Chapter VIII: Part 8

The Burpenfield Club, called after Lady Burpenfield, who had given five thousand pounds to the original fund; was one of the residential clubs or hostels provided for girls who came from good middle-class homes in the country but were compelled, by economic conditions still artfully adjusted to suit the male, to live in London as cheaply as possible. Two fairly large houses had been thrown together and their upper floors converted into a host of tiny bedrooms, and there was accommodation for about sixty girls. For twenty-five to thirty shillings a week the Club gave them a bedroom, breakfast and dinner throughout the week, and all meals on Saturday and Sunday. It was light and well ventilated and very clean, offered an astonishing amount of really hot water, and had a large lounge, a drawing-room (No Smoking), a small reading-room and library (Quiet Please), and a garden stocked with the hardiest annuals. The food was not brilliant--and no doubt it returned to the table too often in the shape of fish-cakes, rissoles, and shepherd’s pie--but it was reasonably wholesome and could be eaten with safety if not with positive pleasure. The staff was very efficient and was controlled, as everybody and everything else in the Club was controlled, by the secretary, Miss Tattersby, daughter of the late Dean of Welborough, and perhaps the most respectable woman in all Europe. The rules were not too strict. There were no compulsory religious services. Male visitors could not be entertained in bedrooms, but could be brought to dinner and were allowed in the lounge, where they occasionally might be seen, sitting in abject misery. Intoxicants were not supplied by the Club but could be introduced, in reasonable quantities, into the dining-room when guests were present. Smoking was permitted, except in the dining and drawing-rooms. There were a good many regulations about beds and baths and washing and so forth, but they were not oppressive. In the evenings, throughout the winter months, fires, quite large cheerful fires, brightened all the public rooms. The lighting was good. The beds and chairs were fairly comfortable. Dramatic entertainments and dances were given two or three times a year. All this for less than it would cost to live in some dingy and dismal boarding-house or the pokiest of poky flats.

What more could a girl want? Parents and friends of the family who visited the Burpenfield found themselves compelled to ask this question. The answer was that there was only one thing that most girls at the Burpenfield did want, and that was to get away. It was very odd. You were congratulated on getting into the Burpenfield when you first went there, and you were congratulated even more heartily when you finally left it. During the time you were there, you grumbled, having completely lost sight of the solid advantages of the place. The girls who stayed there year after year until at last they were girls no longer but women growing grey, did stop grumbling and even pointed out to another these solid advantages, but their faces always wore a resigned look.

There was, to begin with, that institution atmosphere, which was rather depressing. The sight of those long tiled corridors did not cheer you when you returned, tired, rather cross, head-achy, from work in the evening. The food was monotonous and the dining-room too noisy. Then, if you were not going out, you had to choose between your little box of a bedroom, the lounge (usually dominated by a clique of young insufferable rowdies), or the silent and inhuman drawing-room. Moreover, Miss Tattersby, known as “Tatters,” was terrifying. Very early, Miss Tattersby had arrived at the sound conclusion that a brisk rough sarcasm was her best weapon, and she made full use of it. You felt the weight and force of it even in the notices she was so fond of pinning up: “Need residents who have First Dinner take up _so_ much time ...”; “Some residents seem to have forgotten that the Staff has other duties besides ...”; “Is it necessary _again_ to remind residents that washing stockings in the bathrooms ...”; that is how they went. But this, after all, was only a pale reflection of her method in direct talk, and some girls, finding themselves involved in an intricate affair concerning a pair of stockings or something of that kind, preferred to conduct their side of the case by correspondence, in the shape of little notes to Miss Tattersby hastily left in her office when she was known to be out. Many a girl, after a little brush with “Tatters,” who was immensely tall and bony and staring, and looked like a soured Victorian celebrity, had faced the most infuriated director at her office with a mere shrug. The confident Burpenfield manner in commercial life, of which we have seen something in Miss Matfield in Angel Pavement, was probably the result of various encounters with Miss Tattersby.

But what Miss Matfield, who was cursing the place all over again as she left Miss Morrison and went upstairs to her room, disliked most about the Burpenfield was the presence of all the other members, whose life she had to share. There were too many of them, and their mode of life was like an awful parody of her own. The thought that her own existence would seem to an outsider just like theirs infuriated or saddened her, for she felt that really she was quite different from these others, much superior, a more vital, splendid being. Those whose situation was not at all like her own only annoyed her still more. There were the young girls, all rosy and confident, many of whom were either engaged (to the most hopelessly idiotic young man) or merely filling in a few months of larking about, trying one absurd thing after another, while their doting fathers forwarded generous monthly cheques. Then there were the women older than herself, downright spinsters in their thirties and early forties, who had grown grey and withered at the typewriter and the telephone, who knitted, droned on interminably about dull holidays they had had, took to fancy religions, quietly went mad, whose lives narrowed down to a point at which washing stockings became the supreme interest. Some of them were frankly depressing. You met them drooping about the corridors, kettle in hand, and they seemed to think about nothing but hot water. Others were mechanically and terribly brisk and bright, all nervy jauntiness, laborious slang, and secret orgies of aspirin, and these creatures--poor old things--were if anything more depressing, the very limit. Sometimes, when she was tired and nothing much was happening, Miss Matfield saw in one of these women an awful glimpse of her own future, and then she rushed into her bedroom and made the most fantastic and desperate plans, not one of which she ever attempted to carry out. Meanwhile, time was slipping away and nothing was happening. Soon she would be thirty. Thirty! People could say what they liked--but life was foul.

