Chapter V: Part II: I (1)

The European war affected Elsie Williams as much, or as little, as it affected many other young women. She had been married a little over a year in August 1914.

She was vaguely alarmed, vaguely thrilled, moved to a great display of emotional enthusiasm at the sight of a khaki uniform and at the sound of a military band.

Later on, she sang and hummed “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” “Tipperary,” and “We _Don’t_ Want to Lose You, but we Think you _Ought_ to Go,” and was voluble and indignant about the difficulties presented by sugar rations and meat coupons. She resented the air raids over London, and devoured the newspaper accounts of the damage done by them; she listened to, and eagerly retailed, anecdotes such as that of the Angels of Mons, or that of the Belgian child whose hands had been cut off by German soldiers; and after a period in which she declared that “everybody” would be ruined, she found herself in possession of more money than ever before.

Never before had so many clients presented themselves to Messrs. Williams and Cleaver, and never before had there been so much money about. Elsie bought herself a fur coat and a great many other things, and went very often to the cinema, and sometimes to the theatre. She very soon found, however, that Williams, when he could not take her out himself, disliked her going with anybody else.

He was willing enough that she should take Irene with her, or her sister Geraldine, but if she went out with any man, Williams became coldly, caustically angry, and sooner or later always found an opportunity for quarrelling with him.

Elsie was bored and angry, contemptuous of his jealousy, but far too much afraid of him to rebel openly.

She was more and more conscious of having made a mistake in her marriage, but her regrets were resentful rather than profound, and her facile nature found consolation in her own social advancement, her comfortable suburban home, and her tyrannical dominion over a capped and aproned maid.

She very seldom went to Hillbourne Terrace, and had quarrelled with her mother when Mrs. Palmer had suggested that it was time she had a baby.

Elsie did not want to have a baby at all. She feared pain and discomfort almost as much as she did the temporary eclipse of her good looks, and the thought of a child that should be Horace Williams’s as well as hers filled her with disgust.

She only spoke of this openly to Irene, and Irene undertook the purchase of certain drugs which she declared would render impossible the calamity dreaded by her friend. Elsie thankfully accepted the offer, and trusted implicitly to the efficacy of the bottles and packages that Irene bought.

Sometimes Horace declared that he wanted a son, and as time went on his taunts became less veiled, but Elsie cared little for them so long as she remained immune from the trial of motherhood.

She spent her days idly, doing very little housework, sometimes making or mending her own clothes, and often poring for a whole afternoon over a novel from the circulating library, or an illustrated paper, whilst she ate innumerable sweets out of little paper bags. She never remembered anything about the books that she read thus, and sometimes read the same one a second time without perceiving that she was doing so until she had nearly finished it.

After a time, Elsie became rather envious of the money that Irene was making as a munitions worker, and the “good time” that Geraldine enjoyed in the Government office where she had found a job. Elsie seriously told her husband that she felt she must go and do some “war work.”

“You are not in the same position as an unmarried girl, Elsie. You have other duties. These war jobs are for young women who have nothing else to do.”

“I don’t see that I’ve got so much to do.”

“If you had children, you would understand that a woman’s sphere is in her own home.”

“But I haven’t got children,” said Elsie, half under her breath.

“It’s early days to talk like that,” Williams retorted, and his glance at her was malevolent. “One of these days you’ll have a baby, I hope, like every other healthy married woman, and neither you nor I nor anybody else can say how soon that day may come.”

“Well, I suppose till it does come--_if_ it ever does-you’ve no objection to me doing my bit in regard to this war?”

“I don’t know. What is it you propose to do?”

“Oh, get a job of some kind. Ireen says they’re asking for shorthand-typists all over the place, and willing to pay for them, too. I could get into one of these Government shows easily, or I could go in the V.A.D.s or something, and take a job in a hospital.”

“No,” said Williams decidedly. “No. Out of the question.”

Elsie, who at home had, as a matter of course, surreptitiously disobeyed every order or prohibition of her mother’s that ran counter to her own wishes, knew already that she would not disobey her husband.

She was afraid of him.

On the rare occasions when she saw any of her own family, Elsie always made a great display of her own grandeur and independence. She was really proud of her little suburban villa, her white-and-gold china, fumed oak “suite” of drawing-room furniture, “ruby” glasses and plated cake basket. She was also proud of being Mrs. Williams, and of wearing a wedding-ring.

Geraldine came to see her once or twice, and then declared herself too busy at the office to take the long tram journey, and as Elsie hardly ever went to Hillbourne Terrace, they seldom met. But Irene Tidmarsh came often to see Elsie.

She came in the daytime, when Williams was at the office, and very often she and Elsie went to the cinema together in the afternoon. Irene seemed able to get free time whenever she liked, and she explained this to Elsie by telling her that the superintendent at the works was a great friend of hers.

Elsie perfectly understood what this meant, and realised presently that Irene was never available on Saturdays and Sundays.

The war went on, and Mr. Williams made more and more money, and was fairly generous to Elsie, although he never gave her an independent income, but only occasional presents of cash, and instructions that all her bills should be sent in to him.

He did not rescind his command that she should not attempt any war work, although, as the months lengthened into years, it seemed fairly certain that there was to be no family to give Elsie occupation at home.

At twenty-five, Elsie Williams, from sheer boredom, had lost a great deal of the vitality that had characterised Elsie Palmer, and with it a certain amount of her remarkable animal magnetism. She was still attractive to men, but her own susceptibilities had become strangely blunted and no casual promiscuity would now have power to stir her.

She was aware that life had become uninteresting to her, and accepted the fact with dull, bewildered, entirely unanalytical resentment.

“I s’pose I’m growing middle-aged,” she said to Irene, giggling without conviction.

