Chapter TWO: Lilac (1)

I

On the prospectus it was called _The Mordaunt Club_, but in practice no one ever thought of saying anything but “The Hen House” when speaking of the block of unselfcontained flats near the river in which Gillian and Lilac Armstrong had lived ever since their mother’s death.

Sir John Mordaunt, its founder, had built it out of the remnants of Buckingham Palace. This material he had acquired at what a later age has called bargain prices, from one of the contractors when the Royal dwelling was finished and there were bricks and mortar and fine-faced stone to be had for the carting away. Being of the period, the Mordaunt Club building was rock-like in stolidity and forbidding of aspect. Framed to shelter poor spinsters of the governing-classes in their declining years, it consisted of two gaunt five-storied houses, one on each side of a courtyard graced by one plane-tree and a laburnum. Kindness without consideration had directed the scheme. The buildings faced due north and south. There were four flats, or sets of rooms on each floor into two of which the sun never shone; the other two from March to October being intolerable unless their occupants were able to obtain for themselves the sunblinds philanthropy had not provided. The flats consisted of two small intercommunicating rooms, the outer one opening on to a common hall out of which, on each floor, two bleak corridors with coal-bin, oil-tank, sink, cold-water tap and lavatory (also of the period) served the tenants of the four flats as joint domestic offices. Two members living together were allowed one extra and separate room, if they could get it. And the rent, which was small, included a certain amount of service.

There was a communal kitchen in the basement of one of the buildings, from which, twice a day, at one o’clock and at half-past seven, the roast beef of old England or the boiled mutton of her Antipodean island, was sent up accompanied by potatoes, boiled, with turnips, carrots or cabbage according to their season, and followed by milk-pudding, and on Sundays by apple-pie. These viands, served between two hot plates, were placed on the table in each sitting-room, whether it were laid for a meal or spread, as the Armstrongs’ often was, with Gillian’s school-books or Lilac’s millinery, by small hard-working maids. They came from Battersea, these servers, and were ruled over by the janitor Mr. Gordon, and by his wife Mrs. Gordon, who roasted beef and boiled mutton for the “Ladies” (this was how the basement referred to the landings) and fried and grilled and souffléed choicer viands for her husband and the maids to consume at less conventional hours.

Mr. Gordon was only parts of a man: he had a wooden leg, a glass eye and one other contrivance of the surgical-instrument maker, the precise nature and location of which was most decently unrevealed, though its existence was well known and always spoken of as “Mr. Gordon’s trouble.” For some time after they came to the Mordaunt Club the Armstrongs had supposed Mr. Gordon’s trouble to be the one which was always very troublesome on Saturday evenings and had caused him one night to make an earnest attempt at locking the courtyard gate with a tablespoon. This delusion, fostered by the constant references to it in Mrs. Gordon’s conversation, and by the frequency with which it was cited by the maids as a complete explanation for their lateness on any occasion, was dispelled, or rather was thrust further into mystery by Mrs. Gordon herself.

“I wonder if you’d mind paying by cheque, miss,” said Mrs. Gordon on her weekly visit to collect the dinner-money. “If I take it all downstairs in cash, nothing’ll hold Mr. Gordon. They’ve told him at the Orspittle that he can have a new spring fitted to his trouble, and he’s that set on it—you know what men are, miss—that he can’t wait to find out whether it reely will do any good work or whether it’s just one of them try-ons. Larst year he had six little buttons put on, instead of the strap. And believe me, miss, there ’asn’t been a week since when one or other of them buttons ’asn’t popped off. And he won’t have boot-buttons sewed on at home instead. Not he. You know what men are, miss. Back to the shop it must go—and a shillin’ a time unless I can find the button in his close. So I’ve took to keepin’ the buttons till four’s off at a time. And wot it’ll be like if he gets a spring put on as well you can guess for yourself, miss. It’s cost us a pretty penny has Mr. Gordon’s trouble, miss; not but wot her ladyship didn’t come down very handsome at first, but Mr. Gordon never was one to let well alone. And he _will_ read the papers. You know what men are, miss. All them nasty advertisements putting ideas into his head. So, if you don’t mind, miss, I’ll take a cheque, and give you all the cash I’ve collected from Number Six and Number Nine—Eight’s out—and that’ll leave me just enough to do the shoppin’ meself this morning, and Mr. Gordon won’t be tempted even if he does get hold of my clean apron.”

Mrs. Gordon’s clean apron, a highly starched affair, was remarkable for two pockets, in one of which she kept change, in the other a photograph of Miss Gordon, Mr. Gordon’s daughter by an earlier and evidently ill-judged union. Gillian was, from the first, at a loss to account for the frequency with which Mrs. Gordon, diving for change, would put her hand in the wrong pocket and withdraw the picture exclaiming:

“There now! if I haven’t gone and got out Miss Gordon’s photograph instead of arf a crown. P’r’aps, as I have got it out, you’d like to look at it, miss. It’s a new one. She brought it in the other day when she come to see me and Mr. Gordon.”

And it very often was a new one. Miss Gordon seemed to be able to afford a great many very new photographs, many of them taken in deep evening dress, though the first one that had emerged from the housekeeper’s pocket was a tinted affair on a thick bevelled card and represented Miss Gordon in tennis clothes, “pure white to her feet” as Mrs. Gordon pointed out, with racket in hand and balls on the ground, and a tennis-net faintly sketched in on the blank background.

“It’s more than her own mother ever saw,” had been Mrs. Gordon’s cryptic reply to Gillian’s congratulations on the handsome effect produced by this effigy, “nor deserved to,” she had added as one who could, if encouraged, expatiate on a rich theme.

