The Story Of Louie Part 48

But suddenly, as if even in this gratification and triumph lurked a peril best avoided, Louie strode to the canvas, took it from its nail, and set it on the floor by the little fireplace with its face to the wall. She had felt the tigress stretch again. To put that thing out of sight was the safest thing to do. She turned to Evie again.

"Please go," she said. ("Yes, mother's coming in a minute, Jimmy.) You see, he's calling me. Forgive my turning you out like this, but do, do go, and don't tell your husband where you've been. Good-bye."

But Evie Jeffries seemed to suspect that Louie was merely "coming it over her" with something indefinable, essential, not to be acquired.

After all it was she, this shabby, grey-eyed woman, who wrote shorthand for a weekly wage, and herself, Mrs. James Herbert Jeffries, who lived in the mansion in Iddesleigh Gate. Perhaps she felt herself challenged; at any rate she plunged her hand into her lucky-bag once more.

"Oh, there's no need for such a hurry," she said frigidly. "For one thing, I'm a little particular about who I take my advice from. You needn't think I don't see you're just shutting me up?"

Louie was almost hus.h.i.+ng, soothing. "Then let me shut you up. You've seen all you came to see; if there's anything else you want to know, ask me, quite quickly----"

And Louie, in her eagerness to get rid of her and to remove herself from danger, almost gladly submitted to what Evie said next.

"Oh, of course, if you've--an appointment," she said, with a toss.

"Yes, I've an appointment--you understand," she answered, with a little shepherding movement of her hands.

But the next moment that too had turned into something else.

"Oh, you little fool!" Louie broke out, suddenly seeing. "You don't suppose I'm trying to get you out of the way so that I can meet _him_, do you? Good gracious, woman, he's never set foot in this place in his life, and I'll see he never does! Perhaps I wanted you to think he had--I don't know what I thought--with one and another of you I'm getting almost past thinking--but that's the truth anyway! _Now_ are you satisfied? Or have you got the idea so thoroughly into your stupid little head that nothing will shake it? If you're going to spend your Sat.u.r.day afternoons going round to every place you think might possibly----"

But the denial counted for nothing. Evie turned haughtily.

"Who's making the noise now? And why should I believe you? I knew before I came you'd say that----"

"Oh, how you try me!... I _do_ say that. There's nothing else to say.

Do you think if it was any other way I shouldn't boast of it, to you or anybody else? Why, how _can_ you know so little of him--not to speak of myself----"

"You needn't talk as if you hadn't already had the cheek to tell me you loved him!"

"Did I? Upon my soul, I sometimes don't know whether I do or not! Say I don't--say I lied--say I sometimes almost hate him as much as I do you and you me."

"Oh, very likely, the grapes being sour," Evie scoffed.

"Then if they're sour----? What more do you want? Isn't that enough?

And isn't it more than enough that I let you stand there and tell me so? Oh, I'm doing my best to warn you--you'll make a great mistake if you make me _try_ to get him!" She stamped. "_Won't_ you go?"

Evie too stamped. "Oh yes, I'll go, and so will you, I promise you--from Pall Mall----"

"Anything you like--only go----"

But as Evie took a step towards the door a little accident turned Louie suddenly as white as paper. Billy's study leaned against the wall; Evie's skirt or foot caught it as she pa.s.sed; and the canvas fell. Evie gave a short laugh and pushed it with her shoe.

The dear symbol, nay, the very evidence of so many dreamings, that poor thing of wasted smiles and sighs and tears, the pearl from the heart of the oyster-grey----

A kick of her rival's shoe was treatment good enough for it----

It was as if the hives of her own b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the heart beneath them had been trodden on.

Louie stepped slowly forward. "No, stop," she said.

She stood for a moment looking down at the picture; then she spoke slowly.

"You were quite right to come," she said. "You have reason to be jealous."

Evie affected not to hear, but she heard. Louie continued:

"A moment ago I told you not to tell him you'd been here. Now I want you to tell him. He may even be expecting it. You see we have spoken of it, he and I."

Evie Jeffries seemed about to say something, but "Just one moment,"

said Louie quietly----

She placed the picture against the wall again, face outwards. She did not display it as a taunt now; it had served its turn. As if Evie's looks had cheapened it, she no longer wanted it. She stood looking at it.

"It was the last time I sat," she murmured to herself.

Even that pale shadow of a bridal was to be taken from her.

