Chapter III: Part I: I (3)

“Don’t forget--you’ve been out ever since dinner-time, and you imagine me to have been in the buzzim of my family enjoying back chat with the old Lomans. Don’t say anything about that, though, unless you’re asked. Tell the man to drive like blazes now, will you?”

Elsie mechanically obeyed.

Then she dragged herself to No. 8. Her ring was answered by Florrie.

The little servant girl was grinning maliciously. “She’s in the d--’s own temper and all, and you’re going to catch it hot and strong for leaving her to put the children to bed.”

“Mind your own business, Florrie,” said Elsie, pushing past her.

She affected not to hear the single word that the servant flung at her back, but it made her wince.

In the bedroom she found Gladys already in bed, wide awake.

“Mother put us to bed. She was awfully cross, and she slapped Sonnie twice and me once.”

“What for?”

“Oh, because I whined, she said. And she slapped Sonnie when he told her about Dadda being so funny with you. You didn’t know we _saw_ one day,” giggled Gladys.

“Saw what?”

“One day when Dadda kissed you and Sonnie and I saw, over the banisters, and we laughed, but you didn’t hear us.”

“You little viper!” muttered Elsie between her teeth. “I’d like to kill you, I would.”

Gladys alternately giggled and whined, and Elsie was quite unable to distinguish whether the child was really malicious or simply amused by something to which she attached no meaning.

“Anyway, if she’s told her mother, it’s all up,” thought Elsie.

She saw that there was nothing for it but to leave Mortimer Crescent, and spent a miserable night wondering what to say to her mother and sister.

At midnight she heard the sound of the doctor’s key in the front door and his heavy foot on the stairs. He paused outside her door for some seconds, then she heard him go into his wife’s room.

Elsie tossed about in her narrow bed. Her present dilemma frightened her, and she had a vague, irrational idea that some awful and horrible penalty always descended sooner or later upon girls who had done as she had done. These fears, and her lack of any vivid imagination, had dulled her emotional susceptibilities, and she scarcely felt regret at the thought of no longer seeing the doctor. He now stood to her for the symbol of an assuaged desire, the fulfilment of which had brought about her present miseries. Nevertheless, at the back of her consciousness was latent the conviction that never again would she be satisfied with the clumsy demonstrations and meaningless contacts of her intercourse with the boys and youths whom she had known at home.

It seemed to her next morning that she was wholly ugly. Her complexion looked sodden and her eyes were nearly invisible. Her mouth, in some odd way, seemed to have swollen. No one could have called her pretty, and to anyone who had seen her in good looks she would have been almost unrecognisable. Mrs. Woolley, coming downstairs at ten o’clock, eyed her with a malignant satisfaction.

“Perhaps,” she said, “you won’t be altogether surprised to hear that I’m going to make some changes. You’d better pack your box, and go home to your mother, I think.”

“I was going to tell you that I couldn’t stay on here any longer,” said Elsie swiftly. “The ways of the house aren’t what I’ve been used to, Mrs. Woolley.”

In a flash, Mrs. Woolley had turned nasty, and Elsie had seen her own unwisdom.

“Oh, aren’t they indeed? Perhaps you’d be so kind as to tell me what you are used to--or shall _I_ tell _you_?”

Then she suddenly raised her voice almost to a scream and poured out a torrent of abuse and invective, and the two children crept in from the hall and began to cry, and to make faces at Elsie, and demonstrations of hitting her with their little hands, and the servant Florrie held the door half open, so that she might see and hear it all.

Elsie screamed back again at Mrs. Woolley, but she had neither the fluency nor the determination of the older woman, and she was unable to prevent herself from bursting into tears and sobs.

Finally Mrs. Woolley drove her out of the room, standing at the foot of the stairs while Elsie ran up to pull on her best hat and coat, and forbidding the children to follow her.

“Don’t go near her, my pets--she’s a wicked girl, that’s what she is--not fit to be in the same house as innocent little children. Now then, out you go, miss, before I send for the police.”

“I’ll go,” said Elsie, shaking from head to foot, “and I’ll never set foot in your filthy house again. And I’ll send for my trunk and for every penny you owe me, and I’ll have the law on you for insinuations on my character.”

Then she dashed out of the house and into the street.

VI

Elsie’s return home caused far less sensation than she had feared. Mrs. Palmer, indeed, was very angry, but principally at Elsie’s folly in having come away without her trunk or the money due to her.

When a week had elapsed, and nothing had come from Mortimer Crescent, Mrs. Palmer declared her intention of going to a solicitor.

“However you could be such a fool, young Elsie--and I don’t half understand what happened, even now. What was the row about?”

Elsie had decided upon a half-truth. “Oh, she was a jealous old fool, and couldn’t bear her hubby to look the same side of the room as anyone else. That’s all it was, really. She spoke to me very rudely, I consider--in fact she was decidedly insulting--so I simply up and said: ‘Mrs. Woolley,’ I said, ‘that’s not the way I’m accustomed to be spoken to,’ I said, ‘and what’s more I won’t stand it.’ Quite quietly, I said it, looking her very straight in the face. ‘I won’t stand it,’ I said, quite quietly. That did for her. She didn’t know how to take it at all. But, of course, I wasn’t going to stay in the house a moment after that, and I simply walked straight upstairs and put on my things and left her there. She knows what I think of her, though.”