Gillian would have liked to know more, but Lilac had discouraged this curiosity in her sister as being not only vulgar but idle.

“For goodness’ sake, Gillian,” she said, “don’t let the woman talk more than she must. She’ll stay here all day if you listen to her with both eyes like that.”

“But I think she’s wonderful,” said Gillian, “and such a rest from Mrs. Lysaght. She talks about real things and makes them deep and funny.”

Lilac snorted, “Rather a good description of her apple-pies. The crust had sunk in deep enough last Sunday and there was a bit of carrot in the apple when I got to it. Besides, she isn’t here to amuse you—and she doesn’t amuse me. Go and talk to Mrs. Barraclough if you must be amused in the Club. She’ll tell you things that are some use and she might get old Lady Mordaunt to let me sell roses on Alexandra Day.”

Mrs. Barraclough was the Club treasurer. She lived in the flat at the top of the kitchen stairs, and every Monday from 4 to 6, she sat at the receipt of custom. The members—it was understood that they should not be known as “tenants,” lest the Club lose caste—called on her to gossip, or left their rent on the first Friday of the month in notes in her letter-box according to their dispositions, some ladies being far more delicate over finance than others. So delicate indeed was Miss Parsons who lived in the flat immediately opposite Lilac and Gillian, that she always paid her rent anonymously and late at night, stealing down to slip a sealed envelope into Mrs. Barraclough’s letter-box, after Mr. Gordon had gone his rounds at ten o’clock, when he put out the landing-lights and locked the Club up till morning.

Mrs. Barraclough was the widow of a Yorkshire squire—but Mr. Barraclough’s passage through her life had been so short and so sudden that if it had ever mitigated her essential qualities, the change had long been rectified. She was one of seven Irish daughters, all reckless, as only the children of a Resident Magistrate in the eighteen-eighties could be; and, after a youth of hard riding to and after hounds, had eloped from the hunting-field with Tom Barraclough, and had seen him drown before her eyes six months later, when their wild, protracted honeymoon ended in the Aran Islands.

The child, which was born the following year, was a girl, and her mother had never forgiven her for it. In consequence of the child’s failure to be a man she had seen the small estate pass to a cousin, from whom her tiny jointure had to be wrung year by year by a solicitor whose charges for obtaining it halved, and in very bad years, quartered the total which eventually reached the widow’s pocket.

Mrs. Barraclough’s life had been one long scrimmage and the training served her well. For none but a woman inured to battle could hope to keep the semblance of peace and order in such a hornet’s nest as the Club was framed to become in any of those emergencies to which communal life is liable. She had obtained the post by nepotism of the frankest kind. Lilias her daughter had escaped early from the chronic friction of home, by way of marriage with a naval lieutenant, a grandson of the Club’s founder; and the present Sir John Mordaunt, a man of affairs and used to cutting knots, had solved the problem of his daughter-in-law’s relations with her mother by pulling such strings as were necessary to get his son appointed to a ship in the China Seas. Having done this he set Lilias up in a flat in Yokohama and, by himself, appointed Mrs. Barraclough to the post of Treasurer of the Club. Mrs. Barraclough’s book-keeping was entirely her own affair, but it was sufficient, and she was in Debrett. To be in Debrett had originally been the first qualification for membership of the Mordaunt. Lilac and Gillian were not there. They had figured in _Who’s Who_ as “_2 daughters_” until Gerald Armstrong’s death and that was all. But, as Mrs. Barraclough explained when interviewing them, things had slackened terribly since the War. She was referring to the Boer War which had filled the two years immediately following her appointment to the Club.

“It is now enough to be the widow, or the orphan of any officer,” said Mrs. Barraclough, “or of a missionary, and I understand that your aunt was a missionary.”

Gillian was indignant.

“Aunt Elizabeth was nothing of the kind,” she protested. “She was engaged for many years to a celibate clergyman in Rhodesia—who died two years after their marriage—and neither Lilac nor I is her, or his, orphan.”

“That’s what I was just saying,” said Mrs. Barraclough who, being Irish, always knew what she meant, and knew it most especially clearly when her hearers were most confused by what she actually said.

“Wasn’t it because Miss Armstrong was so well known to Mrs. Middleton that you ever came to hear of the Club yourselves? And she’s a missionary born and bred, though how she came by such a daughter as Jessie is one of those things I’d like to ask someone who knows.”

“Well, anyway,” Gillian insisted, “we’re not missionaries.”

“No,” said Mrs. Barraclough, “you’re not, neither of you. Though if one of you was it wouldn’t be that fluffy little sister of yours. I saw her going out in a frill of muslin yesterday, which had no missionary in its pedigree.”

“Lilac won’t ever be a missionary, even though she wants to go to India more than anything in this world.”

“Then to India she’ll go,” said Mrs. Barraclough. “Lilac is the kind of girl that gets what she wants, and sooner than late. But I’ll tell you,” she went on with one of those sudden changes of theme which made her conversation so stimulating, “I’ll tell you who is. The new tenant at 44. Miss Victoria Vanderleyden—she’s a missionary.”

“She sounds much more like an American,” said Gillian.

“She’s that too,” said Mrs. Barraclough. “American on one side and missionary on the other—I forget which is which—and a manicurist by profession.”

“I thought you said she was a missionary.”

“By birth, yes. But now that she’s got in on the strength of having been born in Java or some such outlandish place, I find that she works in one of those sinks of iniquity in Bond Street where you get your face ironed out and your finger-nails made to look as though you’d been eating hot muffins and got melted butter all over ’em. You ring the bell before you can get in, and you pay a guinea before you can get out, and it mostly goes in curtains and cushions.”

