Poor Caroline

by Winifred Holtby

  'Basil's in bed. I've given him about seventy aspirins and made him go to sleep. Come along in.'

  He followed her into the warm cosy room and stood on the hearth-rug looking down at her with bright compelling eyes. She curled herself like a great lazy cat on the divan.

  'Well, what's your news? Mix me a cocktail for the love of Mike, and tell me something cheerful. I feel as mouldy as a wet week-end, what with Basil ill an' London like it is, an' everything. Tell me I've come into a fortune. Tell me the Christian Cinema Company's either made or bust. I'm tired of it. I'm tired altogether.'

  But she did not look tired. She looked golden and grand

  and placid. Her long gown of orange velvet made a warm moving mirror for the firelight. She held out a large handsome hand for the cocktail and Johnson saw that her painted finger-nails were bright as cherries.

  He was a man of action. He was a Greek.

  He stood with one elbow on the mantelpiece looking down at her, telling his news in crisp staccato sentences. He never muddled his own reporting. He was the unequivocal hero of his news.

  'I always told Macafee to study Hollywood. He's like all specialists. Keeps his nose in his own work. Won't look around. I don't pretend to be an engineering expert. Ideas are my job. But I knew this right enough. Of course Brooks spotted it at once. The Tona Perfecta's no more use to any company to-day than a sick headache.' Johnson had quite forgotten his own enthusiasm for the film, and Gloria had ceased to take any interest in it. 'And we've paid five hundred for it. Aren't men businesslike?' she sighed.

  'Of course, that doesn't mean Macafee's no good. On the contrary I pointed out to Brooks this new colour stuff's first rate. He'll do big things, that young man - when he's learned his lesson.'

  'But we've got no rights over the new stuff, have we?'

  'We? Who's "we"? Now look here, Gloria, honestly. Who cares a hoot for the Christian Cinema Company? You don't. St. Denis doesn't. Isenbaum never comes near us now. All he wanted was to make himself pleasant to your husband, 'smy belief. Now, honest, wasn't it? I guess old Guerdon won't care. He's scared stiff of everything. Won't blow his own nose for fear of germs on his handkerchief. The only person who'd really give a dime for the whole damn concern is Caroline, an' she's crazy. Well, I mean, you can't keep a thing going to please Caroline, can you? An' she's got her curate.'

  'Got what?'

  'Oh, she's sweet on that young curate. What's his name? Mortimer. The one who got hurt in the crash. Poor old bird. One of those old-maid-sweet-on-the-parson complexes. That'll keep her happy for months. You know, we never ought to have thought we could run a business concern with

  her as secretary. She's about as much knowledge of business as a flea has of higher mathematics. Of course, we didn't want to be unkind, an" all that. I quite see. But it's gotta come to an end some day. An' we're only losin' money. I've been going into the books a bit. We've been payin' money to printers, lawyers, God knows what. Hadn't you better call a meetin'; pay our bills with what assets we've got, an' wind up the affair, an' start afresh?'

  Even as he spoke he saw himself as the strong practical man, coming to the rescue of these stranded idealists. He lifted burdens of responsibility from Gloria. He put St. Denis to shame. His energy was like a rushing mighty wind. He swept poor Caroline out of her incongruous position in Victoria Street and set her down in a nice suitable alms-house in the country, somewhere among hollyhocks and cabbage-roses, with a thatched roof and a cat, and a kettle on the hob. He swept Gloria out of Maida Vale and set her down in Greece among wild thyme and asphodel.