There was still half an hour before dinner, and, after tidying herself, she sat on her bed trying to repair a ladder in a second-best pair of stockings. She was interrupted by a knock at the door and the entrance of an extraordinary figure. It had a greeny-brown face and was dressed in what appeared to be Oriental costume, and the general effect was that of a seasick Arab chieftain.

“Help!” cried Miss Matfield, but only to her visitor. “What is it? Who are you? It can’t be you, Caddie.”

The green face never moved a muscle, but a careful voice came from it, and the voice, though muffled and lacking its usual variety of tones, was undoubtedly that of her neighbour, Miss Isabel Cadnam, otherwise “Caddie.” She had put a mud pack on her face and had wrapped her head in a towel.

“And you haven’t to smile or anything,” she announced cautiously, “or it’ll crack. But I’ve come to ask you a favour. Are you in to-night? I mean you’re not dressing or anything grand? Well, can I borrow your shawl, the reddy-black one? You promised to lend it to me, if I wanted it terribly some night.”

Miss Matfield nodded.

“Well, this is the night. A great do. My dear, Ivor’s got tickets for a new cabaret, dance and supper place, opening night to-night, and we’re going. Marvellous!” The face did not move, but the eyes rolled and flashed their appreciation.

“All right, you can have the shawl, Caddie,” said Miss Matfield, lazily rising to stretch out a hand for it. That is all you have to do to find anything in a Burpenfield bedroom. “It sounds marvellous. But I thought you’d had a row with Ivor, parted for ever for the umpteenth time and all that. Why, it’s only last Friday you spent hours and hours telling me about it.”

“We made it up this morning,” the green mask replied, rolling its eyes. “Started over the telephone, too, my dear. Ivor tried to explain and then I tried to explain and then about forty people in the office went off the deep end, so I said I’d meet him for lunch. We met. And there you are. And now we’re going on the razzle.”

“Lucky you!”

“I will say that for Ivor. He can be terribly, terribly stupid, almost stupider than anybody I know, except those foul brutes at the office--honestly, my dear, they _are_ the limit--but the minute we’ve made it up, he always has tickets for something amusing. Free list, you know.”

“I believe he waits until he has the tickets, then rings you up that morning and makes it up,” said Miss Matfield. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“What a perfectly loathsome idea, Mattie! What a foul mind you have! Still, he might do that. Rather sweet of him, really, when you think about it. Well, I shall have to fly. I’ve got to get this stuff off. I’ve been wearing it for hours and I feel I shall never be able to smile again. Thanks for the shawl, and, my dear, I’ll take the greatest, the very greatest care of it, and you shall have it back in the morning.”

“Have a good time,” said Miss Matfield, with no particular enthusiasm. “Give my love to Ivor.”

When her visitor had gone, she gave a little impatient shake, sat down again, but threw the stocking on one side. Caddie was really rather a silly creature, but nevertheless she contrived to have quite an amusing, even exciting time. Ivor, a goggly-eyed young man who was with a firm of publicity people, was even sillier than she was, and Miss Matfield admitted to herself at once that she could not possibly endure a single hour of his company, but he pleased Caddie, took her out, quarrelled with her, made it up, took her out more luxuriously, created a continual excitement. It was possible to envy Caddie’s state of mind while despising her taste. Miss Matfield’s ripe mouth, which hardly needed lipstick, took on a discontented curve. It was a pity that silly young men did not amuse her, for there were plenty of Ivors about, whereas there were very few real grown-up men about, men who could make her feel she was still a mere girl. She was beginning to like, definitely to prefer, middle-aged men--and admitted as much to her intimates--but the trouble was that the really nice attractive ones were nearly always terribly domesticated, up to the neck in wives and families, and had hardly more than an occasional faint gleam of interest to spare for a Miss Matfield. The middle-aged men who were interested were always the awful ones, with swollen faces and little boiled eyes, dreary rotters. Mr. Golspie? No, he wasn’t as bad as that, wasn’t quite that type. But quite impossible, of course. Quite absurd.

The gong went clanging below, and as it sounded, a head popped into the room. “You’re in, aren’t you, Mattie?” it said. “Come on, then. I’ve got some _News_. Very exciting.”

This head, which was decorated with a thick shock of fair hair, horn spectacles, a freckled and turned-up nose, and a wide and amusing mouth, belonged to Evelyn Ansdell, who had had a room close to Miss Matfield’s for the last two years, and who was one of the very few friends she had made at the Burpenfield. She was a slap-dash, untidy, scatter-brained sort of girl, younger than Miss Matfield, and though she had all manner of minor faults, she had the two outstanding virtues of being good-hearted and extremely entertaining.

The two girls went down to the dining-room together and were fortunate enough to get a little table to themselves. There, amid the chatter and clatter that went with the mutton stew and the prunes and custard, Miss Ansdell broke the news, in a series of shrieks and gasps.

“I’m nearly dead,” she began, impressively. “No, really nearly dead. I’ve been ringing up parents like mad for the last hour and a half. Don’t I sound hoarse? Honestly, I’ve been screaming and screaming down the telephone.”

