A little after five o’clock there was a knock on the door. Widgeon froze. He guessed who it was. Of course she would have waited until it was nearly time for him to go back to work—she could hold him there against his will and teach him a lesson. There was a second and louder knock, undoubtedly Violet’s. It was a thin staccato drumming, as of anaemic knuckles in an uncontrollable spasm of nerves. Still motionless, he heard her try the door. Then the storm burst.
“Let me in! Let me in! A—oh, I’m locked out! A—oh! ’E won’t let me in!”
She battered on the door, the thump of her head against it marking time for the frantic rolling of her knuckles.
Widgeon stealthily opened the window, closed it again behind him, and tiptoed across the back yard into the cover of a flight of iron steps by which his landlady had access to the sooty patch of crazy paving which she called her garden. He waited until Violet’s hysterics had brought the landlady downstairs to her aid, and, as soon as he heard her manly tones mingling with the yap of Violet and adjuring him to open the door, ran up the iron steps and passed silently through her flat. He fled, hatless, to refuge with his gentleman.
It was infinite pleasure to welcome Mr. Trimlake, to hang up his hat and serve him his dry martini. The sane, cold environment of comfort and celibacy soothed him. It was like coming out of a pub full of drunks into the coolness of a spring morning.
“I wonder, sir,” said Widgeon cautiously, passing the cigarettes to his gentleman, “if you could settle a moot point for me.”
“A what?” asked Mr. Trimlake.
“A moot point, sir.”
Mr. Trimlake made a mental note of the remark, intending to retail it at his club as an example of the curious use of English by upper servants when they wished to be urbane.
“If a married woman,” Widgeon put it, “says, as it might be, sir, that a man promised to marry her if she got a divorce, could she sue him if he refused?”
“She could not.”
“But what would a man do, sir, if she did?”
“Where the opposite sex is concerned,” said Mr. Trimlake simply, “one should always consult a solicitor. I should imagine, Widgeon, that 85 per cent—yes, fully 85 per cent—of unpleasantnesses could be avoided if every man consulted a solicitor at the outset of any entanglement. His rights. Her rights. All clear from the start, you see.”
“Thank you very much, sir,” answered Widgeon hastily. “I had an argument on the point with a friend. Er—will you be dressing to-night?”
Mr. Trimlake hoped to himself that the dear boy had not been getting into some sordid trouble. But it was really unthinkable. Widgeon was too respectable for that sort of thing. One had no right to suggest it.
“No, Widgeon,” he replied. “I’ll be dining at the club and back about ten.”
When his gentleman had dined, returned, and gone to bed Widgeon reluctantly strolled homewards. He reconnoitred the house from the street corner. All lights but that in his landlady’s flat were out. There were no sounds but four or five gramophones, a drunken party in Number Six, and a sports car being warmed up at the far end of the street. He let himself in, tiptoed down the passage, and peered through the keyhole of his room before entering. To his relief the room was dark and apparently empty. He turned on the light and two minutes later heard the firm footsteps of his landlady and the click-clack of the strings of beads bouncing on her breastbone.
She knocked and entered, without waiting for his response.
“I am very sorry, madam—” began Widgeon.
“Don’t apologize to me, my dear fellow,” she answered, adopting a man-of-the-world tone. “I am not in the least shocked by any display of temper. I have no doubt it got rid of some of your repressions. I’m not going to say anything about it—only that I wish you had seen that wee, broken little wife of yours after you left.”
“She’s not my wife,” said Widgeon with a shade of satisfaction. “Did she tell you she was?”
“We needn’t go into that now,” replied the landlady, taken aback. “Veeolett has no bourgeois prejudices. For the time being she considers herself married to you, Mr. Widgeon.”
“Indeed, madam?” said Widgeon noncommittally. “I trust that in any event she did not trouble you very long.”
“Now, my dear fellow, it’s no good talking to me as if you were somebody’s butler. She did not trouble me at all. I merely did what I could for her. I undressed the poor child and put her to bed.”
“You mean, she’s upstairs?”