“Yes, and she knows what she thinks of you,” remarked Mrs. Palmer shrewdly, “and it probably isn’t so far out, either. She may be jealous as you say--those fleshy women often are, when their figures come to be a perpetual worry, so to speak--but there’s no smoke without a fire, and I know you, Elsie Palmer. I suppose this doctor fellow was for ever giving you sweets and wanting to take you out at nights, and sit next you in the ’bus coming home, with his wife on the other side of him as like as not. You were a young fool, let me tell you, to lose a good place like that for a man who can’t be any use to you. What you want to look out for is a husband. I shan’t have a minute’s peace about you till you’re married.”

“Why?” asked Elsie, rather gratified, and very curious.

“Never you mind why. Because Mother says so, and that’s enough. Now you can get on your hat and come with me to Mr. Williams’ office and see what he can do to get this trunk of yours away from that woman. She’s no lady, as I saw plainly the very first time I ever laid eyes on her.”

On the way to the City, Mrs. Palmer questioned Elsie rather half-heartedly. “You’ve not been a bad girl in any way while you’ve been away from Mother, have you?”

“No, of course not. I don’t know what you mean,” Elsie declared, sick with sudden fright.

“I should hope you didn’t. Because mind, Elsie, any gurl of mine who disgraced herself wouldn’t get any help from _me_. And though I don’t object to a bit of fun while a gurl’s young, skylarking may lead to other things. I hope there’s no need for me to speak any plainer. I’ve brought you gurls up innocent, and I intend you shall remain so. Not that Geraldine’s ever given me a moment’s worry.”

“Oh, Geraldine!” Elsie was profoundly relieved at seeing an opportunity for changing the subject indirectly. “She’s a sheep.”

“You’ve no call to speak like that of your elder sister, miss. I wish you were half as steady as she is. She’s the one to help her widowed mother, for all she has such poor health.”

“What do you suppose is the matter with her, Mother?”

“Bile,” said Mrs. Palmer laconically. “Your father was the same, but it doesn’t matter so much in a man.”

“Why ever not?”

“It doesn’t interfere with his prospects. Now I often think Geraldine won’t ever get a husband, simply because of the bad colour she sometimes goes, and the way her breath smells. She can’t help it, poor gurl.”

Elsie felt contemptuous, rather than compassionate. When they came to the office, a very young clerk, who stared hard at Elsie, explained that Mr. Williams was away. He had suffered a family bereavement.

“His wife?” gasped Mrs. Palmer, greatly excited.

“I am sorry to say that Mrs. Williams died yesterday morning. Mr. Williams was not at the office, and a telephone message came through later to the head clerk, giving the melancholy intelligence. I believe Mrs. Williams had been ill for some time.”

“Why, goodness me, we knew her ever so well, my daughter and I! They stayed with us in the autumn.... Elsie, fancy poor Mrs. Williams dying!”

“Fancy!”

“Would you care to see the head clerk, Mr. Cleaver, madam?” said the youth politely, still gazing at Elsie.

“Yes, yes, I think I’d better. He may be able to tell us something more, Elsie,” cried Mrs. Palmer gloatingly.

But when the clerk had gone away to see whether Mr. Cleaver was disengaged, Mrs. Palmer remarked to her daughter:

“Not that he’ll be able to say much, naturally not. It’s an awkward subject to enter on at all with a gentleman, poor Mrs. Williams being in the condition she was.”

“I heard Doctor Woolley say she was very ill.”

“It’s a funny thing, Elsie, but many a time I’ve felt a presentiment like. I’ve looked at Mrs. Williams, and seen death in her face. And that Nellie Simmons, she told me she’d had a most peculiar dream about Mrs. Williams one night. Saw her lying all over blood, she said, and it quite scared her. I knew then what it meant, though I told Nellie not to be a silly gurl. But dreams can’t lie, as they say, not if they’re a certain sort.”

Elsie shuddered, as a thrill of superstitious terror went through her. Dreams played a large part in her life, and Mrs. Palmer had always shown her children that she “believed in dreams,” especially in those of a _macabre_ nature.

The young clerk came back, and took them into a small room where a bald-headed, pale-faced man sat at a writing-table. Mrs. Palmer’s delicacy ran no risk of affront from him, for he was monosyllabic on the subject of Mrs. Williams’ death, and only said that Mr. Williams would not be back until the following week.

Mrs. Palmer, looking disappointed, launched into a voluble story of Elsie’s trunk and its non-return.

Mr. Cleaver said that the firm would write a letter to Mrs. Woolley that evening. He seemed disinclined to enlarge on that, or any other subject.

“It’s been a great worry, as you can imagine,” Mrs. Palmer said, reluctant to terminate an interview which was anyhow to cost her money. “However the girl could have been so silly, I don’t know. But we mustn’t look for old heads on young shoulders, I suppose.”

“I suppose not.”

For the first time, Mr. Cleaver glanced at Elsie as though he really saw her. “Your young lady will be looking for another post, no doubt?”

“By-and-by,” said Mrs. Palmer with a sudden languor. “I’m afraid if I had my way, Mr. Cleaver, I’d keep both my girlies at home with their mother. And this one’s my baby, too. I really only let her go to that Mrs. Woolley to oblige poor Mrs. Williams, who was a dear friend of mine. My daughter has been trained for the shorthand-typing, really, haven’t you, Elsie?”

“’M.”

“I see. Well, Mrs. Palmer, the letter shall go off to-night, and I am very much mistaken if the lady does not----”

“Don’t call her a lady, Mr. Cleaver. She’s no----”

Mrs. Palmer had said all this before, and Mr. Cleaver held open the door for her, and compelled her to pass through it before she had time to say it all over again.

Elsie and Mrs. Palmer were in the omnibus that was to take them back to their own suburb very much earlier than they had expected to be.

