Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  “You know very well.”

  “Say it.”

  “Actually married, then,” said Elsie, blushing a good deal and with affected reluctance.

  When they arrived at Hillbourne Terrace, and the taxi drew up before the familiar flight of steps, she began to feel very nervous. She told herself that she was a married woman, and looked at her new wedding-ring, but she did not feel in the least like a married woman, nor independent of Mrs. Palmer’s anger.

  Elsie’s mother opened the door herself. “What on earth — Are you ill, Elsie, coming home in a cab at this hour of the morning? Whatever next!”

  Mr. Williams is here, Mother,” said Elsie, pushing her way into the dining-room.

  Geraldine was there, a check apron, torn and greasy, tied round her waist, and her hair still in curling-pins.

  She was placing clean forks and spoons all-round the table.

  She looked at her sister with unfriendly surprise. Elsie had worn her everyday clothes on leaving home that morning, and had changed at Irene’s house.

  “Whatever are you dressed up like that for?” said Geraldine at once.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “I’d like to know where you get the money to pay for your new hats,” said Geraldine significantly. “First one thing, and then another — I wonder you don’t sport a tiara, young Elsie.”

  “Perhaps I may, before I’ve done.”

  Elsie was not really thinking of what she was saying, but was rather listening to a sound of voices in the hall outside that denoted a conversation between Williams and Mrs. Palmer.

  She could not help hoping that he was breaking the news of their marriage to her mother. Elsie still felt certain that Mrs. Palmer would be very angry. It astonished her when her mother came into the room and kissed her vehemently.

  “You sly young monkey, you! Geraldine, has this girl told you what she’s done?”

  “What?”

  “Gone and got married! This morning!! To Mr. Horace Williams!!!” Mrs. Palmer’s voice rose in a positively jubilant crescendo.

  “Married!” screamed Geraldine. Her face became scarlet, and then grey.

  “My little girl, married at seventeen!” said Mrs. Palmer with her head on one side.

  She examined Elsie’s plump hand with its wedding-ring.

  Horace Williams stood by, quietly smiling. “Then you’re willing to trust her to me, Mrs. Palmer? You’ll forgive us for taking you by surprise, but you see, in all the circumstances, I could hardly — I naturally preferred — something very quiet. But you and I will have a little talk about business one of these days, and you’ll find that part of it all in good order. Elsie will be provided for, whatever happens.”

  “So generous,” murmured Mrs. Palmer.

  She insisted upon their remaining to dinner, and sent out Nellie Simmons for a bottle of wine. Elsie, now that she saw that her mother looked upon her marriage with the elderly solicitor as a triumph, and that Geraldine was madly jealous of her, became herself excited and elated.

  Williams went to the office in the afternoon, but Elsie remained at home and packed up all her things.

  She made her farewells quite cheerfully when Williams came to fetch her, still thinking of her mother’s repeated congratulations and praises.

  It came upon her as a shock, as they were driving away, when Williams observed dryly:

  “That’s over, and now there’ll be no need for you to be over here very often, Elsie, or vice versa. You must remember that my house is your only home, now.”

  PART II

  I

  The European war affected Elsie Williams as much, or as little, as it affected many other young women. She had been married a little over a year in August 1914.

  She was vaguely alarmed, vaguely thrilled, moved to a great display of emotional enthusiasm at the sight of a khaki uniform and at the sound of a military band.

  Later on, she sang and hummed “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” “Tipperary,” and “We Don’t Want to Lose You, but we Think you ought to Go,” and was voluble and indignant about the difficulties presented by sugar rations and meat coupons. She resented the air raids over London, and devoured the newspaper accounts of the damage done by them; she listened to, and eagerly retailed, anecdotes such as that of the Angels of Mons, or that of the Belgian child whose hands had been cut off by German soldiers; and after a period in which she declared that “everybody “ would be ruined, she found herself in possession of more money than ever before.