“Fast asleep. What she sees in you, frankly, I cannot imagine. But so long as you are under this roof I shall see that you do not ill-treat her. I have given her a key to your room. Good night.”
“Good night, madam,” said Widgeon.
He swiftly packed his clothes and portable possessions. He then turned out the light, hoping that Violet’s newfound protector would decide that he had gone to bed. Half an hour later, laden down by a suitcase in each hand, he staggered quietly out into the street and spent the night at a cheap hotel.
“I find, sir,” he said to his gentleman next morning, “that while living out it is somewhat difficult to give proper attention to my work. Would you have any objection to my sleeping in again?”
“None at all, Widgeon,” said Mr. Trimlake cheerfully. “So long as we do not intrude on each other, you can sleep standing on your head if you want to.”
When two afternoons and two nights had passed without sight or word of Violet, he was sure the affair was safely over. He began to feel secure, healed. On the third afternoon he was washing up his lunch dishes, and Mrs. Hussey was listening approvingly to the brisk and healthy splashings, when Violet Agg toiled up the back stairs. She stopped at each iron landing that her tears might be noticed, but answered the surprised greetings of those servants who saw her only with sobs. Widgeon had no time to escape.
“Oh, Dolf!” she whimpered, holding out her arms to him. “Take me back, Dolf!”
He stared at her in absolute horror, mumbling meaningless words and scraps of words as his impulse to order her away clashed with his fear that she would make a scandal.
“The stairs were so high, Dolf,” she said, clutching at her bosom.
She swayed dangerously out over the iron rail that guarded the well of the staircase.
“I think I’m going to faint,” she said.
Widgeon dashed on to the landing and caught her. Her hat fell off. She twined one arm round his neck, and wriggled the other shoulder clear of the collar of her dress.
“Oh, Lord!” Widgeon howled, putting into the exclamation all the agony of Job demanding justice.
“You’re so strong,” she murmured.
“Go away! You mustn’t come here! Don’t you know you mustn’t come here?”
“I know. But where am I to go, Dolf?”
“Home!”
“Now you let ’im alone, Mrs. Agg,” said Mrs. Hussey, advancing from her kitchen, whence she had watched the scene first with horrified surprise and then with anger. “That’s no way to carry on, and you know it!”
“He’s treated me wicked, Mrs. Hussey,” cried Violet. “He’s ’ad his way with me, and my heart’s broke and he won’t ’ave any more to do with me. And now my hubby’s turned me out!”
“Turned you out, ’as ’e?” answered Mrs. Hussey calmly. “I should never ’ave thought it of ’im! You come back with me, my dear, and we’ll ’ave a talk to ’im.”
“O—ooh, I couldn’t never look him in the face, Mrs. Hussey. I’m that way. And he knows it isn’t him!”
“That way, are you?” asked Mrs. Hussey suspiciously.
Violet nodded her head pathetically, bowing her shoulders under the weight of shame and disgrace.
“Now listen to me, Vi’let Agg,” said Mrs. Hussey. “You’ve been messin’ about with yourself ever since I knew y
ou, and you’ve never ’ad a biby yet and I don’t believe you’re going to ’ave one now. And what’s more,” she added, slightly raising her voice, “I don’t believe you could ’ave one, and if you ’ad I know one person who wouldn’t dare say it wasn’t ’is, and that’s Agg!”
“A—oh,” Violet yapped, putting the utmost refinement into her voice. “So that’s what you think, is it! Don’t you come judging others by yourself, Mrs. Hussey—not with everybody in this house knowing how you’re running after Mr. Widgeon. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, an old woman like you!”
Mrs. Hussey turned white. A stifled burst of laughter from two charwomen on the floor below sent her purple. She retired defeated to her kitchen and slammed the door.
“Take me out of here, Dolf!” sobbed Violet, apparently overcome by the vulgarity of the scene. “Take me out of here!”
Scarlet with embarrassment, Widgeon led her down the back stairs, running the gantlet of two pantry windows on each landing. Though his colleagues had out of delicacy shut their doors, he knew that their grinning faces were massed behind the muslin curtains or frosted glass of every window.
“Now don’t you ever come here again, Veeolett,” he said when they had reached the street.