There was nothing novel about this. Miss Matfield knew all about Evelyn’s parents. They were a queer pair, and had been separated for the last four or five years. Mrs. Ansdell roamed about the country, sometimes trying her hand at odd things, while Major Ansdell, no longer in the army but now the representative of some mysterious imperial organisation, roamed about the whole world, completely disappearing for months on end. Now and then, each of them descended upon London and the Burpenfield, and by some odd chance it frequently happened that their London visits coincided, and then Evelyn had to work desperately hard to make sure that they did not arrive at the Club together. Evelyn herself, who had once been sent flying between them like an amused shuttlecock, did not take sides, except perhaps in certain minor differences, but preserved an amiable detachment, not unlike that of a good old referee. Everything was complicated by the fact that all three of them were rather eccentric. All this was strange to Miss Matfield, whose parents adored one another in their dull elderly fashion and were, anyhow, far too sensible and too busy for such alarms and excursions; but the actual novelty of it had passed. So she merely prepared herself to listen to yet another instalment of the Ansdell family row saga.

“It all began with a letter from mother,” Miss Ansdell continued, excitedly. “It came this afternoon. My dear, the maddest letter. But the point is, mother’s going to run a shop, selling antiques. I forget the name of the place, but anyhow she’s actually got the shop and it’s a marvellous place, all oak beams and bow windows and all that, and rich motorists stopping every minute. That’s not so crazy as it sounds, because mother does really know about antiques and old embroideries and things like that, and could make anybody buy anything if she wanted to. And she wants me to go and live with her, and help her in the shop.”

“Oh, Lord!” Miss Matfield groaned. “But you’re not going, are you? She’s wanted you to go before, hasn’t she?”

“Yes, but this is rather different. Quite different, in fact. It really would be rather fun helping her in a shop. I’d much rather do that, swindling the rich motorists, than go on with this secretary rot. You know how I loathe typing and shorthand. And this time she wants me very badly--her own little darling girl by her side sort of thing--you should have seen her letter. So I rang her up--trunk call, my dear, and I’m absolutely broke--to know all about it, and honestly it does sound rather marvellous. Lovely shop, nice old town, lots of nice people, and a car--you have to have a car in this antique business. I must say--even though I know what mother is--I must say it sounds rather marvellous.”

“It does,” Miss Matfield admitted, grudgingly.

“But wait a minute, wait a minute, Mattie, my dear. That isn’t all the excitement. Oh, no! Before I rang off, mother gave me a message to father about some money. He’s in town, you know. So I rang him up and then, after I’d given him the message, I told him what mother had suggested. Well, you should have heard him. I thought every minute I should hear him going up in sheets of flame. Then he was very quiet, and I knew he was going to be pathetic. He can do it even better than mother. If he really gets going, I’d agree to anything--while he’s there. And he said he had a plan he’d had in his mind for months, been thinking about nothing else, and that he’d have mentioned it before only he thought I was so happy here at the Burpenfield. He’s going away again very soon on this Empire rot, and he wants me to go with him as his secretary. He’s going to America--Montreal and Toronto and those places--and then on to Australia, and I’d go everywhere with him. What do you think about that? He said he’d been thinking about it for ages, but I believe he’d invented the job five minutes before, just to do mother in the eye. And now they both want an answer at once. Isn’t it crazy?”

“Completely mad.” But why did nothing like that ever happen to her? “What are you going to do?”

“My dear, I’m going to take _one_ of them. Wouldn’t you? But which, I don’t know. What do you think?”

“Let’s get our coffee,” said Miss Matfield. “Then we can talk about it afterwards.”

This was a blow. Whether Ansdell went off to Canada and Australia or joined her mother at the antique shop, she was lost to the Burpenfield. Another decent and amusing one gone! Something exciting happening to somebody else, as usual! And Miss Matfield was so busy feeling sorry for herself that if her advice had really been demanded over the coffee, she would not have found it easy to give it. Miss Ansdell, however, like many people who ask to be advised, apparently only wanted a listener, for she never stopped talking herself and when she put a question, promptly answered it without giving her friend time to frame a reply.

When they came up from the dining-room, they saw a tall figure standing just inside the entrance hall. “I believe it is,” Miss Ansdell gasped. “Yes, it is. It’s father. Oh, help!”

And Major Ansdell it was. Miss Matfield had met him, just for a few minutes, two or three times before. He was still a handsome, soldierly looking man, though quite elderly, and was immensely courteous in the Roger de Coverley style to all Evelyn’s friends. But there was in him an extraordinary theatrical strain. Quite frequently he behaved as if he were the hero of some old-fashioned melodrama; and was very emotional, very rhetorical, and absurd. He was quite capable of talking just as men talk in bad stories in popular magazines, and Miss Matfield had sometimes wondered whether it was because he had read a great many bad stories or because the stories were nearer the truth than one thought and were worked up, on the fringes of Empire, out of men like Major Ansdell.

Miss Matfield hung back and saw the Ansdells greet one another and then go upstairs, obviously to Evelyn’s room. There was no talking to Major Ansdell in a public room; he was far too fond of a scene and was not at all shy. Miss Matfield went into the lounge, to smoke a cigarette, and spent an envious ten minutes glancing through one of those illustrated weeklies that seem to be produced simply to glorify that small section of society which works only to keep itself amused. It showed her photographs of these demigods and goddesses racing and hunting in the cold places, bathing and lounging in the warm places, and eating and drinking and swaggering in places of every temperature. By the time she had finished her cigarette, Miss Matfield quite understood the temptation to start a revolution, and told herself that these papers simply asked for one. Then she too went upstairs to her room.