“I’ll tell you what, we’ll stop at the corner shop and have a wreath sent in time for the funeral. I’ve got some money on me,” said Mrs. Palmer.

They chose a wreath and were given a black-edged card upon which Mrs. Palmer inscribed the address of Mr. Williams and: “With true sympathy and every kind thought from Mrs. Gerald Palmer, Miss Palmer and Miss Elsie Palmer.”

“I’d meant to say a few very sharp words to them about introducing _that_ Mrs. Woolley to me, and persuading me to let you go to her, but of course, it’ll have to be let drop now. I daresay poor Mrs. Williams was taken in by the woman herself.”

For two or three days Elsie lounged about at home, obliged by her mother to help in the house, but spending as much time as she could with Irene Tidmarsh, whose old father was still living, although suffering from incurable disease. Sometimes when Elsie and Irene were gossiping in the dining-room, they would hear the old man roaring with pain overhead, and then Irene would run up to him, administer a drug, and come down again looking rather white. A desiccated spinster aunt made occasional appearances, and took Irene’s place whilst Irene went to the cinema with Elsie. But Irene never mentioned Arthur Osborne, and Elsie saw neither him nor his brother.

She told herself that she did not care, and that she was sick of men and their beastly ways.

She one evening repeated this sentiment to Geraldine, whom she suspected of disbelieving her version of the quarrel with Mrs. Woolley.

“So you say. I s’pose that’s because there isn’t anyone after you. If that Begg boy turned up again, or Johnnie Osborne or any of them, you’d sing quite a different song.”

“You’re jealous,” said Elsie candidly.

Her sister laughed shrilly. “That’s a good one, young Elsie. Me jealous of a kid like you! I should like to know what for? Why, you’re not even pretty.”

The taunt enraged Elsie, because she knew that it was true, and that she was not really pretty. What she did not yet realise was that she would always be able to make men think her so.

“Your trunk’s come, Elsie,” Mrs. Palmer screamed at the door. “Carter Paterson brought it, carriage to pay, of _course_. You’d better see there’s nothing missing out of it.”

Elsie made a perfunctory examination, noticing nothing but that there was a letter lying just under the newspaper spread over her untidily packed belongings.

“It’s all right.”

Mrs. Palmer had gone back into the kitchen again, and Elsie, who did not care what Geraldine thought of her, pulled out the note and read it. It was from Doctor Woolley, as she had expected.

“MY OWN DEAR LITTLE GIRLIE,

“What a rotten world it is, kiddie, and what a shame you being turned
away like that. Believe me, dear little girlie, if I had been at home
it would never have happened. Now, Elsie, you and I have had a very
nice friendship, and I know you will understand what I mean if I say
that it must come to an end _for the present_. Burn this letter,
dear, won’t you, and don’t answer it on any account. The letters that
come for me to this house are not safe from interference, so you see
what trouble it might make. With all best wishes for your future, and
thanking you for your sweet friendship, which I shall never forget,

“Yours,
“H.”

“The cad!” said Elsie disgustedly.

She had not really expected Doctor Woolley to write to her at all, although there had been in her mind a vague anticipation of seeing him again very soon. But the letter, with its perfunctory endearments and cautionary injunctions, suddenly made it clear to her that the whole episode of their relationship was at an end.

“The swine,” said Elsie, although without violent emotion of any kind.

She felt that life, for the moment, was meaningless, but rather from the familiar and sordid surroundings of her home, and from her own listlessness and fatigue, than from the defection of Doctor Woolley.

It failed to excite her when a letter arrived for Mrs. Palmer, from the office of Mr. Williams and written by himself, saying how much he regretted that Mrs. Woolley, the merest acquaintance of his dear late wife, should have failed to make Miss Elsie happy in her house. If Miss Elsie desired to find an appointment in the clerical line, as he understood, then Mr. Williams would be most happy to make a suggestion. Could Mrs. Palmer, with Miss Elsie, make it convenient to call at the office any afternoon that week?

“He may want to take you into his own office, Elsie, as like as not. He’d feel he ought to do something, I expect, considering they sent you to those people, those Woolleys, as they call themselves, in the first place.”

“I’m not sure I want to go into an office, Mother.”

“Now look here, Elsie, let me and you understand one another,” said Mrs. Palmer with great determination. “I’ve had enough of your wants and don’t wants, my lady. One word more, and you’ll get a smack-bottom just exactly as you got when you were in pinafores, and don’t you forget it. If you think you’re going to live at home, no more use in the house than a sick headache, and wasting your time running round with God-knows-who, then I can tell you you’ve never made a bigger mistake in your life. Off you pop this directly minute, and get on your hat, and come with me to Mr. Williams. If he’s heard of a job for you, we’ll get it settled at once.”

“I suppose,” said Geraldine bitterly, “I’ll have to see to the teas and everything else, while you’re out. It seems to me it’s always Elsie that’s being thought about, and sent here, and taken there, and the rest of it.”

“More shame for her,” said Mrs. Palmer sombrely. “I declare to goodness I don’t know how I’m to face your aunties next time they come here, unless there’s something been settled about Elsie. I’m sick and tired of being told I spoil that girl.”

“Whatever job she gets, she’ll be home in a month,” said Geraldine.

“She’ll get something she won’t relish from me if she is,” Mrs. Palmer retorted. She pinned on her hat and pulled a pair of shiny black kid gloves out of a drawer in the kitchen dresser.

