It was neither Death nor the Devil.
It was the caretaker come up in her mackintosh and curlers to bear a dread warning from the Ground Floors. They had complained they had, large chunks of plaster had fallen from the ceiling they had, and the gas mantle broke just from the shaking, and the child ill too, mightn’t last through the night for you never knew what mightn’t happen with the doctor coming twice a day.
“Why, what’s the matter with—er—it? “asked Leila, for the Ground Floors were so exclusive that the sex of their child was still a mystery to her.
“Noo-monia, I believe they said, following on the ’flu,” said the caretaker affably, for she had been appeased by Dicky’s immediate offer of Leila’s whisky, and became almost apologetic as she drank it. “Nothing to do with me, you understand, but the Ground Floors being what they are it don’t do to get across them, though what I say is you must have a bit of fun sometimes.”
“Hear, hear, Mrs. McCarthy! What about another one?”
“Here, here, Dicky!” whispered Leila on quite a different note, but Mrs. McCarthy was already saying that her husband being Irish and an educated man led her to prefer whisky to beer any day. She knew all about literary men and artists too, there was one that used to come to this house, quite a famous artist in Punch he was and wanted to draw her he did,” but I looked him straight in the eye and said, ’ Not naked, mind you ’ and he looked as though he was going to faint right off so it showed he saw I wasn’t that kind.
“‘ Never dreamt of it,’ he said, real earnest like, and said his line was funny charwomen. I wasn’t going to be put off with that.
“’ Well,’ I says, ’ I guess I ain’t funny enough for you. Dirty lot artists, always out to make a sketch of you.”
“Quite right, Mrs. McCarthy. Shows a lamentable lack of taste.”
“Just what I think, sir, but then I always was one for thinking. Nice sort of book I could do about this house I always say. Not that there’s any harm in it I daresay.”
“Oh, don’t say that, Mrs. McCarthy. Give us the benefit of the doubt.”
“Just what I say, sir. You must have a bit of fun sometimes, and as for them Ground Floors they may keep themselves to themselves but what is there to keep, that’s what I say, what is there to keep?”
“Just what I think, Mrs. McCarthy.”
“Do you two mind if you go on sharing your opinions on the stairs? “asked Leila.” I want to get to bed myself.”
She was left to tell Dicky what she thought of him, using her whisky to fish for copy.
“After all, it is my party, not yours.”
“Whatever party I go to, is my party.”
He frightened her. As she went down he went up, up, up.
“Have you really come into a fortune? “she asked,” or do you just believe you will?”
“Or perhaps someone else believes it. That would have most effect of all. Supposing a man I met in the street thought it worth while to back me, with the odds at a hundred to one, to make a hundred thousand pounds in five years?”
“Well, anyway, I don’t believe that,” she said.
He crowed with laughter. He said,” Those curlers, you know, they are never removed, they are worn night and day, presumably for heaven. Or perhaps she took them out for the poor young gentleman on the second floor. Just once to say good-bye. Can’t you imagine it all stark and frizzed? That was the one romance of her life you know. ’ ’Ow ’e did look a treat in khaki.’”
Leila murmured,” Following on the ’flu, she said.”
“Don’t get nervous, Leila. Those Ground Floors are always at death’s door, but no doctor has ever succeeded in shoving them quite through it. Get to bed and have a really stiff toddy before going to sleep.”
“How can I go to sleep? All sorts of things may have happened while we sat here.”
“Why shouldn’t they? All sorts of things have happened while we sat here.”
And so they had. Chance had discussed with his friends the message they had brought him from a world he had left behind and now felt free to re-enter ; Gordon had said to the next man who dropped in,” Do you know Dictripoulyos? I’ve got a hunch he’ll get on. Nothing to go on. Just my instinct for a winner. That’s all. Yes, I’ll give you his address.” Celia and Ronny had discovered that they had been holding hands with a ghost; and Mab lying in Harry’s arms exclaimed in the darkness,” There! I knew I’d forget it. I did mean to send a wire from the station to say we’d got married and were off on our honeymoon.”
“Ten to one she’s out dancing and not bothering about you.”
“Oh, come, Harry, that isn’t fair. She’s often let us have the flat to ourselves even when it meant tramping about in the rain. I think we might have let her know beforehand, but she would have been sure to let it out. Still, I wish you liked her.”
“If she weren’t your sister, I might; but I can’t stand your being mixed up with anything that looks so like a poster for week-ends at Cannes.”
“Poor old Leila.”
Chapter XVI
Dicky was right. Leila had ’flu and very badly. She had a telegram next morning which said, “Married Harry overnight too busy to wire yesterday best love darling Mab.” By that time she had already ’phoned to the police and to Harry’s mother, who had said she knew nothing of Miss James-Duff and that her son had left for his holiday yesterday afternoon, in tones of such icy surprise that Leila thanked her for taking down her temperature.
When the charwoman brought her the telegram she laughed because she had been worrying all night and now there was nothing left to worry over. All night she had been watching the pale hyacinths in her window box like faces pressed against her window pane, she had been saying to herself, “I must rest, I must rest and get well,” for she must be ready to meet whatever the morning might bring. But now there was nothing for her to rest and get well for, there was nothing left to fear, and words that she never remembered to have read or heard came floating up in her mind in the funny way they have when one is feverish, and told her, “He who still fears is not quite deserted.”
