At that moment she knew. She stood, holding the plate, staring. He was Harrison. He was the English johnny who’d killed Mr Williamson. “I know who you are,” she said, very slowly, “yer can’t fox me. That’s who you are. I must have been blind in me two eyes not to ’ave known from the first.” He made a movement with his hands as though that was all nothing. “When are they coming back?” And she meant to say, “Any minute. They’re on their way now.” Instead she said to the dreadful, frightened face, “Not till ’arf-past ten.” He sat down, leaning against one of the veranda poles. His face broke up into little quivers. He shut his eyes, and tears streamed down his cheeks. “Nothing but a kid. An’ all them fellows after ’im. ’E don’t stand any more of a chance than a kid would.” “Try a bit of beef,” said Millie. “It’s the food you want. Something to steady your stomach.” She moved across the veranda and sat down beside him, the plate on her knees. “’Ere — try a bit.” She broke the bread and butter into little pieces, and she thought, “They won’t ketch ’im. Not if I can ’elp it. Men is all beasts. I don’t care wot ’e’s done, or wot ’e ’asn’t done. See ’im through, Millie Evans. ’E’s nothink but a sick kid.”
—
Millie lay on her back, her eyes wide open, listening. Sid turned over, hunched the quilt round his shoulders, muttered “Good night, ole girl.” She heard Willie Cox and the other chap drop their clothes on to the kitchen floor, and then their voices, and Willie Cox saying, “Lie down, Gumboil. Lie down, yer little devil,” to his dog. The house dropped quiet. She lay and listened. Little pulses tapped in her body, listening, too. It was hot. She was frightened to move because of Sid. “’E must get off. ’E must. I don’t care anythink about justice an’ all the rot they’ve bin spoutin’ to-night,” she thought savagely. “’Ow are yer to know what anythink’s like till yer do know. It’s all rot.” She strained to the silence. He ought to be moving…. Before there was a sound from outside, Willie Cox’s Gumboil got up and padded sharply across the kitchen floor and sniffed at the back door. Terror started up in Millie. “What’s that dog doing? Uh! What a fool that young fellow is with a dog ’anging about. Why don’t ’e lie down an’ sleep?” The dog stopped, but she knew it was listening.
Suddenly, with a sound that made her cry out in horror the dog started barking and rushing to and fro. “What’s that? What’s up?” Sid flung out of bed. “It ain’t nothink. It’s only Gumboil. Sid, Sid!” She clutched his arm, but he shook her off. “My Christ, there’s somethink up. My God!” Sid flung into his trousers. Willie Cox opened the back door. Gumboil in a fury darted out into the yard, round the corner of the house. “Sid, there’s someone in the paddock,” roared the other chap. “What is it — what’s that?” Sid dashed out on to the front veranda. “’Ere, Millie, take the lantin. Willie, some skunk’s got ’old of one of the ’orses.” The three men bolted out of the house, and at the same moment Millie saw Harrison dash across the paddock on Sid’s horse and down the road. “Millie, bring that blasted lantin.” She ran in her bare feet; her night-dress flicking her legs. They were after him in a flash. And at the sight of Harrison in the distance, and the three men hot after, a strange mad joy smothered everything else. She rushed into the road — she laughed and shrieked and danced in the dust, jigging the lantern. “A-ah! Arter ’im, Sid! A-a-a-h! Ketch ’im, Willie. Go it! Go it! A-ah, Sid! Shoot ’im down. Shoot ’im!”
The Little Governess
—1915—
Oh, dear, how she wished that it wasn’t night-time. She’d have much rather travelled by day, much much rather. But the lady at the Governess Bureau had said: “You had better take an evening boat and then if you get into a compartment for ‘Ladies Only’ in the train you will be far safer than sleeping in a foreign hotel. Don’t go out of the carriage; don’t walk about the corridors and be sure to lock the lavatory door if you go there. The train arrives at Munich at eight o’clock, and Frau Arnholdt says that the Hotel Grunewald is only one minute away. A porter can take you there. She will arrive at six the same evening, so you will have a nice quiet day to rest after the journey and rub up your German. And when you want anything to eat I would advise you to pop into the nearest baker’s and get a bun and some coffee. You haven’t been abroad before, have you?” “No.” “Well, I always tell my girls that it’s better to mistrust people at first rather than trust them, and it’s safer to suspect people of evil intentions rather than good ones…. It sounds rather hard but we’ve got to be women of the world, haven’t we?”