She had not been there more than a few minutes when Evelyn Ansdell burst in, crying: “My dear, mother’s on the phone. Do go in and talk to father until I come back. If you don’t, he’ll come down and do something absurd. I’ll be as quick as I can.” And off she went.

Evelyn’s bedroom seemed almost entirely filled by her father, who welcomed his daughter’s friend--and Miss Matfield felt herself thrust into the part of daughter’s friend at once--with his usual grave and elaborate courtesy. He was, she felt, enjoying himself, and was probably the only man who ever had enjoyed himself visiting the Burpenfield. He addressed her as “Miss Mattie,” having heard Evelyn refer to her as “Mattie,” and Miss Matfield did not feel like correcting him. This only made everything more absurd. It was like taking part in a charade.

“I think you know why I’m here, Miss Mattie,” he began, in deep vibrating tones. “I want to persuade this little girl of mine to go overseas with me, to help me with the great work I am doing and to be by my side.”

She nodded and made a vague affirmatory noise. It was all she could do, but then he did not want anything more.

“A father has his feelings, Miss Mattie. We don’t hear much about them. He keeps them to himself. He hides them, buries them,” he continued, with fine emotional effect, clearly enjoying himself. “An Englishman doesn’t like to make a display of these things. It’s part of the tradition--the great tradition--of our race. If we suffer, Miss Mattie, we like to suffer in silence. Isn’t that so? The Britisher--now, just a moment. I know what you’re going to say.”

“Do you?”

“I do. You’re going to say that you don’t like that word ‘Britisher.’”

“I don’t like it much, I must say,” Miss Matfield confessed.

“I knew you didn’t. I didn’t at one time. I detested the term. I wouldn’t have it at all. But my work, my travels up and down the Empire have taught me better. We must have something that describes not an Englishman, not a Scotsman, or a Canadian or an Australian, but simply a subject of the great Empire itself, and the only word for that is ‘Britisher.’ Don’t resent it, Miss Mattie. It stands for a great ideal. And I say that the Britisher doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. But he feels deeply. He may have his work to do, taking him away from his home into the loneliest places, and be glad and proud to do it.” Here the Major made a fine gesture and came within an ace of wrecking his daughter’s toilet stand. So he sat down on the edge of the bed, where he looked enormous and rather like the White Knight in _Through the Looking Glass_.

“You’re my little girl’s friend, aren’t you, Miss Mattie?” he asked. Miss Matfield said she was, and added that she would be very sorry to lose her.

“I understand that, I understand that,” and he reached over and patted her lightly on the shoulder. “She’s a very lovable child, isn’t she? And you can understand a father’s feelings. I have my work to do, Miss Mattie, and I have many acquaintances, friends if you like, in all parts of the world, but fundamentally, at heart, I’m a lonely man--yes, a lonely man. Evelyn’s my only child, and I want her companionship, I want her by my side, unless of course I should be called upon to visit places where one’s womenfolk couldn’t be taken. If it were a question of our tropical possessions, that would be different, quite different. I don’t like to see a white woman, especially a young girl, in such places. They’re for men, for us rough fellows who like to clean up some backward part of the globe. If you’ve any influence with her--and I’m sure you have, and a very good influence too, a steadying influence naturally, being older----”

“Thank you, Major Ansdell,” said Miss Matfield drily. “You make me sound about fifty. It’s not very complimentary of you.”

“A thousand apologies, my dear Miss Mattie,” cried the Major gallantly. “I know very well you’re under thirty, a mere girl, and a very charming one, I assure you. But Evelyn’s a mere _child_, you see, isn’t she?”

Miss Matfield said nothing, but thought that some of the child’s antics and talk might possibly astonish him.

“But what I was about to say is this. I want you to use your influence with my little girl to persuade her to come with her old father and join her life with mine. There’s some ridiculous talk,” he continued hurriedly and more naturally, “of her joining her mother in some wild-cat scheme for selling old furniture and broken crockery and silly knick-knacks down in the country somewhere. You know the sort of place. Ye oldy antique shoppy! Faked warming pans! Rubbish! Even if she won’t come with me, I’d fifty times rather see the child staying here and doing her typewriting than embarking on such a gim-crack, nonsensical scheme. Trying to sell faked warming pans to a lot of cads and old women!”

At this moment the door flew open and Evelyn joined them, breathless. The little room was completely full now, and Miss Matfield wanted to escape, to let them talk it out together, but she could not manage it unless she pushed Evelyn out of the way.

“I’ve been talking to mother,” Evelyn began.

The Major jumped up. “Don’t tell me she’s still trying to persuade you to bury yourself among her fenders and warming pans and go smirking behind a counter. It’s the most preposterous idea I ever heard of. It won’t even pay. All good money thrown away.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that, father,” Evelyn protested. “Mother really does know a lot about antiques. I know that. I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t make quite a lot out of it.”

Neither of them took any notice of Miss Matfield, but nevertheless she could not very well leave the room until she had a good opportunity to push past Evelyn.