Well, let it go.

This time it was her own foot that kicked the canvas aside; then like a flash she turned--Louie at her deadliest.

"I suppose you're aware you've lost him, whether he knows it yet or not?" she demanded truculently.

Again she was grateful to Evie that she stiffened up against her. Evie smiled.

"Oh, that way--'whether he knows it or not'--n.o.body minds _that_ kind of losing! _That_ wasn't what you were trying to make me believe a few minutes ago. Thank you very much for the tea, not forgetting the advice," she went on, "and if I might return the compliment, I should like to give you a piece of advice too. You say you could get married if you like; I'd jump at that if I were you! You see, there's your boy. Quite a well-behaved little fellow he seems--quite a superior child--and now that I've seen for myself, I'm perfectly satisfied, thank you!"

"Then," said Louie, advancing, "I'm going to spoil your satisfaction.

Listen to me." Her eyes were like saucers of ice. "You've lost your husband. I'm not going to tell you how, but I'll tell you how you can find out. You can tell him what he wouldn't believe when I told him--that you're jealous. You've reason; ask him what it is. If he doesn't tell you, he daren't; if he does--ck!--it's all up between you. Do you suppose," she said slowly, "that _you're_ the kind of woman men tell things to? You, who can neither trust him nor be trusted by him? You, who spy on him when his back's turned? You, who listen while a miserable little Jewess makes mischief for you--for I guess Miriam Levey sent you here? _You_ think you love him? Look at me, I say"--she rapped out the words like a command--"listen, and I'll tell you _my_ idea of loving a man! I've messed my life; if you were anything but what you are you'd know that if you wanted to hurt me your way wouldn't be to point at my little boy and look round my bedroom as if you expected to find pipes and overcoats there! Oh, that's not the way! The way would be to let me see what a perfect marriage could be; there might be tears in my eyes then! But what's this you show me instead? Oh, I know what your marriage is without telling. It would take you and a woman to make a wife for a man! And what would mine have been if I hadn't thrown my chance away? What should I have said if I'd seen what you think you've seen? Listen! I should have said: 'Go, if you like; find a woman if you can whose love's like mine; search the earth for her; I give you leave, and I shall be waiting for you, just the same, when you come back and say there isn't one!' But had _you_ thought of that? Not you! At a word you're off, asking whether this and that's true, because you don't trust him; and so he gives his trust to somebody else! That's what you've lost--and you don't even miss it, you know so little of love!"

Evie had fallen back against the wall, a little intimidated by her vehemence. She did not understand, but she seemed to apprehend that there was something she did not understand. Louie broke out anew.

"_You_ know love! And when and how did you learn it, pray? As you learned your shorthand and things (oh, you're trying hard to forget you ever knew them!) at that place in Holborn? Why, you failed in your petty little examinations there; do you think love's easier? Something you get out of a text-book and answer a paper on? Your husband might know if you don't! _He_ knew just what those other lessons were worth, but he doesn't seem to know that loving has a genius too--that one in a million has it as a gift and the others mimic it as you're mimicking people in your dress and talk now! And you call _me_ common--me, who told your husband long ago what his only, only chance was! Oh, I mustn't say any more or I shall say everything! And you toss your head and say: 'n.o.body minds that kind of losing!' That's your idea; that's what you really think! Why, your mind wants a window as badly as that little dark back room at your Business College.... Oh, it maddens me, the sheer waste! A necklace of love--pearls--and good gracious, a bit of cheap gla.s.s in the middle of it! Yes, I mean you."

She was walking rapidly up and down; she struck the rail of Jimmy's cot with her hand as she pa.s.sed. Evie, cowed, watched her from the wall. Louie stopped before her.

"What do you _do_ for him?" she said bitterly. "What do you _give_ him? What do you _bear_ for him, suffer for him? Don't whimper--tell me--you've made pretty free with me--put that handkerchief away and tell me----"

But instead of putting the handkerchief away, Evie burst into loud sobs. Louie watched her remorselessly. Tears, of course--no doubt that was the way she managed Jim----

"That's no good with me," she said harshly. "I want to know what you do for your husband besides following him about and asking questions about him."

Evie's hand moved as if for a chair. There was none. She lifted her head, walked across the room, and fell across Louie's bed. Louie still watched her unmoved.

"Well?" she demanded again, after a quarter of a minute.

m.u.f.fled in the bedclothes, Evie's voice came.