“Not a shop?” asked Gillian.

“No,” Mrs. Barraclough snorted, “a parlour. The Spider and the Fly it should be called. I went there once to see.”

“Did you pay a guinea?” asked Gillian.

“I did not. I rang the bell and asked for a price-list. I might have dropped an ‘h’ with a crash by the horrors they had. They don’t have a price-list. It’s called a ‘brochure,’ and it says very little about prices. It isn’t exactly a shop, but it’s so nearly one that I’d never have let that young woman in if I’d known about it before she was in. I must wink at it now.”

Mrs. Barraclough spent a good deal of time in winking at things which were not strictly within the order of the Club, but which did not disturb its peace. It was this capacity to wink with discretion that, more than anything else in her methods, had established her power over the members and also over the Committee which loomed behind her administration.

“She’s a nice creature to look at and very quiet.”

“She’s young then?” Gillian was interested.

“She seems young to me, but she’s not a baby. You two are all I want in the infant line at present.”

At one time the Club took no one under forty; but that meant separating mother from daughters. At first they had excluded widows. That was in old Sir John’s time. The idea of a man who didn’t provide for his wife made the philanthropist so angry that he refused to do anything for the consequences.

“The Club’s full of widows now,” said Gillian. “There’s the Countess.”

“There is,” said Mrs. Barraclough, “and it’s about the Countess I’ve got to talk to you, Miss Armstrong. I’ve had a letter of complaint from her.”

“She’s a terrible complainer,” said Gillian. “I suppose it’s her nationality. Poles do have a greater sensibility to grievances than other people.”

“Oh, well, so do the Irish,” said Mrs. Barraclough. “But the Countess has complained of you.”

“Of me? But I never do anything but say good-morning, and take in her parcels if I’m in and she’s out. I don’t share her scullery. She’s on Miss Parsons’ side.”

“That is the trouble. She says she’s timed the maids and that it took Beatrice twice as long to empty your slops last week when your sister was away as it did Gladys to deal with hers and Miss Parsons’.”

“Well, so long as it didn’t interfere with Gladys I don’t see that it matters. Beatrice is on our side and she never complains.”

“You don’t understand. It’s the principle of the thing. You are getting twice as much service as she is whoever serves you. She says, in the postscript, that she cannot avoid the suspicion that you have a hot bath every morning.”

“But of course.”

“That’s what she supposes, she says, ‘as a matter of course.’”

“What have you said to her?”

“I’ve written to say that I am speaking to you on the subject, Miss Armstrong, and I’ve pointed out that the remedy lies in her own hands. But being a Papist I doubt if she is allowed to bathe at all during Lent.”

“Did you put that last bit in your letter?”

“I did not. I’m warning you that whatever you do, whether it’s washing yourself as a Christian should, or having tea-parties on Sunday will be used against you and reported to me—and now you may go, I’ve got to see Mrs. Middleton about the new fireplace she’s putting into No. 6.”

“I shall complain about the Countess and her piano,” said Gillian from the threshold, “and that’ll be cutting off my nose to spite her face, because she plays gorgeously. It will be a terrible pity, but perhaps it will all be for the best, because if she thinks I don’t like her playing she’ll play much more than she does now. I think I shall complain chiefly about the Debussy and the Folk-Songs and then she’ll be put off Rachmaninoff and Liszt.”

“Go away, you chatterbox,” said Mrs. Barraclough, throwing a stone out of her own glass house with vigour and conviction.

This conversation had taken place soon after Gillian had made her entry into the Club, having walked to Chelsea from Wimbledon beside the greengrocer’s van in which the Armstrong furniture was piled, because the greengrocer and his boy, who were officiating, had refused to start unless William’s voice were stilled and their own safety insured. William was a sulphur-crested cockatoo who could, and did, sing “God save the King” as far as the syllable “Gra——” and no further, whenever in his opinion things had gone far enough. He sang very loud and harsh, and danced as he sang, accompanying himself with crest outspread and great beating of wings. Having his cage tied on to the top of a greengrocer’s wagon full of furniture on a cold-hearted day in December, was one of the things no cockatoo could be expected to encourage, and William had burst into the National Anthem before he had been actually roped on as the finishing touch to the already overloaded cart. Several repetitions of this fragment having collected a crowd, William had grown emphatic and reaching a loud “Gray” for the sixth time, stayed there shrieking “Gray—Gray—Gray” and shaking his cage with a furious dance of protest. So Gillian, who had intended to make the journey by omnibus, was obliged to go with William who would listen to her and to nobody else. And William, once he had been persuaded that she was not going to desert him, folded wings and crest, and cocking his head on one side kept one bright, round eye fixed on his mistress as she walked on the pavement beside him and occasionally calling “Puss, Puss” to a passing horse, arrived at the Club at nightfall and was carried into the little flat before anyone quite realized his nature. William had fallen into the category of the things Mrs. Barraclough winked at, partly because she liked Gillian and also because William had remarked, “Good day—what weather!” and had offered her his claw to shake when, quite by chance, she had met him, for the first time, alone on the staircase below the landing where he lived. William lived out of his cage as much as he could, and had a passion for visiting those he liked. William was no respecter of persons. If he liked you he liked you, if he did not there was no persuading him. He liked Mrs. Barraclough and he adored the postman, and for the time that was enough.

