Chapter II: Part I: I (2)

Then Mrs. Palmer pursued her advantage. “You may as well understand, Elsie, that this isn’t going on. I haven’t got the time, nor yet the strength, to go chasing after you all day long. I know well enough you’re not to be trusted--out of the house the minute my back’s the other way--and coming in at all hours, and always a tale of some sort to account for where you’ve been. So, my lady, you’ve got to make up your mind to a different state of things. What’s it to be: a job as a typewriter, or apprenticed to the millinery? Your kind Aunt Gertie’s got a friend in the business, and she’s offered to speak for you.”

“I’d rather the typing,” said Elsie sullenly.

“Then you’ll come with me and see about a post to-morrow morning as ever is,” said Mrs. Palmer. “It’s your own doing. You could have stayed at home like a lady, helping Mother and Geraldine, if you’d cared to. But I’m not going to have any gurl of mine getting herself a name the way you’ve been doing.”

“I suppose I can go now?”

“You can go if you want to,” said Mrs. Palmer, flushed with victory. “And mind and remember what I’ve said, for I mean every word of it.”

It was only too evident that she did, and Elsie went out of the room crying angrily. She did not really mind the idea of becoming a typist in an office or a shop in the very least, but she hated having been humiliated in front of her aunts and Geraldine.

As she went upstairs, sobbing, she met Mrs. Williams coming down. She was a gentle, unhealthy-looking woman of about thirty, so thin that her clothes always looked as though they might drop off her bending, angular body.

“What’s the matter, dear?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Come into the sitting-room, won’t you, and rest a minute?”

“Well, I don’t mind.”

Elsie reflected that there would probably be a fire in the sitting-room, and in her own room it was cold, and she knew that the bed was still unmade.

She followed Mrs. Williams into the sitting-room, where Mr. Williams sat reading a Sunday illustrated paper.

“Horace, this poor child is quite upset. Give her a seat, dear.”

“It’s all right,” said Elsie, confused.

She had only seen Mr. Williams half a dozen times. He always breakfasted and went out early, and Elsie, of late, had eaten her supper in the kitchen. They had met at meal-times on Sundays, but she had never spoken to him, and thought him elderly and uninteresting.

Mr. Williams was indeed forty-three years old, desiccated and inclined to baldness, a small, rather paunchy man.

His little, hard grey eyes gleamed on Elsie now from behind his pince-nez.

“No bad news, I hope?” His voice was dry, and rather formal, with great precision of utterance.

His wife put her emaciated hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Two heads are better than one, as they say. Horace and I would be glad to help you, if we can.”

“It is silly to be upset, like,” said Elsie, sniffing. “Mother and I had a few words, that’s all, and I’m to get hold of a job. I’m sure I don’t know why I’m crying. I shall be glad enough to get out of this place for a bit.”

“Hush, dear! That isn’t a nice way to speak of your home, now is it? But about this job, now. Horace and I might be able to help you there.”

She hesitated and looked at her husband. “What about the Woolleys, dear?”

“Yes--ye-es.”

“These are some new acquaintances of ours, and they’ve a lovely house at Hampstead, but Mrs. Woolley isn’t any too strong, and I know she’s looking out for someone to help her with the children and all. It wouldn’t be going to service--nothing at all like that, of course; I know you wouldn’t think of that, dear--but just be one of the family at this lovely house of theirs.”

“It isn’t in the country, is it?” Elsie asked suspiciously.

“Oh no, dear, Hampstead I said. Only three-quarters of an hour by ’bus from town. Don’t you like the country?”

“Too dead-alive.”

“Well, these people that I’m telling you about, this Doctor and Mrs. Woolley, they’re youngish married people, and most pleasant. Aren’t they, Horace? And they’ve two sweet kiddies--a boy and a girl. Don’t you think you’d like me to speak to Mrs. Woolley, now, dear?”

Elsie was not sure. She felt that Mrs. Williams was going too fast. “I don’t know,” she said ungraciously.

“She’s right,” said Mr. Williams. “We mustn’t be in too great a hurry. Write to your friend Mrs. Woolley by all means, my dear, and let this young lady think it over, and have a talk with her mother and sister. She may not care to live away from home altogether.”

“Horace is always so business-like,” said Mrs. Williams admiringly. “I expect he’s right, dear. But you’d like me to write, just to see if there’s any chance, now wouldn’t you?”

“What should I have to do there?”

“Why, just help look after the kiddies. I’m sure you love children, now don’t you?--and perhaps make a dainty cake or two for afternoon tea, if Mrs. Woolley’s busy, or do a bit of sewing for her--and keep the doctor amused in the evening if she has to go up early.”

It was the last item that decided Elsie. “I don’t mind,” she said in her usual formula of acceptance.

Mrs. Williams was delighted. “I’m going to write off this very evening,” she exclaimed enthusiastically. “Horace and I have to go out now, but I shan’t forget. It’ll be a lovely chance for you, dear.”

Elsie rather enjoyed telling her mother and Geraldine that evening that “Mrs. Williams was wild” to secure her services for a lady friend of hers, who had a lovely house at Hampstead.

“This Mrs. Woolley is delicate, and she wants a young lady to help her. Of course, there’s a servant for the work of the house.”

“If she’s counting on you to help her, the same as you’ve helped your poor mother since you left school, she’s got a disappointment in store,” said Mrs. Palmer grimly. “I don’t know that I’d let you go, even if you get the chance.”

In the end, Geraldine, who wanted the top bedroom to herself, and who thought that Elsie, and the problem of Elsie’s behaviour, were occupying too much attention, persuaded Mrs. Palmer that it would never do to offend the Williamses.

“Besides,” she argued, “it’ll be one less to feed here, and we can easily move her bed into the second-floor back room and use it, if we want to put up an extra gentleman any time.”

