Chapter VI: Part II: I (2)

Elsie felt as though she had never lived before. Every morning she came downstairs, her face sunburnt and glowing, but never unbecomingly freckled, her open-necked, short-sleeved blouses and jumpers indefinably smart and well put on, her undependable and essentially variable good looks seeming always to increase.

She was greatly admired in the boarding-house, and Williams for the first time did not appear to resent this.

He had suddenly become absorbed in a new and obscure digestive complaint, and would discuss the subject endlessly with his neighbours at meal-times. An elderly widow without any companion took a fancy to Geraldine, and as she sometimes gave her presents of clothes, or took her for a drive, Geraldine always sat next to her at the long table in the dining-room, and listened to her with a fair pretence of amiability.

Breakfast was a long, hot, abundant meal. The boarding-house knew its _clientèle_ and catered for it according to the views of business men who never allowed themselves to eat as much as they would have liked on week-day mornings during all the rest of the year. Tea and coffee, eggs and bacon, and fish and sausages were provided, toast and jam and marmalade and potted meat.

Elsie, who never ate anything but bread-and-butter with jam, and drank innumerable cups of tea, at her own home, enjoyed the novel fare because it was novel, and because she had not bought and ordered it herself, and because she was living in a haze of happiness that made everything enjoyable.

The prophecy of the clairvoyante had come true. Elsie knew the love that she had never yet known.

Every morning they went down to the sands and met Leslie Morrison there. They sat in deck chairs, and ate fruit from paper bags, and listened to a pierrot entertainment. At midday Elsie and Geraldine ran back to the boarding-house, undressed, and put on their bathing-suits, and came back to find Morrison already in the water and Horace Williams asleep in his deck-chair behind a newspaper.

Elsie’s bathing-dress was blue, trimmed with white braid, and she wore a rubber cap with a blue-and-red handkerchief knotted over it. Her bare legs and arms and neck had tanned very slightly; Geraldine’s showed scarlet patches of sunburn.

As they joined Morrison in the water, both girls always screamed, clinging to one another’s hands. But once the water was high above their waists, Elsie, a naturally strong swimmer, struck out boldly, consciously enjoying the cold water and the exercise of her muscles. Geraldine, of poor physique and defective circulation, only bobbed up and down in the shallows, still uttering staccato shrieks.

At first, Elsie and Morrison would keep near her, swimming short distances, and then returning, or splashing beside her in shallow water, but sooner or later they would both strike out, swimming side by side. They spoke very little.

“I say, you swim simply splendidly, Mrs. Williams. Why, I’ve never seen a girl swim as well as you do.”

“D’you think so? It’s nice, isn’t it?”

“It’s ripping. I’ve never had a holiday like this one--I mean, one that I’ve enjoyed so much.”

“Neither have I.”

“I hadn’t looked forward to my holiday a bit this year. I never thought it would be anything like this. I didn’t know that anything in the world----”

It was always Elsie who suggested that it was time to go back.

“Geraldine’s gone out already. She turns a funny colour if she stays in too long.”

Once, when they were rather further out than usual, Elsie said that she was getting tired.

“Put your hand on my shoulder--I’ll help you. Yes, do.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t.”

“Yes, you must.”

“Well, if you are sure you don’t mind....”

“_Mind!_”

His voice was very eloquent, and Elsie was abundantly satisfied.

She laid her hand upon his shoulder, and kept it there after her feet touched the sandy bottom once more and they were almost out of the water.

They raced to the bath-towel cloak that she had left under the wall, and as she put it round her Elsie said, without looking at him and in a peculiar tone:

“Did you enjoy it?”

“I loved it,” Morrison replied very low, and after a moment he added:

“Better than any of our other bathes.”

Elsie had never before conducted any one of her numerous love-affairs in a key so reticent, and the very novelty of the experience rendered it strange and precious.

Subconsciously, they might both be waiting for the spoken word, but on the surface each was supremely contented in the present.

The presence of Geraldine did not disturb Elsie in the least. Geraldine had been jealous of her intermittently ever since the days of their earliest childhood, and her manifestations of temper were always latent, rather than active. Elsie was used to them, and indifferent to them.

Besides, Leslie Morrison was always very nice to Geraldine. He sat between the sisters at the entertainments to which they went frequently, he gave chocolates and sweets to Geraldine oftener than to Elsie, and he was always ready to talk of Geraldine’s favourite topic, the old days in the office.

Only his dark eyes sought Elsie’s face with increasing frequency, his pleasant young voice altered slightly and indescribably when he found himself alone with her.

It seemed part of the magic of those enchanted days that Geraldine should make no scene, Horace Williams appear to perceive nothing.

On Sunday evening a band played in the public gardens. They decided to go and hear it.

Then Williams developed his mysterious symptoms, and refused to come out.

“You girls can go with Morrison. I shall take a glass of boiling water with peppermint,” he declared, “and go to bed. I’m in agony.”

“Would you like me to stay with you?” Elsie asked, her heart sinking.

“No, no, go and enjoy yourself.”

“Perhaps you’ll feel better in a bit, and come and join us,” she suggested, and thankfully made her escape.

The gardens were lit with Japanese lanterns and crowded with holiday-makers. Pale frocks and scarves flickered oddly in and out of the shadows and beyond the bright circle of glaring white light thrown out from the raised and roofed circular platform of the bandstand.

“No hope of chairs, I suppose,” said Geraldine disconsolately. “We’re late, thanks to Horace. Just look at the people.”

Morrison volunteered to try and find a seat, and they watched his tall figure disappear into the throng of people.

