The Story Of Louie Part 35

"Yes," said Louie.

"Well, she's had an escape. But don't think about it. You have your own little boy. Come into the garden till your father comes and then have a nice long drive. Shall we wrap Jimmy up and let him go with you?"

That, then, was the second thing; but already Louie had heard a prophetical whisper in her soul.

PART IV

PILLAR TO POST

I

When, in the October of 1896, Louie Causton left Mortlake Road, with half the nurses of the home waving their handkerchiefs after her, she went to a house near the Parson's Green end of Wandsworth Bridge Road.

As she left that house before Christmas, going to another one near the Walham Green Town Hall, there is no need to describe it. Neither need the Walham Green house be described, since from there she went, in February 1897, to yet another house, in a street off the Bishops Road, Fulham. These and other removals did not necessitate the use of a pantechnicon; a four-wheeler sufficed on each occasion. Louie, the boy and the nurse went inside; the top was quite big enough for her belongings. She stuck to the south-western district; at no time did she move farther east than when she took two rooms in Cheyne Walk, over a bicycle shop near the Chelsea suspension bridge--which rooms, by the way, she was forced to leave at an hour's notice, her landlord, a man of straw, being himself ejected and involving his sub-tenant in his own catastrophe. She kept to this district because of its nearness to Kingston and the Molyneux Arms. By the time the boy was nine months old she was living in Tadema Road, not far from where the Chelsea power-station now stands.

The nurse whom she had engaged was a link--save for Chaff the only one--with Trant. She was, indeed, her own old French governess, once Celeste Martin, now Celeste Farnier and a widow. She was a Provencale, from Arles. On the death of her husband, which had taken place while Louie had been still at the home in Mortlake Road, she had sought out Chaff with a sheaf of testimonials, and by-and-by Louie had engaged her. She paid her ten s.h.i.+llings a week, on the distinct understanding that she must not hesitate to accept the first decent post that offered. It was already plain that, even if Celeste could have brought herself to leave the little girl to whom she had taught the order of the personal p.r.o.nouns in French, her affection for Master Jim would have haled her back again.

Louie changed her abode so frequently for one reason and another. In perhaps a third of the cases the landladies to whom she offered herself as a lodger found reasons for asking her to leave when they saw that her letters were addressed to "Miss Causton." Then, to save cab fares, Louie began to make her position plain at the outset.

Sometimes this made a difference, sometimes none. On the whole, London S.W. showed itself charitable or merely indifferent. By May 1897 she was at another house in Wandsworth Bridge Road.

She had not refused to accept, easily and as a loan, a sum of money from Buck; but thrice she had well-nigh quarrelled with Buck because she would accept it only as a loan. Twice, for the same reason, she had had tussles with Chaff. But money, until she should find something settled to do, she must have. No doubt Richenda Earle would have shaken her head and have pointed out that now Louie not only had the Scarisbricks behind her, but a prosperous publican also; but Louie, though she lived as frugally as if she had to earn every penny, did not see why her boy should go short while there was money to be had.

She took the sensible view of the matter, and borrowed, while walking her shoes out and answering advertis.e.m.e.nts for this, that and the other.

Up to the summer of '97 her occupations had been almost as various as her addresses. She very soon discovered that her Holborn training was of little use to her, and she could not (as also she discovered) play the piano well enough to give lessons. What she dreamed of, of course, was a comfortable private secretarys.h.i.+p; no young woman is so ill-trained or so incompetent but she fancies herself good enough for a private secretarys.h.i.+p. Perhaps Uncle Augustus might have helped her to one, but she would have nothing to do with Uncle Augustus; and Chaff was unable to beat up anything of the kind. Buck's proposal, that she should keep his books, had been the cause of their second altercation. Common-sense in the matter of borrowing she was prepared to be; beyond that point she remembered her pride and Richenda's words. So for the present she was spared the worst of the pinch.

So, in the early part of that year, she was in an A.B.C. cash-desk, traveller for a History, and saleswoman at an Earls Court chocolate-stall. Then, in June, she obtained, actually in the face of considerable compet.i.tion, a place in the showrooms of a Bond Street photographer. Perhaps her dresses, of which several still remained, helped her to this place. She wrote letters, arranged appointments, answered press and other calls on the telephone, and received sitters.

No doubt some of these knew Uncle Augustus. Robson, of the Board of Trade (who came one day), would probably know him; so would George Hastie, Robson's friend and colleague, and perhaps Sir Peregrine Campbell and others. Some of them, the more sporting sort, might even know Buck too, for Buck was still a tradition; in short, Louie's own position amused her immensely. By taking her letters home with her and leaving a younger a.s.sistant in charge, she was frequently able to leave the showrooms by half-past four and to spend the evenings with Celeste and her boy. Incidentally, Louie improved her French a good deal, for Celeste crooned over the boy in French and English indifferently.... "The darleeng--the lo-ove--the precieux--oh, oh, oh, mais il existe--il manifeste, le petiot----"; and she would break off to sing, in a cracked voice, "Le Pont d'Avignon," or some lullaby of Frederic Mistral. She idolised the infant; when he was put to bed she did not delay long to follow him, for Louie, who had her work to do during the day, must not be roused at night; and so Louie frequently sat alone, writing her letters or wrapped in her own musings. She received thirty-five s.h.i.+llings a week. Her job had the appearance of a "permanency." In July she got a "rise" of three s.h.i.+llings a week. She also got ten days' holiday, the greater part of which she spent in the company of her father. She was beginning to know what holidays meant now.

