Sparrows Part 18

Often, while busily engaged in serving customers or in hearing and seeing things which, before she came to "Dawes'," she would never have believed to be possible, she had a strong suspicion that old Orgles was watching her from the top of a flight of stairs or the tiny window in his room; it seemed that he was a wary old spider, she a fly, and that he was biding his time. This impression saddened her; it also made her attend carefully to her duties, it being his place to deal with those of the staff who were remiss in their work. It was only of an evening, when she was free of the shop, that she could be said to be anything like her old, light-hearted self. She would wash, change her clothes, and scurry off to a ham and beef warehouse she had discovered in a turning off Oxford Street, where she would get her supper. The shop was kept by a man named Siggers. He was an affected little man, who wore his hair long; he minced about his shop and sliced his ham and beef with elaborate wavings of his carving knife and fork. Mavis proving a regular customer, he let her eat her supper in the shop, providing her with knife, fork, tablecloth, and mustard. Although married and henpecked, he affected to admire Mavis; while she ate her humble meal, he would forlornly look in her direction, sigh, and wearily support his s.h.a.ggy head with his forefinger; but she could not help noticing that, when afflicted with this mood, he would often glance at himself in a large looking gla.s.s which faced him as he sat. His demonstrations of regard never became more p.r.o.nounced. It was as much as Mavis could do to stop herself from laughing outright when she paid him, it being a signal mark of his confidence that he did not exact payment from her "on delivery of goods in order to prevent regrettable mistakes," as printed cards, conspicuously placed in the shop, informed customers--or clients, as Mr Siggers preferred to call them.

One night, Mavis, by the merest chance, made a discovery that gladdened her heart: she lighted upon Soho. She had read and loved her Fielding and Smollett when at Brandenburg College; the sight of the stately old houses at once awoke memories of Tom Jones, Parson Adams, Roderick Random, and Lady Bellaston, She did not immediately remember that those walls had sheltered the originals of these creations; when she realised this fact she got from the nearest lending library her old favourites and carefully re-read them. She, also, remembered her dear father telling her that an ancestor of his, who had lived in Soho, had been killed in the thirties of the eighteenth century when fighting a famous duel; this, and the sorry dignity of the Soho houses, was enough to stir her imagination. Night after night, she would elude the men who mostly followed her and walk along the less frequented of the sombre streets. These she would people with the reckless beaux, the headstrong ladies of that bygone time; she would imagine the fierce loves, the daring play, the burning jealousies of which the dark old rooms, of which she sometimes caught a glimpse, could tell if they had a mind.

Sometimes she would close her eyes, when the street would be again filled with a jostling crowd of sedan chairmen, footmen, and linkboys; she could almost smell the torches and hear the cries of their bearers.

It gave her much of a shock to realise how beauties, lovers, linkboys, and all had disappeared from the face of the earth, as if they had never been. She wondered why Londoners were so indifferent to the stones Soho had to tell. Then she fell to speculating upon which the house might be where her blood-thirsty ancestor had lived; also, if it had ever occurred to him that one of his descendants, a girl, would be wandering about Soho with scarce enough for her daily needs. In time, she grew to love the old houses, which seemed ever to mourn their long-lost grandeur, which still seemed full of echoes of long-dead voices, which were ill-reconciled to the base uses to which they were now put. Perhaps she, also, loved them because she grew to compare their fallen state with that of her own family; it seemed that she and they had much in common; and shared misfortunes beget sympathy.

Thus Mavis worked and dreamed.

CHAPTER EIGHT

SPIDER AND FLY

One night, Mavis went back to "Dawes'" earlier than usual. She was wearing the boots bought with her carefully saved pence; these pinched her feet, making her weary and irritable. She wondered if she would have the bedroom to herself while she undressed. Of late, the queenly Miss Potter had given up going out for the evening and returning at all hours in the morning. Her usual robust health had deserted her; she was constantly swallowing drugs; she would go out for long walks after shop hours, to return about eleven, completely exhausted, when she would hold long, whispered conversations with her friend Miss Allen.

Mavis was delighted to find the room vacant. The odour of drugs mingled with the other smells of the chamber, which she mitigated, in some measure, by opening the window as far as she was able. She pulled off her tight boots, enjoying for some moments a pleasurable sense of relief; then she tumbled into bed, soon to fall asleep. She was awakened by the noise of voices raised in altercation. Miss Potter and Miss Impett were having words. The girls were in bed, although no one had troubled to turn off the flaring jet. As they became more and more possessed with the pa.s.sion for effective retort, Mavis saw vile looks appearing on their faces: these obliterated all traces of youth and comeliness, subst.i.tuting in their stead a livid commonness.

"We know all about you!" cried loud-voiced Miss Impett.

"Happily, that's not a privilege desired in your case," retorted Miss Potter.

"And why not?" Miss Impett demanded to know.

"We might learn too much."

"What does anyone know of me that I'm ashamed of?" roared Miss Impett.

"That's just it."

"Just what?"

"Some people have no shame."

"Do try and remember you're ladies," put in Miss Allen, in an effort to still the storm.

"Well, she shouldn't say I ought to wash my hands before getting into bed," remarked Miss Impett.

"I didn't say you should," said Miss Potter.

"What did you say?"

"What I said was that anyone with any pretension to the name of lady would wash her hands before getting into bed," corrected Miss Potter.

"I know you don't think me a lady," broke out Miss Impett. "But ma was quite a lady till she started to let her lodgings in single rooms."

"Don't say any more and let's all go to sleep," urged pacific Miss Allen, who was all the time keeping an anxious eye on her friend Miss Potter.

Miss Impett, perhaps fired by her family reminiscence, was not so easily mollified.

"Of course, if certain people, who're n.o.bodies, try to be'ave as somebodies, one naturally wants to know where they've learned their cla.s.sy manners," she remarked.

"Was you referring to me?" asked Miss Potter.

"I wasn't speaking to you," replied Miss Impett.

"But I was speaking to you. Was you referring to me?"

"Never mind who I was referring to."

"Whatever I've done," said Miss Potter pointedly, "whatever I've done, I've never made myself cheap with a something in the City."

"No. 'E wouldn't be rich enough for you."

"You say that I take money from gentlemen," cried Miss Potter.

"If they're fools enough to give it to you."

"Ladies! ladies!" pleaded Miss Allen, but all in vain.

"I've never done the things you've done," screamed Miss Potter.

"I've done? I've done? I 'ave my faults same as others, but I can say, I can that--that I've never let a gentleman make love to me unless I've been properly introduced to him," remarked her opponent virtuously.

"For shame! For shame!" cried Miss Potter and Miss Allen together, as if the proprieties that they held most sacred had been ruthlessly and unnecessarily violated.

"No, that I h'ain't," continued irate Miss Impett. "I've watched you when you didn't know I was by and seen the way you've made eyes at gentlemen in evening dress."

Much as Mavis was shocked at all she had heard, she was little prepared for what followed. The next moment Miss Potter had sprung out of bed; with clenched fists, and features distorted by rage, she sprang to Miss Impett's bedside.

"Say that again!" she screamed.

"I shan't."

"You daren't!"

"I daren't?"

"No, you daren't."

"What would you do if I did?"

"Say it and see."

"You dare me to?"

"Yes, you d.a.m.n beast, to say I'm no better than a street-walker!"