The Story Of Louie Part 36

It came, the conclusion. That portion of herself that always seemed resolved to convict Mr. Jeffries of a hideous thing spoke, as it were, softly, seductively.

"And what then, Louie? What then? Come, don't be afraid of yourself!

You know it in your heart all the time! Roy--you remember--_you_ had to make the love there; and you want to be _made_ love to, not to make love. _You_ didn't find Mr. Jeffries a b.u.t.t and a laughing-stock, you know. You envied that little chit of a milliner's hand--envied her and hated her. And she hates you, and always will, because you caught her in the dark with that other creature. Yes, yes, I know you were overstrung at that time, and didn't see yourself very clearly, but look at the thing now--you're calm now. When you saw his eyes, all full of perils and stratagems and deceits, all for her sake, you know you longed to have a man do all that for _you_! And when he did that mad thing with Kitty Windus, you know you wanted a man who would go even to those lengths for _you_! And you know that when he throws her over--brutally, heartlessly, without conscience--you'll want a man who'll be just as brutal and heartless and conscienceless for _you_! You all want it! You all love a ruthless man! You know it's the men who are the merciful s.e.x when s.e.x comes into the question; you're only merciful when it doesn't--just as those stupid men are merciless about the abstractions you don't care a straw about!... So suppose--suppose----"

"Oh, stop!" Louie besought herself faintly.

"--suppose it turns out as I say! Won't you immediately love him a little more when poor Kitty's sent about her business? And won't you love him a little more still when you hear he's engaged to Evie Soames? And won't you, when you learn that he's been willing to go all lengths--all lengths--for love, love him past all mending? You will, you will, you know you will!" The cry rang out almost exultantly.

"But--but--those people--coroners' juries--are supposed to know all about these things."

"Coroners' juries!... Do you remember his eyes?..."

Beyond that point Louie never got. She usually rose quickly and went out to post the photographer's letters. There, then, were the elements of her sum. Sometimes some of them presented themselves, sometimes others; more and more she shrank from casting the total. And often, to shake off the hideous, fascinating obsession, she did the most trivial thing she could think of--went to a drawer and overhauled her dresses, selecting the one she would wear at the photographer's showroom on the morrow.

It was in her to turn from the thought of a possible murder to the shaking out of a crumpled dress.

But she never wore the oyster-grey at the showrooms in Bond Street.

Nevertheless she shook it out frequently, putting it back into the drawer again.

That day, at the Molyneux Arms, Buck was alternately at his fondest and at his most tyrannical. The fondness was for Louie and the boy, the tyranny for everybody else. As Louie entered the little private parlour (she was not allowed to set foot in the rest of the premises) she heard loud crowings; they came from Jimmy, and were for the Pilgrim of Love who held him up at arm's-length in the air; but the next moment Buck was scolding a barmaid who had had the temerity to borrow the current number of _Modern Society_ before Louie had seen it. "Not that I don't make 'em all read it," he said, "but at times and seasons, and in their proper places; what with all these Radicals and what not we don't want chayoss coming again! You bring it back this minute, miss!--'Oryn--thia my Beloved!"

Buck kept his divided humour through tea; then there was another outburst. This time it was about a letter that had not been given to Louie immediately.

"And how do _you_ know that it isn't important?" he broke out on his wife. "Not a word--not a word! I _know_ it is important--all letters addressed so are important, mind, for the future! Those letters aren't about the butcher and baker and candlestick-maker, I'll have you know! Give it to her at once, and let Madermoselle hook up the back, or your next dress shall fasten down the front, I promise you!...

What, little man! A granddad, eh? 'No re-(_h_)-est--but the gra-(_h_)-ave----'"

For all Louie was able to guess from the signature, her letter might have been from butcher, baker and candlestick-maker, all three; the name--"hers to serve, Frank Hickley"--was unknown to her. But the single other name that the letter contained was known. It was that of Kitty Windus. She was laid up somewhere in Vauxhall, and wanted to see her.

The next morning, in a shabby respectable street off the Vauxhall Bridge Road, Louie rang a bell beneath which, punched in a strip of aluminium, was the sign, "F. Hickley, Agent." F. Hickley himself opened the door. Later Louie learned that he was an agent for his wife's shopping, boot-cleaning and potato-peeling. Mrs. Hickley was Kitty's cousin, but the bit she had coming in was not enough to relieve her of the necessity of keeping a lodging-house. That it was a lodging-house Louie guessed from the number and variety of hats and coats that hung in the narrow yellow-painted hall. Mrs. Hickley appeared from somewhere below; Mr. Hickley, descending again, pa.s.sed her on the stairs.

"Are you Miss Causton?" Mrs. Hickley asked.

"Yes. I've had a letter saying Miss Windus was here."

"Will you come up? Don't take too much notice of her, what she says, especially about tracts; Uncle Arthur's side's liable to it. This way."

"Is she ill?" Louie asked.

"Not to call ill. She'll go to Margate in a week or two, for the air, though Margate's too strong for me; Littlehampton's my favourite. And Bognor. Mind the stair-rod--I must tell Frank to fasten it down."

As Kitty had formerly found Louie, so Louie now found Kitty--in bed.

Her muteness as long as Mrs. Hickley remained in the room seemed obstinate, _voulu_; the rapid speech into which she broke without preface when her cousin's step had ceased to sound on the stairs confirmed some vague impression of secretiveness. Louie was uneasy at the change in her.