Mrs. Palmer gave in, contingent on a personal interview with Mrs. Woolley.

This was arranged through Mrs. Williams. She one day ushered into the dining-room of No. 15 a large, showily-dressed woman, who might have been any age between thirty-eight and forty-five.

Her rings, and her light, smart dress impressed Elsie, and her suggestion of paying twenty-five pounds a year for Elsie’s services satisfied Mrs. Palmer.

“My hubby’s a frightfully busy man,” Mrs. Woolley remarked. “He isn’t at home a great deal, but he likes me to do everything on the most liberal scale--always has done--and he said to me, ‘Amy, you’re not strong,’ he said, ‘even if you have a high colour’--so many people are deceived by that, Mrs. Palmer--‘and you’ve got to have help. Someone who can be a bit of a companion to you when I’m out on my rounds or busy in the surgery, and who you can trust with Gladys and Sonnie.’”

“I’m sure Elsie would like to help you, Mrs. Woolley, and you’ll find her to be trusted,” Mrs. Palmer replied firmly. “I’ve always brought up my gurls to be useful, even if they _are_ ladies.”

“She looks young,” said Mrs. Woolley critically.

“She’ll put her hair up before she comes to you. It may be a mother’s weakness, Mrs. Woolley, but I’m free to confess that Elsie’s my baby, and I’ve let her keep her curls down perhaps longer than I should.”

Elsie remained demure beneath what she perfectly recognised as a form of self-hypnotism, rather than conscious humbug, on the part of her mother.

There was at least no sentimentality in her leave-taking a week later.

“Good-bye, Elsie, and mind and not be up to any of your tricks, now. Mother’ll expect you on Sunday next.”

“Good-bye, Mother,” said Elsie indifferently.

She had that morning washed her hair, which made it very soft and fluffy, and had pinned it up in half a dozen fat little sausages at the back of her head. She was preoccupied with her own appearance, and with the knowledge that the newly-revealed back of her neck was white and pretty. She wore a blue serge coat and skirt, a low-cut blouse of very pale pink figured voile, black shoes and stockings, and a dashing little hat, round and brimless, with a big black bow that she had herself added to it on the previous night.

In the Tube railway, a man in the seat opposite to her stared at her very hard. Elsie looked away, but kept on turning her eyes furtively towards him, without moving her head. Every time that she did this, their eyes met.

The man was young, with bold eyes and a wide mouth. Presently he smiled at her.

Elsie immediately looked down at the toes of her new black shoes, moving them this way and that as though to catch the light reflected in their polish.

At Belsize Park Station she got out, carrying her suitcase.

As she passed the youth in the corner, she glanced at him again, then stepped out of the train and went up the platform without looking behind her. Although there was a crowd on the platform and in the lift, and although she never looked round, Elsie could tell that he was following her.

The feeling that this gave her, half fearful and half delighted, was an agreeable titilation to her vanity. She had experienced it before, just as she had often been followed in the street before, but it never lost its flavour. When she was in the street, she began to walk steadily along, gazing straight in front of her.

She heard steps on the pavement just behind her, and then the young man of the train accosted her, raising his hat as he spoke:

“Aren’t you going to give me the pleasure of your acquaintance?” he suavely enquired.

His voice was very polite, and his eyes looked faintly amused.

“Oh!” Elsie cried in a startled tone. “I don’t think I know you, do I?”

“All the more reason to begin now. Mayn’t I carry that bag for you?”

He took it and they walked on together.

“Perhaps you can tell me where Mortimer Crescent is,” Elsie said primly.

“It will be my proudest privilege to escort you there,” he replied in mock bombastic tones.

It was a form of persiflage well known to Elsie, and she laughed in reply. “You _are_ silly, aren’t you?”

“Not at all. Now if you called me cheeky, perhaps....”

“I’ll call you cheeky fast enough. A regular Cheeky Charlie, by the look of you!”

“I think I was born cheeky,” he agreed complacently. “D’you know what first made me want to talk to you?”

“What?”

“That pink thing you’ve got on with all the ribbon showing through it.”

He put out his hand and, with a familiar gesture, touched the front of her blouse just below her collar-bone.

“You mustn’t,” said Elsie, startled.

“Why not?”

“I don’t allow liberties.”

“We’ll have to settle what liberties are, miss. Come for a walk this evening and we can talk about it.”

“Oh, I couldn’t! I’m just going into a new job.”

She purposely used the word “new,” because she wanted him to think her experienced and grown-up.

“What can a kiddie like you do?”

“Why, I’m private secretary to a duke, didn’t you know that?”

“Lucky duke! Where does he live?”

“Oh, that’d be telling. This isn’t Mortimer Crescent?”

“It is, very much so indeed, begging your pardon for contradicting a lady.”

“Well, don’t come any further,” begged Elsie. “Ta-ta, and thanks for carrying the bag.”

“When do I see you again?”

“I dunno! Never, I should think.”

“Seven o’clock to-night?”

“No, I can’t, really.”

“To-morrow, then? I’ll be outside the Belsize Park station, and we’ll go on the razzle-dazzle together. I’d like to show you a bit of life. Seven o’clock, mind.”

“You and your seven o’clock! You’ll be somewhere with your young lady, I know.”

“Haven’t got one.”

“Wouldn’t she have you?” scoffed Elsie. “No accounting for tastes, is there?”

“I’ll make you pay for this to-morrow night, you little witch--see if I don’t!”

Elsie had caught hold of her suitcase, and began to walk away from him.

“Which number are you going to?”

“Eight.”

“I’ll ring the bell for you.”

He did so, rather to her fright and vexation. She urged him in low tones to go away, but he continued to stand beside her on the doorstep, laughing at her annoyance, until a capped and aproned maid opened the door.

