“She’s got something to get out for Mrs. Spooner seemingly.”
Mrs. Smollett took a lump of sugar out of a screw of paper and dropped it in her tea. War or no war, tea without sugar was a thing she couldn’t abide. She stirred vigorously and said,
“Well, that wasn’t where she was coming out of, Mr. Bell. Miss Roland’s flat she was in, and both doors open right through to the lounge so I could no more help hearing what they was saying than if I was in the room with them. And ‘Giles and I are all washed-up’, she said-that was that Miss Roland. And, ‘Didn’t he tell you about me?’ she says.”
Bell shook his head.
“You shouldn’t have listened, Mrs. Smollett-you really shouldn’t.”
Mrs. Smollett set down her cup with a bang.
“Oh, I shouldn’t, shouldn’t I? Then perhaps you’ll tell me what I ought to ha’ done! Put cotton wool in my ears which I hadn’t any handy, or gone away and got all behind with my scrubbing?”
“You could ’ave coughed.”
“And give myself a sore throat? Not likely! If people don’t want you to hear what they’re saying they should shut their doors! Here, this Giles, he’ll be Major Armitage-he’ll be Miss Underwood’s fiongsay, won’t he? Fancy it’s turning out he’s been carrying on with Miss Roland!”
“It’s none of our business, Mrs. Smollett. She’s a very nice young lady that Miss Underwood, and I’m sure I wish them happy.”
Mrs. Smollett gave a loud snorting laugh.
“Likely, isn’t it, with them two girls both wanting ’im and ready to scratch each other’s eyes out! ‘We’re engaged,’ says Miss Underwood, and, ‘I’m Mrs. Armitage,’ says Miss Roland, and she gives her a letter to read.”
“Oh dear me, you shouldn’t say things like that-you really shouldn’t.”
Mrs. Smollett tossed her head.
“It wasn’t I that said them! It was them two. ‘I’m Mrs. Armitage,’ Miss Roland says, and Miss Underwood says, ‘He don’t love you.’ And when I heard her coming out I got down to my scrubbing so as not to upset her by letting her know I could hear what was going on. And she turns right round in the doorway and calls out to Miss Roland something about hating her, and then off down the stairs all in a flash. Funny ain’t it- I mean that Miss Roland calling herself Mrs. Armitage. I mean that would be bigamy, wouldn’t it? Or do you suppose it’d make a difference him having lost his memory? What do you think, Mr. Bell?”
Bell pushed back his chair and got up.
“I think I got my work same as you got yours.”
There was distress in his wrinkled, ruddy face. A talker, that’s what Mrs. Smollett was. And he’d no objection to talk provided there wasn’t any tittle-tattle or nastiness about it, which he didn’t hold with and never would-taking away people’s characters and such.
“I got a nice lot of hot water on the stove for you. I’ll just fill your pail,” he said.
But when he had filled it, Mrs. Smollett was in no hurry to go.
“Funny how Miss Garside stopped having me in to clean up her place, wasn’t it? She don’t have anyone else, I suppose- evenings when I’m out of the way?”
Bell shook his head. He wasn’t any too happy about Miss Garside, and he didn’t want to talk about her affairs.
Mrs. Smollett flounced-if the word can be applied to so large a woman.
“Well, I’ve got the right to know whether I give satisfaction, haven’t I? Used to have me in regular three times a week, and stopped dead as you may say. ‘I shan’t be wanting you any more, Mrs. Smollett,’ she says, and, ‘Here’s your money for today,’ and goes into her room and shuts the door.” She bent to the handle of the pail but straightened up without lifting it. “ Here, Mr. Bell-did she ever get those bits of furniture of hers back again? Told me they’d gone to be mended but I couldn’t see anything wrong with them myself. Very nice pieces they was, like what you see in the antique shops-walnut cabinet and writing-desk, and a set of chairs with backs like a lot of ribbon plaited. Funny if they all wanted mending together, isn’t it? Here now, you might as well tell us, has she had any of them back again?”