  Gloria acquiesced in his rhapsodies. She was not really thinking about Johnson. Her thoughts were with Basil, whom she had kept in London through a dark chill winter when he needed sun and warmth. It was her fault that he was ill again. Without the Christian Cinema Company, he would have left for Nice last October, and stayed there until the warm weather came. The whole affair had been a stupid mistake. She ought to have seen from the beginning that a company run by Caroline Denton-Smyth was inevitably absurd. She ought not to have let Basil's sense of humour run away with her sense of business values. She fell into a mood of unwonted self-dissatisfaction. Tired of London, and of the Maida Vale flat and Hanover Square, she began to wonder whether a hat-and-dress shop in the Boulevard des Moulins might not, after all, be a good investment, now that Monte Carlo was developing a summer as well as a winter season. She hardly noticed when Johnson took her hand, still talking; but when his flow of conversation stopped, as he bent to cover her fingers and wrist with kisses, she raised herself on one elbow and looked at him, amused interrogation in her eyes. He interrupted his kisses to shout at her with tumultuous exaltation.

  'We'll go to Greece - Athens, the Parthenon.'

  'Athens is an awful hole,' she said. 'All the hotels have bed-bugs and you can't get a decent cocktail.'

  She was not really surprised that Johnson kissed her, for men were taken that way quite frequently, it seemed to her. Indeed, she had been kissed so often and in so many ways that his boisterous onslaught hardly interrupted her speculations about Monte Carlo, and the word Athens only fitted itself into her plans for Basil's health.

  But she consented to dine with him after Basil's departure, because she would then be lonely and she felt in need of some diversion. Johnson amused her, as a bear or a sheepdog or a bad film might amuse her. She did not even object to his clumsy and grotesque love-making. She knew how to take care of herself. She had never been fastidious, and she could amuse Basil by recounting the big man's absurdities. Her solicitous and constant affection for her husband was a sentiment untouched by any casual adventure. It was the normal attitude of her heart and mind, the pole to which the needle of her life's compass swung. Basil was her child, her lover, her husband and her friend; he was part of herself, and she was part of him. Johnson, posturing dramatically on the surface of her consciousness, simply did not touch her. It did not even occur to her that he was taking seriously the possibilities of her promise to dine at his flat. But later that night she recounted his absurdities to her husband.

  'And how was our friend Johnson?' asked Basil.

  'More he-mannish, dirty, and businesslike than ever. I wish he'd trim his finger-nails before he tries to make love.'

  'Did he make love to you?'

  'Of course he did. A little. He wants us to dissolve the C.C.C. What do you think?'

  'I don't care a damn. It was a farce from the beginning. I can't think why I thought it would amuse me. I suppose that we can cut our losses and just let the thing die a natural death. If Johnson wants to take the trouble of doing it, let him."

  And that, so far as Basil St. Denis was concerned, was the end of the Christian Cinema Company.

  §4

  Supper was ready, and not supper only. Fate was ready. Life was ready. All time and circumstances stood waiting with Johnson in his sitting-room at the Battersea flat. The lobster lay pink and exquisite, swimming in a bath of white wine sauce, needing only five minutes over a gas-flame to bring it to perfection. The table was spread with olives and cold chicken and salad and trifle in glass goblets. The champagne reclined opulently in a bucket of ice. Red carnations cast their shadows like purple petals across the damask cloth. The fire leapt on ruddy wings. The cigarettes lay in their silver box. Johnson stood gazing down upon his handiwork, and with jubilant appreciation found it good.

  This was the night, and at any moment Gloria might arrive. She was coming, his own, his sweet, with the majesty of a ship in full sail, with the gallant port of a queen. The Battersea flat had known former festivals, but nothing could be like this. And to-morrow, to-morrow they would cross to Paris together. All the plans were laid. Gloria should have the whole day in which to pack her boxes, to tell her firm in Hanover Square that her husband had been taken ill, then she could join Johnson at Victoria for the night boat-train. Oh, it was easy, when the practical brain was lifted on the winds of high imagination, to devise, to risk, to scheme, to
conquer. It was sublime. What if he had, while helping Caroline to straighten the affairs of the Christian Cinema Company, contrived to divert to his own pockets £437 17s. 6d.? What if, in the eyes of the law, he was no longer merely an adventurer, but a felon too? His love was greater than the law, and to-morrow he would have escaped. He was going to take his Gloria to Greece.