  Never before had so many clients presented themselves to Messrs. Williams and Cleaver, and never before had there been so much money about. Elsie bought herself a fur coat and a great many other things, and went very often to the cinema, and sometimes to the theatre. She very soon found, however, that Williams, when he could not take her out himself, disliked her going with anybody else.

  He was willing enough that she should take Irene with her, or her sister Geraldine, but if she went out with any man, Williams became coldly, caustically angry, and sooner or later always found an opportunity for quarrelling with him.

  Elsie was bored and angry, contemptuous of his jealousy, but far too much afraid of him to rebel openly.

  She was more and more conscious of having made a mistake in her marriage, but her regrets were resentful rather than profound, and her facile nature found consolation in her own social advancement, her comfortable suburban home, and her tyrannical dominion over a capped and aproned maid.

  She very seldom went to Hillbourne Terrace, and had quarrelled with her mother when Mrs. Palmer had suggested that it was time she had a baby.

  Elsie did not want to have a baby at all. She feared pain and discomfort almost as much as she did the temporary eclipse of her good looks, and the thought of a child that should be Horace Williams’s as well as hers filled her with disgust.

  She only spoke of this openly to Irene, and Irene undertook the purchase of certain drugs which she declared would render impossible the calamity dreaded by her friend. Elsie thankfully accepted the offer, and trusted implicitly to the efficacy of the bottles and packages that Irene bought.

  Sometimes Horace declared that he wanted a son, and as time went on his taunts became less veiled, but Elsie cared little for them so long as she remained immune from the trial of motherhood.

  She spent her days idly, doing very little house-work, sometimes making or mending her own clothes, and often poring for a whole afternoon over a novel from the circulating library, or an illustrated paper, whilst she ate innumerable sweets out of little paper bags. She never remembered anything about the books that she read thus, and sometimes read the same one a second time without perceiving that she was doing so until she had nearly finished it.

  After a time, Elsie became rather envious of the money that Irene was making as a munitions worker, and the good time—” that Geraldine enjoyed in the Government office where she had found a job. Elsie seriously told her husband that she felt she must go and do some “war work.”

  “You are not in the same position as an unmarried girl, Elsie. You have other duties. These war jobs are for young women who have nothing else to do.”

  “I don’t see that I’ve got so much to do.”

  “If you had children, you would understand that a woman’s sphere is in her own home.”

  “But I haven’t got children,” said Elsie, half under her breath.

  “It’s early days to talk like that,” Williams retorted, and his glance at her was malevolent. “One of these days you’ll have a baby, I hope, like every other healthy married woman, and neither you nor I nor anybody else can say how soon that day may come.”

  “Well, I suppose till it does come — if it ever does — you’ve no objection to me doing my bit in regard to this war?”

  “I don’t know. What is it you propose to do?”

  “Oh, get a job of some kind. Ireen says they’re asking for shorthand-typists all over the place, and willing to pay for the
m, too. I could get into one of these Government shows easily, or I could go in the V.A.D.s or something, and take a job in a hospital.”

  “No,” said Williams decidedly. “No. Out of the question.”

  Elsie, who at home had, as a matter of course, surreptitiously disobeyed every order or prohibition of her mother’s that ran counter to her own wishes, knew already that she would not disobey her husband.

  She was afraid of him.

  On the rare occasions when she saw any of her own family, Elsie always made a great display of her own grandeur and independence. She was really proud of her little suburban villa, her white-and-gold china, fumed oak “suite “ of drawing-room furniture, “ruby “ glasses and plated cake basket. She was also proud of being Mrs. Williams, and of wearing a wedding-ring.

  Geraldine came to see her once or twice, and then declared herself too busy at the office to take the long tram journey, and as Elsie hardly ever went to Hillbourne Terrace, they seldom met. But Irene Tidmarsh came often to see Elsie.

  She came in the daytime, when Williams was at the office, and very often she and Elsie went to the cinema together in the afternoon. Irene seemed able to get free time whenever she liked, and she explained this to Elsie by telling her that the superintendent at the works was a great friend of hers.