Bell looked distressed. This was tittle-tattle. He didn’t like it… He said as sharply as he could bring himself to speak,
“I got something else to do than take notice of what people has mended. And water don’t stay boiling, Mrs. Smollett- yours will be cold.”
He got a toss of the head.
“I’ve no call to scald my fingers, have I?” She lifted the pail. “Nasty marks those things left where they’d been standing- that wallpaper isn’t half faded, only you didn’t rightly notice it till they’d gone. And if you ask me, Mr. Bell, I’d say she’d sold them.”
CHAPTER 13
The events of this day were to be collected, catalogued, sorted, and re-sorted. Everything that everyone did or said, however trifling, however unimportant in itself, came to be scrutinised and put under a microscope. There are days like that, but you don’t know until afterwards that the small, foolish things you do or the hasty words you say are going to be raked up, and picked over, and brought into judgement. If you had known, you would of course have behaved quite differently. But you don’t know-you never know-until it is too late. Only one of the people in Vandeleur House had any idea that what was said and done that day might make all the difference between safety and disaster.
Meade came back to No. 3, and made a neat parcel of the spencer, which she addressed to Mrs. Spooner in Sussex. Mrs. Underwood asked her why she was looking like skim milk, and lectured her for climbing the stairs when she might have taken the lift.
“But I did take the lift, Aunt Mabel.”
“Then what are you looking like that for? When are you seeing that young man of yours?”
The skim-milk colour gave way to a momentary scarlet. Mrs. Underwood received a startling impression of fragility. Then the dark head was bent over the parcel.
“He’ll be at the War Office all day. He’s going to ring me up as soon as he knows when he can get off.”
Mrs. Underwood was dressed for the street. She pulled on a pair of gloves and said,
“Here, I’ll take your parcel, and I’ll go and pack for you this afternoon. Get Ivy to make you some Ovaltine and have a lazy day. He’ll be wanting you to go out with him tonight as likely as not. I shan’t be back till half past seven.”
It was a fearfully long day. Meade went into her room and lay down upon the bed. She couldn’t think, and she couldn’t feel. Everything was suspended, waiting for Giles. But this inability to think or feel was not rest, it was the extremity of strain. Thought did not function because it was stretched rigid between two opposite poles, the impossible and the actual. It wasn’t possible that Giles should be married to Carola Roland-Giles was married to Carola Roland. Only one of these things could be true. Yet there they were, the two of them, each making an impossibility of the other, and between them her own thought, in suspense.
Across the landing, Elise Garside sat staring at the bare wall which faced her. Six months ago the wall had not been bare. A tall, slender walnut cabinet had stood against it with, on either side of it, one of her ribbon-back chairs. The whole effect had been delicately formal. Now the wall was bare. The cabinet with the Worcester china tea-service which had been one of her great-grandmother’s wedding presents had gone. The chairs had gone, not only the two but the whole set, and gone, as she most bitterly knew, at a tenth of what had been their value before all values had been lost in a dissolving world.
The paper which covered the wall was, as Mrs. Smollett had said, a good deal faded. The imprint of the cabinet remained, blue upon a ground of silver-grey. The chair backs had left faint shadows. On Miss Garside’s right another patch of blue showed where the bureau had stood, whilst above the high mantelshelf several small blue ovals and a large rectangle proclaimed the departure of six miniatures and a mirror. The furnishings which remained were sparse and of no value-a threadbare carpet whose colours had
gone down into a grey old age, a few chairs with chintz covers pale from much washing, a bookcase, a table, and Miss Garside.
She sat quite still and faced the empty wall. She also faced an empty future. She was sixty years of age. She had no training and she had no money. She would not be able to pay the rent of her flat on quarter day, and she had nowhere to go. Her only living relations were an incredibly aged aunt, bedridden in a nursing home, two young serving soldiers in the Middle East, and a niece in Hong Kong. Until six months ago she had been quite comfortably off. Then the industrial concern from which she derived her income failed, and she had nothing left. All her eggs had been in the same basket. Now there was no basket and no eggs. There was no money at all. The diamond ring which she had failed to sell was in her hand. She turned it to and fro without looking at it, until her eyes were caught by a flash from the stone. She stared now at the ring, a fine solitaire diamond set in platinum. That was what it looked like, and that was what she had always believed it to be. But it wasn’t-it was a sham. Uncle James’ wedding present, and a sham. There hadn’t been any wedding because Henry Arden had been killed at Mons. But Uncle James had been most lordly and open-handed about the ring. “Oh, keep it, my dear, keep it! Bless my soul, I don’t want it back!” Uncle James, rolling in money, playing at being generous and cheating her all the time. He had had the name for being mean-but to be as mean as that! Life was very surprising.