“Your mother may or may not know a good deal about antiques,” said the Major very impressively, “though I seem to remember her being taken in every day or so by some piece of faked-up rubbish. But she knows nothing whatever about human nature and has no head for business. And if you’re going to keep a shop, my child, you have to know something about human nature and business. Now I could keep a shop and make a success out of it, if I wanted to, because I understand people and know how to organise. Your mother knows no more about organisation than a--a prize rabbit.”

“Well, listen to me, father, and never mind about that. I’ve been talking it over with mother, and I’ll tell you what I’ve decided to do. I’m coming with you on this trip--and, by the way, you’ll have to give me some money for clothes, I haven’t a thing--and then afterwards, if I don’t like it, I shall try mother’s scheme, if the shop’s still in existence.”

“It won’t be. But that doesn’t matter. This is good news, Evelyn. Just the two of us, side by side----”

It looked as if a magnificent parental embrace were arriving. Miss Matfield, murmuring something about letters, slipped out. The Ansdells were absurd, all three of them, but she could not help envying Evelyn. Major Ansdell might be ridiculous, but if he had asked _her_ to go roaming round the Empire with him, she would have accepted like a shot. As it was, she stayed on in Angel Pavement and at the Burpenfield, and would soon have lost an amusing Club neighbour too, almost the only one left with whom she could be friendly and confidential. Foul.

The late post had arrived and there were two letters for her. One was from her mother and was merely the regular hasty bulletin. Dad was working too hard as usual, looking after everybody for miles around except himself, and not looking at all well. The Wesleys’ little girl was down with pneumonia. Those new people, the Milfords, the elderly people who had taken Rogerson’s old house, had a son and his wife home from India, quite nice. There was no chance of her getting up to town this next month but Dad said he might have to come up and would let her know in good time. And when did Lilian think she could manage another week-end at home? Oh--and Mary Fernhill, the quite plain one who went out to South Africa last year and came back so suddenly, well, she was engaged. There was nothing very exciting in all that. Just the usual stuff. Poor mother, poor dad! He did work too hard, and he was beginning to have a terribly pinched look. That was the trouble about being a doctor, you never bothered, went on until you dropped. That was pretty foul too. There didn’t seem to be much good luck going in life, and what there was completely escaped the Matfield family.

The other letter was more interesting, and she kept it until she reached her own room again. It was dated from the Chestervern Agricultural College:

_Dear Lilian,_

_I have to be in London to-morrow (the 16th) and am wondering if
you would care to spend the evening with me, have dinner and then
go somewhere. It would be a great treat for me. I’m sorry the
notice is so short, but couldn’t help that. Will you let me know at
once--c/o Holborn Palace Hotel--and tell me what time to call for
you if you are free._

_Yours sincerely,
Norman Birtley._

So Norman Birtley hadn’t forgotten her existence. She sent a dashing note to him at his rather ghastly Holborn Palace Hotel, telling him she was free and could be called for at the Burpenfield at seven o’clock. And after slipping out to post it, she felt slightly better.

Ansdell looked in, having disposed of her father, not without first making him promise her a new outfit. “And we sail in a fortnight, my dear,” she crowed. “And to-morrow I give those beastly people the sack, after which I hand out the same to Tatters _in person too_. Yes, I am. That will probably close the dear old Burp to me for ever, and not a bad thing too. Except I shall be very sorry to leave you, Mattie. I will really. After all, we’ve had some great conferences in these queer little dens, haven’t we? I’ll have to tell father he must have two secretaries, and then we’ll both go out, slip away and marry big brown men from the West and the great open spaces. What do you say?”

“I’d love it,” said Miss Matfield, forcing a smile. “I’m terribly sorry you’re going. They’ll put some awful creature into your room, either one of the old hot water brigade or some devastatingly bright young person from the lounge set. I suppose it’s nearly time I joined the hot water school, the kettle fillers----”

“Don’t be absurd. You’re one of the very few people here who are really alive--and look it. Let’s change the subject. I believe it’s depressing you. Had any letters?”

“One from mother, very dull, and one from a man I’ve known off and on for years. He’s coming up to town to-morrow and wants me to spend the evening with him, seeing the sights.”

“A-ha! Is he a big brown man? Do you like him?”

“He’s not bad,” Miss Matfield replied, indifferently. “A bit feeble. He’s from my part of the world and used to hang about a lot at one time, but we haven’t seen much of one another for ages.”

“I scent a roam-a-ance,” cried Miss Ansdell. “His sweetheart when a boy. And you have cared all these yee-ars and I never knew----”

“Don’t be an ape. You’re making me feel sick.”

“But seriously, Mattie. Is he going to ask you to marry him, after the coffee has been served in a shaded corner?”

Miss Matfield smiled, but thought this over. “He might, you know,” she admitted, staring into nothing, her eyes growing sombre. “And if I thought I was doomed to stay in this place much longer, spending my evenings washing stockings and pattering round with kettles, I’d marry him next week. But I haven’t the least desire to marry him. He’s quite decent, but--oh--he’s just rather feeble. Most young men seem rather feeble, these days. I suppose most of the other sort were killed in the war. I hate feeble men, don’t you? I mean, I like a man to have plenty of character, a solid lump of it, and I don’t even care if it isn’t a terribly good character so long as there’s plenty of it. There’s a man in my office----”

“You don’t mean Mr. Dirty--Dersy--what’s it?” Miss Ansdell asked.