“I shall be sick if I have to stand for long, that’s certain,” declared Geraldine. “I believe the sun was too hot for me this afternoon. My head’s splitting.”

“Take off your hat, why don’t you?”

Elsie’s own hair was only covered with a blue motor veil, knotted at either ear, and with floating ends.

“My hair would be all over the place. I like to look tidy, thank you.”

“Please yourself,” said Elsie indifferently. She was absorbed in watching for the first glimpse of Morrison returning to them.

When she caught sight of him, elbowing his way through the crowd, it actually seemed to her as though the heart in her body leaped forward to meet him.

As usual, his eyes sought Elsie’s and held them for an instant before he turned to Geraldine.

“There’s one chair there. I’ve taken it, and a fellow is kindly keeping it for me. I thought you and your sister could take it in turns to sit down.”

“I don’t know....” Geraldine began ungraciously.

“It’s quite a good place, and nice-looking people on either side. The chap that’s keeping it for us seemed very decent.”

“Oh, go on, Geraldine!” said Elsie. “Hark, they are beginning again.”

The band had struck into a selection from a popular musical comedy.

Leslie Morrison put his arm beneath the girl’s elbow, and they moved away, Geraldine still grumbling sub-audibly.

Elsie, motionless, waited.

Never before in her life had she known this ecstasy of anticipation, so poignant as to be almost indistinguishable from pain.

When Leslie came back to her, she thought that she must fall, and instinctively caught at his arm for support.

Without speaking, he drew her away from the ring of light, into the deep shadow of a clump of trees. She stumbled against something in the sudden obscurity, and discerned the low railing that separated the ornamental shrubs and flower-beds from the crowded gravel paths.

“Come,” said Leslie’s voice in her ear, hoarsely. They stepped together over the little railing on to the grass. Another few steps, and they were in an isolation as complete as though a curtain had fallen between them and the seething mass of talking, laughing, swaying people in the gardens.

Even the sound of the band only reached them faintly as though from a great distance.

Leslie Morrison halted abruptly, and they faced one another, their eyes already accustomed to the semi-darkness.

By an impulse as inevitable as it was irresistible, they were in one another’s arms.

Neither spoke a word whilst that long throbbing embrace endured.

Through Elsie’s whole being flashed the wordless conviction: “_This_ is what I’ve been waiting for....”

“Elsie,” whispered the man. “Elsie ... Elsie ... Elsie ... I love you!”

“I love you,” she whispered back again.

They stood clinging to one another, entwined, the hot summer darkness encompassing them.

“What shall we do?” Morrison murmured at last. “I have no right to say a word to you, Elsie--I never meant to.”

“What does it matter?” said Elsie recklessly. “Horace and I have never been happy together. I ought never to have married him. It’s you I belong to.”

“My darling ... my sweetheart.”

They kissed passionately, again and again.

“What are we going to do?”

Elsie pressed closer and closer against him. “Forget everything, as long as this holiday lasts, except that we can be together. It’s been so heavenly, Leslie! We can settle--something--later on, when it’s all over.”

“I can’t let you go back to that man again. It would drive me mad.”

“Take me away with you,” she whispered.

“Oh, if I could ... if I only could, little girl!”

They spoke as lovers talk, ardently, and tenderly, and with long silences.

A sudden surging movement, and the distant sound of the National Anthem, penetrated at last to them through the darkness.

“It’s all over!” Morrison cried, aghast. “Your sister?...”

“I’ll manage her,” said Elsie. “Leslie ... once more....”

Her mouth found his, and then she tore herself out of his arms.

“Come with me.”

Rapidly Elsie found her way to the little pay-desk outside the enclosure, in which the lights were already being extinguished.

“She’s bound to come out this way.”

They waited, Elsie’s eyes at first dazzled, striving to find her sister’s form in the crowd. Every fibre of her being was acutely aware of the presence of Leslie Morrison, standing just behind her, so that her shoulder touched his breast.

Without turning her head she put out her hand, and felt it clasped in his and held tightly.

Her senses swam, and it was Geraldine’s own voice that first warned her of her sister’s approach.

To her relief, Geraldine was talking to a strange young man.

“Good-night,” she said amiably.

“Good-night, and thanks so much for a pleasant evening,” he returned, raising his soft hat.

Elsie compelled herself to speak. “Have you met a friend?” she enquired, with simulated interest.

“Hallo! Where have you been, I should like to know? Isn’t it funny?--that’s a fellow who was at our place for nearly a month during the war. Belcher, his name is. He was the very one that kept the chair for me. Did you two get seats somewhere else?”

“Yes,” said Elsie swiftly.

“It was good, wasn’t it--the band I mean? Horace has missed something by staying at home.”

Geraldine was evidently, and contrary to her wont, in high good humour.

They walked back to the boarding-house, Leslie Morrison between the two girls, Geraldine openly hanging on to his arm. His other hand was out of sight in his pocket, Elsie’s warm, soft fingers locked in his.

At the door they parted.

“Good-night and sweet repose,” said Geraldine indifferently, but she waited for her sister to precede her into the lighted house.

Elsie moved in a dream. It startled her when Geraldine, looking curiously at her under the glare of the electric light in the hall, said suddenly:

“What’s the matter with you, Elsie? You look moon-struck, and your hair’s all over the place, half down your back.”

“Is it?” Elsie put up her hands and pushed up the soft, loose mass under her veil again. “I’m going to bed,” she said, in a voice that sounded oddly in her own ears. “Tell Horace, will you? I’ve a splitting head.”

She felt an unutterable longing to be in the dark, and alone with her new and overwhelming bliss.