Then he lifted his hat, said “Good-night” very politely, and went away.

She never saw him again.

IV

Elsie found the life at 8, Mortimer Crescent, a pleasant contrast to that of her own home.

Mrs. Woolley herself never came downstairs before half-past nine or ten o’clock, and then she was very often only partly dressed, wearing a stained and rumpled silk kimono and a dirty lace-and-ribbon-trimmed boudoir cap. Elsie’s only duty in the morning was to keep the two children quiet while their mother slept. This she achieved by the simple expedient of letting them go to bed so late at night that they lay like little logs far on into the morning.

Elsie shared a bedroom with Gladys, and Sonnie’s cot was in a dressing-room opening into theirs.

The children were rather pallid and unwholesome, never quite free from colds or coughs, and seeming too spiritless even to be naughty. They went to a kindergarten school from eleven to four o’clock every day, and Elsie took them there and fetched them away again.

During the daytime she was supposed to dust the dining-room, drawing-room, and Mrs. Woolley’s bedroom, but she soon found out that no accumulation of dust, cigarette ends, or actual dirt would ever be noticed by the mistress of the house.

There was a general servant, who was inclined to resent Elsie’s presence in the house, and who left very soon after her arrival. Another one came, and was sent away at the end of a week’s trial because Mrs. Woolley said she was impertinent, and after an uncomfortable interim, during which Elsie nominally “did” the cooking, and they lived upon tinned goods and pressed beef, there came a short-lived succession of maids who never stayed.

At first, Doctor Woolley was seldom seen by Elsie. He went out early, and both he and his wife were out nearly every night.

Mrs. Woolley told Elsie that they adored the theatre. Elsie, who adored it too, had on these occasions, after putting the two children to bed, to remain sulkily behind while Dr. and Mrs. Woolley, after an early meal, walked away together to the Underground station. Sometimes Dr. Woolley was sent for, and could not go, and Mrs. Woolley rang up one of her friends on the telephone--always another woman--and took her instead. One evening after this had happened, the doctor returned unexpectedly early, just as Elsie had finished putting Gladys and Sonnie to bed.

She was coming downstairs, some needlework in her hands, as the doctor slammed the hall door behind him. Instantly the prospect of a dreary evening, probably to be spent in sucking sweets and surreptitiously looking over everything on Mrs. Woolley’s untidy writing-table, disappeared.

“Hallo! And how was you to-morrow, Miss Elsie?” cried the doctor genially.

He was a stout, middle-aged man, jocose and very often foul-mouthed, with nicotine stains on his fingers and grease spots on his waistcoat.

He affected a manner of speech that Elsie found intensely amusing.

“You and I all on our ownie own, eh? Where’s the missus?--and the kids?”

“The children are in bed, and Mrs. Woolley’s gone to the play with Miss Smith, Doctor.”

“And haven’t you got a drink of cocoa and a bit of bread for a poor man, kind lady?”

Elsie burst out laughing. “You’re so silly, I can’t help laughing!”

“‘Silly,’ says she, quite the lady. ‘How’s that?’ says I; to which she says, ‘Not at all,’ says she, and the same to you and many of them,” was the doctor’s reply.

Elsie giggled wildly.

“Come along now, tell that slut in the kitchen to stir her stumps and bring some food to the dining-room. Have you had your supper yet?”

“No, Doctor.”

“Then you and I will make a party-carry, otherwise a _tête-à-tête_, otherwise a night of it. Run along and I’ll get out something that will make your hair curl.”

Elsie had heard this formula before, and understood that the doctor would unlock the door of the tiny wine-cellar and bring out a bottle.

She told the maid to bring supper for Doctor Woolley to the dining-room, but she herself carried in her own plate and cup and saucer, knowing that Florrie was quite aware she had already eaten her evening meal with Mrs. Woolley.

The doctor was drawing the cork out of a bottle as she came into the room. The electric light was turned on, and the small dining-room, with drawn red curtains, and the gas-fire burning, was bright and hot.

The doctor ate heavily of cold meat and pickles, prodding with a fork amongst the mixed contents of the glass jar until he had annexed all the pickled onions that it contained.

He made Elsie sit down and eat too, but he made no demur to her assurance that she wasn’t hungry and only wanted some cake and a cup of cocoa.

At first the doctor gave all his attention to the food and warmth of which he stood in need, and Elsie felt self-conscious, and as though she were out of place.

She ceased to answer his occasional facetious interjections, and threw herself back in her chair, gazing down at her own clasped hands.

Gradually the atmosphere of the room altered, and Elsie’s instinct told her that the current of magnetism that had never failed her yet was awakening its inevitable response in the man opposite.

At once she felt confident again, and at her ease.

“I say, why didn’t the missus take you to the theatre when she found I was busy?” he queried suddenly.

“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose she never thought of such a thing.”

“Wanted someone nearer her own age, eh? You won’t find the ladies running after someone younger and prettier than themselves, you know. Too much of a contrast.”

Elsie laughed self-consciously.

“All the better for me, eh? I’m not often allowed to get you all to myself like this, eh? Ah, when I was a gay young bacheldore things was different, they was.”

Elsie laughed again, this time in spontaneous tribute to the humour of wilful mis-pronunciation.

“Now, what about this bottle that you made me get out, eh? Where are the glasses?”

He found two in the cupboard of the carved walnut sideboard, and poured a liberal allowance of port from the bottle into each.

“Oh, I couldn’t, Doctor! You must excuse me, really you must. I simply couldn’t.”

“Oh, couldn’t you, really, awfully, truly couldn’t?” he mimicked in exaggerated falsetto. “Well, you’ve got to--so that’s _that_!”

“Who says so?”

“I say so. I. _Moi._ ‘_Je_,’ replies I, knowing the language. Come along now, be a good girl.”