Elsie, rather sulky and unwilling, was obliged to follow her mother once more to the dingy office, but it cheered her to see the pleased, furtive smile on the face of the young clerk who had admitted them before. It was very evident that he had not forgotten her. Elsie thought more about him than about the desiccated, wooden-faced little solicitor, with the crêpe band round his arm, who responded to all Mrs. Palmer’s voluble condolence with solemn little bows and monosyllables.

Mrs. Palmer was evidently disappointed at extracting from him no details about his wife’s illness and death, and at last she turned the subject and began to speak of Elsie’s qualifications as a typist.

“You see, Mr. Williams, I always felt it was waste, her going to be a kind of mother’s help to that Mrs. Woolley. ‘It’s not what you’ve been trained for, my dear,’ I said, ‘but still, if you want to, you shall try it for a bit.’ I’ve always been a one to let my girlies try their own wings, Mr. Williams. ‘The old home nest is waiting for you when you’re tired of it,’ is what I always say. You’ve heard mother tell you that many and many a time, haven’t you, Elsie?”

“Yes,” said Elsie, bored.

She had often heard her mother make the like statements, in order to impress strangers, and she had no objection to backing her up, since it was far less trouble to do so than to have a “row” afterwards.

Mr. Williams bowed again. “I am sorry that Miss Elsie was exposed to unpleasantness of any sort, through an introduction of mine, and I may add that I entirely agree with you, Mrs. Palmer, in thinking that the--the domestic duties embarked upon were quite unworthy of her. Now, I am in want of a confidential clerk in this office.”

Elsie saw her mother’s eyes glistening behind the coarse fibre of her mended veil, and felt that her fate was sealed.

“Yes, Mr. Williams?”

“If I could persuade you to allow Miss Elsie to come to me.... Nine to six, and twenty-five shillings a week to begin with. Her duties would be light, simply to take down, type, and file my personal letters.”

“It would be a very good beginning for her,” said Mrs. Palmer, firmly, but with no undue enthusiasm. Elsie knew that her mother’s mind was quite made up, but that she did not want to seem eager in the eyes of Mr. Williams.

“You’d like to give it a trial, Elsie?”

“I don’t mind,” said Elsie. She met the eyes of Mr. Williams and managed to smile at him, and for an instant it seemed to her that an answering pin-point of light appeared behind the pince-nez.

“It would be quite usual,” said Mr. Williams gravely, “for me to give you a short test. Take this pencil and paper, please, and take this down.”

He handed Elsie a shorthand pad and a pencil. She took down in shorthand the brief business letter that he dictated to her, and then, more nervously, read it aloud, stumbling over the pronunciation of one or two words, and once substituting one word for another, of which the shorthand outlines were similar, without any perception of the bearing of either upon the context.

Mr. Williams corrected her. “It’s always the same,” he told Mrs. Palmer in a low, rather melancholy voice. “These young people are wonderfully clever at taking dictation--eighty words a minute, a hundred words a minute--but you can’t depend upon them to transcribe correctly.”

Mrs. Palmer looked offended. “I’m sure Elsie will tell you that she wasn’t doing herself justice, Mr. Williams. I’m sure she’s as accurate as anybody, when she’s not nervous. But if you think she won’t do the work well enough, of course....”

Mrs. Palmer’s lips were drawn together, and her intonation had become acidulated.

“Not at all,” said Mr. Williams quietly, “not at all. You misunderstand my meaning altogether. I have no doubt that Miss Elsie will suit me very well indeed, when she has fallen into my little routine. What about next week?”

“Very well,” Mrs. Palmer answered swiftly. “I’ll let her come to you on Monday morning, Mr. Williams, and I’m very much obliged to you for thinking of us. It’ll be a relief to me to know Elsie is in a good post. You see, I’m in the position of both father and mother to my girlies, and this one’s my baby, as I always say----”

As Mr. Williams opened the door for them he said: “I hope that little affair about the trunk was satisfactorily concluded? It was perhaps a shade awkward, having the letter written from this office, in view of the fact that we were personally acquainted with the parties--but my head clerk, Mr. Cleaver, could hardly be expected to appreciate that.... A very worthy man indeed, and an able one, but the finer shades are rather beyond him. Good morning, Mrs. Palmer--good morning, Miss Elsie. Nine o’clock on Monday morning, then.”

Mrs. Palmer went away in high spirits, and commented to Elsie and to Geraldine so enthusiastically upon Elsie’s good fortune, that she began to believe in it herself.

“Are there any other girls there?” Geraldine asked.

And Elsie said quickly, “Oh dear, no! Both the other clerks are men.”

She began to think that perhaps after all the hours spent in the office might not be without amusement.

Besides, all sorts of people came to see a solicitor.

Elsie spent the week-end in cutting out and making for herself a blue crêpe blouse, which she intended to wear on Monday morning. She also made a pair of black alpaca sleeves, with elastic at the wrist and at the elbow, to be drawn on over the blouse while she was working.

She put the sleeves, her shorthand pad and pencil, a powder-puff, mirror, pocket-comb, and a paper-covered novel in a small attaché case on Monday morning, pulled on the rakish black velvet tam-o’-shanter, and went off to Mr. Williams’ office.

Her first day there was marked by two discoveries: that Mr. Williams expected to be called “sir” in office hours, and that the name of the youth who shared with her a small outer room where clients waited, or left messages, was Fred Leary.

A high partition of match-boarding separated the waiting-room from an inner office where Mr. Cleaver sat. And if Elsie and Fred Leary spoke more than a very few words to one another, Mr. Cleaver would tap imperatively against the wood with a ruler. He was also apt to walk noiselessly round the partition and stand there, silently watching Elsie, if the sound of her typewriter ceased for any undue length of time.