“No. He’s rather sloppy too. Not a bit amusing. But there’s a man who’s just come lately, Golspie----”

“I know. But you said he was awful.”

“So he is,” Miss Matfield admitted hastily. “I told you about him, didn’t I? I don’t say I like him. He’s rather a brute, and looks it, or at any rate looks weird. But he has got some character, and could do something without asking everybody’s permission. That’s all I meant. Of course, from every other point of view, even poor Norman Birtley, who really isn’t so bad, is worth fifty of him. Imagine going out to dinner with Golspie!” And she laughed aloud at the thought.

They talked of other things, yawned, stared, talked again, more idly, yawned again, and then went to bed.

III

Miss Matfield awoke next morning with a vague feeling that something pleasant and rather exciting was about to happen. Norman Birtley. So that was it. She could think of nothing else, and was rather disappointed, slightly cross with herself, when it all dwindled to Norman. That showed the sort of existence she led, these days. There had been a time when Norman Birtley was only a joke. When he became serious she had brushed him aside. After that, when he turned into the attentive admirer, popping up at odd intervals and popping down again wistfully, it is true she had liked him better. But now, the very thought of an evening with him could bring her out of sleep in a vague sense of excitement. It was absurd. It was pathetic. No, it was simply revolting.

Before she reached the office, she had completely reversed this judgment. There was nothing revolting about it. Perfectly right and natural. Norman Birtley was quite decent; he liked her, admired her, perhaps was in love with her; and she had every right to look forward to an evening with him, to an evening out with anybody (except girls from the Club, sharing Pit seats and sandwiches), for that matter. The 13 bus, grinding away through the slight fog, agreed with this conclusion, hinted that she was too proud, and seemed to say that for its part it took all it could get, like the stout-hearted Cockney it was. There was some fog too in the City, and it was a raw yellow morning for Angel Pavement. Everybody in the office yawned a good deal and was rather irritable for the first two hours. It was that sort of morning. The rest of the day was more comfortable, but dull and slow, lumbering towards five-thirty like a stupefied elephant. Miss Matfield had not much to do. Mr. Golspie was out all day, and it was he who usually kept her busy. Mr. Dersingham, who found himself getting pink and flustered when Miss Matfield coolly stared at him and waited, with a kind of ironic resignation, for his next halting sentence, preferred to dictate his letters, whenever possible, to little Poppy Sellers, in whose eyes, as he rightly suspected, he was a large fine gentleman. The only amusing thing that happened in the afternoon was that poor Mr. Smeeth, returning importantly and fussily from the bank, tried to tell them a funny story he had heard there and completely failed to bring out the point. He was rather pathetic, Mr. Smeeth. After that there were huge blank spaces, during which yellow wisps of fog seemed to creep into one’s mind. But she was able to get away early and have a really good Burpenfield bath, tons of hot water, before changing.

She was quite ready when the message came that Mr. Birtley was waiting below. In the corridor she ran into Kersey, one of the depressing old inhabitants who, as usual, was trailing along with a kettle. She meant well--poor old thing--but she had a horrid trick of saying things that depressed you at once.

“Hello, Matfield,” she droned damply. “Going out, are you? That’s the way. You have to enjoy yourself sometimes, haven’t you? That’s right, dee-ar.”

This was Kersey’s usual speech if she saw that you were dressed to go out. She had another speech ready for you if she saw you were not dressed. “Not going out to-night, eh, Matfield? No, I thought not. Well, you can’t expect to go out every night, can you, dee-ar?” And you left her drooping there, with her kettle, but not before she had set your spirits drooping too, whether you were staying in or going out. It was as if the horrible future addressed a few remarks to you.

Norman Birtley was waiting in the lounge, looking very tall, very awkward, very uncomfortable. Round the fire was the usual set, two or three of the bright young ones with Ingleton-Dodd lounging in the middle of them. Ingleton-Dodd was a large woman, about forty, with a curious white face, her hair plastered back, severe mannish clothes, and a bass voice. She seemed to have more money than anybody else in the Club, and owned quite a good little car, about which she talked a great deal. She was talking about it, or about some car, when Miss Matfield walked in.

“Oh, the man was a complete fool,” she was saying, in that deep bass voice of hers. “I told him to have a look at the mag. ‘Put the mag right,’ I told him, ‘and the whole thing will be right. Clean those points a bit, to start with.’ By this time, he’d taken the mag out and was staring at it like a stuck pig.”

“Marvellous!” cried one of the bright children. They all thought Ingleton-Dodd “the very last word.”

“‘Oh, give it to me,’ I said, and snatched it out of his hand. Then I sent for the manager. ‘Look here,’ I said to him, ‘does anybody in this place know how to time a mag?’ You should have seen his face.”

Awful creature! _She_ ought to have seen Norman Birtley’s face. He was looking at Ingleton-Dodd with fascinated repulsion written clearly on his simple and expressive features. He greeted Miss Matfield confusedly, dropping his hat when he shook hands. His hands were hot and damp, and there was a glint of perspiration on his pink forehead. He had not changed at all, except that he now wore rimless eyeglasses and his sandy moustache was a trifle more in evidence. He was only a year or so older than Miss Matfield and, as he was far less sophisticated than she was, not at all at home in London, which he only visited at long intervals, she felt the older of the two.