“You’re a nice one, I must say, leaving me alone all the evening, and then dashing off upstairs the minute we get in. I should think Horace would find something to say to you----”

Elsie neither heard nor heeded.

She ran upstairs and into the small double bedroom. It contained two beds, and for the first time since their marriage she and Horace had occupied separate ones.

To-night Elsie felt that she could never be thankful enough for the comparative solitude that would enable her to feel herself free again.

She tore off her thin summer clothes, shook down her cloud of hair, ran across the room in her nightdress to snap off the light, and then almost threw herself into bed.

In the blessed darkness, Elsie lay with hands clasped over her throbbing heart, and relived every instant of the evening, thrilling to a happiness so intense that she felt as though she must die of it.

She was perfectly incapable just then of looking beyond the immediate present and the glorious certainty of seeing Leslie Morrison again in the morning.

Although Elsie had been attracted, in a sensual and superficial manner, by a number of men, she had never in her life loved before, and the passion for Morrison that had suddenly swept into her life held all the force of a long repressed element violently and unexpectedly liberated.

Body, soul and spirit, she was obsessed almost to madness by this young man, several years her junior, whom she had not known a month.

When Horace Williams came up to bed it was nearly midnight, and Elsie, her face half buried under the sheet, pretended to be asleep.

IV

The love-affair of Elsie Williams and Leslie Morrison swept on its course, and in the early days of their madness neither of them paused for an instant to count its possible cost.

It seemed, indeed, as though Fate were deliberately simplifying their way.

Horace Williams appeared unable to give his attention to anything beyond his newly-discovered digestive trouble, and remained constantly indoors through the hottest and finest of the summer days, experimenting upon himself with drugs, and studying tables of dietetic values. He questioned Elsie very little as to her movements, taking it for granted that she, Morrison, and Geraldine formed a trio.

In point of fact, the youth whom Geraldine had met at the Sunday evening concert, and whom she spoke of as Percy Belcher, now almost always made a fourth in the party.

Geraldine monopolised him eagerly, and openly showed her triumph at feeling that she could now afford to relinquish Leslie Morrison.

Elsie and Morrison went swimming together, and lay on the hot, crowded sands, and dropped behind the others when they all went for walks, and sat with locked hands and her cheek against his shoulder in the stifling, thrilling darkness of the picture theatre, watching together the representation of a love that was never anything but the reflection of their own, the eternal triumph of a Man and a Woman, pale representatives on the screen of Elsie Williams and Leslie Morrison.

The golden fortnight drew to its close, and with the end of the Torquay holiday, it suddenly seemed to Elsie as though the end of the world must come.

“What are we to do, Leslie?” she gasped.

“I don’t know, darling,” he said miserably.

“You’re going to be in town for a bit?”

“For a little while. They’re sending me off again, pretty soon--abroad this time.”

“I can’t live without seeing you sometimes. Oh, Les, how can I go back to the old life with Horace after _this_?”

“Elsie,” said Morrison very low, “would he divorce you if----?”

“Not a hope. It costs money, and he’s too mean. Besides, he’d never do it if he thought I wanted it. He’s cruel, is Horace.”

“Not to you?”

“He doesn’t knock me about, if that’s what you mean--he knows I wouldn’t stand it--but of course he doesn’t care for me, or for anybody but himself. I was told he gave his first a rotten time--anyway, I know she used to look wretched enough. You know there was a first Mrs. Williams?”

“No, I didn’t. Of course, I saw he was much older than you. Oh, Elsie, whatever made you marry him?”

“Oh, I was a fool and I thought I’d like to be married, and get away from home. I didn’t know what it was going to be like, that’s certain. Oh, Les, fancy if I was still Elsie Palmer, and you and me could get married!” She gave a sob.

“Don’t, sweetheart! I’d have asked for your promise, fast enough, if you’d been free, but I couldn’t marry any girl till I’m earning a bit more.”

“Don’t you get a good screw, Leslie?”

“Rotten. But I’m jolly lucky to be in a job at all these days, I suppose.”

“Lucky!” Elsie echoed the word drearily. “You and I aren’t amongst the lucky ones, boy. I don’t see how things are ever going to come right for us, without a miracle happens.”

“He--Williams--may ... he may die.”

“Not he!” said Elsie bitterly. “There’s nothing the matter with him. All this talk about indigestion is stuff and nonsense--just fads he’s got into his head. There’s nothing wrong with Horace. And it’s always the ones who aren’t wanted that live on and on. But how am I going to bear it, after this wonderful time we’ve been having?” She began to cry.

“Elsie, don’t, darling! I’ll think of a way. There must be some way out.”

Leslie took her in his arms and she forgot everything else.

On the last evening they all went to the theatre together, and it was there, for the first time seeming awake to the situation, that Horace Williams, sitting at the end of the row of stalls, suddenly leaned across Geraldine and looked long and balefully at his wife.

She felt herself changing colour.

Morrison, however, observed nothing. He talked only to Elsie, looked only at her during the interval, and whilst the play was in progress and the lights in the theatre lowered, his hand sought and held hers.

“Elsie, we can’t part like this. How can I see you alone?”

“We can’t--not here. But Horace starts at the office again on Wednesday, and he’s there all day. Come to the house.”

“It means an age without seeing you. Elsie, can I write to you?”

“Yes ... no....” She was startled. “Oh, Les, darling, I’d love your letters!... But he’d see them. Wait a minute.”

She thought rapidly.

“Address them to the post-office--I’ll call there. He doesn’t know or care what I do all day, so long as I’m always there in the evenings when he gets back.”

But Elsie was to find herself mistaken. Her husband, after their return to the suburban villa, displayed a very unmistakable interest in her movements during the hours of his absence at work.