It was Mrs. Barraclough who came to the rescue in the matter of what Lilac called “carving Gillian’s career.” Lilac had £100 a year of her own, as well as the £50 a year with which she and Gillian were each left when Mrs. Armstrong’s annuity perished with her. So Lilac stayed at home and devoted the considerable leisure left her when the domestic arrangements of life in the Mordaunt Club had been disposed of for the day, to the management of her toilet and wardrobe, while Gillian went forth to carve her career with what had so far proved the worst possible incompetence. Carving a career, as Lilac pointed out, demanded common sense, and of common sense Gillian had no grasp.

“You might have known that stuff about Venus was no use in a school,” said Lilac. “I suppose you think that any word beginning with a ‘v’ is beautiful because of violet. The _violet_, the _viol_ and the _vine_ and all that nonsense.”

“But it wasn’t Venus. I didn’t give them that line. It was the one about Minos et Pasiphaë,” Gillian protested.

“It’s the same thing, only worse. I shall ask Mrs. Barraclough if she knows of any safe job for a mild lunatic who knows three languages and a lot of poetry.”

Mrs. Barraclough did not endorse Lilac’s estimate of her sister.

“Gillian’s all right,” she said, “only a little unprejudiced. I’ll go and see if old Winona wants another secretary.”

Old Winona, or Winona Lady Bottomley as she was described on her large glazed and gilt-edged visiting-cards, was out of a secretary when Mrs. Barraclough called. Old Winona seldom kept a secretary for more than a few weeks at a time. They either left of their own accord or were sent away in a great hurry laden with compensatory gold. Some of them took prolonged sick-leave, and to these Old Winona was very kind.

“She’s the second wife and first widow of Bottomley’s Bicycles,” said Mrs. Barraclough, “and she doesn’t know how rich she is. The lawyers don’t tell her—they think her reason might give way. But she keeps three secretaries, one in Belfast and one in London and one to travel up and down with her, and they’re never the same secretary except the one in Belfast, who’s a man. The others are girls. Poor things. You’re to go to see her at twenty minutes past eleven to-morrow morning, and to take a signed photograph of your father with you.”

“But I haven’t got one,” said Gillian, “my father never signed a photograph in his life.”

“Then take any photograph you’ve got and say it’s your father’s,” said Mrs. Barraclough, who had no use for purely academic scruples in business.

“The only signed photograph she’s got,” said Lilac, “is one of William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes, and that’s a picture post-card. And it’s so worn out with being hidden by me when I had good reason for worrying Gillian that it’s no use for carving and careering. But I’ll lend Gillian a black hat and my good umbrella and see her to the top of Sloane Street by 11:15 myself. I’ll watch her across the road and we must leave the rest to God.”

“Do I call her ‘Winona Lady,’ as they do Adeline Duchess?” asked Gillian.

“No; you don’t know her well enough to make game of her title,” said Mrs. Barraclough, “and you must be very careful about it. There _is_ a Lady Bottomley, Toby’s wife, but she’s never mentioned, she’s one of the Oh No’s.”

“What are they?” asked Lilac, who knew the importance of social distinctions and the wisdom of not being too proud to ask questions.

“It’s poetry,” said Mrs. Barraclough, as one who had very little use for the article. “‘Oh no, we never mention him, his name is never heard,’ a famous poem, ‘my lips are now forbid to speak that once familiar word.’”

“I know,” said Gillian.

“‘From sport to sport they hurry me
To banish my regret
And when they only worry me——’”

“I don’t think it ends like that,” said Mrs. Barraclough.

“That was Andrew Lang,” said Gillian, “he didn’t like Haynes Bayley—he was quite right. He wrote ‘O think not Heleena of leaving us yet,’ when it might just as well have been ‘O, Helena, think not——’”

“For William’s sake, my poor idiot, if not for your own and mine, try to forget about how things sound for the next twenty-four hours. It’s far more important to find out how things are. I’ve met Toby Bottomley,” Lilac went on, turning to Mrs. Barraclough, “but I didn’t know he’d a wife.”

“She’s not noticeable, I grant you that. Not where Toby is. She’s on the stage, in America. There was a rumour that Toby was divorcing her, but Old Winona don’t believe in divorce. Her own two husbands died. And Toby only gets an allowance while she lives, so I dare say it’s all hanging fire.”

Lilac was silent and Gillian noticed that her pretty face sharpened, the blue eyes narrowing and the soft mouth tightening to a hard, red line for a moment, as they did when Lilac was planning a move in the very successful game she was already playing with life.

Gillian never understood the moves or the game, but she knew that Lilac played and won, and she was often a little uncomfortable about it. For Lilac had a way of letting her sister in at some advanced stage in an affair of the kind and expecting her to co-operate in the dark. A pang of suspicion thrust itself through her mind. It was Lilac who had gone to Mrs. Barraclough. Had Lilac a reason for wishing Gillian to work for Lady Bottomley? But, on the contrary, Lilac was rather annoyed about the prospect.

“If I’d known,” said Lilac as soon as the door had closed behind Mrs. Barraclough. “If I’d had the slightest suspicion that Mrs. Barraclough knew the Bottomleys, I’d—I’d—well, Gillian, will you _promise_ me not to tell the old lady that I know Toby?”

“Well,” said Gillian, “I won’t start off by saying, ‘Oh, dear Lady Bottomley, my sister knows your son,’ but if she asks me if I’m the Miss Armstrong her son knows....”

“She won’t. She doesn’t know.”

“Lilac,” said Gillian, “what is it?”

“Oh, it’s quite all right. I met him at Glynde, at Sophie’s birthday revels, and he’s generally at Eaton Square on Sundays. Sophie knows all about it. It was Toby who gave that dinner at the Savoy last week.”

“I thought it was Stephen and Sophie’s party. That was why I wondered why they didn’t ask me.”