He laid his big coarse hand on hers, and at the contact the familiar thrill of sensuous excitement and pleasure ran through her.

“Are you going to drink it?” he said masterfully.

“Oh, I suppose I must try it. I’ve never tasted wine before,” Elsie added truthfully.

“High time you began, then.”

He went back to his place, and drank in long gulps, first saying:

“Our hands have met--our lips not yet--
Here’s hoping!”

Elsie sipped at her glass, choked, and put it down again. “How beastly!” she said, shuddering.

“You’ll get used to it.”

“No, I shan’t, because I’m not going to touch the horrid stuff again.”

“We’ll see about that.”

He came round beside her again, and held her with one arm while he tried to force the glass to her lips.

Elsie turned her head aside, struggling and laughing.

“You young monkey!” said the doctor, and forced her face upwards with his free hand.

His breath was in her face, and his inflamed eyes gazing into hers. Instinctively Elsie ceased to struggle and closed her eyes.

He kissed her mouth violently. “God! You haven’t got much to learn. Who’s been teaching you?” he asked her roughly.

“Oh, you oughtn’t to have done that,” said Elsie feebly.

“Rubbish! You know I’ve been thinking of nothing else since you’ve been here.”

He sat down and pulled her on to his knee. “Now tell me all about it,” he commanded. His manner was no longer facetious, and he had dropped his jocosities of speech.

“Let me go,” said Elsie.

“Sit still.”

“Suppose someone were to come in?”

“No one will.”

She wriggled a little, half-heartedly, and he gripped her more firmly round the waist. The scene degenerated into a sort of scrambling orgy of animalism.

Elsie, although she was frightened, was also exhilarated at the evidence that she possessed power over a man--and a married man--so much older than herself.

She knew that if at any moment he became unmanageable, she had only to threaten to call the servant, and she fully intended to do so as a last resort. But in the meanwhile there was an odd and breathless fascination in feeling that she stood so close to a peril in which lay all the lurking excitement of the unknown.

A sudden wail from the room overhead startled them both.

“That’s Sonnie!” gasped Elsie.

“Oh, blast the kid!”

But he let her go and she flew upstairs, glad, and yet disappointed, at her release.

She dismissed Sonnie’s nightmare with sharp injunctions not to be silly, tucked him up and decided to go to her own room and not to return downstairs.

“That’ll show him,” she murmured, simulating to herself a conventional indignation.

In reality, she was intensely excited, and she had been tossing about her bed restlessly for nearly an hour before reaction overtook her, and she became prey to a strange, baffled feeling of having been cheated of the climax due to so emotional an episode.

When at last Elsie slept, it was after she had heard Mrs. Woolley come in and the doctor bolt the hall door and both of them go upstairs to their bedroom, on the other side of the landing.

Every day now held the potentialities of amorous adventure.

Sometimes Elsie did not see the doctor all day long, sometimes they met in the evenings, with Mrs. Woolley present, and he talked in the old facetious style, watching Elsie furtively as she giggled in response.

He very often made excuses for passing things to her at meals, so that their hands touched, and he pressed her foot under the table with his big one, or rubbed it up and down her ankle.

There were moments, however, when they were alone together, and then he pulled her to him and kissed her roughly all over her face and neck, pushing her abruptly away at the first possibility of interruption. Once or twice, at the imminent risk of being discovered, he had snatched hasty and provocative kisses from her lips in a chance encounter on the stairs, or even behind the shelter of an open door.

The perpetual fear of detection, no less than the tantalising incompleteness of their relations, was a strain upon Elsie’s nerves, and she was keyed up to a pitch of unusual sensitiveness when the inevitable crisis came.

Mrs. Woolley, in a new blue dress that looked too tight under the arms, had taken the children to a party.

The maid Florrie was out for the afternoon. Elsie, restless and on edge, terribly wanted an excuse to go down to the surgery. At last she found one, and after listening at the door to make certain that no belated patient was with the doctor, she knocked.

“Come in!”

He was sitting at the writing-table, rapidly turning over the leaves of a big book.

“Elsie!”

“Oh, if you please, Doctor,” she minced, “they’ve all gone out, and Mrs. Woolley left a message to say if you _could_ go and fetch her and the children from 85, Lower Park Avenue, about seven o’clock----”

“Stow it, Elsie! D’you mean to say you and I are the only people left in the place? Where’s that damned slut in the kitchen, eh?”

“It’s Florrie’s afternoon out, Doctor, but----”

“Florrie be damned! Look here, Elsie, this sort of thing can’t go on.”

She backed until she stood against the wall, feeling the warm blood surge into her face and looking at him through half-closed eyelids.

“What sort of thing?”

“You know very well what I mean. Look at me. D’you think I’m a man?”

He thrust out his chest and doubled up his arms, standing with his legs wide apart. In spite of his grossness and unwholesome fat, Elsie thrilled to the suggestion of his masculine strength.

“Yes,” she murmured.

“Well, I tell you no man’s going to stand what you’re making me stand. Elsie, you little devil! Don’t you know you’re driving me mad? God, if I could tell you the sort of dreams I get at night, now!”

“About me?” she asked curiously.

“Shut up!” His voice was savage, and she suddenly saw sweat glistening on his upper lip and round his nose.

Elsie decided to begin to cry. “It frightens me when you shout at me like that. Perhaps I’d better go,” she said sobbingly.

“No, no, no! I say, what a brute I am! Come here and be comforted, little girl.”

He sat down heavily in the revolving chair before the writing-table and held out his hand.

Elsie advanced slowly, without looking at him, until she came within reach of his arm. Then he caught hold of her and drew her on to his knee, gripping her tightly until her weight sank against his shoulder.

“Let me kiss all the tears away. What a hound I am to make you cry! Was’ums very mis’mis?”