  Elsie perfectly understood what this meant, and realised presently that Irene was never available on Saturdays and Sundays.

  The war went on, and Mr. Williams made more and more money, and was fairly generous to Elsie, although he never gave her an independent income, but only occasional presents of cash, and instructions that all her bills should be sent in to him.

  He did not rescind his command that she should not attempt any war work, although, as the months lengthened into years, it seemed fairly certain that there was to be no family to give Elsie occupation at home.

  At twenty-five, Elsie Williams, from sheer boredom, had lost a great deal of the vitality that had characterised Elsie Palmer, and with it a certain amount of her remarkable animal magnetism. She was still attractive to men, but her own susceptibilities had become strangely blunted and no casual promiscuity would now have power to stir her.

  She was aware that life had become uninteresting to her, and accepted the fact with dull, bewildered, entirely unanalytical resentment.

  “I s’pose I’m growing middle-aged,” she said to Irene, giggling without conviction.

  One day, more than a year after the Armistice in November 1918, Irene Tidmarsh came to Elsie full of excitement.

  She had heard of a wonderful crystal-gazer, and wanted to visit her with Elsie.

  Elsie was quite as much excited as Irene. “I’d better take off my wedding-ring,” she said importantly. “They say they’ll get hold of any clue, don’t they?”

  “This woman isn’t like that,” Irene declared. “She’s what they call a psychic, really she is. This girl that told me about her, she said it quite frightened her, the things the woman knew. All sorts of things about her past, too.”

  “I’m not sure I’d like that,” said Elsie, giggling. “I know quite enough about my past without wanting help. But I must say I’d like to know what she’s got to say about the future. You know, I mean what’s going to happen to me.”

  “Oh, well, you’re married, my dear. There’s not much else she can tell you, except whether you’ll have boys or girls.”

  “Thank you!” Elsie exclaimed, tossing her head. “None of that truck for me, thank you. Losing one’s figure and all!”

  “You’re right. Anyway, let’s come on, shall we?”

  “Come on. I say, Ireen, she’ll see us both together, won’t she?”

  “I hope so. I wouldn’t go in to her alone for anything. Swear you won’t ever repeat anything she says about me, though.”

  “I swear. And you won’t either?”

  “No.”

  The crystal-gazer lived in a street off King’s Road, Chelsea, a long way down.

  A little hunch-backed girl opened the door and asked them to go into the waiting-room. This was a small, curtained recess off the tiny hall, and contained two chairs and a rickety table covered with thin, cheap-looking publications. There were several copies of a psychic paper and various pamphlets that purported to deal with the occult.

  “I’m a bit nervous, aren’t you?” whispered Elsie. She fiddled with her wedding-ring, and finally took it off and put it in her purse. When the hunch-backed child appeared at the curtains, both girls screamed slightly.

  “Madame Clara is ready for you,” announced the little girl, in a harsh, monotonous voice.

  She led them up to the first floor, into a room that was carefully darkened with blue curtains drawn across the windows. They could just discern a black figure, stout and very upright, sitting on a large chair in the middle of the room. A round stand set on a single slender leg was beside her.

  Elsie clutched at Irene’s hand in a nervous spasm.

  The black figure bowed from the waist without rising. “Do you wish me to see you both together, ladies?” Her voice was harsh and rather raucous in tone.

  “Yes, please,” said Irene boldly.

  “You quite understand that the charge will be the same as for two separate interviews?”

  “Yes.”

  The little girl advanced with a small beaded bag. “The fee is payable in advance, if you please.”

  Elsie fumbled in her purse, and pulled out two ten-shilling notes.

  “Half a guinea each, if you please, ladies.”

  “Ireen, have you got two sixpences?” Elsie whispered, agitated.

  Irene, by far the more collected of the two, produced a shilling, and the little girl with the bag went away.