So she must be quite deserted, for it could not matter now if she lost her job or her reputation or her temper with Harry’s mother, or that the doctor had started on his rounds and could not call till the end of the day and by that time it was too late to get anyone to send to the chemist for his prescriptions ; it did not matter that he said she must have a nurse and she could not possibly afford one, it did not matter that the charwoman couldn’t come back again in the afternoons to get her tea or supper ; and that Dicky never looked in till the evenings when he was too late to be of any use and prevented her going to sleep just as she was feeling like it by cheering her up with his astounding progress in style and society ; and that Blincko very kindly came and sat on her bed with half a pound of grapes and a long story of somebody else’s misfortunes which ended with the request to use her ’phone, and as the ’phone had lately been moved by Leila’s bed she sat on Leila’s pillows to do so and Leila tried to stifle her noisy cough under the bedclothes while Blincko’s sympathetic voice went on and on saying, “Yes, darling, I know just how you must be feeling about it,” and “I don’t know how you can bear it,” and “Do let me know if there is anything I can do, won’t you?”
Nothing mattered now that Mab was safely married and hadn’t remembered to let her know.
She had two or three ’phone calls asking her to come and dance, and Toby sent flowers, which the charwoman left strewn over her as though she were a corpse and Leila never noticed they were there until they had faded.
After that she hung up the receiver because it tired her too much to talk. Her only letters were a reminder of her overdraft from the bank, and an indignant appeal from her stepfather (the second to hold that position) to beseech her to write more often and more tenderly to her devoted mother.
She had no word from Ronny. He too had run down, fallen flat—no, it was she who had fallen, she had
stopped spinning, she had dropped out, and nobody noticed. When, or if, she went about again and saw people, they would say, “Oh, have you been ill? Why didn’t you tell us?”
One evening she heard somebody knock twice a great many times. She did not care who it was ; she only hoped nobody would be such a fool as to open the door.
Then the somebody knocked four times, but Dicky was out, having got his second invitation to dinner within a week.
Then there was a slow succession of single knocks and then silence, so that she supposed the silly fool, whoever it was, had at last given it up and gone away ; but presently there came a low knock on her door and she had to say “Come in,” and somebody came into the sitting-room and round through the folding doors which were open as usual into her room, and it was Ronny Haversham, looking very startled and his high-cut nostrils twitching as they always did in surprise so that he was like a nervous horse.
“Hullo?” he said.
“Hullo! “said Leila, and that was when he first knew he was in love with her and knew it so well that he did not even wait to tell himself of the fact.
For there was Leila by the light of a single candle looking very ill and more nearly plain than he had ever seen her, with her wine-dark hair all dank and untidy and her face not even powdered and her lips pale and blue, and she was lying flat with her bedclothes tossed about and her pillows plainly out of hand.
But as she struggled to raise herself on her elbow and greeted him with a tentative, uncertain smile, he saw something frightened and despairing and gallant, a kind of battered splendour in spirit as well as looks which tortured him with an exquisite sense of pity and admiration so that he longed to kneel and be of service.
“I say, may I come in? I’d no idea you were ill. Those people who let me in never told me.”
“Oh, those Ground Floors! I don’t expect they know. They are very exclusive. It’s lovely to see you, but I’ve got ’flu, don’t you mind?”
“Of course not. Is Mab out? Who looks after you while she is at the School of Economics?”
“She isn’t there now. She’s left.”
“That’s all right for you, then.”
He was puzzled by her evasive glance and the flush that was not of fever.
“Oh, I’m all right,” she said, “as long as I don’t lose my job being away again. Hand me that glass, will you, and the powder-box and find yourself a chair. Good God, is this my grandmother I see before me? Even so I might have powdered, but there’s nothing like ’flu for making you lose your self-respect.”
It was lucky it was only Ronny, since he was too unlikely to matter. If it were Toby now, she might find she had lost not only her job but her offer of another, and the notion made her laugh with a desperate gaiety.
“You’ve got a temperature,” said Ronny and put his hand on her forehead.
“Well, don’t tell me I’ve got a temperament. I haven’t the energy to support one these days.”
” Don’t talk such a lot.”
“Don’t you want me to amuse you?”
“Not a bit, and you aren’t amusing me, so just put your head back and keep quiet.”
His hands were cool and steady and the finger-tips of a firm yet sensitive pressure. Under their touch her head sank back, the muscles of her neck relaxed, her eyes closed, and she swam in a momentary oblivion.
“You ought to have been a doctor,” she said presently.
“I believe I ought. I can generally manage other people’s troubles better than my own.”
“What are your own?”
“Oh, I don’t know. They’re my own fault, I expect. I seem to make rather a mess of things somehow.”
“Have you quarrelled with Celia?”
“Well, she’s sent back the engagement ring, so I suppose I have.”
“Poor Ronny, what a shame! And now I suppose you’re just beginning to realize how much you love her.”
He was silent.