He petted and soothed her, kissing the back of her neck and her dust-coloured curls, murmuring absurd, infantile phrases.

Presently he whispered: “D’you love me?”

Elsie laughed and would not answer, and he struggled with her playfully, pulling her about, and grasping at her with his big hands.

After the horse-play, she put both arms round his neck and lay still.

“I want to know something,” said Doctor Woolley slowly.

“What’s that?”

“Don’t you know more than a good little girl ought to know?”

“What about?”

“About--life. About being kissed, for instance. I’m not the first, my girl, not by a long, long way. You’re the sort that begins early, _I_ know.”

“You’ve a nerve!” Elsie ejaculated, not knowing what to say.

“Well, it’s true what I’m saying, isn’t it? I mean, you’ve let fellows kiss you?”

“Just boys, perhaps.”

“Hasn’t anyone taught you anything besides kissing, eh?”

“Of course not! What do you take me for, I’d like to know? Mother brought up me and my sister like ladies, let me tell you. Besides, I don’t know what you’re driving at, I’m sure.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then I’ll show you.”

“No!” screamed Elsie in a sudden, only half-assumed, panic.

She sprang up, but he pulled her back again.

“You silly little fool! You don’t suppose I’d really say or do anything to frighten you, do you? Why, you’re much too precious.”

He kissed her again and again.

“Tell me one thing, though. You did know what I meant, didn’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

“Of course you did! A girl like you couldn’t help knowing. My God, I wish I’d known you ten years ago. I wasn’t married then.”

“You oughtn’t to talk like that.”

“Why not? It’s true. Amy’s as cold as ice--not a real woman at all. And she’s as jealous as the devil. I’ve always wondered why she let anyone like you come into the house at all. It’s a miracle she hasn’t spotted us yet.”

“It’d be all up with me being here if she did,” said Elsie shrewdly.

“If you go, I swear I’ll go with you,” said Doctor Woolley, but he said it without conviction, and Elsie knew it. “Can’t do without you, little one, at any price, now. But you’ve got to be even sweeter than you’ve been to me yet.”

Elsie shivered a little, excited and disturbed, and in part genuinely shocked.

“When will you, Elsie?”

His breath on her neck was hot and hurried.

She jumped off his knee. “Oh, look, it’s getting on for half-past six! You’ll have to be off.”

“Come back! You haven’t told me what I want to know yet.” He grabbed at her dress.

“Listen!” cried Elsie.

In the second during which he turned, arrested, she slipped out of the room.

Her heart was beating very fast, and her face burning.

She half expected him to follow her, but he did not do so; and she was partly relieved and partly disappointed.

She saw him again at supper, which the Woolleys always called dinner, and the consciousness between them caused a singular constraint to pervade the atmosphere. Mrs. Woolley, for the first time, seemed to be aware of it, and every now and then turned sharp, bulging brown eyes from her husband to Elsie, compressing her thin lips until they formed a mere hard line in her red face.

When the meal was finished, she told Elsie to go upstairs and fetch one of her evening dresses. “I want to see if I can’t smarten it up a bit,” she explained. “I’m in rags, not fit to be seen.”

“I’ll stand you a new frock, Amy,” said the doctor suddenly. “How much d’you want, eh?”

“Oh! Why, whatever’s up, Herbert? I’m sure it’s ages since I’ve had a thing, and I’d be only too delighted----”

She broke off.

“Run up, Elsie, will you? The primrose dress, with the black lace, in the left-hand corner of my wardrobe....”

Elsie went, envious of the new dress, and at the same time thinking mockingly of Mrs. Woolley’s mottled skin and the lines that ran from her heavy nostrils to her sagging chin. Dresses and jewellery ought to be for girls who were young and pretty, not married women, plain and stout, like Mrs. Woolley. When Elsie came down again the doctor had gone, and Mrs. Woolley was in high good humour.

“I’ll get some tulle to-morrow, Elsie, and we can freshen it up round the neck and sleeves. You’d better rip off all this old stuff. And look here--you’re handy with your fingers--you can take the lace off and put it on that old navy blouse of mine, that’s got no collar. You know the one I mean ... you can drape it a bit....”

Elsie assented rather sulkily.

“Doctor Woolley’s so generous,” said Mrs. Woolley complacently. “He’s for ever giving me things, me and the children. If you knew more of the world, Elsie, you’d realise how lucky a woman is when she gets a hubby like mine who’s never so much as looked at another woman since he married. Some men aren’t like that, I can tell you. The tales I could let out, if I cared to, that I’ve heard from some! But if Doctor Woolley’s manner sometimes puts ideas into people’s heads, why, they’ve only themselves to blame is what I always say. He wouldn’t give a thought to anyone but me, not really.”

She looked full at Elsie as she spoke, and Elsie stared back at her.

The girl was puzzled and angry, not feeling certain that she knew whether Mrs. Woolley really believed her own words, or was using them to convey an oblique warning.

“If she really imagines that, she must be a fool,” thought Elsie contemptuously, only to veer round uneasily a moment later to the conviction that Mrs. Woolley had been talking _at_ her.

It was the latter unpleasant belief that prevailed, without possibility of mistake, in the course of the next few days. Whenever the doctor was in the house, Mrs. Woolley made a point of remaining at his side, and during the hours when he was in the surgery she kept Elsie employed with the children, every now and then coming to look in on her with excuses that were always transparently flimsy.

The tension in the atmosphere pervaded the whole house.

At last one afternoon, when Gladys and Sonnie were at school, and Mrs. Woolley in the drawing-room with an unexpected caller, Elsie and the doctor met upon the stairs.

She knew that she was looking her worst, strained and overwrought, and with the odd Japanese aspect of her eyes and cheek-bones intensified. Even her hair felt limp and unresilient.