She learnt from Fred Leary that there had never been a female typist in the office before, and that Mr. Cleaver had been greatly opposed to the introduction of one.

“The Old Man always gets his way in the end, though,” said Fred Leary, alluding to Mr. Williams.

“I knew him before,” Elsie asserted, to give herself importance. “Him and his wife were in our house for a bit. I knew Mrs. Williams too.”

“They said he led her a life,” remarked Leary.

“What sort of way?”

“Oh, I couldn’t tell a kid like you.”

“What rubbish! As though I didn’t know as much as you, any day.”

He laughed loudly. “Girls always think they know everything, but they don’t--not unless some fellow has----”

The sharp tap of Mr. Cleaver’s pencil sounded against the matchboard, and silenced them.

The fact that their conversations had to be more or less clandestine added zest to them, and although Elsie was not in any way attracted by young Leary, who was spotty and unwholesome-looking, she several times went to a cinema with him on Saturday afternoons, and once to a football match. After the latter entertainment, however, they quarrelled.

Elsie had disliked the mud, the cold, the noise, the standing about and the crowds. She had been bored by Leary’s enthusiasm, which was utterly incomprehensible to her, and secretly annoyed because, of the multitude of men surrounding her, not one had paid any attention to her, or to anything but the game and the players.

“I wasn’t struck on that outing of yours,” she remarked critically to her escort the following Monday morning. “Another time we’ll give the football matches a miss, thank you.”

Leary’s admiration for Elsie, however, was less strong than his desire to see a league match, and he offended her by going by himself to the entertainment that she despised.

Elsie resented his defection less for his own sake than for that of the excitement that she could only experience through flirtation, and without which she found her life unbearably tedious.

She had been in the office nearly three months when Mr. Williams asked her suddenly if she liked the work there.

“I don’t mind it,” said Elsie.

She was in reality perfectly indifferent to it, and merely went through the day’s routine without active dislike, as without intelligence.

“Now that you are used to our ways,” said Mr. Williams deliberately, “I think you had better remove your table into my room. The sound of your machine will not disturb me in the least, and if clients desire a private interview, you can retire.”

Elsie looked up, astonished, and met her employer’s eyes.

His face was impassive as ever, but there was a faint, covetous gleam in his fish-like eyes.

Elsie, at once repelled and fascinated, gazed back at him, and felt her heart beginning to beat faster with a nervous and yet pleasurable anticipation.

VII

“When do you want to take your holiday, Elsie?”

“I’m not particular.”

“Your mother will want you to get a breath of sea-air, I suppose.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Elsie. “Mother’s not awfully struck on going away.”

It was late July, and between Elsie and her employer a curious, secret relationship had been established, at present only symbolised by occasional furtive touches of his hand on her neck or her dress, and a continual exchange of glances, steady and compelling on Williams’s side, and responded to by Elsie almost against her own will.

Her typewriting table had been moved into his office, and she sat there nearly all day.

He spoke to her very little, but she was now always intensely conscious of his presence, and of her own effect upon him.

At first she did not understand to what his questions about the holidays were leading.

Next day, he spoke about them again.

“Shouldn’t you like to go to Brighton--some place like that?”

“Rather.”

“I often run down there myself from Saturday to Monday.”

Mr. Williams looked at her more attentively than ever, and Elsie felt the blood creep up into her face. She knew that she blushed easily and deeply, and that men enjoyed seeing her blush.

“That hasn’t got anything to do with me,” she stammered, at once excited and confused.

“Hasn’t it?”

“Mr. Williams!”

He glanced cautiously at the door, and then lowered his voice. “Look here, my dear child, I’m old enough to be your father and--and my dear late wife took quite a fancy to you. Surely you and I understand one another well enough to take a little holiday jaunt together without anyone but our two selves being any the wiser.”

Elsie had not really expected the suggestion, and she was startled, but also triumphant.

“Whatever do you mean, Mr. Williams?”

He smiled, a small, thin-lipped smile, that held a suggestion of cynical mockery at her transparent pretence.

“Only what I say. I’m a poor, lonely fellow, with a little bit of money and no one to spend it on, and if I go to a nice hotel for the week-end I want someone to keep me company. Think over it, Elsie. You quite understand that I’m not asking anything of you--you’re as safe with me as if I were your father. Just a pretty face opposite me at meals, and a smartly dressed little companion to take out for a walk on the front or to the theatre on Saturday night--that’s all I want.”

“Oh, I daresay,” said Elsie.

His face stiffened, and she felt immediately that she had made a mistake.

“It’s awfully kind of you to think of such a thing, Mr. Williams, but I really couldn’t dream of it. Why, I don’t know what mother would think----”

“Of course, it’s a very conventional world,” said Mr. Williams gravely. “You and I would know well enough that our little adventure was most innocent, but we don’t want anyone to think or say otherwise. So I propose, Elsie, that we should keep it to ourselves. I presume it would be easy to tell your mother that you were staying with a friend?”

“Well--there’s Ireen Tidmarsh, a young lady I often go with. I could say I was going to her.”

“Just so. After all, you’re of an age to manage your own affairs.”

Elsie swelled with gratified vanity. She loved to be told that she was grown up.

“Well, what about the August Bank Holiday week-end? I could meet you at the booking office at Victoria Station on the Saturday, and we could travel back together on the Tuesday morning. I’d like to show you something of life, Elsie.”

He moistened his lips with his tongue as he spoke the words.

Elsie wished desperately that she could feel attracted by him, as she had been by Doctor Woolley. But Mr. Williams, physically, rather revolted her.