She turned the stone. It flashed and made a rainbow as bravely as if it had been real. That Miss Roland who had taken the top flat had one just like it. It had winked at her only yesterday from a long hand with scarlet nails when they went down in the lift together. She wondered whether that stone too was a sham. Girls like Carola Roland often had very valuable jewellery given to them. It might easily be real. Looking back, she remembered how bright the stone had looked-brighter than her own, because she had slipped her glove down to make sure that the ring was there. And then she had pulled on her glove in a hurry because the rings were so much alike and that offended her pride.
She went on thinking about the rings and how much alike they were.
CHAPTER 14
Mrs. Underwood packed parcels for the bombed until a quarter to five. Then she had a few straight words with Miss Middleton and went out to play bridge. In the course of the words she informed Miss Middleton that she wouldn’t be coming again, and that, “My niece isn’t really strong enough, and I think it would be very much better if you made arrangements to fill her place. She comes home quite worn out, and I’m sure I don’t wonder.”
At 5:30 Agnes Lemming met Mr. Drake by appointment in the town. She had intended to tell him with all the firmness to which she could constrain herself that he must stop thinking about her, and that they must never meet again, but as it turned out she did nothing of the kind. The reason for this change of purpose was really no reason at all. It was trivial, it was inadequate. It was also, one would have said, quite out of Agnes Lemming’s character. But it sufficed. There is, after all, such a thing as the last straw. Julia Mason’s parcel was the last straw.
Julia was a cousin, good-natured and extremely well-to-do. She was the kind of woman who buys clothes and doesn’t wear them, or wears them three times and then gets bored to tears. Periodically she sent parcels to the Lemmings. One had arrived by the midday post, and it had arrived addressed, not to Mrs. Lemming, but to Agnes. Opened, it was found to contain a delightful tweed suit in one of the soft shades between brown and sand with the least coral fleck in it. There was a long coat to match with a warm fur collar, shoes, three pairs of stockings, a felt hat, a handbag and gloves, and a jumper and cardigan in a dull coral shade. Tucked inside the cardigan was a letter from Julia.
“Dear Agnes,
I do hope you’ll be able to make use of these things. I must have been off my head when I bought them. They are too tight, and I look a fiend in the colour. Marion has given me all her coupons, so I can get something else. She’s just gone back to America, so she doesn’t want them…”
Agnes picked up the coat and slipped it on, tucked a fold of the jumper inside it to try the effect of the colour, and pulled on the hat. The effect was quite magical. These were her clothes-designed for her, made for her-exactly right. As a rule Julia’s things were too big. These fitted. And generally they were the last things on earth which Agnes Lemming could or should have worn. These were hers.
And then Mrs. Lemming came in, picked up the cardigan, and walked over to the glass. When she turned round she had a pleased, excited look.
“What a charming colour! I don’t always care for Julia’s taste, but this is really very charming indeed. Just take off the coat and let me slip it on. Why, it couldn’t be better! The shoes won’t fit me-you can have those, and the stockings. Tiresome that Julia’s feet should be larger than mine-women’s feet seem to get bigger and bigger-but the other things will do beautifully. The skirt may want a little alteration. You can do it this afternoon, and then I can wear it to go down to lunch with Irene on Saturday-it’s just right for the country.”
A little colour had come into Agnes’ face.
“Julia sent those things to me, Mother. I-I should like to keep them.”