She looked at the doctor rather piteously, envisaging to herself her own unprepossessing appearance, and wishing that she had at least powdered her face recently.

“Where’s Amy?”

“In the drawing-room, with a lady visitor.”

“Thank God! I’ve been hag-ridden for the last week. What the devil’s up, Elsie?”

“I don’t know,” she murmured. “At least, I know Mrs. Woolley’s been horrid to me lately, that’s all.”

“She has, has she?” he muttered furiously. “Here--come in here.”

He drew her into the shelter of the nearest doorway.

“Elsie, I’m mad about you. This sort of thing can’t go on--it’s simply hell.”

“Oh, hush, someone’ll hear....”

“I don’t care who hears!” But he lowered his voice. “I haven’t had a kiss from you for days--quick_!_”

Their lips met.

“You dear little girl! Is she being a beast to you?”

Elsie, in his embrace, started violently. “_Someone coming upstairs!_” she hissed.

He stood motionless to listen, waited a second too long, and then sharply shut the door.

“Florrie!” Elsie whispered in a frightened voice. “Did she see us?”

“No, no--not a chance. Or, if she did, she only saw me. She won’t think anything of that.”

“She’s gone upstairs--I must go.”

“No, don’t. I tell you it’s all right. Hang it, Elsie, when am I going to get a word with you again?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think I shall go home again.” She was half crying.

“Elsie, d’you know Amy’s going out to-morrow night? She’s going to see her friend, that Williams woman, who’s ill.”

“What, the one that was at mother’s place?”

“Yes--yes--but they’re in their own house now. It’ll take her all the evening to get there and back, pretty nearly.”

“She won’t go.”

“Yes, she will. I shall tell her I’m going off to a case at Roehampton or somewhere, and that I shan’t be back till late.”

“Oh, don’t. It simply isn’t safe.”

“It’s quite safe, you little fool. You and me have got to come to an understanding, I can’t stand this life another minute. Look here, we’ll go out somewhere together.”

“No, no! That’d be much worse. Sonnie always wakes up, and he’ll scream himself into a fit if I’m not there, and then Florrie would know----”

“I forgot the kids. Elsie--Gladys sleeps in your room doesn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Elsie, suddenly flushing scarlet.

He laughed abruptly, scanning her face with hungry eyes. “I’ll have a fire in the surgery. We’ll go down there. Florrie knows better than to put her foot inside it,” said Doctor Woolley significantly.

V

It was two days later.

Florrie and Mrs. Woolley were talking in the kitchen. Elsie hung about in the diminutive passage, trying desperately to hear what they were saying. An awful intuition gripped her that they were talking of her.

Florrie’s voice was indistinct, almost inaudible, but snatched phrases rose occasionally from the angry monotone that was Mrs. Woolley’s.

“... My innocent children ... turn my back ... the gutter ... don’t you talk to me ... the gutter ... out of the gutter....”

Elsie tried wildly to persuade herself that Mrs. Woolley was abusing Florrie. Sometimes she lost her temper with her servants, and shouted at them.

On the evening that Mrs. Woolley had gone to see her friend Mrs. Williams, who was reported very ill, Elsie, in her best frock, had boldly gone into the surgery, where a fire blazed, and there was a sofa newly piled with cushions. On the table had been placed a bottle and glasses and a dish of biscuits. Doctor Woolley had locked the door behind her, in spite of Elsie’s half-meant protests, but at first he had been entirely jovial, using catch-phrases that had made her laugh, and drinking heartily.

She herself had begun to feel rather affronted and puzzled at his aloofness, before it suddenly came to an end.

The remembrance of her own surrender rather bewildered Elsie. She had never consciously made up her mind to it, but the doctor’s urgency, her own physical susceptibility, and an underlying, violent curiosity had proved far too strong for her feeble defences, based on timidity and on the recollection of certain unexplained, and less-than-half-understood, arbitrary axioms laid down during her childhood by her mother.

She supposed that that one half-hour in the surgery had made “a bad girl” of her, but the aspect of the case that really preoccupied her was her terror that Mrs. Woolley should have found it out.

She felt sick with fright as the kitchen door opened, and, turning round, pretended to be looking for something in the housemaid’s closet under the stairs.

She heard Mrs. Woolley brush past her and go into the drawing-room, slamming the door violently behind her.

Elsie, her knees shaking, went upstairs to fetch Gladys and Sonnie and take them to their kindergarten.

She dawdled on the way back, being unwilling to go into the house again, and alternately hoping and dreading that the doctor would be at home for the midday meal.

At one o’clock, however, Mrs. Woolley and Elsie sat down without him.

Mrs. Woolley did not speak to Elsie. She kept on looking at her, and then looking away again. Her hard face was inscrutable, but Elsie noticed that her hands, manipulating her knife and fork, shook slightly. The doctor came in before the meal was over, jaunty and talkative.

“Hallo! Is this Wednesday, or Piccadilly, or what? Which I mean to say is, has the cold meat stage been passed and the rice pudding come on, or contrarywise?”

Elsie burst into nervous laughter, the strident sound of which caused the doctor to glance at her sharply, and Mrs. Woolley said:

“Nonsense, Herbert! The way you talk, sometimes! The girl has got your meat and vegetables keeping hot in the oven, and I’m sure you haven’t seen rice pudding at the table for a fortnight. There’s a nice piece of cheese on the side, too.”

The doctor ate in silence, voraciously, as he always did, and his wife presently said in a thin, vicious voice:

“Of course, you’ve nothing to say to your wife, Herbert. It’s easy enough to talk and be amusing with strangers, isn’t it?--but I suppose it isn’t worth while in your own home.”

“What’s up, Amy?” he growled. He did not look at Elsie, who found herself fixing apprehensive eyes on him, although she knew it was a betrayal.