One day, more than a year after the Armistice in November 1918, Irene Tidmarsh came to Elsie full of excitement.

She had heard of a wonderful crystal-gazer, and wanted to visit her with Elsie.

Elsie was quite as much excited as Irene. “I’d better take off my wedding-ring,” she said importantly. “They say they’ll get hold of any clue, don’t they?”

“This woman isn’t like that,” Irene declared. “She’s what they call a psychic, really she is. This girl that told me about her, she said it quite frightened her, the things the woman knew. All sorts of things about her past, too.”

“I’m not sure I’d like that,” said Elsie, giggling. “I know quite enough about my past without wanting help. But I must say I’d like to know what she’s got to say about the future. You know, I mean what’s going to happen to me.”

“Oh, well, you’re married, my dear. There’s not much else she can tell you, except whether you’ll have boys or girls.”

“Thank you!” Elsie exclaimed, tossing her head. “None of that truck for me, thank you. Losing one’s figure and all!”

“You’re right. Anyway, let’s come on, shall we?”

“Come on. I say, Ireen, she’ll see us both together, won’t she?”

“I hope so. I wouldn’t go in to her alone for anything. Swear you won’t ever repeat anything she says about me, though.”

“I swear. And you won’t either?”

“No.”

The crystal-gazer lived in a street off King’s Road, Chelsea, a long way down.

A little hunch-backed girl opened the door and asked them to go into the waiting-room. This was a small, curtained recess off the tiny hall, and contained two chairs and a rickety table covered with thin, cheap-looking publications. There were several copies of a psychic paper and various pamphlets that purported to deal with the occult.

“I’m a bit nervous, aren’t you?” whispered Elsie. She fiddled with her wedding-ring, and finally took it off and put it in her purse. When the hunch-backed child appeared at the curtains, both girls screamed slightly.

“Madame Clara is ready for you,” announced the little girl, in a harsh, monotonous voice.

She led them up to the first floor, into a room that was carefully darkened with blue curtains drawn across the windows. They could just discern a black figure, stout and very upright, sitting on a large chair in the middle of the room. A round stand set on a single slender leg was beside her.

Elsie clutched at Irene’s hand in a nervous spasm.

The black figure bowed from the waist without rising. “Do you wish me to see you both together, ladies?” Her voice was harsh and rather raucous in tone.

“Yes, please,” said Irene boldly.

“You quite understand that the charge will be the same as for two separate interviews?”

“Yes.”

The little girl advanced with a small beaded bag. “The fee is payable in advance, if you please.”

Elsie fumbled in her purse, and pulled out two ten-shilling notes.

“Half a guinea each, if you please, ladies.”

“Irene, have you got two sixpences?” Elsie whispered, agitated.

Irene, by far the more collected of the two, produced a shilling, and the little girl with the bag went away.

“Will you two ladies be seated? One on either side of the table, please--not next to one another.”

Elsie made a despairing clutch at Irene’s hand again, but her friend shook her head, and firmly took her place on the other side of Madame Clara.

Elsie sank into the remaining chair, and felt that she was trembling violently. Her nervousness was partly pleasurable excitement, and partly involuntary reaction to the atmosphere diffused by the dim, shaded room and the autocratic solemnity of Madame Clara.

A sweet, rather sickly smell was discernible.

The silence affected Elsie so that she wanted to scream.

Her eyes were by this time accustomed to the semi-darkness, and she could see that Madame Clara was leaning forward, her loose sleeves falling away from her fat, bare arms, her elbows resting on the little table, and her hands over her eyes.

Suddenly the woman drew herself upright, and turned towards Irene.

“You, first. You have a stronger personality than your friend. It was you who brought her here. Do you wish me to look into the crystal for you?”

“Yes, I do,” gasped Irene.

Elsie wondered from where the crystal would appear, and then she noticed the faint outline of a globe in front of the seer, on the little stand.

A thrill of superstitious awe ran through her.

“Make your mind a blank as far as possible, please ... do not think of the past, the present, or the future ... relax ... relax ... relax....”

Madame Clara’s voice deepened, and she began to speak very slowly and distinctly, leaning back in her chair, the crystal ball before her eyes.

“Time is an arbitrary division made by man--the crystal will not always show what is past and what is to come. For instance, I see illness here--bodily suffering--but I do not know if it has visited you or is still to come. It may even be the suffering of one near to you....”

She paused for an instant, and Elsie just caught Irene’s smothered exclamation of “Father!”

“Hush, please,” said the seeress. “The shadow of sickness deepens--it deepens into the blackness of death. A man--an old man--he is dying. You will get money from him. Beware of those who seek to flatter you. You are impressionable, but clear-sighted; impulsive, yet self-controlled; reserved, but intensely passionate. I see marriage for you in the future, but with a man somewhat older than yourself. I see conflict....” She stopped again.

“Perhaps the conflict is already over. You have certainly known love--passion----”

Elsie, from mingled nervousness and embarrassment, suddenly giggled.

The clairvoyante raised an authoritative hand. “It is impossible for me to go on if there are resistances,” she said angrily, in the voice that she had used at first, ugly and rather hoarse.

“Shut up, Elsie!” came sharply from Irene.

Elsie ran her finger-nails into her palms in an endeavour to check the nervous, spasmodic laughter that threatened to overcome her.

“The current is broken,” said Madame Clara in an indignant voice.

There was a silence.

At last Elsie heard Irene say timidly:

“Won’t you go on, madame?”

“I’m exhausted,” said the medium in a fatigued voice. “You will have to return to me another day--alone. All that I can say to you now, I have said. Beware of opals, and of a red-haired man. Your lucky stone is the turquoise--you should wear light blue, claret colour, and all shades of yellow, and avoid pinks, reds and purple.”