It had been nice in the Ladies’ Cabin. The stewardess was so kind and changed her money for her and tucked up her feet. She lay on one of the hard pink-sprigged couches and watched the other passengers, friendly and natural, pinning their hats to the bolsters, taking off their boots and skirts, opening dressing-cases and arranging mysterious rustling little packages, tying their heads up in veils before lying down. Thud, thud, thud, went the steady screw of the steamer. The stewardess pulled a green shade over the light and sat down by the stove, her skirt turned back over her knees, a long piece of knitting on her lap. On a shelf above her head there was a water-bottle with a tight bunch of flowers stuck in it. “I like travelling very much,” thought the little governess. She smiled and yielded to the warm rocking.
But when the boat stopped and she went up on deck, her dress-basket in one hand, her rug and umbrella in the other, a cold, strange wind flew under her hat. She looked up at the masts and spars of the ship, black against a green glittering sky, and down to the dark landing stage where strange muffled figures lounged, waiting; she moved forward with the sleepy flock, all knowing where to go to and what to do except her, and she felt afraid. Just a little — just enough to wish — oh, to wish that it was daytime and that one of those women who had smiled at her in the glass, when they both did their hair in the Ladies’ Cabin, was somewhere near now. “Tickets, please. Show your tickets. Have your tickets ready.” She went down to the gangway balancing herself carefully on her heels. Then a man in a black leather cap came forward and touched her on the arm. “Where for, Miss?” He spoke English — he must be a guard or a stationmaster with a cap like that. She had scarcely answered when he pounced on her dress-basket. “This way,” he shouted in a rude, determined voice, and elbowing his way he strode past the people. “But I don’t want a porter.” What a horrible man! “I don’t want a porter. I want to carry it myself.” She had to run to keep up with him, and her anger, far stronger than she, ran before her and snatched the bag out of the wretch’s hand. He paid no attention at all, but swung on down the long dark platform, and across a railway line. “He is a robber.” She was sure he was a robber as she stepped between the silvery rails and felt the cinders crunch under her shoes. On the other side — oh, thank goodness! — there was a train with Munich written on it. The man stopped by the huge lighted carriages. “Second class?” asked the insolent voice. “Yes, a Ladies’ compartment.” She was quite out of breath. She opened her little purse to find something small enough to give this horrible man while he tossed her dress-basket into the rack of an empty carriage that had a ticket, Dames Seules, gummed on the window. She got into the train and handed him twenty centimes. “What’s this?” shouted the man, glaring at the money and then at her, holding it up to his nose, sniffing at it as though he had never in his life seen, much less held, such a sum. “It’s a franc. You know that, don’t you? It’s a franc. That’s my fare!” A franc! Did he imagine that she was going to give him a franc for playing a trick like that just because she was a girl and travelling alone at night? Never, never! She squeezed her purse in her hand and simply did not see him — she looked at a view of St Malo on the wall opposite and simply did not hear him. “Ah, no. Ah, no. Four sous. You make a mistake. Here, take it. It’s a franc I want.” He leapt onto the step of the train and threw the money onto her lap. Trembling with terror she screwed herself tight, tight, and put out an icy hand and took the money — stowed it away in her hand. “That’s all you’re going
to get,” she said. For a minute or two she felt his sharp eyes pricking her all over, while he nodded slowly, pulling down his mouth: “Ve-ry well. Trrrès bien.” He shrugged his shoulders and disappeared into the dark. Oh, the relief! How simply terrible that had been! As she stood up to feel if the dress-basket was firm she caught sight of herself in the mirror, quite white, with big round eyes. She untied her “motor veil” and unbuttoned her green cape. “But it’s all over now,” she said to the mirror face, feeling in some way that it was more frightened than she.