“Why should anything be up, as you call it? But as it isn’t very amusing for me to sit here all day while you eat, and as I happen to be rather busy, strange though it may seem, I think I’ll ask you to excuse me.”

She turned her head towards Elsie, but spoke without looking at her. “I’ll thank you to come and find that paper pattern for Gladys’s smock. The child isn’t fit to be seen.”

Mrs. Woolley pushed Elsie out of the room in front of her, making it obvious that she meant her to have no opportunity of exchanging a look with the doctor.

Throughout the afternoon she never let the girl out of her sight until Elsie had actually left the house to go and fetch the two children from school.

It was abundantly evident that a crisis impended. The atmospheric tension affected everyone in the house, and Elsie, her nerves on edge, became frantic.

She said, immediately after supper, that she was tired, and should go to bed, and Mrs. Woolley laughed, shortly and sarcastically.

Elsie went up to her room and cried hysterically on her bed until Gladys woke and began to whine enquiries.

It seemed impossible, to Elsie’s inexperience, that the horrors of that day should repeat themselves, but the next one was Sunday, and brought its own miseries.

The doctor, who did not go to church as a rule, announced his intention of accompanying his family, and they set out, a constrained procession: Gladys, in tight black boots and with fair hair crimped round her shoulders, holding her father’s hand, Mrs. Woolley, walking just a little faster than was comfortable for Sonnie’s short legs, clutching the boy’s hand, and Elsie slouching a pace or two behind, cold and wretched.

At the bottom of the Crescent they met an elderly couple who often came to see them, and whom Elsie knew well by name as Mr. and Mrs. Loman.

The encounter broke up the procession, and caused a readjustment of places. Mrs. Woolley was at once claimed by the sallow, spectacled Mrs. Loman, and the children, with shrill acclamations, ran to her husband, Sonnie’s godfather and the purveyor of many small treats and presents.

The doctor, after a loud and boisterous greeting, boldly joined Elsie, and both of them dropped behind the others.

“Oh, I’ve wanted so to speak to you!” gasped Elsie.

“Shut up--don’t make a fuss now, there’s a good girl. Keep a cheery face on you, for God’s sake, or we shall give the show away worse than we’ve done already.”

Mrs. Woolley turned round. “Herbert, Mrs. Loman is just saying that she hasn’t set eyes on you for ages. Come and give an account of yourself.”

She spoke in a thin, artificial voice, but her eyes blazed a command at him.

The doctor stared back at her, insolent security in his manner. “Thankee, Amy, but I wouldn’t interrupt a ladies’ confab. for the world. Go on about your sky-blue-purple Sunday-go-to-meeting costumes, and I’ll keep Elsie company.”

Mrs. Loman laughed and the doctor grinned back at her.

White patches had appeared on the mottled surface of Mrs. Woolley’s face, but she made no rejoinder.

Doctor Woolley turned to Elsie again, the merriment dropping from his manner. “That’ll shut her up for a bit,” he said between his teeth. “Has she been giving you gyp, Elsie?”

“Oh, it’s been awful. I’m certain she’s found out.”

“How?”

“That Florrie, I suppose.”

“Damn Florrie and her mischief-making! Well, kiddie, the fat’s in the fire. I’m afraid there’s only one thing for it.”

“What?”

“Why--why, my dear child, don’t you see for yourself--you’ll have to clear out of here. No use waiting for Amy to make a bloody row, now is there? If you simply say you’re going home again, she won’t have a leg to stand on. And if it wasn’t for--for the kids, I’d go with you.”

“You wouldn’t,” said Elsie bitterly. “I may be a bit green, but I’m not green enough to swallow that.”

“Don’t talk like that,” said Doctor Woolley. He slipped his hand under her arm, and at the contact, jaded and miserable as she was, her pulses leapt. His fingers squeezed her arm.

“We’ve had some happy times together, little girl, eh?” he murmured in a sentimental voice. “And don’t you see that when you’re on your own again we can meet ever so much more freely. I want--you know what I want, don’t you, Elsie?”

She did not respond. “What _I_ want, is to know what’ll happen to me if I go back to mother and say I’ve left Mrs. Woolley. You don’t suppose she, and my sister and my aunts, aren’t going to ask what’s happened, do you?”

“Well, you can tell them something,” said the doctor impatiently. “A clever girl like you, Elsie, surely you can think of something. Besides, everybody knows that a pretty girl doesn’t always hit it off with a woman older than herself. There’s nothing wonderful in that. Damnation, they’re stopping!”

“Here we are,” said Elsie.

He withdrew his arm hastily from hers after a final pressure.

Mrs. Woolley and her friend were already standing at the church steps, and both of them fixed their eyes on Elsie and the doctor as they came up. Elsie saw Mrs. Woolley touch the other woman’s elbow, and guessed at, rather than heard, the words coming from between her teeth:

“Look at that, now--_look at that_.”

On Mrs. Loman’s face was an expression of mingled eagerness, curiosity, and disgust. It was evident that Mrs. Woolley had spoken freely of her wrongs.

Elsie spent her time in church in wondering whether it would yet be possible to blunt Mrs. Woolley’s suspicions, or whether she dared face her mother with a made-up story to account for her return.

She was still young enough to have a furtive dread that her mother must be omniscient in her regard, and she was afraid that Mrs. Palmer would somehow guess at her lapse and tax her with it.

Elsie had very often lied to her mother before, but not with any conspicuous success, and she felt just now strangely shaken and unnerved, physically and morally.

When they came out of church, the Lomans hospitably pressed their friends to return with them, share the hot Sunday dinner, and spend the afternoon. The children were specifically included, but Mrs. Loman glanced in Elsie’s direction, and then looked back at Mrs. Woolley, raising her eyebrows.