“I can’t help it. I can’t keep away from you. I know I’ve behaved badly, but I can’t live without you. You won’t give up our little room, will you?” she begged pitifully.
“I will!” answered Widgeon firmly. “That old lamppost won’t get no more rent out of me!”
“Oh, Dolf, how can you talk coarse like that—and her so kind to us both! You will give her another month’s rent, won’t you, Dolf?”
“I won’t!”
“You wouldn’t make me come here again to fetch you,” she murmured, “not your little Veeolett. Give me the rent so as I can wait for you there.”
Widgeon with ill grace gave her fifteen shillings.
“That’s only a week, darling. A week’s over so quickly,” she said.
“Here’s another fifteen bob, then. That’s all I’ve got.”
“And you’ll come and see me to-morrow afternoon, Dolf, won’t you?”
“I’ll try,” he said weakly.
When the next afternoon came, however, he did not go. He knew there was a risk that Violet might come to fetch him, but the porter at the front door and the boy at the service entrance, both sympathetic allies, had promised to keep their eyes open. If she made a row—well, anything was better than returning to that awful room and those two awful women.
Though the flat and all in it were perfect to the casual eye, Widgeon knew of a number of odd jobs that he had put off for the past month, and turned to them with a will. He ironed Mr. Trimlake’s top hat. He polished the glasses. He examined his gentleman’s shoes, and was ashamed to find that one pair had actually needed reheeling for a week and another had laces which might have broken the next time they were tied. Having passed his own inspection and brought his stores up to date by telephoning to the grocer and the wine merchant, he began to shell shrimps to accompany his gentleman’s dry martini. Mr. Trimlake had a greedy love of fresh shrimps, but Widgeon, who intensely disliked the finicky business of shelling, only served them when he had a guilty conscience.
At a quarter to six the front doorbell rang. Mr. Trimlake was due back, and Widgeon supposed that he had forgotten his keys at the office. He opened the door with a flourish, and the genial respectful smile that he kept for his gentleman and such guests as he particularly wished to honor. Violet took two wild and tottering steps and pitched against him.
“I done it! I done it now!” she whined in a desperate, childish voice.
She was quite limp. Her head lolled idiotically on the thin shoulders. Widgeon grabbed her by the elbows and held her up at arm’s length as if she had been an overcoat belonging to a departing guest.
“Now you get out of here!” he said sternly.
“Don’t speak rough to me, Dolf,” she murmured. “It won’t be long now.”
She looked back at him over her shoulder with forgiving, wide blue eyes.
“You drove me to it,” she said. “You didn’t come.”
“That’s no reason for coming here,” he answered shortly.
“You don’t understand, Dolf. I ’ad to see you. I been rash. I’m going to a better world, Dolf.”
Widgeon dropped her, and she crumpled up against his knees.
“What! What have you done? What have you done, Veeolett?” he shouted at her in panic.
“I drank the acid out of the radio.”
“But—but you can’t have done! Oh, Christ—you have! Come in here quick!”
He shut the front door and carried her through the flat into his pantry.
“It burns, Dolf,” she whimpered. “You don’t know ’ow it burns. I’m all empty,”—she patted her stomach,—“like as if the bottom had dropped out.”
“But what did you want to go and do it for?” he sobbed.
“You didn’t love me. I’m dying, Dolf.” Her fingers plucked at the respectability of his black waistcoat. “Kiss me.”
“Oh, damn! Damn! Damn!” yelled Widgeon.
He rushed to the telephone. The pages of the directory fluttered under his hands as if ruffled by a furious draught.
“What are you doing?” she asked quickly.
“Hospital.”
“It’s too late, Dolf,” she panted. “I won’t be alive no more when they come for me. And they’d ask questions. I don’t want for you to get into trouble.”
Widgeon for the first time thought of himself, and saw the entanglements that threatened him—the hospital, her death, the police inquiries, his landlady’s evidence, and what the coroner would say about him. He rushed out to the landing and knocked on Mrs. Hussey’s door.
“Lor’, Mr. Widgeon! ’Ave you seen a ghost?” she asked.