“Well, it wasn’t. It was Toby’s. Stephen and Sophie were asked—and me—and we went to _Kismet_ after dinner. In a box. There wouldn’t have been room for you.”

“Oh, well, I’m glad it was Toby’s party. There isn’t nearly so much iron in my soul now that I know,” said Gillian, “and if Lady Bottomley doesn’t know about you she can’t suspect me of being your sister. Besides, it may not come to anything.”

“No, p’r’aps it mayn’t,” said Lilac, “and, I forgot to tell you, I had a letter from Sophie this morning. They’re going to Glynde after Ascot, and they’ve asked me to go, and you. They’ll have a Goodwood Party, but you needn’t go to the races.”

“If I become that old lady’s third secretary,” said Gillian, “I shan’t be able to go to Glynde at all, except perhaps for a week-end. I’ll write to Sophie myself.”

“Oh, all right,” said Lilac; but she was not pleased.

Sophie Glynde had originally been Gillian’s friend. She was German on her father’s side and had been at a school in Lausanne where Gillian had spent six months of her sixteenth year. Her English mother was a Glynde, and Sophie, who was startlingly pretty, had married her second cousin Stephen almost at sight the summer she came to England. She would, if Stephen’s elder brother went on being a bachelor until he died of riotous living, be the Mistress of Glynde Regis one day.

Sophie had been very kind to the Armstrongs. But gradually her butterfly affections had settled on the younger sister who, not being under the pressing necessity of carving a career, was able to put herself more unreservedly at Mrs. Glynde’s disposition on those frequent occasions when that lovely being, who had a horror of solitude, was deprived of the solace of her husband’s company. Sophie was now Lilac’s friend. And Lilac, who took the same size in shoes, gloves and garments as Sophie did, inherited all the clothes of which Sophie grew tired before they were reduced to the condition in which they automatically passed into her maid’s possession. Lilac, who had a genius for dress, spent laborious days in achieving the raiment for triumphant nights from this spoil, and no one but Gillian, who pinned her into the never quite securely finished results, knew how precariously the lace from one gown, the satin from another, were held together to form a third more wonderful than either in its outward and dazzling effect.

Lilac, naturally, met a great many people at the Glyndes’ of whom Gillian had no knowledge, or whose names she knew without importance; but Lilac’s reserve about this one person, this Toby Bottomley, was unusual and significant. Lilac, clearly, would prefer that Gillian should not become Toby’s mother’s secretary.

But Lilac was to be disappointed.

She fulfilled her promise, lent Gillian the black hat, completed the loan with a pair of grey suède gloves and took her to the top of Sloane Street the following morning. Her last words as she pushed her sister off the island were:

“For Heaven’s sake, remember you’ve never heard of me.”

II

Number 99 Knightsbridge was a conspicuous house. It rose a full story higher than its neighbours and spread a whole window wider than any other private dwelling from the Hyde Park Hotel to the Guards’ Barracks. You could see it half-way down Sloane Street, thrusting its crammed and costly window-boxes into the dimness of the London colour scheme. Each of the fifteen front window-frames had had the Georgian sashed panes removed and was now filled with a sheet of plate glass, bevelled into an ebony frame and veiled inside with curtains of the richest lace; each of the rust-brown bricks of which it was built was now surrounded with the best mortar, so white that Gillian felt it must be enamelled. The wrought-iron balconies which hung across the first and second floors were painted black and enhanced by a gilded boss wherever the pattern made it possible to apply one, and the tall black railings which fenced the ground floor from the street had their tips gilded to match the balconies. In the midst of them the decoration of an ornate gardendoor twisted and whirled around what was evidently a bicycle-wheel with a golden tyre, the hub of which was formed of the letters W. M. in monogram. Gillian had often rejoiced in the opulent charm of this exterior without supposing that the dwelling behind it would ever admit so plain a worm as herself to tremble at its more intimate magnificences. Now, as she pressed the amethystine button of the bell-push at the gate she felt like a goose-girl in a fairy-tale at the moment when she comes to the magician’s cave. It was rather a shock to find the door opened by a perfectly plain butler; a tall, grave, clean-shaven man who received her with a melancholy kindness which belonged to more anciently established, less insistently plutocratic surroundings. The pathway from the street to the house-door was flagged with porphyry and malachite under a glass roof supported on pillars up which crimson-ramblers, their roots in huge porcelain vases, were twined. Baskets of scented geraniums hung at intervals from the arches of this processional way, and tubs of blue and pink hydrangeas stood in the garden spaces on either side of the path. The hall into which she followed the butler up a flight of three marble steps, occupied the whole floor and was lit by two tall windows on the street side, and by glass doors opening on to the long garden which led down to the Park. It was full of very brightly burnished suits of armour each embowered in a separate grove of palm and fern. In the midst of these, enormous pink begonias trained round sticks in a barrel-shaped design, occupied the four corners of a sunken fountain which was playing above the rather agitated home-life of several corpulent goldfish. At each corner of the staircase there were life-size figures representing Nubian slaves (boy and girl alternating) in coloured raiment bearing trays in either hand. On one tray stood a vase of flowers, on the other a lamp. The cumulative effect of passing three of these chromatic statues after a glimpse of the suits of armour below, had stunned Gillian a little and, by the time the drawing-room door closed upon the butler, leaving her alone with its amazing splendours, she had ceased to be keenly receptive.