  “Will you two ladies be seated? One on either side of the table, please — not next to one another.”

  Elsie made a despairing clutch at Irene’s hand again, but her friend shook her head, and firmly took her place on the other side of Madame Clara.

  Elsie sank into the remaining chair, and felt that she was trembling violently. Her nervousness was partly pleasurable excitement, and partly involuntary reaction to the atmosphere diffused by the dim, shaded room and the autocratic solemnity of Madame Clara.

  A sweet, rather sickly smell was discernible.

  The silence affected Elsie so that she wanted to scream.

  Her eyes were by this time accustomed to the semidarkness, and she could see that Madame Clara was leaning forward, her loose sleeves falling away from her tat, bare arms, her elbows resting on the little table, and her hands over her eyes.

  Suddenly the woman drew herself upright, and turned towards Irene.

  “You, first. You have a stronger personality than your friend. It was you who brought her here. Do you wish me to look into the crystal for you?”

  “Yes, I do,” gasped Irene.

  Elsie wondered from where the crystal would appear, and then she noticed the faint outline of a globe in front of the seer, on the little stand.

  A thrill of superstitious awe ran through her.

  “Make your mind a blank as far as possible, please ... do not think of the past, the present, or the future ... relax ... relax ... relax...”

  Madame Clara’s voice deepened, and she began to speak very slowly and distinctly, leaning back in her chair, the crystal ball before her eyes.

  “Time is an arbitrary division made by man — the crystal will not always show what is past and what is to come. For instance, I see illness here — bodily suffering — but I do not know if it has visited you or is still to come. It may even be the suffering of one near to you...”

  She paused for an instant, and Elsie just caught Irene’s smothered exclamation of “Father!”

  “Hush, please,” said the seeress. “The shadow of sickness deepens — it deepens into the blackness of death. A man — an old man — he is dying. You will get money from him. Beware of those who seek to flatter you. You are impressionable, but clear-sighted; impulsive, yet sel
f-controlled; reserved, but intensely passionate. I see marriage for you in the future, but with a man somewhat older than yourself. I see conflict...” She stopped again.

  “Perhaps the conflict is already over. You have certainly known love — passion—”

  Elsie, from mingled nervousness and embarrassment, suddenly giggled.

  The clairvoyante raised an authoritative hand. “It is impossible for me to go on if there are resistances,” she said angrily, in the voice that she had used at first, ugly and rather hoarse.

  “Shut up, Elsie!” came sharply from Irene.

  Elsie ran her finger-nails into her palms in an endeavour to check the nervous, spasmodic laughter that threatened to overcome her.

  “The current is broken,” said Madame Clara in an indignant voice.

  There was a silence.

  At last Elsie heard Irene say timidly:

  “Don’t you go on, madame?”

  “I’m exhausted,” said the medium in a fatigued voice. “You will have to return to me another day — alone. All that I can say to you now, I have said. Beware of opals, and of a red-haired man. Your lucky stone is the turquoise — you should wear light blue, claret colour, and all shades of yellow, and avoid pinks, reds and purple.”

  She stopped.

  Elsie, though awestruck, was also vaguely disappointed. It did not seem to her that she had learnt a great deal about Irene, and the warnings about colours and precious stones might have come out of any twopenny booklet off a railway bookstall, such as “What Month Were You Born In?” or “Character and Fortune Told by Handwriting.”

  Then she remembered that she herself had made Madame Clara angry by laughing, and that the woman had said the current was broken.

  “Probably she’s furious,” Elsie thought, “and she won’t tell me as much as she told Ireen. And she’s got our money, too. What a swindle!”

  What about my friend?” said Irene Tidmarsh. Her voice sounded rather sulky.

  “Your friend is a sceptic,” said the clairvoyante coldly.

  “No, really “ Elsie began.

  The woman turned towards her so abruptly that she was startled.

  She could discern an enormous pair of heavy-looking dark eyes gazing into hers.