“Oh, I couldn’t!” she repeated faintly.

He was very patient. “No expense, of course. And if you’d like a new hat or an evening frock, Elsie, or a pretty set of those silk things that girls wear underneath, why, I hope you’ll let me have the privilege of providing them. You can choose what you like and bring me the bill--only go to a West End shop. Nothing shoddy.”

Elsie was breathless at his munificence, and she longed wildly for the evening dress, and the silk underwear. Pale pink crêpe....

Perhaps it would be worth it.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t ask me to do anything that wasn’t perfectly right, Mr. Williams,” she said demurely.

“I am glad you feel that. I’m glad you trust me,” he solemnly replied.

“Of course I do.”

“Then that’s our secret. We need take no one into our confidence, Elsie, you understand. The arrangement is a perfectly innocent and natural little pleasure that you and I are going to share, but people are very often coarse-minded and censorious, and I would not wish to expose either of us to unpleasant comments. You’ll remember that, and keep it to yourself?”

“Oh, yes,” said Elsie.

That night as she was going to bed, she critically examined her own underwear. Her chemise and drawers were coarse, she wore no stays, and the garters that held up her transparent lisle-thread stockings were plain bands of grimy white elastic. Her short petticoat was white, with a torn flounce, and only the camisole, which showed beneath her transparent blouses, was trimmed with imitation Valenciennes lace and threaded with papery blue ribbons.

“What you doing, Elsie?” grumbled Geraldine from her bed. “Get into bed, do; I want to go to sleep.”

“Have you seen those things they sell in sets, Geraldine, in some of the High Street shops? Sort of silk combinations and a princess petticoat and nightgown, all to match like?”

“I’ve seen them advertised at sale times, in the illustrateds, and beastly indecent they are, too. Why, you can see right through that stuff they’re made of.”

Elsie became very thoughtful.

Her sister’s words had brought before her mind’s eye an involuntary picture that both startled and repelled her.

“Anyway, the prices are something wicked. What’s up, young Elsie?”

“Nothing. I heard something to-day that set me wondering, that’s all.”

“What?”

“Oh, some girl that wanted a pink silk rig-out, that’s all.”

“You must have some queer friends. No decent girl would wear those things--only tarts do, unless it’s fine ladies that aren’t any better than they should be, from what the Society papers say.”

Geraldine, in her curling-pins and her thick nightgown, looked rigidly virtuous. “Get into bed, do.”

“It’s too hot,” sighed Elsie.

The room was like a furnace, but neither of them would have dreamed of opening the window after dark.

Elsie tossed and turned about for a long while, unable to sleep. She visualised herself in new clothes, in evening dress, which she had never worn, and she thought of the excitement of staying in a big hotel where there would very likely be a band in the evenings and, of course, late dinner every night.

If only it had been anyone but Mr. Williams! But then, he was the only rich man she knew.

“It’s a shame,” thought Elsie, “that I shouldn’t have opportunities of meeting other men like him, only different. I wish I’d gone in for manicure--I’d have met all sorts then.”

For a moment she wondered whether her friendship with Williams might not lead to his introducing her to his wealthy friends, but she was shrewd enough to perceive that his first preoccupation would be to keep their connection secret, and that he was of far too cautious a temperament to risk her meeting with men younger and more attractive than himself.

Her last waking thought was of the silk set of underclothes, cool and lovely and transparent against her skin.

The following morning Mr. Williams behaved exactly as usual, and made no reference whatever to his suggestion of a holiday. Elsie, rather anxious and affronted, took advantage of a late call from a client to leave the office at six o’clock exactly, without returning into her employer’s room to announce her departure as she usually did.

On her way to the crowded Tube station she was followed and accosted by a strange man. This adventure had become a common one to Elsie, but a certain recklessness pervaded her that evening, and when he urged her to come and sit in the park, under the cool of the trees, she went with him. He was a man of thirty-five or so, with a miserable, haunted, disease-ravaged face, and he began almost at once to pour out to her a long story of his wife’s treachery, of which he had just made the discovery.

“I’ve never looked at another girl,” he kept on saying. “I’ve never spoken to one the way I’ve spoken to you to-night. But you remind me of her, in a way, and I knew you’d be all right, and sorry for a poor devil who’s been fooled.”

Elsie hardly listened to him, but she let him put his arm round her waist, and as his caresses became more violent and eager, she again felt that instinctive conviction that it was to such an end that she had been created. These physical contacts only, brought her to the fullness of self-expression. At last she realised that her companion was muttering a request that he might go home with her.

“What do you take me for?” Elsie asked furiously. “I’m a respectable girl, I am.”

He became maudlin and begged her to forgive him, and she sank back again into his embrace, appeased at once.

At last, when the park gates were closing, she roused herself and insisted that if he wanted to go on talking to her they must go somewhere and have supper.

The man seemed too dazed and wretched to understand her, but when Elsie, rendered prudent by certain previous experiences, asked whether he had any money, he drew out a handful of loose silver.

“That’s all right, then,” she said, relieved, and took him to a cheap and very popular restaurant.

Elsie drank cocoa and ate sweet cakes, and her escort, leaning heavily on the marble-topped table, continued his low, maundering recitation of self-pity.

She had very little idea of what he was talking about.

She liked the restaurant and enjoyed her cakes, and the occasional contact between herself and the unknown man satisfied her for the time being.

When they left the restaurant, Elsie directed him to the omnibus that would take her nearest to her own suburb, and they climbed to the top of it, and sat in close proximity on the narrow seat all through the long drive.