But the drawing-room was worthy of the keenest appreciation. Like the hall it covered the whole floor. It had three windows looking on to Knightsbridge, and three on to the Park. Its walls were panelled in hand-cut velvet brocade, electric-blue on a mauve background: each of the two fireplaces was enriched by an overmantel, all-white balustrades and mirrors, supporting or reflecting innumerable shelves and brackets, no shelf without its flower-vase, no bracket without its statuette. Between the windows were more mirrors, framed in Dresden china frames from which candle-holders curved out like pink and gilded horns and bore not candles but china imitations carrying electric lights and silken shades which mirrored themselves again in the glass. The room was full of electric-light bulbs. From the heavily moulded ceiling mauve and blue ribbons hung in slings and from each sling a gilded Cupid stretched down a torch-filled hand, and in each torch a bulb. This amorous army of illumination circled round a very beautiful Venetian glass chandelier which, with the Aubusson carpet that spread its blue medallion and faint roses over the parquet-floor, seemed to indicate another mind feebly at work under the overmastering influence which had clearly directed the main ornamentation of the house.

There was one book in the room: _The Golden Treasury_, bound in blue leather, with a wreath of purple violets encircling the name “Winona” tooled on the cover. On the top of the grand piano, a Broadwood in a painted case, there stood an army of photographs each in a silver frame. Most of these photographs were of the same person. These were all signed “Winona” in a flowing hand and showed the signer in various forms of evening dress from full panoply of Court train, veil and feathers, to a relatively simple gown of what was probably black velvet enhanced by ropes of pearls. Here and there the series was broken by portraits signed “Reginald”; but Gillian could not discern a “Toby” among them.

As she waited and wondered if the personality of their owner were veiled or revealed by all these effigies, the door opened and the butler reappeared carrying a silver tray covered with an embroidered tray-cloth.

“Her ladyship wishes you to take a glass of milk, miss,” he said, depositing his burden on an inlaid table, “and will be with you presently.”

There certainly was a glass of milk, an engraved glass in a silver holder, on the tray before her, but it took Gillian some time to locate it among the dishes of fruit, sandwiches and cake with which it was surrounded. Winona, Lady Bottomley, was evidently kind to others as well as lavish to herself, though Gillian, who had not been brought up to eat between meals and was also a little nervous that morning, could not obey the command to drink. She was counting the layers of marzipan that separated the rich substance of an iced cake out of which one wedge had been hewn in evident consideration of her need when the door opened once more and Lady Bottomley stood revealed.

“Good morning, Miss Macfarlane, pray be seated,” she said in a measured and stately voice as she seated herself in the exact centre of a slippery and magnificent settee.

Gillian, a little surprised at the form of address, managed to control herself from correcting it by the thought that it would be time enough to do so if and when it turned out that she was to take up any duties for the lady.

There was a pause. Gillian tried not to stare too hard at the marvellous auburn wig, the Roman nose, the small dim eyes, the imposing figure, the ringed hands folded over the plush of a lace-flounced gown which presented themselves to her consideration for some time before the spirit which informed them spoke again. When the silence was broken it was with another surprise.

“My daughter-in-law, the future Marchioness of Fulham, has spoken to me of you,” said Lady Bottomley. “She assures me that, happily, most happily, you do not possess any shorthand.”

Gillian, to whom the very existence of any such person as the future Marchioness of Fulham had, until that moment, been unknown, and who was, moreover, bewildered by the receding phantom of that “Toby” on whose account she was to conceal her own relationship to Lilac, murmured that unfortunately she did not practice shorthand.

“Fortunately, Miss Macfarlane,” said Lady Bottomley, growing more imposing with each syllable, “I consider that a knowledge of shorthand renders its possessor unfit for the post of secretary to a lady of title. I shall require you to take all my letters down in your own handwriting, and to copy them out in an imitation of mine.”

“Won’t that be like forgery?” asked Gillian, forgetting her nervousness in the novelty of the demand.

“No,” said Lady Bottomley with slow decision, “it will not. It must be a poor imitation of my handwriting, and I shall sign the letter myself. The quotations from _The Times_ and _The Guardian_ with which I enliven my letters to those Abroad, you will add in your own handwriting; but I like my own remarks to appear in a style which will not clash with my signature.”

Gillian remembered Mrs. Barraclough’s admission that old Winona seldom had the same secretary for many weeks at a time, and wondered whether a tendency in handwriting to clash with the august signature were responsible for the failure of the relationship, or if other and even more probable reasons were to be revealed.

“You will also,” went on the lady, “you will also prepare lists of suitable concerts which on those afternoons when I am not accompanied by my daughter-in-law or my son Sir Reginald, the third baronet, you will attend with me. Concerts of classical music.”

“And matinées?” said Gillian hopefully. This part of her duties sounded easier than imitation scripture.

“No matinées,” said Lady Bottomley, “only bazaars. I disapprove of the stage.”

“Not even charity matinées?” said Gillian.

“Only those acted by amateurs in Halls. I do not ever go inside a theatre. When the cause is good I buy tickets and give them to others.”

“Oh,” said Gillian, and wondered if she and Lilac would ever be counted as others.

“How old are you?” Lady Bottomley was forsaking instruction for inquiry.

“Twenty-three—that is I shall be twenty-four next birthday.”

“And when is that?”

“In April,” said Gillian, conscious that this was only July.

“That’s very young. Still it may mean that you will prove more docile than those of riper years.”

Gillian hoped she was docile.

“We shall see. But if you come to me I must stipulate that you do not marry.”

“Never?”

“Not for three years. My last two secretaries—no, my last three,” Lady Bottomley checked them off on her fingers, “all married within a few months of joining my circle. I am now engaging only such as will take a vow not to marry for three years.”

“But suppose I left you—or you sent me away for some other reason?” Gillian ventured.

“In that case you would be free to marry. Not otherwise. Have you any intention of marrying?”