He obliged her to give him an account of her day, and took to ringing her up on the telephone for no acknowledged reason, and always at a different hour.

At first, Elsie cared little. She and Leslie Morrison met daily, and on one occasion spent the afternoon in the country together. Elsie recklessly telephoned to her own house at seven o’clock that evening, and said that she was with Irene Tidmarsh, and should not come home that night.

“You must,” said the hollow voice at the other end of the line.

“I can’t. Her father’s awfully ill, and she’s afraid of being left.”

“When shall you be home?”

“To-morrow.”

“I’ll come and fetch you.”

“All right,” said Elsie boldly. “What time?”

There was no answer. Williams had rung off.

Elsie knew, beyond the possibility of mistake, that her husband suspected her; but in the intense excitement that possessed her she was conscious of nothing so much as of relief that a crisis should be at hand.

She spent the night with Leslie Morrison at a tiny hotel in Essex.

Early next morning they travelled back to London, parting at Liverpool Street station.

“Let me know what happens directly you can, darling,” urged the man.

“I’ll telephone. Anyway, come round as soon as you can get away. _He_ won’t be in before seven.”

“Good-bye, Elsie darling. I’ll never, never forget....”

He left her, joining a hurrying throng of other young men wearing soft hats and carrying little brown bags, nearly all of them hastening towards the City.

Elsie proceeded by train and tram to the house of Irene’s father.

Her friend opened the door to her. “Hullo! I thought I should see you. That hubby of yours is on the warpath.”

“What’s happened?”

“Oh, nothing, thanks to me! Come in, Elsie. Have you had breakfast?”

“I’ve had some tea; I don’t want anything else. Tell me about Horace.”

“Well, Horace, as you call him, saw fit to come round here at eleven o’clock p.m. last night, and got me out of my virtuous downy by ringing at the front door bell till I thought the house was on fire. He said he’d ‘come for’ his wife, if you please!”

“I know. I told him I was going to spend the night at your place,” said Elsie calmly. “I suppose you didn’t happen to tumble to it, Ireen?”

“I’ve not known you all these years for nothing, old girl,” said Irene, grinning. “What do you take me for? I told him you were in bed and asleep, and had been for hours.”

“You’re a real sport, Ireen! How did he take it?”

Irene pursed up her lips and shook her head. “He asked me to tell you to ring him up first thing this morning. If you ask me, you’re in for trouble. And p’r’aps now you’ll be so kind as to tell me what it all means, and why on earth you couldn’t have given me fair warning before saying you were here. It’s lucky for you I didn’t give the whole show away on the spot.”

Elsie, habitually ready to discuss any of her love-affairs with Irene, had told her nothing about Leslie Morrison. But she saw now that a degree of frankness was inevitable.

Irene listened, sitting on the kitchen table, her shrewd, cynical gaze fixed upon Elsie. “You’re for it, all right,” she observed dryly. “I thought directly I saw you after you’d got back from Torquay that there was something up. But I somehow didn’t think you’d go off the deep end like that, Elsie. Why, you’re dotty about him!”

“Yes,” said Elsie, “I am.”

“And what do you suppose is going to happen?”

Elsie groaned. “I wish to the Lord that Horace would do the decent thing, or go West--and let me have a chance of happiness.”

“He won’t,” said Irene. “Well, whatever you do, don’t make a fool of yourself and run off with this fellow. It simply isn’t worth it, when he hasn’t got a penny, and not very often when he has.”

“If I thought Horace would divorce me it’d be different,” Elsie said. She was not listening to Irene at all. “Though even then, I don’t know what we would live on. Leslie hasn’t anything except his salary, and that’s tiny, and I’m sure I couldn’t earn a penny if I tried. Mother wouldn’t help me, either, if I did a thing like that.”

“No more would anybody else. And surely to goodness, Elsie, you’d never be such a fool. Think what it would mean to be disgraced, and have a scandal.”

“I wouldn’t mind that with him.”

Irene groaned. “You are far gone! Well, the worse it is while it lasts, the sooner it’s over. You’ll see sense again one of these days, I suppose. Meanwhile, you’d better ’phone that husband of yours.”

Elsie’s conversation with Williams over the telephone was brief. She agreed to come home at midday, and neither made any reference to the visit of Williams at eleven o’clock on the previous night.

Elsie anticipated a scene with her husband, and felt indifferent to the prospect. She had not enough imagination to work herself up in advance, and, moreover, her faculties were entirely occupied with the blissful expectation of seeing Morrison again that afternoon.

He came some hours after she had arrived home.

Elsie had done some shopping in the morning. With her husband’s money she had bought a gold-nibbed fountain-pen for Leslie, and had paid for copies of a photograph of herself.

She had scarcely ever in her life before given anyone a present, and Leslie Morrison’s ardent thanks, and rapture over the photograph, caused her the most acute pleasure.

“Darling, it’s lovely, and it’s just you! I shall always carry it about with me, done up with your dear letters.”

“Don’t keep my letters, Leslie,” said Elsie suddenly.

“Why ever not?”

A sudden recollection had come to her ... “_Beware of the written word...._”

The medium to whom Irene had once taken her had said that. She had also said other things; had told Elsie that love would come to her.... Perhaps she really knew....

“I’d rather you didn’t, really,” she said feebly. “Suppose--suppose Horace ever got hold of them----”

“How could he? Besides, Elsie darling, he’s got to know about us some time. I wish you’d let me tell him now. I can’t go on like this; it’s a low-down game coming to a man’s house without his knowledge and--and making love to his wife.”

“His wife!” said Elsie angrily. “Don’t call me that. I may be his wife in law, but it’s you that I really belong to.”