She opened her eyes and looked at his dark sleeve and then at his face with its anxiously watching eyes dark against the light, for he had placed himself between her and the candle so that the flame should not worry her.
When she realized this she began to shake, and tears came running into her eyes and down her cheeks. She was frightened when this happened ; she thought she must be mad or delirious or about to die.
“I can’t think why I’m crying,” she gasped when Ronny bent over her and gave her water and begged her not to cry, but never asked what was the matter, for he seemed to know that she should want to cry, “but you don’t know, you don’t know,” she sobbed. “Mab’s gone away and got married, but it’s not that, because I’m glad, glad, glad. I can’t think why I’m crying, but it’s only because you are so nice.”
Ronny said huskily, “Leila, you do like me, then?”
“Of course I do, I’d like a dustman who was nice to me now. Don’t lose your head and propose to me, for I warn you I’ll accept straight off and it won’t do for you to get out of two engagements within a week.”
“Leila, you are a darling. Do you ever stop laughing even when you are crying? It was your pluck first made me love you, I mean admire you, for of course I didn’t love you then when I was just engaged to Celia ; but do you remember that first evening and your grand manner when the curtain came down? I’d thought you just rather amusing and fast and perhaps silly, and then I saw you were a princess when anything went wrong.”
She cried so much at this that he became alarmed and reproached himself for exciting her, but she protested that it did not matter. “Such lovely things you said to me ; lovely things never hurt anybody. Oh, Ronny, I believe you’ve made me want to get well, after all.”
He was kneeling beside her and he was of service. The thought wrapped him in a warm repose. The bright and baleful glances of the wife of his junior officer were at last mercifully veiled.
Celia, too, had become oddly indistinct. He would always think of her as a sweet little thing because she was small and fair and had a low voice, but he hadn’t been able to see her clearly of late ; she was getting lost to him as in a mist, drifting away. Then she had sent back that ring without any real explanation, only thanks, and what was the use of thanks when she had given him the cruellest blow a woman could give a man, and for no reason, no reason at all?
That was what he had said to himself as he looked at the ring and her note, but he had had to say it a good many times, for somehow he could not quite convince himself of its truth.
Perhaps he hadn’t really loved her after all, but at any rate he had thought she needed him ; she had always seemed rather a lonely little thing in spite of her mother who was so jolly and companionable, just like a girl herself.
But she hadn’t needed him, and she hadn’t really understood him. When he was in low spirits, she was sympathetic, so much so that he sometimes saw he had made her suffer more than he did himself, but that didn’t do him any good. What he needed was to be laughed out of it. She hadn’t enough vitality for that. Leila, now, would laugh on her death-bed.
And as this horrid word drifted into his mind, he heard what she had last said and started up, putting his arms round her and saying, “Of course you want to get well. You’re going to whether you want to or not. I want it.”
She thought that though he was so gentle he was really as masterful as Mervyn Joyce, and oh, how much more restful than Toby! Here was someone she could admire and respect as well as like. And Celia had thrown him over for a selfish mongrel puppy like Dicky. What a fool she was—what a blind, heartless, merciful, providential fool! And in her thankfulness for Celia’s folly she said one of the most incautious things she had ever said to a man.
“It is wonderful that you should be so kind to me.”
But it did not seem to depreciate her value in his eyes ; it really did not matter what she said or showed of her feelings ; for the first time for years they could move about comfortably in dressing-gown and slippers instead of putti
ng on frills of artificial indifference or recklessness.
“Leila!” said Ronny magically—” Leila! “
He saw her as a water lily, a water lily with a sleek and shining head, with long and sinuous arms, with the green eyes of a mermaid, white petalled, floating in dark water, drowning, and he had pulled her to the surface, he had saved her, he did not quite know from what but it did not matter ; she needed him, and if he had not come she might have got very ill, she might have died or have gone off the deep end, a favourite expression of hers, and if it signified her going off with any of the men he had met here, Ronny would have agreed that it meant her sinking to the furthest depths, for he had no opinion of any of the men he met at Leila’s : they were all sharks, sharks snapping at a water lily.
“You are like a water lily,” he said, and Leila, moved again to the wildest imprudence by fever and the self-abandonment of a woman who is falling in love, gave of herself, even of her worst.
“My name is really Lily,” she confessed faintly.
“What a beautiful name,” said Ronny.
She knew now that she had nothing left to fear. She might tell him of the varied if shallow depths of her past, and the complications involved by her presents ; she might even tell him of her mother, thrice married, three-chinned, tremendous, who fortunately exercised her flashing eyes and redundant personality on the Riviera, and on her single visit to Rainbow Road had clasped Blincko’s hand in an agony of bereaved tenderness and murmured, “Take care of my little girls,” so that Blincko, faithful after her fashion, had taken care of them ever since, and had indeed begun the very next Sunday morning by mooching in when they were asleep and asking if they could lend her a cauliflower, so that Mab, opening one eye, had asked very crossly if she thought they grew cauliflowers in the window-boxes.
But all she told Ronny would only redound to her credit. She saw it in his eyes, she saw it——
“Oh,” she cried, “remember the germs.”
“Damn the germs,” he answered.
Knock Four Times Page 20