It was with real difficulty that she tore herself away in the end, physically roused to a pitch that rapidly amounted to torment. She was frightened and disgusted by her own sensations, but much less so than she had been in the days of her technical innocence, before she had known Doctor Woolley. She decided that she would go to Brighton with Mr. Williams.

And she would buy the silk underclothes--pink silk--and a real evening dress, cut low, that should reveal her shoulders and the full contour of her bust, and perhaps he would give her enough money for a string of imitation pearl beads as well.

“After all, he can afford to be generous,” Elsie thought complacently. “An old man like him! I expect I’m a fool to look at him, really.”

She meant that her attraction for men was sufficiently potent to ensure her ability to cast her spell wherever she chose, but common sense reminded her that the number of men within her immediate sphere was limited. Even men who followed her, or addressed her casually in the street, were mostly of the bank-clerk type, and of her own actual acquaintance scarcely one reached the level of the professional class to which Williams belonged.

At Hillbourne Terrace, Elsie found the front door locked, and realised that it must be late. She understood what had happened. Mrs. Palmer, angry at her daughter’s tardiness, had probably decided to give her a fright, and was waiting in her dressing-gown, angry and tired, for Elsie to try the side door.

“I just won’t, then,” muttered Elsie angrily. “I’ll jolly well go to Ireen.”

She had seen a light in the house opposite as she came up the street, and it would not be the first time that she had called on Irene Tidmarsh for hospitality.

Her friend opened the door in person, and Elsie explained her position, giving, however, no specific reason for her lateness.

“Come in,” said Irene indifferently. “You can sleep with me if you want to. I often thank God I’ve no mother.”

The two girls went up to Irene’s large, untidy bedroom in the front of the house, and began to undress, and Elsie was unable to resist the topic of the pink silk underclothes that obsessed her imagination.

“Geraldine says only tarts wear them.”

“What does she know about it?” Irene enquired. “Ladies of title wear them--that Lady Dorothy Anvers, that’s always being photographed, she goes in for black silk nightgowns--_black_, if you please!”

“I’d rather have pink, a great deal. I think black’d be hideous.”

“Depends on one’s skin, I suppose,” said the sallow Irene thoughtfully. “Who wants to give you a silk nightie, young Elsie?”

Elsie deliberated. She was not usually communicative about her own affairs, but the notice of her employer had gratified her vanity, and she very much desired to boast of it to someone. Irene, at least, would be safe, and she sometimes offered shrewd pieces of advice that were not the outcome of experience, of which, by comparison with Elsie herself, she had little, but of a natural acumen.

Elsie, when the gas had been turned out, and the two girls were lying in Irene’s bed, after extracting giggling oaths of secrecy, recounted to Irene the whole story of her adventure with Mr. Williams. She represented herself as still entirely undecided as to the sincerity of his assurance that their relationship was to be purely friendly.

“Rats!” was Irene’s unvarnished comment. “It isn’t very likely the old fool would have told you to get silk nighties and things unless he meant to see them himself. But I wouldn’t do it, Elsie. It’s too risky.”

“Why, who’s to find out? It isn’t as if his wife was alive,” said Elsie, with a recollection of the household in Mortimer Crescent.

“I don’t mean that at all. But it’s a beastly risk for you. He’s your boss, after all. Suppose he gives you the sack, once this week-end business is over? Men are like that--they get sick of a girl directly they’ve had their fun, and then they don’t want to be for ever reminded of it.”

“It’s quite as likely he’d be for ever pestering me to go with him again,” Elsie declared, not at all desirous of supposing that her attractions could be provocative of such speedy satiety. “And even if he did sack me, there are plenty of other jobs going.”

“You young fool! Don’t you see what I mean? Suppose he landed you with a baby?”

“Oh!” Elsie was startled.

Like a great many other girls of her class and upbringing, although she possessed a wide and garbled knowledge of sex, she was singularly unable to trace the links between cause and effect. “A baby,” in this connection, was to her nothing but an isolated catastrophe, that she had never particularly connected with the physical relations between a man and a girl.

“It couldn’t, Ireen.”

“Why not? Of course it could happen. A girl I know got caught, only luckily she had some sense, and went to one of these doctors that can stop it for you----”

“Can they?”

“Some can,” said the well-informed Irene. “But mind you, it’s an expensive business, and a jolly dangerous one. Why, the doctor can be had up for doing it, I believe. So don’t you go and get yourself into any mess of that sort, now.”

“I should think not,” murmured Elsie.

“How old did you say this fellow, this Williams, was?”

“I don’t know. About forty or forty-five, or something like that. He was years older than his wife, and she wasn’t a chicken.”

“And she’s dead, is she?”

“Of course she is. I told you all about that ages ago.”

“I know. Look here, Elsie, I’ve an idea. Why don’t you marry this fellow?”

“Ireen Tidmarsh, are you dotty or what?”

“I’m giving you jolly good advice, and you’ll be a young fool if you don’t take it. He’s rich, and you’d have a splendid position, and after a year or two you’d probably find yourself free to go your own way. He wouldn’t live for ever, either.”

“Don’t,” said Elsie.

“Well, it’s true. You can bet he’s on the look-out for a second wife already--widowers of that age always are.”

“He wouldn’t think of marrying me.”

“Only because he can get what he wants without,” said Irene curtly. “You show him he can’t, and set him thinking a bit. If he’s half as keen on you as you say he is, anyway, the idea’s bound to cross his mind.”

Elsie was rather bewildered, and disposed to be incredulous. She was incapable of having formulated so practical an idea for herself, and it held for her a sense of unreality. “Anyhow, I couldn’t marry an old man like that. I don’t even like him.”