People began to assemble on the platform. They stood together in little groups talking; a strange light from the station lamps painted their faces almost green. A little boy in red clattered up with a huge tea wagon and leaned against it, whistling and flicking his boots with a serviette. A woman in a black alpaca apron pushed a barrow with pillows for hire. Dreamy and vacant she looked — like a woman wheeling a perambulator — up and down, up and down — with a sleeping baby inside it. Wreaths of white smoke floated up from somewhere and hung below the roof like misty vines. “How strange it all is,” thought the little governess, “and the middle of the night, too.” She looked out from her safe corner, frightened no longer but proud that she had not given that franc. “I can look after myself — of course I can. The great thing is not to—” Suddenly from the corridor there came a stamping of feet and men’s voices, high and broken with snatches of loud laughter. They were coming her way. The little governess shrank into her corner as four young men in bowler hats passed, staring through the door and window. One of them, bursting with the joke, pointed to the notice Dames Seules and the four bent down the better to see the one little girl in the corner. Oh dear, they were in the carriage next door. She heard them tramping about, and then a sudden hush followed by a tall thin fellow with a tiny black moustache who flung her door open. “If Mademoiselle cares to come in with us,” he said, in French. She saw the others crowding behind him, peeping under his arm and over his shoulder, and she sat very straight and still. “If Mademoiselle will do us the honour,” mocked the tall man. One of them could be quiet no longer; his laughter went off in a loud crack. “Mademoiselle is serious,” persisted the young man, bowing and grimacing. He took off his hat with a flourish, and she was alone again.
“En voiture. En voi-ture!” Someone ran up and down beside the train. “I wish it wasn’t night-time. I wish there was another woman in the carriage. I’m frightened of the men next door.” The little governess looked out to see her porter coming back again — the same man making for her carriage with his arms full of luggage. But — but what was he doing? He put his thumbnail under the label Dames Seules and tore it right off, and then stood aside squinting at her while an old man wrapped in a plaid cape climbed up the high step. “But this is a ladies’ compartment.” “Oh no, Mademoiselle, you make a mistake. No, no, I assure you. Merci, Monsieur.” “En voi-turre!” A shrill whistle. The porter stepped off triumphant and the train started. For a moment or two big tears brimmed her eyes and through them she saw the old man unwinding a scarf from his neck and untying the flaps of his Jaeger cap. He looked very old. Ninety at least. He had a white moustache and big gold-rimmed spectacles with little blue eyes behind them and pink wrinkled cheeks. A nice face — and charming the way he bent forward and said in halting French: “Do I disturb you, Mademoiselle? Would you rather I took all these things out of the rack and found another carriage?” What! that old man have to move all those heavy things just because she… “No, it’s quite all right. You don’t disturb me at all.” “Ah, a thousand thanks.” He sat down opposite her and unbuttoned the cape of his enormous coat and flung it off his shoulders.
The train seemed glad to have left the station. With a long leap it sprang into the dark. She rubbed a place in the window with her glove but she could see nothing — just a tree outspread like a black fan or a scatter of lights, or the line of a hill, solemn and huge. In the carriage next door the young men started singing “Un, deux, trois”. They sang the same song over and over at the tops of their voices.