“How are you, Lilian?” he inquired, smiling nervously. “You’re looking very well.”

“Am I? I don’t feel it. I’m feeling pretty foul.”

“You’re not, are you?” He looked at her anxiously. “What’s wrong? You haven’t got anything the matter with you, have you? Are you seeing a doctor?”

This obvious concern ought to have pleased her, for it was very flattering. But these questions, demanding as they did a definite answer, a disease or two, only irritated her. It was understood at the Burpenfield that you were nearly always pretty foul, with nothing exactly wrong with you perhaps, but nevertheless in a fairly permanent state of being worn out, nerve-racked, tottering on the brink of something ghastly. Miss Matfield had forgotten that this simple visitor from the country knew nothing of this convention.

“Oh, I’m all right really, I suppose,” she replied, dismissing the subject. “Shall we go now? Where do you propose to take me, Norman? Have you any plans?” She moved to the door.

“Well, I didn’t know exactly what to do. I suppose I ought to have asked you first, but there wasn’t time. There seems to be a rather good show on at the Colladium this week, so I got two seats for that, second house. Do you like music halls?”

“Not bad. It all depends.”

“A fellow I was talking to at the hotel said it was a very good show, so I thought that would be all right. But if you don’t want to go, I suppose I can get rid of the tickets, can’t I?”

“No, that will be all right. I’d like to go,” she told him. They were walking down the hill now, towards Finchley Road.

“Good. And about dinner,” he continued, struggling laboriously with his duties as host. “I thought we might go to a place in Soho. Old Warwick--he’s our principal at the Chestervern Agricultural, and he’s been here a good deal--told me there was a good little place, one of those French or Italian places, you know, a bit bohemian but very good cooking--I’ve got the name and address in my book and I’ll find it in a minute. Anyhow, I thought, if you didn’t mind, we might go there.”

“All right,” she replied, not very enthusiastically. Some of those little Soho places were rather foul, and old Warwick of the Chestervern Agricultural might not be a very good judge. “Let’s go there, and you can dig out the name and address on the way. We’ll hurry and catch a bus.”

“Oh, will a bus be all right?” he cried, obviously relieved. “I thought perhaps we might have to take a taxi.”

“No, a bus will do,” she told him. A taxi, though, would have done a great deal better. She loved riding in taxis. Perhaps--who knows?--if Mr. Birtley had insisted upon their having a taxi, the whole evening might have been different.

Once again she went jogging down the long hill, past the sudden sparkle of Swiss Cottage, the genteel gloom of St. John’s Wood, and a Baker Street that was now like a series of captivating peepshows. They did not talk much inside the bus, which was full and uncommonly noisy, but he shouted a few questions about the Club and Ingleton-Dodd (whom he regarded with horror) and the office and her father and mother, and she screamed fairly adequate if brief replies. Her spirits rose when they actually arrived in Soho, for though she had some mournful memories of its _table d’hôte_ and had been in London long enough to be sceptical about its romantic bohemianism, she could not resist the place itself, the glimpses of foreign interiors, the windows filled with outlandish foodstuffs, chianti flasks, and bundles of long cheroots, the happy foolish little decorations, the strange speech, the dark faces, the girls leaning out of the first-floor windows. It was quite a long time since she had last walked along Old Compton Street. It made her sigh for an adventure. Meanwhile, that very evening took on a faint colouring of adventure while they were still searching for old Warwick’s restaurant, though, with all the good will in the world, she could not transform Norman Birtley, fresh from the Chestervern Agricultural College, into a romantic and adventurous companion.

At last, they found old Warwick’s restaurant. It might have been French or Italian or even Spanish or Hungarian; there was no telling; but it was determinedly foreign in a de-nationalised fashion, rather as if the League of Nations had invented it. No sooner was Norman’s hand on the door than a very fierce-looking, moustachioed, square-jawed Latin flung it open very quickly and with a great flourish, so that they were almost sucked in. The place was very small, rather warm, and smelt of oil. The lights were shaded with coloured crinkly paper. There were only four other people there, two oldish tired girls masticating rather hopelessly in the far corner, and a queer middle-aged couple sitting almost in the window. The fierce Latin swept them across to a tiny table, thrust menus into their hands, rubbed his hands, changed all the cutlery round and then put it all back again, rubbed his hands once more and then suddenly lost all interest in them, as if his business was simply to drag people in and then, having got them seated, to create a momentary illusion of brisk service before they had time to change their minds.

“You can have the whole dinner for three and sixpence,” said Norman, looking up from his menu. “Wonderful how they do it in these places, isn’t it? I mean to say, what would you get in an English restaurant for that? Nothing worth eating, I’ll bet. But these foreigners can do it. Of course, it’s their job. They know how to cook. Shall we have the dinner?”

Miss Matfield thought that they might, and looked about her, not very hopefully, while Norman gave the order to a waitress, a very tall fat girl with a chalky face and no features, who had just appeared. The queer middle-aged couple looked queerer still now, for the man appeared to be dyed and the woman enamelled and it was incredible that they should ever eat food at all. You felt they ought to feed on wood and paint.