“Whoever you marry, young Elsie, you won’t stick to him,” said Irene cynically. “And if you ask me, the quicker you get a husband the better.”

“That’s what mother says.”

“She wasn’t born yesterday. Well, do as you like, of course, but it’s the chance of a lifetime. I’m sure of that. Just hold out for a month--tell him you couldn’t think of going anywhere with him--and see if he doesn’t suggest your becoming the second Mrs. Williams.”

“You’re mad, Ireen,” said Elsie, entirely without conviction.

She was in reality very much impressed both by Irene’s worldly wisdom and by the sudden realisation it had brought to her of the possibilities latent in Mr. Williams’ admiration.

She disliked having to work, and she knew that marriage was her only escape from work. To be married very young would be a triumph, and she thought with malicious satisfaction of how much she would enjoy asking Aunt Gertie and Aunt Ada to visit her in her own house.

“Well, good-night,” said Irene’s voice in her ear. “I’m going to sleep. If you want to get over to your place early in the morning, don’t wake me, that’s all.”

“All right.”

Elsie turned over, gave a fleeting thought to the memory of the man she had met that evening, and fell asleep almost at once.

The next morning, after huddling on her clothes, and washing her face very hastily just before putting on her hat over her unbrushed hair, Elsie crossed the street and went home.

Mrs. Palmer was on the doorstep.

She was very angry.

“How dare you stay out all night like that, you good-for-nothing little slut? I haven’t closed my eyes for wondering what’d happened to you. Where have you been?”

“At Ireen’s.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going there?”

“I never thought of it, till I got here and found the door locked.”

“It wasn’t locked till nearly eleven o’clock, miss, and you could have come in by the side door, as you very well knew. And what were you doing out till eleven o’clock, I should like to know?”

“Nothing,” said Elsie, beginning to cry.

Her mother promptly boxed her ears. “Elsie Palmer, you’re nothing but a liar, and you’ll break your widowed mother’s heart and bring her to disgrace before you’re done. However you’ve managed to grow up what you are, so particular as I’ve been with the two of you, is more than I can understand. Tell me this directly minute, who you were with last night?”

Elsie maintained a sullen silence, dodging as her mother aimed another heavy blow at her.

“I declare you’ll make me lose my temper with you!” said Mrs. Palmer violently. “Answer me this instant.”

“I went to the cinema.”

“Who took you?”

“That fellow in the office--that Leary boy.”

“Why couldn’t you come in last night and say where you’d been, then? The fact is, Elsie, you’re telling me a pack of lies, and I know it perfectly well. You can’t take your mother in, let me tell you, whatever you may think, I’m sure _I_ don’t know what to do with you. I sometimes think you’d better go and live with your aunties; you’d find Aunt Gertie strict enough, I can tell you.”

Elsie knew this to be true, and was fiercely resolved never to put it to the test.

“What you want is a thorough good whipping,” said Mrs. Palmer, already absent-minded and preoccupied with preparations for breakfast. “Put that kettle on, Elsie, and be quick about it. And I give you fair warning that the very next time I have to speak to you like this--(see if that’s the girl at the door--it ought to be, by this time)--the very next time, I’ll make you remember it in a way you won’t enjoy, my lady.”

Mrs. Palmer’s active display of wrath was over, and Elsie knew that she had nothing to do but to keep out of her mother’s way for the next few days.

She helped to get the breakfast ready in silence. She was too much used to similar scenes to feel very much upset by this one; nevertheless it influenced her in favour of acting upon Irene Tidmarsh’s advice.

She knew very well that it would not be as easy to hoodwink Mrs. Palmer over a week-end spent out of London as she had pretended to Mr. Williams. Elsie was still afraid of her mother, and believed that she might quite well carry out her threat of sending her daughter to live with the two aunts.

Her chief pang was at relinquishing the thought of the pink silk underclothes, but she endeavoured to persuade herself that they might still be hers, when she should be on the point of marrying Mr. Williams. After all, it would be more satisfactory to own them on those terms than to be obliged to put them away after two days into hiding, in some place--and Elsie wondered ruefully what place--where they should not be spied out by Geraldine.

She went to the office as usual and was a good deal disconcerted when Fred Leary announced that “the Old Man” had telephoned to say that he was called away on business, and should not be back for two days.

Elsie, rather afraid that her own determination might weaken, decided to write to him, sending the letter to his home address.

Her unformed, back-sloping hand, covered one side of a sheet of notepaper that she bought in the luncheon hour.

“DEAR MR. WILLIAMS,

“One line to tell you that I have thought over your very kind
suggestion about a holiday, but do not feel that I can say yes to
same. Dear Mr. Williams, it is very kind of you, but I cannot feel it
would be _right_ of me to do as you ask, and so I must say no, hoping
you will not be vexed with me. I do want to be a good girl. So no
more, from

“Your little friend,
“ELSIE.”

VIII

It took Elsie exactly three months to bring Mr. Williams to the point predicted by Irene Tidmarsh.

During that time she was quiet, and rather timid, scrupulously exact in saying “sir” and very careful never to be heard laughing or chattering with Fred Leary.

Williams at first made no allusion to her note. When at last he spoke of it, he did so very much in his ordinary manner.

“I was sorry to get your little note the other day, Elsie, and to see that you don’t quite trust me after all.”

“Oh, but I do,” she stammered.

He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I’m afraid my little friend isn’t quite as staunch as I fancied. It doesn’t matter. Perhaps some day you’ll know me better.”