“Well,” said Gillian with complete candour, “I’ve no intention of _not_ marrying, but I don’t suppose I shall marry for a long time. I don’t feel old enough yet.”

“You are quite old enough to marry,” said old Winona visibly annoyed, “twenty-four is amply old enough. I was married at twenty for the first time. Have you anybody in particular in view?”

“To marry? Oh, no. They all want to marry Lilac, not me?”

“And who is Lilac?”

Gillian felt the hot blood creep up her neck, over her chin, into her face and fill her eyes with tears. This was exactly what Lilac had forbidden her to do.

“Oh, just a sister of mine,” said she, trying to make as light of the matter as possible.

To Gillian’s relief Miss Macfarlane’s sister was a person to whose identity Lady Bottomley attached no significance whatever, and, after a few more questions, they passed on to a mutual exhibition of handwriting, and an attempt on Gillian’s part at that not too faithful reproduction of the Bottomley script on which so much depended. Greatly to her own surprise she was able, by the simple device of using a broad J nib, to write a hand with which the signature “Winona Caroline Bottomley” did not clash, and before long she was walking down Sloane Street, a little unsteady in the knees, but with an odd new steadiness in her mind. Lady Bottomley had engaged her at what seemed to Gillian a fabulous salary, and unusual though the conditions of her new employment appeared to be, she had a premonitory feeling of security in them quite unlike the apprehensions which had filled her after her first interview with Mrs. Lysaght. Eccentricity was to Gerald Armstrong’s daughter far less terrifying than regulated convention.

Not until she was opposite Cadogan Gardens did it occur to her that she had been engaged as Miss Macfarlane, a friend of the future Marchioness of Fulham: whereas, now that the gate of No. 99 Knightsbridge was closed behind her, she realized how completely she was nothing of more consequence than Gillian Armstrong, a tenant of the Mordaunt Club, on whom its secretary, plain Mrs. Barraclough, had taken pity.

It was possible that even now Miss Macfarlane, bearing a coroneted introduction, was pressing the amethyst button of the electric bell, and that she, Gillian, would in a few moments be convicted of fraud and disgraced in a way which would annoy Lilac quite dreadfully. Should she go back and confess to old Winona, or forward and confess to Mrs. Barraclough. Both confessions would have to be made with as little delay as possible. But, seeing that by this time she was nearer home and Mrs. Barraclough than she was to Knightsbridge, Gillian, who usually took the more difficult alternative from a sense of self-discipline, hurried on and walked straight across the courtyard and knocked at Mrs. Barraclough’s door before going up to face Lilac in their own flat.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” said Mrs. Barraclough. She was eating her luncheon with the _Morning Post_ propped up against a large Sheffield-plate cruet-stand which gave to the whole of her small and rather austerely furnished room that sense of having a storied past behind it which was so lacking in the Armstrongs’ flat.

“It was Winnie Roehampton who told me that her late mother-in-law was out of secretaries again. She married Roehampton after she’d killed Jim Bottomley. He was her first husband and she made him hunt before he could ride. She’d always wanted Roehampton, but she couldn’t afford him, so she took Jim Bottomley first and married the other, six weeks after the accident, on her jointure.”

“Well,” said Gillian, “if she’s that kind of person I shouldn’t think Lady Bottomley would engage a secretary who came through her.”

“No, you wouldn’t, but Winnie’s a sensible girl. Her heart’s always in the rich place,” said Mrs. Barraclough. “She’s always kept friends with old Winona who’d never really cared for Jim. He was only her stepson, and she was delighted that her Toby could have it all. And when Winnie married into the peerage, well—wait and see. You’ll understand soon enough.”

“Well, but what about Miss Macfarlane?”

“That’s you, Miss Armstrong. All her secretaries are Macfarlanes. She’s very obstinate about names. Winnie Roehampton says she always calls Hyde Park Corner the Marble Arch.”

“Goodness,” said Gillian. “Doesn’t it make it very difficult to know what she means?”

“I dare say it does,” said Mrs. Barraclough. “But you may get used to it.”

“And is ‘Toby’ the third baronet Sir Reginald?”

“He is,” said Mrs. Barraclough. “Old Bottomley was the first, poor Jim was the second and Toby is the third—all in ten years. Old Bottomley was one of the Coronation honours. He did something very handsome for Belfast Harbour. You’ll hear all about that, too.”

“Then you really think I am quite honestly engaged?”

“Quite honestly,” said Mrs. Barraclough, “and I shouldn’t be at all surprised if you kept the job. Anyhow you have my blessing and I’ll tell Winnie Roehampton to tell her late mother-in-law you’re a treasure.”

Gillian left Mrs. Barraclough comforted and relieved. Odd though it all sounded, it was not a terrifying oddness. Winona, Lady Bottomley, was more like the first chapter in a new book than a problem of existence. You felt there were answers to all her sums. You were astonished at, not dismayed by her; and Gillian enjoyed astonishment.

“Lilac,” she called, bursting into the outer of the two rooms they used as living-rooms.

But the little room was empty. The black Cromwellian table that stood under the window was not laid for luncheon, and William had unfastened the latch of his cage and, perched on the back of one of the three chairs they had bought at Heal’s to match the table, was thoughtfully manicuring his claw with his beak.

“Hillo!” said William. “Kiss cocky! Kiss cocky!”

“Lilac! Lilac!” called Gillian and went through the door into the inner room which was lined with bookcases and furnished with an enormous red-leather chesterfield, Sophie’s gift to the young flat-holders, and so huge that there was hardly space for another seat in the room.