She stopped.

Elsie, though awestruck, was also vaguely disappointed. It did not seem to her that she had learnt a great deal about Irene, and the warnings about colours and precious stones might have come out of any twopenny booklet off a railway bookstall, such as “What Month Were You Born In?” or “Character and Fortune Told by Handwriting.”

Then she remembered that she herself had made Madame Clara angry by laughing, and that the woman had said the current was broken.

“Probably she’s furious,” Elsie thought, “and she won’t tell me as much as she told Ireen. And she’s got our money, too. What a swindle!”

“What about my friend?” said Irene Tidmarsh. Her voice sounded rather sulky.

“Your friend is a sceptic,” said the clairvoyante coldly.

“No, really----” Elsie began.

The woman turned towards her so abruptly that she was startled.

She could discern an enormous pair of heavy-looking dark eyes gazing into hers.

“Make your mind a blank--relax,” said Madame Clara, her tone once more a commanding one.

Elsie moved uneasily in her chair and fixed her eyes on the crystal. She could only see it faintly, a glassy spot of uncertain outline.

The seeress bent forward, leaning over the transparent globe. After a moment or two she began to speak, with the same voice and intonation that she had made use of in speaking about Irene.

“The crystal reflects all things, but Time is an arbitrary division made by man--we do not always see what is past, and what is future.... In your case, there is very little past--how young you are!--and what there is, is all on one plane, the physical. You are magnetic, extraordinarily magnetic. You have known men--you are married, if not by man’s law, then by nature’s law--you will know other men. But you are not awake--your mind is asleep. Nothing is awake but your senses....”

Elsie’s mouth was dry. She longed to stop the woman but a horrible fascination kept her silent, tensely listening.

“Now you are bored--satiated. You have repeated the same experience again and again, young as you are, until it means nothing to you. You have no outside interests--and you are ceaselessly craving for a new emotion.”

Abruptly the sibyl dropped on to a dark note.

“It will come. I see love here--love that you have never known yet. There will be jealousy, intrigue--letters will pass--beware of the written word----_Ah!_”

The exclamation was so sudden and so piercing that Elsie uttered a stifled scream. But this time she was not rebuked.

Madame Clara, all at once, was calling out shrilly in a hard voice, an indescribable blend of horror and excitement in her tone:

“Oh, God--what is it? Look--look, there in the crystal--what have you done? There’s blood, and worse than blood! Oh, my God, what’s this? It’s all over England--_you_--they’re talking about _you_----”

Irene Tidmarsh screamed wildly, and Elsie realised that she had sprung to her feet. She herself was utterly unable to move, wave after wave of sick terror surging through her as the high, unrecognisable voice of the clairvoyante screeched and ranted, and then broke horribly.

“It’s blood! My God, get out of here! I won’t see any more--you’re all over blood!...”

A strange, strangled cry, that Elsie did not recognise as having come from her own lips, broke across the obscurity, the room surged round her, she tried to clutch at the table, and felt herself falling heavily.

Elsie Williams had fainted.

She came back to a dazed memory of physical nausea, bewilderment, and resentment, as she felt herself being unskilfully pulled into a sitting position.

“Let go,” she muttered, “let me go....”

“She’s coming round! For Heaven’s sake, Elsie ... here, try and get hold of her....”

She felt herself pulled and propelled to her feet, and even dragged a few steps by inadequate supporters.

Then she sank down again, invaded by a renewal of deadly sickness, but she was conscious that they had somehow got her outside the dark, scented room, and that the door had been slammed behind her.

Very slowly her perceptions cleared, and she realised that Irene was gripping her on one side, and the little hunch-backed girl holding a futile hand beneath her elbow on the other.

With an effort, Elsie raised her head.

“Look here, old girl, are you better?” said Irene, low and urgently. “I want to get out of here as quickly as possible. D’you think you can get downstairs?”

Elsie, without clearly knowing why, was conscious that she, too, wanted to get away.

She pulled herself to her feet, shuddering, and staggered down the stairs, leaning heavily on Irene.

“What happened?”

“Oh, you just turned queer. Don’t think about it. Look here, we’d better have a taxi, hadn’t we?”

“Yes. I couldn’t walk a step, that’s certain. Why, my knees are shaking under me.”

“Go and get a taxi,” Irene commanded the hunch-backed child, who went obediently away.

Elsie sat down on the lowest stair and wiped her wet, cold face with her handkerchief.

“What made me go off like that, Ireen? That woman said something beastly, didn’t she?”

“Oh she’s mad, that’s what she is. She suddenly started ranting, and you got frightened, I suppose--and no wonder. Never mind, you’ll soon be home now.”

It struck Elsie that Irene was looking at her in a strangely anxious way, and that she was talking almost at random, as though to obliterate the impression of what had passed at the _séance_.

Elsie herself could not remember clearly, but there was a lurking horror at the back of her mind.

“What did she say?” she persisted feebly.

“Here’s the taxi!” cried Irene, in intense relief. “Here, get in, Elsie. Thank you,” she added to the child. “Don’t wait, I’ll tell the man where to go.”

She gave the driver Elsie’s address after the little girl had entered the house again, and then climbed in beside her friend, drawing a long breath.

“Thank the Lord! We got away pretty quickly, didn’t we? Well, it’s the last time I’ll meddle with anything of that kind, I swear. I say, Elsie, had we better stop at a chemist’s and get you something?”

“Yes--no. I don’t care. Ireen, I want to know what that woman said. It was something awful about _me_, wasn’t it?”

“She had a--kind of fit, I think. I don’t believe she knew what she was saying--she just screamed out a pack of nonsense. And you gave a yell, and went down like a log. I can tell you, you’ve pretty nearly scared the life out of me, young Elsie.”