  For the hundredth time he crossed to the window, brushed back the curtains and looked out across the park. The pale grey evening lay in delicate silence. Before her coming spring had cast a faint enchantment upon the air, so that the trees in the park and the hidden line of the river seemed to be hushed and waiting. Johnson felt that he too was hushed and waiting. He felt as though the black buds on the trees must swell with his swelling heart, that the ground must tingle with apprehension, while the crocuses unfolded and the flowers - he was a trifle vague about which flowers -pierced the dark soil with their green spears. All the world sang one song. She is coming. She is coming. She is coming. Spring? Gloria? Who knew, who cared? For were they not all one? Oh, this was ecstasy. He could have wept with pity for the poor, dull, lifeless creatures who had never known this rapture of expectation.

  Then, just when his imagination had leapt beyond it, so that for the moment he expected it no longer, he heard the door bell ring. He dropped the curtains and stood facing the little room. Everything in it was perfect to his eyes. If never again he was to taste perfection, he would have had this hour.

  He went down the passage, flung the door open, and saw, not Gloria, but Miss Doreen Weller.

  'Good evening,' said Miss Weller. Her voice was high and unnatural. 'You were expecting me, weren't you?' And before he had time to collect his scattered wits, she was in the flat. She was in the sitting-room. She had seen the supper-table.

  Johnson was horrified. His sense of decency was outraged by the thought that this ugly, untidy, stupid, revolting creature should peer through her pince-nez on to the room prepared for Gloria. There she stood gaping down upon the table, the carnations and the champagne.

  'Oh,' she said. 'Oh.' And then her face hardened and a gleam of vindictive cunning lit her eyes. 'Oh, but you can't get away with it like that, you know. I haven't come to be made a fool of. I've got a boy friend now, and he's waiting outside, and I've come for my twenty pounds, and if you don't let me have it within ten minutes, he's going for the police.'

  Thank God she was in a hurry. Thank God she would go soon.

  'Now, now, young lady,' he said, with a mild severity. 'Now just remember that you've got no right here, and that you are in a very awkward position. If I chose to give you up to the police as a common thief, I could. I have no legal responsibility whatsoever for you or your manuscript. 'Smatter of fact, I've made inquiries, and your stuff is still on its way round publishers. One day you may be getting a letter to say it's been taken, and you'll be sorry then that you let yourself jump to conclusions.'

  Johnson was playing for time. The truth was that until the moment when she entered his flat he had completely forgotten Miss Weller and her twenty pounds. Her visit to him had taken its place among the many other perplexities which he would escape by his retreat from England. England was full of troubles. Its civilization had become too complex. A man never knew where he was in it. At any moment Miss Weller might appear demanding twenty pounds, creditors might issue writs, or women like Mollie might write distressing letters.

  'Do you realize,' he repeated, 'that this is blackmail, and that the penalties for blackmail are even higher than the penalties for theft? You can't come here and demand twenty pounds like this. You paid that money to me under legal conditions which have been fulfilled. You remember that in my prospectus,' his resourceful brain was supplying him with new expedients as he talked, 'I definitely declared that I only accepted manuscripts at my clients' risk. I cannot possibly undertake that every novel submitted to me will be published.'

  'But you said you'd help me.' Her defiance was melting before his stern solemnity.

  'Yes and I wanna help you. I don't like to see a girl like you ruin all her chances in life for an act of folly. I've been thinking a great deal about you since you came to me, an' how I could help you best. But it seems to me that you gotta face the music. If I gave you the money now, I'd be an accessory after the act, an' I hold myself in patria potestas -' He meant loco parentis, but one Latin phrase was really as good as another. 'I've gotta think what's the best for you in the long run.' He was temporizing, for he had not yet made up his mind whether to give her the money and get rid of her before Gloria arrived, or to get rid of her without paying. He had bank-notes in the house, but giving her these would leave him short for his journey. Oh Hell, what a life! Wasn't it just too bad that this wretched sordid accident should break in upon his mood of ecstasy?