"You're not to talk about it," Kitty said, the words falling one over the other; "that's what the doctor meant, though of course he didn't know what it was. And Mr. Folliott too--the Reverend Mr. Folliott of St. Peters. He gave me the address in Cliftonville, quite the best end of the town; there's such a lot in a good address, don't you think?

You know Margate?"

"How are you, dear?" said Louie gently. "Yes, your cousin told me you were going away for a bit."

"Right away," said Kitty. "I can, you see; I haven't got to work if I don't want to; though I'm not rich, of course. Neither is Annie, but I don't like to see men doing the housework like Cousin Frank for all that. I've told Frank so again and again. '_Be_ an agent,' I've said time after time; 'for typewriters, or mangles, or tea, or anything you like, but get out of the house; it isn't a man's place.' And it isn't.... You've heard?" she broke off suddenly to say.

She blinked at Louie. Her neck above her nightgown was hardly more substantial than that of a chicken; her hands seemed to have become as veined as a skeleton leaf. Louie took one of them.

"Always running errands and setting the table--it isn't a man's life,"

Kitty continued. "'What does agent _mean_?' I said to him. 'Pull yourself together and _make_ it mean something, Frank!' I said.

'You're not very big, but you're strong, and you've got your wits about you,' I said.... You've heard?" she demanded once more.

"Well, tell me how you are," said Louie, patting the thin hand soothingly.

"But have you heard the news? Glad tidings for all. 'Come unto Me, and I will give you rest'--that's what we all want--rest; though why they should print 'Come' in red and 'unto' in green and 'Me' in purple, and all the letters like twigs, I'm sure I can't tell you, my dear. And always Oxford frames. I must ask Mr. Folliott. 'Though your sins be as crimson----'"

"You haven't asked how my little boy is, Kitty," said Louie.

"'Suffer the little children, and forbid them not'--how is he?"

But she did not wait for an answer. She was off again--the doctor, the Reverend Mr. Folliott, her approaching visit to Margate. And always she returned to the indignity of a man's doing women's work about the house. It was in this connection that she suddenly mentioned, in a way that gave Louie a slight start, the name of Mr. Jeffries.

"I will at least say that for him," she prattled; "I shouldn't have got sick of the sight of him; out of the house at half-past nine he'd have been, and that would have been the end of him till six o'clock; not always b.u.mping into you like Frank. I suppose you know Miss Levey's there too, at his Company? He's getting on there like anything. So's Mr. Mackie; you remember Mr. Mackie? He takes the auction himself now on Mondays and Thursdays; in Oxford Street; everybody stops as they walk past; he's a caution, is Mr. Mackie, I can tell you! But of course Jeff"--here she became mysterious, and nodded once or twice--"Jeff's on the way up--up. It's a different cla.s.s of work from Mr. Mackie's; better, as you might say; he's in the Confidential Exchange Department, Miriam says----"

"How is Miss Levey?" Louie asked, at a loss what else to say.

"Oh, in the pink--but the soul's the chief thing; what shall it profit a man; and I don't know whether her soul's in the pink. Do you always _hold_ with the Church of England, Louie?" she asked earnestly.

There was nothing to be made of her. She ran on weakly, irresponsibly, from trifle to trifle, and it was at Louie's own risk that she gave her talk any significance at all.... Suddenly she insisted that she herself had broken the engagement, not he. She spoke of his place in the Company--it was the Freight and Ballast Company; it appeared to be a "permanency." He was getting on--on; _he_ wouldn't polish bra.s.ses and take the lodgers' boots to be mended!... As she talked, Louie looked round the poor, neat little bedroom. It had framed texts and a picture of a lady s.h.i.+pwrecked in a nightgown; this was ent.i.tled "Simply to Thy Cross I cling." There was a good deal of muslin about, tied back with flyblown bows.

But suddenly Kitty seemed to remember something. Louie was once more gently patting the hand on the counterpane when she gave a quick little clutch and sat up.

"They wrote to you to come, didn't they?" she asked, looking hard at Louie.

"Yes, dear. I'd have come sooner if I'd known. The letter was sent on from Mortlake Road. I came as soon as I got it."

"That's all right," said Kitty, nodding mysteriously again. "I want to talk to you. Is the door shut?"

"Yes; but don't talk. Let me talk to you instead."

"No; there's something I want to say, and I shall forget it if I don't say it now.... You heard about it, didn't you? I don't mean the glad tidings for all----"

"Lie down, dear." (Kitty was squatting up in bed.) "Tell me the next time I come. I'll come again."

"No, I must tell you now. Though Jeff's sins be as scarlet. Of course you heard about Archie?"

"Hush."

"Of course you'd be down on him; quite right; so was Jeff. Jeff didn't half give him a talking to, I can tell you! 'Oh, I'll give him a dressing down,' he said; he was pretending it wasn't much, so as not to alarm me; but _I_ know him! 'Miss Causton and me?' he said. 'What a ridiculous idea!' And he made Archie apologise before the whole school. And now Archie's gone, and they said it was suicide; but what I can't understand is about Jeff's having that black eye, that very day. He'd fallen when he was drunk, he said, but Jeff never got drunk.

He said he tripped on the step; but he never _got_ drunk, if you understand what I mean. Wine is a mocker, isn't it, Louie? But I'm sure Jeff wasn't drunk. He isn't that kind of man."

Louie herself wondered why she should interpose as quickly and peremptorily as she did. She wondered, too, why she should do so in the words she used and in a voice so thin and harsh.