“Well, let me have it out with him then,” said Morrison earnestly. “We don’t know, after all. He may be ready to do the decent thing, and set you free.”

“I don’t care if you do. I’m pretty sure he guesses.... Horace has always been jealous, though he’s never had any cause before.”

“He didn’t say anything at Torquay?”

“No, it’s since we got back. He asked me once if you were engaged to Geraldine, and I said no. And he asked if you meant to come and see us here, and I told him most likely you would. He didn’t say anything much, but he hates a man coming near the place, really.”

“I’d far rather have it out with him,” young Morrison repeated. His face was resolute, and he stood his ground when Elsie, starting violently, exclaimed:

“I believe that’s Horace now! I can hear his key in the door. He’s never in at this hour as a rule--the skunk, he’s come to spy on me!”

“Darling, it’s all right!” said Morrison.

He put the photograph away in his breast-pocket with hands that trembled slightly. Both fixed their eyes on the door as it opened upon the figure of the little elderly solicitor. His face wore a no more sardonic expression than was habitual with him, and Elsie could not deduce from it whether or not he was surprised to see Leslie Morrison.

Neither man made any movement towards shaking hands, but they greeted one another conventionally, and talked a little, as though indifferently, of the holiday at Torquay.

Leslie asked whether Mr. Williams was any better in health, and the solicitor replied coldly:

“No, I am no better. I daresay my case would be a very interesting one, from the point of view of a doctor. But I am not one to give up, and I have no doubt that a great many people do not realise there is anything the matter with me.”

He turned his eyes upon Elsie for a moment as he spoke.

At the same instant, the inevitable thought that had flashed through her mind at his words caused Elsie to cast a lightning glance towards Leslie Morrison.

It was that glance that her husband intercepted.

V

They had another evening together before the storm broke.

Morrison took Elsie to a dance.

He issued his invitation boldly, in the presence of Williams, and to Elsie’s secret astonishment, her husband made no objection to her acceptance.

She wanted terribly to buy a new dress for the dance, but dared not risk a reminder to her husband, for fear he should suddenly forbid her to go. Finally she decided to wear a black dress, covered with black net, and with black net shoulder-straps. It was not new, but she had seldom had any occasion for wearing it, and she had enough money in hand for the housekeeping to enable her to buy a pair of black artificial silk stockings and slim black satin shoes with high heels.

Round her thick, light hair she tied a black velvet band with a spray of forget-me-nots worked in blue silk across it, but instinct told her to leave her full, beautiful throat unadorned by any of the few cheap ornaments that she possessed. Her smooth skin showed a sort of golden glow that merged imperceptibly into the warm pallor of her round arms and the dimpled base of her neck.

Elsie looked for a long while at herself in the glass, rubbed lip-salve into her already scarlet mouth, and, despite the “Japanesey” effect of lids that seemed half-closed, wondered at the brilliant light in her own hazel-grey eyes.

Leslie Morrison came for her, and they left the house together before Williams arrived from the office.

To both of them it was an unforgettable evening.

Elsie, like all women of her type, was a born dancer. Nevertheless, before the evening was half over, they had left the crowded hall for a screened alcove in an upper gallery, where the reiterated refrain of syncopated airs, and the wistful rhythm of valse-times, reached them through the haze of ascending cigarette-smoke.

It was three o’clock when they exchanged a last close, passionate embrace and Elsie, pale, exhausted, with indescribably shining eyes, crept upstairs to her room, undressed, and lay down noiselessly by the side of her husband to relive the evening that she had spent with her lover.

Williams left the house next morning without waking her, but it was that evening that the inevitable crisis came.

The solicitor returned home nearly two hours before his usual time, and found Leslie Morrison just preparing to enter the house.

The two men went in together.

Elsie started violently at the sight of her husband, and then laughed artificially. “Hullo! It’s a case of Oh, what a surprise, isn’t it? You’re back early, Horace.”

“Yes,” said her husband.

“I hope you’re not too tired after last night,” Morrison began.

“Oh no, thanks! It was fine. Horace, I haven’t told you about the dance yet. It’s a shame you weren’t there.”

The moment she said the words, Elsie knew that she had made a mistake.

“Yes,” Williams remarked quietly, “you’d have liked me to be there, wouldn’t you? Well, let me inform you that you aren’t going to any more dances for the present.”

“Whatever do you mean, Horace?”

“Morrison knows what I mean all right, and so do you, you little ----” His low, snarling tone gave the effect of spitting the ugly word at her.

Leslie Morrison sprang to his feet. “Look here, sir----”

The solicitor held up his hand. “That’ll do. It’s not for you to adopt that tone in speaking to me, you know. Please to remember that I’m Elsie’s husband.”

“Look here,” Morrison began again, “I’m perfectly ready to make a clean breast of it. I do love Elsie. Her and me were just pals at first, and then I suppose I didn’t exactly realise where I was drifting. But I’m free to confess that I lost my head one--one evening a little while ago--and I told her I loved her.” He glanced at Elsie, as though for a further cue.

“And of course she told you that she was a pure woman, and a loving wife, and you must never speak like that again?” sneered Horace Williams.

“Elsie, don’t let him speak like that.... Tell him!” urged Morrison.

“I don’t need any telling,” Williams retorted smoothly. “She thinks she’s in love with you, of course.”

“I am in love with Leslie,” said Elsie suddenly. “And if you did the decent thing, Horace, you’d set me free to marry him. You and me have never been happy together. I didn’t ever ought to have married you, but I was a young fool.”