Irene was indeed oddly white-faced and jerky. Her manner was as unnatural as was her sudden volubility.

Elsie, still feeling weak and giddy, leant her head back and closed her eyes. She felt quite unable to make the effort of remembering what had happened at the clairvoyante’s house, and was moreover instinctively aware that the recollection, when it did come, would bring dismay and terror.

She and Irene Tidmarsh did not exchange a word until the taxi stopped.

“Here we are. You’d better pay him, Elsie. I’ll take the Tube from the corner, and get home in half an hour.”

“Aren’t you coming in with me?” said Elsie, surprised.

“I don’t think I will. I’d rather get straight home.”

“Oh, do!” urged Elsie, half crying. She felt very much shaken. “I’m all alone; Horace won’t be back till seven, and this has upset me properly. Besides, I know I shall remember what it was that awful woman said in a minute, and I’m frightened. You _must_ come in, Ireen.”

“I can’t,” repeated Irene, inexorably. “I ... really, I’d rather not, Elsie.”

The door opened, and Irene turned rapidly and walked away down the street.

Elsie tottered into the house.

“I’m ill,” she said abruptly to the servant. “I fainted while I was out, and I feel like nothing on earth now. I shall go to bed.”

“Yes, ’m. Shall I go for a doctor, ’m?” said the girl zealously.

“No,” said Elsie sharply. “I don’t want a doctor. Telephone to Mr. Williams at the office, Emma, and ask him to come home early. Say I’m ill.”

“Yes, ’m.”

Elsie dragged herself upstairs and took off some of her clothes. She was shivering violently, and presently pulled her blue cotton kimono round her and slipped into bed. She lay there with closed eyes, shuddering from time to time, until Emma brought up a cup of strong tea. Elsie drank it avidly, lay down again and felt revived. Presently she dozed.

The opening of the door roused her. It was nearly dark, but she knew that it must be her husband, who never knocked before entering their joint bedroom.

“What’s all this, Elsie?”

“I felt rotten,” she said wearily. “Turn on the light, Horace.”

He did so, and advanced towards the bed. His face wore an expression of concern, and he walked on tiptoe.

“I fainted while I was out with Ireen,” Elsie explained, “and I was simply ages coming to. We came back in a cab, and I must say Ireen’s awfully selfish. She wouldn’t come in with me, though she must have seen I wasn’t fit to be left--just turned and walked off. I’m done with her, after this.”

“Where had you been?” enquired Williams quickly.

“Oh, just out.”

“Where to?”

“I suppose you’ll call me a fool, if I say it was to see one of those clairvoyante women, someone Ireen had heard of. It was all Ireen’s doing--she persuaded me to go.”

“Very silly of you both,” said the little solicitor coldly. “Did this person upset you?”

“Yes. She had a sort of fit, I think, and called out a whole lot of nonsense, only I can’t remember what it was.” Elsie moved uneasily.

“Where does she live?”

“Why?”

“She ought to be prosecuted for obtaining money under false pretences. I suppose you gave her money?”

“Oh yes.”

“You’d better give me her name and address and I’ll see that she is properly dealt with.”

“I’d rather not.”

Horace Williams shrugged his shoulders. “Well, you’d better get up and come down to supper, hadn’t you? There’s no reason for lying in bed if you’re not ill.”

“All right,” Elsie agreed sullenly.

Her husband never shouted at her or threatened her, but she was afraid of him, and of a certain sinister dryness that characterised his manner when he was displeased.

The dryness was there now.

Elsie spent the evening downstairs. Her husband read the newspaper, and she turned over the pages of a fashion magazine listlessly. Her thoughts, unwillingly enough, returned again and again to the scene in the clairvoyante’s room, but still she could not remember the actual words screamed out by Madame Clara before she had lost consciousness. But she remembered quite well other words, that had preceded them.

“You are magnetic ... extraordinarily magnetic.... You are not awake--your mind is asleep.... Now, you are bored, satiated. You are ceaselessly craving for a new emotion....”

Elsie reflected how true this was.

She glanced distastefully at her elderly husband.

The bald patch glistened on the top of his head, and he was breathing heavily as he read his newspaper.

He had always been rather distasteful to her physically, and although the continuous, degradingly inevitable proximity of married life in a small suburban villa had hardened her into indifference, Elsie was still averse from the more intimate aspects of marriage with him.

She wished that she could fall in love, remembering that Madame Clara had said: “I see love here--love that you have never known yet.”

“That’s bunkum,” thought Elsie. “I’ve been in love heaps of times--I was in love with that doctor fellow, Woolley. It doesn’t last, that’s all.”

She hardly ever met any men nowadays, as she resentfully reminded herself.

The husbands of her married friends were at work all day, and if she occasionally met them at their wives’ card-parties, they did not interest her very greatly. Most of the wives distrusted the husbands and gave them no opportunity for flirtation with other women. And Horace Williams himself was a jealous man, always suspicious, and never allowed his young wife to go anywhere with any man but himself.

Elsie had been for a long while in inward revolt against the dullness of her life. She remembered with longing the old days of her girlhood, when every walk had been the prelude to adventure, and the casual kisses of unknown, or scarcely known, men had roused her to rapture.

Nowadays, she knew very well that she would be less easily satisfied. The apathy that had been creeping over her ever since her marriage had to a certain extent lessened the force of the animal magnetism by which she had been able to lure the senses of almost every man she met, and for the first time she was beginning to have doubts of her own attractiveness.

Elsie gave a sigh that was almost a groan.

Williams neither stirred nor raised his eyes.

“I think I’ll retire to my little downy,” Elsie murmured, drearily facetious.