“I never could have dared to go to sleep if I had been alone,” she decided. “I couldn’t have put my feet up or even taken off my hat.” The singing gave her a queer little tremble in her stomach and, hugging herself to stop it, with her arms crossed under her cape, she felt really glad to have the old man in the carriage with her. Careful to see that he was not looking she peeped at him through her long lashes. He sat extremely upright, the chest thrown out, the chin well in, knees pressed together, reading a German paper. That was why he spoke French so funnily. He was a German. Something in the army, she supposed — a Colonel or a General — once, of course, not now; he was too old for that now. How spick and span he looked for an old man. He wore a pearl pin stuck in his black tie and a ring with a dark red stone on his little finger; the tip of a white silk handkerchief showed in the pocket of his double-breasted jacket. Somehow, altogether, he was really nice to look at. Most old men were so horrid. She couldn’t bear them doddery — or they had a disgusting cough or something. But not having a beard — that made all the difference — and then his cheeks were so pink and his moustache so very white. Down went the German paper and the old man leaned forward with the same delightful courtesy: “Do you speak German, Mademoiselle?” “Ja, ein wenig, mehr als Französisch,” said the little governess, blushing a deep pink colour that spread slowly over her cheeks and made her blue eyes look almost black. “Ach, so!” The old man bowed graciously. “Then perhaps you would care to look at some illustrated papers.” He slipped a rubber band from a little roll of them and handed them across. “Thank you very much.” She was very fond of looking at pictures, but first she would take off her hat and gloves. So she stood up, unpinned the brown straw and put it neatly in the rack beside the dress-basket, stripped off her brown kid gloves, paired them in a tight roll and put them in the crown of the hat for safety, and then sat down again, more comfortably this time, her feet crossed, the papers on her lap. How kindly the old man in the corner watched her bare little hand turning over the big white pages, watched her lips moving as she pronounced the long words to herself, rested upon her hair that fairly blazed under the light. Alas! how tragic for a little governess to possess hair that made one think of tangerines and marigolds, of apricots and tortoiseshell cats and champagne! Perhaps that was what the old man was thinking as he gazed and gazed, and that not even the dark ugly clothes could disguise her soft beauty. Perhaps the flush that licked his cheeks and lips was a flush of rage that anyone so young and tender should have to travel alone and unprotected through the night. Who knows he was not murmuring in his sentimental German fashion: “Ja, es ist eine Tragödie! Would to God I were the child’s grandpapa!”
“Thank you very much. They were very interesting.” She smiled prettily handing back the papers. “But you speak German extremely well,” said the old man. “You have been in Germany before, of course?” “Oh no, this is the first time” — a little pause, then — “this is the first time that I have ever been abroad at all.” “Really! I am surprised. You gave me the impression, if I may say so, that you were accustomed to travelling.” “Oh, well — I have been about a good deal in England, and to Scotland, once.” “So. I myself have been in England once, but I could not learn English.” He raised one hand and shook his head, laughing. “No, it was too difficult for me…. ‘Ow-do-you-do. Please vich is ze vay to Leicestaire Squaare.’” She laughed too. “Foreigners always say …” They had quite a little talk about it. “But you will like Munich,” said the old man. “Munich is a wonderful city. Museums, pictures, galleries, fine buildings and shops, concerts, theatres, restaurants — all are in Munich. I have travelled all over Europe many, many times in my life, but it is always to Munich that I return. You will enjoy yourself there.” “I am not going to stay in Munich,” said the little governess, and she added shyly, “I am going to a post as governess to a doctor’s family in Augsburg.” “Ah, that was it.” Augsburg he knew. Augsbur
g — well — was not beautiful. A solid manufacturing town. But if Germany was new to her he hoped she would find something interesting there too. “I am sure I shall.” “But what a pity not to see Munich before you go. You ought to take a little holiday on your way” — he smiled — “and store up some pleasant memories.” “I am afraid I could not do that,” said the little governess, shaking her head, suddenly important and serious. “And also, if one is alone….” He quite understood. He bowed, serious too. They were silent after that. The train shattered on, baring its dark, flaming breast to the hills and to the valleys. It was warm in the carriage. She seemed to lean against the dark rushing and to be carried away and away. Little sounds made themselves heard; steps in the corridor, doors opening and shutting — a murmur of voices — whistling …. Then the window was pricked with long needles of rain …. But it did not matter … it was outside … and she had her umbrella … she pouted, sighed, opened and shut her hands once and fell fast asleep.
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Women Alone Page 3