“Understand this, the pair of you,” said the little solicitor clearly and deliberately. “I shall never set you free, as you call it. You’ve married me, and you’ve got to stay with me. As for you,” he turned to Leslie Morrison, “you can leave my house. And understand clearly that I won’t have you inside it again. And if I catch you speaking to my wife again, or meeting her, or having anything whatsoever to do with her, it’ll be the worse for you.”

Morrison took a sudden step forward, his hands clenched, and Elsie screamed, but Horace Williams stood his ground.

“I’m well within my rights, and you know it,” he declared. “I could horsewhip you, in fact, and if you were fool enough to bring a case for assault it’d go against you. _Clear out!_ That’s my last word to you.”

“Will you let Elsie have a divorce?”

“No, I won’t.”

“Will you let her have a legal separation, then? You’ve her own word for it that she’s not happy with you. I’m not thinking of myself, but you can’t have the cruelty to keep her tied to you when she’s miserable. Let her have her freedom.”

For all answer, Williams pointed to the door. The expression of his face had not altered by a hair’s-breadth.

Morrison turned to Elsie, white and tense. “Elsie, you hear what he says. What d’you want me to do?”

Elsie had lost her nerve. She began to cry hysterically. Instead of answering Morrison’s appeal, she turned to her husband.

“Why can’t you let us just be pals, Leslie and me?” she sobbed. “You bring your horrid, mean jealousy into everything. I s’pose you don’t grudge me having a friend of my own age, do you?”

Leslie Morrison instantly and loyally followed her lead. “If Elsie is kind enough to let me be her friend, and--and take her out every now and then, and that sort of thing, I’m willing to forget what’s just passed, and simply ask you as man to man if you’ve any objection to us being, as she says, just pals,” he said steadily enough.

“I have every objection. You young fool, Elsie has just said in so many words that she’s in love with you. Did you mean that, Elsie, or did you not?”

Elsie sobbed more and more violently, and her voice rose to an incoherent screech. “How do I know what I mean or don’t mean, when you make a row like this? But I’ll tell you this much, anyway, it’s true what he said; I’m wretched with you, and if you were half a man, you’d set me free.”

“There, that’s enough,” said Williams. “Going round and round in a circle won’t help any of us, and you ought to know by this time, Elsie, that I always mean what I say. You’ll please to remember what you were when I married you--a little fool of a typist, without a penny, whose mother kept a boarding-house and was only too glad of the money I gave her. It doesn’t take a genius to say what would have happened to you if you hadn’t found a man fool enough to marry you, either.”

“Stop that!” Morrison shouted.

The solicitor blinked at him quietly. “I’ve twice told you to get out of my house,” he observed. “Don’t make me say it a third time. It’ll be the worse, if you do--for Elsie.”

“Are you threatening her, you--you brute, you?”

“I object to your friendship with my wife. That’s all--and enough too. Now go.”

“Oh yes, go!” said Elsie suddenly, breaking into renewed sobs and tears. “I can’t stand this. You’d better go, Leslie boy, really you had. I shall do myself in, that’s all.”

“Don’t talk like that----” the youth began frantically, but Williams opened the door, and stood silently pointing to it.

There was something strangely inexorable in his little, trivial figure and sinister, passionless expression.

“Elsie,” said Morrison brokenly, “if ever you want me, send for me. I’ll come!”

He went out of the room, and they heard him go down the stairs and let himself out at the front door.

“That’s the end of that,” said Williams in a quiet, satisfied voice. “Stop that howling, Elsie. You didn’t really suppose that I didn’t know what was going on?”

She sobbed and would not answer.

There was a long silence, and at last Elsie, face downwards on the sofa, began to feel frightened and curious. She bore it as long as she could, and then looked up.

Her husband was gazing out of the window, in which a potted aspidistra stood upon a wicker stand between soiled white curtains.

At the slight movement that she made he turned his head. “Elsie, tell me. Did you really mean what you said, that you’re in love with that boy?”

To her incredulous surprise, his voice had become hoarse and almost maudlin.

“You only said it to make me angry, didn’t you?”

In a flash Elsie saw the wisdom of allowing him at least to pretend to such a belief. “Perhaps I did,” she said slowly. “Anyway, it’s true enough that we aren’t particularly happy together, and never have been. And I meant what I said about a separation, right enough, Horace.”

“You won’t get one,” said Williams, and his voice had become vicious-sounding once more. “And remember what I’ve said--that fellow is never to set foot in here again, and you and he are not to meet in future.”

* * * * *

The following morning Elsie went to the High Street post-office and found there the letter that she had expected.

“MY OWN DARLING GIRLIE,

“What is to be done? I can’t tell you, darling, what a hound I felt
to leave you all alone with that jealous brute yesterday and yet the
awful thing is that he has the right to you and I have none. Oh,
Elsie life is hard isn’t it darling? I wish I could take you away but
that cannot be and it is you that have to bear the brunt of it all
except that I am in hell knowing what you are going through all the
time. Perhaps that is not an expression I ought to use to you but you
must excuse it for I hardly know what I am writing.

“One of our chaps has gone sick, and they are sending me to the North
instead of him which means we can’t meet again as I go off to-morrow.
But write to me darling and tell me what it is best to do now. Would
it simplify things if we were to be just friends and no more?

“Cheer up, Elsie perhaps some day things may come right for us--who
knows? He may die; doesn’t he always say there is something wrong
with him?

“A thousand kisses for you, dearie. I have your sweet photo with me
and love to look at it and re-read your wonderful letters. Write and
tell me everything, and what you think we had better do. Shall we be
able to meet when I come back at the end of the month?

“No more at present, from

“Your own true lover, Leslie,
“BOY.”