“It’s only a quarter past nine.”

“Oh, well, we lead such a deliriously exciting life that I’d better get some rest, hadn’t I?” she said ironically. “Just to make up for all the late nights we have.”

At last her husband put down the paper and looked coldly at her through his pince-nez. “What is it you want, Elsie? I work hard all day at the office, and you have plenty of time and money for amusing yourself in the daytime--and a strange use you seem to make of them, judging by to-day’s performance. What more do you want?”

“I don’t know. We might go to the pictures sometimes, or to a play. I hate not having anything to do.”

“That’s the complaint of every woman who hasn’t got children.”

“I can’t help it,” said Elsie angrily.

He said nothing, but continued to fix his eyes upon her, with his most disagreeable expression.

“Good-night, Horace.”

“I shall come up to bed before you’re asleep,” he said meaningly.

She went out of the room.

The thought crossed her mind, as it had often done before, that she had made a frightful mistake in marrying Horace Williams.

“I was only eighteen,” she thought, “I ought to have waited. Perhaps he’ll die.”

As she undressed, Elsie idly imagined a drama of which she herself would, of course, be the heroine.

Horace would be at the office, as usual, and a telephone message would come through to say that he was ill--very ill indeed--he was dead. Everyone would admire the young widow in her black, with her string of pearl beads.... Horace would leave her quite a lot of money. Elsie knew that he was rich, although he had never told her his income. She would stay on in the villa, but people would come and see her--she would go out and enjoy herself--enjoy life, once more....

Elsie sighed again as she got into bed.

Bored and exhausted, she fell asleep almost at once, to dream vividly.

In her dream, she stood outside a closed door, knowing that something unspeakably horrid lay beyond it. Terror paralysed her. At last she pushed at the door, but it would not yield more than an inch or two. Something was behind it. She looked down and saw a dark stain spreading round her feet, oozing from beneath the resistant door.

Screaming and sweating, Elsie woke up, and as she did so the remembrance came back to her in full of everything that the clairvoyante had said that morning.

II

“Hallo, Elsie!”

“Hallo, Geraldine!”

“You’re quite a stranger, aren’t you? I think it’s about a year since we had the honour of seeing your majesty last.”

“Well, now I have come, aren’t you going to take the trouble to invite me to come in?” asked Elsie good-humouredly.

“There’s a visitor of mine in the drawing-room.”

“Who is it? Aunt Ada?”

“No, not Aunt Ada, Miss Smarty. It’s a friend of mine, I tell you, who I knew at the office during the war.”

“Well, you can introduce me to her, I suppose,” said Elsie carelessly.

She noticed that Geraldine’s hair was not, as it generally was, in curling-pins, and that she was wearing a new dress, of an unbecoming shade of emerald green. Geraldine always went wrong over her clothes, Elsie reflected complacently. She herself wore a new black picture hat, and it was partly from the desire to show herself in it that she had come to her old home.

“Where’s mother?”

“Out.”

“What a mercy!”

Elsie walked into the familiar drawing-room, feeling glad that she no longer lived at Hillbourne Terrace, under her mother’s dominion, and forced to share a bedroom with the fretful Geraldine.

A young man of two- or three-and-twenty was sitting in the drawing-room, and rose to his feet as Elsie and Geraldine came in.

“This is my sister, Mrs. Horace Williams. Elsie, this is my friend, Mr. Morrison,” said Geraldine with pride.

Elsie was immediately conscious of a quickened interest. The young man was of a type that appealed strongly to her; dark and tall, with very brown eyes, and a wistful, ingenuous smile that was the more noticeable because he was clean-shaven.

When they shook hands, she was conscious of the slight, unmistakable thrill of mutual magnetism.

“I thought I was going to find a young lady in here, when Geraldine told me she had a friend!” Elsie exclaimed, laughing.

“Sorry I’m a disappointment,” Mr. Morrison replied, also laughing.

“Oh, I didn’t say that. Only my sister doesn’t have gentlemen friends as a rule,” Elsie declared innocently.

Geraldine’s sallow face flushed. “You don’t know much about it, do you, considering that we never see you nowadays. I’m not one for talking much about my own affairs, either, so far as I’m aware. It’s a misfortune, really, to be as reserved as I am. I often wish I wasn’t!”

It was unprecedented, in Elsie’s experience, to hear Geraldine setting forth a claim, however obliquely, to be considered interesting. Elsie looked at her in astonishment.

“She must be gone on this fellow,” she thought, and without the slightest compunction she immediately put forth all her own powers to attract Morrison’s notice and admiration to herself.

The task proved to be as easy as it was congenial. In a very little while, Elsie and young Morrison were talking and joking together, and it was only an occasional, spasmodic, and quite evidently conscientious effort from Morrison that from time to time caused Geraldine to be included in the conversation.

Morrison told Elsie that he travelled for a big firm of silk merchants in the City, and was very little in London.

“How did you and Geraldine meet, then? I thought you were in the same office as her during the war,” said Elsie sharply.

“Just for six months I was, and then I got this job in the place of a man who’d joined up. I was under age for joining up myself, worse luck,” said the youth.

Then he must be younger than she was herself, Elsie reflected, surprised. She felt oddly touched by the thought.

She looked at Morrison, and found that he was looking at her with admiration evident in his dark eyes.

Elsie allowed her eyes to dwell for a second on his before she broke the momentary silence. “What about tea, Geraldine?”

“All right,” said her sister sulkily. “Where’s the hurry?”

It was already half-past four, but Elsie guessed that Geraldine did not want to go and fetch the tea and leave her alone with Morrison.