“You’d better go and see your mother this afternoon,” said Mrs. Woolley coldly. “Go home first and tell Florrie we shall be out, and she can lock up the house and go out for a bit herself. Tell her she must be back by five.”

“All right,” said Elsie lifelessly.

She turned on her heel, when a sudden shout stopped her.

“Post those letters of mine, will you?” said Doctor Woolley very loudly. “You’ll find them in”--he came nearer to her--“_wait in till I come_,” he muttered almost inaudibly, and rejoined his wife before Elsie had taken in the meaning of his words. It came to her afterwards, and the renewed sense of intrigue very slightly relieved the dull misery pervading her.

At No. 8, Mortimer Crescent, the hot joint was taken out of the oven and left to grow cold, but Florrie had made a Yorkshire pudding, and she and Elsie ate it for their dinner, and added pickles and bread and cheese and cake to the meal. Very soon afterwards, Florrie announced that she was going off at once.

“So am I,” said Elsie. “I told _her_ I’d lock up the house. Mind you’re in by five.”

“That’s as it may be,” haughtily said Florrie, with a venomous glance. Elsie felt far too tired to quarrel with the maid, as she had often done before, and when Florrie was actually gone she went upstairs and lay down on her bed. It was nearly three o’clock before a cautious sound from below betrayed the return of the doctor.

Elsie rose and automatically glanced at herself in the looking-glass. One side of her face was flushed, her eyes looked small and swollen-lidded, and her hair was disordered. She dabbed powder on her face and pulled her wave of hair further down over her forehead before going downstairs.

The doctor was hanging up his hat on the crowded hooks that lined one side of the wall in the tiny entrance lobby.

“Coast clear?”

Elsie nodded.

“Sure?”

“Absolutely.” She held out the key of the house door. “I’ve locked up at the back.”

“Then I’ll lock up at the front,” said Doctor Woolley, and did so.

“My God, we’re in a bloody mess,” he began, turning round and facing Elsie.

Desperate, she ran forward and threw herself into his arms, instinctively seeking the only reassurance she knew, that of physical contact.

The doctor suddenly buried his face in her hair, then forced her face upwards and kissed her passionately.

They clung to one another.

At last he released his clasp, only keeping one arm round her waist.

“Where can we go? We’ll have to settle something, and Lord knows when I shall get another chance of speaking to you, with that hell-cat on the warpath. I’ve had the deuce and all of a time getting here now, and we must both clear out of the place before she and the kids get back. Put on your hat and coat, old girl, and come along.”

“Where to?”

“Where I take you,” said the doctor brusquely.

When she came down again, he hurried her out of the house, locking the door again behind them, and putting the key under the scraper, where it was always looked for on Sunday.

“Taxi!”

The doctor hailed a passing taxi and made Elsie get into it.

He gave the address of a hotel in a street of which she had never heard.

“Where are we going to?”

“Somewhere where I can talk to you.”

He passed his arm round her again, and she made no pretence of resistance, but lay against him, letting him play with her hand and occasionally bend his head down to kiss her lips.

Elsie had slept very little for the past three nights; she had shed tears, and she had been subject to a continual nervous strain. By the time that the taxi stopped she was almost dozing, and it was in a half-dazed state that she followed Dr. Woolley into the dingy hall of a high building and, after a very short parley with a stout man in evening dress, to an upstairs sitting-room.

She asked nothing better than to sink on to the narrow couch in a corner of the room and let herself be petted and caressed, but after a time her wearied senses awoke, and told her that the man beside her was becoming restive and excited.

“Look here, Elsie,” he said finally, “you’re a beguiling little witch, you are--but we’ve got to come down to hard facts. I’m going to order you a pick-me-up, and have one myself, and then we can talk about what’s to be done next. I’ve got to be home again, worse luck, by seven o’clock. I’m supposed to have had an urgent call to Amy’s friend, Mrs. Williams. She’s ill enough, poor soul, in all conscience, and I’ll have to go there before I go home. Now then, what’ll you have?”

“Tea,” said Elsie.

He laughed. “Women are all alike! You can have your tea--poisonous stuff, tincture of tannin--and I’ll order what I think’s good for you to go with it. Wait here till I come back.”

He went out, and Elsie, already revived and stimulated, flew to the spotted and discoloured looking-glass, and took out her pocket-comb to rearrange her curls.

She actually enjoyed the hot, strong tea when it came, and her spirits suddenly rose to a boisterous pitch.

They both laughed loudly at the faces that Elsie made over the bottle that the doctor had obtained, and from which he repeatedly helped himself and her, and although they kept on telling one another that they must talk seriously, their hilarity kept on increasing. At last he began to make violent love to her, and Elsie responded coquettishly, luring him on by glance and gesture, while her tongue uttered glib and meaningless protests. Very soon, her flimsy defences gave way altogether, and she had ceded to him everything that he asked.

Then the inevitable reaction overtook her, and she cried, and called herself a wicked girl, and finally sank limply into a corner of the taxi that Dr. Woolley had summoned to the door of the hotel.

He got in beside her. “Buck up, little girl!” he cried urgently. “You’ll be at No. 8 in no time, and we don’t want Amy asking awkward questions. Look here, I’ll put you down at the corner of the Crescent, and you can walk to the house. The air’ll do you good, and besides, we can’t be seen together. I’m off to that wretched Williams woman, and I’m not going to be in till late.”

Elsie continued to sob.

“Come, come, come--pull yourself to pieces,” Doctor Woolley tried to make her laugh. “We’ve not settled anything, but we’ve had our time together. Ah, a little love is a great thing in a world like this one, Elsie. Thank you for being so sweet to me, little girl.”

He kissed her hastily, with a perfunctoriness of which she was aware.

When the taxi stopped in the main thoroughfare, a little way before the turning into Mortimer Crescent, he almost shoved her on to the pavement.