To Elsie, Leslie Morrison’s love-letters were wonderful.

She read and re-read this one, but when she had answered it, she burnt it.

Certain words of the clairvoyante, whom she had once visited with Irene Tidmarsh, she had never been able to forget, and of late they had haunted her anew.

“_Beware of the written word...._”

Elsie burnt all Morrison’s letters to her, and asked him to burn all those that she wrote him.

Gradually these letters that passed between them grew to be the most important factor in her life.

Elsie, who had detested writing, now desired nothing so much as to pour out her soul on paper, and the limitations that she found imposed upon her through lack of education and the power to express herself made her angry.

Again and again she asked Morrison in her letters to take her away, and after a time his steadfast refusals bred in her mind the first unbearable suspicion that her passion was the greater of the two. Her letters became wilder and wilder.

Sometimes she threatened suicide, or gave hysterical and entirely imaginary descriptions of scenes with her husband; sometimes she expressed a reckless desire for Horace’s death, or asked if she could “give him something” unspecified. These phrases, to a large extent, were meaningless, but Elsie frantically hoped by them to impress upon Morrison the extent of her love for him.

When he got back from the North of England they met surreptitiously.

A certain café in a small street not far from Elsie’s home became their rendezvous. Sometimes Morrison was able to get there in the middle of the day, but generally he came at about five o’clock, and they had tea together. Very occasionally they met early in the afternoon and went out together.

Each meeting was entirely inconclusive, save in exciting Elsie almost to frenzy and reducing young Morrison to further depths of despondency.

The months dragged on. Morrison was often away, and then he and Elsie wrote to one another daily. She was entirely obsessed with the thought of her lover, and hardly ever saw Irene Tidmarsh, or went to Hillbourne Terrace. And all the while, Horace Williams said nothing.

He and his wife did not quarrel; indeed, they hardly spoke to one another, but the atmosphere between them, day by day, was becoming more heavily charged with mutual hatred and apprehension.

VI

The tension under which Elsie now lived began at last to affect her health. She slept badly, and was nervous as she had never been before.

Williams watched her without comment--a sinister little figure. Sometimes, utterly overwrought, Elsie tried to force a scene with him, but she only once succeeded in making him evince anger.

Strangely reckless, she suddenly suggested that Leslie Morrison should be invited to lodge in their house, with no slightest expectation that her husband would entertain such a scheme, but with a wild desire to provoke him to a scene that should release some of her own pent-up emotion.

“He’s looking for rooms, Geraldine says,” she declared, “and we’ve a bedroom to spare, and might as well use it.”

Williams gazed at her incredulously. “Are you aware that I’ve shown Morrison the door once already?” he asked at last.

“Yes, I’m quite aware of that,” said Elsie, with insolence in her voice. “I thought you might have got more sense now, that’s all.”

“Listen to me, Elsie. I forbade you to speak to that fellow again--and by God, if you’ve done so, I’ll see you never forget it!” His face was livid and he spoke through his clenched teeth.

“I’ll speak to whom I please.”

“Have you been meeting Morrison?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

Elsie felt a curious pleasure and relief in thus mocking at the furious jealousy that was evident in her husband’s face and manner.

“Answer my question.”

She remained silent.

“Are you and that fellow in love?”

“I’ve answered that before. I told you months ago, when you first started to insult me, that he was nothing to me.”

“That wasn’t true then--and it isn’t now. Morrison’s in love with you, damn him, and you’re in love with him!”

“Am I?”

Elsie laughed derisively in the new and uncomprehended realisation that she was no longer afraid of Horace.

“You little bitch!...”

He caught her by the shoulders and suddenly flung her against the wall.

Elsie screamed, but it was reflex action from the physical shock alone that made her do so. She was neither frightened nor very much startled. There was even an odd exhilaration for her in the sudden release of those pent-up forces that had for so long vibrated tensely between herself and her husband.

However, her arm and shoulder were bruised, and her whole body violently jarred. “You’re a coward!” she panted. “Hitting a woman!”

“You drove me to it.... Elsie, get up!... I’m sorry I did that, but you’re driving me mad. God, if I had that fellow here I’d wring the life out of him!”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Elsie taunted him. “He’s a great deal stronger than you are--he’s a man, he is--you’d never dare to touch him. All you can do is to knock a woman about.”

“That’s a lie! I’ve never touched you before, though there’s many a man in my place would have beaten you within an inch of your life. I didn’t know what I was doing just now.”

He took a step towards her, but Elsie pulled herself up from the floor without appearing to notice the movement. She felt slightly giddy, and her head ached.

“Aren’t you going to--to forgive me? I oughtn’t to have hit you, I acknowledge, but you’ve done everything to drive me to it. Elsie, swear to me that there’s nothing now between you and Morrison.”

“Oh, all right,” she said wearily. “I swear it.” She felt that she no longer cared what happened in a sudden overwhelming fatigue.

“I don’t believe you,” said Williams bitterly.

Elsie shrugged her shoulders, and turned, moving stiffly, to leave the room.

“Are you--are you hurt?”

“Yes, of course I am. My shoulder will be black and blue to-morrow, I should think.”

“Shall I get you anything?” Williams muttered, shamefaced.

She made no answer.

That afternoon Elsie rang up Leslie Morrison on the telephone after her husband had gone out. “Is that you, Les?”

“Yes. How’s yourself?”

He had told her never to be prodigal of verbal endearments in their telephone communications, and she knew that he was probably not alone, but it struck her painfully that his tone was a purely casual one, such as he might have used to anyone.

“We’ve had an awful scene, boy.”

“What--who?”