Mrs. Lemming had slipped out of the long coat and was trying on the cardigan. It was a very good fit, and it suited her. But then most things did suit her. She was nearly sixty, but she still had elegance and beauty. Her grey hair was most becomingly waved. Her dark eyebrows arched perfectly above dark, brilliant eyes. She had remained slender without becoming thin, and her complexion was still remarkable. She contemplated herself with pleasure and turned a smiling face.
“Really, my dear, Julia won’t mind who has the clothes. She just wants to get rid of them-they wouldn’t suit her at all.”
Agnes said, “No.” And then, “She sent them to me, Mother. I should like to keep them.”
Mrs. Lemming’s smile became tinged with malice.
“Well, my dear, I’m afraid you can’t. Really, you know, you are being a little absurd. At your age you should have enough sense not to make yourself ridiculous by wearing completely unsuitable clothes.”
Agnes lost her colour, but she stood her ground.
“Julia sent them to me. Here is her letter-you will see what she says.”
Mrs. Lemming let the letter fall upon the dressing-table.
“That is quite enough of this nonsense. I need the clothes, and I am going to keep them. You can tell Julia they did not suit you, and you can have my old grey instead. By the way, the grey skirt is exactly right-you can alter this one by it. Get it done this afternoon. I am going on to the Remingtons, so I shan’t be back till after seven. And for goodness sake clear up all this mess! I must fly!”
Agnes cleared up the mess, but she did not alter the skirt. She lay down on her bed and rested.
At a quarter past four she made herself a cup of tea, and then slowly and carefully she dressed to go and meet Mr. Drake. She had beautiful hair. She took pains with it. Then she went into Mrs. Lemming’s room and used her powder. She even added a touch of colour, and was surprised to find what a difference it made. Then she put on the new clothes. First the shoes and stockings-beautiful soft shoes and fine stockings. Next the skirt which she hadn’t altered, and the soft coral jumper. She would be too warm if she wore the short coat of the suit as well as the top coat. She had a fancy for the latter with its becoming fur collar. She put it on and packed the short coat and the coral cardigan back in Julia’s box. Next hat, gloves, handbag. Julia had done the thing thoroughly-gloves, shoes and handbag were a perfect match. She looked at herself in Mrs. Lemming’s long glass and thought, “This is me-this is what I’m really like. I needn’t be a slave.” Then she went to meet Mr. Drake.
He did not know how much afraid he had been until he saw her coming towards him. It is not easy to break old tyrannies. He looked, and wondered at the change in her.
“My dear-you’ve come! Do you know, I’ve been afraid all day that
you wouldn’t.”
She shook her head.
“I would have come-whatever happened. But I meant to tell you I couldn’t come again.”
“And now?”
“I want to talk to you.”
They found a corner in an almost empty tea-shop. When he had given his order he said with a smile which transformed his face,
“Well, now we can begin. It will take them ten minutes to produce that tea. I want to talk to you, and you want to talk to me. Which of us talks first?”
Agnes said, “I do.” If she didn’t talk first her resolution might fail, and if it failed she would go back of her own slave will and never be free again.
He went on smiling at her with his eyes and said,
“Very well. What is it, Agnes?”
Her hands were clasping one another tightly. Her feet in Julia’s new soft shoes were cold, but her cheeks burned. In Mr. Drake’s eyes she was as beautiful as a dream, and he thought that the dream was going to come true. She said in her soft voice, hurrying a little,
“Did you mean-what you said-yesterday?”
“Yes, I meant it. Didn’t you get my letter?”
“Yes-I got it. I-loved it-very much. I thought you meant it. You do, don’t you? You want to marry me?”
“More than anything in the world, my dear.”
The waitress brought the tea on a gimcrack tray-war buns, war cakes. Agnes drew a long breath and waited. When the girl had gone away she said in a whispering voice,
“Could it be soon?”
Mr. Drake nodded. He was under an extreme pressure of emotion. A tea-shop with a languid waitress and a few dallying customers is a definite handicap upon the emotions. He wanted to take the woman he loved in his arms and make ridiculous and romantic speeches, and all he could do was to nod at her across a flimsy table and say,
Miss Silver Deals With Death Page 7