But Lilac was not in the book-room, nor in the larger single room on the north side of the building looking into Gwynne Street which they used as a bedroom. Lilac had evidently gone on to some occasion of her own when she left Gillian at the top of Sloane Street, which was like Lilac, who had many private affairs to attend to though she usually kept Saturday morning free for flat-keeping and was in to lunch. And this was Saturday morning or Gillian would not have been free to go looking for work as she had done. Gillian, in solitary disgrace, was still correcting the July examination papers in the mistresses’ room at Pelham House all the other days of the week.

So Gillian took off her hat and washed her hands and went and ate bread and cheese and lettuce with William and read _The Song of Honour_ in a little yellow-paper book with a rather smudgy woodcut on its cover which she had bought at the Poetry Bookshop the Saturday before. William, who adored crusts with butter, sat on one claw on the back of her chair and held the crusts she gave him in the other, occasionally dropping one while he stood on both feet in order to stretch a long neck to turn over a page for Gillian. He didn’t tear the page, but he often turned it before Gillian was quite ready, and she had to turn back while William was climbing down to pick up his crust from the floor. She did it as quietly as possible in order not to hurt his feelings. William was really tiresome when his feelings were hurt. He would chatter and scream and flap his wings and require whole-hearted, undivided attention for quite five minutes if he felt neglected or snubbed, and Gillian had to be very careful because the Countess had already complained of the noise he made.

It was three o’clock when Lilac came in. She was flushed, but it was with excitement quite as much as with heat.

“Have you got the job?” she asked from the doorway. Gillian felt she dared not have answered “No.”

“Yes. I think so, though she wants someone at once,” she replied, wondering why Lilac’s eyes were so blue and her hair so curly at the sleepiest hour of the whole week.

“That’s all right. You can go to her on Monday,” said Lilac, taking off her hat and pushing the damp curls from her forehead with the third finger of her left hand. “I’ve fixed it all up with Mrs. Lysaght.”

“Lilac!”

“Yes. I have. I took the Putney bus and I called on her.”

“Goodness!” said Gillian.

“And gracious!” said Lilac, “I do wish, dear Gillian, you would not swear so blasphemously.”

“All right then. Damn!” said Gillian, “but hurry up.”

“Yes, I did. I called at _Mon Repos_. What a woman! Does she always screw that little gold pencil in and out?”

“Always!” said Gillian, “particularly when she’s angry. Was she angry with you?”

“Oh, very.” Lilac sat on the table and swung her buckled shoes up and down in the sunlight that came through under the green rush sunblinds. “At first. But it’s all right. You’re to correct those abominable children’s papers at home till the end of the term, and she’ll pay you your full salary. A person, you really couldn’t call her a girl, called Jane Bird, who lives on the other side of the Albert Bridge, will collect and deliver them day by day.”

“Bird,” said Gillian. “How on earth——”

“She came here, while you were at school on Tuesday,” said Lilac, her eyes hard and her mouth narrow. “After what she said I arranged what I’d say.”

“What did she say?”

“She said—she stood in the doorway—she’s a great creature, Gillian—she said, ‘Your sister is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. She’s no good to Madame Bowdler.’ I asked her who Madame Bowdler was and she said that was Mrs. Lysaght’s spiritual title, and then she told me that the whole school was boiling over about your being in disgrace. You never told me that they sent up your lunch and tea.”

“And it’s been Irish stew with the chill off all this week,” said Gillian. “I didn’t tell you because it is all so horrid I’d rather not talk about it.”

“_I_ talked about it,” said Lilac. “I felt I must play a father’s part.”

“But, Lilac, suppose Lady Bottomley hadn’t wanted me?”

“You’d have had to find someone who did,” said Lilac. “You’d have had to do that in any case. I was determined you shouldn’t go back there any more. I told her you weren’t safe to associate with ordinary people because of the unfortunate purity of your mind. I admitted,” Lilac paused ruefully, “I admitted that it was a disadvantage, especially in school-work. I very nearly said that I supposed no head mistress could hope to see God.”

“Oh, Lilac, you didn’t!”

“No—only nearly. It was a thing I thought of saying. Jane Bird said it to me.”

“How did she find you?”

“She asked Miss Fairfax if you had any family, and Miss Fairfax told her there was a sister. She said she hadn’t supposed that anyone so wide-eyed as you could possibly be anything but the youngest of a family. I told her that to all intents and purposes you were.”

“Well,” said Gillian, “nobody who saw you would suppose I was younger than you.”

“Not until they knew us,” said Lilac darkly.

* * * * *

So Gillian wrote to Lady Bottomley to say that she could begin work for her on Monday, and the sisters went out to post the letter in time to be delivered at 99 Knightsbridge that evening, and then walked along the Embankment to Chelsea Bridge and back by Battersea Park, and Gillian confessed to Lilac that she had told about her after all.

“Did she take any notice?” asked Lilac.

“Not the slightest.”

“It’s all right then, for the present,” said Lilac. “It’s really Toby I mind. And he mayn’t find out just yet. Did you see him?”

“No,” said Gillian, “only his photograph and that was called Reginald.”

“Yes,” said Lilac. “I know. Isn’t it a pity?”

III

“Will you,” said Lady Bottomley with majesty, “take down the following letter:

“Winona, Lady Bottomley presents her compliments to Mrs. Archibald Anstruther, and regrets that she cannot become a subscriber to the Society for the Prevention of Photographing Private Persons in the Park as she is already so fully occupied in signing cheques for the Societies to which she belongs ... no, take out ‘already’ and put in ‘lately’ ... to which she already belongs, that she cannot take the exercise prescribed for her by her physician. They all tell me I ought to walk for at least one hour a day before luncheon and for half an hour after tea.”