“Him--Horace--and me. The same old thing, of course--jealousy. I stood up to him, and told him I didn’t intend to put up with that sort of treatment any longer, and I’d never give up anyone I--I liked.”

“I say, Elsie, you were careful, weren’t you?” asked Morrison, his voice grown anxious.

“Yes, yes, darling, of course I was, for your sake. But Leslie--this is what happened--he knocked me down.”

There was a smothered exclamation that made her heart leap with sudden exultation. Of course Leslie cared....

“Elsie--girlie--he didn’t! Are you hurt?”

She could have laughed in pure joy at his sharply-anxious question.

“Nothing bad. Shaken, of course, and I expect there’ll be a bad bruise, but I can put up with worse than that, you know.”

“You oughtn’t to have to! The hound! I’d like to.... Look here, can’t we meet?”

“Yes, yes!” she said eagerly. “What about tea? I’ll come to----”

“The same place,” he interrupted quickly, and she understood that he did not want her to mention the name of the tea-shop that had so often served them as rendezvous.

“What time?”

“About half-past five. I shan’t get away any earlier.”

“All right, darling. I’ll be there.”

“Sure you’re all right?”

“Yes, quite all right now,” Elsie declared, laughing happily.

“I must go. See you later, then?”

“Yes. Good-bye, boy.”

The answering good-bye came to her faintly over the wires as the final click warned her that he had hung up the receiver.

Elsie looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. Only three o’clock--two hours and a quarter before she could think of starting out.

The telephone rang again, and Elsie, with a joyful hope that Morrison had been unable to resist a further word, snatched at the instrument.

“Hallo, hallo! Who’s there?”

“I am--Horace,” said her husband’s flat, nasal voice. “Look here. How would you like to go to the play to-night, Elsie?”

“What!” said Elsie, disappointed at not hearing Leslie Morrison’s voice again, and still dazed from the scene of the morning.

“I said, how would you like to do a theatre to-night? I’ve got tickets for ‘The Girl on the Pier’--good places--for to-night.”

She understood at last that he was seeking to propitiate her, and to make up for his violence. “I don’t mind. What time does it start?”

“Half-past eight, but we’d better meet in town somewhere for some food. I shan’t have time to come home first. What about the Corner House, at about seven o’clock? That’ll give us plenty of time to go on to Shaftesbury Avenue afterwards.”

“All right. How many tickets have you got, Horace?”

“Just the two. I thought you and I would go by ourselves and have a jolly evening,” said the far-away voice rather tremulously.

Elsie laughed drearily as she rang off.

It seemed to her that the time dragged interminably until she could go upstairs and dress herself for the evening’s outing. She meant to meet Morrison first and then go on to the Corner House and wait there for her husband.

Elsie put on a dark blue coat and skirt, with a new pale blue jumper of artificial silk, and a big black hat with a blue feather. Round her neck she wore a small black fur.

After her variable wont, she had suddenly recovered her looks, after the sodden, stupefied ugliness that the morning’s unhappiness had produced in her. Her eyes seemed more widely opened than usual, her hair fell into thick curls and rings, and a soft, bright colour lay under her oddly prominent cheek-bones. She rubbed lip-stick on to her full, sulkily-cut mouth, and lavishly powdered her straight, beautiful neck. The glow of excitement and gladness transformed her as she went out to meet Morrison, slamming the door of the villa behind her.

“Darling!”

“My own dear little girl!” said Leslie, and held both her gloved hands for a moment in his. “I haven’t been able to think of anything but what you told me this afternoon. Are we going for a walk, or will you come in?”

“I’d like to come in and sit down,” said Elsie languidly. “Have you had tea?”

“No. I’ll order some.”

“Not for me, boy. I’m meeting Horace for a meal in about an hour and a half. We’re going to the theatre.”

“Have you made it up, then?”

“Oh, I suppose so! He telephoned and said he had these tickets. I suppose he thought it’d make up, in a way.”

They chose a corner table at the further end of the tea-shop, and Elsie took off her coat and leant against it as it lay folded over the back of her chair.

“Where did he hurt you this morning?” said Morrison intently.

She pulled up the loose sleeve of her silk jumper. “Look!”

Her smooth, soft arm was already discoloured all round the elbow and up to the shoulder.

“It’s worse higher up, only I can’t get at it now to show you.”

“_Damn_ him!” Leslie Morrison muttered between his teeth.

His boyish face was black with an intensity of feeling that Elsie had seldom seen there of late. It sent a rush of joyful reassurance all through her.

“Darling, I don’t care about anything while we’ve got each other.”

“But it can’t go on, Elsie. He’s making your life miserable. Isn’t there any hope of a divorce, or even a separation?”

“He says he never will.”

Elsie spoke slowly. She was revolving a possibility, that she had often viewed before in her own mind.

“Les, can’t we go away together? I don’t care what happens, or what people think of me. I’d face anything, with you.”

Even as she spoke, she knew--and one side of her was relieved to know--that Morrison would negative the suggestion, as he had often done before.

“Out of the question, darling girl. Think what I’m getting--two twenty-five a year and no particular prospect of a rise for years to come. And look at what you’ve been used to!”

“Not before I married.”

“Times were different then. It was before the war. Living has gone up five hundred per cent. since then, and it’ll be many a long year before it comes down again. Why, Elsie, we couldn’t even live!”

“I don’t know whether you think I’m living now!” she exclaimed vehemently. “Existing, I call it. And we shall only be young once, Leslie, and it seems so hard to waste it all.”

He groaned, and they sat silent for a time, their hands locked together beneath the table.

“Would you be ready to--to end it all?” she asked suddenly. “I mean for us to go out together, right out of life?”