“No hurry, I suppose,” she cried gaily, “but I’m a bit tired, that’s all, and I thought I’d like a nice cup of tea. It’s a good long way to come, and the Tube was pretty full.”

“Where did you come from?” Morrison asked eagerly.

She named the suburb. “You must come and look us up one day, Mr. Morrison. My husband is a solicitor, and he’s always at home on Saturdays and Sundays. The rest of the week I’m by myself and ever so lonely,” sighed Elsie.

“I’d love to come. I should--er--like to meet Mr. Williams,” said Morrison solemnly.

“Here’s Mother!” Geraldine announced sharply, as a door banged downstairs.

Mrs. Palmer came in, breathing heavily, her hands full of parcels.

“Elsie! Dear me, this _is_ a surprise. Good afternoon, Mr. Morrison, how are you? Quite well, thank you, but for Anno Domini, that’s all that’s the matter with me.” She dropped into a chair.

“Where’s tea?”

“I’ll get it up,” said Geraldine.

“Go and give her a hand,” Mrs. Palmer calmly directed young Morrison. “My gurl is out. They’re all the same, nowadays--always out, never in.”

“_I_ never have any trouble with servants,” Elsie murmured.

She was annoyed that her mother should thus dismiss Morrison, and that he should meekly prepare to obey her.

He opened the door for Geraldine and went out behind her, and Elsie heard her sister talking animatedly as they went downstairs.

“What’s come over Geraldine?” she coldly enquired.

“Why should anything have come over her, as you call it? Geraldine’s a gurl like you are, I’d have you remember, and a very much better one than you’ve ever been, to her widowed mother. You mind your own business, Elsie.”

“That’s a nice way to speak to me, when I haven’t been at home for I don’t know how long.”

“And whose fault has that been?” enquired Mrs. Palmer. “Not but what I’m always pleased to see you, Elsie, as I’ve told you time and time again, and Mr. Williams too--Horace, I should say--if he cares to come. But don’t you go interfering with Geraldine’s friends.”

“Is this fellow a friend of hers?”

“Of course he is. They’ve been going together for some time now.”

“I suppose she’s not engaged?”

“No, she’s not engaged,” Mrs. Palmer reluctantly conceded. “But I’m free to confess that I hope she will be. This Leslie Morrison is a nice fellow, as steady as can be.”

Elsie reflected that Leslie was a lovely name.

“Now, Elsie,” said her mother warningly, “I know what you are, and I give you fair notice that I won’t have any of your goings-on. You’ll remember that you’re a married woman, if you please, and just behave yourself. Any of your old tricks, my lady, and I shall drop the hint to Horace. Him and me knew one another before ever he set eyes on you.”

“All the more reason for not making mischief between us now. He’s jealous enough as it is, making a fuss of anyone so much as looks the same side of the room as I happen to be.”

“I don’t blame him,” said Mrs. Palmer curtly. “You’re a caution, you are, and always have been. I don’t mind telling you that I never was more thankful in my life than to get you safely married. And don’t you go casting sheep’s eyes at poor Geraldine’s fellow, for I tell you I won’t have it.”

Elsie laughed scornfully. She was secretly flattered at the alarm that was conveyed by Mrs. Palmer’s reiterated cautions.

“What should I want with a boy like him? He must be six years younger than Geraldine, at the very least.”

“Nothing of the kind. And if he was, it wouldn’t matter. It’s the first time anyone has looked like business, where Geraldine’s concerned, and with you off my hands I can afford to make things a bit easy for her. She’s been a good daughter to me, has Geraldine,” said Mrs. Palmer with a significant emphasis.

“Well, I’m sure I don’t want to stand in her way,” Elsie declared contemptuously.

“Anyone less selfish than you are, Elsie, would offer to help things on a bit. I can’t be for ever asking him here, and he’s not got the money to take her out a great deal. Why don’t you get them to meet at your place?”

“Perhaps I will,” said Elsie slowly.

She was rather silent during tea, mentally reviewing her mother’s suggestion from various angles.

Leslie Morrison definitely attracted her. She asked him how long he was to remain in London.

“Not long, Mrs. Williams. I’m doing Bristol and Gloucestershire next week, and then I’m taking my holiday.”

“Where are you going for that?” Mrs. Palmer enquired.

“I haven’t made up my mind. Anywhere near the sea is good enough for me.”

“My husband and I are thinking of Torquay,” Elsie said. “We’ve been wondering if you’d care to come along, Geraldine. I suppose Mother wants to stew on in London, as per usual.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Palmer assented complacently. She looked at her younger daughter with approval. It was the first time, actually, that Elsie had ever invited Geraldine to spend a holiday with her.

“Torquay is a first-rate place,” declared Leslie Morrison enthusiastically. “I was there once on business, and I quite made up my mind to return one day.”

“Thanks very much, Elsie,” Geraldine said rather coldly. “It’s a long journey, isn’t it, and I’m a wretched traveller, as you know.”

“Please yourself. Horace wants a thorough change, and we’re sick of Wales. We’ve been there every year ever since we were married.”

“Come, I don’t suppose that makes much of a total, does it?” Morrison gallantly remarked, looking at Elsie.

“More than you’d think for, perhaps. I was caught young--eighteen, if you want to know.”

“Elsie,” said her mother abruptly, “have you been to see your aunties lately?”

She directed the conversation so that no more personalities were possible, until Elsie rose and said good-bye.

“Allow me,” said Morrison, as he helped her to put on her coat.

Elsie fumbled for the sleeve-hole until she felt the guiding pressure of his fingers on her arm.

“Thanks ever so much. Well, good-bye, Mr. Morrison. Let me know if you come up our way any time.”

“I ... I hope you’re going to let me see you to your ’bus,” he said rather awkwardly.