  'But you must help me. I tell you, I've got a friend. I know your correspondence college is rotten - I've been to other girls. What happened to Miss Holden's stories, and Mr. Peter's? Where's Mr. Osborne now? Tell me that!' She was growing hysterical again. Her voice rose to a scream. All her doubts of the integrity of the Correspondence School returned to her. 'Why do you run that correspondence school? Why aren't you writing books yourself? Isn't it true that only the men who can't publish their own stuff try to teach other people how to write? How many of your pupils have you got into real jobs? How much have you ever really done for any of us? You cheat, you swindle, you take our money under false pretences. To buy champagne.' Gasping with sobs she seized the gold-covered neck of a bottle. 'Champagne. Champagne! and I shall have to go to prison.' Suddenly losing all control of herself, she flung the bottle across the table. It caught the vase of carnations and went crashing to the floor. Violence led to violence. Miss Weller caught up the tablecloth, and Johnson's supper fell round him in chaos. He lumbered round the table and caught the girl's hands, wrestling against her hysterical violence, as she snatched at his collar and tried to scratch his face.

  'I'll kill you, I'll kill you,' sobbed Miss Weller. 'Thief! Swindler! Beast! Beast! Beast!'

  'Well, really,' said a cool deep voice from the doorway. 'This is a pretty spectacle. Is it a private fight, or can anyone join in?'

  Johnson and Miss Weller sprang from their struggling embrace, and faced Gloria, who stood contemplating them with calm amusement.

  'The door was open, and hearing somebody sound all hot an' bothered I walked in. Is this the party you promised me?'

  Johnson caught at his disordered collar and stared, and stared. For the first time in his life, he could find no word to say.

  Miss Weller, with a final scream, collapsed among the broken glass and crockery, and crouched sobbing on the floor.

  'Don't you think you'd better say something?' asked Gloria. 'Or would you rather I did not disturb your confidential interview? No thanks, I won't come in. It looks rather messy, and I've got a decent frock on.'

  It was a lovely frock. Never had she looked more rich and splendid and desirable. She held her cloak of golden tissue and brown fur tightly about her with one jewelled, cherry-tipped hand. The light from the passage glittered on her swinging ear-rings. She raised her eyebrows and looked from Johnson to the girl.

  He still stared at her, speechless and ridiculous, seeing her as a goddess remote from mortal imperfection, as a bright loveliness, as the beauty and crown of life.

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  'Well, I suppose I ought to inquire whether you're murdering or seducing this young woman or something. But I'm tired, and I want my dinner. And as you seem to be otherwise occupied, I think I'll say good night.'

  She had gone. He heard the door of the flat slam behind her. Only then did he find his tongue.

  'Gloria! Gloria! Mrs. St. Denis! Comeback.' He pushed the table over in his blind rush for the door, completing the ruin of his own room. He hurled himself down the passage, and fumbled with the Yale lock. But the catch had slipped, and it had always been difficult to open. By the time he reached the street, she had climbed ag
ain into the taxi which had brought her and had vanished among the jostling traffic. He knew then that he had lost her beyond all hope of recovery. He stood bare-headed and wild-eyed, staring up the street, but he had no hope of her return, and none of her forgiveness.

  He climbed slowly and heavily up the stairs. In his flat the wretched Doreen Weller still wept among the broken tumblers. All that he wanted now was to get rid of her. He went to the desk, unlocked it, and from a leather wallet took out four five-pound notes. He had intended them for Gloria's expenses on the way to Paris. He had intended them to pay for Pullman cars and flowers. He crushed the notes into a ball, and thrust them into the girl's damp fingers.

  'Here's your damned money; you little fool,' he said. 'Now get to Hell outa here.'

  Slowly she opened her hand and unfolded the notes upon her knee. Slowly the realization that she was saved reached her dazed and angry mind. Slowly she climbed to her knees and to her feet, pushed the notes into the shabby leather purse which she had dropped on to the chair, and, still sobbing quietly, found her way out of the room. Without a word, she went off down the passage, and Johnson heard her snivelling until the door of the flat slammed for a second time, and he was left alone.