliberately, “if she gets a kind, sober, God-fearing husband, she gets what any woman round here would go down on her knees and thank God for. Wouldn’t she?” He shot out the question with a sort of galvanic energy, his small black eyes for a moment fixed and intent.
“Perhaps,” said Eustace again.
“Then what d’you mean by fair? It isn’t as if you’d a fancy for another woman.”
“And if I had?”
Harden looked at him sharply.
“Well, personally, I shouldn’t feel justified in gratifying my ‘fancy’ if it were going to cost some hundreds or some thousands of poor devils their chance of a decent life.”
Eustace looked up quickly.
“It strikes you like that?”
“It strikes me like that.”
A moment passed.
“About those drains—” said Eustace.
It was two o’clock when he let himself into his flat. The light was burning in the hall, and he looked about him with a puzzled frown before he switched it off. He couldn’t remember having put it on. It had been daylight when he went out. But the hall was always dark. He must have put it on without thinking. All the same it puzzled him.
He felt his way to his room, undressed, and lay awake until the early dawn showed him a blue misty sky looking over the top of the tall houses opposite.
In the dining-room Valentine slept dreamlessly, curled up in the largest leather chair. The dawn that brought sleep to Eustace woke her; but before waking her it brought her a dream—one of those fleeting dreams that touch the still half sleeping thought.
It was a dream about the island. She was quite alone in the dark inner cavern where she had found her pink shells, and all the floor of the cavern was heaped with shining pearls. All the pearls in the world were there, and all the colours of the rainbow dazzled on them under a milky veil. But it was dark in the cavern.
She came awake, and felt the light on her face; and suddenly she was so hungry that she didn’t know what to do. It was still dark in the passage. She went along it with her fingers on the wall until she came to the door of Eustace’s room. It was shut. She was sure that she had left it ajar. Eustace must have come home while she was asleep. She turned the handle very gently and looked in. Eustace was lying on his side with his face hidden against his arm. He looked very large. She shut the door and went on down the passage.
There were eggs in the kitchen, and a loaf and some butter. When she had eaten two eggs and a great deal of bread and butter, she felt better.
She had discovered a pot of strawberry jam, and was engaged in trying to balance a strawberry on a wobbly bit of bread, when Mrs. Fleming walked in.
The strawberry overbalanced. Valentine gave a little shriek and caught it just in time. When it was safely in her mouth, she began to notice the immobility of Mrs. Fleming, and the redness of her face, and the way she stared.
“Lor!” said Mrs. Fleming. “Of all the starts!” She had held her breath until she could hold it no more, and the remark had the effect of a small explosion.
Valentine finished sucking her finger.
“How did you get in?” she inquired.
Mrs. Fleming stiffened.
“How did I get in? How did I get in? Why, same as I always do—with the key what I has a-purpose. And may I arst if you’re stayin’ ’ere, miss?”
“No, I’m not staying—at least I don’t think so. Eustace isn’t up yet, so I don’t know.”
Mrs. Fleming’s sharp little grey eyes fixed Valentine in a stare of frank curiosity just tinged with hope. Charing was dull work—not that she called herself a char; she was a “daily,” and more than equal to putting anyone in their place if they called her out of her name. A bit of scandal would liven things up, besides providing her with an opportunity of feeling superior to the gentry; so there was a tinge of hope in the inquisitive eye.
“May I ask where you slep’, miss?”
“In the dining-room,” said Valentine, waving the sucked finger in the air to dry it.
“An’ either she’s the boldest, brazen-faced ’ussy as ever I should wish to see—an’ ’eaven knows there’s plenty of ’ussies to be see’d for anyone as isn’t as stone blind as any old Balaam’s ass—or else she’s one o’ them born innocents that didn’t ought to go hout without ’et mother, an’ ’er grandmother, an’ ’er great-grandmother’s cat.” This, after work was over, to a fellow “daily,” Mrs. Diggs by name, a frail and lachrymose creature who wiped her eyes before replying:
“An’ what’s the use of being an innocent young creature, Mrs. Fleming, with the world full of men?”
Mrs. Fleming sniffed.
“Oh, lor, Mrs. Diggs, ’ow you do go on about the men! Can’t say I mind ’em myself—but then I’ve ’ad luck. An’ what I says is this—get ’em in ’and an’ keep ’em in ’and, an’ they’ll come an’ feed out of yer ’and same as a lot of puppy dogs. But let ’em once get out of ’and, an’ you may whistle for ’em—for they ’aven’t got no sense, men ’aven’t,”
“Well, I dunno about that,” said Mrs. Diggs.
Mrs. Fleming had plenty to say to Mrs. Diggs afterwards; but at the time she confined herself to looking sharply at Valentine whilst she removed her battered black hat and drab waterproof and put on a checked apron which had seen better days. Valentine sat on the kitchen table and looked on whilst she made tea.
When Eustace emerged from his room, the sound of voices in the kitchen puzzled him vaguely. He had his bath, and as he returned, the voice of Mrs. Fleming could still be heard. She appeared to be embarked on a sustained narrati
ve. Her voice was very shrill and penetrating. He frowned and shut the door with something of a bang.
Mrs. Fleming, thawed by hot tea, was engaged in giving Valentine the full and complete history of her courtship and marriage. She made toast and fried bacon at the same time.
“An’ I says to ’im, ‘Now,’ I says, ‘you just got to choose whether you’ll ’ave your public ’ouse or whether you’ll ’ave me.’ An’ mind you, miss, I don’t say as h’orl barmaids is no better than they should be, but I do say, an’ willing to swear, that that there Kate Smith at The Bull was the very image of Jezebel out of the Old Testament, an’ wot I couldn’t bring myself to name in front of a young lady. So I spoke plain enough to George Fleming, an’ thought it my duty—lovely bit o’ bacon this is by the smell. I’ll say this for Mr. Ryven, ’e always gets the best—‘George,’ I says, and me donkey was up, I can tell you. I says to ’im, ‘George, you can ’ave me or you can ’ave that ginger-’aired Jezebel, but you can’t ’ave both of us, not unless you go for a ’eathen Turk or a Mormon, an’ then, I dessay you might ’ave a dozen, or more—only one of ’em won’t be me, George, an’ that I tell you straight. So you can just choose,’ I says.”
Mrs. Fleming turned over all the bacon with a wump, and a loud sizzling arose from the pan.
Valentine was thrilled.
“Oh, do go on! What did he say?”
“Seein’ as me name’s Fleming, ’e said what ’e oughter say. ‘Maud,’ ’e says, ‘wot are you gettin’ at?’ ’e says. An’ I says, ‘George Fleming, I’m a-gettin’ at you.’ An’ ’e says, ‘Me pore mother always said as you were’—which a more interferin’ woman I never ’opes to see, not this side of the grave. An then I says, ‘You come along o’ me, and we’ll put up the banns an’ you can sign the pledge at the same time. No more public ’ouses for me,’ I says, ‘an’ no more ginger-’aired Jezebels for you, George Fleming.’ An’ I ’ope to goodness that Mr. Ryven isn’t going to be late, for bacon kep’ is bacon spoiled.”
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