“It’s her again, Mrs. Hussey. Come quickly. Quickly, please!”
“Whatever’s ’appened?”
“She’s killed herself … Mrs. Agg. In my pantry.”
“’Ow did she get in?” demanded Mrs. Hussey, her indignation at the return of the ex-porter’s wife preventing her from grasping more than one idea at a time.
“Through the front. She must have waited till the porter was in the lift, and climbed the stairs. What am I to do, Mrs. Hussey? She’s killed herself. And Mr. Trimlake back any moment!”
“Vi’let Agg killed herself?” asked Mrs. Hussey, unbelieving.
“She’s dying. She drank acid.”
“Where did she get it?”
“The batteries. The wireless in my room.”
“A—ah! So that’s what you wanted a room of yer own for!” exclaimed Mrs. Hussey. “And so she’s told you as she’s put ’erself away, ’as she?”
“She’s done it! I know it! She’s burning inside.”
“Then all we can do,” said the cook practically, “is give ’er what to keep ’er alive and get ’er out of ’ere. I’ll come and ’ave a look at ’er if you don’t mind, Mr. Widgeon.”
“God bless you!” exclaimed Widgeon fervently.
Violet Agg had moved herself from the pantry to the adjoining room. She was lying on Widgeon’s bed and hiccuping. Her colorless face, resting on the remains of her hat and a tangle of colorless hair, was set into a steadfast look of courage and agony.
“Who’s with you, Dolf?” she murmured. “I can’t turn my head.”
“It’s only me, dearie,” said Mrs. Hussey in a hoarse deathbed whisper. “’Ow are you feelin’?”
“Burning. Burning,” Violet moaned. “It won’t be long now.”
“’Ow’s your mouth? Burned too?”
“No. I swallowed it right down.”
They heard the front door open, and Mr. Trimlake’s steps in the hall. Mrs. Hussey drew
a deep breath and took responsibility upon herself. Her apron swelled majestically. It might have been dinnertime, with a drunken footman and a sick kitchenmaid.
“’Alf a mo’, Vi’let! I’ll see you don’t pass out while ’e ain’t ’ere,” she said.
She fell upon Widgeon, brushed the powder off his coat, and combed his hair, which was falling in dark, oily locks over his face.
“In you go!” she ordered. “Leave ’er to me!”
Widgeon marched out to greet his gentleman.
Mrs. Hussey was not sure whether Violet Agg had taken poison or not. It was possible that she had—to impress herself as well as Widgeon.
“Wireless battery, was it?” she asked.
“Yes,” Violet wailed.
“They didn’t ought to allow people to buy ’em,” said Mrs. Hussey mournfully. “Just like the governess in the last ’ouse where I worked. Not more than a teaspoonful she took, and that wasn’t ’ardly acid, the doctor said, ’cos the battery ’ad run down. But it made a ’ole clean through ’er in time, it did.” Mrs. Hussey clicked her tongue pityingly. “A lovely corpse she’d ’ave been without that, she would.”
Violet let out a yell of fright that Mrs. Hussey quickly smothered with a broad hand.
“It ’urts, Mrs. ’Ussey!” she screamed. “A—oh, it really does ’urt!”
“Ah, you should ’ave thought of that before you up and did it, duckie. That poor girl now—fifty mortial hours she was screamin’ and yellin’ for somebody to put ’er out of ’er pain.”
“I want a doctor! Get a doctor!” Violet yelped, struggling against her hand.
“It’ll be too late when ’e comes, dearie. Now, you and me ’as ’ad words, Vi’let Agg, but I’ll do what I can. If there’d been anyone to give that poor soul what I’m going to give you, she’d ’ave ’ad a chance. And don’t you go calling out, ’cos one good scream and that there acid’ll be through your stummick before you can say knife. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
Mrs. Hussey ran to her kitchen and turned to the end of her cookery book, where there was a chapter on First Aid.
Where an acid is the poison [she read], give chalk and water, whiting plaster from the wall or white of egg. Failing these, soap and water may be used to neutralize the acid.
The Salvation of Pisco Gabar and Other Stories Page 11