On one of those days she had an unexpected little meeting in Richmond Park. Celeste and the boy had gone on by train, and she was walking.

The meeting was with a girl called Myrtle Morris, who, when Louie had kept the confectionery stall at Earls Court, had sold cigarettes at the stall adjoining. Miss Morris was accompanied by a tall young man; she stopped to greet Louie, and the young man walked slowly on. Myrtle asked Louie what she was doing now. Louie told her. "And you?" she said.

"Oh, I've gone back to my old trade," the girl said, nodding towards her retreating companion. "Artists' model. That's my present employer--Izzard."

"Who?" said Louie. The name seemed familiar.

"Billy Izzard. Know him?"

"No," said Louie. But she remembered now where she had heard the name.

"Jolly clever painter," said the model authoritatively. "Nice fellow too. Shall I call him?"

"Thanks, but I must be getting on," said Louie. "Good-bye."

"So long. Come and look me up some time, won't you? 25 Edith Grove."

"Thank you. Good-bye."

So that was Roy's friend! They had not gone down with the yacht that had lain under the hill at Rainham Parva. But she had only seen Mr.

Izzard's back. For a moment, but only for a moment, she thought of Roy; then the sum-total of a long sequence of reveries returned to her again.

Or rather, the factors that made that total returned. In spite of her broodings late at night, when her letters were written and Jimmy's food prepared for the night, she was still unable to cast them up. Had she been asked to state her relation now to Mr. Jeffries her attempt would have been something like this:

"It's perfectly absurd, of course. There is no relation--nothing that can properly be called a relation. How can there be, with a man I don't see--haven't seen since that queer party? I don't even know where he is or what he's doing; he may be a commissionaire again for all I know."

"Yes, but," she now answered herself, as if it had been some form of a dialogue, "don't forget that other night, at Mortlake Road, after Kitty'd gone."

She did not forget that night. She had told herself that night that it was nonsense that she should love Mr. Jeffries. Again she answered that critical objector within herself.

"But it _is_ nonsense after all! How _can_ I? I suppose I mean that if things had been different I might have loved him. Moping about a man you never see is all very well for a schoolgirl for a week or two, but not for grown women, and mothers at that."

"Then you mean he's just the same to you as Buck and Chaff?" the dialogue continued, as she walked.

"All I mean is that he might have been more."

"Well, suppose you were to hear now that he'd broken off with Kitty, and--you know--that other were to happen?"

She did know what she meant by "that other." It was the most familiar of her thoughts. It was what in her heart she was stilly waiting for--to learn one day that Mr. Jeffries had broken off with Kitty and had become engaged to Evie Soames. And at that point she always tried to stop the dialogue. Beyond that point lay something that she vaguely apprehended might be horrible.

She had no definite reason for supposing this horrible thing to exist.

The horror, indeed, was that it might exist, and to entertain morbid thoughts about something that merely might exist was neither pleasant nor wise. But at times she could not forget the promise she had once made to herself--that if anything unaccountable ever happened to a certain young man she would know in what quarter to look for the likely cause of it. And something had happened. Part of what had happened she had had from Miss Cora; "A lethal chamber--the nasty little sewer-rat!" Miss Cora had said; and it had happened on the eve of his wedding to Evie Soames. To commit suicide had been the only thing to do.

And of course he had committed suicide....

Then that second voice within her tried to speak again. "Remember," it said, "that this Mr. Jeffries, of whom you can't help thinking when all's said and done, had suffered innumerable insults from him--you yourself were dragged into one of them----"

"Quiet!" the other self commanded peremptorily.

"--and as far as that girl you hate's concerned--Evie Soames--if the reason was good enough for suicide it was good enough for the other thing."

"What other thing?" Louie, in spite of herself, could not help asking.

"Oh--_you_ know!"

"Do you know what you're saying?" This was an attempt to browbeat the other Louie.

"Oh, perfectly well! _I_ know myself--you--us--Louie Causton--better than you do! And I know that lion better! Have you forgotten? Don't you remember what you thought of him, that if he set his mind on a thing he'd get it sooner or later, one way or another? Don't you remember what he said--'I wonder if anybody's ever beaten who doesn't deserve to be?' They are dangerous men who believe that! And the way's clear for him now, isn't it? Of course it is! Why, suppose you hear, first, that he's thrown Kitty Windus over; suppose you hear, next, that he's forging ahead in his business, whatever it is--you know he's as ambitious as Satan; then suppose you hear that he's engaged to Evie Soames--married to her. Suppose you hear all this?"

"Oh, anybody can make up an _a priori_ tale like that!" the other scoffed.

"Perhaps they can; but what _is_ a murder anyway? Whoever sees one committed? Don't they hang men on just such _a priori_ tales, as you call it? Suppose that, rather than let him marry that girl----"

"Oh, stop, stop!" Louie positively shrieked within herself.

She was white. This scene always turned her white. She quickened her pace, but her ghastly pallor remained unchanged. A hundred times she had argued it all before, and she knew the conclusion that would presently come.