Having given the order, Mr. Birtley was now looking about him too, and when he had finished doing this and had obviously noted the more picturesque details for the benefit of the other members of the staff of the Chestervern Agricultural College, he beamed at her through his rimless eyeglasses. “Nothing I enjoy better than studying these queer types,” he whispered. “A place like this is a treat to me, if only for that reason. Old Warwick told me I’d enjoy that part of it. He’s had some very funny experiences in his time. I must try to remember some of the yarns he’s told me, once or twice when I’ve been sitting up with him over a pipe at the Chestervern.”

While Miss Matfield was asking idly what sort of man Mr. Warwick was and Norman was telling her, the waitress had brought them the two halves of a grapefruit, the juice of which had apparently been used some time before. They had not finished with old Warwick, who seemed to Miss Matfield a silly old man, when the waitress returned to give them some mysterious thick soup, which looked like gum but had a rather less pronounced flavour.

Miss Matfield tried three spoonfuls and then looked with horror at her plate. Something was there, something small, dark, squashed. There were legs. She pushed the plate away.

“What’s the matter, Lilian? Don’t you like the soup?”

She pointed with her spoon at the alien body.

Mr. Birtley leaned across and peered at it through his glasses. “No, by George, it isn’t, is it? Is it really? Oh, I say, that’s not good enough, is it? That’s the worst of these foreigners. Do you think I ought to tell them about it?”

“If you don’t, I will,” said Miss Matfield indignantly. “Absolutely revolting!”

But there was nobody to tell. Even the fierce Latin had disappeared. It seemed as if when soup was served, the whole staff hid in the kitchen. Miss Matfield was sure now that her first instinctive disapproval had been right, as usual. This was a foul little place. Unfortunately, she was really hungry, having had a very small lunch.

The next member of the staff they did see obviously could not be blamed for the soup, for he was the wine waiter, an ancient gloomy foreigner. He padded across to Mr. Birtley, who was trying not very successfully to explain a very funny thing that had happened last term at the College, held out a wine list decorated with dirty thumb marks, and waited apathetically.

“A-ha!” cried Mr. Birtley jovially. “Let’s have something to drink, shall we? Do you think we could manage a whole bottle? I think we could. Yes, let’s have a whole bottle. Now then, what is there? Will you have red or white wine, Lilian? It’s all the same to me.”

“I’d like red, I think,” she replied. “Burgundy perhaps.” It was more sustaining. After all, with bread and butter and some burgundy, it might be possible to stun one’s appetite. She had no hopes of the dinner.

“Burgundy it is,” cried Mr. Birtley, with the air of a reckless musketeer. “All right, then. A bottle of Number Eleven. Beaune.”

“You geef me moanay,” murmured the ancient foreigner.

“Righto. Money. There you are.” And then he gave Miss Matfield a wink and smiled at her. She smiled back, softening towards him a little, for he was so obviously enjoying himself and thinking it all so wonderful. Poor Norman!

“You ought to come and see us at the College next time you’re home, Lilian,” he said. “You’d like it. We’ve got one or two amusing fellows on the staff, and the students aren’t a bad crowd. We have little dances sometimes, and tennis in the summer. It’s growing too. In a year or two, if I can scrape up some money, I may get a partnership. Not bad, eh? The fact is,” and he lowered his voice, as if to keep these confidences away from the waitress, who had just deposited some microscopic pieces of fish in front of them and was still standing near, as if to see if they would have the audacity to eat them, “the fact is, I can get on better with old Warwick than any of the other fellows. He’s taken rather a fancy to me, thinks I’ve got more drive than the others. And as a matter of fact,” he added, looking earnestly at her, “I have. And I wish you’d come and look me up down there.”

She said she would, if she could manage it, and then explained, while the ancient foreigner poured out the wine, how difficult it was to do all one wanted to do, what with one thing and another, and then, fortified by the burgundy and determined to drive old Warwick out of the conversation for a time, she went on to tell him more about the office and the Club. He listened attentively, though with just the faintest suggestion of patronage. Obviously he thought a good deal more of himself these days, now that he had made such a hit with his old Warwick of the Chestervern Agricultural. But then all men were alike in that: they all thought they were marvellous. However, she could tell from the way he looked at her that he still thought she was marvellous too, which was very pleasant. She could feel herself getting steadily better looking and more attractive.

This could not be said about the dinner. The chicken was not marvellous, was not even pleasant. Like many other places in Soho, this restaurant evidently had a contract that compelled it to accept only those parts of a chicken that could not be called breast, wing, or leg. It specialised in chicken skin. The salad could be eaten, but its green stuff seemed to have been grown in some London back garden behind a sooty privet hedge. The sweet was composed of a very small ice, the paper in which it had been delivered from the van at the back door, and some coloured water that might have been part of the ice two hours before. That was the dinner, a miserable affair. Even Norman seemed to have a suspicion that it had not been very good, but he did not apologise for it, perhaps out of loyalty to old Warwick. Miss Matfield, in despair, had had two full glasses of the burgundy, a raw and potent concoction, which had produced at once a rather muzzy effect in her mind so that everything seemed a little larger and noisier than usual. Once, just before the coffee, she had found herself wanting to giggle at the thought of Norman taking his sandy moustache back to Chestervern and old Warwick. The coffee, black and bitter, stopped all that nonsense. They smoked a cigarette together over it, and Norman, with tiny beads of perspiration on his ruddy forehead and his glasses slightly misty, talked about old times and smiled sentimentally across the cruet at her.