“Really, there’s no need--I couldn’t think of troubling you.”

Elsie took no pains to hide that her protest was a purely conventional one.

“Put on your hat, Geraldine, and go with them. A walk’ll do you good,” urged Mrs. Palmer.

But Geraldine, as she frequently did, had turned sulky. “I’ve got something to do upstairs,” she muttered, and disappeared.

It was exactly like Geraldine, Elsie thought, to cut off her nose just to spite her face. Not that it could have made any difference if she had succeeded in preventing that brief walk taken by Leslie Morrison and Elsie Williams.

Elsie knew, beyond any possibility of mistake, the very first moment at which a spark from her own personality had lit the flame destined to burn more or less fiercely in that of another.

But this time she experienced an odd excitement that held in it something new.

She wondered, rather wistfully, whether this was because it was such a long while since she had had any opportunity of talking to a man other than her husband or one of his elderly married acquaintances. Her conversation with Morrison did no more than skirt the edge of personalities that were implied, rather than spoken. Yet when they parted Elsie knew, and knew that Morrison knew, that each was determined to see the other again. She travelled home in a dream, and hardly heard her husband’s vexed enquiry as to the reason of her lateness.

Williams had always shown a very strong conviction that it was a wife’s duty invariably to be at home in time to welcome her husband’s return from business.

“I’ve been to Hillbourne Terrace.”

“H’m. You’ve made yourself very smart. That hat suits you, Elsie.”

He so seldom paid a compliment that Elsie was astonished, and ran to look at herself in the mirror over the dining-room sideboard.

It was the hat, was it?

Her full face was softly flushed, and her eyes looked bigger and darker than usual. Elsie saw her own closed mouth break into an involuntary smile as she gazed at her reflection. She went up to her room singing softly.

Two days later Leslie Morrison came to see her.

“I hope you won’t think I’m taking a liberty. Knowing your people so well, it seemed quite natural, like, to take advantage of your kind invitation.”

“That’s right,” Elsie encouraged him.

She hardly knew what she was saying, but already their intercourse seemed to be on a plane where conventional interchanges of words were unnecessary.

Although it was only the second time they had met, Morrison told her a great deal about himself, and Elsie listened, with a growing, tremulous tenderness.

He went away before her husband came in, and Elsie underwent a momentary, essentially superficial, reaction.

“I’m getting soppy about that boy--that’s what I’m doing! Just because he’s got a pair of eyes like--like I don’t know what. Him and Geraldine! It’s too ridiculous. Why, he’s younger even than me.”

She reflected that if Morrison, indeed, had been a year or two older, he would certainly have kissed her by this time. But it was quite evident to her that such an idea had never even crossed his mind. He viewed her with obvious admiration, and with great respect.

The next day Elsie bought a book of poems, about which Morrison had told her. She read some of them, and it seemed to her that she had a new understanding of a form of expression which had never made the least appeal to her before.

“I’m a fool!” Elsie told herself in astonishment, but with an ominous sensation of strange, new emotions, softer than any she had yet known, taking possession of her life. She felt that she would like to give the book to Morrison as a present, but they had made no definite arrangement for meeting again, and she could not bring herself to send it by post. Restlessness possessed her.

It was a relief when one evening her husband began to speak of their summer holiday.

“We can start on Tuesday, like we planned. Cleaver gets back on Monday morning, and the sooner we get to the sea in this weather, the better. It won’t last.”

“It might. September can be a ripping month sometimes,” said Elsie dreamily.

“That’s your experience, is it? Well, it’s not mine. I only hope we shan’t have a rainy spell as we did last year, and sit in an everlasting sitting-room without so much as a book to look at.”

Elsie shuddered at the recollection. She and Horace had quarrelled incessantly throughout their last holiday.

“Is your sister coming with us?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’ll be better than nobody. She’ll be somebody for you to go with to those picture-houses that you’re so fond of. But it’s a pity that girl hasn’t got a sensible husband. We might get a decent game of bridge, then.”

“It’s a pity you haven’t got any men friends,” Elsie retorted. “I never knew anybody like you for that.”

Williams did not answer, but he turned upon his wife a look, peculiar to himself, that always vaguely frightened her. It held not only utter contempt, but something of quiet, unspecified menace.

She hastily spoke again. “Geraldine’s got a--a young fellow that she thinks is going with her now. A boy called Morrison.”

“Is he coming to Torquay?”

It was Horace Williams’ own matter-of-course tone in making the suggestion that suddenly filled Elsie with a frantic determination to see it carried out.

“Yes, most likely he is. So you’ll get your bridge, I daresay, and there’ll be somebody to take us to the pictures of an evening.”

As Elsie said the words, her heart seemed to herself suddenly to leap against her side, as though in anticipation of a joy almost too great to be borne.

She lay awake most of that night, revolving schemes by which Leslie Morrison could be brought to Torquay without letting Williams know that it was Elsie who had originated the idea.

Although formerly she had been as much flattered as irritated by her husband’s suspicious jealousy, it seemed to Elsie now to be of the utmost importance that he should not look upon Morrison in any other light than that of Geraldine’s friend. She wondered if she could induce Geraldine herself to suggest that Morrison should come to Torquay, but decided that it was unlikely. Finally, after a great deal of deliberation, Elsie next day wrote a note to the young man:

“DEAR MR. MORRISON,

“If not otherwise engaged, we shall be pleased if you will come to
tea on Saturday afternoon. It will be the last time for some weeks we
shall be at home, as we go to Torquay on the Tuesday. My sister, Miss
Palmer, is coming with us. Why not join the party, as you say you
would like to visit Torquay again?!!!

“Yours sincerely,
“E. WILLIAMS.”

Elsie thought about this note incessantly after it was written and posted, and awaited the reply with proportionate excitement.

It came by return of post:

“MY DEAR MRS. WILLIAMS,

“Very many thanks indeed for your most kind invitation to tea.
Unfortunately I am not able to avail myself of it, as am already
engaged to go to Hillbourne Terrace. The suggestion about me going to
Torquay is simply great--that is, if you really meant it! I intend
talking it over with your sister when we meet on Saturday.

“Believe me, with kind regards,

“Yours very sincerely,
“LESLIE M. MORRISON.”

Elsie came downstairs earlier than usual in order to conceal her letter before Williams should ask to see it, as he invariably did with his wife’s correspondence.

She put it in her pocket, and kept it there all day. On Saturday she wanted very much to go to Hillbourne Terrace, but Williams was at home, and on such occasions he never expected his wife to go out except with him. They spent the afternoon drearily enough, Williams reading the newspaper, and Elsie pretending to sew, and in reality wholly occupied with speculations as to how Geraldine would receive Leslie Morrison’s suggestion.

She felt pretty certain that Mrs. Palmer, at all events, would be in favour of it. “If only he has the sense to make it sound as if it came from him, and not from me!” thought Elsie.

She had felt confident of receiving another letter from Morrison before starting for Torquay, but to her dismay there was no word, either from him or from Geraldine, and on the eve of departure she still did not know whether or not her scheme had succeeded. For the first time, she heartily wished that there had been a telephone in her mother’s house.

On the morning of their journey the weather changed and became suddenly sultry. The train was crowded and unbearably hot.

Geraldine was to meet them at the station, and the fact that she arrived late made Horace Williams angry, in his own unpleasant, silent way. There was only one empty seat in the railway carriage, which Elsie at once took, and Williams and Geraldine were forced to stand in the corridor, already strewn with hand baggage and full of heated, perspiring people.

The train ran from London to Taunton without a stop, and at the end of two hours Williams forced his way into the carriage and spoke quietly to his wife.

“Here, Elsie, give me your place for a little while. One of my boots is hurting, and I can’t stand any longer. Go and take your turn for a bit.”

Elsie joined Geraldine in the corridor without demur. There were certain tones in Horace Williams’ voice that she had learnt to obey. Geraldine, her face pallid and shiny with heat, her tight blue cloth dress looking as though it constricted even her narrow chest and shoulders, was sitting in an uncomfortable, crouching position on a roll of rugs.

Both she and Elsie had removed their hats, and while Elsie’s hair dropped naturally into soft, flattened curls and rings, Geraldine’s clung damply in straight, short wisps to her neck and forehead, and she constantly raised her hand to push away, quite ineffectually, a straggling end that immediately fell down again.

“Hell, I call this,” she remarked shortly, as Elsie, stumbling over bags and packages and the feet of other passengers, reached her side and propped herself up against the side of the swaying train.

“You’re a nice one to take on a holiday, I must say,” Elsie retorted, but without acrimony. She felt that nothing would really matter if she could once get the assurance that she craved.

“Horace is in a foul temper. He never can stand the hot weather. I’m sure I hope it’ll be cooler at the sea than what it is here. Have you brought a new bathing costume, Geraldine?”

“M’m. A blue one, with a decent skirt--not one of those horrible skin-tight things you see in the picture papers. Improper, I call them.”

“You couldn’t be improper if you tried,” said Elsie cryptically. “Besides, there’ll be nobody to go in the water with you except me. Horace never bathes--makes him turn green, or something.”

She eyed her sister carefully as she spoke. Something in the wariness of Geraldine’s return glance gave her a rising hope.

“I’m sure I wish we were going to have someone we knew there. Horace would be much easier to keep in a decent temper if he had another man to go with sometimes.”

Then Geraldine spoke. “That boy Leslie Morrison said something about coming down one day this week, and spending part of his holiday at Torquay. He was awfully keen I should go and stay with his mother, near Bristol, too.”

“Was he? Well, you could do that later,” said Elsie. She was nearly breathless with triumph, but strove to make her voice sound matter-of-fact. “But I hope to goodness he will come to Torquay. It’ll make all the difference to Horace.”

Geraldine sneered. “I daresay you think it’ll make all the difference to you, too. It’s anything in trousers with you, old girl, whether the fellow belongs to another girl or not. But I’m not afraid of anything of that sort while Horace is about. He knows how to keep you in order, as Mother said.”

“I’ll thank you, and Mother too, to keep your opinion of me till it’s asked for.” Elsie, however, spoke mechanically.

She had immediately become obsessed by visions of herself and Morrison, walking, swimming, sitting beside one another on the sands, or in the intimate closeness and darkness of the picture palace....

“I’ll just tell you this, young Elsie. Leslie Morrison isn’t the sort of fellow you’ve been used to--not like Johnnie Osborne, and that truck. And as for carrying on with a married woman--why, he’d be ashamed to think of such a thing.”

Elsie smiled, and said nothing. She hardly heard what her sister was saying.

A hand laid upon her shoulder made her jump violently.

“Are you in the moon, Elsie? I’ve been making signs to you for ten minutes, I should think. It’s more than time we had our sandwiches,” said Horace Williams querulously.

“Oh, all right.”

By tugging and pulling at piled-up packages, they succeeded in getting hold of the basket in which Elsie had packed ham sandwiches, seed-cake, and bananas.

The train sped onwards....

III

The Williamses and Geraldine stayed in a boarding-house that proudly advertised itself as being situated “right on the front,” and young Morrison had a room in an apartment house, much cheaper and more remote, half-way up one of Torquay’s steepest hills. He arranged to have all his meals except breakfast at the boarding-house.

The weather was very hot, and sunny, and breathless.